The Rundown - Novo’s Post-Ozempic Plan, Paramount Gets Closer to Warner Bros Merger

Episode Date: September 21, 2026

Market update for September 21, 2026Limited Time Promo: Sign up for a Public account, deposit $1,000 and get $100 in free stock (LINK)Interview with Matt Hougan, CIO of Bitwise: (YouTube)Follow us on Instagram (@TheRundownDaily) for bonus content and instant reactions.In today’s episode, Zaid covers:Why a 5% Treasury yield might actually be good newsNovo’s plan to find its next blockbusters as it tries to regain momentum against Eli LillyParamount’s push to clear a major hurdle in its Warner Bros. mergerAccenture jumping after landing an AI-safety role with AnthropicBitcoin breaking above $85,000 as crypto stocks rallyThe best-performing stock of the last 45 years (it's not a tech company)

Public.com presents the rundown. Your daily market update in 10 minutes. My name is Zaid Admani, and today is Monday, September 21st. In today's episode, I'll break down why a 5% treasury yield might actually be a good thing. I'll also tell you why Nobunortiz is trying to reinvent itself after falling behind Eli Lilly, and why Paramount might finally be getting closer to its massive merger with Warner Brothers. Then stick around. to the end of the show to find out which stock has been the best performing of the last 25 years. And trust me, it's not who you think it is.

We got a great show for you today. Let's go. Stocks are coming off a pretty wild week, but despite all the drama, the S&P 500 was basically flat on the week, while the NASDAQ managed to gain 0.7%. The Dow ended up down 1.7% for its third straight losing week,

but nobody cares about the doubt. So last week, the big news was that the Federal Reserve raised interest rates for the first time in three years. And, you know, for the most part, the stock market kind of shrugged it off. And that's because the stock market seems to be taking cues from the bond market right now. The bond market seems to be running the show. Lately, the days where bond yields go up, stocks go down. And the days where yields go down, stocks go up, like we saw last Thursday. And, you know, that makes sense, right?

Higher yields means higher borrowing cost for companies and consumers, which can, slow economic growth. On top of that, when you can earn close to 5% on U.S. Treasuries, bonds suddenly look a lot more attractive for investors compared to taking risk in the stock market. But the big question now is what happens to yields from here? And why are yields up in the first place? There's actually two explanations on why yields could be rising. There's the optimistic explanation, and then there's the bearish one. Just for some context, the 10-year treasury yield started the year around 4.17 and now it's hovering right around 5%. The optimist, explanation for why that happened is that the economy is just really strong right now.

The Atlanta Fed is tracking economic growth at 5.1% for Q3. On top of that, S&P 500 earnings are expected to grow nearly 29% in Q3, and unemployment is still sitting around 4.1%. So maybe rates are higher simply because the economy can handle them. So that's the optimistic take on what's happening with the bond market. The bearish explanation is that investors are demanding more yield on bonds because they're worried about inflation and government debt and geopolitics and the credibility of U.S. policy. Right now, the market is leaning towards the optimistic explanation, which is why stocks are still hovering near all-time highs.

I think the wild card in all of this is what happens with oil prices. Crude prices actually pulled back at the end of last week and continued to pull back at the start of this week, but there's now a new shortage of oil tankers around the Strait of Hormuz. So even if the price of a barrel of oil comes down, the cost to deliver that oil could stay high because of shipping costs, which could keep the price of gas and diesel high, which could lead to elevated inflation. So as we enter into Q4, the two major themes are what's going to happen with the bond market and what's going to happen to oil. I think those two things are going to continue to dominate the headlines, at least until we start earnings season in a few weeks.

So we'll continue to keep an eye on all that along with everything else happening. So definitely get subscribed to the podcast if you haven't already, especially with everything going on right now, and tune in every day to stay in the loop. Let's run through some headlines, starting with Novo Nordisk. The Danish pharma giant Nova Nordisk held a big investors event this morning and basically laid out their plans for life after OZemPEC and WeGovie. Remember, Novo invented the modern weight loss drug market with Ozempic, but now the market is dominated by Eli Lilly with their Manjaro and Zepbound drugs. And you can see the impact of Novo Nordis losing their grip on the weight loss market. Novo's stock has dropped 27% in the last 12 months, while Eli Lilly's stock has gone up over 50%.

So the other problem for the company is their patents. Semi-glutodid, which is the active ingredient in Ozempic and Weigv, starts losing patent protection in major markets over the next several years. In the U.S., that patent will expire in 2032, which will allow generic versions of OZempic to hit the market. And that's a big deal because the U.S. accounted for more than half of Novo Nordus's sales last year. So Nova Nordus is now trying to build their next generation of drugs before the patents expire. In the investors event, the company says they want to launch more than five new multi-blockbuster

drugs by 2030. And they're not just focused on the weight loss and diabetes sector. They're also looking into areas like cardiovascular disease, liver disease, and blood disorders. And in order to meet their goals, the company is planning to use AI to speed up the development process. Last week, Nova Nordisk announced a partnership with Anthropic to use Claude science inside their R&D. Nova wants to use the AI to analyze research and solve scientific problems and ultimately speed up how quickly new drugs make it through development. So yeah, the company and its new CEO are talking a big game right now and trying to

shore up investor confidence. But the market isn't buying it at all. In fact, Nova stock dropped 7% this morning after the investor meeting. The thing is, Nova Nordus fumbled the weight loss opportunity with OZepic so bad that investors are now hesitant to give the company. benefit of the doubt. So Novo can talk a big game all they want, but at this point, they're going to have to prove to investors that they can still innovate before investors are ready to jump back in. And yeah, sure, using AI for drug development makes for a great headline, and I'm sure

it's going to help speed up drug discovery, but at this point, every pharma company on the planet will be using AI. So I'm not really sure how much of an edge using AI is at this point. Let me know the comments on what you guys think, are you still bullish on Novo Nordus? Do you think they'll make a comeback? I know that Nova Nordus has seen some early success with their we-govy weight loss pill, but still, as of right now, all the hype and attention seems to be going towards Eli Lilly. Let's shift gears and talk about Paramount, because the company might finally be getting close to closing their acquisition of Warner Brothers. Now, a quick refresher here, Paramount and Warner Brothers agreed to merge back in February in an $81 billion deal, but this

acquisition has faced a ton of criticism from both politicians and Hollywood. You know, the argument is that this deal concentrates too much control of large entertainment and news properties into one entity. So in response, California and 11 other states sued in July on antitrust grounds to block the merger. Well, it seems like Paramount and California's attorney general are now in advanced settlement talks over the lawsuit. And Paramount is considering some pretty significant concessions to get this thing across the finish line. One of the big commitments is a $1.5 billion investment in production in California and a promise to not leave. leave the state. Other compromises include not selling either of the studio lots and also a possible

penalty on the company if they don't produce the 30 movies a year that they're pledging after the merger. So these settlement talks are a meaningful step forward. And, you know, Paramount has a lot of incentives to get this deal done quickly. Starting next month, Paramount has to pay a so-called ticking fee that pays Warner shareholders roughly $650 million every quarter until the merger closes. So the market seems to think that a deal is close to getting done, and that's why Paramount and Warner Brothers stock are each up around 7% this morning in reaction to the report. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Shares of Accenture are jumping this morning after the consulting company landed an interesting

AI deal with Anthropic. On Friday, Anthropic named Accenture as their first independent safety evaluator. Remember a week ago, Anthropic CEO Dario Amadey calls for an AI industry slowdown for safety reasons. And step one of his safety plan was letting outside evaluators inside the company. So they're making good on that by hiring Accenture. A team from Accenture is going to be sitting inside Anthropic and essentially act as a red team, which means that their entire job will be trying to break Anthropic safeguards and checking whether the AI is actually behaving the way Anthropic says it should.

I do find it funny that Anthropic is hiring a consulting company for this. It's kind of like student paying a teacher to grade their homework, you know? But hey, good for Essentialia. I mean, they really needed this win. Their stock was down 30% this year because everyone thought that AI was going to kill the consulting industry. But it seems like they finally figured out how to cash in on this. And then Accenture stock is up around 5% this morning at the time of this recording. Let's stick with the winners today and talk about crypto.

Crypto is rallying this morning with Bitcoin topping $85,000 for the first time since January. Bitcoin has been on a tear over the last five days. It's up 7% and it's up nearly 35% over the last three months. And the fact that Bitcoin is rallying right now, despite the recent setbacks, is pretty impressive. Last week we talked about how the Clarity Act failed to advance in the Senate, not to mention the Fed hiked interest rates, which tends to hurt risky assets like Bitcoin. But crypto also got one good news last week from the SEC.

On Thursday, the SEC gave the green light for tokenized stocks to trade in the U.S., which could be a big deal. So yeah, crypto is finally starting to have a moment again. There seems to be some momentum there. If you want to learn more about what's happening in crypto, go check out my conversation I had with BitWiCIO, Matt Hogan. The interview was posted over the weekend. It was a great conversation, and it kind of got me fired up about crypto.

So definitely go check that out. We'll put the link in the description. Let's wrap the show with a fun fact. The best performing stock of the last 45 years is an Apple, Microsoft, and V-Divya, Google, or some other tech company, it's Home Depot. Home Depot IPO IPOed 45 years ago this week, and at the time, the hardware store only had four locations, the IPO at around a $40 million valuation. You fast forward to today, and Home Depot is worth nearly $300 billion. To put it another way, if you'd invested $1,000 in Home Depot on the day of their IPO and

reinvest the dividends over the years, that stake would be worth roughly $16 million to To put into perspective how crazy that it is, if you had done the same $1,000 investment into Apple's IPO, which happened less than a year earlier before Home Depot's, that investment would be worth about $4 million today. I mean, that stat blew my mind. By the way, if you want a full deep dive about Home Depot's founder story and how their IPO almost never happened, the Acquired podcast did an awesome episode on it. It's like four hours long, but I highly recommend it.

And here's a bonus fun fact from that episode. Home Depot gave stock compensation to a ton of their store floor. back in the day, so workers had a direct financial incentive to grow the business. And according to Home Depot co-founder Ken Langone, roughly 3,000 Home Depot store employees became multi-millionaires from their equity. So shout out to Home Depot. You know, as a suburban dad, there is nothing better than a Saturday morning visit to Home Depot to feel productive.

And, you know, the Home Depot story is also a great example of how it's not always a sexy tech company that leads to huge returns. Sometimes it's a boring hardware company. Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. I hope you guys enjoyed today's episode. Thank you guys so much for listening, watching, and commenting. Shout out to Mike and V for all the work behind the scenes. And we'll see you guys back here tomorrow.