The Rundown - Nvidia Market Cap Back at $3T, Fortnite Creator to Launch App Store

Episode Date: August 16, 2024

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Public.com presents the rundown your daily market update in five minutes. My name is Zadadmani, and today is Friday, August 16th. In today's episode, we recap the market's performance this week and tell you why vibes are shifting. Again, also, the maker of Fortnite is sick of paying Apple and Google 30%, and they're finally doing something about it. We'll tell you more. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out the latest trend in remote work.

It's great if you're a CEO. Maybe not if you're everybody. else. All right, let's go. The stock market was feeling to love yesterday. Stocks rally thanks to some solid retail sales data. Americans have been shopping this summer, especially on cars and electronics. And that strong consumer spending has injected some confidence back into the markets. The S&P 500 was up more than 1.6% yesterday, and the NASDAQ was up over 2%. You know, it's been a great week for economic data. The PPI report, the CPI report, retail sales data, all came in better than expectations.

And you know what's crazy? Stocks are now back in the green for the month of August. So after all the drama from earlier this month where markets were tanking and it felt like a recession was imminent, stocks recovered all those losses and were back in the green. And some of the popular stocks are on a winning streak. Like, Nvidia's market cap is back above $3 trillion, and the stock has gotten up over 20% since last Monday.

And Apple's stock has gone up for nine trading days in a row recovering from the shock that Warren Buffett sold half a stake. So I hope you bought the dish. Let's run through some headlines. Epic Games, the creator of Fortnite, is releasing its own app store on Android and iPhone mobile devices. See, Fortnite was removed from Apple's App Store and Google's Play Store back in 2020 for violating those company's guidelines. Epic Games was tired of having to pay Apple and Google a 30% fee for every transaction on their app like Fortnite. So they tried to exploit some loopholes, got caught, and their app got banned.

So then Epic decided to lawyer up and take Apple and Google to court for the freedom to operate their own storefront on Android and iPhone devices. Epic ended up beating Google in court but lost to Apple. I guess Apple must have better lawyers. So because Epic won their court case, they're launching their own storefront, their own app store on Android devices all across the globe. Now Epic can't do this for the iPhone, at least in the U.S., but they are launching their own app store for the iPhone in Europe thanks to some new regulations in the EU. The EU Digital Markets Act requires Apple to give users the ability to install alternative app stores. So Epic will have their own app store in Europe for the iPhone, and they'll have their own app store for Android devices all over the world, and Epic thinks they'll do over 100 million downloads by the end of 2024.

This is going to be very interesting because if Epic is successful, we're probably going to see other app store competitors flood in. So we'll see if users will actually download a separate app store to play their favorite game or install their favorite app. I think a lot of users like the simplicity of having everything under Apple or Google. But yeah, Apple and Google charging 30% for every transaction on the app seems pretty high. What do you guys think? Do you think that the 30% that Apple and Google charge for their app store transactions is fair? Is it too high? Or do you not care at all?

Maybe you're an Apple shareholder and you wish that Apple charged more. I mean, I don't know. We'll make that the poll on Spotify today. So if you're listening to this episode on Spotify, tap today's episode and vote in today's poll. By the way, Google has been taking a lot of L's in the courtroom recently. They lost this case against Epic. They got ruled a monopoly by the DOJ. I mean, it's been tough.

And speaking of L's from Google, Google is releasing a new AI text-to-image tool. They're calling it Imagine 3. Now, this comes after Google's previous image generator debacle from earlier this year. I don't know if you guys remember this, but Google's image generator was making some historically inaccurate images. Like they were making Abraham Linking Black and other weird stuff. There was something wrong with the algorithm. So Google got a ton of backlash for that. They ended up scrapping the whole thing and went back to the drawing board.

And now they have a new and improved tool. The new version is supposed to be an enhanced version of the previous tool, but you won't be able to generate any images of public figures or weapons. So it's a pretty vanilla image generation tool, unlike the new image generation tool that's on Twitter right now called GROC. Some crazy images coming out of that one. No guide reel so far. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today.

Shares of Bayer, the German pharma company, are up today after the company won an appeal in their favor regarding a lawsuit over claims that the weed killer Roundup led to cancer. Bayer is facing thousands of lawsuits regarding Roundup. In fact, they agreed to pay over $10 billion back in 2020 to settle some of those lawsuits. There's still thousands of lawsuits remaining. But for now, investors are happy the company won an appeal and the stock is up over 10% on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. On the flip side, shares of applied materials are down after reporting earnings. Applied Materials is the largest U.S. maker of chip manufacturing equipment, so they make the equipment that makes the chips for AI. And honestly, the earnings weren't that bad. They beat expectations.

Sales were up, profits were up. But I think investors were hoping for a bit more juice because of all the AI buzz. I mean, applied materials has benefited from the AI hype this year. The stock is at more than 35% as of market closed yesterday. But the stock is down more than 3% in reaction to these earnings. Let's wrap the show with a fun fact. There are fewer remote jobs these days than there were two years ago. Only 7.6% of job postings on indeed offer remote or hybrid options.

That's down from the 10% at the peak in 2022. This is according to Axios. Now, to be fair, the current 7.6% is still way up from the 2.6% job postings that offered a remote hybrid option back in 2019. So remote work is still way more popular today than it was five years ago, years ago, but it's down from the peak from two years ago. And remote work continues to be a controversial topic. Former CEO Eric Schmidt recently said that Google is behind on AI because of the remote work

policies. He's blaming remote work for Google's lack of AI success. But you know who will be working remotely? Starbucks new CEO Brian Nicol. Brian will not be relocating from Southern California, where he currently lives to Seattle, where Starbucks headquarters is. Starbucks said that Brian will commute to the office in Seattle as needed, but he's He's also going to have a satellite office, along with assistance, in SoCal.

That must be nice. How long is the commute from Newport Beach to Seattle on a PJ? Where's that two, two and a half hours? That's like a typical SoCal commute, right? Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. That's the rundown for the week. Hope you guys enjoyed the show this week. If you did, don't forget to hit us with a five-star rating on Apple and Spotify.

Also, if you guys haven't checked out the public app in a while, you should go check it out because they launched a new product that no other app is doing. You can now invest in corporate bonds on public. And right now, public is offering a 7.3% yield with monthly interest payments. So what that means is you can benefit from the highest bond yields since 2009 and keep your rate for years to come. Because see, timing is everything when it comes to this. Right now, interest rates are high, but all the indication is that Fed will potentially start cutting rates as early as September. So that means that yields on saving accounts and bonds will likely lower as well.

But you can lock in a 7.3% yield until 2028 using the public app. So go check that out. Really cool stuff. No other app is doing this. And take advantage of the high yield while you can. We'll put a link to the app in the description. Thank you guys again for listening. Shout out to public.com.

Shout out to Connor and Mike for all the help behind the scenes. Have a great weekend, everybody. And we'll see you guys back here on Monday. This is the rundown. Your real-time resource for news events and trends in the markets. All views presented in the show reflect the opinions of the guests. You should not take any mention of a publicly traded security as a recommendation to buy. sell or hold that security.

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