The Rundown - Nvidia Takes a Rare L, Amazon to Launch Revamped Alexa with AI

Episode Date: June 21, 2024

Stock market update for June 21, 2024.

Public.com presents the rundown. Your daily market update in five minutes. My name is Zadmani, and today is Friday, June 21st. In today's episode, we tell you about the latest housing data. And spoiler alert, it's not so great. We also tell you about Amazon's latest plans for Alexa and another hack at a financial institution. Let's take around to the end of the show

to learn about Netflix's new business and why it's going to make AMC very upset. No, it's not what you think. All right, let's go. Well, guys, the stock market's winning streak finally came to an end on Thursday. Both the S&P 500 and NASDAQ finished lower yesterday, and the NASDAG streak of seven record closes has come to an end. The Dow, on the other hand, did have a good day for once, but nobody cares about the Dow, so whatever. InVIDIA actually took a rare L on Thursday.

The stock ended up dropping 3.5% yesterday, and the company is now back to second place behind Microsoft for the title of the most valuable company in the world. Now, did I potentially jinx Nvidia stock in yesterday's episode? It's possible. I was talking about how Nvidia stock has been on such a crazy pace that it might hit $4 trillion. I also threw the word bubble out there. I probably shouldn't have said all those things. So I apologize to all the Nvidia shareholders out there. This one's on me.

We got some housing data yesterday, according to the U.S. Department of Housing. Construction on new homes is at a four-year low. The data showed that new home construction fell by 5.5% in May, which is not great. Looks like high interest rates are finally starting. starting to have an impact on the housing market. So now we're in a situation where we're not building homes, but the demand for homes is still pretty high. Housing market just continues to be such a mess. Now, the good news is that mortgage rates are starting to come down. The average 30-year mortgage is now 6.9%, which is the lowest it's been in three months. So a little bit of

good news when it comes to the housing market. Let's run through some headlines. Starting with Amazon. Amazon is planning to revamp Alexa with AI. This has to be the least shocking headline of all time. Now, Amazon launched Alexa back in 2014. It's literally been a decade, and Amazon never really figured out how to make money from it. It's been a money-losing service for Amazon since. And also, I don't think it ever became as popular as Amazon thought it would. You know, because after using Alexa for like 10 minutes, you realize that it's really not that smart. I mean, it's great for setting timers and reminders, but that's about it. Well, Amazon is cooking up some AI improvements for Alexa that'll make the voice assistant way smarter. And they might even

charge for it. Reuters reported that Amazon is thinking about charging $5 a month to access the super smart version of Alexa. But you know, I feel like Amazon really fumbled a bag here. I mean, when Alexa came out, it had so much hype, so much promise, and they never really made any improvements to it over the years. So now they're playing ketchup. So we'll see what they're cooking up here. The new Alexa is expected to come out sometime later this year. But I mean, is anyone really going going to pay five bucks a month to get the super smart version of Alexa? Kind of skeptical there. Also, one more Amazon-related news. They're not going to be using those plastic air pillows that come in their packages. You guys know what I'm talking about, right? Now, this is great news for the

environment, but not so great news for my five-year-old daughter because her favorite thing to do was pop those air pillows anytime I was taking a nap. So I'm pretty happy they're going away. Let's shift gears and talk about a hack happening at Lending Tree. Bloomberg reported that hackers were selling user data from Lending Tree. The stolen data is connected to the firm's insurance platform Quote Wizard. Now, Lending Tree has said no customer's financial information was taken, but they're still investigating the size of the data breach. Lending Tree uses Snowflake to run its cloud database platform, which was compromised. The news of the hack has definitely caught investors' attention,

and Lending Tree stock dropped more than 2% yesterday. Is it weird that I'm just so numb to all these hack news? Like, I feel like we hear about a new hack every other day now. All right, let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Starting with Sarepta Therapeutics. Shares of the pharma company spiked in the pre-market after the FDA approved an expansion of the company's therapy for Dushane. muscular dystrophy. Analyst predicted this approval will increase potential sales of this therapy

to $3 billion by 2025 and peak sales by $5 billion by 2027. Surreptus stock jumped more than 37% in the pre-market in reaction to this news. A stock not doing so great this morning is honestly AI stocks in general. All the big names in AI are down this morning. Invidia stock is down 1.5% in the pre-market. SMCI is down 2%. The Micron is down 2%. Dell is down 2%. It's down across the board. Maybe investors are finally starting to take some profits here. Let's wrap the show with a fun fact. Netflix is getting into the popcorn business. Netflix announced that they're teaming out with popcorn Indiana

to roll out a new line of popcorn called Netflix Now Popping. Not really sure if I dig the name. They're launching with two flavors which include cult classic cheddar kettle corn. That's the name of the flavor. And swoonworthy cinnamon kettle corn. Like, what's up with these names? Netflix is partnering with Walmart,

to roll out these snacks nationwide. Now Netflix is not the only entertainment company to get into the snack business. AMC actually launched their own popcorn brand back in 2021. Things seem to be going pretty well because a couple months ago, AMC announced that they're expanding the availability of their popcorn to Publix, Kroger, and Amazon.com. But now they have to compete with Netflix in the snack department. The same company that destroyed their movie theater business. By the way, this is not Netflix's first move into food. The company actually collaborated with Ben and Jerry's on the Netflix and chill ice cream flavor back in the same. 2020, which is still on sale today, even though I've never seen it at the grocery store,

but it's still on sale somewhere. Now, I think this is a very smart move by Netflix to leverage their brand to get into snacks and other things, but you know what this really tells me? That the streaming business is probably getting so saturated that Netflix is trying to figure out other ways to make money. And what better way to do it than popcorn? Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. Hope you guys enjoyed today's episode. I feel like this week went by pretty quick. We've now officially entered summer season where things slow down a little bit, But in just a couple weeks, Q2 earning season starts. So things will pick back up here in a little bit.

Hope you guys are enjoying the summer. If you guys have a couple minutes, it would be so awesome if you could rate this podcast five stars on Apple and Spotify. I know we mentioned it on every show, but that rating really does help to show. Thank you guys again for listening. Shout out to Connor and Mike for all the help behind the scenes. And we'll see you guys back here on Monday.

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