The Rundown - Oil Soars Past $100 a Barrel, Novo Nordisk & Hims Settle Feud

Episode Date: March 9, 2026

Market update for Monday March 9, 2026Check out the Public app for incredible investing tools and to support the show (LINK)Follow us on Instagram (@TheRundownDaily) for bonus content and instant reactions.In today’s episode:Oil surpasses $100 a barrel Hims makes peace with Novo Nordisk Oracle & OpenAI bail on major data center planThe S&P 500 has some new entrantsAirline and cruise stocks dip amid oil price spike Fun fact: Pixar has its biggest opening weekend in nearly a decade

Public.com presents the rundown. Your daily market update in under 10 minutes. My name is Zad Admani, and today is Monday, March 9th. In today's episode, we'll give you the latest on oil prices and why there's concerns about stagflation now. We'll also break down the surprise truce between Nova Nordisk and Hymns and why Oracle and Open AI are scaling back plans for an AI data center in Texas. Then stick around to the end of the show for a wild stat about Pixar.

a surprise cameo from my two-year-old son. We got a great show for you today. Let's go. Markets are coming off the worst week of the year. The S&P 500 fell 2% last week, while the NASDAQ fell by 1.2%. The Dow took the biggest hit by far, dropping 3%, but nobody cares about the Dow.

Every sector was in the negative last week, except for energy, and that's because oil prices are surging right now. There are two main benchmarks that investors use to track oil prices. There's Brent Crude, which is the global benchmark for oil traded internationally. And then there's West Texas Intermediate or WTI, which is the benchmark for oil produced and traded in the U.S. Both of these benchmarks were up around 30% last week, which was the largest weekly gain

since 1983. And as of this morning, oil is trading north of $100 a barrel for the first time since 2022. In fact, there was a point over the weekend that WTI spiked to, $120 a barrel before pulling back a bit. The market is clearly worried about a supply disruption in the Middle East. Since the war broke out with Iran a few days ago, oil and natural gas facilities across the Middle East have been attacked. The biggest issue, though, is that traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has come

to a standstill. You know, we've talked about the Strait of Hormuz a lot over the last week. It's a very important shipping channel that connects the oil-rich Gulf countries to the rest of the world. About 20% of the world's oil supply flows through it. And as of right now, tankers are refusing to pass through that street. because they're afraid of being attacked by Iran. So that's caused a lot of these Gulf countries like Kuwait, Iraq, UAE, and others to stop

production of oil because they're running out of room to store all the oil. And all of that is leading to an oil supply shock, which is why the price of oil is surging. If you want to learn more about the importance of the Strait of Hormuz and the impact on the global economy, go check out the deep guide that we did about it over the weekend. We've gotten some great feedback on it so far. So thank you to everyone that's listened to it already. Now, there is some potentially positive developments here. the G7 finance ministers are discussing a coordinated release from their strategic oil reserves

to try and stabilize oil prices. On top of that, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said over the weekend that these trade of Hormuz could reopen the normal traffic soon. So we'll see if that materializes. But the longer this drags on, there will be growing concerns about inflation coming back. You know, energy is an input cost to everything in the economy. So higher oil prices means everything gets more expensive. But to make matters worse, the latest jobs report on,

Friday showed that the labor market lost 92,000 jobs in February. So we have a situation right now where there's a weakening labor market and surging energy prices at the same time, which could potentially lead to stackflation. This really puts the Fed in a tough spot here. Normally they'd want to cut rates to support the economy, but they can't do that if inflation is spiking from oil prices. So we'll see what the Fed says. There's a Fed meeting next week. And then this week, we're getting a CPI inflation report on Wednesday. Keep in mind, though, the CPI data is for the month of February, so it won't include the impact of the surge in oil prices last week. But it's still worth watching and we'll recap the report for you later this week.

So yeah, a lot going on right now. I'll tell you one thing, though. Nobody's talking about AI disruption and software anymore. Geopolitics and oil prices are dominating the market narrative. You know, it's a fast changing situation. We're staying on top of it. So make sure you guys are subscribed to the podcast if you haven't already and tune in every day to stay in the loop. Let's run through some headlines.

Starting with some pharma drama. Nova Nordis has agreed to drop its patent infringement lawsuit against the telehealth company, Hymns and hers, and the two sides are now planning a new partnership that will allow Hymns to sell Nova Nortis's blockbuster drugs, OZempic, and WeGovie, directly through its platform. This comes just weeks after Nova Nortis accused Hymns of launching what it called a copycat version of the WeeGovie pill and accusing the company of patent infringement. Hymns was selling a generic form of the WeGovie pill for $49, underw. cutting Nova Nordus's pricing by about $100.

But after legal threats from Nova Nordus and scrutiny from regulators, Hymns quickly removed that product from its platform. Now, Nova Nortis said they reserved the right to bring back the lawsuit if needed, but for now, they're partnering with HIMS. And under this new agreement, Hymns will stop advertising compound inversions of these weight loss drugs and instead offer Nova Nordus's FDA-approved medication through its telehealth marketplace. That news was a huge relief for HIMS investors.

The company's stock had already fallen more than 50% this year, but shares are surging today up more than 30% at the time of this recording. For Nova Nordus, this move also highlights how competitive the weight loss drug market has become. Nova Nordus has been losing market share to rival Eli Lilly, so partnering with Hames could help Novo expand distribution and potentially reach more patients online. Novo's stock is up around 1% this morning at the time of this recording. Let's shift gears and talk about another partnership. Oracle and OpenAI.

According to reports, the two companies have ended plans to expand their flagship AI data center in Abilene, Texas. This is a pretty big deal because this site is part of the Stargate Project, which was announced at the White House last year with President Trump, SoftBank, and Oracle. The original plan was to expand the Texas facility from 1.2 gigawatts to about 2 gigawatts, essentially adding multiple new buildings filled with AI servers.

But those plans fell apart due to financing issues and shifting infrastructure needs from OpenAI. Now, OpenAI says their broader deal with Oracle is still intact. The two sides agreed to a $300 billion deal to build 4.5 gigawatts of capacity. Open AI says they're simply choosing to put that additional capacity in other locations, including Wisconsin, Michigan, and New Mexico. So I guess the key point here is that Open AI isn't scaling back on infrastructure spending just yet. Also, Oracle is reporting earnings tomorrow after the close,

so it'll be interesting to see what they have to say. The company has pretty much gone all in on AI, so investors are quick to react to any negative news. The stock has already lost about half its value since peaking back in September. So we'll break down those earnings later this week. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Four new companies are joining the S&P 500, which is causing their stock price to get a bump this morning. S&P announced that vertive, lumentum, coherent, and Echoastar will be added to the index on March 23rd as part of the quarterly rebalance. Three of those four companies are tied to the AI boom.

Vertive builds data center infrastructure, Lumentum and coherent, make optimal networking components, and those two actually got a boost last week after Nvidia announced a $2 billion investment in both of those companies. As for Echo Star, they're the outlier here. They're a TV and wireless provider operating brands like DISH TV, Sling TV, and Boost Mobile. So those four companies will be added to the S&P Index,

which means that every index fund that tracks the S&P 500 now has to go out and buy shares of those companies that creates a wave of automatic buying pressure, which is why all four stocks are up around 2 to 3% this morning at the time of this recording. The four companies that are being replaced in the S&P are Match Group, Molina Healthcare, Paycom software, and Lamb-Wetzen, and those four stocks are down around 2% this morning.

Another loser today are airline and crew stocks, thanks to the surge in oil prices. The global JETF dropped merely 11% last week. It's worst week in 11 months, and it's down another 3% this morning. See, when oil prices spike, airline profits usually take a hit. Investors are also starting to worry that higher ticket prices could eventually scare off travelers. And then to make things worse, airports are becoming nightmares again.

The partial government shutdown means that TSA officers are working without paychecks, which is leading to staffing shortages, and that's why there are three to four hour-long security lines to some airports. The Havi Airport right here in Houston told travelers yesterday to arrive five hours before their flight. And all of this is happening right as spring break travel season kicks off. So if you're planning to fly anywhere anytime soon, you might want to pack some patience. Let's wrap the show with the fun fact. Pixar just had its biggest opening weekend for an original movie in nearly a decade. Pixar's newest animated movie Hoppers made $46 million in the U.S.

and roughly $42 million overseas for a global total of $88 million. That's Pixar's biggest opening weekend for an original movie since Coco back in 2017. Great movie, by the way. You know, I grew up watching Pixar movies, and now I have two young kids, one of which is actually interrupting my recording right here. Welcome to the show, buddy. Well, we'll keep that in. My kids heard Pixar, and they just came running in.

I got to say, though, the recent Pixar movies haven't been so great. Last year's Elio only made like $20 million on its opening weekend and was a box office disaster. I never ended up watching it, actually. Hoppers has gotten pretty good reviews, though, so I'll probably take my kids during spring break to watch it. If you guys saw Hoppers over the weekend, let me know what you guys thought in the comments. Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. Hope you guys enjoyed today's episode.

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