The Rundown - Oura Pulls it’s IPO Last Minute, FICO’s Monopoly Comes Under Fire

Episode Date: September 29, 2026

Market update for September 29, 2026Limited Time Promo: Sign up for a Public account, deposit $1,000 and get $100 in free stock (LINK)Follow us on Instagram (@TheRundownDaily) for bonus content and instant reactions.In today’s episode, Zaid covers:Why the S&P 500 looks strong even as huge parts of the market move in the opposite directionOura’s last-minute decision to delay its highly anticipated IPOCarMax showing signs its turnaround is gaining tractionFair Isaac getting hammered as FICO faces new competition in mortgagesWhy minivans are making a comeback

Public.com presents the rundown. Your daily market update in 10 minutes. My name is Zadadmani, and today is Tuesday, September 29th. In today's episode, we'll break down why many stocks in the S&P are making lows despite the overall index sitting near record highs. We'll also tell you why ORA Ring just delayed their highly anticipated IPO just hours before they were supposed to go lot. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out why minivans are making a comeback. We got a great show for you today. Let's go. Stock started the week in the red. Yesterday, the S&P 500 fell 0.8%, which was its worst day in more than a month, while the NASDAQ dropped by 0.9% as oil and bond yields kept climbing.

And by the way, the Dow Jones, which we haven't talked about, has had a rough month. It's now on track for its worst September in three years, but nobody cares about the Dow. So all things considered, though, I'd say the stock market is holding up pretty well, given the elevated oil prices and bond yields, both the S&P and NASDAQ are near record highs. But there is something weird happening when you dig in a bit deeper in the indices. According to Goldman Sachs, about 45% of stocks in the S&P 500 have had a negative beta over the last three months. Basically, what that means is that nearly half the stocks in the S&P have, been moving in the opposite direction of the overall market. Now, a big reason that this is happening

is the concentration at the top. A handful of mega-cap tech and AI companies have gotten so large that they have so much weight and influence on the S&P 500 that they can make the index look stronger even when the large chunk of the market isn't doing so high. And that's because oil prices and bond yields keep climbing, which is a drag on many companies because it means higher input costs and borrowing costs for businesses. The 10-year treasury yield keeps going up, it jumped to 5.25% yesterday, which is a 19-year high. And the 30-year yield hit 5.57%, which is its highest since 2004. And oil is still hovering near $100 a barrel. Now, there was some good news to report on that front. Saudi Arabia just got their East-West pipeline back online. This pipeline

lets Saudi Arabia move oil to the Red Sea to bypass the short of Ramos, but it was damaged earlier this month by a drone strike. Before the attacks, though, this pipeline carried four million barrels a day, which is about 4% of the global oil supply. So this pipeline coming back online should help improve supply and hopefully bring down prices. And by the way, the other good news here is that negotiations are still happening between the U.S. and Iran. So if that actually goes somewhere, we could get even more relief on oil prices. We'll continue to keep an eye on the oil market, bonds and stocks along with everything else happening. By the way, there are some interesting earnings happening this week as well. Micron reports on Wednesday and Nike reports on Thursday.

And then of course we have the big jobs report on Friday. We'll break all that down later in the week. So definitely get 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 Aura Ring. Ora was supposed to go public today. But at the last minute, the smart ring maker postponed their IPO, blaming uncertainty

in the IPO market. Now, this is very strange for a company that pulled the plug like this last minute. Before we dive into that, a quick background on the company. ORA was founded back in 2013. They make those smart rings that you've probably seen some people wear that track things like sleep, heart rate, body temperature, and activity. You know, these rings are pretty expensive. They cost like $4 to $500. And then ORA also has a subscription service on top of that, which is like $70 a year,

which gives you more detailed health data and AI-powered insights. And look, these rings are popular. Their business has been growing fast. ORA has 5.7 million paying subscribers and revenue for the first nine months of the year jumped 74% to $1.21 billion. The company said they also recently turned profitable as well. So given all that, the expectation for this IPO were pretty high. ORA was planning to raise around $2 billion and start trading on the NASDAG this week

at a valuation of about $13.5 billion. And that's why this whole market uncertainty explanation, by the company is a little strange to me. I mean, the NASDAQ 100 literally hit a record high last week. Barron's thinks the real reason that ORA delayed their IPO was because they were asking for too much money

and existing shareholders were trying to cash out. One of the red flags about this IPO was that roughly three quarters of the shares being offered were coming from existing investors selling their stake rather than new shares raising money for the company itself. ORA itself was expected to net just $500 million from this IPO, and almost all that money would have gone towards taxes

related to employee stock options. So that means very little of the money being raised from this IPO was actually going towards the business. And you know, I think it's possible that Aura's bankers got a sense that the stock could potentially tank on its first day of trading and the company decided to pull the plug last minute to avoid the optics. Now, the company said the IPO is postponed and not canceled. Maybe the company will come back with a less aggressive valuation because at $13.5 billion, ORA would have been valued at more than eight times its sales. For context, that's the same valuation that Apple currently trades at today. So we'll have to see what ORA does. Personally, though, I don't really understand the ORA hype.

Like, I'm all for tracking your health and sleep and all that stuff, but there are more and more companies like Apple working on their own screenless health devices. So I think it's going to be hard for ORA to hang on to their customers. But then again, I'm not an aura user myself. If you are someone that wears the aura ring, let me know in the comments and how you like it. And if you would consider investing in this IPO. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. CarMax shares are jumping this morning after the used car retailer reported surprisingly strong earnings and showed some real signs that their turnaround might finally be working.

Revenues last quarter jumped 20% from a year ago to $7.9 billion, while adjusted earnings came in at $1.16 a share, which was up from the 64 cents a share last year and well above Wall Street expectation. And I think the most important number from the earnings was same store sales. Sales at locations opened at least a year, jumped 13%, which was way above the 5.6% that Wall Street expected. And the reason that's notable is because same store sales had declined for four straight quarters. Now, CarMax has been trying to turn things around by cutting prices to bring customers back. And it looks like that strategy is working, but it is squeezing profits per vehicle a bit. Gross profit per used car sold fell by $111 compared to the same quarter

last year. But the company is making it up with more volume. And management is feeling confident enough about the turnaround that they plan to restart share buybacks this quarter, which is a key green light signal. That was a terrible pun. Anyways, the market liked what it heard and CarMax stock is up around 5% this morning at the time of this recording. Now, on the flip side, shares of Fair Isaac are getting hammered today. Fair Isaac is the company behind the FICO score. The stock is down more than 20% this morning after a major change in the mortgage market. See, historically, when you wanted to get a mortgage, the lender would pull your FICO score

to price the mortgage and interest rate. Well, late last night, the head of the federal housing finance agency, Bill Pulte, posted that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are moving to include Vantage score, which is FICO's direct competitor and owned by the three big credit bureaus. So that means that lenders may no longer need to pay for Fair Isaac for a FICO score on every eligible mortgage. And it wasn't just Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac doing this. On the same day, Rocket Mortgage said that Vantage score will be its default for eligible

loans in the fourth quarter. So it seems like the monopoly that FICO had on the mortgage market is starting to crack and the stock is getting crushed as a result. I mean, their stock chart is just ugly. Fair Isaac's stock was already down nearly 50% coming into today, and it's down another 20% this morning. Let's wrap the show with a fun fact. Minivans are making a comeback. Americans have bought 281,000 minivans this year through the month of August, which is up 8% from last year. And this is happening while overall new car sales have declined. In fact, for the first time in almost a decade, Americans are now buying about as many minivans as large SUVs. I don't know about you guys, but I feel like in the 90s, minivans were

everywhere. Like every family had a minivan. My family had a minivan. A lot of other families I knew had a minivan. But then something happened around the turn of the century where minivans just stopped being cool. Minivan sales peaked back in the year 2000. And for the last 25 years or so, mini events have had this stigma of just, I don't know, not being cool anymore. I feel like everyone, just started buying giant SUVs instead. But it seems like the tides might finally be turning again, and people are realizing that minivans are incredibly practical and a good deal. Now, minivans usually give you more space, better gas mileage, and a lower price than a large SUV. In fact, on average, minivans are about $30,000 cheaper than a large SUV. And you know, these minivans today

aren't like the minivans from back in the 90s. These days, minivans have all-wheel drive, leather seeds, built-in vacuums. Some minivans even have. a refrigerator built in. And by the way, the minivan lobby isn't paying me to say this. I'm just genuinely hyped about minivans. If there's a car company out there with a sick minivan, my DMs are open. Earlier this year, I tried to convince my wife to get a minivan when she was looking for a car. She wasn't about it at all. She ended up getting a giant SUV. So the minivan lobby still has more work to do to get people like my wife on board, but I'm glad to see that minivans are making a comeback. I might have also just set the record for the number of times someone

and says minivan in a 90-second span. Anyways, let me know in the comments of what you guys think about the minivan resurgence, especially if you own a minivan. Let me know in the comments on what we're missing out on by not owning one.

Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. Hope you guys enjoyed today's episode. I apologize if my voice sounds a little weird. I started losing my voice halfway through recording this episode. I think I just got too excited talking about minivans. Hopefully my voice is better by tomorrow.

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