The Rundown - Regional Bank Issues Lead to Market Selloff, Micron Exits Data Center Business in China

Episode Date: October 17, 2025

Stock market update for October 17, 2025.Follow us on Instagram ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@therundowndaily⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠This video is for informational purposes only and reflects the views of the host and guest, not Public Holdings or its subsidiaries. Mentions of assets are not recommendations. Investing involves risk, including loss. Past performance does not guarantee future results. For full disclosures, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Public.com/disclosures⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Public.com presents the rundown. Your daily market update in under 10 minutes. My name is Zaid Admani, and today is Friday, October 17. In today's episode, we'll tell you why some investors are freaking out about regional banks and the latest comments from President Trump regarding China. We'll also tell you what Oracle CEO said about the company's profit margins. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out why your next Uber driver might be training chat GPT. We got a great show for you today. Let's go.

Well, guys, stock sold off on Thursday with the S&P and NASDAG both dropping about half a percent. And a big reason for the sell-off yesterday was concerns around bad loans being made by regional banks. Zion's bank in Utah disclosed they were taking a $50 million charge to cover bad loans they made. And then another regional bank out of Arizona, Western Alliance disclosed similar exposure with around $100 million in potentially bad loans. That double dose of bad news yesterday by

these regional banks had investors freaked out there might be a systematic credit issue. But as of right now, the problem seems to be isolated to a handful of regional banks. The big banks like JP Morgan, Bank of America, say they don't have any bad loans or credit risk. But it's definitely something that investors are going to be paying close for attention to. Whenever you start hearing about bad loans and banks, everyone instinctually freaks out. On top of that, the timing wasn't great. the markets were already on edge this week about the China trade talks and the government shutdown. So the regional bank stuff definitely didn't help. In fact, volatility in the markets this week have been at the highest level since May.

Now, we did get some big news this morning regarding the China trade news. President Trump just said this morning that the 100% tariffs on China that he threatened a week ago won't happen that he still plans to meet with China's President Xi in two weeks. So Trump seems to be fully walking back the threats that he made a week ago that sent markets into a turmoil. So those comments by President Trump should provide a nice boost to the markets today. We'll see how the markets end up finishing off the week. You know, I did say on Monday show we were in for a wild roller coaster of a week, and it definitely delivered.

We'll see if this volatility carries over into next week, which is a big week for earnings. We're going to be hearing from Tesla, Netflix, Intel, just to name a few. So we're staying on top of all the developing stuff. Make sure you guys are tuning into the podcast every day to stay in the loop. Let's run through some headlines. Starting with Oracle. Oracle is trying to convince investors that its massive bet on AI will actually pay off and be profitable.

The company's co-CEOCEO CLEA McGoeric told analysts this week that Oracle's AI Cloud Division, which is a division that rents out Nvidia GPUs to customers like OpenAI, will eventually reach gross profit margins between 30 and 40%. That's a stark contrast to what the information reported a few weeks ago. According to internal documents obtained by them, Oracle's GPU rental margins have been hovering around 16% over the past five quarters, which is pretty low for a tech company. According to that report, Oracle is having a hard time turning a profit on all the expensive

Nvidia chips they've bought, especially the older ones. Some of the older GPUs are barely breaking even. And even for the newer Nvidia Blackwell chips, they're so costly to deploy right now for Oracle that Oracle actually lost money on them last quarter. But then again, Oracle's leadership thinks this massive investment in AI, will pay off in the long term. They're just kind of going through a buildout phase right now. To their credit, Oracle has signed a ton of major deals with companies like OpenAI and Meta,

and they're projecting that their overall cloud revenue could grow from $10 billion today to $166 billion by 2030, thanks mostly to those AI infrastructure deals. We'll have a seat that actually plays out, but I think it's clear to say that investors are starting to be a bit more skeptical about Oracle's ambitions. Now, sticking with the AI theme, let's talk about the memory. Maker Micron, they are exiting the data center business in China. According to a report from Reuters, the U.S. memory chip maker plans to stop supplying server memory chips to Chinese data centers.

Micron made about 12% of their revenue from China last year, about $3.4 billion. So this isn't a small market for them. Now, the company says they'll still sell chips for automotive and mobile products in the country, just not for the servers or AI data centers. The Chinese government actually put a ban on micron products back in 2023 from their products being used in critical infrastructure. And Micron has been struggling in China since. But thankfully for Micron, there's still so much demand for their memory products for AI chips that I don't think that Micron is too concerned about losing the Chinese market. Micron's revenues

hit a record high this year and their stock prices jump more than 130% so far. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Shares of the railroad giant CSX is moving higher this morning, despite the company reporting a 22% drop in profits last quarter. Now, I think investors were more focused on the new CEO, Steve Angel's comments, saying that he was open to strategic opportunities, which is CEO speak for, I'm probably going to sell the company. The railroad industry is going through a consolidation period right now. Earlier this year, Union Pacific and North Folk Southern announced an $85 billion merger,

creating the U.S.'s first railroad network connecting the east and west coast. So Steve Angel might be thinking about consolidation. I mean, he has a track record of doing mergers when he was the CEO of Prax Air. He orchestrated a $70 billion merger with Lindy to create one of the biggest industrial gas companies in the world. So investors are betting that Angel is going to merge the railroad company soon and shares of CSX are up nearly 3% this morning on that news. I kind of want to do a deep dive on the railroad industry, mostly because I played a lot of railroad tycoon as a kid. And I'm just kind of interested to see how the business works. Let me know the comments.

if you guys ever played Railroad Tycoon. Now, on the flip side, shares of Novo Nordis are sliding this morning after President Trump said that prices of the blockbuster weight loss drug, OZMPIC would be lowered. Now, currently, OZMPIC costs around $1,000 a month out of pocket, but President Trump wants to price closer to $150 a month as part of his most favored nation policy. That policy aims to make Americans pay no more for drugs than patients in other wealthy countries. As a result, shares of Novo Nordisk are down around 4% this morning. in pre-market trading.

Let's wrap the show with a fun fact. Your Uber driver might soon be training AI models. Uber just launched a pilot program in the U.S. that lets drivers make extra cash by doing small microtasks inside the Uber app when they're not driving. The microtasks are essentially data labeling jobs to help train AI models.

It includes things like uploading photos or recording yourself speaking in a local language or even snapping a menu written in Spanish. All that data is then used to train AI models and make them better. Data labeling is a big part of training AI, and Uber has quietly been building an AI data labeling business this year. They even bought a startup called Segments AI to help scale it. We covered that earlier this month.

And now they're turning their massive driver network into an on-demand AI workforce. You know, on one hand, this seems like a pretty smart business move by Uber. They can make money from all these AI companies labeling their data, and Uber drivers can now make extra money while waiting for passengers. But it all seems a little dystopian, you know? Now, Uber says their goal is to build the ultimate, flexible work platform. I wonder if at some point Uber will start offering discounts to passengers

for completing data labeling tasks during their ride. I'm only half joking. They might legit offer this pretty soon. Let me know in the comments on what you guys think about this. Do you think this is a good idea from Uber? And would you do a task on the Uber app to save a few bucks on your Uber ride? Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. That's the rundown for this week.

Hope you guys enjoyed today's episode. If you did, and you have like seven extra seconds, consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple, Spotify, wherever you listen to your podcasts. And if you are listening on Spotify, don't forget the vote in today's Spotify poll. Leave us a comment on Spotify. All that engagement really does help us out,

and it helps other people find the show. Hope you guys have a great weekend. As a reminder, we're going to have a deep dive, episode tomorrow. It's going to be about AMD. And then on Sunday, we're posting an interview with the CFO of Figma. So two good episodes coming out this weekend. Keep an eye on your podcast feed for those. And keep sending in those listener questions. We're going to make a list and try to answer as many as we can in a future episode. Thank you guys again for listening, watching, and commenting. Shout out to Mike and Connor for all the work behind the scenes. And we'll see you guys back here

tomorrow for the deep dive. Rosen lasagna, medium power, 15 minutes. Sounds like Ojo time. Let's play. Feel the fun with Play-O-Joe. The online casino with all the latest slot and live casino games.

What you win is yours to keep with no wagering requirements, instant payouts, and no minimum withdraws. Hey, I just won. Woo-hoo. Feel the fun. Play Ojo. Honey, forget about the lasagna.

Let's celebrate. 19 plus Ontario only. Please play responsibly. Concerned about your gambling or that of someone close to you. Call 16-5-3-1-26-1-6-1-26-100. The Madamy Holmes Bike for Brain Health supporting Baycrest returns on May 31st for its fifth anniversary with a new start and finish at the Aga Khan Museum. Join thousands of cyclists as we take over the DVP and Gardner Expressway in support of dementia research and brain health. Riders of all abilities are welcome and both regular bikes and e-bikes can participate.

Bring your friends, family or corporate team and make an impact. Register today at bikeforbrainhealth.ca.