The Rundown - Tesla Earnings Fall Short, Trump Considers Investing in Quantum Computing

Episode Date: October 23, 2025

Stock market update for October 23, 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 Zadadmani, and today is Thursday, October 23rd. In today's episode, we'll break down Tesla's earnings and what Elon said in the earnings call that is raising some eyebrows. We'll also discuss the latest quantum breakthrough from Google and why Trump is considering investing in quantum companies. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out how many jobs Amazon is expected to replace with robots. We got a great show for you today. Let's go.

Stocks were down on Wednesday with the S&P 500 dropping 0.5% while the NASDAQ fell 0.9%. Some of the big losers yesterday included Netflix, which was down more than 10% in reaction to their earnings. We broke that down on yesterday's episode, so go check that out if you missed. it. Also, some hot names from this year, like nuclear, space, and quantum stocks were also down big yesterday. Now, quantum stocks are making a comeback this morning for a specific reason, but we'll talk about that more in a bit. Overall, though, it's been a pretty weird few days for the markets. You know, the gold rally is on pause right now. Crypto is experiencing a mini dip, and we have a meme stock making a comeback with Beyond Meat making wild moves this week. Oh, and there's also

the government shutdown that's still ongoing with no end in sight. But, you know, despite all the chaos and uncertainty, both the S&P and NASDAQ are still within 1% of all-time highs. So the stock market continues to be resilient. Now remember, tomorrow morning, we are finally getting the September CPI inflation report. This report was supposed to come out on October 15th, but was delayed due to the government shutdown. But we'll finally see the inflation numbers tomorrow, and that could have a pretty big impact on how the markets end the week. We'll break down the inflation numbers on tomorrow's episodes, so make sure you guys tune in for that. There's just a lot of moving pieces right now that we are staying on top of with inflation, earnings, gold, random tariff news.

So it's a great time to get subscribed to the podcast to stay in the loop. Let's run through some headlines, starting with Tesla. Tesla reported earnings last night, and there was a lot going on with the earnings and the earnings call. Let's start with the numbers first. Tesla's Q3 revenues beat expectations coming in at 28.1 billion. which was up 12% from last year. The company sold a record number of cars in Q3 thanks in large part to U.S. buyers rushing to buy an EV before the $7,500 tax credit expired at the end of

September. While the revenue numbers are good, the problem for investors is that even though Tesla sold more cars, it made less money on each sale. Tesla's profits dropped 37% because Tesla cut prices for its Model 3 and Model Y to boost sales. The company's obviously, Operating expenses also jumped 50% to $3.4 billion, with the company saying that tariffs ate more than $400 million from their profits last quarter. Now, while Tesla does manufacture its cars in California and Texas, it does have to import raw material in parts, which they have to pay a tariffon. Now, as for the earnings call, it was an interesting one. Elon barely talked about the EV business. He was more focused on talking about the Robotaxy stuff, saying that Robotaxy would be operating

in Austin, Texas, without human driving. by the end of the year. Remember, Tesla launched Robotaxies in Austin over the summer, but they have a human driver in them. I guess that's going to be going away by the end of the year. On top of that, Robotaxis will be expanding to eight to ten cities with a human driver by the end of 2025. Elon also hyped up Tesla's humanoid robot optimist saying that it has potential to be the biggest product of all time, but he did admit that getting it to market will be incredibly difficult. And then near the end of the earnings call, Elon started ranting about, his $1 trillion pay package. The Tesla board has rewarded Elon a trillion dollar pay package,

but it still has to be voted on by shareholders. Now, Elon is already worth like $400 billion, but he made the case to investors that this pay package isn't about money, but more about voting control. He says that he wants enough control to have a strong influence, but not so much that he can't be fired if he goes insane. Tesla shareholders will be voting on the pay package at the annual meeting on November 6th. Overall, I'd say it was a relatively poor earnings report, investors saw it that way as well. Tesla stock dropped around 3% in reaction to the earnings. Let's shift gears and talk about quantum computing. Quantum stocks have been on a tear all year. They've recently experienced a dip, but they got a big surge again this morning

after the Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump administration is considering taking a stake in some quantum companies. According to this report, the Commerce Department is in talks with several quantum computing companies, including Ionic, Raghetti computing, and D-Wave to take equity stakes in exchange for at least $10 million in federal funding for each company. President Trump has made it a priority for the U.S. government to take a direct stake in what he called strategic American industries. The administration already took a 10% stake in Intel over the summer. They've also invested in rare earth companies like MP materials and lithium Americas.

So this news sent shares of quantum companies surging this morning, shares of Ragellors, D-Wave and Ionic are all up more than 10%. The hype around quantum really kicked into the gear late last year after Google announced a big breakthrough with their quantum willow chip. Since then, quantum stocks have just been on a tear. And Google actually just announced another quantum breakthrough this week.

Google says they were able to run a quantum algorithm on their willow chip 13,000 times faster than software written for a normal supercomputer. Now, I'm not going to lie to you guys. Some of this stuff is a bit over my head. I'm not very technical when it comes to the quantum stuff. But this is surely going to add to the quantum hype. We'll have to interview a quantum expert on the podcast soon to really break some of this stuff down.

Let me know in the comments of what you guys think about the hype around quantum computing. It's just crazy to me that we're still like in the middle of this AI boom. And investors are already kind of bored and moving on to quantum. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Volvo is on track to have its biggest one-day jump ever after the Swedish car blew past profit expectations thanks to their successful cost-cutting initiative. Profits in Q3 were up, even though sales actually fell 7% in the quarter. Volvo says they cut 3,000 jobs, they pulled back on spending, and their focus on boosting

margin, which actually jumped from 17% to 24% in Q3. Volvo is also navigating the tariff environment better than most. Thanks to a new U.S.-EU trade deal, tariffs on European cars drop from 27.5%. 5% down to 15%. And Volvo's even moved some hybrid production to the U.S. to dodge future tariffs altogether. So investors were pretty excited about that. Volvo's stock was up more than 40% today.

Now, fun fact, Volvo's biggest shareholder is actually a Chinese car company called Gile. Now, moving on, let's talk about a loser. Shares of Moderna are down this morning after the company scrapped one of its most anticipated vaccine projects. The vaccine that was in development was aimed at preventing birth defects caused by CMV, which is a common virus that infects over half of adults by the age of 40, usually without symptoms. The issue is that CMV could pass from mother to baby during pregnancy, and that causes serious health problems for the baby. But Madonna's vaccine only proved to be 6 to 23% effective in trials, which was far short of the 49% goal that they had. The company is pulling the plug on

that program for pregnant women. As a result, shares of Madonna are down more than 4% this morning on that news. Let's wrap the show with a fun fact. Amazon plans to replace more than half a million human warehouse jobs with robots over the next few years. The New York Times got their hands on some internal documents at Amazon. And according to those documents, Amazon wants to automate 75% of its operations. And they've already started rolling out fully robotic warehouses in places like Louisiana and Virginia. And this is going to be a big money saver for them. According to Morgan Stanley, the robot takeover could save Amazon up to $4 billion a year in labor costs. You know, whenever I see headlines like this, I always feel like it's inevitable that more robotics and automations

are coming to pretty much every industry. And that's one reason why the robotic sector has been a hot investment. That I'm actually more bullish on robotics than I am AI. Now, obviously, there's a big concern on what's going to happen to the people losing their jobs to robots over the next few years. For Amazon, they say they aren't firing people just yet in their warehouses. They're just hiring less people moving forward. So yeah, this could be a big concern. We'll have to see what happens. You know, I like to take the optimistic approach and hope that the warehouse jobs get replaced by, you know, technicians required to fix robots. But with AI, maybe their robots will fix themselves. I guess it's just a reminder to start being nicer to your

Roomba and chat GPT, just in case they end up taking over the world. Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. Hope you guys enjoyed today's episode. If you did and you have like five extra seconds, consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you listen to your podcast. And if you are listening on Spotify, don't forget to 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. Thank you guys so much 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. Rosen lasagna, medium power, 15 minutes.

Sounds like Ojo time. Let's play. Feel the fun with Play Ojo. 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. Plus Ontario only please play responsibly. Concern about your gambling or that of someone close to you. Call 1866-531-2600 or visit ConXonetio.ca. The Madamy Holmes Bike for Brain Health supporting Baycrest's returns on May 31 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. I don't know.