The Rundown - Tesla Issues Tariff Warning, Gold Crosses $3,000 for First Time

Episode Date: March 14, 2025

Stock market update for March 14, 2025.

Public.com presents the rundown, your daily market update in five minutes. My name is Zad Admani, and today is Friday, March 14th. In today's episode, we discuss why stocks are officially in correction territory and how long that typically lasts. We also tell you why Tesla has come out against Trump's tariffs, and if that might change the president's mind. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out how much stock big tech CEOs have sold over the last year. Alex Carp and Zuck were the two highest. Got a great show for you today?

Let's go. The markets were doing the tariff slide once again on Thursday. Stocks finishing the red across the board with the S&P 500 dropping 1.4% and the NASDAQ dropping 2%. The S&P is officially in correction territory now, down more than 10% from its recent highs, and the NASDAQ is down more than 13% from its highs. And I think the biggest shocker for me is how fast this all happened. The S&P was at a record high less than a month ago on February 19th. And then 16 trading days later were in correction territory.

In fact, the last time the markets fell this fast was February of 2020. This is according to Barron's. That was like the early days of COVID. Now, if you're feeling bummed out a bit, I'm going to hit you with some good news. Corrections aren't that uncommon and they don't typically last very long. According to Barron's, corrections typically happen. once per year in the last around three to four months. There have been 15 market corrections since 2008, and the last one was in the summer of 2023. Fun fact about that, we launched this

podcast in October of 2023, and that's when things really turn around. I'm not even kidding, go pull up the public app and look at the chart of the S&P 500, go back to 2023. We launched a podcast at the bottom of the market, and we've been rallying ever since. Was this podcast responsible for the bull market over the last two years? Sure, I'll take credit for that. So it's possible that this is also a short-lived correction and we bounce higher from here. But this time feels a bit different because the markets are getting slapped in the face every single day from uncertainty around tariff policy or tariff threats from Trump. That's something that we might enter into a full-on bare market, which is when stocks drop 20% from their highs.

So we'll see what happens. I'm not gonna lie, I'm starting to become a bit numb to all of this. I mean, it still hurts seeing your portfolio go down. But stocks dropping 1 to 2% every day at this point isn't shocking anymore. I think the next time I'll get shocked is when like a market circuit breaker gets triggered. That's going to get the juices flowing again. Oh, I also wanted to talk about gold. I've personally never been a gold guy and I wish I was because gold hit record highs yesterday,

officially breaking the $3,000 per ounce barrier for the first time ever. Gold has been crushing it this year. It's already up 12%, which kind of makes sense. In times of uncertainty, which we have right now, investors seem to forget all about AI or Bitcoin and they end up buying a shiny piece of metal. Bitcoin, by the way, still hovering around the $81, $82,000 range and down around 10% for the year. Let's run through some headlines. Tesla is speaking up against tariffs.

Wait, let me make sure I read that right? Yeah, no, it's true. The Elon Muskled company warned that the Trump administration's trade war could make Tesla a target for retaliatory tariffs, which could increase the cost for vehicle production in the U.S. Tesla specifically points to increase cost to import metals like lithium and cobalt that are harder to find in the U.S. And these remarks were made in an unsigned letter that the company sent to a U.S. trade representative. This letter also emphasized the higher costs will make Tesla less competitive overseas, where sales have already started to dip, especially

in Europe. Now, Tesla sent a similar letter during Trump's first term, but, you know, that was before Trump and Elon were boys. So the fact that this letter even went out is kind of surprising. I mean, again, the letter was unsigned, so nobody at the company wants to put their name on it. But I think Tesla executives are really starting to get nervous. Tesla stock has declined 40% since the start of the year, and it's completely erased the 91% gains from Election Day. So I wonder if this letter coming from Tesla will change Trump's mind on tariffs. We know Trump is a big fan of Tesla based on what he did earlier in the week, turning the White House into a pop-up Tesla dealership.

This is a different panel than I've had. Everything's a computer. That's beautiful. Wow. Now, as for Elon, his net worth has dropped by over $100 billion this year. But don't feel so bad for him, okay? He's still the richest man in the world by a lot. Now, part of that is because the valuation of his other companies like Neurilink, SpaceX, X-AI, and boring company are up 45% since the election. But all those companies are private companies and they don't trade on the stock market. So their valuation isn't fluctuating on a daily basis. Let's stick with Trump and talk about Trump, Inc. The Trump family is working on a business deal involving crypto. According to the Wall Street Journal, representatives of Trump's family held talks to take a

financial stake in the U.S. division of Binance. Binance is one of the biggest crypto exchanges in the world, they were a household name a few years ago, but the company got in some legal trouble in 2023. In fact, the company's billionaire founder, CZ, spent four months in jail after pleading guilty to anti-money laundering violations. CZ was released from prison in September, and after that, Binance reportedly reached out to the Trump team to initiate negotiations that might bring the company back to the U.S. Now, CZ said in a post that he hasn't spoken to anyone from the Trump team, but he did say that he wouldn't mind a pardon. So whether this investment from the Trump family involves a pardon or not, nobody knows. I mean, there's no details about that, but the Trump

family continues to get more involved in crypto. By the way, Trump's official meme coin, currently trading around $11. Pretty big fall from the $70 plus that it hit after it launched back on January 19. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Doc is signed stock is up big this morning. after the company's solid earnings report showed that its new AI offering is powering new businesses and gaining traction with their customer base. I mean, I don't understand what AI is needed

to sign a PDF, but they must be doing something right because their stock is up more than 15% today in reaction to the earnings. Now, on the flip side, shares of Lee Auto are down after the Chinese EV manufacturers saw profits decline last quarter even though deliveries increased by 20%. Lee Otto has had to cut their prices to compete better in the Chinese market, and that's having an impact on their profits.

As a result, Lee's stock is down around 3% this morning on this news. Let's wrap the show with the fun fact. Palantir CEO Alex Carp has sold $1.9 billion worth of stock since the start of 2024. And that's more than any U.S. tech executive other than Mark Zuckerberg, who sold about $3.5 billion worth of company shares in that same period. But outside of Zuck, Alex Carpest sold more than eight times the size of the combined sales of Tim Cook, Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai, and Andy Jassy, who have each sold around $30 to $80 million worth of shares in their respective companies.

And Elon Musk, I mean, he hasn't sold any shares of Tesla since he bought Twitter back in 2022. By the way, don't expect the Palantir CEO to slow down his selling anytime soon. his shares are currently worth around $12.4 billion, and his new stock selling plan lets him sell up to 80 million shares in the next six months. So Alex Carp definitely taking advantage of the big run-up in Palantir stock over the last 12 months or so. Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. That's the rundown for this week. Another brutal week in the markets, despite some solid inflation data, it wasn't enough to overcome from the tariff drama.

Hopefully we get some relief next week. We have a Fed meeting coming up, so that'll be interesting. As always, we're going to be staying on top of this stuff, so make sure you guys are subscribed for the podcast to stay in the loop. And remember, we'll have a deep dive episode come out this weekend, so keep an eye out for that. I think people like our deep dive stuff, so we're going to keep doing it. Thank you guys again for listening.

Shout out to Mike and Connor for all the help behind the scenes, and we'll see you guys back here for the deep dive. This is the rundown, your real-time resource for news events and trends in the markets. All views presented in the show reflect the opinions of the guests. You should not take any mention of a publicly traded security as recommendation to buy, sell or hold that security. Run down guests are not financial advisors and are not affiliated with public holdings or its subsidiaries.

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