The Rundown - Tesla Loses Bid for Musk's $56B Pay Package, XRP Becomes Third-Largest Cryptocurrency

Episode Date: December 3, 2024

Stock market update for December 3, 2024.

Public.com presents the rundown. Your daily market update in five minutes. My name is Zadmani, and today is Tuesday, December 3rd. In today's episode, we'll tell you why Elon Musk's net worth has taken a major hit despite Tesla stock rallying. We also dive into big changes coming to Frontier Airlines. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out how many people hit the skies on Sunday. It was the busiest traveling day on record.

All right. Let's go. Looks like investors were feeling pretty good after Thanksgiving. The stock market got off to a great start this week with the S&P 500 jumping 0.2%. And the NASDAQ up nearly 1% thanks to a rally in big tech stocks. Apple stock hit all-time highs. And meta and Tesla stock were both up more than 3% yesterday. We're going to talk more about Tesla in a bit.

Also, a quick update on Bitcoin. It seems to be trading sideways for the past few days. I mean, it's been rallying for weeks now. So seeing a couple of days of sideways trading is just not as exciting, you know? It's been stuck between $94 and $97,000 for the past few days now. So we're still waiting for the official $100,000 print, really hoping that it happens this year.

We're also starting to get sales data come in for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The latest data for Adobe Analytics shows that a record $13.3 billion was spent online during Cyber Monday. That's up 7.3% from last year. On top of that, Amazon reported this morning that their black. Friday week in Cyber Monday was the best ever for them. Now, Amazon didn't provide exact sales numbers. I wonder why. But they did say they did record sales and sold a record amount of items.

So it looks like consumers are feeling pretty good right now, and they went pretty big during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Now, yesterday, a comment on Spotify called me out for something that I said on yesterday's show. I closed the show yesterday saying that I thought that it was going to be a slow week. And I got called out for it. And you know what? You're right. That was my mistake.

I shouldn't have said that because it's not. going to be a slow week. We're getting some major earnings this week from companies like Salesforce, Dacusine, Lulu Lemon, and Kroger, just to name a few. And then on top of that, on Friday morning, we're getting the jobs report for November. That report should give us a better idea of how the labor market is doing. Right now, economists are expecting 200,000 jobs to be added in November. So yeah, this is going to be a pretty major week coming up. We're going to cover all the major earnings reports throughout the week, and we're going to cover the jobs report on Friday, so make sure you guys stay tuned for that. And shout out to the comment on Spotify for calling me out.

Sometimes I deserve it. Let's run through some headlines. Elon Musk's network took a bit of a hit yesterday after Tesla failed to reinstate his record pay package in a Delaware court. This is despite Tesla shareholders overwhelmingly voting in favor of this pay package back in June. I mean, this whole story is kind of nuts, in my opinion. This whole thing started back in January when in Delaware court struck down Elon Musk's record pay package that Tesla awarded him back in 2018.

This pay package awarded Elon Musk's 300 million shares in Tesla stock if he hit some milestones, which at the time in 2018, most people didn't think he was going to do. Well, he ended up hitting those milestones, and he was supposed to be awarded all those shares. Well, then a Tesla shareholder filed a lawsuit in Delaware saying that he wasn't properly informed about this pay package, and a judge in Delaware voted in favor of this Tesla shareholder. So then Tesla ended up putting this pay package to a vote in June, and 77% of Tesla shareholders voted in favor. of this pay package. I think Tesla lawyers thought that this would be enough to get this pay package

reinstated, but the judge still ruled against it. And we're talking about a lot of money here, okay? The 300 million shares that would have been granted to Elon Musk as part of this pay package was worth around $56 billion back in January during this original ruling. Currently, it's worth over $100 billion now. So the fact that shareholders overwhelmingly voted for this pay package and it still got rejected by the courts is kind of surprising to me. No surprise here. Elon Musk took to X to voice his frustration, calling this ruling absolute corruption and saying that shareholders should control company votes, not judges. So we'll see what happens and it looks like Tesla is going to appeal this decision. Now, we've got some more Tesla news to talk about. Tesla's sales in China

dropped 4% in November year over year. But it is over a 15% jump from the previous month. China continues to be a hot market for EVs. Sales of electric vehicles jumped 51% compared to a year ago. Now, part of the reason there's so much demand in China is that the Chinese government is offering trade-in subsidies, which is attracted over 4 million applications, according to the China Passenger Car Association. But unfortunately for Tesla, competition in China continues to heat up. In fact, this was the third straight month that a Chinese rival outsold Tesla in the region. The biggest EV seller in China is BYD. They sold more than 500,000 vehicles for the second consecutive month. Let's shift gears and talk about frontier airlines because they're

shaking things up a bit. Actually, they're shaking things up a lot. The bare bones budget airlines, is going to start offering first-class seating. Frontier Airlines said they're going to make the first few rows of their airplane into first-class seats in an effort to attract high spenders. The company says this will bring in more than $250 million in revenue in 2025 and about $500 million in revenue in 2006. I mean, I think this is a pretty smart move because a lot of these airlines make a majority of their profit margin

from first-class and business class seating. I think the biggest challenge is going to be frontier shaking this brand image they have of being a budget airline, similar to Spirit Airlines, RIP to Spirid Airlines, which declared bankruptcy a couple weeks ago. But you know what I mean? When you fly Frontier Airlines, you're expected to spend like $39 to fly to Denver or Vegas, and you're expecting zero service. So even if they start offering first class seating, I don't know how many high value spenders are going to want to fly frontier. But we'll have to see. I think it's worth a shot because budget airlines have had a tough time recently. Frontier airline stock is down more than 60% in the last five years. The first class seating will be added to Frontier Airlines

starting in September of 2025. So we'll see how it goes. I kind of want to give it a shot. I'm not going to lie. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. MP Material, a rare earth materials company stock, is up more than 10% this morning, possibly in response to news that China is banning the export of key materials to the U.S. The restriction involves materials used in semiconductors, infrared technology, fiber octave tables,

and solar cells. So China dominates the rare earth industry, while MPs. materials operates in the U.S. These restrictions by China could be good for MP materials as business. As a result, shares of MP are popping this morning. I also want to highlight XRP, which is a cryptocurrency, also known as Ripple. It is ripping right now. It's now the third largest cryptocurrency by market value. XRP's value has soared nearly 70% in the last five days. And its market cap is around $145 billion. By the way, if you're interested in learning more about XRP or wanting to add it to your portfolio, you can find it on the public app. Now, today's shares of U.S. steel

are falling after Donald Trump announced that he will block the company from being acquired by Nippon Steel, which is a steel company out of Japan. Trump says he plans to use his terror strategy to make the U.S. Steel industry stronger. See, Trump doesn't want a foreign steel supplier like Nippon Steel taking over an iconic U.S. company like U.S. Steel. He wants U.S. Steel to return to the glory days. I mean, it used to be America's largest company at one point. Investors don't like this news, though. U.S. Steel shares are down around 7% on this news. Let's wrap the show with a fun fact. This past Sunday was the busiest traveling day ever for U.S. airports. The TSA reported a record 3.09 million passengers were screened on Sunday. That's the

most ever for a single day. In fact, this is only the second time ever the TSA has screened more than 3 million passengers in a single day. The last time it happened was July 7th of this year. I mean, air travel has been booming this year. The top 10 busiest travel days for the TSA all happened in 2024. As a result, airline stocks have had a pretty good year. The ETF JETS, which tracks airline stocks, is up more than 30% this year, slightly outperforming the S&P 500. So I'm sure airlines are hoping for this travel trend to continue in 2025.

Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. Hope you guys enjoyed today's episode. If you did, consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple and Spotify. Leave us a comment on Spotify. vote in today's Spotify poll, all that engagement really does help us out. And feel free to call me out for something as well. We appreciate all the feedback. Thank you guys so much for listening. Shout out to Mike and Connor for all the help behind the scenes. And we'll see you guys back here tomorrow. This is the rundown. Your real-time resource for news events and trends in the markets.

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