The Rundown - Tesla Misses Q4 Deliveries, Disney Has Best Box Office Year Since 2019

Episode Date: January 2, 2026

Market update for January 2, 2026.Follow us on Instagram (@TheRundownDaily) for bonus content and instant reactions.In today’s episode:Tesla misses Q4 delivery estimates as vehicle deliveries fall 16% year over yearLuxury retailer Saks prepares for bankruptcy after missing a major debt paymentFurniture stocks jump after Trump delays tariff hikes on importsOil prices slide as global supply continues to outpace demandDisney caps off a massive year at the box office with $6.5B in ticket sales

Public.com presents the rundown. Your daily market update in under 10 minutes. My name is Zadadmani, and today is Friday, January 2nd. In today's episode, we'll recap the final market scoreboard from 2025. We'll also tell you about the underwhelming delivery numbers that Tesla just reported. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out why oil prices are having their worst years since 2020, and the movie studio that dominated the, box office in 2025. We got a great show for you today. Let's go.

20205 is in the books and unfortunately we didn't get a stand-in-claw's rally to close out the year. In fact, Wednesday was ugly across the board. Every sector finished in the red with the S&P 500 and NASDAQ both dropping about 0.7%. That marked the fourth straight losing session for both these indices. So not a great way to close out the year, but overall, though, 2025 was a great one for investors. The S&P was up 16% in 2025 and the NASDAQ was up 20% largely driven by the hype around AI. Max 7 stocks were up 25% overall with Google being the best performer jumping 65%. Invidio was the second best performer adding 40% and ending the year as the most valuable company in the world with a market cap of $4.5 trillion. All that being said, the real real

surprise winners of 2025 weren't tech stocks, it was actually medals. Gold surged more than 60% last year and silver absolutely crushed it up 150%. Both of these medals having their best year since 1979. So while everyone was arguing about AI valuations, the shiny rocks quietly stole the show. So yeah, like I said, 2025, great year for investors, except for Bitcoin investors. Bitcoin actually finished the year down 6%. Now, to be fair, Bitcoin did hit a record high in 2025 peaking around $126,000 back in early October, but the rally lost steam in Q4 and Bitcoin is now sitting around $90,000. So that sets of a lot of interesting storylines going into 2026. Will Bitcoin bounce back? Can gold keep ripping after a historic run? What happens to the AI trade?

Will earnings growth hold up? And I think most importantly, what will happen to the Federal Reserve, especially with a new Fed shares coming in in May? So yeah, there's a lot of things for us to keep an eye on in 2026. We're going to be breaking down all the top stories here on the rundown every single day. So if you want to be a more informed investor in 2026 with only 10 minutes a day, make sure you're subscribed to this podcast to stay in the loop. And if you're already one of the 70,000 subscribers, consider sharing this show with someone that you think would enjoy it as well. With your help, we could potentially hit 100,000 subscribers by the end of this year. All right, that's enough plugs for today. Let's get into the rest of the show. Let's run through some headlines.

Starting with Tesla. Tesla just reported delivery numbers for Q4, and the numbers weren't so great. Deliveries in Q4 came in at 418,000 cars, missing Wall Street estimates of 426,000. When you compare it to Q4 of last year, deliveries were down 16%. So that's a pretty big drop-off,

and there are a few factors leading to the decline in sales. For one, the federal EV tax credit of $7,500 ending in September, that caused a ton of demand to be pulled forward to Q3, because buyers wanted to take advantage of the credit before it expired. And beyond that, Tesla continues to face a ton of competition from EV rivals coming out of China, especially BYD, which has taken market share from Tesla in key European markets with a cheaper car. Now, Tesla has tried to reignite demand with a cheaper version of the Model Y, which launched back in October. That's helped a bit, but clearly not enough to offset the broader slowdown.

But as I've said multiple times, at this point, Tesla investors don't really care that much about the car business. more. In fact, Tesla's stock is up 2% at the time of this recording, despite the delivery miss. Investors are clearly more focused on Elon Musk's long-term vision for Tesla, which is all about AI, robotaxies, and humanoid robots. Now, we'll have to see how long that enthusiasm lasts from investors. We're actually going to be hearing again from Tesla on January 28th when they report earnings. The fact that Tesla stock is hovering near all-time highs, though, it kind of blows my mind. Let's shift gears and talk about another company struggling with sales, SACS Global. SACS Global is preparing to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after missing a $100 million interest payment

to bondholders this week. You know, Slack's Global owns some of the most iconic high-end department stores like Sacks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, and Bergdorf Goodman, but behind the scenes, things weren't so great. The trouble really started in 2024 when Sacks borrowed billions of dollars from bond investors to pull off a $2.7 billion acquisition of Neiman Marcus. The idea was to create this luxury department store juggernaut. While that plan didn't work out, instead of just loaded the company up with unsustainable debt, and since then, SACS had struggled to keep up with interest payments,

they delayed payments to vendors, and even explored selling some assets just to stay afloat. And once you start missing payments, I mean, things just start spiraling. Like missing payments to vendors had a real impact on the stores themselves, because some brands have held back merchandise shipment, leaving Sacks with weaker inventory and fewer fresh products on the shelves. That weaker offering and inventory management issue weighed on the business with sales dropping 13% in the most recent quarter, and net losses widened to $288 million.

So yeah, it looks like Sacks is headed for bankruptcy, making it the most high-profile department store bankruptcy since the pandemic. I feel like luxury department stores as a concept don't really work anymore, especially because these luxury brands have their own stores these days. Like, why would a wealthy shopper go buy a luxury handbag at Sacks Fifth when you can just go to a Louis Vuitton store or a Chanel store directly? I guess one cool thing about Sacks is at their store in New York has a pretty cool slight show during the holidays. I was there recently. It was pretty awesome.

And I wonder if that's going to go away now that the company is filing for bankruptcy. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Shares of Wayfair and R.H. are moving higher this morning after President Trump delayed tariffs on furniture. See, right now, imported upholstered furniture, kitchen cabinets, and vanities are already facing a 25% tariff, which went into effect back in September. But tariffs would have increased to 30% on furniture and 50% on kitchen cabinets and vanities starting on January 1st. But President Trump pushed that increase out to 2027, citing productive negotiations with trade partners. So that's a big relief for furniture retailers, a large chunk of what Wayfair sales and what RH sources comes from Asia. So higher tariffs would have meant higher costs and tighter

margins. So investors are celebrating this tariff pause and shares of Wayfair are up 3% and RH is up 5% in pre-market trading. Now, on the flip side, oil prices continue to slide this morning coming off the steepest annual drop since 2020. Oil prices fell more than 20% in 2025 and down 5% just in the past month. Now, the reason for the drop is oversupplied. OPEC plus countries, which include Saudi Arabia, UAE, Russia, and other oil-producing countries, increased production despite demand not being there. Both the International Energy Agency and the U.S. government estimate that production is

exceeding consumption by over 2 million barrels a day, and that surplus is expected to get worse in 2026. So oil prices could continue to fall in the coming year, which is great news for anyone filling up their gas tank, but not great news for oil and energy. Let's wrap the show with the fun fact. Disney put up the biggest box office year since the pandemic. In 2025, Disney Studios raked in $6.5 billion globally, making it the only studio to cross the $6 billion mark in 2025.

For context, the next closest competitor was Warner Brothers Discovery at $4.3 billion. Now, this is Disney's fifth time ever topping the $6 billion number, billion number, but the first time since the pandemic. So that's encouraging for moviegoers. Leading the way for Disney this year was Zootopia 2, which crossed $1.3 billion at the box office and officially became Disney's highest grossing animated film ever. On top of that, the Lilo and Stitch live action remake also cleared a billion dollars earlier this year. And then you have Avatar, Fire, and Ash. It's expected to join the billion dollar club literally any day now. Notably, none of them were original IP, but that's just how it goes these days. Disney says,

that about 700 million people worldwide saw one of its movies in theaters in 2025. That's nearly one in every 10 people on Earth. So Mickey Mouse still got it, but despite Disney's success at the box office, their stock only went up 2% in 2025. So the market doesn't seem to care too much about the box office success. Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. That's the rundown for this week. Hope everyone had a fantastic new year.

You know, I love the holidays, but I'm also looking forward to things getting back to routine starting next week. As a reminder, we're going to be posting some content over the weekend, so keep an eye on your podcast feed for that. And if you guys enjoy the show and want to help us out, 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.

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