The Rundown - Tesla Soars After Robotaxi Rollout, Hims Loses Partnership with Novo Nordisk

Episode Date: June 23, 2025

Stock market update for June 23, 2025.This 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 Monday, June 23rd. In today's episode, we'll tell you how the markets are reacting to the escalating tensions in the Middle East. They don't seem to be too worried right now. We'll also break down Tesla's Robotaxie launch in Austin. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out why Hollywood might stop making original movies. We got a great show for you today.

Let's go. The S&P 500 is coming off its second red week in a row, dropping 0.2%. The NASDAQ was able to squeeze out a gain of 0.2% last week. Overall, though, I'm pretty surprised by the lack of volatility in the markets, given the conflict in the Middle East between Israel and Iran. Things did escalate over the weekend with President Trump ordering a strike on three nuclear sites in Iran. Iran says they play. to retaliate and potentially shut down the strait of Hormuz.

And look, if that happens, it would be a big deal because about 20% of the world's oil flows through that narrow waterway. If Iran ends up blocking it, oil prices could start soaring. But for now, investors aren't expecting much disruption. Oil prices have barely moved since the weekend. But definitely something to keep an eye on. And we'll see how the rest of the market reacts today and the rest of the week. Remember, the S&P 500 is within 3% of all-time highs, which is just.

just wild to me, given that there is a war breaking out in the Middle East and still a lot of uncertainty around trade. But look, investors seem to be optimistic that things will get worked out without too much economic disruption. So the next few weeks should be very interesting. We're going to be locked in here on the rundown and we'll keep you guys in the loop every day. Let's run through some headlines. Starting with Tesla. Tesla finally launched their robo taxi service in Austin, Texas over the weekend, and Elon set the price at exactly $4.20 per ride, because of course he did. Now, this wasn't a full launch. It's more of like a soft opening. It was only open to a handful of social media influencers to test out the service. These rides

take place in a red Model Y with no one in the driver's seat, but there is a Tesla employee riding shotgun for safety reasons and to monitor the performance of a self-driving car. Now, if you live in Austin, keep an eye out for these cars. Tesla has put a Robotaxy logo on the side of these cars, so you should be able to see them. I've seen some videos of the Robotaxies in action, and yeah, it looks pretty cool. Early reviews have been pretty positive. Right now, the cars are only available in a small part of the city between 6 a.m. and midnight. But Elon says the goal is to scale from the 10 to 20 cars they have now to over a thousand cars in the next few months. So they're hoping to ramp up pretty quickly. I'm actually looking forward to trying this out myself. So once this

becomes open to everyone, I'll make the trip over to Austin and try it out and also compare it to a Waymo. Let's shift gears and talk about Apple because they just made another big move in streaming and they're ready to take on Netflix. The tech giant just signed a deal with Peter Churnan's North Road studio giving Apple first dibs on any new film projects the studio develops. That's a pretty major shift because for the last five years, Peter Churnin's company had been making movies for Netflix. And Peter Chernin, man, he has a stacked resume. He was the producer behind Ford versus Ferrari, which is a great movie.

He's also the producer behind the Planet of the Eighth franchises. And the popular New Girl show from a few years ago, which is very rewatchable even today. Now, Peter Chernin's company had already been working with Apple. They produced the show C with Jason Mamoa. And I guess the two sides are now expanding that partnership. And this move just signals how serious Apple is about building out their entertainment division and their streaming service. They continue to invest billions of dollars into really good shows and movies with huge high-profile stars. I mean, this upcoming F-1 movie is a great example of that.

It stars Brad Pitt. The movie's budget was like $300 million, and they must have spent that much on marketing, too, because I've seen this movie everywhere. Honestly, though, I hope the movie is really good. It comes out on Friday, June 27th, and I'm definitely going to go see it. I'm a big F-1 fan. And by the way, Tim Cook is not paying me to say that. Could you imagine if Apple took their AI efforts as seriously as they take it? streaming. Apple intelligence and Siri might not be a laughing stock at this point. Let's talk about

some stocks making moves today. Shares of the fintech firm FISAV are rising this morning after the company announced plans to launch their own stable coin. Pfizer does a lot of payment products for banks and other institutions, but they also compete against the POS systems like toast and square with their own product called Clover. You know, you've probably seen them at coffee shops and food trucks. It's another white tablet that tries to force you to tip 20% after buying a $6 coffee. Well, now the company wants to get into the stable coins, and they've made deals with Circle and PayPal to help do so. The partnership will attach Circle's USDC stablecoin infrastructure to Pfizer's banking network for digital assets. This will help clear payments through stable

coins. So it seems like stable coins are having an impact in the financial space, and as a result, shares of Pfizer are up around 3% this morning on this news. And Circle, stock just keeps pumping. It's up big again this morning. Shares have gone up more than 700% since they IPOed like three weeks ago. Now on the flip side, shares of Hymns and hers are down nearly 30% this morning after Novo Nortis abruptly canceled a high profile partnership to distribute its blockbuster weight loss drug, WeGovie, through Hymns's platform. Telehealth company had struck a deal with Nova Nortis back in April to offer WeGovie through its platform, which was seen as a win-win for both sides.

Nova Nordus would broaden access to one of its top-selling drugs, while Hymns would secure a critical lifeline as regulatory scrutiny mounted over their selling of compound weight loss drugs. See, for months now Hymns has been selling these copycat GLP1 drugs because of a shortage in these drugs a while back. But now there's no more shortage, so selling these compound drugs isn't legal anymore. So this Nova Nordus deal was supposed to be a path forward. But Novanortis is canceling the partnership over concerns about Hymnors.

is misleading marketing and because Hymns is still selling compound GLP ones on their platform. Novodortis did keep their partnership with other telehealth providers, including LifeMD, which saw their stock rise more than 4% on this news. But yeah, Hymns is getting crushed right now. Stock saw a rapid rise in their price this year, but seems like the air is starting to come out. Let's wrap the show with a fun fact. Pixar just had its worst box office opening in their history. Their new original movie, Elio, brought in just $21 million over the weekend, which is brutal,

especially since Disney reportedly spent over $250 million to make and market this movie. I mean, Pixar movies used to be a guaranteed hit back in the day, but that's just not the case anymore. And this continues a trend of original movies struggling at the box office. The last original Pixar movie Elemental also flopped when it was released back in 2023. And I think this is a great example why Hollywood Studios are hesitant to make it. original movies. Leo had great reviews. I personally know some parents that took their kids to see it and they really liked it.

But these days, audiences aren't going to the movies for originality. They want familiarity. And that's why sequels crush it inside out two made over $1.7 billion. Moana 2 also made over a billion dollars. I think that's why we're going to see Hollywood keep cranking out these sequels. It's the only way to make sure fire money. We actually talked more about the future of Hollywood and some of the challenges they face with the rise of AI videos on our deep dive episode over the weekend.

It was a great episode, so go check that out if you missed it. A bonus fun fact about Pixar, Steve Jobs actually became a billionaire because of Pixar and not Apple. We should probably do a deep dive about that because it's a very interesting story. Both Apple and Pixar could probably use Steve's help right now. Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. Hope you guys enjoyed that episode. If you did and you have like eight extra seconds, consider giving us a five-star rating

on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcast. And if you do listen 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. 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.