The Rundown - Trump Gives GM a Boost, Beyond Meat Reaches Meme Stock Territory

Episode Date: October 21, 2025

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Public.com presents the rundown. Your daily market update in under 10 minutes. My name is Zadadmani, and today is Tuesday, October 21st. In today's episode, we'll recap earnings from GM, Coca-Cola, and more. We'll also tell you about the latest meme stock taken over Reddit. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out why the used luxury handbag market is booming and why I might have to start day trading Gucci purses soon. We got a great show for you today.

Let's go. Stocks rallied on Monday to start the week, despite half the internet not working yesterday, thanks to the AWS outage. The S&P 500 was up 1.1% yesterday, and the NASDAQ jump 1.4% thanks in large part to the 4% jump from Apple stock, which closed at record highs for the first time in 2025. It seems like investors have moved past the trade drama with China,

The markets have officially erased all the losses since President Trump's 100% tariff threat back on October 9th that sent the markets into a turmoil. The same can't be said for crypto, though, both Bitcoin and Ethereum are still down more than 10% from their highs earlier this month. Meanwhile, the government shutdown still drags on. It's now on its 21st day, which is the second largest shutdown ever. Now, the White House Economic Advisor Kevin Haslett went on CNBC yesterday morning, and he said that the shutdown could end this one. week. I don't know. We'll have to see. But honestly, I don't think the markets care too much about it. Investors are fully focused on earnings season. We've covered a lot of earnings last week and some this week. We're going to be talking about earnings and pretty much every episode for the next three to

four weeks. So it's a great time to get subscribed to the podcast and tune in every day to stay in the loop during earnings season. Let's run through some headlines. And we're going to be talking earnings starting with GM. General Motors just pulled off the earnings trifecta. The American car maker reported earnings this morning and they beat on revenues and profits for Q3 and they also raise their full year guidance. Investors love nothing more when companies report the triple beat. CEO Mary Barra said that GM's performance was driven by its strong vehicle portfolios pointing to strong demands for brands like Chevy, Cadillac, and GMC. I think the key point though is that GM said the impact of tariffs won't be as bad, dropping the cost from $5 billion down to $4 billion,

thanks in part to the revised tariff policy by the Trump administration, which was announced last week. Under the new policy, automakers that build vehicles in the U.S. will get a 3.75% credit on the sticker price of each car sold to offset the tariff cost. So that will ease some of the tariff pain. In fact, GM CEO, Mary Barra, actually thanked President Trump in her shareholder letter for this new policy. Now, the other thing that stood out to me from these earnings was GM's EV business. GM sold a record number of EVs last quarter, likely because people were buying EVs to take advantage of the EV tax credit, which was expiring at the end of September.

But only 40% of GM EVs are profitable. So GM is now planning to scale back EV production to get to profitability. And they're also expecting a hit to EV demand because the EV tax credit has expired. But I think investors like that because they will lead to higher profitability for GM down the line. So overall, it was a big quarter for GM. Investors were loving it. Shares of the company are up more than 10% this morning in pre-market trading. Now, let's shift gears and talk about another 100-year-old company, Coca-Cola.

They reported earnings this morning as well. And they beat across the board. They also expect to meet 2025 guidance. But they did warn that demand for their sodas are kind of weak. Overall revenues were up 5% in Q3 to $12.5 billion. dollars, but unit volume, which is like how much liquid Coca-Cola actually sells, only grew by 1%. Now, that's a slight improvement from last quarter's decline, but demand was flat in North America and Latin America, which are two of Coke's biggest markets. The way I see this is that

Coke is making more money without selling more sodas, mostly because of price hikes, and also a focus on higher margin drinks, like water, coffee, and sports beverages. In fact, Coca-Cola's bottled water and sports drinks both saw volumes increase 3% while coffee and tea reported volumes growth of 2%. The focus on the high margin drinks pushed up Coke's operating income by 59% year over year and operating margin climbed to 32% up from the 21% last year. So Coke is selling the same amount of drinks, but the profits they're able to squeeze from those sales is going up and that has investors happy. As a result, shares of Coca-Cola are up around 3% this morning. in reaction to the earnings. I hate to admit this, but I might have a slight addiction to Coke zero.

I mean, it's, I drink it probably two to three times a week, if not more. It's so good. What can I say? Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Shares of Beyond Meat are soaring as the company has now become the latest meme stock. Shares were up 100% on Monday and they're up another 40% this morning in pre-market trading. Now, Beyond Meat's business, has been struggling, and their stock had become a penny stock. But the people of Reddit and Twitter saw that it was a heavily shorted stock with more than 50% of shares being sold short. So the traders on Reddit and Twitter are trying to pull off a classic short squeeze, forcing

short sellers to close out their position and boost the stock price higher. It seems to be working so far. We'll see how far it goes, but this doesn't change the fact that Beyond Meets' fundamental business aren't getting any better. It is funny, though, how meme stocks have essentially become a permanent feature of the stock market at this point. I mean, I think we're getting a new one every other month at this point. Moving on, let's talk Northrop Grumman. Shares of the defense contractor are down this morning after they reported mixed earnings.

Now, the company's earnings per share did beat expectations. It was up 10% year over year in Q3, but the revenues of $10.4 billion missed expectations. The company also cut the revenue forecast for the year by $350 million. Northrop says they're seeing strong demand for missiles, but a slowdown in their space division. And shares of the company, you're down more than 2% this morning in reaction to the earnings. I don't know if it's just me, but I feel like the name Northrop Grumman is the most defense-contractory sounding company name I've ever heard. You know what I mean?

It's like them and Raytheon. You just hear the name and you know they sell weapons. Let's wrap the show with a fun fact. Sales of second-hand luxury goods are growing faster than sales of new ones. According to the Wall Street Journal, the resale market for luxury goods hit $56 billion dollars last year, which is nearly triple what it was a decade ago. This isn't thanks in large part to platforms that now make buying authentic secondhand bags super easy, like the real real, which I'm pretty sure my wife has used a couple times. It's actually a publicly traded company

and the stock has jumped more than 250% in the past year, thanks mostly to Gen Z shoppers. You know, these platforms allow younger shoppers who can't afford a new bag to still buy one and, you know, flex the logo, which I'm pretty sure is a big part of buying a luxury handbag. in the first place, right? But what's interesting is that this is starting to hurt the sales of big luxury companies. Sales of new designer goods have basically flatlined over the past two years. I find the used luxury handbag market to be so fascinating because prices of certain bags rise and fall depending on which style or brands are trending. Some bags that are selling for 500 bucks one year might be selling for a thousand bucks the next year. It's basically day trading

but with purses. My wife has been trying to convince me to start day trading these handbags. bags on these resale sites. And honestly, I kind of want to try it now and maybe even do a deep dive. Again, I'm not super plugged into the luxury space. So let me know the comments on what you guys think of the whole luxury handbag resale market. Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. Hope you guys enjoyed today's episode. If you did and you have like six extra seconds, consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple, Spotify, 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. We appreciate everyone taking the time to comment. By the way, if you guys have any listener questions, drop them in the comments as well. We're going to try to answer some listener questions in a future episode. 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. Frozen lasagna, medium power, 15 minutes.

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