The Rundown - Trump Pushes Back Enforcement of TikTok Ban, StubHub to Make IPO Debut

Episode Date: September 17, 2025

Stock market update for September 17, 2025.

Public.com presents the rundown. Your daily market update in under 10 minutes. My name is Zaid Admani, and today is Wednesday, September 15th. In today's episode, we'll give you the latest update on the TikTok ban and tell you which U.S. investors are finalizing a bid to buy the company. We'll also preview the upcoming Stubhub IPO and tell you why China just banned Nvidia chips. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out which company. just bought the fire festival.

We got a great show for you today. Let's go. Markets had a pretty quiet day on Tuesday with the S&P and NASDAQ both dropping just 0.1%. I think Wall Street was just taking the kind of chill in preparation for the post-Fed meeting rally or sell-off depending on what happens at the Fed meeting today and what Jerome Powell says in his press conference this afternoon. At this point, everyone is expecting a 25 basis point cut. Some even think we might be getting a surprise 50 basis point cut.

I'm really curious to see what kind of vibe Jerome Powell will give off in the press conference. Is he going to hint at more rate cuts this year pointing to the softening labor market? Or is he going to talk more about inflation still being above the Fed's 2% target? So I'll be tuning into the press conference, which starts at 2.30 p.m. Eastern time. I'm sure the markets will be going on a wild ride as they usually do when Jerome Powell talks. We'll break down the Fed's decision and all the interesting comments from Jerome Powell on the press conference and how the markets reacted to everything on tomorrow's show. So make sure you guys tune into that to stay in the loop. Let's run through some headlines, starting with TikTok.

There's been some major developments regarding the TikTok ban. The TikTok ban deadline was today, but President Trump signed an executive order pushing the TikTok ban for the fourth time, now to December 16th. And this time, there's finally some real progress on a deal that could keep the app alive in the U.S. long term. Remember, there is a U.S. law right now stating that TikTok cannot operate in the U.S. as long as its majority owned by a Chinese company. Well, according to reporting from the Wall Street Journal, multiple U.S. companies and investors are finalizing a deal to buy the U.S. operations of TikTok. This deal is being led by the tech giant Oracle, along with the private equity company Silver Lake Capital and the venture capitalist firm

and Drescent Horowitz. These group of investors are planning to buy TikTok's U.S. operation from TikTok's current Chinese parent company, BiteDance. The U.S. investors would hold 80% of TikTok, while ByteDance would own 20. The board of directors of the TikTok U.S. company would be mostly American, with even one seat designated by the U.S. government, which is kind of weird. Now, the biggest sticking point around a TikTok sale has always been TikTok's algorithm. It's what makes TikTok so good and addicting. This algorithm is owned by ByteDance, and under Chinese law, the Chinese government has to

sign off on any sale of the tech. So the work around here is that the U.S. TikTok company would license the recommendation algorithm from ByDance, and American engineers would use that tech to recreate and maintain a U.S. only version. So they're planning to license the tech, but make it American. And for all of this to work, U.S. users of TikTok will have to download a new U.S. only version of the TikTok app that according to reporting is already under development. So I wonder if that means that U.S. users on TikTok will only get served U.S. users. U.S. content, which would be kind of a bummer, you know? So there's still some questions surrounding this whole deal.

We still haven't seen a price tag that U.S. investors are going to be paying for the 80% control of the U.S. version of TikTok. But the wheels seem to be in motion, and President Trump is expected to have a call with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday to potentially seal the deal. So yeah, TikTok might not be going away here in the U.S., but it could be changing. And I wonder if this U.S. version of the algorithm is going to be good enough to keep users around or is everyone just going to go to Instagram Reels or YouTube. I guess we'll have to see. Let's shift gears and talk about Stubhub. The ticketing platform will finally hit the public markets

today. Stubhub is pricing its IPO at $23.50 a share, which is at the midpoint of the $22 to $25 range that was set last week. Now, this would value Stubhub at $8.6 billion, which is about half of what it was reportedly seeking before it started the IPO process, according to CNBC. Now, this is Stubhubhub's third attempt of going public. The last time was back in April, but then the markets had a meltdown after Trump's Liberation Day tariffs, so Stubhubb backed off. Now, as for the financials of the company, Stubhubb's sold about $8.7 billion in gross ticket sales last year. But there are some questions around the growth as the company faces tough competition from companies like Ticketmaster, Vivid Seats, and Seat Geek. Stubhub's revenues grew just 3% in the first half of 2025. And the company

is losing money. They lost $35.9 million last year, which is up from the $29.7 million in 2023. On top of that, profitability has been slipping. Their EBITA margins have dropped from 26% in 2020 to 12% in the first half of this year. And that's far below StubHub's 35 to 40% target. The company is blaming this on heavy marketing costs tied to building up their new direct-to-sales business. Stubhub has been leaning hard on this direct-to-sales business. They see it as a 153 billion opportunity, which is way bigger than the resale market it currently dominates. But they're still very early in this, though. Stubhubb brought in just $100 million in gross ticket sales from the direct sales business last

year. That's just 1% of their total gross ticket volume, and most of that came from the Yankees. So today's IPO will tell us of investors are buying the Stubb Hub growth story, or if they see this as another ticketing resale platforms. Stubhub will start trading on the New York Stock Exchange today under ticker symbol O-T-U-B. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Alibaba shares are up nearly 3% this morning after the Chinese tech giant secured a major

customer for its AI chips. The client is China Unicom, the country's second largest telecom company. They're going to use Alibaba's AI chips to power a massive new data center project. Now, on top of that, there's been some breaking news this morning coming from the financial times. they're reporting that the Chinese government has banned tech giants like Alibaba and ByDance from buying Nvidia's new AI chips designed for the Chinese market. Chinese regulators are saying that Chinese companies like Huawei have now closed the performance gap with Nvidia.

So domestic firms should be the priority when it comes to securing AI chips. In fact, the Chinese government went as far to order these tech companies to stop testing Nvidia chips immediately. So obviously this is great news for Chinese chip makers like Alibaba. and Huawei, but not great news for Nvidia. Invidia CEO Jensen Wong said that he was disappointed in this news. It also adds to the China-U.S. trade drama. But surprisingly, Nvidia's stock hasn't taken a big hit so far.

It's only down around 1% this morning on this news. Now, a stock taking a bigger hit this morning is General Mills. Their shares are down despite the cereal and food giant beating earnings for the quarter and keeping its 2026 outlook. The problem for General Mills has been growth, or I guess the lack of growth. Their net sales were down 7% last quarter, and the company has been in a multi-year struggle to revive demand. You know, kids these days aren't eating as much cereal as we did back in the day. So General Mills is trying a bunch of stuff.

They're ramping up advertising. They're doing more in-store promotions, even hosting events to push their brands. They've even made changes to their product portfolios selling off their yogurt brands in June, such as Gogh and Yoplay, which to me are the two best things they have. But the company wants to focus more on other categories. So far, these moves haven't resulted in a turnaround just yet. Now, General Mills is excited about the fresh pet food category under their blue buffalo brand. It's a growing market, but for now, investors aren't impressed, and shares of General Mills are down more than 3% this morning at the time of this recording.

Let's wrap the show with a fun fact. LimeWire has bought the rights to the Fire Festival on eBay for $245,000. Now, for all my millennials out there, they probably remember LimeWire. it's how we used to acquire music back in the day. It wasn't legal per se, but I'm pretty sure I can't get in trouble for saying this anymore, right? Statue of limitations and all. Anyways, I didn't even know that LimeWire was still around. Apparently, they did shut down back in 2010, but came back in 2022 as an NFT platform.

And now they've acquired the rights to the Fire Festival. And as for the Fire Festival, it's become an iconic meme at this point. If you guys remember, this festival took place back in 2017. It was supposed to be this ultra-luxury music festival in the festival. the Bahamas and it turned out to be an absolute disaster. There have been multiple documentaries about the fire festival and I've watched all of them. Things got so bad for the fire festival that the founder, Billy McFarlane, even went to federal prison for four years on fraud charges. He was released in 2022 and I guess he still owned the fire festival brand and now he just sold

it to Limewire. As for Limewire's plans, they want to use the Fire Festival brand to launch real world experiences, whatever that means. But they did emphasize they won't be bringing back the actual festival itself, which I think is a shame. You know, I think we need to bring it back and do the fire festival right this time. Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. Hope you guys enjoyed today's episode. If you did, and you have like seven 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. 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.

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