The Rundown - Trump Shakes Housing and Defense Stocks, Anthropic Raises $10B

Episode Date: January 8, 2026

Market update for January 8, 2026Follow us on Instagram (@TheRundownDaily) for bonus content and instant reactions.Google overtakes Apple to become the world’s second-most valuable companyTrump threatens to ban Wall Street from buying single-family homesDefense stocks rally after Trump calls for a $1.5 trillion military budgetNvidia regains access to China as H200 chip sales inch closer to approvalFun fact: Anthropic’s quiet AI strategy could beat OpenAI’s business model

Public.com presents the rundown. Your daily market update in under 10 minutes. My name is Zaid Admani, and today is Thursday, January 8th. And today's episode will break down the market's reaction to Trump's threads to institutional investors and defense companies. We'll also tell you the latest on Nvidia's return to the Chinese market. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out why Anthropic might be a better investment than Open AI. We got a great show for you today. Let's go.

Markets lost a little momentum on Wednesday. The S&P 500 slipped about 0.3%, snapping a three-day win streak, and it was a pretty broad pullback, more than three quarters of stocks in the S&P finished in the red. The NASDAQ did manage to grind out a 0.2% gain. Google was one of the big winners yesterday, with the stock adding 2%, and overtaking Apple to become the,

the second most valuable company in the world with a market cap of nearly $3.9 trillion. The last time that Google overtook Apple was back in 2019. Now, zooming out, let's talk about the oil market because oil prices are moving a bit lower after President Trump said that up to 50 million barrels of Venezuelan oil could be sent to the U.S. And that the U.S. could potentially control Venezuelan oil production for years to come. So that means that more oil supply could hit the markets and more supply means lower prices. Now, I still think the Venezuelan oil story will take years to fully play out, but the Trump administration is being pretty aggressive.

In fact, a bunch of oil executives are meeting with Trump at the White House today. So we'll see what comes out of that. Overall, though, it's been a pretty eventful week. And tomorrow, we cap it all off with the December jobs report, which should give us a clear picture on where the labor market stands. We'll break down those numbers on tomorrow's episode. So make sure you guys are subscribed for the podcast and tuning in every day to stay in the loop. Let's run through some headlines, starting with the housing market. President Trump shocked Wall Street yesterday after he threatened to ban large institutional

investors from buying single family homes, arguing that corporate ownership has helped push housing out of reach for everyday Americans. In his post, he said that people live in homes and not corporations. Housing affordability has become a key political issue, and his proposal would target private equity firms and large asset managers that have spent the last decade plus buying up these single family homes and renting them out. That includes companies like Blackstone, Invitation Homes, and Apollo Global Management, whose stocks all fell yesterday after Trump's post. Now, to be clear, this is still very light on details. Trump said he's taking steps to implement the ban, and he's

going to ask Congress to codify it into law, but there's still a lot of questions on how exactly this ban would work and who exactly counts as a large investor or whether existing portfolios would be grandfathered in. And here's the other thing, these large institutional investors only on a small slice of the housing market, current estimates put it around 2 to 4% of single family homes nationwide. Now, in some markets like my hometown of Houston, Texas, it's a bit higher. But I still don't think this alone is going to be enough to solve the housing affordability crisis. Like, sure, it's a step in the right direction, but we're going to need additional policy to truly help housing affordability. See, the real problem right now is a lack of supply. So policy is pushing for

faster permitting when it comes to building homes could have a bigger interest. impact when it comes to the housing market. But first, we'll have to see if this institutional ban becomes real policy and what impacts it will have on the housing market. Let's shift gears and talk about Nvidia. According to Bloomberg, China is preparing to approve purchases of NVIDIA's H-200 AI chips as soon as this quarter, but there will be some caveats. Chinese officials are expected to allow the H-200 chips, but only for select commercial uses while restricting them from being used in the military, sensitive government agencies, and critical infrastructure. This decision by the Chinese government has been in limbo for months now as tensions between the U.S. and China continue to rise over AI and chip dominance.

But for Nvidia, getting any exposure to the Chinese market is a big deal. Last year, Nvidia's China business was basically wiped out after the Trump administration banned the sale of the H20 chip, which was a watered down chip, Nvidia specifically designed for the Chinese market to comply with earlier export restrictions. So for months now, Nvidia was making no revenue from China, which is the world's largest market for semiconductors. But then, just a few weeks ago, the Trump administration reversed course, and they're now allowing Nvidia to sell their powerful H-200 chips to China, but 25% of the revenue that Nvidia makes in China has to be paid directly to the U.S. government. What's wild is that despite all this policy whiplash, Chinese tech companies have already

placed orders for more than 2 million H-200 chips priced at roughly $27,000 each. These Chinese tech companies really want to get their hands on these powerful Nvidia chips, but the Chinese government has reported. asked these Chinese tech companies to pause their orders until a formal decision is made. The Chinese government wants to build up their own semiconductor industry and rival Nvidia one day. So we'll see what the final ruling ends up coming from Beijing. But you know, because of all this uncertainty, Nvidia is protecting themselves. According to Reuters, Nvidia is now requiring full upfront payment for the H-200 orders in China

with no refunds, no cancellations, pretty much a final sale. So that shifts to risk entirely onto the Chinese tech companies placing the order. What I'm wondering, though, is if the Chinese government doesn't end up approving the sale of the H-200 chips for whatever reason, does NVIDIA just keep all the money from all the orders from these Chinese tech companies? Like, what happens there? I actually don't know. I'm going to have to look into this. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Defense stocks are rallying this morning after a pretty volatile 24 hours for the sector. Now, yesterday, defense stocks like Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Rtiex were down after President Trump, criticized defense contractors for slow production, high executive pay, and excessive returns to shareholders.

In a truth social post, Trump said that he would not permit dividends or stock buybacks at defense companies until they ramp up production and invests more heavily in manufacturing capacity. Now, just for some contacts here, aerospace and defense companies in the S&P 500 have paid out about $25 billion in dividends and spent another $14 billion on stock buybacks over the past year. Trump doesn't want that money going towards investors and instead going towards more manufacturing and production. So that caused the sell off in defense stocks. But then a few hours later, President Trump followed up on truth social that he wants major increases in U.S. military spending, saying the defense budget should jump from roughly $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion in 2027.

So the news of more defense spending caused defense stocks to rally this morning. You know, on one hand, higher defense spending is bullish for defense companies, but tighter rules around buybacks and dividends could cap returns. So it'll be interesting to see what the defense sector does this year. Now, on the flip side, shares of Revolution Medicines are plummeting after the pharma giant AbVey denied reports from the Wall Street Journal that it was in talks to acquire the company.

Revolution Medicines focuses on experimental cancer treatments if they're working on drugs that stop the growth of many cancers, including lungs, pancreatic, and other tumors. And even though AbV denied the acquisition talks, the journal reports that other potential tutors are still interested in the company, so this story might not be over, but for now, shares of Revolution Medicine are down nearly 8% this morning on this news. Let's wrap the show with a fun fact. The AI startup Anthropic has nearly 100xed its value in less than three years.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Anthropic is raising $10 billion at a $350 billion valuation. Now, for some context, the company was valued at just 4.1.1. billion back in May of 2023. So the company has seen a massive increase in value just like all the other AI companies. Now, Anthropic is the company behind the Claude Chatbot, which I personally like a lot. And even though they don't get the same level of hype as OpenAI, they might actually have a better business model. See, unlike Open AI, which is very consumer-focused, Anthropic has gone after enterprise customers. In fact, around 80% of Anthropics revenues come from businesses and not consumers. And usually that's a better business model because companies are using

Claude for things like coding, legal work, finance, and internal AI tools, you know, stuff that actually saves money for businesses and has a measurable return on investment. You know, businesses are more likely to spend a lot of money on AI tools if it saves the money. Consumers on the other hand can be very price sensitive. And that's why some people think that Anthropic might hit profitability before Open AI does. You know, there are rumors that Anthropic could IPO later this year. And honestly, I think they might be a better IPO target than Open AI. But I don't know. Let me know in the comments of what you guys think. As an investment, would you rather, invest in Anthropic or Open AI.

Right now, I'd be leaning towards Anthropic. Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. I hope you guys enjoyed today's episode. If you did, and you have like five extra seconds, consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you listen to your podcast. If you are listening on Spotify, don't forget to vote in today's Spotify poll.

Leave us a comment on Spotify. All of that engagement really does help us out. and it helps other people find the show. Now, looking ahead a bit, we have a big interview coming up this weekend. CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin is going to be hopping on the show. I am super hyped about this. I've been watching Andrew on TV for years now.

I've been prepping all week for this interview, so I can't wait for you guys to see it. That interview should be going up on Sunday morning. Keep an eye on your podcast feed for that. If you guys have any questions that you want me to ask Andrew, definitely leave them in the comments on Spotify or YouTube. And as always, 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. Rosen lasagna, medium power, 15 minutes. Sounds like Ojo time. Let's play. Feel the fun with Play Ojo, the online casino with all the latest slot and live casino games. What you win is yours to keep with no wagering requirements, instant payouts, and no minimum withdraws. Hey, I just won.

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