The Rundown - Trump Targets Netflix Deal as Paramount Launches Hostile Bid for WBD

Episode Date: December 8, 2025

Market update for Monday, December 8, 2025Follow us on Instagram (@TheRundownDaily) for bonus content and instant reactions.

Public.com presents the rundown. Your daily market update in under 10 minutes. My name is Zad Admani, and today is Monday, December 8th. In today's episode, we'll preview this upcoming week, including a Fed meeting and some important earnings. We'll also tell you what Trump just said over the weekend about the Netflix deal and how Netflix plans to defend it. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out how much wealth boomers control in the

U.S. Spoiler alert, it just hit a record high. We got a great show for you today. Let's go. Markets are coming off a winning week. Despite lower than usual trading volumes last week, stocks rallied to near record highs. The S&P added 0.3% and the NASDAG jump 0.9% putting both indices within 1% of record highs again. You know, there really wasn't a lot going on last week outside of the big Netflix deal on Friday. But that's going to change this week because we are looking at a stacked week coming up. The big event this week obviously is the Fed meeting, which is on December 10th. Right now, the markets are pricing in a 90% chance of a rate cut at that meeting.

And the rate cut has been the big story over the last couple of weeks. You know, markets went from not expecting a rate cut in early November to now almost guaranteeing it. And it's that optimism around the rate cut that's been the main catalyst for the recent market rally, especially for rate-sensitive stocks like airlines, truckers, and small-cap stocks. And if you take a look at the Russell 2000, it's sitting at record highs right now. Now, of course, with any Fed meeting, the wild card is always Jerome Powell's press conference. You know, in the past, we've seen the markets yo-yo off of his comments. But this time, it could be different.

Because remember, Jerome Powell's term as Fed chair is set to expire in May of 2026. So his commentary might not be as influential as investors prepare for the next Fed chair to take over in a few months. So we'll see what Jerome Powell. has to say and how the markets react on Wednesday. But outside of the Fed meeting, we're also getting some surprisingly important earnings reports this week. Oracle reports earnings on Wednesday after the market closed and then Broadcom reports on Thursday. Both of these companies have been a winner of the AI boom. But remember, the AI trade has recently cooled off a bit. So investors are going to be paying close attention to what these companies have to say in their earnings. So yeah,

we're going to be paying close attention to all those earnings along with whatever else pops up this week. So make sure you guys are subscribed to the podcast and tune in every day to stay in the loop. Let's run through some headlines. And we're talking more Netflix. Netflix shocked the media and business world on Friday morning by announcing a $72 billion deal to buy Warner Brothers. And this deal is getting the attention of everyone, including the president of the United

States. President Trump said over the weekend that this deal could be a problem in that the combined companies would have a very big market share. He even went as far to say that he would. personally be involved when it comes to reviewing this deal on antitrust grounds. Now, look, everyone expected Netflix to face some regulatory resistance when it came to closing on this deal. But these comments from Trump have to make them a lot more nervous. What's funny is, according to Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandis actually met with Trump at the White

House in mid-November, and in that meeting, he argued that Netflix isn't a monopoly because Netflix doesn't have any cable or broadcast networks. I mean, Sarandis must have felt pretty good about this deal going through after that meeting with Trump, which is why Netflix probably offered a massive $5.8 billion breakup fee. I mean, just looking at the numbers, if Netflix absorbs HBO and Warner Brothers, it would control more than 30% of the US streaming market and roughly 450 million global subscribers. Now, Netflix plans to defend this deal by widening the definition of their competition. Instead of comparing themselves to just Disney Plus or Prime Video, Netflix will argue that their competition is YouTube, TikTok, Twitch, pretty much every social platform that

fighting for people's attention, meaning that their market share looks much smaller when you count all of digital entertainment. In fact, Ted Sarand has told Trump in their meeting that acquiring Warner Brothers would simply make Netflix about the size of YouTube in the U.S. market. Netflix also plans to bring up that 75% of HBO Max subscribers already subscribe to Netflix, which makes Netflix a complimentary service rather than a direct competitor. And I think those are all fair arguments by Netflix, but I think they're still going to have an uphill battle getting this approved. Either way, this is going to get really messy over the next few months. Now, if you want to learn more about this deal as an investor, I broke down the bull and bear case for Netflix buying

Warner's on this weekend's deep dive episode. It's one of our longest and best deep dives we've done, so go check that out if you want to learn more about this deal. Now, we just got some breaking news this morning that Paramount plans to one-up Netflix's deal by moving forward with a hostile bid for WBD, offering $30 per share for all of Warner Brothers Discovery. According to Paramount, This is an all-cash offer and equates to an enterprise value of $108 billion, and it gives shareholders $18 billion more in cash than the Netflix offer. Paramount plans to go directly to the shareholders with this deal. So now WBD shareholders will have to decide whether to go with the Netflix deal or the Paramount offer. So yeah, this deal just gets more and more interesting, and it is far from over.

Let's shift gears and talk about another acquisition. This one isn't as high profile, but IBM is buying the data infrastructure company. Confluent for $11 billion. IBM will pay $31 a share in an all-cash deal for the company. Now, Confluent isn't a household name, but their tech powers a huge chunk of the modern internet. The software lets companies stream and analyze data in real time, which is crucial for things like fraud detection, inventory tracking, ride hailing, and also AI agent activity.

Confluence customers include Amazon's AWS, Google Cloud, Anthropic, and the company has said that Open AI uses its products to analyze how customers are using. Chat GPT. But unfortunately for the company and its investors, the last couple of years haven't been so great. After IPOing in 2021, Confluence struggled with slowing cloud growth, stiff competition, and more conservative enterprise spending. In fact, in August, the stock lost a third of its value after reporting weaker cloud sales growth. And a few months later, the company started exploring a potential sale. So IBM is coming in and buying the company. And this deal makes sense for IBM. It's a move designed to boost their cloud software business, which reported a slowdown in growth during the most

recent quarter. IBM says this deal will strengthen their artificial intelligence offering, and it expects cloud data growth to double over the next three years. You know, these days, IBM is all about buying companies. M&A is at the center of their strategy to jumpstart growth and capture the cloud-based demand that is being generated by AI. Last year, IBM spent $6.4 billion dollars on HashiCorp, which is a platform that allows customers to create and manage data infrastructure on the cloud. And then in 2023, they spent $4 billion on a software company called app deal. The strategy for IBM seems to be working. Their stock is at all-time highs right now up more than 40% for the year. As for Confluent, their shares are up nearly 30% this morning after this deal was announced.

Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Carvana shares are rising this morning on the news that the online car retailer will join the S&P 500 on December 22nd. I got to say, this Carvana story has to be one of the biggest market comeback stories ever. Their stock was trading at record lows in 2022. Some people thought that they were headed for bankruptcy. But today, the stock has surged more than 8,000% from its 2022 lows, and it's up nearly 100% just this year. Now, once Carvana gets officially added to the S&P 500,

their stock will have to be bought by index funds that track the S&P, which is why Carvana's stock is up more than 8% this morning. Now, on the flip side, Marvell stock is sliding this morning after reports that Microsoft may shipwit's custom chip work over to Broadcom. See, Marvell currently helps Microsoft co-develop their Maya AI chips, but it looks like Microsoft might prefer to go with Broadcom instead. Broadcom also helps co-design Google's TPU chips. Now, Broadcom is reporting earnings this Thursday, so we might get more information on this

potential deal. But yeah, this is pretty unfortunate timing for Marvell. They recently announced a $3.25 billion acquisition of selling. Alessial AI to strengthen their AI chip business. But now investors are worried that losing Microsoft as a client could hurt their long-term investment. As a result, Marvell stock is down around 6% this morning on this news. Let's wrap the show with the fun fact. Americans over the age of 70 now control 31% of all the wealth in this country.

That's the highest share ever recorded. You know, it's a very interesting stat, but not that shocking if you think about it. These days, people are living longer because of modern medicine, and older Americans tend to own assets like homes and stocks, which have absolutely exploded in value over the past few years. Just looking at the data, there is a noticeable jump in wealth ownership for 70-plus-year-olds after 2020. That's because both housing prices and the stock market have gone up huge in value.

We'll put up the chart showing this stat in the video version of this episode so you can see for yourself. But basically, the line starts going vertical after the year 20. So yeah, man, the boomers, they just timed life perfectly, I guess. Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. 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. 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 again 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.

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