The Rundown - Uber Invests $1.25B in Rivian, Micron Delivers Blowout Earnings

Episode Date: March 19, 2026

Market update for Thursday March 19, 2026Check out the Public app for incredible investing tools and to support the show (LINK)Follow us on Instagram (@TheRundownDaily) for bonus content and instant reactions.In today’s episode:Fed Meeting recap: rate cut hopes fadeUber invests $1.25B* in Rivian to launch robotaxisMicron crushes earnings but stock still fallsFive Below jumps, Red Cat drops on earningsMeta shuts down the metaverse (yes, really)

Public.com presents the rundown. Your daily market update in under 10 minutes. My name is Zadadmani, and today is Thursday, March 19. In today's episode, we'll recap yesterday's Fed meeting and what Jerome Powell said about oil prices. We'll also break down Micron's insane earnings report in why Uber is investing over a billion dollars into Rivian. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out why Meta might have to change the company's name again. We got a great show for you today. Let's go. Stocks got absolutely cooked on Wednesday.

The Dow, S&P, NASDAQ, were all down about one and a half percent, sending the markets to its lowest levels of the year. I mean, every single sector was in the red yesterday. There was nowhere to hide. Investors were processing a lot of news yesterday. Most of it negative. For one, we got the PPI. inflation report yesterday, which measures wholesale inflation, and it came in hot, up 0.7% in February

month over month. That is more than double what was forecasted. And what makes this even more concerning is that that data is before the war with Iran even started, so it doesn't capture any of the energy price spikes that we've seen lately. So that means that inflation could get worse from here. That brings us to the Fed meeting yesterday. Now, the Fed did what everybody expected. They held rates steady. But it's what Jerome Powell was said in the press conference. that had investors concerned. Jerome Powell basically said that they're not seeing much progress in inflation right now, and now with energy prices rising because of the war, that's putting the Fed in a tough spot.

He literally said that they're in a difficult situation right now. The labor market is starting to soften, but the Fed can't cut interest rates because inflation is starting to surge back up. Now, according to the Fed dot plot, the Fed is projecting one rate cut sometime this year, but the market is a bit more skeptical. They're pricing in a 50% chance that we don't get a rate cut at all. What's crazy is that before the war, started like three weeks ago, there was only a 4% chance of no rate cut this year. So that is a

massive shift in expectations in a short amount of time. That brings us to oil prices. Oil prices shot up again yesterday after further escalation in the war. Israel struck a natural gas field in Iran. Then Iran retaliated by striking an LNG facility in Qatar. Saudi Arabia also said an Iranian drone struck one of its refineries. So we are seeing energy infrastructure get hit across the entire Gulf region. Not to mention the Strait of Hormuz is still closed. All of this is leading to major supply disruption, and even if the war was to end tomorrow, things would not go back to normal overnight. So all of this is causing the price of natural gas and crude oil to spike right now.

Brent crude hit $19 a barrel yesterday, the highest of the year. Now, prices have pulled back a bit this morning, but if things continue to escalate, I don't think we're going to see a major relief in oil prices anytime soon. So yeah, you can see why investors are a bit on edge right now. Inflation is starting to run hot again. It could get worse because of rising oil prices, and the Fed's hands are tied, so any hope of a rate cut is starting to evaporate. It could be a pretty bumpy stretch for the markets in the near future. We're staying on top of everything that's happening, so make sure you guys are subscribe to the podcast and tuning in every day to stay in the loop.

Let's run through some headlines, starting with Micron. The memory maker Micron reported earnings last night, and I got to say these numbers are absolutely. The company's revenue nearly tripled year over year to about $24 billion, completely blowing past expectations, and their gross margins doubled as well to 75%. That is very unusual for a memory chipmaker. I mean, they're putting up Nvidia level margins right now. And the company is seeing no signs of a slowdown. The guidance for next quarter is even crazier. They're projecting $33.5 billion in revenue, while analysts were expecting $24 billion. This is just a perfect example of how insane the demand for memory has become as a result of the AI boom. Every data center that's being built right now to train and run AI models needs massive amounts of memory.

And, you know, there's just not enough supply right now to go around. Micron CEO actually said they can only meet about 50 to two thirds of customer demand right now. But despite the blowout earnings, the stock is down 5% following the report. I guess to be fair, micron stock had already quadrupled over the past year and was up 62% just in 2026 heading into the report yesterday. So investors might just be taking some profit here. There's also concerns around spending. Micron said their capital expenditure will top $25 billion this year,

and it'll jump another $10 plus billion in 2027. You know, the company is ramping up capacity to meet demand, but that kind of rapid expansion is making investors a bit nervous. Zooming out, though, I gotta say, Micron has clearly become a major player in the AI boom. Their name is not as flashy as Nvidia, but the stock is outperformed in the last. last 12 months. This also probably means that RAM prices probably aren't coming down anytime soon,

which is kind of a bummer. Let's shift gears and talk about Uber and an update on the Robotaxie Race. Uber announced today they're investing up to $1.25 billion in Rivian to build out a fleet of up to 50,000 fully autonomous robo taxis over the next five years. Now here's how the deal is supposed to work. In the first phase, Uber will purchase 10,000 of Rivian's upcoming R2EV, equipped with self-driving technology. For the next phase, Uber has the option to buy 40,000 more of the R2s starting in 2030. As for the timeline, the first robotaxes are expected to hit the road in San Francisco in Miami in 2008, eventually expanding to 25 cities across the U.S., Canada, and Europe by 2031.

And these self-driving rivians will be exclusive to Uber's platform. Now, I feel like there should be an asteris on the headline here because when you dig into the details, Uber has only committed like $300 million as the initial investment, and the rest of the billion dollars will come if certain autonomous milestones are met by specific dates. So the $1.25 billion headline number is great, but it's mostly PR to try to boost the stock. A lot needs to happen for Rivian to get the full investment from Uber. I think the market kind of sniffed that out because Rivian stock initially popped like 10% when this headline hit the timeline, but now the stock is up around 3%.

That being said, this move is pretty notable. No, it's another sign that Uber is clearly going all in on the partner approach when it comes to Robotaxies. Earlier in the week, Uber announced a deal with Nvidia, where Nvidia's autonomous driving software will power a separate fleet of self-driving cars on Uber's network. And that's supposed to happen sooner with cars hitting the streets of San Francisco in L.A. in 27 and expanding to 28 cities by 2028. Uber stock is down around 1% this morning at the time of this recording. The stock has lost about 8% since the start of the year. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Shares of five below are popping after the discount retailer delivered its best holiday quarter in the company's history.

They beat on earnings, they beat on revenue, and same store sales surged 15% in the quarter. The company says that demand was strong across all income levels and not just low income shoppers. I think more importantly, though, the company gave a strong full-year outlook for 2026. Shares of the company are up 7% this morning at the time of this recording. And when you zoom out, the stock is more than tripled over the past 12 months. I doubt many people knew that. Now, on the flip side, let's talk about Red Cat. Shares of this military drone maker are down this morning after the company reported mixed earnings.

Now, Q4 revenues were up 2,000% from a year ago. I had to double check that number. And yes, that is correct. The company saw explosive growth when it comes to revenue. But the stock still sold off because Q4% of the year. for losses were wider than expected. I think more importantly, though, the company did not give any formal revenue guidance

for 2026 on the earnings call, which is kind of a red flag. New investors don't like it when companies don't provide a forecast. And as a result, shares of red cat are down around 15% this morning at the time of this recording. Let's wrap the show with the fun fact.

Meta is officially pulling the plug on the metaverse. The company announced that Horizon Worlds will be going dark on June 15th on the Quest VR headsets. CEO Mark Zuckerberg is finally admitting defeat. I mean, they went all in. They literally changes the name of the company from Facebook to Meta five years ago. You know, at the time, Zuck was calling the Metaverse the Next Frontier. He said that it would reach a billion people.

And he then proceeded to spend an absurd amount of money trying to build it. Meta's Reality Labs division has lost over $80 billion since 2020. Well, the reality is, no pun intended, Nobody cared about the Metaverse. Horizon Worlds never really caught on. The platform never had more than a couple hundred thousand monthly users. So now the company is pivoting completely. They've cut over a thousand jobs from the Reality Labs Division.

They're shutting down VR gaming studios and pivoting everything to AI and their smart glasses, which admittedly are pretty great. You know, my takeaway from all of this is that it just shows you how dominant meta's underlying social media ads businesses. Meta stock has nearly doubled since their name change in 2021. So I guess the takeaway is that you can light $80 billion on fire and still be fine as long as as 3 billion people are scrolling your apps every single day. Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today.

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