The Rundown - Uber Partners with Lucid for Robotaxi Fleet, TSMC Delivers Record Profits

Episode Date: July 17, 2025

Stock market update for July 17, 2025. This video is for informational purposes only and reflects the views of the host and guest, not Public Holdings or its subsidiaries. Mentions of assets are not recommendations. Investing involves risk, including loss. Past performance does not guarantee future results. For full disclosures, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Public.com/disclosures⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Public.com presents the rundown. Your daily market update in under 10 minutes. My name is Zadadmani, and today is Thursday, July 17th. In today's episode, we'll tell you about President Trump's comment about Jerome Powell to send the markets on a wild ride. We'll also dive into Open the Eyes' plans to take on Amazon and Uber's plans to expand robotaxies. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out why the Japanese company that owns 711, just backed out of a deal with a Canadian company. We got a great show for you today.

Let's go. Stocks had a choppy day of trading on Wednesday after reports that President Trump was planning to fire Fed Chair Jerome Powell. The markets dropped midday following that report, but then bounced back after President Trump told reporters at the Oval Office that he was highly unlikely to fire Powell. So the stocks ended up finishing on a high note with the S&P 500 and NASDAQ. both jumping 0.3%. In fact, it was another record closed for the NASDAQ, the 9th of the year so far.

Now, going back to President Trump's beef with Jerome Powell, you know, Trump really wants Powell to cut interest rates by as much as three percentage points, which is something the Fed has never done before. Now, Jerome Powell's not cutting interest rates at all. He's waiting to see what impact Trump's tariffs will have on inflation before making any moves. Remember, the Fed has two jobs to keep employment high and to keep inflation low. And as we've seen from the data, the labor market continues to be pretty strong. But there's some inflation data showing that inflation might be starting to take back up because of tariffs.

And because of that, the Fed is taking a wait-and-see approach before cutting interest rates. Wall Street doesn't think the Fed will cut rates anytime soon. There's nearly a 0% chance of a rate cut in July and only a 50% chance of a rate cut at the September Fed meeting. So Trump is doing what he does best. He's turning up the pressure. He's calling out Jerome Powell on true social posts with nicknames and publicly pushing pushing Powell to resign. And also, Trump might not have the legal authority to fire Jerome Powell

in the first place. So all of this is getting pretty messy. Jerome Powell, for his part, has said multiple times that he has no plans of resigning before his term ends in May of 2026. What makes this whole thing ridiculous is that President Trump was the one who first appointed Jerome Powell during his first term back in 2018. And overall, I think that Jerome Powell was done a pretty good job as Fed Chair over the last seven years. And the markets feel that way too, because anytime Trump hints at firing Jerome Powell, the markets take a dip. Investors don't like the uncertainty and the president threatening the Fed's independence. Now, the next Fed meeting is on July 30th, and while the Fed isn't likely to cut rates,

that press conference from Jerome Powell could be pretty interesting. He probably won't talk about the Trump drama because he usually tries to avoid talking about it. But I'm definitely going to be watching because whether you love him or hate him, when Jerome Powell talks, the markets listen. Let's run through some headlines. Starting with ChatGPT. OpenAI is testing a new feature that'll let you buy products directly through ChatGPT, and OpenAI is going to take a cut from those sales.

See, right now, ChatGPT just links you out to places like Amazon and Home Depot, but the plan is to bring the checkout experience inside the app. OpenAI is basically turning ChatGPT into your AI-powered shopping assistant. And honestly, this will be a lot. makes a ton of sense. Because I bet millions of people are already using chat GPT to research what to buy. I mean, I literally used chat GPT last week to find a microwave. So if I could go from prompting chat GPT the best microwaves to buy under $300 to tapping buy now within the app, I mean, that would be pretty powerful. Open AI has already teamed up with Shopify to power the checkout tech,

and this move could unlock revenues from users of the free version of chat cheap. See, right now, OpenAI makes most of their money through subscriptions, but this opens the door for affiliate fees, and I hate to say it, but probably ads as well. Because I bet brands would pay a lot of money for their products to be recommended by ChatchipT. Now OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has says he's not a fan of ads, but Open AI is trying to grow the revenue to justify their $300 billion valuation. And that's why I think we're inevitably going to see ads on the platform. And we saw this happen with Google 20 years ago. So don't be surprised if chat GPT is just littered with ads in a few years. Enjoy the ad-free experience while we still got it.

Now, speaking of Google, OpenAI actually just signed a deal to use Google Cloud to help power chat GPT. OpenAI had exclusively been using Microsoft Azure because of Microsoft's early investment in OpenAI, but they're now expanding their cloud partners to bring on Google, Oracle, and CoreWeave. And this whole thing is pretty interesting because OpenAI is now using Google servers to power a tool that is actively killing Google's search business model. Interesting times right now in the AI wars. Let's shift gears and talk about Uber, because they just made a big move to expand their robotaxy fleet.

Uber just signed a six-year deal with Lucid Motors and the self-driving tech company, Nuro, to deploy 20,000 autonomous vehicles across their network. Now, as part of this agreement, Uber will invest $300 million into Lucid. And Lucid will provide Uber with their gravity SUV that will be outfitted with, with Neuro's autonomous driving tech. And the goal here is to roll out the first car by 2026.

Now, Uber's been locking in partnership with autonomous vehicle companies across the world. They have more than a dozen partnerships, including Waymo here in the U.S. and then just yesterday, Uber announced a deal with the Chinese AV maker Baidu to launch self-driving taxis across non-U.S. markets. This is a win for Nuro as well, which is a company backed by Google and the SoftBank Vision Fund. Uber and Nero actually first partnered back in 2022 on food delivery robots, but then neuro pivoted to focus on autonomous software. And the biggest winner out of this deal might be Lucid. Lucid stock, which trades under ticker symbol LCID, jumped as much as 62% at one point

once this partnership was announced. The stock has given back some of those gains that's now up more than 20% at the time of this recording. Now, Lucid is a pure play EV company that was once hyped as a challenger to Tesla when they went public back in 2021 as a SPAC. The stock quickly climbed to as high as $30 a share. but it currently trades under $5 a share. But now with this deal with Uber, the company is getting a lifeline,

and investors are hoping that this deal will help reverse the company's fortunes. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Shares of TSMC, the largest chipmaker in the world, are rising after the company raised its 2025 revenue outlook. TSM now expects growth of 30%, which is above the mid-20% target it had previously provided, and their profits for the quarter came in at 61%, a record high that also beat estimates. TSM makes chips for big names like Nvidia and Apple, and they've been a big beneficiary of this AI boom

and big tech companies spending billions of dollars to build out AI infrastructure. TSM's high-performance computing division, which includes AI and 5G applications, accounted for 60% of their total sales in the quarter. So based on TSM's earnings, there seems to be no slowdown when it comes to the demand for AI chips. TSM stock is up more than 3% today at the time of this recording. Now, on the flip side, shares of the high fructose corn syrup maker ADM is down this morning after President Trump posted on True Social yesterday that he convinced Coca-Cola to use real sugarcains in their drinks instead of high fructose corn syrup. Now, Coke hasn't actually confirmed.

They're going to be making the switch from high fructose corn syrup to real sugar canes in the U.S. But that didn't stop the investors from panicking a bit. ADM stock was down 6% yesterday after Trump posted his second. tweet and it's down another 2% this morning at the time of this recording. Now, I do want to point out that Coke does use real sugarcains in most international markets. And personally, I think it tastes better. Every time I've been to Mexico or Europe or the Middle East, I just feel like their soda tastes better. But let me know in the comments on what you guys think. I might have to do a blind taste test to confirm this. Let's wrap the show with a fun fact. There are more than twice as many

7-11 stores in Japan than there are in the United States. Now 7-7-Eleven is actually owned by a Japanese company called Seven and I Holdings, and this company was about to be acquired by a Canadian company for $46 billion until the deal fell apart yesterday. The Canadian company Kuch Tard, yes, that is their actual name, they operate Circle K convenience stores. They are backing out of their takeover of the Japanese company because they say that Seven and I had a persistent lack of good faith engagement. It turns out that there was resistance in Japan of a North American company, taking

over an iconic Japanese company. Seven and I's stock is down more than 5% after these reports. Many people might not consider 7-Eleven to be an iconic Japanese company, but at this point, there are over 21,000 7-Elevens in Japan and only 9,000 in the U.S. It's actually a pretty interesting story of how 7-Eleven came to dominate in Japan. I was reading more about this yesterday. We might have to do a deep dive about this. We might have to make a trip out to Japan just to film on location. Guys, tell Mike in the comments to make it happen.

Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. Hope you guys enjoyed today's episode. If you did and you have like eight extra seconds, consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcast. And if you do listen 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. Shout out to Mike and Connor for all the help behind the scenes. and we'll see you guys back here tomorrow.