The Rundown - Walmart & Amazon Explore Launching Stablecoins, Gucci's Parent Company Hires New CEO

Episode Date: June 16, 2025

Stock market update for June 16, 2025. Follow ⁠⁠⁠⁠@TheRundownDaily⁠⁠⁠⁠ on Instagram.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 Monday, June 16th. In today's episode, we'll preview this upcoming week, including what to expect at the Fed meeting. We'll also tell you about Walmart and Amazon's plans for stable coins. Then stick around to the end of the show to learn more about the world's largest meat company. They just started trading on the New York Stock Exchange. We get a great show for you today. Let's go.

Stocks are coming off a down week because of geopolitical conflicts that popped up on Friday that tanked the markets. Israel's airstrikes on Iran and retaliatory attacks by Iran sent the S&P and NASDAQ down more than 1% on Friday, pulling both indices in the red for the week. Overall, the S&P lost 0.4% last week and the NASDAQ was down 0.6%. Oil seems to have been the biggest impacted so far. Oil prices jumped 7% on Friday for the largest one-day percentage gain since March of 2022. Prices hit as high as $73 a barrel on Friday. The good news is, though, things look to be stabilizing a bit.

There seems to be optimism the conflict won't spill over into something bigger. Right now, oil is off from its Friday highs trading around $70 a barrel, but prices are still up over 20% since the start of May. Right in time for $7. summer road trip season. Now, shifting gears from geopolitics to monetary policy, all eyes are going to be on the Federal Reserve this week. The two-day FOMC meeting kicks off on Tuesday and wraps up on Wednesday. We're going to get a decision on interest rates and a Jerome Powell press conference. Now, Wall Street isn't expecting a rate cut this week. In fact, there's only a 0.2% chance of that

happening. But, you know, with inflation trending down for months now, investors are itching for any signal from Jerome Powell that a rate cut is coming soon. So we'll see what Jerome Powell says in the press conference. You know, he's been getting a lot of heat from President Trump to cut rates. I'm sure Trump is already cooking up a new nickname for him when he decides not to cut rates this month. So we'll recap that for you later this week. Also, just a heads up, it is a short week for the stock market. Markets will be closed this Thursday, June 19th, in observation of June 10th. So no show for us as well, but we will be back on Friday to recap the week. Let's run through some headlines. Walmart and Amazon are looking at breaking into crypto. According to the Wall Street Journal,

both retail giants are exploring, issuing their own stable coins. That's right, a Walmart coin and an Amazon coin might actually become a thing one day. Now, the main reason they're looking into this is to save money. See, every time you use a credit card to buy something at Walmart or Amazon, they have to pay a fee to banks and credit card companies like Visa and MasterCard. And with the amount of If customers and volume these companies do, we're talking billions of dollars in fees every year. But with stable coins, that would allow them to cut out Visa and MasterCard and keep more money in-house. And it's not just about fees. Stablecoins could also speed up settlement times and make cross-border transactions way smoother.

And when this report dropped on Friday, investors definitely notice shares of Visa and MasterCard both dropped about 5% on Friday, which is a sign that Wall Street sees Stablecoins as a real threat. the traditional payment rails. Now, yes, talks are still early and these retail giants are also reportedly considering tapping into an existing stablecoin network, like Circles' USDC, for example. But all this excitement over stablecoin has kept Circle stock hot. The Circle issues the second largest stable coin in the world, USDC, and its stock is up more than 360% since they IPOed less than two weeks ago. It closed up 25% on Friday, and it's up another 10% this morning. Now, If you want to learn more about stable coins and the company's circle, we dropped a deep dive episode about this topic over the weekend.

So go check that out if you want to understand what stable coins are and why investors are so hyped about this space. I mean, it might be one of the best deep dives we've ever done. So go check that out if you haven't seen it. It's on Spotify, YouTube, wherever you listen to your podcast. And with the way things are going into stable coin space, we might have to do a part two pretty soon. Now, sticking with Amazon, they just announced a partnership with Roku this morning. To serve more ads. See, Amazon has an ad service called DSP

that allows companies to advertise on streaming channels. Well, they just added Roku to the list of streaming channels that will be served these ads. This deal would create the largest connected TV network in the U.S. on Amazon's DSP platform, giving advertisers access to 80% of U.S. connected TV households with inventory across Prime Video, the Roku channel, and other top streaming apps.

Basically, if you're watching TV on a Roku or a fire stick, chances are you're now part of Amazon's ad machine. You know, Amazon's ad business doesn't get a lot of hype, but it's growing like crazy, pulling in more than $14 billion last quarter alone, which is up 19% year over year. And Amazon seems to be pushing even more ads these days. You know, Prime Video started rolling out ads in early 2024, and according to Ad Week, they've now doubled the ad time to four to six minutes per hour. So if it feels like your favorite show on Prime Video was interrupted more often with ads, well, it probably is.

But this push by Amazon has made them the third largest digital ads network in the world behind only Google and meta. And this partnership is also a big win for Roku as well, as it likely means more revenue for them as these Amazon DSP ads start playing on their platform. Investors seem to be pretty excited about this. Roku stock is up more than 7% this morning in reaction to this news. I feel like streaming at this point has even more ads than old-school. traditional TV. I guess the only good part is that we can pay extra to turn off the ads if we want to.

Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Shares of Caring are up this morning as the French luxury giant behind Gucci and Saint Laurent made a move to turn the company around. Caring is reportedly bringing on Luca de Mayo, the current CEO of European carmaker Renault, to lead the company out of a downward spiral that has dragged the stock down by 70% over the past three years. He will have his work cut out for him, though. Gucci, which generates two-thirds of carrying's profits and half of its revenue, has been suffering from double-digit sales decline for over a year. But investors seem to like this new CEO higher, and the stock is up 10% in response to this news.

Now, on the flip side, the biotech stock Surrepta Therapeutics is getting crushed this morning after tragic news from its clinical trials that a patient died from liver failure while taking the company's gene therapy. Shrepta's gene therapy was for treating Dushan muscular dystrophy or DMD. It's a rare but fatal genetic disease that mostly affects young children. And this is the second patient to die from liver failure while on this gene therapy. As a result, the company is pausing clinical trials and treatments for patients that can't walk, and shares are down more than 37% in response to this news.

Let's wrap the show with the fun fact. The biggest meat company in the world just hit the New York Stock Exchange, and chances are you've never heard of it. The company is called JBS. They're based in Brazil, and the company brought in $78 billion in revenue last year. That's more than Nestle, PepsiCo, and their top competitor, Tyson Foods. Now, JBS has traded on the Sao Paulo Stock Exchange for two decades, but they're hoping that by switching to the U.S., it'll raise their profile and open up access to more investor

capital. Despite the company's roots in Brazil, JBS is the biggest U.S. processor of beef, the second largest pork supplier, and the owner of Pilgrim's Pride, the second largest American chicken company. The stock started trading last Friday under ticker symbol JBS. Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. Hope you guys enjoyed today's episode. If you did, and you have like 12 extra seconds, consider giving us that you. five-star rating on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcast. If you are listening on Spotify, don't forget the 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.