The Rundown - White House Launches 'Super Intelligence Force', The Stock Market Is More Divided Than It Looks

Episode Date: October 5, 2026

Market update for October 5, 2026Limited Time Promo: Sign up for a Public account, deposit $1,000 and get $100 in free stock (LINK)Follow us on Instagram (@TheRundownDaily) for bonus content and instant reactions.In today's episode, Zaid covers:Why a stock market near record highs hides a much weaker picture underneathThe White House’s new “Super Intelligence Force” and its AI safety assignmentAI executives facing questions under oath at New York City CouncilSam Altman’s reassurance to CerebrasElon Musk’s TSMC comments rattling Intel investorsTom Cruise’s Digger flop as Warner Bros. prepares for its Paramount merger

Public.com presents the rundown. Your daily market update in 10 minutes. My name is Zadadmani, and today is Monday, October 5th. In today's episode, we'll tell you why most stocks in the S&P 500 are struggling, despite the index being near record highs. We'll also tell you about the government's latest AI task force and how Sam Altman and Elon Musk are moving some chip stocks in opposite directions. Then stick around to the S&S.

of the show to find out how Tom Cruise's latest movie could end up costing Warner Brothers more than $150 million. We got a great show for you today. Let's go. Stocks are coming off a mixed week. They did get a nice boost on Friday after the week jobs report gave investors a reason to believe that the Fed might hold off on hiking rates in October. We broke down that jobs report on Friday's episode, so go check that out if you missed it.

You know, after the Fed raised interest rates in September, investors were worried that another rate hike was coming in October, but now the vibes have shifted. According to the prediction market on public, the market is pricing in an 82% chance that the Fed does not hike rates at the October meeting. Now, that meeting is happening on October 28th, so a lot can happen between now and then. Maybe the vibes shift again. But for now, the stock market is celebrating. Friday's rally pushed the NASDAQ to record highs, and the S&P 500 is within 1%

of all-time highs as well. So on the surface, everything looks great, but when you dig in under the surface, it's not so hot. There was a great breakdown from the Wall Street Journal over the weekend that showed that almost 80% of the S&P 500 stocks fell in the month of September, with the average stock dropping about 5%. In fact, only two of the 11 S&P 500 sectors finished higher in September, technology and communication services. And that second group got a big assist because it includes meta and Google. And if you look at small cap stocks, they also got hit hard with the Russell 2000 dropping 5%. So AI companies are carrying the index to record highs, but non-AI companies are having a hard time right now dealing with higher fuel costs and higher borrowing costs because of surging

treasury yields. You know, if you're an AI company, the high yields haven't impacted your investment in data centers and AI infrastructure because of how massive the opportunity is. Non-AI companies, on the other hand, don't have that same luxury. In fact, one UBS accounts, says that outside of AI investments, business investments is basically running at zero. So now the question is, will there come a point where AI companies also pull back on investments? Because remember, many of these AI companies are funding the AI boom now with debt. So when rates go up like they have, they are having to pay more in interest. Right now, the 10-year treasury yields at 5.3%.

But what happens at the 10-year jumps to 6% or even higher? Will big tech companies keep investing at the 3%? rate that they are now or will they pull back some? And what happens if they pull back? What kind of ripple effect will that have on the economy? So I think that's going to be the key question to watch moving forward. And you know, the next few weeks are going to be interesting because Q3 earnings season is about to kick off. So we'll hear from all kinds of companies on what impacts they're feeling from higher fuel and borrowing costs. This week, we are getting earnings from PepsiCo and Delta Airlines. And the next week, we're hearing from the big banks. So we'll have a lot

to talk about and breakdown over the next few weeks. Definitely get subscribe for the podcast if you haven't already and tune in every day to stay in the loop. Let's run through some headlines. And we're talking AI safety again. The White House revealed a new AI task force called the Super Intelligence Force, which honestly sounds like something from a bad Marvel movie. The task force is going to be chaired by Jay Clayton, who is the current director of National Intelligence,

and now the AI czar. The task force also includes VP J. J.D. Vance, Pete Hexeth, Scott Besson, plus outside advisors like David Sacks and Condoleezza Rice. This task force has 120 days to report on AI's risk and opportunities and figure out what the government's role should be when it comes to safety and regulation. This includes examining existing laws and possible congressional actions and how the government should respond to AI-enabled hacks and other threats. But one thing is clear, though, that this administration's priority is also keeping the U.S. ahead in the AI race, and avoiding regulations that slow down innovation. Jay Clayton told the Wall Street Journal that risk of not being first is high.

So we'll see what comes out of this task force. It's essentially a review of what the oversight should look like and not a new set of binding safety rules just yet. So I don't think this should have too much of an impact on the valuations of AI companies. Meanwhile, AI executives will be in New York City today testifying under oath at a New York City Council meeting about AI's potential dangers. Executives from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, and Meta are all expected to testify, and the people testifying will be policy and safety executives and not the CEOs. And apparently it wasn't easy to get these companies to testify, according to the council speaker, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google agreed only after being threatened with subpoenas.

Also, another speaker at this council meeting will be AI researcher, Jacob Coxson. Remember, he was the guy who quit Anthropic a few weeks ago saying that these AI companies are gambling with us. our lives. So yeah, New York City is playing a role in the AI safety debate. Now, I don't think a council is going to be the one that regulates AI, but we could get some interesting quotes from the city council meeting. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Shares of the chipmaker's Cerebris are getting a boost this morning thanks to some comments from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Now, quick refresher on Cerebris, they're a company that makes large dinner plate size AI chips designed to run AI models at high speeds, specifically for inference workloads.

Now, last week, the stock dropped 15% after reports that OpenAI was using Nvidia chips rather than Cerebrus' chips for the ultra-fast mode of their new GPD 6.1 model. And that made investors nervous because Cereberuses chips are designed for fast inference workloads and OpenAI is Cerebris' biggest customer. Cerebris and Open AI agreed to a $10 billion agreement back in January to supply OpenAI with computing power through 2028. So the reports of Nvidia chips being used for ultra-fast mode was concerning,

but Sam Altman came out on Friday and posted that Cerebrus is a close partner of the company and that the two companies are working together on pushing AI speeds further. So that's helping calm investors a bit. Cereber stock is up 5% this morning at the time of this recording. Honestly, though, when one post from your biggest customer

can swing your stock price by this much, that might be a sign that you might be too dependent on them. By the way, Cereber stock is down about 50. percent from its post-IPO highs from back in May. On the flip side, shares of Intel are down this morning because of comments from another AI CEO, Elon Musk. Over the weekend, Elon confirmed that TSM is in discussions with TeraFav, which is the massive chip-making joint venture with SpaceX and Tesla being built out in Texas. You know, Intel joined the TeraFab project back in April, and I think investors had hoped that Intel would be the only chip manufacturer on the project.

Turns out TSM might be involved as well. And honestly, this makes sense for Elon to do this because having multiple chipmakers can keep prices competitive. And nobody wants to get locked down and be dependent on just one company. So as a result, Intel stock is down about 5% this morning. But if you zoom out on Intel stock, it was up 25% over the past month. And it's up 200% since the start of the year.

Let's wrap the show with a fun fact. Tom Cruise might have just had his big, flop of his career. His new movie called Digger made just $8 million over its opening weekend. And what makes this even worse is that this movie apparently costs like $125 million to make, and another $100 million was spent on marketing. So this is going to be a financial disaster for the movie studio. You know, on paper, the movie sounded like a good idea. It's Tom Cruise playing a billionaire oil tycoon, and it was directed by the same guy who directed Birdman and The Revenant. but the audience just didn't like it.

You know, personally, I feel like Hollywood really needs to update their business model because spending $150 million on a non-superhero movie makes no sense. You know, especially nowadays when you have YouTubers making amazing movies on shoestring budgets, how was Hollywood dropping nine figures

and making bad movies? And by the way, the timing of this flop is interesting because Digger is the last movie Warner Brothers were released as a standalone movie studio because Paramount, merger we talked about a couple weeks ago is set to close tomorrow.

And apparently the two movie executives who ran Warner's film studio will not be joining the combined company. And I can't say that I'm shocked. So yeah, big picture, I think Hollywood really needs to figure out their business model. And also, Tom Cruise, maybe just stick with doing more Mission Impossible in Top Gun movies with cool stunts. Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. I hope you guys enjoyed today's episode.

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