Nvidia's $5B Intel Bet + Lyft & Waymo Launch Robotaxis | The Rundown September 18, 2025

Public.com presents The Rundown, your daily market update in under 10 minutes. My name is Zaid Admani, and today is Thursday, September 18th. In today's episode, we'll recap the Fed meeting and tell you why the market is expecting two more rate cuts this year. We'll also tell you about the partnership announced between NVIDIA and Intel and why I think it's a win-win for all sides. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out why Jeff Bezos would probably still be a hundred millionaire if he never started Amazon. We got a great show for you today. Let's go. The stock market was in the red on Wednesday with the S&P 500 closing down 0.1% and the NASDAQ dropped 0.3%. This is despite the Fed finally cutting interest rates for the first time this year. The Fed yesterday gave the markets what they wanted to see, a 25 basis point cut, which puts the Fed's fund rate at four and four and a quarter percent. But since this cut was expected for weeks now, the markets didn't really know how to react. If you pull up the chart of the S&P 500 from yesterday, you'll see that stocks actually took a dive after the rate cut decision was announced, but then recovered as Jerome Powell was talking in his press conference. Now, I watched the whole press conference from Jerome Powell, and my biggest takeaway was that the Fed is shifting its focus from the inflation to jobs. The labor market has been showing signs of weakness, with revisions showing nearly a million less jobs were added to the economy over the past year. Jerome Powell called this rate cut a risk management move. Basically, they're trying to prevent further cracks happening in the labor market. He also talked about how the Fed is in a tough spot right now because inflation is still above their 2% target. In fact, the Fed doesn't expect inflation to get below 2% until 2028. On top of that, inflation could also tick higher in the short term because of tariffs. But despite the concerns about inflation, the Fed is signaling two more rate cuts this year. At this meeting, the Fed released their famous dot plot. And according to the dot plot, a majority of Fed members expect interest rates to be between 3.5% and 3.75% by the end of this year. So that would imply two more rate cuts coming up. I actually posted a full rant about the Fed dot plot over on Instagram. So if you want to learn more about that, go follow us on Instagram. Zooming out a bit, what this rate cut means for most people is that borrowing money will become cheaper. Mortgage rates, car loans, credit card rates, they should all start going down. And this should help stimulate the economy as well. Businesses should start borrowing money to invest more and hire more people, which should help the labor market. And all of that should serve as more fuel to the stock market rally. So if you haven't taken a peek at your portfolio, your retirement account, your 401k, your Roth IRAs, right now is a great time to do so. Let's run through some headlines. NVIDIA has become the latest company to throw Intel a lifeline. NVIDIA has agreed to invest $5 billion into Intel, taking a 5% stake in the company. As part of this investment, the two companies will co-develop chips for PCs and data centers. Intel's future PCs will use NVIDIA's graphics technology, while NVIDIA will lean on Intel CPU chips in some of its data center products. Basically, they're combining NVIDIA's dominance in AI and graphics with Intel's x86 ecosystem, and that could finally make Intel competitive again against AMD in the PC market. The bigger picture here is that NVIDIA joined SoftBank and the U.S. government as major investors in Intel. SoftBank invested $2 billion, and the U.S. government invested nearly $9 billion to take a 10% stake in the company. And I think this is a very smart and strategic investment by NVIDIA. See, right now, NVIDIA is fully reliant on TSMC to manufacture their AI chips. Remember, NVIDIA doesn't actually physically make their chips. They just design them, and then they send it to TSMC, which is based in Taiwan, to actually manufacture them. And while this investment from NVIDIA into Intel isn't specifically about Intel's foundry manufacturing NVIDIA's chips, it might eventually lead to that because NVIDIA is now invested in Intel's future. They're incentivized to see Intel thrive. So Intel's foundries could eventually start manufacturing NVIDIA's chips, which would be great for Intel, but also great for NVIDIA because it would give them an option outside of TSMC. And this would also be great for U.S. national security. So I think this is a win-win for all sides. And investors also see it this way. Intel's stock jumped nearly 30% this morning after this announcement. Let's shift gears and talk about Waymo because they are teaming up with Lyft to launch robo taxis in Nashville next year. This is Waymo's first big commercial deal with Lyft. Riders in Nashville will be able to hail a Waymo car through both the Waymo app and the Lyft app. And Lyft will handle all the fleet management, everything from car maintenance to depots. Now, I thought this was a very interesting deal, and it shows you what Waymo's strategy is when it comes to expansion. When Waymo first launched in markets like Phoenix, San Francisco, and LA, it was all through their own ride hailing app. They were also handling the maintenance and fleet management. But as they started expanding to cities like Atlanta and Austin, they partnered with Uber, meaning you could call a Waymo on the Uber app. So this new deal with Lyft for Nashville means that Waymo is spreading their bets to other ride hailing companies to not just be reliant on Uber. Now, I think this is a smart move because it gives Waymo leverage when it comes to negotiating future expansion with either Lyft or Uber. And speaking of expansion, I mean, Waymo, it continues to grow at a hockey stick pace. They crossed 10 million paid rides back in May, doubling the ride count in just five months. And the company is planning to expand to Miami, Washington, D.C., Dallas, and Denver next year. And as for Lyft, this deal couldn't come at a better time. Their shares popped more than 10% on this news yesterday, while Uber stock was down about 5%. You know, Lyft has been playing catch up to Uber pretty much forever. So getting the exclusive rides to Waymo in Nashville is a rare win. And I bet you they're gonna make a huge play to get rides to future expansions as well. It'll be interesting to see how Uber ends up responding. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Novo Nordisk stock is cooking this morning. Shares are up more than 7% after new trial data showed that its Wegovy weight loss pill helped patients lose 16.6% of their body weight over 64 weeks. Novo Nordisk says they have already submitted this pill to the FDA for approval and expecting an answer by Q4 of this year so this pill could be hitting the markets early next year by the way Novo Nordisk's main rival Eli Lilly is also planning to launch a weight loss pill next year Eli's pill is called or Orforglipron I'm probably butchering that name recently they released data on its performance showing a 12.4% weight loss in 72 weeks so as of right now Novo's pill seems to work better in a shorter amount of time which has Novo Nordisk investors hyped right now. Now, on the flip side, Cracker Barrel seems to be cracking. The stock is sinking today after the company served up weaker than expected earnings and a gloomy sales outlook. The company is expecting revenues for fiscal 2026 to come in at three point four billion dollars, which is below estimates. And the restaurant is seeing a drop in foot traffic. The company says that visits are down eight percent since they rolled out a new logo back in early August, which got a lot of backlash online, including from President Trump. People thought the new logo and the restaurant redesign was killing off the restaurant's country charm. Cracker Barrel now expects same-store traffic to drop between 4% to 7% next year. And while the restaurant's revenue technically beat estimates, that was mostly because they hiked menu prices by 5%. Now, management says they've halted store remodels and they're redirecting their focus to improvements in the kitchen rather than brand identity. But unfortunately, the damage might already be done. Cracker Barrel stock is down more than 5% this morning. Let's wrap the show with a fun fact. Before Jeff Bezos started Amazon, he was actually a hedge fund guy. Jeff Bezos joined D.E. Shaw at 26 years old, back when the fund was still relatively new itself, and his job was to research internet companies for investment opportunities. Now, this was back in the early 90s the internet was relatively new and after doing his research Jeff Bezos realized that the opportunity unlocked by the internet was going to be so massive that he quit his hedge fund job and started his own internet company and obviously that decision worked out for him Amazon is now one of the largest tech companies in the world but here's the thing even if Amazon ended up flopping for some reason Jeff Bezos still would have been rich because he invested 250,000 into Google when they were founded in 1998 and that investment went on to be worth over 280 million dollars when Google IPO'd in 2004. so it's safe to say that his instincts about the internet paid off now according to multiple reports Jeff Bezos sold all of his Google stock shortly after Google's IPO so maybe he's not that good of an investor after all because Google stock has nearly a hundred x since they went public well all right guys that's the rundown for today hope you guys enjoyed today's episode if you did and you have like seven extra seconds consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple Spotify 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 tell us what you think about this Nvidia Intel investment all that engagement really does help us out and it helps other people find the show thank you guys so much for listening watching and commenting shout out to Mike and Connor for all the work behind the scenes I will see you guys back here tomorrow