White House Eyes Defense Stakes + Eli Lilly's Weight-Loss Pill Win | The Rundown August 26, 2025

Public.com presents The Rundown, your daily market update in under 10 minutes. My name is Zaid Admani, and today is Tuesday, August 26th. In today's episode, we'll tell you about all the drama coming from the White House that's impacting the markets. Trump is threatening tariffs and firing a Fed official. We'll break it all down. We'll also tell you about Eli Lilly's big announcement regarding their weight loss pills. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out why the hype around Burning Man is starting to fade. We've got a great show for you today. Let's go. The market stumbled out of the gate this week with the S&P 500 dropping 0.4% on Monday and the Nasdaq lost 0.2%. I guess the enthusiasm from Friday didn't carry through the weekend. More than 400 stocks in the S&P were down to start the week. And we are getting news today that's likely to shake up the markets even more. President Trump just threatened China with tariffs again because of China's export controls on rare earth magnets. He told reporters that if they don't give us magnets, then we might have to charge them 200 percent tariffs or something. That is a direct quote. Now, the reason this matters is because China controls 90% of the global supply of rare earth magnets, which are critical for building everything from cars to phones. So we'll see if China ends up relaxing export controls on those magnets. Now, to add to the tariff drama, Trump is also going after countries with digital service taxes, which are aimed at big U.S. tech companies like Meta, Google, and Amazon. Many countries in Europe have digital service taxes with more likely to come. Trump said that unless those tariffs come off, he'll slap substantial new tariffs on those countries and even restrict US chip sales. So we'll have to see if Trump is serious with those threats or if it's just a bluff. Now, Trump is serious about remaking the Federal Reserve. Last night, President Trump said that he is firing Federal Reserve Board Governor Lisa Cook from her position. Citing allegations that she had made false statements on applications for home mortgages. Now, just to be clear here, Lisa Cook has not been charged with any crime. Lisa Cook pushed back saying that she won't resign. And she argued that Trump doesn't even have the legal authority to fire her. So this is likely going to get messy. It's probably going to be challenged in court. But the bigger picture here is that President Trump continues to attack the independence of the Federal Reserve over the refusal to cut interest rates. You know, the Fed being an independent entity. It's a crucial element of the economic system. So we'll see how the markets end up reacting to all of this. We're going to be standing on top of all the drama. So make sure you guys are subscribed to the podcast to stay in the loop. Definitely not a slow start to the week, I got to say. Let's run through some headlines. President Trump's plan to turn the U.S. government into an investor might just be getting started. Just a few days after the U.S. government took a 10% stake in Intel for $9 billion, the president said Monday he wants many more deals like this. And this morning, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick just told CNBC the Pentagon is thinking about taking equity stakes in defense contractors like Lockheed Martin. Lutnick called Lockheed Martin basically an arm of the U.S. government. Which, okay, I understand his point since more than 70% of Lockheed's revenue does come from U.S. federal contracts. But, I mean, actually owning a piece of the company, that would be a whole new level. Now, to be clear, the U.S. government has taken stakes in private companies before, but it's always in a time of crisis. It happened back in 2008 with all the failing banks. It also happened in 2009 with GM and Chrysler. But right now, there's no crisis. Defense contractors are doing just fine. So this feels more like President Trump pushing the U.S. towards a kind of state-sponsored capitalism. Critics say this is risky for companies like Intel or Lockheed to have the U.S. government be a shareholder because they might start making business decisions based on political pressure instead of market realities. But then supporters of this move argue that taxpayers should be getting something back. The U.S. government is handing out billions of dollars in subsidies anyways. Either way, it completely rewrites the rules of capitalism in America. And it'll be interesting to see how the markets react to it. If you're an investor, do you want to own a company that has the U.S. government as a major shareholder? We're going to find out. On a side note, I'm not sure what brokerage app Secretary Howard Letnick is using to make these investments. But you should consider checking out public.com. They got the best looking app in the industry. with a ton of features. So Secretary Ludnick, I'm sure you're listening to this. Check out public.com. Let's shift gears and talk about Eli Lilly, because the pharma giant is now one step closer to getting their weight loss pill to market. The company announced that their daily weight loss pill called Orvorgliprin crushed its latest clinical trials. Helping patients drop an average of 23 pounds over 72 weeks. On a side note, I think they got to come up with a better name here because that's pretty hard to say. You know, these weight loss pills could be a game changer because right now the GLP-1 market is dominated by weekly injections like Ozempic and Manjaro. These pills would be a lot easier to take for patients and more importantly, a lot easier to manufacture. So they should be cheaper than the weekly injections. And that could open up a wide market of people that are willing to take these pills. Eli Lilly says they have enough data to file for approval and they expect a global launch around this time next year. So summer of 2026 could end up being a big one. This is great timing for Eli Lilly because their rival, Nova Nordisk, recently received approval for their weight loss pill, and Eli seems to be on the verge of getting approval too. By the way, other pharma giants like Pfizer and Viking Therapeutics have been trying to get their own weight loss pill to market, but they've struggled in their clinical trials. So that could leave Eli and Nova Nordisk to continue to dominate the weight loss space. Moving forward. So I'm definitely keeping an eye on these two companies and their stock as these pills come to market over the next few months. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Good day. Echo Star shares are going parabolic this morning after AT&T said that it's buying Spectrum licenses from the company for $23 billion. And to put that into perspective, Echo Star's entire market cap before this news was only around $8 billion. So this is a big deal for Echo Star, and it's a good deal for AT&T as well, because these Spectrum licenses give AT&T access to the invisible highway that carries wireless data. And AT&T desperately needs them to. To boost their network speeds, according to AT&T, the Spectrum deal will cover virtually every market across the U.S. You know, I hear a lot of complaints from AT&T users, so I'm sure they're happy to hear about this deal. And Echo Star investors are really happy about this deal because their shares are up more than 70 percent this morning on this news. Now, on the flip side, shares of MicroStrategy, I mean, Strategy. Stock is down this morning after Michael Saylor went shopping for more Bitcoin again. The company announced that it bought more than 3,000 Bitcoin for about $360 million, bringing their total stash to 632,000 Bitcoin worth almost $71 billion. But investors are surprisingly not happy with this move because Bitcoin's price has slid 2% in the last five days, and it's down 6% in the past month. falling from its summer high of $124,000 to about $109,000 today. As a result, shares of strategy fell by more than 4% yesterday after the announcement, and it's down another 1% this morning in pre-market trading. Let's wrap the show with a fun fact. The Burning Man Festival kicked off on Sunday in the Nevada desert, and it got hit with a giant sandstorm with winds hitting 50 miles an hour and visibility dropping to near zero. I feel like the Burning Man Festival has been an absolute mess these past couple of years. Last year, there was also a windstorm, then in 2023, there was the flooding. I personally just don't understand the hype for it. I know the festival was popular in the tech community. A lot of tech CEOs like Elon, Zuck, and Sergey Brin used to go pretty frequently, but I just don't understand the allure of being stuck in traffic for six hours in the middle of the desert. That doesn't sound like a lot of fun to me. Plus, like the outfits, you know, I don't know. They're just not my thing. I do think that the popularity is starting to wane a bit because tickets haven't sold out for the second year in a row. And the nonprofit company that runs the whole thing operated at a loss last year. I did look into it, though, and apparently the tickets go for like a thousand dollars for the week long festival. Dropping four figures to camp out in the dust storm in the middle of the Nevada desert. I don't know. I think I'd rather have my money on the public app invested in the stock market. You know, maybe I'm just old and boring now. So if you've been to Burning Man, let me know in the comments on what your experience was like. Did I end up missing out on a totally life-changing experience? Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. Hope you guys enjoyed today's episode. If you did, and you have like six extra seconds, consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple, Spotify, wherever you listen to your podcasts. And if you are listening 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. We've had a lot of engagement on our episodes on Spotify over the last couple weeks. Thank you to everyone that's taken the time to comment. Again, it really does help us out. Thank you guys so much for listening and watching. Shout out to Mike and Connor for all the help behind the scenes. And we'll see you guys back here tomorrow.