Musk's $30B Pay Approved + Boeing Workers Strike Again | The Rundown August 4, 2025

Public.com presents The Rundown, your daily market update in under 10 minutes. My name is Zaid Admani, and today is Monday, August 4th. In today's episode, we'll recap last week's market madness and get you ready for this week. We'll also tell you about Elon Musk's new pay package from Tesla and Berkshire Hathaway's earnings results. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out how much it costs to make Happy Gilmore 2 and why we're going to get a lot more Adam Sandler movies on Netflix. We've got a great show for you today. Let's go. The markets are coming off their worst week of the summer with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq both dropping more than 2% last week. And the main driver of that was the disappointing jobs report, which dropped on Friday morning. Not only did that report show that July's jobs numbers were disappointing, but the report also revised May and June's numbers by a combined 258,000 jobs. That means that according to this report, over the last three months, the economy has added just 35,000 jobs on average, which is way lower than what economists were expecting and a sign that the labor market is showing signs of weakness. So that caught Wall Street off guard and the markets tanked on Friday to close out the week. Now, this report also caught the attention of President Trump, and he really didn't like the numbers, especially the big downward revisions. So on Friday afternoon, he fired the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is the government agency in charge of gathering all the data for these reports. So, yeah, that was a shocker, and it probably contributed to the markets tanking on Friday. It'll be very interesting to see what the August jobs report looks like when that comes out next month. I'm sure the numbers are going to look real good. Now, looking ahead to this week, we are getting a ton of high profile earnings, including Palantir, AMD, Uber, Airbnb, Disney, and more. So it's another stacked week of earnings, and we might get a couple of trade deals as well, because remember, the new tariff rates go into effect on August 7th. We're going to be staying on top of all that stuff, so make sure you guys are subscribed to the podcast to stay in the loop. Let's run through some headlines starting with Elon Musk. The Tesla board just approved a massive $29 billion pay package for Elon to keep him locked in and motivated. This deal includes 96 million shares of Tesla that will only vest if Elon stays in as a key executive through 2027. So essentially this is a two-year $29 billion deal. I heard Zuck might be offering similar pay packages for AI engineers. Now, this new deal is Tesla's way of making good on the $50 billion pay package from 2018 that got struck down by a Delaware court earlier this year. In a shareholder letter sent out this morning, the Tesla board said this was a first step in reaching a long-term compensation deal, which they will bring to vote at the November 6th annual shareholder meeting. And this pay package would also gradually increase Elon's voting power at the company, which currently sits at around 13%. The board really wants Elon to lock in and focus on Tesla and not get distracted by SpaceX or XAI. Because right now, Tesla is going through a tough time. Their core business is struggling. Tesla's vehicle sales dropped by 14% last quarter, and revenue growth has flatlined. Now, there's been some quiet rumors of Tesla potentially switching to a different CEO. But right now, the Tesla board and investors still believe that Elon Musk is the guy. Let's shift gears and talk about Berkshire Hathaway. The Warren Buffett-led conglomerate reported disappointing earnings over the weekend with operating profits dropping. 4% in Q2, dragged down by insurance underwriting losses. There are other segments like railroads and energy were flat or just slightly up. But the company's biggest hit came from their $3.8 billion write-down on their Kraft Heinz stake. That's a rare L for Warren Buffett. Berkshire now values its 27% stake in Kraft Heinz at just $8.4 billion, which is less than half of what it was worth back in 2017. Now, Warren Buffett threw a bit of shade at Trump's trade policy as well. He warned that escalating tariffs could have adverse consequences across most, if not all, of their businesses and investments. In fact, Berkshire was a net seller of stocks for the 11th straight quarter. They unloaded $3 billion worth of equities in Q2 and $4.5 billion overall in the first half of the year. And this is all coming at a time where Warren Buffett is preparing to step down as CEO at the end of 2025. He's going to stay on as chairman of the company, but Greg Abel is set to take over as CEO. So, yeah, the vibes are a little shaky over at Berkshire. The stock is down more than 3% this morning in reaction to the earnings. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. And a week. Wayfair shares are popping this morning after the furniture e-commerce company posted its strongest quarter since the pandemic. Revenues grew by 5% year-over-year in Q2, and while that number sounds kind of low, for Wayfair, that's a major comeback. See, last quarter, revenue growth for Wayfair was flat, and for 2024, sales dropped by 1%. On top of that, the company hasn't posted a profit in years. But that all changed in the Q2 report, where they reported a surprise profit, and investors are jumping back into the stock. It's up more than... Five percent this morning. Sticking with the winners. Let's talk Spotify. Their stock is up this morning after the streaming giant announced that it's raising prices for its premium subscribers in pretty much every region outside of the U.S. In Europe, prices are jumping from 11 euros a month to 12. Now, investors are betting that just like Netflix, Spotify can continue to raise prices without users jumping to a different platform. That's called price inelasticity. And investors love it. Spotify stock is up more than five percent this morning. Now, on the flip side, Boeing stock is moving lower this morning after more than 3,000 workers in their defense unit went on strike in Missouri and Illinois. The strike began after the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, IAM for short, denied the four-year labor contract offered by the company. And this is a big deal because Boeing's defense unit makes up around 30% of their total revenue, and it manufactures some of the most recognizable products in the American military, including Including the Apache helicopter. And even Air Force One. So this is more headache for Boeing to deal with as they try to turn around the company. And it comes less than a year after thousands of Boeing employees went on strike in September of last year. That strike didn't end until November of 2024. Boeing stock is down around 2% this morning in reaction to this news. Let's wrap the show with a fun fact. Adam Sandler's Happy Gilmore 2 just had the best opening weekend for a Netflix movie ever. Nearly 47 million views in three days. And the crazy part is that this movie only cost around $30 million to make. So that probably means that all the celeb cameos in the movie, like Eminem and Travis Kelsey and Bad Bunny, they must have just done it for free. Now as for the movie itself, like personally, I didn't really like it. I mean, it was fine, but the second half of the movie was, it was really bad. And it just doesn't compare to the original. I mean, Shooter McGavin in the first movie might be one of the greatest movie villains of all time. It might also be possible that I'm just aging out of Adam Sandler movies. I used to watch them all the time as a kid. They just don't hit the same anymore. But hey, you're definitely going to be seeing a lot more Adam Sandler movies on Netflix because he signed a $275 million deal with Netflix to make movies for them. Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. Hope you guys enjoyed today's episode. We're set up for a pretty interesting week. It's the first week of August, which historically isn't a very bullish month. We got a lot of earnings to look forward to. So we're going to be staying on top of all of that. If you guys are new here or longtime listeners and have like eight extra seconds, consider giving us a five star rating on Apple, Spotify, wherever you listen to your podcast. 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. Thank you guys so much for listening and watching. Shout out to Mike and Connor for all the work behind the scenes. And we'll see you guys back here tomorrow.