6 Business News Stories We Are Following Today 4-23-25

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This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. We're going to give you six of the stories that we're following today. There's, of course, a lot going on in the markets and the news today. We'll just give you a quick synopsis of six of the things we're watching. First, the markets totally surged yesterday. They made up for one of the horrible days they had last week.

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And it looks like today they'll be surging again. We're midway through the day now. They're up about one and a half to two percent. The S&P is an asset up a little bit more. Let's hope that that holds. That's a welcome relief from a market perspective. Second, President Trump. eases up on his volleys after Chairman Powell. He says he's not serious about wanting to fire Powell.

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He probably got enough feedback that it's a bad idea. He also is trying to decelerate the trade war with China. It seems like he's coming around to trying to find a better path to some sort of detente with China and on the trade war side as well. Third, Intel is up today on news that it's going to cut 20% of its employees as it tries to get leaner and more profitable.

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So that's what's going on with Intel. It's been fascinating to watch Intel over the last couple of years as they've given up a lot of the advantage that they created over a couple decades. Fourth, Elon Musk tells the markets he's going to spend more time at Tesla, less time on Doge. A lot of people are probably happy about that. Certainly, Tesla investors are happy about that.

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They've taken on the chin some this year. Fifth, RH. RH jumped 10% yesterday. It's also up today. I rail on RH Restoration Hardware for its funky accounting a lot and for its business practices a lot. But one of my colleagues reminded me that when they have an up day, I've got to make the effort to say something positive about them as well.

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And yesterday was one of those days, and today looks like one of those days. Finally, sixth, I am largely an investor in index funds over individual stocks. Two of the individual stocks that I do own, one of them I got through a hedge fund I invested in, Astero Labs. That's down 58% year to date. The other one is Palantir Technologies. That's up about 25% year to date and up again today.

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So of those two, I'm still a net loser. And again, it reinforces the issue of there's no reason for me to be invested in individual stocks. I should be sticking to the index funds, generally low cost today, whether Vanguard, Fidelity, whoever you're working with, just that's where I should be going today. Again, these are six stories that we're watching today.