In this episode, Scott Becker shares nine top business headlines, including the U.S. credit rating downgrade by Moody’s, market reactions, surging tech stocks like NVIDIA and Tesla, and more.
Chapter 1: What are the top business headlines today?
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. We're thrilled to have recently passed 7 million downloads. We've also gotten to 21,000 plus subscribers in the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. So it's a weak newsletter. So we greatly appreciate you listening, you reading, and so forth.
Chapter 2: Why did Moody's downgrade the U.S. credit rating?
We'll keep on trying to make sure that we're teaching and entertaining, sometimes usefully, sometimes not. Today's discussion is Nine stories that we're following this morning, and thank you for listening. First, Moody's, the major credit agency, on late Friday dropped the U.S. credit rating to AA1 from AAA.
Chapter 3: How is the stock market reacting to the credit rating downgrade?
Moody's largely pointed to ballooning deficits and rising interest costs, ultimately quite a disaster. As I often say, debt kills nations, companies, and families. Second, the stock market is reacting negatively to the drop in the U.S. credit rating. The equity markets point down this morning, and the long-term bond yields point up.
Chapter 4: What pushback is Congress giving on the budget bill?
Third, I give some credit today to those in Congress on both sides of the aisle who are providing some pushback to the current iteration of the budget bill that President Trump and team are pushing. This will likely send deficits higher.
Chapter 5: What is the current status of the NASDAQ and S&P 500?
People on his own side of the aisle that are challenging him, I give them great credit because this has been political suicide the last several years, but something that needs to be done to keep the budget deficits under control. Fourth, the NASDAQ is down about half a percentage point year to date. The S&P 500 is up now 1.3% year to date. We'll see how those continue to play through.
Fifth, UnitedHealth Group rallied 6.5% on Friday, points up another several percent today. It's down 42% year-to-date. United is the third largest U.S. company by revenues. It's that big. Sixth, the five largest U.S. companies by revenues are Walmart, Amazon, UnitedHealth, Apple, and CVS. Walmart is up nearly 9% year-to-date.
It's an amazing strength in this company over a very long period of time. The company itself is largely located in red states and is having a small tiff with President Trump as it tries to discuss the impact of tariffs on its stockholders.
As firms navigate the president, they're often between a rock and a hard place because they're trying to be up front with their shareholders but not rile the president. Seventh, NVIDIA has been surging like crazy recently. It's nearly up 30% over the last month. Its market cap is back to $3.3 trillion, and it barely trails Microsoft, which has a market cap of $3.37 trillion.
Eight, Tesla has jumped 44% over the last month. Elon Musk and Donald Trump are resilient people. Jensen Wang, the CEO of NVIDIA, is also a force of nature. Finally, ninth, Doximity dropped 10% Friday despite outstanding results. This was due to Doximity projecting slower growth going forward. The stock is essentially flat year to date.
It reported a great year in revenues and profits, but just the slowness in its potential growth has caused the stock to drop significantly on Friday. Thank you for listening to the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. We hope you enjoyed the podcast. Thank you very, very much.
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