Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
The Markets Jump, Nvidia, Tesla, the EU, Russia and Apple in the News – 9 Stories We Are Following This A.M. 5-27-25
Tue, 27 May 2025
In this episode, Scott Becker shares nine major stories shaping the business world, including surging markets driven by tariff delays, Apple’s tension with U.S. trade policy, NVIDIA’s China concerns, and more.
Chapter 1: What are the latest market trends?
First, the markets are surging today as President Trump walks back some of his potential tariffs and pauses some of his tariffs on the EU. The EU in total is the U.S. 's biggest trading partner. So the markets view that as very good news as he looks to delay the tariffs from June 1st to July 9th with the hopes of getting the EU to the table where he wants them.
Chapter 2: How are tariffs affecting the markets?
Second, the markets had a tough week last week. The NASDAQ remains down about 3% year-to-date. The S&P down about 1.34% year-to-date. They look to make that up today as the markets rebound some as the president takes his foot off the gas on the tariffs. Third, NVIDIA is down about 2% year-to-date.
Chapter 3: What are NVIDIA's earnings expectations?
This week, NVIDIA reports on its earnings on Wednesday, and we'll see what the markets are really looking for here is how much the restrictions on selling to China will hurt NVIDIA's sales. Jensen Wang says it could impact up to 15 billion of sales a year to China. Four, Apple is this week's scapegoat for the president or attack dog. The president has Apple in its crosshairs.
Chapter 4: Why is Apple in the news this week?
Apple apparently employs about 3 million people in China. The president would like some of those jobs and manufacturing going back to the U.S. Apple's worked hard to become less reliant on China moving jobs to India and some to the U.S., but from the president's perspective, not nearly enough. He's trying to put 25% tariffs on iPhones that are imported.
Chapter 5: What impact do tariffs have on Apple?
Strikes me, and not to be political, wrong to target a specific company's products versus generally. But we'll see how this goes. Great book recommended to you this week by Dave Staffman, president of his own investment firm today, called Apple in China, about a deep relationship Apple has in China. Fifth, Apple's down nearly 22% year to date.
Chapter 6: How is the political landscape affecting business?
It's fallen behind Microsoft and NVIDIA in the market cap wars. We'll see how that goes. Sixth, Russia and Putin are proving to be more difficult to negotiate with than either President Obama back in the day or President Trump thought they would be.
Remember, President Obama famously tried to reset relationships with President Putin or Prime Minister Putin in Russia and found it much more difficult than he expected. President Trump is finding the same thing. He's finding Russia to be much more difficult than he expected. He's trying to get them to move towards peace or a ceasefire with Ukraine. He's having a hard time getting there.
He's talking about sanctions on Russia. I believe that both President Obama and President Trump have this largely right. We need to be involved in diplomatic efforts with them, but it doesn't seem right now to be reaping rewards that we'd like to see. Seventh, Salesforce, which is the largest sort of CRM company in the world, is nearing an $8 billion deal to buy Informatica.
They were due to do this a year or two ago. Now the price is lower. It will be the company's second largest deal ever. Salesforce is run by Marc Benioff, brilliant, brilliant person. They're down 18% year to date. A great piece on ambient technology and physicians offices of the Wall Street Journal today, That article is called why AI may be listening on your next doctor's appointment.
That's already happening. A couple of companies mentioned prominently in the article, both Microsoft and a bridge. A bridge is ran by the brilliant CEO and founder, Shiv Rao, Dr. Rao. Finally, ninth, Tesla sales have dropped 50% in the first quarter in Europe. That's a big number. Nevertheless, the stock price has rebounded greatly over the last month or two.
There's just a great deal of hope and promise for Tesla's overall technologies, particularly related to self-driving cars and a lot more. So we'll see how that continues to play out. Thank you for listening to the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. Thank you very, very much.
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