Thursday's Final Takeaways: Autonomy, AI, and the Fed

0:00I'm Marley Caden here in Chicago alongside San Vadas at the New York Stock Exchange. Here's some final thoughts on this session today. As I take a closer look at some of the stories that stuck out to me, I try to move away from the ones that we've talked about throughout the day and highlight some other ones, Lucid, making a push into autonomous ride hailing, unveiling a new Robo Taxi concept at its investor day as the EV Maker looks for new growth opportunities. The carmaker introduced a two-seat autonomous vehicle called the Lunar. It's designed without a steering wheel or pedals, and it's built on the company's upcoming mid-size EV platform. They say that the Robo Taxi could cut operating costs by about 40%, and eventually run on ride hailing networks through partnerships with companies like Uber and Autonomous Tech firm Nuro. Lucid also says it's working to deploy autonomous versions of its upcoming gravity SUV on Uber's network as soon as later this year, while that Lunar concept remains an earlier development. Now, this move puts Lucid into this rapidly evolving Robo Taxi race alongside players

1:00like Tesla and Waymo, as automakers increasingly are looking for ways to have a new revenue stream from this autonomous service, but Lucid did close the day down more than 7% after their work concerns about widening losses at its investor day. Also, want to shift gears here and talk about Netflix. They may not be acquiring Warner Brothers' discovery, but it is reportedly shelling out about $600 million for an AI filmmaking startup called Interpositive. The company was co-founded by Ben Affleck and develops AI tools that are designed to help filmmakers handle post-production tasks, like editing footage, fixing visual errors, and enhancing scenes. Netflix says it plans to integrate the technology into its production pipeline as it looks to use AI to streamline filmmaking while still keeping creative control in the hands of artists. Now, this purchase is one of the biggest ever-by-the-streaming leaders, and is also one of the largest AI deals by a major Hollywood player. It really highlights how streaming companies are increasingly investing in any kind of tool to lower production costs, and speed up content creation as this competition in

2:02the media industry intensifies, especially in the wake of Netflix bowing out of the Warner Brothers' peace sky fight, Sam. Those were just some stories that caught my eye that didn't get as much attention as some of the more headline-driven ones, how about you? Similar kind of story, and it would have gone a lot of attention on a normal day, and that is more evidence of low-higher low-fire with the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits, falling slightly jobless claims, coming in at 213,000 suggesting conditions in the labour market remain stable. So, that's good news. That's expected to give the Fed a little bit more headroom now to stay on hold, as it keeps an eye on the potential inflationary pressures coming from the war in Iran. Now, we also saw the trade deficit narrowed to start the year as exports jumped to a record high, and imports fell. Outbound shipments grew 5.5% in January, while imports fell 0.7%. That closed the trade gap by 25% to $54.5 billion from a revised $72.9 billion in December.

3:05Now, if that trend continues, it could contribute to GDP this quarter, so it's something to keep an eye on, but you just wonder how backwards-looking it is now given, of course, the renewed potential, but heading into tomorrow, what we'll be looking at for money. Investors gearing up for the latest PCE report. The Fed's preferred inflation gauge due out tomorrow morning, economists expecting headline PCE to rise about 3.10% of a percent month over a month, roughly 2.5% from a year ago. While core PCE that restrips out food and energy is forecast to increase about 3.10% as well on the month, around 2.7% annually. That CPI report that we got earlier this week was mostly overlooked and came in in line. So we'll be interesting to see what the numbers are here, how the market responds to this report amid all of the headlines, and also if it signals any changes to expectation for Fed rate cuts later this year, Sam, especially as in Kevin Green, our conversation with him, he was saying this report is expected to come in hot, so it will be interesting to see if the market reacts, and it could depend entirely on what other headlines are happening

4:07tomorrow morning. Yeah, that's right, and of course Trump taking to truth social today, saying to Lake Powell, he should be dropping interest rates, so that's obviously something else we're continuing to watch here, but we'll continue to get more macro data tomorrow as well, Marley. I mean, we do have a GDP update as well as Jolt, so we'll get a bit of an update on growth and then the labor market. But again, let's just see if it adds to some of the signs of stability we've seen with jobs, with the growth, it's hard to know how much credence to give to these numbers, just of course, because we were thinking about productivity coming into this year with a lot of the strength coming through from the data and looking resilient, but now, obviously, we have these inflation repressures. Let's see what happens moving forward. You mentioned it's going to be interesting tomorrow with consumer sentiment, because, of course, we want to know how people are feeling about some of these kitchen table issues. Now, obviously, we've got this flare-up and geopolitical tensions, and that is feeding into the price of the pump as to how people go about their days.

5:11So, I think that's going to be really telling, but I don't know about you, Marley. I'm afraid to turn the calendar for tomorrow. It's Friday the 13th, given all the headlines we've been doing with this week. Weekly roller coaster ride, at least for this week's sound, but that's going to do it for us for Market On Closed today.