Meta Stock Explodes on Muse Hit, Markets Flash Warning Not Seen Since 1999

Zaid Admani (0:00)

Public.com presents The Rundown, your daily market update in 10 minutes. My name is Zaid Admani, and today is Tuesday, September 22nd. In today's episode, we'll break down Monday's massive market rally and the weird warning sign that hasn't happened since 1999 We'll also tell you why Meta's new Muse AI app is exploding in popularity and why Amazon is trying to block it. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out how a super El Nino could impact everything from food prices to global shipping. We got a great show for you today.

Let's go.

Markets kicked off the week with a massive rally on Monday. The S&P 500 jumped 1.5% and the NASDAQ surged 2.3% to a record close. It was the first record close for the NASDAQ since June 2nd, and the S&P is also less than 1% away from its own record high. There were two factors that really drove the rally on Monday. The first one was oil prices pulling back. Oil prices dropped about 5% with Brent crude now dropping under $100 a barrel. So it seems like investors are becoming more optimistic about a potential peace deal between the US and Iran. The other factor yesterday was that the AI hype came roaring back. The Semiconductor Index jumped 4.3%, its biggest one day rally since early August. Meta was one of the big winners yesterday. Their stock jumped 11% after their new Muse AI agent app became the number one app on the Apple App Store. AMD was also a big winner. Their stock jumped 10% and their market cap crossed $1 trillion for the first time ever. So apparently all it took was oil prices falling a bit and one viral Meta AI app for investors to stop stressing about the macro factors and FOMO right back into the AI trade. Now I should point out there is something really weird happening underneath the surface. Despite the S&P jumping more than 1% yesterday and sitting less than 1% from record highs, 30 stocks in the S&P 500 hit new 52 week lows on Monday, while only seven stocks hit 52 week highs. That is very unusual. In fact, according to Sentiment Trader, the last time the S&P rose at least 1%, sat within 1% of a record high and had more new lows than new highs was December of 1999 Just a quick history lesson, that was a few months before the.com bubble peaked. And before 1999, the last time it happened was July of 1929 Now, before you start panicking, because I just mentioned 1999 and 1929 in the same sentence, there is some important context here. Yesterday, eight of the 11 S&P sectors still finished higher on Monday, so this wasn't a situation where just like five or six AI stocks went up and everything else went down. And if you zoom out and look at the equal weight S&P, it's up around 10% this year, compared to roughly 13% for the regular S&P. So, you know, there's a gap, but it's not a massive one. I think this is a good reminder that an index sitting near record highs doesn't mean that every stock is doing well in that index. Like there's still plenty of companies stuck in their own personal bear markets, likely from higher oil prices and the macro factors that we talked about, but the AI winners right now keep dragging the overall index higher. And honestly, that's one of the big advantages of owning an index. You don't have to pick which individual companies are going to be the winners. Now looking ahead, the next big thing the markets will be watching this week is Thursday's meeting between President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. The two leaders are meeting in Washington, DC, and the main topics will be trade, of course, and probably AI as well. So we'll see what comes out of that. We'll stay on top of it for you guys, along with everything else happening in the market. So definitely get subscribed to the podcast if you haven't already and tune in every day to stay in the loop.

Let's run through some headlines. And we're talking Metta. Metta is getting a lot of love from Wall Street right now, thanks to their new AI app called Muse. Now I talked about Muse on this show a couple weeks ago when it first launched, and the app has exploded in popularity. Muse is the number one free app on both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store sitting ahead of Chat GPT and other AI apps. In fact, according to Sensor Tower, the Muse app has been downloaded 2.5 million times in the last 13 days. I've used this app since the day it launched, and I can see why it's gaining popularity right now. By the way, I'm not getting paid to say this by Zugg, but if you want to throw me a bag, my DMs are open. But what Muse can do is it connects to your email, calendar, Facebook, Instagram accounts and do stuff like book appointments or fill out forms or find items for you on Facebook Marketplace and a lot more. I've seen people use it to save money on their power bill or find cheaper car insurance, and you can even connect it to your public app so Muse can trade for you as well. And by the way, you can do all these things on Chat, GPT and Claw too, but it's just faster and easier on Muse. And I think that's why this app has taken off. Like Muse is the first AI app that my wife has liked using. So yeah, you can see why the market is super excited here. Metastock is up almost 20% since Muse launched back on September 8th. It seems like Zuck might finally have a hit new AI product that justifies his 100 plus billion dollar cap expense. But you know, as the popularity of Muse has exploded, Muse is now running into a problem. Their AI agents are now being blocked by certain websites. Like yesterday, Amazon came out and blocked Muse from accessing its website. You know, when you ask Muse for a product recommendation, it was going on Amazon using its built-in browser and finding stuff for you. Well, Amazon is now blocking that access and other AI bots. And you can see why Amazon is doing this. They don't want AI agents shopping for people instead of actual humans, because it could impact their ads business. You know, AI agents don't click on ads, humans click on ads. And like I said, other websites are also starting to block AI agents as well. So there's an interesting dynamic playing out here. If AI agents are how people interact with the internet in the future, well, then what are these websites going to do? And there's some companies right now that are jumping on the trend. Amazon might be trying to keep Muse out, but Shopify is opening the door. Shopify announced yesterday that Muse will integrate directly with ShopPay and allow the AI agent to shop across Shopify merchants and actually complete purchases on your behalf. For now, the markets like that, Shopify stock closed up more than 7% on Monday and is up another 7% this morning at the time of this recording. You know, I was kind of bearish on the concept of personal AI agents, but like I said, after using Muse, I can kind of see the vision. And I'm really curious to see if this is the start of Meta's next big business or is it just a flash in the pan right now? There are rumors that ChatGPT is launching their own version of personal AI agents and like an app similar to Muse. So we'll see what that looks like, because you know, one of the problems that Meta will continue to have is trust. You know, there are probably millions of people that don't want to give Meta access to their emails, calendar, passwords and personal accounts. So again, really curious to see how this all plays out. Now we should learn more about Meta's AI plans this week. The MetaConnect conference starts tomorrow. Zuck is giving the opening keynote. And rumors are that Meta will be announcing more functionality for Muse and showing off new glasses and maybe announcing a new AI model as well. So yeah, I'm really excited for that. And we'll recap anything notable later this week. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today.