Meta Expands Chip Deal with Broadcom, Wall Street Traders Cash In on Volatility

public.com presents the rundown. Your daily market update in under 10 minutes. My name is Zadeh Admani and today is Wednesday, April 15. In today's episode we'll tell you why markets are near record highs. We'll also recap earnings for Bank of America and Morgan Stanley and break down the latest AI chip deal between Meta and Broadcom. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out the net worth of the next Fed chip. We got a great show for you today. Let's go. Stocks kept the rally going on Tuesday with the S&P adding 1.2% while the Nasdaq jumped nearly 2%. The Nasdaq has now gone up for 10 straight days, which is the longest winning streak for the index since 2021. In those 10 days, the Nasdaq has shot up 14% and is now positive for the year. The S&P is now within spitting distance from a record high, closing about 0.2% below all time high levels set back in January. It's been an incredible turnaround for the stock market, and it's all been driven by optimism of a peace deal with Iran. The market seems to think the worst of the war is behind us with minimal economic impact. In fact, President Trump added more hope, saying in an interview this morning that the Iran war is very close to over and that the US and Iran will have another round of peace talks in the coming days. We've gotten messages like that from the President before, but the market seems to be fully buying in this time. Stocks are moving higher and oil prices are dropping lower. WTI is trading around $90 a barrel as of this morning, down from the $118 a couple weeks ago. Now, to be clear, the situation is still not fully resolved. Remember the US Navy has now placed a blockade on the Strait of Hormuz targeting ships going to and from Iranian ports. We talked more about that earlier in the week. This move is to prevent Iran from exporting their oil, which has been an economic lifeline for them during the war. Now, another key note about this blockade, ships from non-Iranian ports have been allowed to pass through. In fact, more than 20 commercial ships have passed with the Strait of Hormuz in the past 24 hours, according to US officials. That's still a fraction of what the traffic was before the war, but it's starting to pick back up, which is only adding to the optimism. The other big piece of the rally has been earnings season. Big banks have kicked things off with mostly solid results. We've covered them all week, so that's giving investors confidence that the economy is holding up just fine. On top of that, we had a cooler than expected wholesale inflation report yesterday, which is giving investors another reason to feel better about the macro picture. So yeah, it seems like the market has now turned its focus to corporate earnings. And we're going to have a lot to talk about there because tomorrow we're hearing from TSMC and Netflix. And the next week we're hearing from heavy hitters like Tesla, Intel, IBM, United Airlines, and more. So there's a lot going on right now in the markets. The vibes are definitely shifting. I mean, we could be hitting all time highs today. So it's a great time to get subscribed to the podcast and tune in every day to stay in the loop. Let's run through some headlines. And we're talking more bank earnings. Let's start with Bank of America first. They beat on both top line and bottom line. The big story was trading. Equity trading revenue jumped 30% to a record $2.8 billion, beating estimates by about $350 million. Investment banking also beat estimates rising 21% to $1.8 billion. And the net interest income, which is the difference between what banks earn on loans and what they pay depositors, rose 9% to nearly $16 billion due to higher loan and deposit balances. In fact, loan balances grew 8.5% to $1.2 trillion, which tells you that businesses and consumers are still borrowing money. Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan called the American consumer healthy and said that spending remains solid. Credit card and debit card spending was up 6% in Q1. So all of that pushed Bank of America's earnings per share to $1.11 cents, which is the highest earnings per share in nearly two decades. Bank of America stock is up more than 2% this morning at the time of this recording. Now let's talk about Morgan Stanley. They told a pretty similar story. Equity trading hit a record $5.1 billion, which is up 25% and topped estimates by $1 billion. Investment banking fees jumped 36% and the wealth management business pulled in over $118 billion in new assets. Morgan Stanley's stock is up more than 5% this morning at the time of this recording. So that wraps up Big Bank earnings season, and the big takeaway is that trading and deal making were the big boost for Big Banks in Q1. All the market volatility that's been stressing everyone else out has been an absolute gold mine for Wall Street trading deaths. Let's shift gears and talk some tech and AI. Broadcom and Meta just announced they are extending their custom chip partnership through 2029. Under this deal, Broadcom will help build and design Meta's custom AI chips called NTIA, which stands for Meta Training and Infrains Accelerator. These chips by Meta are designed to power everything from content recommendation to AI features across Instagram, Facebook, and everything under the Meta umbrella. This partnership with Meta and Broadcom is getting so deep that Broadcom's CEO Hot Tan is actually stepping down from Meta's board and moving into an advisory role. So the goal for Meta is to reduce their reliance on Nvidia's chips and bring more of their AI infrastructure in-house. And they're not the only big tech company doing that. Google and Amazon have their own custom AI chips, and there are rumors that OpenAI is working on their own custom AI chip as well. Broadcom has been the biggest beneficiary of that. They've become the go-to partner to help develop these custom chips. And that's one reason why Broadcom stock is up over 20% in the last two weeks. In fact, big tech stocks in general have seen a big resurgence lately. Nvidia's stock has gone up over 18% in the last couple weeks, and Meta and Amazon are up around 15%. So shout out to everyone that bought the dip. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Snapshairs are jumping this morning after the company announced plans to cut 16% of its workforce, which is about 1,000 employees. And the reason is AI efficiencies. This is just the latest example of a tech company announcing layoffs because of AI. Snaps says AI agents are already generating more than 65% of new code, which is allowing them to have smaller teams that are more nimble. This move is expected to save Snap over $500 million a year, and it's pushing up Snap stock to over 7% this morning at the time of this recording. Snap lost over $460 million last year, so maybe this will get Snap back to profitability. I gotta say though, as a Snap shareholder, Snap stock has been beaten up pretty bad. It's trading near its all time lows, so who knows, maybe this will finally sparkle rally. On the flip side, let's talk about ASML. Their stock is dropping despite beating earnings expectations this morning and raising their 2026 sales guidance. The company says that business is doing great, demand for chips is outpacing supply, and their customers are accelerating their expansion plans. But the stock is still pulling back this morning down around 2-3% at the time of this recording for two main reasons. For one, ASML stock is already more than doubled over the past 12 months, so a lot of this good news was already priced in. The second reason though is that there's a new bill in the US Congress called the Match Act that could ban ASML from selling any of its machines to China, not just the most advanced ones. Right now, China still accounts for about 20% of ASML sales, so if this bill passes, that number could drop significantly. So even with the great earnings report this morning, the China risk is overhanging the stock and pushing the stock lower. Let's wrap the show with a fun fact. We're about to get the richest federal reserve chair in history. Kevin Worsh, president Trump's pick to replace Jerome Powell, and he just dropped his financial disclosures ahead of his confirmation hearing. And yeah, this guy is loaded. According to the disclosures, he has over a hundred million dollars in personal assets. In fact, some estimates put his net worth somewhere between $130 million and $200 million. Now to be fair, Jerome Powell is also pretty rich. When Jerome Powell was first nominated in 2017, he discloses assets worth between $20 and $55 million. So we've had rich fed chairs in the past, but what makes Worsh so interesting is that his wife is Jane Lauder, the granddaughter of Estee Lauder. Her net worth is estimated to be around $1.9 billion. So yeah, Kevin Worsh's wife and in laws are billionaires. Now, ask for Kevin Worsh. He says he's going to sell off a huge chunk of his assets if he gets confirmed as Fed Chair, including stakes and funds and companies like SpaceX and Polymarket. Worsh's confirmation hearing is set for April 21st, but there is a catch though. Senator Tom Tillis is blocking any vote until the DOJ wraps up his investigation into Jerome Powell. If that investigation isn't wrapped up soon, then Worsh's confirmation could get delayed, keeping Powell on as the Fed Chair passed the May 15th date, which is when his term officially is supposed to end. So yeah, the next few weeks for the Fed could be very interesting. There is a Fed meeting at the end of the month. It could be Jerome Powell's last or he could be on for one more meeting depending on what happens with the DOJ investigation. Well, alright guys, that's the rundown for today. Hope you guys enjoyed today's episode. If you did and you have like five extra seconds, consider giving us a five star rating on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you listen to your podcast, all that engagement really does help us out and it helps other people find the show. Thank you guys so much for listening, watching and commenting, shout out to Mike and Connor for all the work behind the scenes. And we'll see you guys back here tomorrow.