Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
10 Business News Stories We Are Following Today 1-30-25
Thu, 30 Jan 2025
In this episode, Scott Becker breaks down 10 major business stories, including market reactions to GDP growth, Fed rate decisions, Blackstone’s record assets, and UPS’s sharp decline.
Chapter 1: What are the key business stories for January 30th?
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. We're going to walk through 10 of the business stories that we're following today. It's January 30th. It is a busy, busy day in the business world. So bear with me. I'm going to first give you four or five prescripts to the business stories that we're following. First, the U.S.
Chapter 2: How did the U.S. economy perform in the fourth quarter?
economy grew less than expected in the fourth quarter. Inflation came in at the expected numbers. The GDP grew at 2.3%. The personal consumer expenditures index grew at 2.5%. The markets seem to be responding fine to these numbers because they don't put too much cold water on the concept of Fed rate cuts.
In fact, the slower economy is a bit of a concern, particularly how much deficit spending we still have. Second, we've heard about this separately, Atticus Coffee in Park City might be one of the best coffee shops in America. We also noted just briefly that we're sold out of business-to-business webinars at Becker Private Equity through the next month and a half, six to eight weeks.
Chapter 3: What is the impact of Blackstone's record assets?
Third, Blackstone, the biggest private equity fund operator with the largest assets under management, So it's revenues and profits surged in the fourth quarter, and it reached record assets under management of $1.13 trillion. But even with all, it's down a few percent today. We'll see how that goes. It was down 5% last time we looked.
Chapter 4: Why did Microsoft experience a decline today?
Fourth, Microsoft, which is something we're an individual holder of,
Chapter 5: What are the latest updates on UPS and Starbucks?
is down of course six percent today and always a reminder to me to stick as much as possible to index funds versus individual stocks now here's the tensors we're following past the prescript and i'll get through these very quick because i know we're taking a lot of your time today ups is down nearly 17 percent as it missed on fourth quarter revenue it's just having a tough tough day second starbucks jumped eight percent on approved results their new ceo is basically a genius
Third, I'll just give you a couple of the stocks that we watch in the year-to-day results. I'll go through three of them very quickly. Apple down 4.42%, Lucid down 11.63%, Amex up 6.22%, Palantir up 5.46%. Those are just a few of the stocks that we watch. Intel is also down about 1.5% and more. Fourth, Apple is set to report earnings today after the markets close.
Their market cap is right about $3.6 trillion. Fifth, the Fed and Chair Powell held rates steady at their meeting yesterday. We'll see how that continues to play out. Sixth, E-Advocate Health is going to close its Walgreens clinics in Illinois and Wisconsin. This involves 47 or so in-store clinics. It marks the continuation of Walgreens moving out of being a direct provider of primary care.
Seventh, Tesla fell 2.26% yesterday, bid on the mend today. It's down about 6.5% year-to-date. It had weaker than expected fourth quarter revenues, and it saw its profit drop by 71% for the quarter. Eighth, Caterpillar, mainstream of the traditional economy, is down nearly 5% today after forecasting lower revenues for the year. It also missed on fourth quarter revenues.
Ninth, RFK had its first HHS confirmation hearings. We're covering that at Becker's Healthcare. No comment on that. I'm not an RFK fan. nor a Mehmet Oz fan, or did not really become a Pete Hexer fan either, but different story. I am a huge Marco Rubio and Elise Stefanik fan, so it is some balance there. Tenth, tragic accident yesterday involving American Airlines and U.S. military helicopter.
An awful shame. A lot of people dead. American Airlines, and this is basically irrelevant, down about 4% to 5% on this, but what a shame. In that event, those are 10 of the stories we're following, plus a few prescripts. You can always reach Scott Becker at 773-766-5322. Thank you for listening, and thank you to Chanel Bunger.
We've now passed a combined 22 million downloads on the Becker's Healthcare and Becker Private Equity podcast. God bless all of our listeners. Thank you very very much.
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