Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
6 Business News Stories We Are Following Today 4-23-25
Wed, 23 Apr 2025
In this episode, Scott Becker highlights six key business updates, including a market rebound, Intel’s 20% workforce reduction, and more.
Chapter 1: What are the key business stories for today?
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. We're going to give you six of the stories that we're following today. There's, of course, a lot going on in the markets and the news today. We'll just give you a quick synopsis of six of the things we're watching. First, the markets totally surged yesterday. They made up for one of the horrible days they had last week.
Chapter 2: How did the markets perform recently?
And it looks like today they'll be surging again. We're midway through the day now. They're up about one and a half to two percent. The S&P is an asset up a little bit more. Let's hope that that holds. That's a welcome relief from a market perspective. Second, President Trump. eases up on his volleys after Chairman Powell. He says he's not serious about wanting to fire Powell.
Chapter 3: What is the latest on President Trump's approach to the Federal Reserve?
He probably got enough feedback that it's a bad idea. He also is trying to decelerate the trade war with China. It seems like he's coming around to trying to find a better path to some sort of detente with China and on the trade war side as well. Third, Intel is up today on news that it's going to cut 20% of its employees as it tries to get leaner and more profitable.
Chapter 4: What significant changes is Intel making?
So that's what's going on with Intel. It's been fascinating to watch Intel over the last couple of years as they've given up a lot of the advantage that they created over a couple decades. Fourth, Elon Musk tells the markets he's going to spend more time at Tesla, less time on Doge. A lot of people are probably happy about that. Certainly, Tesla investors are happy about that.
Chapter 5: What is Elon Musk's new focus at Tesla?
They've taken on the chin some this year. Fifth, RH. RH jumped 10% yesterday. It's also up today. I rail on RH Restoration Hardware for its funky accounting a lot and for its business practices a lot. But one of my colleagues reminded me that when they have an up day, I've got to make the effort to say something positive about them as well.
And yesterday was one of those days, and today looks like one of those days. Finally, sixth, I am largely an investor in index funds over individual stocks. Two of the individual stocks that I do own, one of them I got through a hedge fund I invested in, Astero Labs. That's down 58% year to date. The other one is Palantir Technologies. That's up about 25% year to date and up again today.
So of those two, I'm still a net loser. And again, it reinforces the issue of there's no reason for me to be invested in individual stocks. I should be sticking to the index funds, generally low cost today, whether Vanguard, Fidelity, whoever you're working with, just that's where I should be going today. Again, these are six stories that we're watching today.
Thank you for listening to the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. Thank you very, very much.