RAT MONEY
RadioAustinTexas.com
04/02/2025
Insiring, uninspiring, and down right messed up financial news of the day.
The media on this page is taken largely from a financial newsletter now published by Sherwood Media. They enfolded the company Robinhood, which is an online stock trading company and financial company. Its CEO has done some really wild things in the stock trading game, and is one of the most impressive people known.
Around a year ago, he led the stampeded of investors at Robinhood in the GameStop market takeover, which made them billions, and cost many billionares and large hedgefunds billions, and made them the laughing stock of Wall Street. He named his company well.
However, I am referring to Robinhood’s previous CEO. Now it is Bulgarian born Vladamir Tevin, 36 years old.
Robinhood Financial
This is a question for the CEO of Alphabet. (If you’re not Sundar Pichai, keep scrolling.) As chart enthusiasts, we desperately needed to know why, when we search the web for a stock and use Google Finance’s “year to date” return function on its interactive module, the calculation is always, bafflingly, wrong. For example, the feature shows that Dollar Tree is down 1.5% year to date, but by our calculations, it’s actually up 0.5% year to date. So we pulled out our calculators and figured out what Google Finance is doing wrong.
Yesterday saw a volatile but positive session for stocks on Liberation Day Eve. The S&P 500 gained 0.4%, the Nasdaq 100 rose 0.8%, and the Russell 2000 erased a loss of 1.2% to finish in the green. Healthcare was the worst-performing S&P 500 sector ETF, while consumer discretionary and tech led the way higher. All members of the Magnificent 7 rallied.
Today Tesla announces its quarterly sales — even if you might want to reconsider those consensus sales estimates — and if that’s not enough excitement for you, at 4 p.m. ET, the White House will announce what’s actually happening on those tariffs.
A SHOT IN THE GUT
Hims & Hers gets a win in its weight-loss journey
Shares of Hims & Hers finished up 5% yesterday after jumping on news that the company would, after a number of twists and turns, actually be able to offer Eli Lilly’s blockbuster weight-loss drug, Zepbound, to its customers.
The direct-to-consumer pharmacy app built its business on generic versions of the kinds of drugs that get emails sent to spam, if you catch our drift, but now that it’s won over customers, the company has been focused on getting in on the biggest and most lucrative trend in pharmaceuticals: GLP-1s.
That said, Hims & Hers has had a rocky weight-loss journey. Here’s the tape:
Last year, Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk sold more than $40 billion in GLP-1 drugs.
Numbers like that get a pharmacy app very, very hungry, provided they themselves are not taking appetite-restricting drugs. Hims & Hers got in on the game and made $230 million selling compounded versions of semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy, last year.
When the FDA announced in February that semaglutide was no longer in a shortage, that caused problems for telepharmacies like Hims & Hers, as without a shortage they no longer could sell compounded semaglutide. This sent the stock down 20%.
That was a problem because the ability to sell those drugs was the cornerstone of a marketing push that culminated in a Super Bowl ad. A lot of effort, and no weight-loss drug!
Those weeks of frustration came to a head yesterday when Hims & Hers said it’ll sell just Zepbound on its platform, which at least for now means it gives up on making its own in-house version of compounded semaglutide and will just prescribe patients Eli Lilly’s branded drugs.
THE TAKEAWAY
All things considered, this is probably not the outcome that investors hoped for, given that despite the 5% one-day jump, the stock is still down 24% over the past month. A company that produces an incredibly desirable drug still has a leg up on the retailer that sells it, and in this case, Hims & Hers is far from the only game in town. Eli Lilly has already cut a deal with Hims & Hers rivals Ro and Amazon Pharmacy to move the drug.
Last updated 04/02/2025