Closing Bell - Closing Bell 04/11/25

Episode Date: April 11, 2025

From the open to the close, “Closing Bell” and “Closing Bell: Overtime” have you covered. From what’s driving market moves to how investors are reacting, Scott Wapner, Jon Fortt, Morgan Brennan and Michael Santoli guide listeners through each trading session and bring to you some of the biggest names in business.

All right. Welcome to Closing Bell. I'm Scott Wapner live from Post9 right here at the New York Stock Exchange. This Make or Break Hour begins with hopes for a breakthrough as the market looks for any bit of good news after this incredibly turbulent trading week. So while we wait for any new developments, whenever they might come we will show you where things currently stand on Wall Street in this very fast changing market. The major averages have been all over the map again today digesting bank earnings and big big moves in the bond market once again. In fact we'll show you an

intraday of the S&P versus an intraday of the 10 year treasury bond yields come off the boil stocks get a little bit of a lift a few other things going on which will let you know about too. Materials actually the best

sector today gold hitting a another new record high. So at least one of those safe haven trades is working again. Tech also doing well. Several big names getting a boost. Apple needed it. Nvidia did too. They're among those names in the green today.

It does take us to our talk of the tape. Where do we go from here with all this volatility? Where are we going? Let's ask Tom Lee. He is FundStrat's managing partner, head of research, also a CNBC contributor with me here at Post9. Thank you for being here. So, Liberation Day didn't go as you thought,

and you apologized publicly for that, which I think a lot of people appreciated. You're always a stand-up person about that. What now? Where are we going? Well, I think a lot of people appreciate it. You're always a stand-up person about that. What now? Where are we going? Well, I think a couple of things that we're thinking about is we know markets have gotten very pessimistic. They've priced in a 60% probability of a recession.

And if tariff negotiations de-escalate, then the probability isn't that high. So I think that there's still a big window for markets to have a large rebound, but it's really the path of this deescalation. We're in a bear market. I mean, we're in a bear market, right? I mean, it almost doesn't matter, you know, textbook, whether you say we are or not.

It's like so many stocks got just absolutely destroyed before, before this uncertainty happened in the market. Yes, I mean, if we define a bear market as stocks feel like a grind or you're losing money, I'd say it really started in December because markets were churning even through the February high. But if I was to define a bear market as unleashing a type of financial tightening that leads to a recession,

we're not at that criteria. But I think it feels like a bear market for the average person. Are we supposed to buy into that? Or just stay cautious and on the sidelines, don't do anything, sit on our hands? I don't think people know what to do. And I'm not just talking in the CEO suites

because they obviously don't know what to do. How can you? So what is the investor supposed to do? Yeah, I mean, I think there's sort of two brains people are fighting. One is the tactical brain, which is, look, they want to know if this is a bottom, and they want to be convinced of it by seeing stocks rally on bad news. But if someone had the investor hat on, and, you know, that's the long term brain, you know, I have a lot of confidence the US companies are going to navigate through this treachery. Stocks are hugely oversold because you

never really lose money buying the VIX at 50 or when the percentage of stocks above the 208 drops to 15. Those are almost guarantees of positive one-year three-year five returns. So it depends which brain you're wearing today but I I'd say the majority of our clients are trying to be tactical. I hear views of well it's really hard to get uber bearish now because a headline at any moment as I said in the open here the market is waiting so hard for some bit of good news that if you're on the wrong side of that you get a day like you had on Wednesday. Yes.

I mean, if I was to oversimplify the framing of this, US and China have absurd levels of reciprocal tariffs at the moment. And if you believe those are in place, then the global economy is in trouble and you should be bearish. But if this is a matter of who makes the overture first or blinks, but we know it deescalates, then I think the downside has largely, it comes off dramatically and I think stocks can actually do really well into the rest of the year. So you'd be a buyer right now?

Yes. And with the apology that of course, you know, I didn't think Liberation Day was going to be this draconian, but yes, I would be buying stocks today. What would you buy? Well, one of the things we did for our clients last night is to look at what's called, Walter Diemer calls, sold out stocks, which is worse than oversold. Sold out stocks don't go down because there's a lot of bad news priced in.

There's a lot of stocks that didn't make new lows on Tuesday April 8th. They made their lows a month ago and they had lower volume on April 8th. Those are what I call washed out stocks. A group that I think's washed out is the mag-7. So I'd look at mag-7 as a place to really expect a rebound including stocks like Tesla. Okay. You used the word draconian. That was your word. But I'm going to play off of that and say, well, what if we're in a post draconian period where because of that, we're left with the rubble of that decision making in the White House.

And the damage has been done. CEOs have no visibility whatsoever. Consumer, do you see this consumer sentiment number today? Yeah, they're awful. Do you see where inflation expectations are? Yeah, they've gone bananas. Do you see what earnings expectations have done recently? I mean, there's no ability to make guidance.

So what if the damage is already done now? That's right. Now we have to keep in mind this has been 10 days. So it is a shock, a high amplitude shock, but only of seven days. So someone can restart the patient's heartbeat. I think that the White House is now keenly aware that Main Street can't handle a huge deleveraging because it is going to lead to job loss and he's listening to CEOs. So I think there's a really big window to repair the bulk of this damage.

And at the other side of this, of course, is that we have reciprocal tariffs in place that are acceptable. We have tax policy that's changing and less regulation. So I actually think the 2026 outlook is still quite good. Which puts are you, so to speak, more reliant on now? A Fed one or a Trump one? Well, I think there's a call at work and a couple of puts. I think that there is a Fed liquidity put that was in evidence today by the Fed.

When Collins. When Collins said what she did. Yes, exactly. But we know the Fed put on rates strikes much lower. The White House has a policy put because we know that you can't brinksmanship the global economy to a halt just to try to get China to blink. And I think that the call is, I think there's a negotiator call, which means I think the White House exercised the Navarro call and replaced him

with Besant. And you think that's a meaningful switch, certainly for the markets. For our clients is a huge switch because our clients were very worried that there was an incomprehensible level of reciprocal tariffs announced based on what they thought was flawed methodology. That was terrifying to them. So to see a different person negotiating these reciprocal deals

is a huge boost to confidence. Okay, you stay with us for a moment. Let's bring in our senior economics correspondent, Steve Leesman, for more on what's been happening in the bond market and what Susan Collins said today. She, of course, is the Boston Fed president, in which she said the Fed would quote, absolutely be prepared, end quote, to help stabilize the market if needed.

Well, Steve, obviously one can say, well, of course, and they are ready because they already have facilities prepared like they always do to deal with it. However, however, hearing somebody of that stature say that they're watching and they're at the ready and they'll do what they have to do if in fact they have to do it is all you need sometimes in a market that is hanging for any bit of decent news. Well it's only dangerous Scott if people think it means the Fed is really going to do something. I think it's important to know that what she said is probably true. Susan Collins, the Boston Fed president, does not speak for the Federal Reserve.

I think that's important. I think if you asked her, she would say she doesn't speak for the Federal Reserve. These would be decisions that would be made by the chair in consultation probably with the New York Fed if he were in a position, and Susan Collins said we were not Where liquidity was needed so I don't want to throw any cold water on what's happening here, but I would suggest There is no Evaluation by the Federal Reserve at this time that we're in a place where something Extraordinary is needed from the Federal Reserve extraordinary is needed from the Federal Reserve. All of my contacts in the liquidity world suggest that we are not in a position of needing extraordinary

liquidity from the Federal Reserve. My knowledge of what I think the Fed thinks is the same, that we're not in an extraordinary position. There are episodic issues out there, there's certainly going to be firm level issues that are out there, but it has been pretty remarkable, Scott, that we have not had that situation. As you know, and I think you do too, Scott, you work the phones to try to find the people who are inside the plumbing of the system, and they're not sending out any distress signals at this time. And maybe one of the reasons is because the Fed has these standing liquidity facilities,

which makes this different from other times we've been through these sorts of adjustments, which is if you know that not only you can get liquidity, but your counterparty can get liquidity, it changes the level of panic. So it may be that where there's less panic out there than there otherwise would be, given the adjustment that we're seeing in the bond market and in the dollar market, because of the existence of these facilities and the knowledge the Fed could come in. I think Susan Collins spoke the truth that the Fed could come in if it was needed, but I don't think that her comment should be taken as seeing that there is any possibility of

the Fed coming in with anything imminently here because there just is no evidence it's needed. I didn't, I didn't certainly I didn't take it as such. I'm not just I'm leaning against that possible interpretation by the market. Yeah, I'm not necessarily sure that that was the market's way of thinking about it either. It's maybe just merely a reassurance just to know that the feds not asleep at the wheel and they can be criticized at times in the past for maybe not seeing the obvious when it was right in front of them and then having to react to something

that was maybe made a little more difficult but we'll see just to hear somebody from the fed today come out and say hey we know what's going on we see it we're paying attention to it and if we have to do something, we'll do it. I think that's right. I think that's important, and I think you characterize it correctly. It's also well to remember, Scott, in this post-2019 world, post-pandemic world, then also post-SVB world, I do think the Fed has its ear to multiple parts of the ground in the markets in ways that it perhaps did not before those particular crises that I mentioned. We know that there's a robust desk at the New York Fed that is watching and listening and

talking to market participants. We know that the Treasury has an operation like that as well that I I don't know specifically but I assume that they're staffed up watching and listening. The bank supervisors ostensibly, some of them blew it in the SVB thing and that will not be repeated. There may be something new that they haven't thought of yet, but it's a different world, Scott,

especially if you think about the post Dodd-Frank world where these banks look to be far more well capitalized. Now there was an interesting comment from Jamie Dimon about letting relaxing certain regulatory requirements so the banks could play a bigger role in treasuries. But let me make one important distinction here. The Fed will ease the transition to a new equilibrium when it comes to whatever that new equilibrium is for the yield on bonds or the value of the dollar or the value of stocks, it will not stop that equilibrium change.

Alright, Steve, good stuff. Thank you very much. Steve Leesman, you've helped us a lot this week in really fast moving situations, so we appreciate you very much for that. Steve Leesman, our senior economics correspondent. Now let's bring in Chris Harvey of Wells Fargo Securities and Kevin Gordon of Charles Schwab. Tom Lee, as you all see in our wide shot here, is still with us. Mr. Harvey. All right. All right. So much has happened in such a short period of time. I can't even remember the last time we spoke whether you still have your 7,007

target on the S&P in place? We do. We do. And what we've been saying is, listen, we still think the second half is going to be strong. We think the Fed's going to be cutting rates. We think we're going to look through a bunch of things. We think we'll be talking more positively about trade and tariff. The other thing is, this slowdown is driven by an exogenous shock, not because balance sheets are upside down and backwards.

You can get through that. Are we too high? Maybe. We'll look at numbers this quarter and we'll figure it out, but we still are pretty positive on the second half of this year, and we do think we put it in the bottom. So if I hear you right,

you're still looking for ways in which your high target can be correct rather than looking for ways to try and take it down because you think you might have to. That's right, that's right. And I think there are plenty of reasons for that, right? What did we see on Wednesday? Up 10%.

Who would have told you we were going to be up 10%? What if the Fed is cutting by three times by the end of the year? What if what all this is is a repricing of risk? You talked about a bear market before. One of the things that's different from us and one of the things that's changed, we've talked about low vol, low vol, low vol.

It's worked really well, but now we're seeing the tech AI trade. Trading at a market multiple, sometimes a little bit of a premium, a little bit of a discount, that is a great secular story. That is US centric. That has been repriced no longer the consensus trade,

and that's a great long-term opportunity. And that's where you should be putting your attention. But if they're cutting three times, doesn't that mean they're cutting into something that's gotten worse? So before you said inflation expectations are going up, if you look at, this can get a little bit wonky, but if you look at breakeven on five years and 10 years, where you see breakevens are at two, two and a quarter. Where does the Fed want them?

Two, two and a quarter. The other thing is you're seeing real rates go higher. As real rates go higher, that's more restrictive. That forces the Fed to rethink what they're doing. So what's interesting about breakevens too is breakevens are actually saying either we're going to a recession longer term or the tariffs aren't a long term issue.

And I think it's the latter, not the former. I'm curious as to what volumes, I don't expect you to have this information at the top of your head obviously. I'm curious as to what volumes were on the Schwab website people look logging into their accounts and seeing what in the world was going on if they had the wherewithal to actually look. Yeah well the easy answer is high volumes were high no surprise surprise. But I mean even on a day like today, it's been actually more on the fixed income side, less on the equity side, where some of the, you know, concern is a strong word,

but I think just questions about why yields have been picking up even when we got two prints for inflation this week that were negative in month-over-month terms. So that aside though, you know, a lot of the consternation, I was with clients this week on the West Coast, you know, talking about more of these secular themes that may be shifting. And I think one of the difficulties about the sell-off that's happened already, but also trying to gauge where we go from here is that, you know, this is a man-made shock, not something that we really have a history book to use. So I think that if you just look at that alone and you're starting to weave in something

like the Fed, our view is that if it's not an interest rate problem, it's probably not an interest rate solution. So I have very little conviction or very low conviction that even if the Fed were to step in with an emergency rate cut or more cuts that have been priced in, that that would be some sort of elixir for what ultimately ails the economy if there is something that does ail the economy in the end. And I think the sort of rapid nature of tariff policy itself, on again, off again, maybe a delay, maybe we'll get to some sort of deal with X country, that's really, I think, what

ultimately leads to a slowdown in the economy. It doesn't have to be some drastic recession, but you were sort of alluding to it earlier, if this economic momentum to the downside takes on a life of its own And if companies are ultimately just gonna say hey if there if we don't know the rules of the game We're not gonna play I think that is sort of kind of isolates itself and starts to sort of feed on itself But it doesn't have to be drastic It takes some level of guts though to stick to your guns the way you are and try and build a case I know you're not stubborn, but to try and build a case to where you actually, actually

think we could get to. Okay. So we wrote a note today. What did we learn? We weren't sure whether the tariffs were revenue generation, whether negotiating ploy, if they were something else. What we know today or we think we know today, they're a negotiation tool. You think so?

You think you have that clarity? I think so. I think so. I think what Trump did is he said, I'm willing to take the economy into a recession. I'm willing to sink the stock market. That's how far I'm willing to go. Right? At first we thought we were losing leverage, but then we thought now that he stepped away,

he's realized he's shown people what he's willing to do, they need to come to the table, they will come to the table, and we will get some sort of deals done over the next couple months and in the first half of this year. With China, China's a tough nut, and I don't see either one really breaking on that one, but with our allies, I do see progress. The most important thing for me is progress. We're beginning to see that, and I think there is hope that we will make progress in the next 90 days.

I guess I take a bit of a different view if you were just to look at what was announced last week. The reciprocal tariff chart itself was based on, I mean, we all know this, but based on trade deficits. I think if you look at the language from the president himself, he still talks about the desire to close trade deficits. So if the desire is still bad, if that's the end goal, I think that is probably a more negative bearish outcome because it's a tough thing to do.

It's virtually impossible with every country listed on the chart itself. But I think you are making an assumption that you know what the White House defines as victory. Because they could define victory as something that we don't know and how it's titrated really makes a difference because I think Chris Harvey could be right. If it ends up being pretty acceptable to markets and it's a better deal for the U.S. I mean, people are going to look at 2026 and put a higher multiple on that. Yeah, I think the ultimate question would be though, what are the metrics of success? We don't know because they haven't outlined them. And then also if the metrics of success, if you define some sort of concession or some

sort of lowering of a tariff rate as a victory, but tariffs stay on because there still is this desire to close the trade deficit with all of these countries, that to me would still be net negative because the move to that kind of world where you're trying to totally shift how we do trade, that's a very long term process, you know, and it doesn't it takes much longer than just, you know, three and a half points you make, to which I turn back to you. Right. If you even if you have rollback of some of the picked out of the sky numbers from the board, if you still have tariffs of any kind on for the duration of the year minimum.

Does that hurt your case or no? If we're making progress, that's a real positive. And so one of the things that we've been talking about is deficits, right? What we're going to play with and what's liquid natural gas is one of the things that's going to come up time and time again. What's going to come up is ag. What's going to come up is ag. What is going to come up is armaments. And this is how we're going to start to close that gap on trade.

Again, if we make progress, right, the first time, whether it comes from Japan or South Korea or Vietnam, we'll have the template. When we have that template, now we can take that template, we can move forward. One of the things that I also think is going to be involved take that template, we can move forward. One of the things that I also think is gonna be involved in that template is that our partners might be forced

to put tariffs on China as well because we see China or the administration sees China as the existential threat and they've been circumventing these things. We need to stop that. And so when we talk about what the goals are, I think the goals are lower oil, lower rates, putting China in a box and having fair trade or balanced trade in North America,

between the EU and parts of Asia. And then we can move forward from there. But when you got the number of 145% on China, your reaction was what? They don't wanna do business with China. They wanna put as much pressure on China as they will. They know that Xi will not bend, and that's really the purpose.

We want to slow down their economy as fast as possible. Yeah, but if you try and slow down their economy, you're hurting our economy at the same time. You are. No doubt about it. We need more stuff from them than they need from us. It's not so, but if you're making progress elsewhere, that's a good thing.

Eventually, what I think is we'll get to some reasonable middle level, not so but if you're making progress elsewhere that's a good thing eventually what I think is we'll get to some reasonable middle level but the point is you want to put as much pressure on them as possible because it has to be extreme right they will not they're in a position where they they've dug in we've dug in and it's got to be a lot of pressure and what we're going to do is we're gonna release that pressure by doing pressure. And what we're going to do is we're going to release that pressure by doing, or what I think we're going to do is we're going to release that pressure by doing deals

with other parts of Asia, with across North America and in the EU. And what we want to do is we want to put China, or what I think they want to do is they want to put China in a box, which creates more pressure. What do you guys think of Tom's idea of when I say, well, what do you want to, when I said, do you want to buy?

Yeah, I want to buy. I said, what? He said, mega caps. Those are like the biggest question in the market right now, no? Yeah, huge question. I mean, I think that if you were to look at, you know, if you were sort of narrative agnostic

and you were to just look at what the charts say, more on the sentiment side of things, as we're big watchers of sentiment, I mean, virtually every metric we look at has been completely washed out. A lot of them touching kind of the December 2018 lows or all-time lows. So looking at that alone,

you could look at forward returns from there and say, yeah, things are pretty, you know, the ground looks pretty set for any kind of durable bounce, and I think that's why you have days like Wednesday, where the market is this coiled spring. Moving forward though, and I think coming back to the idea that this is an environment that is really unlike any other in market history, if you are going into recession and if you're starting to see the market price that, you probably still have I think more

room to the downside. But that's the ultimate unknown because probably not until the summer is when you see the connection, if the connection still stands between soft data and the hard data whether higher inflation expectations are going to lead consumer to consumers pulling back on spending or if they're able to still you know enjoy a relatively resilient labor market and that doesn't affect anything then we could probably definitively say there's not as much of a connection not as much to worry about but you know because of

how fast moving this is as well you know it's take some time, I think, to figure it out. Some of the interesting action today is around the financials, which I obviously reported this morning that the numbers were by and large good, the commentary was not. Most people said, I think, who cares about the numbers? It's all about the commentary.

But these stocks like JP Morgan are clearly helping the overall market because JPM is up almost 5%. Leslie Picker follows the space and follows that money. The stocks are acting good, even in the faces you heard yourself of commentary that was as cautious as we expected. You're exactly right, Scott.

Investors paying little attention to the numbers themselves, instead focusing on the repercussions of everything that's going on in the macro markets and policy front. As you can imagine, those types of questions truly dominated the conference calls today. Broadly, the executive said, consumers and credit trends are actually holding up fine for now. Commercial clients, on the other hand,

have paused big transactions and investment and no one was really willing to make any predictions about the yield curve and what it will mean for loan making profitability. As for macro commentary, Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Sharf saying they expect quote continued volatility and uncertainty and are prepared for a slower economic environment 2025. JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon reiterating his shareholder letter from earlier this week and saying the economy is facing considerable turbulence. Morgan Stanley CEO Ted Pick,

saying quote economists are telling us the risk of recession has materially increased but the consensus today is softer, not negative growth and Black Rocks Larry Fink saying that quote, uncertainty and anxiety about the future of markets and the economy are dominating client conversations. Next week, we'll hear from Goldman Sachs

on Monday, Bank of America and Citigroup on Tuesday. Scott, but your point about just the lack of clarity that's out there, but no real major bad news at this point in time, certainly helping get a bid for a lot of these names today. Yeah, I think you're right about that. Leslie, thank you very much. That's Leslie Picker. I just want to point in time, certainly helping get a bid for a lot of these names today. Yeah, I think you're right about that. Leslie, thank you very much. That's Leslie Picker.

I just want to point out too, we're hanging around the highs of the day now. We could show, I could show you the Dow intraday, I could show you the NASDAQ, because NASDAQ's the best right now of the majors. It's up more than 2%. Just, and now the Dow's up better than 700 points. So it's a Gordon Harvey Lee bounce.

That's what we're going to call it. We are until we're not. Sounds like a law firm. You don't want to be a law firm right now. That's not a good place to be. Financials. What do we think? And earnings in general.

We already know, don't we, that earnings are going to be bad. It's the degree to which we have to really take down numbers. Yeah. Well, I mean, today is an example of like stocks. The banks have no guidance. That's bad news. And they're rallying that they look pretty washed out. And I think earnings season is going to be very revelatory.

But I think companies are going to get a pass for giving no guidance because it is sort of a binary issue right now. Some people were looking at that being another shoe to drop once you get all the... now we're just we just began the season obviously. Right. But if you can't give guidance that speaks to how bad some of these companies might think the environment really is. So if you roll the clock back two weeks ago we thought earning season would be a disaster. The first dozen companies we saw almost no matter what you report the stock went down. Then we had the stock market go down and now we're beginning to think as long as you report something that's not as bad as expected it will be okay at least for now.

As far as financials we like the group. Really great opportunity. They're a market leader. They've been a market leader. Good valuation. Yeah, banks are still, the pushback on banks is, hey, if we're going to head into a slowdown or recession, those are tough. But they're telling you that credit costs aren't as bad. Yes, there's a ton of uncertainty. There's a ton of risk out there. But the risk award actually looks pretty good.

Yeah, I mean, I think to the extent that what was the standout to me in fourth quarter reporting season is that as you were going through that season, where the blended growth rate went from an estimated, you know, mid to high single digits, all the way up to close to 17%, all the estimates for every quarter in 25 got ratcheted lower. So to some extent, you were kind of pricing in maybe a slower earnings backdrop,

but also now I would say the consensus is probably that most companies are gonna withdraw guidance or just bring it lower. So yeah, I think the major surprise would be if we weren't priced for that or if that wasn't the expectation and then all of a sudden companies started saying we actually have no visibility. So to Tom's point, it has kind of become almost mainstream to do it. And it's similar to, not that I'm equating this at all to the dark days of of the pandemic but at the time that you had seen a record number of companies pull guidance that was actually the time that was sort of the best for the market looking forward because we already knew

what the case was for earnings that they were sort of at their low point and then it gave you the launch pad from there. All right. Difference is this time but we'll leave it there. Good weekend everybody. Thank you very much for being here. Tom, Chris and Kevin Kevin. All right, let's send it to Pippa Stevens now for a look at the biggest names moving into the close. Pippa? Hey, Scott, well, gold's hitting another record high. It's 21st of the year as the tariff turmoil sends investors towards safe haven assets.

That's pushing up shares of the producers, including Barrick and Newmont. UBS upgrading Newmont to buy, noting sustainable cash returns. That stock pacing for its fifth gain this week and shares of strategy strategy formerly known as micro strategy soaring alongside Bitcoin as President Trump overturns a Biden era rule requiring decentralized finance platforms to report crypto transaction data. The stock is rebounding up 11% after crypto stocks struggled the past

few months as investors shed riskier assets. Scott? All right, Pippa. Thank you, Pippa Stephens. We are just getting started here on the Bell. Up next, Light Streets. Glen Cacher weighs in on tech as we wrap up a very volatile week for that sector.

We're live at the New York Stock Exchange this Friday. You are watching Closing Bell on CNBC. Dow just off its very highest level 655 plus we're back after this. Well, Apple is higher today after a very volatile run of late Steve Kovac is here with more on that stock because it has so much uncertainty around it even before this happened. And now we're trying to figure out what this next thing actually is gonna mean.

Yeah, and uncertainty is an understatement with all these tariffs back and forth. So let me lay down what we know and what we don't know, Scott. First, what we do know. Apple did get that slightly reprieved this week with tariffs in India and Vietnam dropping down to 10%. Not too hard for Apple to absorb that, but this doesn't have the manufacturing capacity in India

to fulfill US demand for iPhones. That's still mostly going to absorb that, but this doesn't have the manufacturing capacity in India to fulfill U.S. demand for iPhones. That's still mostly going to happen in China. And what we don't know, how Apple is going to respond, will there be price increases, how much will they increase, what does that do to margins, and when can we expect those increases to happen? The reps I talked to over at Apple, they're pretty adamant about remaining silent, so you're not going to get any clarity from the company quite yet. One hope though that people have been talking about recently, President Trump floated the

idea of company-specific tariffs that could happen. He said that this week. Maybe Apple can backchannel its way into making that one happen. As for a made-in-the-USA iPhone, that's been a lot of chatter about that this week as well. I'd put you to Kiff Leswing's story over on CNBC.com. Really good breakdown of how that may or may not happen, Scott. All right. Good stuff, Steve. Thank you very much for that, Steve Kovac. Now let's bring in Glenn Kacher, founder and chief investment officer of Lightstreet Capital. It's nice

to see you. Nice to see you too, Scott. We've been working for the weekend here, right? Yeah, I hope not. 3000,000 miles from New York. How's it feel out there? Feels pretty good. But I think we're all struggling with what's happening in the real economy and with the tariffs and how that's going to impact the capital markets going forward. How do you think this is all gonna shake out?

I mean, I just had some guests on who say tech is the place to be. It's your wheelhouse, obviously. And a lot of these stocks have gotten cut down pretty well. Yeah, as an investor, we're looking to invest in industries, sectors, companies that makes products that are one, difficult to compete with or to replicate, and two, that, you know, companies that innovate faster than their competitors.

And to us, that, you know, tends to scream technology. That's also the sector that we spend all our time in. But we feel pretty good about where we're standing. I'd say, you know, know similar what Tom was saying a few minutes ago. The semiconductor space I think you know we've seen those stocks mark down. We look at

the AI race and the company companies that are buying those semiconductors. The harness AI. And those companies that don't buy those semiconductors that don't rent them that don't build those applications

to participate in AI are going to fall behind and lose out to either new players or their existing competitors. So we look at microprocessors that make all this possible, the brains of those servers that serve up these cloud AI services from, you know, Nvidia, AMD, Broadcom, and say, that's the place I want to be.

Those are the hardest chips to make in the world. And so we want to own those companies. We want to own Taiwan Semiconductor, which is the company that actually makes all of those chips physically in Taiwan. And we want to own that company. And as the quote you just put up said, you know, it's impossible to avoid shipping those chips

in from Taiwan. And so I think that those are, you know, this is a sector that's going to get treated well by the Trump administration. As an investment manager, how are you viewing all of this? I mean, I've seen, you know, a post at least of yours on social media about the tariffs, obviously not being in favor of what the administration has done. But the bigger ramifications of how all of this is playing out and how it all went down,

you're having to make your investment decisions based on the unknown. Well, you know, I'll clarify that. I mean, I think that President Trump and the administration, they're attempting to restore the economy by doing three things, fixing government fraud, waste, and abuse, right? I think we can all agree we've got major problems there. We're demanding that our allies take on more

of their own defense spending. I think that's a fair request. And third, we wanna reduce the unfairness in global trade. I think that's a rational goal. I mean, when I travel around the world and I talk to, you know, US companies that are trying to access some of these foreign markets, it is unfair.

There are unfair tariffs, there are unfair barriers, there's theft of IP. We've got to eliminate those things, reduce and eliminate those things. So I think the administration's efforts in trade come from a rational place. The problem is that it's the implementation that has been so off. We've taken a mercurial approach to solving this problem with tariff levels that are so damaging neither side, us or the other side, could live with them in order to, in theory, force feeding negotiations. But at the same time, you're upsetting the entire capital markets and causing interest

rates to fly up. And this is a policy error. So we need an administration. We need a little bit more sage kind of behavior, the kind of talk that Ted Pick or Jamie Dimon have when they speak to market participants. And you know we need that kind of negotiation and that kind of behavior as opposed to tough bombastic talk in the Rose

Garden. We'll leave it there. I think it's an appropriate place to leave it. Glenn I appreciate your time very much. We'll see you soon. Sure thing.

That's Glenn Kacher up next. Tesla shares falling in today's session. What's driving that leg lower's Glenn Kacher up next. Tesla shares falling in today's session. What's driving that leg lower? We'll tell you next. All right, welcome back. Let's send it over to Phil LeBeau now for a look at what's behind the move in Tesla today, Phil. More tariff news is one factor, Scott. Take a look at shares of Tesla. And we talked to you about what's happening in China, where in China they are now halting shipments

of new orders of the cyber, excuse me, US-made models. That's the Model S and the X that are built here in the US. Not in high volume over to China, but not a surprise that they're halting those. Meanwhile, Tesla is offering a lower-priced Cybertruck, now under $70,000. Now, the Cybertruck is only here in the United States, so this is not tariff related, but it is a reflection on the fact that Cybertruck demand has been extremely weak. Tesla reports its Q1 results on

April 22nd. And then finally, take a look at shares of General Motors. GM today saying that it will halt EV van production in Canada. This is according to Reuters. We've reached out to GM for a comment on this. And you might be saying, EV van? What's that? That is the Bright Drop electric delivery van. That's what you would see a company like an Amazon, a package delivery firm use. They only sold 101 of them in the first quarter. They are going to be halting production at least through October.

And again, those are made up in Canada. They say it's be halting production at least through October. And again, those are made up in Canada. They say it's because of slow sales, according to Reuters, Scott, but you know that tariffs out of Canada for anything likely playing a factor as well. Yeah, for sure. Phil, thank you. Phil LeBeau. Up next, biggest movers into the close. Hey, Scott, what one retailer the firm says can manage through a trade war? The name to watch coming up next. All right, we have less than 15 to the closing bell. Let's get back to Pippa Stevens now for a look at the key stocks that she's watching. What do you see?

Hey Scott, shares of Walmart are rising after Mizuho initiated the stock at Outperform with a 105 target saying the company is delivering the complete package even through a trade war. Analysts also saying that a decade of investment spent to transform the company from a store-based retailer into more of a tech-led player is at a tipping point. And shares of American Express and The Green following an upgrade to buy at Bank of America,

the firm calling the stock recession resilient at an attractive multiple, saying the current downturn is a time to buy a high quality company. Scott? All right, Pippa. Thank you, Pippa Stevens. Coming up, we drill down on some big moves in the energy space. We're back after this. All right. We're now in the closing bell market zone. CNBC senior markets commentator Mike Santoli is here to break down these crucial moments of this trading day. What a difference a week makes.

I mean last week right Thursday Friday terrible you go into the weekend thinking you might have an event on Monday that you don't want. People obviously don't want to get too negative today going into a weekend where we are hanging on any word from the White House of any incremental development. Yeah, for sure. And you know, even early Monday, of course, you did kind of test that downside. You got new lows in the S&P 500. The game all week has been do we have evidence that the acute phase of the shock maybe is ending? And I

think you have some evidence that it's tentative. Each day this week, S&P 500 made a higher low intraday. It's sort of trying to stair step back. It's up more than 10% from the intraday lows on Monday. Some of the pressure has definitely dissipated. You're seeing the range go down. You know today it's kind of drifting in the same range we were in but since Wednesday. All that I guess is to the good. You're making use of the fact that you had that selling frenzy last week. The market short-term got sold out. That's different from saying that the market has successfully priced in, ultimately, what

the economic impact is, because there's such a wide range there that there's just no way to actually handicap it with any confidence. The other piece of it is, there's ways to look at the news flow of the last 24 hours with the 145% versus 120% or whatever tariffs on goods between the US and China on the absolute extreme panic in the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Survey this morning and say, okay, it doesn't get worse than that. Whatever we've seen so far, it probably should work back from there to get a little bit less

scary. So I guess all of that's in the mix in terms of how this market's managing to try and find some traction. And you don't know in any way, you know, the real collateral damage. As people see like, well, okay, look at the dollar. Do people think we're no longer a trusted trading partner or the worthiness to putting right? I think it was Bank of America from American exceptionalism today to American repudiation.

And you know, you got to get away from that kind of trade to make the market feel a little bit better because pressure points on yields and I mean on bonds, yields shooting up, and the dollar weakness was pretty startling to look at. Yes, that market action definitely needs you to ask very big questions, structural questions about something huge

is changing. There's this global tide going out of money from dollar assets. Maybe what I can say is it looked like the 30-year treasury yield was headlong past 5% headed this morning. It stopped at 498.

It came down to like the low 48. It's at four right now. It's at 414 in the 10 year for that matter came down as well. Like 460. I was talking to 30. But yeah the 440. Yes.

But the point is I look to the wrong one. The point is that we came off. We came off the highs. It released the pressure a little bit. The dollar bounced exactly where it should have been like multi year support in the wrong one. We came off the highs, it released the pressure a little bit, the dollar bounced exactly where it should have been, like multi-year support in the dollar index.

Who knows if that lasts, but I think that the lesson is, if we're not getting assaulted by those kinds of capital market stresses, those dollar asset flight, and all the rest of it, then the stock market can try and figure out if this range makes any sense. While we listen for earnings and try to figure out if the stock market has gotten ahead of the analysts and the companies and

priced in what's going to be either a a dim or diminished outlook for most companies yeah I was looking at the three I looked up I saw three yeah three months big difference between the three month and the 30 year Yeah, the yield on the 30 year is now in the red the bikes pointed is 484 just so around some buyers near five percent. Yeah, a lot of pages this week. I want to make sure Michael thank you