Closing Bell - Closing Bell: 10/22/25

Episode Date: October 22, 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. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to closing bell. I'm Scott Wobner, live from Post 9 here at the New York Stock Exchange. The first mag seven of earning season. That is top of mind. It's just about an hour away. We hear from Tesla. Experts are standing by with everything you need to know. The stock, as you see, is down, and we can't wait for that report. Along with most of the Big Cat Brethren, they're down too, having a market impact, certainly. There's a look at three of them. Amazon and Apple are lower. There's the majors, as we said. So the NASDAQ is obviously the weak. of the bunch today with 60 to go in regulation as the mega caps pull back.

Netflix is sharply lower following its own earnings report. The AI power plays. They're also losing some gains today. Take you through some of those. The banks are a bit weaker and some of the air also coming out of the high flying names like Palantir and Robin Hood. We'll watch all of that. Kathy Woods' Arc Innovation Fund is down sharply as well.

There it is down near 5%. Take a look at the small caps. Russell 2000 is falling more than 2% today, turning next. for the week as well. Takes us to our talk of the tape. Tesla earnings always closely follow. Tonight will be no different. Our Phil Lebo gets things started today with what matters most of all, Phil.

You know, Scott, aside from the numbers, you know, profit, losses, revenue, what really stands out, three key questions. First of all, has the China market stabilized? We saw better than expected deliveries in the third quarter. So that brings up the question. Has it gone through the soft patch and Tesla now can. operate from a position of strength there. What specifics does Elon must give regarding robo-taxie growth? Or is it going to be what we've heard before? They're going to be huge.

That's what the street wants. They want specifics. And then finally, humanoid robots, humanoid robots, I should say. When will they roll out? He has given some indication about early demand slash prototypes rolling out. Do we get more specifics on that? Energy storage deployments rarely gets much attention when Tesla reports its results, but it's been a huge growth engine for the company. And they are already this year above what they deployed last year. The margins are 27%. If that continues to grow, those margins, that's going to be a huge driver to the upside for Tesla. As you take a look at the chairs, remember, after today, and the conference call with Elon Musk, which will really drive the stock, both after hours as well as

tomorrow. Two weeks from now is the next big catalyst. That's when the shareholders of Tesla vote on the pay package for Elon Musk. You already know, Scott, there are some big institutional groups that are advising Tesla shareholders to vote against it, but it is critical that Elon Musk, if he gets that package, many believe that's the green light for Tesla shares to go on an extended run. Yeah, well, they've been on a nice run over six months, 80%, or so. Phil, thanks. Come back to you in just a bit. Phil the boat sets the table for us. Now let's bring in Wed Bush Securities, Dan Ives, and CNBC contributor, Bryn-Tockington of Requisite Capital. Dan, I come to you first. It's great to have you both with us.

The street would seem to believe, only going, of course, through what the chart has shown us, that the worst is behind this name. You believe it is? Oh, yeah. I think the worst is in the rear-of-in mirror, because, look, that was the must-brand issues, you know, what we saw with deliveries. Now you're seeing a stabilization. China continues to be the key, as Phil talked about. I think that's actually an upward trajectory. But the reality is that that's just an appetizer. It just sets the table to now it's going to be its most important chapter of growth ever,

the autonomous and robotics feature. And I think that's what's really the focus here. We think autonomous is worth the trillion dollars alone. That would be key on the call laying out we believe 30 or 35 cities within the next year. That's how you get to a $2 trillion mark cap, and we ultimately believe it's $3 trillion by the end the next year, and now this starts that golden chapter. This idea of stabilizing, deliveries are still down 6%, I think, year over year. You had a pickup before the expiration of the tax credits expiring, so we have to be careful

not to read too much into that for the overall story, I would think. And then if you look at the international picture, it doesn't look good. So what leads you to believe that the story truly has turned? I think it's really China. I mean, if you look at all the numbers coming out of China, I expect much to hit on the call. Stabilization to growth. You have refreshes coming out.

You'll be on a trajectory going into next year, $5, $5.50K per quarter. Look, and that, I mean, it's obviously that's very important, but the reality is going to drive the stock going forward, it's now, it's the AI chapter of growth that's common. I mean, I believe as a physical AI play, Tesla and Nvidia, the two best out there. Now you actually start to see rubber meet the road. This is going to be the key.

Stabilization on the core business, but I mean, this is, that's why much right now, wartime CEO, eventually XAI, you know, the Sherald and me, they'll own part of that. This becomes an AI story going forward. Yeah, Bryn, I mean, I know how much. much of a fan you are of Musk. I mean, you've said as much. But that doesn't mean you're a huge fan of the stock, which, frankly, you haven't been over the last, I don't, you know, five, six months or so. So where does that leave somebody like you as a shareholder today? Well, to me, it's about adding to the position and then taking advantage when I feel it's

overpriced. I added to the position, as we all know, around 290 when he announced the American party, also at 320. And so when, you know, once again, when he continues to do his little side hustles, the market sells off. It's a wonderful time to add to it. Right now, we're still too close, I think, from a stock perspective to that 2024 high, which is around in the 460s. And so I think that as we go into this earnings call to kind of build on what Dan was saying, I do think we have like peak EV sales over the, like this quarter will be peak because of those pull forwards. But I don't think that is what's going to move the stock. And just to give some examples, with full self-driving, with the robo taxis,

I saw Sawyer made a really interesting post that in Q3, they announced that when you were using the autopilot, there was one crash every 6.3 million miles. If you look at NITES data with just regular cars, it's one every 700,000. So that's incredible. And so I think that the market's going to want to see, are robo-taxies in Austin and the other cities going to be able to go unsupervised, like Elon said in the summer? And so I think it's going to come down to execution of the robo-taxies in the short term. I also think Optimus, he's done podcast. Those hands are really hard to get right.

I think we're still going to be in that proto-type stage as they roll out Optimus 3. So to your point about the stock price, I would add to the position around. 390, I do think it's going to be constrained here up around the 4.36, but if it gets to 460, I don't see this quarter being the quarter that it breaks out. See, Dan, that's so interesting to me, because you have somebody who I think in the bigger picture is as bullish as you, but certainly has a more sober view of where the stock currently is, where it's come from to where it is, and where it might go in the near term. So how do you rebut that if you want to? Yeah, and Bryn, obviously brings up great points.

I mean, to me, it's really about, look, picking your spots, you know, it's obviously always tough on Tesla. I just view it is the underlying demand is stable relative to China. Margins is felt tough. I think that's a slight uptick, you know, going forward next few quarters. But Scott, the reality is, like, the autonomous market, I think they're going to own 80% of it, you know, in terms of worldwide. And this now starts, when you look at Optimus, I believe they'll talk about.

talk about, you know, what's going to be volume production in 2026. And that's why this is the most important chapter ever in Tesla's history. And that's why Musk right now is so engaged. And look, could you, you know, could you miss, you know, like here or there in terms of where the stock's going to go? But my view is this is a stock going to 6, 700, and I think beyond, just given where this now plays in the AI revolution. And I think Tesla continues to be the most undervalued AI name in the market. Brindy, do you believe that, as Dan does, that the two most important AI plays,

I think everybody would be on Team Invidia in that conversation. But Tesla? Well, I think there's more than one winner. I think with the AI, obviously, you know, Jensen's talked about, he's never seen Elon, a company stand up, you know, what they did for XAI on the AI data center as fast as he did. And so investors who don't own Tesla miss what Elon and his team do so well is manufacture.

And so to me, the company's always been this manufacturing vertically integrated marvel. But just we haven't seen since like the Thomas Edison days. And so I think that as an investor, though, I try to be pragmatic is like, if I bought it today, I would definitely sell the 460 calls of the 500 because I just don't think there's enough fundamental energy for the stock to break through because right now they're going to have from an earnings perspective, I think year over year, it's going to be down earnings 22%. And so you still have this moment where they're pivoting from the, I think, the EV sales that are stable, but the new business, which I don't think is going to have a dollar of revenue

anytime soon. And so I just think, play the stock that way, sell calls. I agree with Dan, $600, the world is their oyster, but I don't think it's going to happen in 2026. The hands on the optimist, he's talked about this. This is really, really difficult. and also with the rare earth minerals. They need those magnets to be able to make this work. And I don't think they have the access to those magnets to actually mass produce the robots right now. All right, that's a great setup, you guys.

Thanks so much. Dan and Bryn, we'll see you soon. As I said earlier, most of the mega caps are lower today ahead of next week's earnings. That's where we begin with our panel this hour. Liz Thomas, head of investment strategy at SOFI, Adam Parker, founder and CEO of Trivariate, and Stephanie Link of High Tower, both Stefan Adams,

our CNBC contributors. Liz, I'll start with you. So this is really the entree into Mag 7 earnings. What's the great takeaway going to be? Do you think when these have delivered and what's it going to mean for the market? Well, really the story, as it has been and I think it will continue, is about sentiment.

And I was on Closing Bell about a month ago and talked about the fact that I think this rally can continue and the bull market can continue, but it won't be without these intermittent breakdowns in beta. And we are right in the midst of an intermittent breakdown in beta, and it's happening the way that you would expect. So as we hear from these Meg 7 names, I think it's going to affect sentiment. I think investors are going to react to it, and it may feel more volatile than usual just because of how extended we got. So you look at some of the factor performance over the last week.

We've got value stocks, high-quality stocks, doing well, right? And then you look at some of the stuff that hasn't done well. Momentum has really taken a hit. So a lot of those crowded trades, a lot of the stuff that's run up so much gold being on that list as well. You're talking about froth, perceived frothy areas of the market. Not even perceived, real. Yeah, yeah. Right.

So real frothy. Real froth in the market coming out. So as the Meg 7 information comes out, you're going to see sentiment react to that more than anything. And then again, this is all about guidance. It's all about spending. And I think for the rest of 2025, it will continue to be about spending. But in 2026, it becomes, where is the real profit? How do you see it?

Nice to see everyone. Thanks for having me. Look, I think the earning season for Mag 7 is going to be, what the market needs is Goldilocks on the CapEx. So you need to believe it's going higher. The CapEx is going higher. Is there anything to lead you to believe it's not? May you really expect them to say something otherwise?

No, I think in the distribution of it's flat to down, higher or way higher, you've got a sign probability. I've got a low one to flat the down in the next couple of quarters. But I think it has to come up. I think you have to be convinced that they're still very committed to high return on that spending. I think there's some risk that they actually spend too much in the short term and freak people out a little bit. So, you know, I'm not saying Microsoft's going to have negative free cash flow. Are we fast that stage?

I don't think so. And I don't agree. The froth is an interesting word. I think there's froth in the profit list. You know, you see ARC down 5%. it's a, you know, a low-quality hyper-growth proxy or whatever Goldman profitless basket. Like those things, there's froth, you know, the number of companies that are up 100% or more in six months. But I don't know if there's froth in the Mag 7.

No, no. I think it's a little bit different. I don't think that list is talking about that. No, no, she didn't say that. No, she didn't say that. If you look at Liktab, you'd say the gold miners, the gold stocks are a massive. There's a lot of speculation. If I showed you the AI power plays, a lot of these stocks that Steph loves so much, they've gone like crazy.

Yeah, I just think there's a risk that, you know, if you say the Mag 7 going to be way bigger in two years or way smaller, I'll take way bigger. I think there's a reasonable chance that that happens, and it's hard for people who actively manage to beat the index when that happens, so that nobody's rooting for that, and they want breadth and all that. But the data center spent, I mean, believe two-thirds of what Jensen says, or whatever, multiply it by 0.6? Like, it's going to grow 100% in the next 18 months. So, like, do I want exposure to stop growing 100%? I think so, kind of, yeah. What do you think? I mean, there is air coming out of a lot of those areas. You know, even stocks that have had good earnings.

Look at G. Iver Nova, perfect example of that today. You can pull it up. Good report. Not good reaction in the stock market. Isn't that a sign of something? No. And I know you were going to start with that for me. G.E. Renova and vert. We walk right into it when you're talking about perceived froth or things that have gone up a ton. and then they actually deliver on the earnings and the stock goes down. They're up a lot.

OK, GE-R-Nova is up 100% in the last year, not just last month or two. It's actually down 17% now from its high, which I think is quite interesting. Vertive rose 40% or 45% from September, early September. So, yeah, maybe it was a little extended, but the expectations were so high, but these quarters were so good. So maybe you see, when I always say earnings season is silly season, And that's exactly what I mean. The fundamentals of both of these companies today were mind-boggling,

vertive, beat and raised, total revenue up 28%. Operating margins beat by 200 basis points. Orders up 60% booked to bill up at 1.4 times. How can people only say silly season when the stocks they love go down on earnings? They don't look at the trajectory of the stock going up and saying that's silly season the whole way up. No, it's not because of the fundamentals that I just told you. orders of 60% for an industrial company is unheard of. And same thing with GEVernova, their orders grew 50%.

And they actually beat and raised for electrification growth. They raised their numbers. So numbers are going higher. Stocks follow profits eventually. I don't care if these are crowded stocks or not. This is a theme that you want to have long-term exposure to. Throw in Eaton, throw in Quantas Services and Rockwell. I can name a whole bunch and I want to own them all.

Look at Oclo, for example, which I don't think you own. That's a different story. That totally is a speculation, in my mind. Any of the nuclear stuff is total speculation. You're not going to use nuclear 100% of nuclear. Well, maybe there are six degrees of speculation in this market. Could be. Okay?

Very literary. Maybe Saffire in the house here. Because everything is a little bit speculative on the whole AI thing. You're assuming that you're going to get all the deliverables on where all this money is going and all the power that's needed. and at some point the record may skip. Not when you look at backlog up 15% of GEVernova, at $135 billion. That's real money.

That's real orders, right? So to me, the backlogs are the most important. Company commentary is extremely important, and they both were very positive. And so if they pull back because they've run a bit, that's your opportunity. So I did some work a couple weeks ago on this exact point, which is the stocks that end up beating earnings go up more than the 10 days before the print than they do the few days after.

So if you're a real investor, like these guys, they're not buying it just for the print. They're buying it because I think it's structurally going to go up and beat and raise multiple times. So that is a pretty common pattern where companies don't react as well. That certainly happens. The second thing I'd say is back to what I've said previously, like you were like, you know, is Tesla and Nvidia, the two winners from AI? I disagree with that. And it's been in my head, so it's been bothering me, so I don't know if I'm hijacking where you're headed. It doesn't matter, go out of it.

But I'll take in the semi, I'll take Nvidia and Taiwan semi all day long. And I think that Taiwan Semi is the most important asset on Earth, personally. And if I'll take a power name too, you know, she listed a bunch that I like, but I probably take, you know, if you're saying this is happening and I think a company can be 510 X bigger, I'll probably go CEG. I'll probably take Constellation. So I'll take CEG, Taiwan Semi, NVIDIA. I think I like that cocktail better than Tesla.

But I don't, problem I have with Tesla is I don't, it's impregnable to analysis. And that's never my strength. I had a fund manager text me during the conversation and say the notion that they're going to have 80% of the, autonomous market's ridiculous. So, I mean... Yeah, I'll take the under on that. But I, you know, but I, but what these guys can be right about is who knows where it's going to trade in a three to six month view.

Every hedge fund guy I talk to all the time has lost money shorting it 17 times in the last 10 years for reasons that have nothing to do without trade. So it's kind of impregnable to research at this point. And you're dreaming on 2035 humanoid volumes or whatever. So I'm not saying good or bad, but I know what Taiwan semi does and I know it can't be replaced. The other point, though, is... is maybe it's playing off of what step was saying that the positive story about the market is

the self-correction the self-correcting mechanism that this market has that it it can suss out sort of areas of froth and okay so the stocks can come in and then they'll give buyers a choice if they want to come in at that moment too we've sort of done that on almost every step of the way over the last you know four years well there's there's interesting relationships between i think three big things. You've got the macro economy, which is sort of a black box right now because we're not getting data. You've got earnings results, which are very strong, fundamentally sound, and there's real results there to hold on to. There's nothing broken in that. And it's really hard to imagine that the stock market is going to have some kind of major breakdown while profit

margins are where they are and rising. And then you've got the market itself. And because we have economic data, even leading into this, that was softening, cooling, concerns over the labor market. We've got a Fed meeting coming next week. I think that keeps us rational, too. It keeps us from getting so far in that euphoric camp that everything just gets completely unhinged. Now, we're a little unhinged in certain areas, and there have been some breakdowns that are concerning. I better want to get into private credit and all of that right now. But I think the cooling economic data has kept us rational, and, to your point, these little shakeouts that we have. We shake the tree, some of the bad apples fall off. It's still a pretty full tree.

hop back on and look for other opportunities. In those moments, I think the healthy way to handle it is to have people hop back on and broaden it out, right? Find some buying in places like health care, financials, some of the things that are not the Meg 7, not tech, not semiconductors. Of course, we're still going to see appetite there. That's what Steph's been doing a lot of. But that's healthy activity. That's broad activity and that's other places in the market picking up the slack. Give me the last word. A week ago, we were worried about credit for reasons. I get it. But we've had many banks that have said opposite. Credit is just fine. Capital One recorded last night better than expected provisions for loan losses. They grew their purchase volumes

at 39%. This Discover card transaction is transformational, and the stock trades at 14 times earnings. And by the way, they're benefiting from all the other banks, what they said, net interest income and fees and marketing expenses being down. So we were so worried about credit a week ago, So that's your opportunity, because those stocks are still down from where they were. All right. Good last point. Steph, thank you. Adam, thank you.

Liz, thanks to you as well. Steph, we're going to see in a little bit. In the market zone, that's when we'll see it. Coming up next, meme mania, it is back. Beyond Meat, jumping 500% just this week. What's driving that action? We'll tell you the other names that are seeing big gains as well. We're live with the New York Stock Exchange.

You're watching Closing Bell on CNBC. The memes are back from Beyond Meat to 1,800 flowers. several stocks are turning heads today. Christina Partsenevolos joins us now with more. Tell us. This is shares of a struggling plant-based meat company that have exploded. You said 500% but 750% from just last Friday in one of the wildest rallies of this year. Yes, beyond meat. The stock has actually been halted 14 times today alone from the NASDAQ. Excuse me. It was up 100% in pre-market trading and then actually went negative for just a brief moment. It was up about 20% after that. And now you can see it's, I wrote 4.5%.

5% of my script, but you can see on your screen, it's down 9%. I just can't keep up. This rally, though, has nothing to do with fundamentals given these massive swings. Beyond does have elevated short interest. So in addition to the meme stock mania, there's probably some short covering that happened and added to that volatility just over the last few days. About 38 million shares are sold short, according to S3 partners. So that's up 17% just over the past month. We're also seeing signs of institutional buying given the blocks of trade coming through today. Other names, like you talked about, Scott, are catching the wave, too. You have Krispy Cream up 11%. GoPro down, or up 7%. 1-800 flowers was initially up. Now it's down 15%. Why?

We don't know. All moved dramatically today as retail traders really rotated between these speculative plays. Like you said, memes are back. The moral of this story, don't ask why. I know I should. In either direction. Yeah. I just report the news. I want to ask that. Because oftentimes, honestly, honestly, you can't come up with a why. As you said, a lot of these moves have nothing to do with the fundamentals behind it. The Y is making money. That's true, I guess. Or losing it.

How to make money or losing it, right. Yeah, Christina, thanks. Christina, Christina Parts of Nevelos. Our next guest taking a closer look at the charts here. Joining me now, BTIG market technician Jonathan Krenski. It's good to have you back and a perfect reason to. What do you think here? Hey, Scott, yeah, so we were on a couple weeks ago talking about just when they launched the

meme ETF, which had gone dormant since November of 2023, and how the prior launch of it back in November of 2021, kind of marked the peak of that. And, you know, so far, if we look at the meme index, it's pretty much coincided. The peak is coincided with the launch of that ETF. I think the moral of the story here is that parabolic moves in any asset class tend to revert in equal and opposite fashion. And we've seen parabolic moves in the meme stocks and the quantum stocks in precious metals. And we're seeing the opposite end of that over the last couple days. But I mean, you know how this works, escalator up, elevator down. I mean, is that what we're at risk here? Yeah, well, I think in some cases it took elevator up, elevator down,

right? So I think a rocket up, elevator down. Yeah. So look, the parabolic moves are kind of certain parts of the market. I think the bigger focus for investors is, you know, are we starting to see signs of weakness in other parts of the market in the non, you know, the non-parabolic areas. And I think there's some modest weakness creeping through. And the backdrop for all of this is that we've now gone 121 straight trading days, about six months without testing the 50-day moving average. We've only seen two longer streaks since 1990, both ended around the 140-150-day mark. So could we make it through the end of the year without a bigger hiccup? You know, surely it's possible. But I think odds and history would suggest we're likely to test that 50-day. And really,

that's not the end of the world, but given, you know, the slow, steady up trend we've seen since April, it would probably feel a little bit painful. Does it even matter if these things pull back as long as other areas of the market don't? I mean, these are fun things to look at, these, you know, crazy moves in the charts, but they don't seem to be tremendously market moving. No, I think that's fair, and that's why we're, you know, focused on some other parts of the market. And there is still rotation, to be clear. I think right now you're seeing some rotation into the more defensive parts of the market. The REITs and health care charts are starting to break out, both in absolute and relative terms. So I think that's notable. But yeah, ultimately it

comes down, you know, we're going to see a huge slate of earnings from the biggest names next week and, you know, kind of the heart of the Mag 7. And that's really the make or break, probably part for the overall market. Yeah. So from memes to metals, I mean, what do you make of gold in this breakdown? Yesterday was downright ugly. A little follow through today, but not nearly of that magnitude. But what do you think? think it's doing from here. Yeah, I mean, so, you know, at the peak on Monday, we were about 28 or 30 percent above the 200 moving average. That's, you know, that was the widest spread for gold in about 20 years and about as wide as it's ever been. And so it's, you know, we're seeing

the pullback of that parabolic move. You could see a little bounce or chop. I think probably one more leg lower for gold. Again, just to test that 50-day moving average. And then, you know, look, The structural mark, the structural uptrend for metals is still intact. So I don't necessarily think this is the end of the structural bull, but I think it did need to shake out some excess. And that's certainly what's happening over the last couple of days. Yeah, it's gotten a lot of attention. I mean, it's still, even with that dramatic pullback, it's still up more than 9% in a month. Jonathan, thanks. Appreciate it. Jonathan Krinsky. We'll see you soon. Still ahead. Run you through what to watch for when IBM reports it

overtime. Closing bell is coming right back. Getting some news out of Washington. Amon Javar is joining us with that. Amen, what are we learning here? Yes, Scott, that's right. Treasury Secretary Scott Besson just stopped and talked to some reporters here on the North Lawn of the White House. I asked him about that report earlier today that the U.S. is considering software curbs for China in retaliation for the Chinese action on trade. The Treasury Secretary said yes, they are considering those kinds of software curbs.

He said everything is on the table. He was also asked about Russia sanctions, and he signaled that something significant may be coming. Here's what the Treasury Secretary had to say just a short time ago. We are going to either announce after the close this afternoon or first thing tomorrow or first thing tomorrow morning a substantial pickup in Russia's sanctions. So there you heard the Treasury Secretary is saying. going to announce a substantial pickup in Russia sanctions. He didn't specify what that is, Scott. There have been a number of discussions in Washington around a bill up on Capitol Hill to increase sanctions on those who import Russian oil. Not clear if that would be part of what the Treasury

Secretary is talking about it, but he did say it could come after the close today, so that is in just about 20 minutes time. Well, we'll watch all of that. Obviously, the software news seems to be the most relevant, I think, to how the markets may take that. What's interesting, Amin, like a name like Microsoft is up, still up two-thirds of 1%. I've read some other things about a software component that Intel has in addition to chips. That stock's down 3%. But we'll see what ends up coming from that. And if it has the same impact on some of the software players as it has at times over the chip names.

which have obviously been in the news related to the same sort of headlines. And this is tricky for investors, Scott, because as you weigh all these headlines, you have to figure how much of this is sort of trade saber-rattling ahead of the meeting next week and how much of this is really actually on the table and actually likely to happen. We know that the president is departing from Malaysia on Friday. We know that the Treasury Secretary has said that he'll be having meetings with the Chinese delegation as early as this weekend. So all of this next couple of days in the run-up to those meetings

could be both sides jockeying for position in those talks saying, hey, you know, if you're coming at us with this, as a reminder, we have that response ready to go. So you have to take all of that into context as you make a decision if you're an investor looking to place money on this. Did he say anything, the Treasury Secretary about the, you know, on again, off again, maybe yes, maybe no meeting between the President Trump in President Xi?

No. I mean, his tone was, you know, all full steam ahead. He didn't specifically say, he didn't specifically say that, I don't think. It was a little chaotic there. There were a lot of reporters and some people were, there's a little pushing and shoving, but so I didn't catch everything he had to say, to be honest. But, no, his, the whole vibe from the Treasury Secretary was this meeting is on, but you did hear the president yesterday raised the prospect sort of unprompted, you know, that the meeting

could not happen between himself and Xi Jinping. He said sometimes people might pull out of a meeting that might say things are too nasty to have a meeting right now. The president said, you know, but this is just business, so it's not too nasty. So it sounded like the president was suggesting that Xi Jinping was the one who might pull out of the meeting before it happens tentatively at the end of next week. White House officials will point out to you that no meeting has officially been scheduled between Trump and Xi Jinping, even though the president has been talking about it for some weeks now.

That's a good point you make. Amon, thank you very much. It's Amon Javre's with the latest for us on the North Bonn of the White House. Meantime, a groundbreaking deal for the National Hockey League has prediction markets and the digital sports books in focus today. Contessa Brewer joins us with more. I think this is a really interesting story for all of the ramifications that you've been reporting on all day. It's interesting because it really is the NHL breaking the ice on pairing up with the prediction platforms. I mean, pun intended.

Cali and Polly Market get a co-exclusive deal with the NHL to use its licensed trademarks. The Hockey League sees it as a great opportunity for fan engagement, especially for new fans. Kalshi's CEO told CNBC today he sees this as a sign that prediction markets are here to stay. Not so fast screams the gambling industry. The American Gaming Association blasted out, scathing criticism of this deal and the NHL's willingness to do business with the prediction platforms. Over the past seven years, the legal U.S. sports betting market has proven that a transparent, accountable, and regulated system benefits everyone, fans, league, states, and most importantly, consumers. Undermining that success with backdoor gambling schemes, masquerading as financial products, is reckless and short-sighted.

Piper Sandler out with a note this week that says sports really is driving. 90% of the volume on Kalshi, 30% of it coming from Rob. Robin Hood, sports betting stocks, up today, Draft King's the most, because it had news yesterday that it has acquired Railbird, which is a platform that will help Draft King's launch its own prediction platform. So the prediction markets are unregulated? They're regulated by the CFTC. They're regulated at the federal level, like commodities are.

So if you make a gamble on orange juice futures, that's a financial trade, not a bet, right? that this is what they're arguing. And men, in the prediction markets, they've been allowed to self-certify, meaning not going through this rigorous process of can you offer it or not by the CFTC, you can just say, yeah, we're meeting all of their requirements. And that's one of the reasons why the traditional players are upset? Well, the traditional players, Draft Kings and Fandle, are they traditional at this point? You know what?

As I said that, I was like, are they really traditional? But look, the parent company of Fandual Flutter operates Betfair, which is an exchange. So they already have experience overseas with the same thing. They know how to do it. They've partnered with the CME, definitely a traditional player in this space with lots of experience on financial trades. And so when they go forward and offer this on predictions, I think it's going to give investors another data point to consider. The question really centers around sports in particular is offering these event contracts on sports gambling that violates the state's rights to legalize and regulate gambling. Does it violate tribal rights to offer it on tribal lands?

There's a lot at play. Thank you. To be continued, obviously. Contested Brewer. Up next, we track the biggest mover. As we hit into the close today, we'll be right back. We're now the closing bell market zone. CNBC senior markets commentator, Mike Santoli, here to break down these crucial moments of the trading day.

Plus, Phil LeBoe, with a final look with what to expect from Tesla's numbers out top of the hour. And Simomodi with a rundown of IBM's report, which is also coming in overtime. And, of course, High Tower, Stephanie Link is back with us. We're going to get her take on that and the markets and more. What's your take on today? A little bit of the frothy areas are coming back a little bit. And just kind of a messy repositioning is really what's going. on. It really could have been worse. If you told me, you know, semis are down two and a half

percent. Netflix got a 10 percent haircut on a pretty decent number. And then, yes, all the hot money flows have reversed and gone out. I think it started with Bitcoins dropped 10 days ago. It never really got off the mat. We did see gold reverse. So you see it rolling through all these overheated parts of the market. Yeah, low volatility stuff is actually firm on the day, values outperforming. So the market's trying to make the best of it and say we're going to actually sort of spread our bets elsewhere, as opposed to having it be more of a volatility storm. We'll see if it managed to do that. Well, Tesla tonight is going to be the first test for the mega caps.

Phil, what do you have for us here? Just to remind us what we need to watch for most of all. Yeah, three things are going to stand out, Scott. First of all, do we see some improvement in gross auto margins? They were 15% last quarter. Many believe it could get up to 15.6, 15.7%. Robotaxy going unsupervised and autonomous. Do we get some details in terms of timing?

Is it the first quarter of next year? Is it sometime next year? When is it, according to Elon Musk? And then there's the humanoid robot rollout. Any details there? One other thing is you take a look at shares of Tesla. Keep in mind that Tesla energy storage, doesn't get a lot of attention. They've already deployed a record amount for any year.

And that's just through the first three quarters. Margins on that, by the way, 27%. And, of course, it's the conference call at 530. What does Elon Musk tell us? We'll be on it. We'll have all the details. when that happens. But before that, Scott, we get the numbers. Yes, we do. We'll look for you, Phil. Thank you. We'll pivot to IBM and those numbers, which are also coming out in O.T. Seema.

Scott, IBM will break out that critical AI book-to-business number when the company reports earnings after the bell, which will show us whether corporations are continuing to seek IBM's expertise on integrating AI into their business. Software as a whole now makes up about 45% of total sales, and J.B. Morgan analysts say the performance of software will be the the primary driver of the stock's performance once the results are out. Investors also want to know if quantum computing is creating more opportunities for Big Blue, plus more details on its latest partnerships with Anthropic and Chipmaker Grock. The stock is up about 30% this year versus the 13% outperformance in the software

ETF. We'll see if that can stick. Stigot. All right, Seema, thanks so much. I turn to Stephanie Link. Well, you've made a great buy in this. Thanks. the conviction that you had to stick with it, I'm sure at times wasn't easy in the face of questions

about can they get the Red Hat integration right? Are they old and boring tech in the face of this whole revolution around AI? And Arvin, their CEO, has said, yep, check, yep, check, and here we are. He's a rock star. There are only eight buys on this stock right now, 14 holds and sells from the cell side. Only two things matter to me tonight. Software needs to reaccelerate. Last quarter was disappointing at 7.8% growth. Expectations are for 9. I've seen as high as 10. That would be led by hybrid cloud and red hat growing 14%. Automation up 17% and data up 7. Those are the three big pieces within software that I'm looking at. And I do think you will see reacceleration. The second thing that's important, free cash flow. They guided 13.5 billion plus last quarter for the full

year. If they do 3.2 billion like I think they can, they can actually get to something like $4 billion in free cash flow. The street would really like that a lot. When you back the chart out again, guys, that what we showed was, you know, what a couple of mountaintops it looked like and then the, yeah, what caused that pullback? Was that the reaction to the one of the earnings reports prior? 100% it was software decelerating. That was disappointing. That's a big part of their strategy. Software and services is 74% of their total revenue. They got to get those two piece is right. People are going to also point to the mainframe cycle and the upgrade.

We're seeing one. I think that will actually help the earnings as well. But I just don't care as much about that because it's very cyclical. Software, they got to get right. And that has to reaccelerate. And I think it will. So we lump Tesla in, obviously, to the Mag 7 because market cap is like 1.3-ish trillion, or 1.4 trillion. But how do you look at it reporting tonight and what it means to the overall context of the market? It's a little bit of an odd fit in the Mag 7 just because all of those other companies are swimming in profitability and are kind of deploying it all into building AI directly with cash. Tesla's a little bit different. Obviously, I would say at least two-thirds of the market cap is not based on the business that's operating now. Just

looking at the earnings power of the company. So it's to some degree rides along with, you know, the sort of risk appetite aggression in technology, just the willingness to pay up for some version of the future that people think is on the way. It's been fascinating how we just showed that longer term chart. I mean, it's kind of crested up in this area a couple of times over the last five years. It's managed to hang around there a little while longer than it did the last time. So, you know, we'll see. We know what the deliveries were. Obviously, sometimes the suspense is removed on that score, but it seems like the market wants to have these springload of reactions to numbers this time based on how far the markets come in the

the six months since the April low. So, you know, I guess we'll see if people leading hard one way the other. It just depends. I was talking with Steph about G.E. Vernova, which delivered a great quarter. And then there was another one in the group, which was a beaten raise. And on a day like today, when you're having a little bit of, whether it's perceived froth or whatever it is coming out, it doesn't matter what you deliver if it's viewed as, you know, not living up to whatever mountaintop you had to reach. No, that's for sure. And I mean, honestly, the independent power and anything renewables, anything adjacent to it, has just gotten destroyed today. And the largest stock by weight in the Russell 2000 was Bloom Energy for the last few weeks.

Bloom Energy, of course, one of these all... I mean, everyone thinks it's mom and pop, metal benders and banks, and it really isn't. The top of the Russell 2000 became meaned out. And so I just think everything's getting sold in that bucket. It's not really about the numbers that were just... What do you think of the whole meme thing, stuff? Which, you know, Christina Parts of Novel is so perfectly laid out for it. Is there a message in the market there?

It's kind of unnerving, but it's not a big part of the market. It just gets a lot of attention, right? And so when you have risk off, they're going to get dragged down. You had gold, you had silver, you had Bitcoin, you had value outperform growth today. You had the ARC ETF down 5% today. So it's just a rotation. They've had a nice run. I think that's okay.

You want to pick your spots. And actually, I'm just looking at that GE-Renova, the performance. That came back. Actually, it was down as much as 6%. this morning. So I think those are. They heard what you had to say about it earlier in the program. On your show, of course.

I mean, I do think it's, you have to take days like this and crazy stuff like Beyond Meat, along with retail being a persistent bid in this market and being emboldened by getting rewarded for buying every dip and being super aggressive and being price insensitive about their favorite stock. So look, that's kind of helped you on the upside. It's going to bite you on the down. Yeah, thank you. Stephanie, thanks for sticking around. Mike, thanks to you.

Thanks to you. Speaking to the retail investor, we'll be thinking about that cohort yet again because Tesla's numbers are coming out in a matter of moments. Don't go anywhere as I send it into overtime with Morgan and John.