Closing Bell - Closing Bell 10/27/25

Episode Date: October 27, 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.

Court, thanks so much. Welcome to closing bell. I'm Scott Wobner, live from Post 9 here at the New York Stock Exchange. This maker break hour begins with new records for stocks. It's a broken record. Here's the scorecard with 60 to go in regulation. The S&P going for its first close above 6,800 a day. It looks pretty good. It's a gain of more than 1%. Optimism over a China trade deal. Certainly the catalyst for the move today. Tech is leading as well. A very strong day for the NASDAQ because of the chips. Invidia is higher. The day's biggest movers, Qualcomm, After announcing new data center chips, we'll have more on that straight ahead. But look at that stock up near 13%. And that's not even the best levels where that stock was trading today. We do begin with our talk of the tape, all that lies ahead this week with mega-cap earnings, the Fed decision, and so much more looming large. Let's welcome in Solace's Dan Greenhouse and Icapitals, Sonali Bass. It's great to have you both with us.

Dan Greenhouse, you first. This is a resilient rally. This likes any positive headline. It's getting on trade. thinks it's going to get good stuff from the mega caps, how much is actually riding on what happens this week? Yeah, so for viewers who watched the halftime show, you saw Joe Turanova say something that was demonstrably false, which was that this market can withstand a disappointing series of results from Mag 7. I totally disagree. Joe is the best, but I think he's dead wrong.

When you look at how important this trade is to the market, the mega cap names, forget Tesla, but let's include Broadcom instead. That's like about a third of market cap in the S&B 500. But when you add in everything else, train technologies, and GEVernova, et cetera, you get up to somewhere around 43, 44% of the S&P 500. I could be off by a little bit. But that's how important this trade is to the whole market. And I totally disagree. If something goes wrong with this story, which I don't think is what's going to happen,

but if something were to go wrong for the story, I think it would be a big problem for the markets in general. Yeah. Do you agree with that? Because, I mean, obviously, when Joe made the statement that he did, he pointed to the fact that there was all of this other stuff that's good. Now, he also wasn't making the point that these could have a misstep in the market. The rally is just completely over because it would be bought if these stocks pulled back at all. But honestly, what do you think is really riding on this week? Well, look at the numbers themselves. The expectations for the MAG7 is a 14.5% rise on average we've seen over the last couple of years, 35%. So coming into Wednesday,

Thursday, that seems very low relative to what we've seen before. Cap-X spending is going to expect to be, expected to be coming in at $105 billion across the group. There could be a little bit of upside to that, actually, if you think about how much catch-up there is to play for Apple and Amazon in particular, and think about valuations alone. People are talking about Apple's near record high, but Apple is up, what, 6, 7% this year so far? So there's a lot of room still, and you look at the earnings beats.

Almost 90% of the companies that have reported already have beat. Now, they haven't been rewarded at a significant margin in the trade. But with that said, optimism and sentiment is not overly stretched heading into this report either. You think the bar is pretty low for these mega caps coming in? Or is it high? I mean, I don't even know how to judge that. Sure. It's not like the stocks have gone crazy of late.

Well, I mean, Nvidia is up 40% or something for the year. Yeah, if you brack it out, it looks amazing. But they have been a little choppy at times. Absolutely. And Apple, as we know, I think Shanali hit the nail on the head. I mean, the growth rates for these stocks have been coming down now for some time. That's not a new story. Coming into the year, you'll remember a lot of us were on TV saying the growth rate was going to slow for the Mag 7 and accelerate for everyone else. And that is undoubtedly playing out. So I don't think that from that standpoint, sentiment is too high. And when you look at the positioning data from the sell side in terms of exposure to the Mag 7 and the technology trade in general, obviously everybody's exposed. But it doesn't appear to me reading the data that they are overexposed. So no, I don't think the bar is too high. But again, to the earlier comment, if there is a disappointment, if there is a letdown, it's going to be a problem for the market. Yeah, I mean, it's going to, the market's going to have to adjust to the fact that so much of the optimism is around capex.

Yes. From the hyperscalers. That is a big part of this. But I would even look at broader parts of the market as well. Look at financials, for example. EPS growth came in at more than 20%. And the expectation had been roughly 13%. And you look at the trade through October, Scott, take a look at it.

It's still non-profitable names. It's still the golden-most shorted basket that is seeing double-digit percentage returns through the month. This has not been a set of buying on fundamentals, which is what we would welcome back to this market, actually. We've seen a little bit of that turnaround in recent weeks. But if people are buying these names on optimism that earnings will grow, that's a better sign than some of what we've been seeing. Do we even care about specifics around China, U.S. trade? Or are we just good enough with just getting it off of the boiling point to some degree? That's a great question.

Listen, I think we care about the specifics, but to a point I've been making for a couple of quarters, all you're really concerned with is that worst-case outcomes and worst-case headlines don't come to pass. Another 100% tariff on this, a 20% tariff on that. I think that's probably just my anecdotal conversations around the street. I think that's what people care about the most. Everyone's gotten their head around the idea that tariffs are going to go up to the extent that that raises prices. I think everybody has gotten their head around that. Obviously, I still think there is some more effect of that over the next six to nine months.

But I think it's less about the specifics and more about the trend. And as long as the trend isn't getting worse, which, you know, this may come back to bite me, but I don't think it's getting worse. That's probably good enough. you with the market at a record high. It's telling you that's the case. We want to continue to follow the story we heard about at the end of the previous hour. And that was Amazon reportedly planning to cut as many as 30,000 corporate jobs beginning on Tuesday. Our senior economics correspondent, Steve Leesman, joins us with more. Steve, it's a big number. And it's a big story

in how we're thinking about as we here look at AI-related stocks and we think about all of the optimism and all of the money that is being thrown towards this transformational technology, the impact negatively that it's going to undoubtedly have on tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of workers in this country over time. I'm wondering how as an economist you're looking at this kind of an announcement and thinking in the bigger picture what it's going to mean? Well, first of all, Scott, this is a Reuter. story that we haven't confirmed. It seems like for sure this is happening. It was something that they previously announced. Not all of it, it seems to me, Scott, we can attribute to AI because

there's a bunch of things going on in Amazon. To the extent it is AI, I will tell you that it seems clear to me that this stuff's happening faster than we envisioned. And the first part of that, I think, is that going back to a speech by Fed Governor Waller, who talked about this essentially a J curve where things get worse before they get better. People are displaced from their jobs and the new jobs that tend to be created by technology have not been created yet. The fields don't even exist in some of them. So there will be some help on the back end of this, but there could be some pain at the front end. But I would point out a couple of things. The Reuter story does note this other issue, which could be broader as well, this issue of overhiring from the pandemic.

People were grabbing employees right and left, and now you get to a point where the volume and the business normalizes, and you have too many people on board. So that's something that's been out there, and there's actually been some concern by the Fed here, Scott, that there may be some people let go because of this. This is an issue that essentially companies have been holding on to workers, and then they hope that they're going to get the volume, and they don't get it. And the other third aspect here that is worth noting, Scott, is perhaps tariffs playing a role with Amazon. A lot of the stuff they get from overseas, I don't know what's happened to the volume of that. But the stories I've read suggest that there has been an impact on their business, and that could be affecting the level of employment of Amazon. I do get the feeling, though, and I think the news would back me up,

that a lot of these companies, Amazon and others, have already, for the most part, right-side. themselves post-pandemic because they've had enough period of time now to figure out who they need, where they need them, and what maybe they don't. The other point I would make is that I'm going back to an email to employees that the Amazon CEO Andy Jassy sent back in June where he said that he expects the company's workforce to decline in the next few years as it uses artificial intelligence to handle more tasks. There's that against what you said in the way that the Fed may be thinking about all of this because the folks over at Goldman Sachs research are thinking along the same lines. I was reading a paper of theirs that they put out,

I believe, in the last month or so, where they suggest, and I'm quoting here, Steve, innovation related to artificial intelligence could display 6 to 7 percent of the U.S. workforce if AI is widely adopted. But the impact is likely to be transitory as new job opportunities created by the technology, ultimately put people to work in other capacities. That goes to the whole redeployment, if you will, versus replacement argument. Right. So there's a good story in the journal today that says a bunch of companies are holding the line on hiring. And what's going to happen, Scott, is this very big experiment where you're going to see how much can AI do? How long can it do it for? There was an interesting story I read not too long ago about the idea that they're trying to get the AI to work for long.

hours, and they haven't quite nailed that down. So that's something they're going to try to figure out in terms of how long and how much can AI do and how much growth can a company accomplish in the absence of people. So they're going to try it. It doesn't mean it's going to work, but what it's interesting here is the speed of change. These technologies have tended to give you a little time, a little heads up, a little warning that these things are going to happen. It does not seem to be the case of AI.

Today, Scott, I was thinking about a problem. project I wanted to do and wished I'd had a junior economics reporter to do the regressions for me? Well, I had AI do it, so I didn't need that junior economics reporter today. You know, the other thing is, Steve, you bring up the Fed, obviously. The Fed has no way of modeling this. It's impossible. It's got to be impossible for the Fed to exactly figure out what and when and how long this is all going to take to play out. The other side is that, well, that's why they should be cutting interest rates somewhere. would say. Because they need, if today more than ever, maybe they need insurance policies

against employment. So you could, I could make the opposite argument, Scott, and I wouldn't necessarily be right. But remember that just before you brought me on, you were talking with my friend Dan there about the idea of all of the investment. Well, what does that do? That raises the cost of capital. So you have these two forces that are really fighting against each other. You're right. In order to cushion the blow with employment, well, the Fed should either cut rates or the government should increase the social welfare benefits to people who lose their jobs. But in order to accommodate the increase in the demand for capital that comes from all this investment, well, that demands a higher price of money. So it's not entirely clear. The other thing I would just point out, not to bring your argument to add absurdum, but for like 300 years economists are trying to figure out both the course and the effects of the technological development.

developments, and they really don't have a good theory. You can relate what's happening now to AI, Scott, to the invention of electricity and when it happened. And this is more than a hundred years later since that happened. So trying to game these out and figure things out, near-term, I think what it means for the Fed is it's going to go slowly and trying to gauge these impacts. They're talking about this a lot. They're trying to understand it. But when things like this happened, assuming that a good chunk of this is related to AI from Amazon, they're going to have to just put that in the bucket and figure it out. Yeah, Steve, thank you very much for jumping on with us. This is a big story, and not likely the last of its kind that we're going to hear

about, too, in coming months. That's Steve Leesman. For joining us now with more reaction. Intelligent Alphas, Doug Clinton, Big Technologies, Alex Kanchowitz. Alex, of course, is a CNBC contributor. So Alex, good to have you both. Alex, you see this story, the headline, at least, as we wait for more and your instant reactions, what? Well, I don't think that this is AI-related. I think this is largely Amazon, taking the look at its workforce and seeing where it can be more efficient. You know, something interesting has happened with this moment where everybody's talking about

whether AI can replace jobs. Companies by and large have looked and they've said, where are the places where we might need maybe two employees working instead of five, and they've decided to cut there. They've also used AI as an excuse as a excuse for when they're suffering or not. not doing great in certain business units and need to cut down and they say they say well we're going to look at AI to make us more efficient where they just needed to do layoffs anyway. I'm not saying that's exactly what's happening with Amazon but I do think that this is following a trend of many companies within the economy either slowing hiring or cutting workforce

and you know maybe winking at the fact that it's AI like Jassy might have done with his letter that he wrote earlier this year where when you look at it you don't see one-to-one automation of jobs. So for me, AI is hanging in the balance. It's going to be impactful, but this is just a traditional layoff for Amazon. I hear you, but you use the word efficient multiple times in the answer that you just gave me. So it may not be a 100% direct relation to AI. And this is just speculation anyway. But from here forward, it feels like it's always going to be at minimum peripheral, that AI is playing the biggest role in productivity and efficiency. So you're automatically as a CEO thinking about jobs you may

not need from human capital because you can take care of any of that with technology. This has always been the case for Amazon, even middle of last decade. They had people that were sitting at their desks that were ordering different packages from vendors to or different products from vendors and having them go bring them into the into the fulfillment centers and then the AI would even negotiate with those vendors to try to figure out what the right price would be so I think that this has always been the case with Amazon Amazon has of course often out reallocated those people within the company to different jobs a lot of the

vendor managers that were doing those jobs ended up becoming product managers and program managers the one thing that I'll say is you know we should be thinking about here is the question of is generative AI this modern iteration of AI that chat GPT ushered in good enough to replace tens of thousands of workers. And that's where I pause and say, I don't think it's quite there yet. Yes, it might add some efficiency, but I don't think a company that could have operated with 30,000 employees yesterday is now being able to put their work on the generative AI that we see today with the chat GPT.

That might come eventually. I just don't think it's there yet. The other thing, by the way, is that I'm looking squarely right now at a New York Times piece from October 21st, okay? From just last week, where the headline reads, Amazon plans to replace more than half a million jobs with robots. Internal documents show the company that changed how people shop has a far-reaching plan, says the article,

to automate 75% of its operations, that its workforce has more than tripled since 2018, but Amazon's automation team expects the company can avoid hiring more than 160,000 people in the United States, it would otherwise need by 2027. That, according to this article, and according to the internal documents that they have seen, would save about 30 cents on each item that Amazon picks, packs, and delivers. Those are big numbers, and it's a big theory to wrap your arms around. I read that full article. I think that is a stunning article. I think that's worth

everybody who's watching this right now taking the time and go read. It will take you 10 or 15 minutes, it's worth reading top to bottom because, you know, but we may see, we probably will see some displacement with white collar work from the growing reliance that we have on gender of AI, especially as this technology gets better. But we've seen real advances in robotics. And we see competitions where the robots are now able to effectively take a package off a shelf and put it in a package. It's not quite there yet. But the thing that's been tough for companies like Amazon to replicate with robotics is the dexterity of human limbs to be able to take something off a shelf and to put it in a package or from a truck and then put it on a shelf.

Moving the shelves around with robotics has been something they've been doing for a long time. And I think if you're thinking about blue-collar work in this country or even the full globe, the fact that the robotics are getting advanced enough where Amazon can even write in a memo that 75% of the work within its fulfillment centers could be automated one day, I think that is a glaring alarm and that's something we should be very concerned about when you're thinking about the prospects for broad employment again in this country and across the globe. Of course, Doug, as we often see in cases like this, large numbers of job losses aren't exactly hated on Wall Street. I don't know another way just to plainly say it. The stock

is obviously in the green and other times of corporate efficiency have led to big gains over time in stocks. Look at Facebook. for example, an entire year of efficiency, in quotes, led to a rebound in the stock that we have rarely seen any company do. It's true, Scott. In the long run, I do think that Wall Street will cheer for efficiency driven by AI that we will undoubtedly see not just at the MAG 7 companies, but across every company in America. But in the short term, I think there's a different question, which is, here we are.

about layoffs this close to earnings for me is a little bit of a yellow flag because politically it's hard to talk about doing layoffs and then have a monster earnings quarter you know it's easier to kind of get past that quarter and then maybe do it in a few weeks now maybe this news wasn't intended to get out right now obviously it had been rumored for a few weeks but that's something that i'm thinking about just in the immediate term is does this sort of point to maybe a rougher quarter for amazon here in a couple of days yeah dan you you you want to push back on this whole notion of AI displacing jobs? Is that what I heard you taking the other side?

I did my least stop at one point. I did my least stop at one point. Alex is right. Like, obviously Alex is usually right, so that's a safe assumption. But there's a lot to go between now and then. We don't know that this story is related to AI. Amazon, as you mentioned, has a million and a half employees today. They had 600,000 or whatever it was pre-COVID.

So there's been an enormous hiring spree across the industry. AI is going to take jobs for sure. But whether it's the cotton gin or the printing press or the ATM machine, America, the United States of America has been dealing with this for hundreds of years. And I don't know why we're rushing to think that this time is going to be different. There are a few things I would offer also on top of that because the AI story is still tip of the iceberg, isn't it? But there are a few other stories that are also front and center. These companies are practically conglomerates.

So the efficiencies that are struck across divisions, imagine how might that, accelerate when you see more M&A occurring as well. When you consider that it's CAPEX, it's buybacks, and not investment in jobs that are being rewarded by the market right now by and large. And if you look at the upcoming set of earnings seasons, really what investors are looking for is that marginal dollar, that profit margin being spent more and more on CAPEX and on buybacks ahead of the job story despite the labor market cooling. The other thing I can't help but think about, Doug, is the juxtaposition of sorts of, we want these companies to spend who at the same time are spending to become more efficient.

We used to have a problem with companies spending too much because they weren't efficient enough. Now we need them to spend on this technology so that they can actually become more efficient and need fewer humans. That's right. I think we'll see this as a pattern. The most aggressive users of AI for the next couple of years will also be the creators and enablers of AI like Amazon. And so even if AI wasn't the direct or proximal cause of this particular layoff round, I think that they will be very aggressive in using AI to backfill a lot of those roles to augment the humans that do remain to do their jobs better. And we've seen that at other companies, Google, obviously, has done, I think, some of the same. Microsoft has made much smaller and more periodic layoffs

throughout the year in the same vein. And I think Open AI you could point to as maybe the best example. You know, they have codex now where they can code a lot of the application that they're building, AI building itself, as the canonical example of this. And so we'll continue to see the Mag 7 be aggressive in finding ways to use AI to drive efficiency. All right. Let's leave it there. Doug, thanks. Alex. Thank you. Of course. Thanks to our Steve Leastman. And here on the desk, Dan Greenhouse and Shannali Basick, thanks so much. That was a big breaking story.

We'll continue to follow it. We're just getting started. Still ahead. Goldman's Ben Snyder. He tells us which names he thinks Stan to benefit the most this earnings season. We're live with the New York Stock Exchange. You're watching closing bell on CNBC. Coming up next, Goldman's Ben Snyder.

He'll tell us what he thinks this earnings season could mean. for the future of this record-setting rally. He'll be right here at Post-9 after this break. We are back. Stocks are heading towards yet another record close as the week's major events loom, especially large. Joining me now at Post-9, Ben Snyder, Goldman Sachs' senior U.S. portfolio strategist.

Nice to have you. We're in a pretty good position heading into this week, aren't we? Yeah, it looks pretty good. I think it's really important to notice amid all of the talk of AI and all of the talk of macroeconomic volatility, how strong earnings have been this year. We've had 12% earnings growth in the first half of the year. The S&P 500 is now up about 16 or 17%. So most of that has been driven by earnings. And here we are stepping into the biggest week of the third quarter earnings season.

Yeah. How do you think it's all going to go down this week? Do we finish the week feeling even better than we do? I think so. I think so. If we look at the mega cap tech stocks, we have five of those magnificent seven. report this week. In the first quarter of the year, they grew earnings by 30%. In the second quarter of the year, they grew earnings by 30% again. And when we look at consensus estimates

for this quarter, that estimated growth is just 14%. I think that's a low bar. We're going to clear that bar. So we just had the news before you came up here that we've been discussing for most of the first 30 minutes here about these Amazon reported cuts at the corporate level 30,000 jobs. I mean, when you hear numbers like that thrown around, and what is today 30,000, from Amazon will be tomorrow or the next day X,000 from somebody else. We'd know the wave that is coming of some sort related to AI. How do you think about that? I think we have a sense there's a wave coming, but we don't really know how quickly that will occur.

Our economists have estimated that in total AI could cause job displacement in the U.S. of maybe six or seven percent, which is quite a lot. But that's very different if it occurs over a year versus if it occurs over a decade. And so far what stands out to me is most of the announcements we've heard from, corporates are not large layoffs. Today's news perhaps being an exception to that. Mostly what we've seen is companies say, we're just going to reduce hiring. I think that bodes well for a gradual and smooth labor market transition. Do you extrapolate any of that and say, okay, well, if I put that into an actionable, if not investable perspective, well, the Fed's just going

to be more engaged. Probably the risk is for more cuts than less in the environment that we're talking about, no? Well, I think there's a fine line, right? If we see too much labor market displacement, that probably suggests a larger amount of Fed easing than the market is currently pricing. But from an equity market's perspective, that's a real negative for growth. I think the more positive outcome is what we've seen recently, where the Fed has said, we think we need to ease a little bit. We're going to stay on course with that. And because there's really a dearth of labor market data these days, I think it's very likely they continue along that path, including a cut this week. So you and David Koston have a target of 7,200 by mid-26. What could go wrong? We always talk about what goes right, right? Where economy's good. Rates are coming down.

Earnings are going to be strong. We're going to get these trade deals. CapEx through the roof. AI's this transformational force. What could go wrong? Well, a couple points. First, as an equity investor, one is supposed to ask what could go right. So I think that's the right pose.

Second, what stands out to me is when I look at broad institutional investor positioning. it's surprisingly constrained for a market that's an all-time high, for a P-E multiple that is fairly high relative to average. So, for example, when we look at the Goldman Sachs Prime brokerage data, hedge fund leverage is actually at roughly the 30th percentile of the last few years. And likewise, on our trading desk flows, mutual funds have mostly been selling for the last couple weeks. So although it seems like the market is embedding a lot of optimism, what we see in the positioning data is actually still a lot of skepticism, which I think supports that view the market can keep climbing from here. We'll talk to you again soon, I hope. Thank you for being here. Thanks.

It's Ben Snyder from Goldman Sachs. Coming up next, one of New York's most iconic restaurants coming back to life. Bobo reopening under restaurateur Stephen Starr. He is here. He is a hitmaker and he is here at Post 9 next. We'll talk about the latest venture, the health of the consumer, so much more. We're back on closing bell. One of New York City's most celebrated restaurants gets new life today.

Bobo reopens for business. The one-time Mario Battagli-owned establishment is now owned by hitmaker Stephen whose star restaurant group operates 43 restaurants in six cities, an empire that generates some $400 million a year in revenue. Steven Starr is here with us at Post 9. It is great to have you. When I saw that number, $400 million, my mouth fell at, yeah, I couldn't believe the number is that big.

Me too. I don't know how much of it I keep, but that's how much we do in sales. We'll get to that in a minute. I read where you said, and we talk about Bobo, you know, opening tonight, opening nights are our saddest moments. I would have thought it was the opposite. No, it is weird with me. After the day I opened it, I sort of get sad. I want to go home. I want to go watch CNBC or MSNBC and leave everyone else to celebrate because the process is over. The creation has been complete. What's the line and is it a fine line between honoring what a great restaurant in

part used to be and putting your own stamp on how you want the new place to be as well. Right. With Babbo, you have to do both. You have to, the room is the, you're honoring the room, and it still is the room. We refreshed it, but it has the same spirit. In terms of the spin, the chef used to be one of the chefs at Babo, Mark Ladner, who's a Michelin star, four-star Michelin chef. So we are, we have a piece of the history there already with him. We have the room, and there will be some new spins with the food, and we're going to have some of the old dishes, the favorites, back on the menu. Oh, thankfully.

I'm glad to hear that. So is everybody else. So you have 43 restaurants in six markets. You employ 5,000 people. Also read where Drew Nieperon, now he's a founder of Nobu, and he is a force in his own right in this industry. He thinks you're the greatest restaurateur in America. He said, quote, he's not a meter, cedar, or greeter. He's a creator.

Nine of your restaurants are among the 100 top grossing restaurants in the U.S. Is there a formula that you follow? What is the winning formula for Stephen Starr? It's just persistence. Never saying it's enough. We're always seeking to make it better. And I do believe that one of the big things with our restaurants that differ us from other restaurateurs is the ambiance, the theatrical impact that is, you know, it has on people.

I know you like music, and I wrote in the intro, you're a hit maker. But how do you keep making hits that evolve with people's tastes and desires? That's got to be a challenge. It's keeping your finger on the pulse of popular culture. And you know, I was in the music business. I was a concert promoter for many years. And I know a lot of people in music and radio and record companies. And I do look at these things like their albums.

Each restaurant is like my new album, and I try to outdo the last one, or maybe one will be more acoustic, will be simpler, and not so theatrical. So I'm always changing it up on what something feels and looks like. I didn't even realize that now you're in Nashville, right? You open to Pastece in Nashville. Is there somewhere you want to be that you're not? London. I'm going to London in a few weeks. I really want to open in London.

And it would be exciting. It would be a challenge. And I'd love to just take over another country, another country. Would that be your first restaurant outside of the United States? We actually did a restaurant a long time ago with Daniel Rose in Paris. It was small. We did it at the same time, Kuko opened. It was like 20 seats.

And then when the COVID hit, and we closed it, we never opened it. So this would be the first big venture into another country. So you have so many different places. different price points, right, high-end, middle. You must have a pretty good read on where the consumer is right now. I mean, the restaurant space, the stocks that's been kind of unkind to investors. What do you see? I believe that from my own perspective, we are looking positively at the future.

We have to be careful not to spend as much money as we normally do in openings because things are getting too expensive to open a restaurant. We are counting on now because of our track record and reputation, the landlords contributing significant TI to our opening. So that's the thing. People are eating less and drinking less. That's the trend for sure, mainly because of Ozempic and that sort of thing. Sure, I mean, we follow that here.

I mean, the impact on alcohol-related names, every survey you see says people are drinking less than they have in their lifetimes, adult lifetimes, for certain. You're not afraid, though, of the industry, which has the reputation of being so, so, incredibly tough. I love where you said, and this is about deploying your capital and being unafraid to do it over and over and over despite the challenges that exist. You said, quote, any Wharton professor would say that's dumb. You should have kept the money, should have spent less on things like the $90,000 hand-painted two-story fresco at Boroughmini, which is your newest place in Philly, or replace the antique mirrors that Keith McNally thought didn't look

quite aged enough. Why is that stuff so important to you? Because at the end, people maybe not even consciously see the difference. They feel the difference between what maybe we do or Keith, for instance, does. You just feel it. You don't know it. The lighting is so important. So many people will get it, but you'll just go to a place and say, I just loved it there. And you don't even know why. But it's because of those details, that extra time and effort we put it into. Wish your success with Bobo. It's an iconic place. New York City and we're happy to have it back. We're having the mint love letters are back

on the menu. All right. So that's a reason to come to. Okay. That's a great pasta just in case you're wondering. Steven's good to see. Thank you. All right, that's Stephen Star. Up next, we're tracking the biggest movers as we head into this close. Seema Modi standing by with that. Hi, Seema. The U.S. government's stake in MP Materials is down today. We're going to reveal that full story

and why that stock is moving when we're after this break. SectorSort is sponsored by SectorSpider ETFs. for a look at the key stocks that she is watching. Tell us. Scott, let's check on MP materials and USA rare earths, both plummeting after Treasury Secretary Scott Besson told NBC news that he expects China to defer export controls on rare earth materials. As we know, China dominates global rare earth's production up to nearly 70% of total production. Meantime, Albemarle is the laggard on the S&P today after it's sold a controlling stake in Ketjans' refining catalyst solutions business to private equity firms, KPS Capital, partners. That stock is on pace for its worst day since early September down over 9%.

And Berkshire Hathaway shares are falling today after the stock was downgraded to underperform from market performed by KBW analysts who see weaker railroad growth due to tariffs and lower investment income due to falling interest rates. They also see a unique succession risk when Warren Buffett steps down as CEO at the end of the year. Scott? All right, Seema. Thank you. Sima Modi. Up next, Lulu Lemon popping on the heels of its latest partnership. We'll give you the details coming up in the market zone, which is next. We're now on the closing bell market zone. CNBC senior markets commentator Mike Santoli. And in Ves Brian Levitt break down these crucial moments of the trading day.

Plus Steve Kovac. He's on Apple Watch as it heads towards. another record closed and an even bigger milestone. And Courtney Reagan with what is driving Lulu shares higher today. Mike, I begin with you first. It's kind of nothing not to like about this market right now. No, certainly not at the index level. Scott, a pretty clean break higher after just this stutter step we had for a couple of weeks. Maybe you can start to critique that we're narrowing back out. We're kind of migrating to the very high conviction themes, which of course is semis and AI. Equalweight S&P is underperforming by a lot today, but it is still positive. We'll see if that matters in the coming days.

Steve Kovac, we're not only going to get a record close for Apple. By my count, we're only like a dollar away from $4 trillion in market cap. Yeah, it's getting really close there. If it doesn't hit it going into the close, I mean, we're going to be on $4 trillion watch again tomorrow, Scott. And look, everyone's getting bullish on the stock. J.P. Morgan this morning piling on to all those analysts commentary that we heard last week saying they're expecting. and a robust high single-digit revenue growth, not just for the September quarter

they're going to report on Thursday, but also in the guidance for the December quarter, obviously the biggest one, all on the back of that iPhone 17 momentum. We keep hearing about that this is a very strong iPhone cycle. So we'll be getting some real clarity from Apple just in a couple days time, Scott. Yeah, we'll continue to watch that, Steve.

Thank you very much. Courtney, everybody seems, loves the NFL, and I guess Lulu, does two. I mean, Taylor Swift, Lulu Lemon, everybody's piling into the NFL. Lululemon is teaming up with fanatics to sell NFL apparel. And shares are up 2% on the news today. But Lulu Bear, Randy Konak of Jeffrey, says it's a Hail Mary. It only signals deeper strategic confusion for the brand that's lost its core consumer. He says that's the real trouble here. And that core consumer is going to smaller competitors like Allo and Viori. Now, Lulu's shares have shed

more than half of their value so far this year. And it doesn't seem to have picked up the Consumers who have been uninspired by competitor Nike as it moves through its own transformation. So Lulu Lemon hasn't detailed how the NFL apparel fits into a longer-term plan so far. Is it going to bring in a new consumer? Maybe that's a strategy if it's not the same consumer who's already shopping at Lulu, which we're just not sure about. It's just not clear that this potentially reignites interest in the lapsed Lulu Lemon core consumer. And that's what Connick and other analysts are really hoping that they can claw back.

Back over to you. All right, Cor, thank you. That's Courtney Reagan. So Brian Levitt's good to have you with us at Post 9. It is a pivotal week to say the least. How much you think is actually riding on what happens with the results from mega caps? A lot of it's riding on the results of the mega caps. I mean, particularly at the broad index level, we have significant concentration at the broad index level, and you've got valuations that are continued to be priced for pretty significant growth. So I think a lot of it. But the reality is these businesses continue to look pretty well positioned. positioned. And the expectation is that they will deliver on earnings. And the macro backdrop in general continues to be good for risk assets. You're still, you know, positive on where this market can go between now and the end of the year? I am. And, you know, I keep coming back to some core elements, which is growth is resilient. Inflation expectations are contained. Yields are

down. Oil prices are down. The Fed is easing. In many ways, it's almost hard. With the exception of valuations, which are not timing tools, it's almost hard to think about. out what there is not to like with regards to the current macro backdrop. Mike, I mean, we were just talking about trying to close above 6,800. Now we have 6,900 in our sites. Yeah, I mean, obviously, the, you know, the mile markers come quicker when you're moving faster and the numbers get higher. So there's no doubt that, you know, there has been a little bit of reserve of caution out

there among like strategists, for example. The S&P is now well above the median target for the end of this year. That's why I'm focused on how this develops between now and year-end, as everybody forms their 2026 outlooks, if people's eyes start to get pretty big. The way the market has acted since April is very much the way it acted in the year 2017, when it was not even of 3% pullback the entire year, just marched higher. Obviously, it was people looking forward to tax cuts the following year. And then we had this acceleration higher, this momentum top in early 2018. That's when everybody got over-excited. So we're kind of in that zone where people have not yet quite built up that level of enthusiasm.

Maybe that's going to be necessary. The other piece I would just note in terms of the earnings, there's no doubt that the general trend of earnings of these big companies is likely to deliver. But, you know, Netflix didn't do anything particularly wrong in its core business, and the stock got smacked. So I don't think all of them are going to be up commensurate with how good the numbers are. And so we'll see if maybe that's something at the market's going to have to contend with here. Brian, it's been an incredible move. I mean, the only thing that really tripped this market up of magnitude was an unforced error from the administration on the rollout of trade.

Yeah. X that, you saw the chart we just put up there. Is that the environment we're in barring either unforced error or an unforeseen something? Yeah, absolutely. The chart just continues to look like that. Absolutely. And the reality, if you think about 2018, what we saw in 2018 was a series of rape hikes, which we're not going to get. And we saw more confusion around the U.S.-China trade war, which we may not get.

This is an environment that may even look different than that because we're going to have easing, and we should have better policy clarity. So, right, so when do markets roll over? Markets roll over either with a policy mistake or a meaningful deterioration and economic activity, neither of which seem like they're lurking right now. Yeah, are you in the Everything Rally camp, that it's not just the mega cabs, so you can get a real broadening and, you know, you want to go with Bitcoin risk asset up. I don't know where you think gold is, which is, you know, was below 4,000, and it retook it.

We can show it now, but as you answer the question. I'm less inclined with the so-called debasement trade. You know, the U.S. dollar assets have done just fine, so I'm not piling into gold and Bitcoin. What you have a nice opportunity for as we move into the end of the year in 2026 is good stimulus, decent stimulus in the year. U.S., better around the world, policy easing, and hopefully a pickup in activity a bit from a little bit of the slowdown that we've seen. That should help broaden things out. You've seen small caps do decent.

You've seen international do well this year. So this year has been a bit of an everything. Rale, I think for a lot of investors, the concern is valuations. And so you can diversify portfolios here, bring down the overall valuation. Doesn't mean you sell mega cap growth, get out of it entirely, but you can diversify and still participate. Yeah, you can say, yeah, I don't love the valuation, but that alone, not even close to enough to get you out of this market.

So they're clapping. Bell's going to ring any moment now, and it's going to ring in a new all-time high for stocks yet again. In fact, the S&P 500 is definitely going to close above 6,800. As I said, we need to start having a conversation about the next stop of 6,900. They'll continue the market conversation. in the next hour. I'll see you tomorrow to Morgan and John.