Closing Bell - Closing Bell 10/6/26

Episode Date: October 6, 2026

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, Melissa Lee 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.

All right, guys, 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 momentum for the Bulls. The S&P hitting its first record high. Since mid-August, we will discuss what all that means with our experts over the final stretch. Let me show you the scorecard here with 60 to go in regulation. We have been green all day for the majors, rates, oil, both down. That's obviously helping the picture today. Well, crude's up a little bit, but it's not rising fast. Market breadth, it's good as well. Those sectors are green. Strength today, broad, tech, utilities, discretionary, industrials. You get the picture. Marvell's a big mover as well. We'll tell you exactly what's going on there in just a little bit. That's good for six and a half percent highs of the day. Cyber, strong once again, throughout basically the whole complex. Microsoft extending its recent run, along with NVIDIA, which takes us to our talk of the tape where this record-setting market is heading and whether another broadening move is about to happen because we've gotten so narrow. Let's ask our panel.

CNBC contributor, Trivariates, Adam Parker, SOFY's Liz Thomas, Partners Group, Anastasia Amarosa. It's great to have everybody with us. I'll come to you first. If I told you that in the last month, the Fed was going to hike, the tenure was going to rise by 50 basis points, we'd have no earnings to fall back on, and oil would stay high,

and that the first handful of days into October, the S&P would have hit a new high, would you said what? Well, you know. Ain't gonna happen. Yeah, you know that, you know, like, in my top five least favorite subjects is the Fed. Okay. So take them up.

But they did hike, though. Right, but like, you know, like the bogey in the last 15 years that I've been thinking about this stuff, it's like, I remember somebody saying, oh, there's no way equities can work if we get to like 4% on the tenure. It's like impossible they'll work. And four and a half is like the sound barrier. You know, and that just goes up. If the economy's strong and earnings are strong, ultimately, that kind of trumps everything. Well, that's your answer to that.

Because the economy has remained strong and earnings are expected to be strong. So none of those other things matter. Like, we had seasonality was against us. The speed of the move in rates was against us. People talk about the Fed being a friend or foe. The Fed was against us. And yet here we are. And the good news is I write twice a week, and we never once wrote, we were concerned about any of that.

stuff so I can prove that I've been worried about it. But at the end of the day, I think what mattered is I don't have sufficient history to analyze, right? Like, we don't have a lot of history where the Fed's rising will have 10 years backing up. We don't have a ton of history in the last eight years where oil's been correlated to rates. So you can go guess at what historical regime is relevant, or you can say, what's different about today? 25% earnings growth next year, probably another 20 the year after. Earnings are probably too low. They've been too low for two or three years since AI has come out.

The mag seven or grade eight, whatever you're going to call them, their numbers are coming up. So the call we had at the beginning of the year is probably still the right call, which is multiples contract, earnings grow through it, and the market ends up higher. Like, I think that's still right, and we'll see if we get some more, a real gross scare on the tenure or not, we'll see. But it's not, I don't think it's at these levels. I think it's higher. So we shouldn't be surprised by where we are, given all that stuff?

I would change the statement to be if you had said all of those things were going to happen, and then what the market was going to do was rotate back into big cap tech, the Meg 7 would come back in, other sectors might kind of lag back. a little bit. Therefore, mathematically, the index is higher. I would say that probably makes sense, because that's what we've done every single time in this cycle. And I think actually what's happening right now is we might finally be seeing classic late cycle behavior. So you've got investors going back to large-cap stocks. We've got growth that's strong, a Fed that's hiking, and some of their defense is saying the economy can withstand it. We're strong enough. Inflation

is rising again. Growth is okay. The labor market is solid. This is late cycle feelings. And I think we have to really be aware that that could be the stage we're in. But we're not late cycle in the principal driver of the economy, which is the AI buildout. We're not even close to late cycle in that if you look at all the numbers and the earnings. So how could you think we're late cycle if all of that, the most incredible economic driver that we've seen in decades, is like, what if that's mid-cycle? How can you be late-cycle in the economy? There's always a driver that takes it through that late cycle and actually concentrates the stocks.

If you look at what happens in late cycle, it's usually about 10 to 15 stocks that drive the index higher until it stops. Late cycle can last a while. I think we all made calls for, oh, we might be heading towards late cycle a few years ago, and it didn't happen. Maybe this is just the beginning of it. And I do agree we still have some room to run. I don't think we've hit the peak of inflated expectations according to the hype cycle in AI. I think there's still more to go. I don't think we've hit the peak in the market.

I don't think we've hit the peak in earnings. But I think we're closer to it than we were a year ago. And we should be wary of the fact that the Fed is hiking. That's fair. And I mean, that's a little more nuanced than saying, you know, this is like sort of classic late cycle. Not classic approaching recession late cycle, but classic in the sense that what happens in late cycle.

The economy is usually strong, maybe verging on overheating. And if AI is the thing that's pushing us into that place, what does the Fed usually do in that scenario? They start hiking rates. And they try to do that to bring things back into balance. Sometimes they accomplish that. Sometimes they don't. Usually what happens is in a hiking cycle, if that's what's about to occur, it ends in tears. Now, I don't know that that's exactly what's going to happen.

In fact, I think the Fed's going to have to tap the brakes on this hiking cycle sooner rather than later. What do you think? Well, I'd love to talk about the Fed, first of all. I do think the market may be getting over their skis in terms of how much they were pricing in terms of the rate hiking cycle. Well, we've seen that, right? We have. The two years backed off of where it was.

Right, right. But we're still looking for three more rate hikes from here and out. And I do think that maybe some of that will start to shift. Because first of all, case and point, we looked at that core PC number, which is significantly lower than where the market expectations were. If you look at the three-month annualized trend of the core PC, it's actually starting to soften. And I do think whether it's energy, whether it's portfolio effect, whether it's tariff prices, some of that will start to wane.

And so if the Fed can be patient here for another month or two, maybe they don't actually have as big of a case to high-crate. So with that, kind of back to the optimist point, I'm actually quite optimistic on this market, especially heading into Q4. And that was not the setup, I would tell you, going into the summer, because, you know, in the summer valuations were a lot higher

and maybe momentum was not as certain, but today we have valuations that have actually reset quite 80 fully so. We're 19 times. We're like 23. It's true for the SMP. It's true for the S&P. It's true for the semiconductors.

It's true for even the X-Max-7. So I like the valuations. And then there's the earnings momentum. And then I do kind of want to come back to oil in the bond market. I think just maybe we may have seen the bulk of the move higher in rates. And, you know, we should talk about the appetite investors have for bonds. At 5.25% on a 10-year treasury, you have a lot of end-user demand that is coming into the bond market. So that in and of itself may cap the move higher in bond yields supporting markets.

Well, I mean, there are some who suggest that the movement in yields could cap the move in stocks because now for the first time and a long time, you actually have competition. It's why people like Rick Reeder, who's still constructive on the market, thinks you're not maybe in the greatest investing environment he's ever seen, but a little bit lower because there's competition for stocks and there hasn't been. Yeah, I mean, one of the things Liz was making about is like the challenge that we all have is when we were formulating our investment heuristics when we were slightly younger. Things were more synchronized secretly. You know, it felt like housing was lined up with, you know, autos and lined up with industrials.

And now I feel like everything's cycling at a slightly different time. The Fed's a little out of kilter. The AI thing is this totally separate cycle. So it's hard to like know some things are late cycle and some things are. You know, it's like it's hard to perfectly align. I just, I feel like the thing that institutional investors are asking me in my meetings, are give me any ideas you have that are consumer or industrial that aren't AI and aren't rate sensitive.

I'm loaded to the gills with the other stuff. So is there anything? So there's search, is it healthcare services, which I like, is there anything I can find that's going to get me some different alpha stream? I tend to agree with your view. I think we're three and a half years into an AI cycle because I think day one was NVIDIA's made 23 upward earnings revision, three and a half years into an eight to 10 year cycle. It's way too early to get bearish on that.

And on associate's sense of me, I really agree with. A lot of people two weeks ago were worried about the midterms, regulation coming in my meetings, data center stuff was noisy, the correlation between oil and rates. I think we could get a huge relief rally after the midterm just because it's behind us and we end up the year higher. I'm not great at three-month market calls, but I wouldn't be surprised if we kind of had a big move higher when that's said and done. Yeah, you can't be, you can't think we're, you know, late cycle if you think that Micron's going to double.

Yeah, and just to be clear, the double was from 780, so we're on the way. We're on the way. Yeah, yeah, so we're about, you know, 40% of the way there. Was it at 780? We said 1,500, but yeah, was it about a double? But yeah, we got a way to go. I think we're going way higher. I think it's one of the reasons the market looks cheaper is because you get a $1.2 trillion market cap company that trades at five times.

Like, that itself is almost a whole turn. in the equity market because they're growing so fast. You know, what that's kind of like InVidia. That's why it's multiple is the cheapest it's been in however many years. It's like almost $6 trillion in market. I struggle, look, if somebody asks me in a vacuum, like, do you like it when stocks beat the quarter and don't go up? The answer is no. But I think Mike Run is a really interesting case where I would take a step back and say,

look, I've been covering following semiconductors for 25 years. It might be the greatest quarter ever produced by a manufacturing company in the history of humankind. I mean, they did 50 billion in revenue. They make stuff in a factory that an 85% gross margin. Name me one other company that's ever done that at that scale. So it trades at five times peak, 11 times normalized. Is that the right number for a company that's going to do 30% of its market cap and cash in the next 70 quarters? I don't think so.

So I think that stocks are going to go meaningfully higher. I do it. Whether it doubles or 60, 70%, you can give me a hard time later. But I think it's fine. I think, you know, to Adam's point, to actually kind of maybe slightly disagree, but I think what's unique about the... You can totally disagree. Totally disagree.

Maybe a slightly unique environment that we have today is actually I think several things are working together in unisoned. It's not just pitting all of our hopes on the U.S. consumer, but it's actually also looking at the corporations. They're seeing narrow record margins and that earning strength that we talked about, but also at CAPEX. You know, if you look at CAPX numbers, they're up 15% year over year. And this is something like we haven't seen in years. And it's not just AI. I would say it's the whole reindustrialization and onshore momentum that's showing up on all sorts of supply chain. So, Adam, to agree with you, I will say.

What was the slight part? I didn't even hear the disagreement. Well, you were saying that different parts of the economy are behaving differently at different times. Like autos are bad or housing are bad. But today, more things from my perspective are good in unison than not. And to agree with you, I would say the industrial sector is certainly really interesting because of that.

So the question we asked, Liz, at the very top of the program, this is the second day in a row where you've had basically every sector up. Could we get into another broadening period? Or as long as rates are up where they are. you're still going to have that move back to the mega caps. I think we're thirsty for a broadening period. So you're going to hear people talk about that if there is light at the end of a tunnel in certain sectors.

I think you'll hear about it in financials. I think you'll hear about it in industrials because the way that they're trading looks like they're ready to bounce, both of them. And I think the beginning of earning season is a good catalyst for that. But as long as rates remain where they are, as long as the Fed, and in reality, the Fed is in a hiking posture right now. They may change their tune. I think they will change their tune.

but right now they're in a hiking posture, and I'm not going to disagree with them because the market's going to follow that. So the rate-sensitive sectors, I think, are going to stay under pressure until that changes. I think it'll change pretty quickly if inflation continues to come in cooler, if oil prices come down,

and maybe even after the mid-term elections and we get some of this angst behind us and we get a nice relief rally in stocks. I absolutely agree with that side of it. But I do think that it keeps a lid on the market really ripping in all fashion. until rates come back down. Depends what you mean by broadening.

You know, well, I mean, kind of like, let's see something other than tech go up. Because over the last month, really, it's kind of been tech and everything else is red. Tech earnings are growing 60% plus this year. They're supposed to go 40% plus next year. You're asking for a lot of relative multiple contraction

for tech not to outperform in the uptap. So I think it's less likely we get broadening, more likely we get further concentrated before the site. Really? I mean, you can still have tech outperforming. and have other areas of the markets start performing better again, no? Q3 was a little more bifurcate. I mean, Invidio was a good stock, but Broadcom and Micron weren't because of the July

rollover. I think if you look at the numbers, I think there's risk that the grade 8 or the MagS7 plus Brodcom whatever could outperform in an uptap. I think there's more upside to their numbers than there is the market for the other 492. The industrials, there's some good stuff there, but most of the ones that are good have been correlated to the AI trade. They trade like an AI semi. So when you run a diversified book, you could fool yourself.

saying I own power, I own industrial, but really you own AISEMEs. It's all the same trade. And so I think you've just got to decide how much that you want to own. And you see that on the market. I agree. I like some of the industrials, but I like the ones that are exposed to the fact that we need more compute, we need more power. So I don't know, I don't think you disagree with anything, but I'm fine that you teed up.

All right. We'll leave it there. I agree with you. We got to bounce. All right, cool. Thank you, everybody for being here. It's nice to have all of you on the set today. Let's get some of today's other stories, starting with Marvell, shares are surging.

Sima Modi is tracking that force and joins us with more. Hi. Hey, Scott, so Marvell, coming out hot with an incredibly bullish revenue target for 2031, projecting sales of $70 to $90 billion for 20331, well above the 46 billion estimate, giving investors yet another reason to get bullish on this name of stock, which has already had a huge run up this year, up 240%. Its guide sort of tells us three things. One, the AI buildout is creating a new cohort of winners beyond the GPU Titans like

Nvidia and AMD. Second, there is a need, a growing need for networking and connectivity, and that's going to rise as hyper-scalers build their own custom chips and need Marvell's technology to ensure their chips can communicate with one another. And third, as Marvell's CEO Matt Murphy said on the investor day today, hypers are continuing to rethink their networking needs as they build these chips. Worth noting Marvell's key competitor in all of this is Broadcom, which is also up on the day by around 4%. We'll hear more from Marvell's CEO tomorrow morning. the street, Scott. All right, good stuff. Seaman, thanks so much. We look forward to that. Alphabet signing a 20-year nuclear deal with Constellation Energy. Mackenzie Segalos is following that story and joins us with more. Hi. Hey, Scott, so Constellation Energy shares jumping 12% on the deal. Google is

contracting for 3.6 gigawatts of power from Constellation Energy across the PGAM grid. That's the country's largest power market covering 13 states and D.C. And it is the latest sign of just how aggressively big tech is locking up electricity for this AI data center buildout increasingly through these kinds of long-term deals directly with the power producers. And a key piece to this agreement is squeezing more electricity out of nuclear plants that constellation already operates. So upgrades to 11 existing reactors in Illinois, Pennsylvania and New Jersey are expected to create nearly a gigawatt of additional capacity, roughly enough to power 750,000 homes with the first of that newly generated additional capacity expected to come online in 2028.

Now, Constellation says that it is putting up $4.3 billion in capital to fund those reactor upgrades and add new generating capacity. And of course, this comes in a week where Constellations already signed with Amazon to provide nuclear power. For both Google and Amazon, locking in contracts like these is becoming increasingly important to the AI build. But as data centers put more strain on the grid, PJM has proposed requiring new data centers to bring their own electricity supply or risk being curtailed during peak demand. And the companies say this deal is a direct response to that. Scott?

All right, Mac, thank you. Mackenzie Segal. Another bullish call on SpaceX. Got one yesterday. Got one today. Brian and Gomez following with the new details. Hi. Hey there, Scott.

Yeah, SpaceX shares climbing to their highest level since June. returning Elon Musk to trillionaire status. Now, the move comes following an increased price target, as you said, by Goldman Sachs. The bank lifting their expectations $10 from 220 to 230, reiterating a buy rating, saying it believes that AI segment estimates still look conservative relative to street estimates over the next six to 18 months, absent a correction across the broader AI operating landscape. Now, remember, as you said, Morgan Stanley's Adam Jonas reiterated his overweight rating and $300 price target yesterday, saying the stock is cheap.

and getting cheaper. It also comes after the company successfully launched a crude NASA mission and separately sent Google's AI chips into orbit. A shares have been incredibly volatile this year. It took less than three sessions to go from the 171 to its intraday high of over 225 after its June debut. You can see in the chart there. Shares started trending lower soon after, bottoming in early August, but have since climbed back around 58% since then, Scott. Okay, Brandon, thank you. That's Brandon Gomez. We're just getting started. Coming up next, a new model shaking up the AI arms race and threatening the industry's biggest players. We've got the details plus Alder's Anka Crawford weighs in next.

Welcome back, a new model in the AI arms race, threatening to shake up the competitive landscape. Our Kate Rooney joins us now with more. Tell us more about this. All right, Scott. So this is a startup. It's backed by Nvidia. It's called Reflection. And it's right now being seen as the American answer to the popular, low-cost Chinese options of AI. that have surged in popularity. So unlike what we have in the U.S. from Open AI or Anthropic, their closed models, other companies. So if you think of a bank or a startup, for example,

can take these models and then customize them with their own data. That route can be cheaper while keeping some of the more sensitive information in-house, Alex Carp of Palantiers among those that have argued for this. Reflection's CEO was on Squabbox earlier this morning. He compared it to owning versus renting. I kind of think about it from an AI rental market to an AI ownership market. Close models is kind of like renting your AI, like renting an apartment. And as enterprises use AI more, they want to own it as much as possible because it becomes such a big line item.

And so we see a big shift happening to open source and meeting this moment to produce a great American Western open model that enterprises can use for their most critical workloads. And Scott, there is also a geopolitical factor here. companies have dominated this open source space while banks and government agencies right now do have a limited amount of Western alternatives if they do want to do that and run AI themselves go in that ownership direction. There is a similar trend coming out of Europe as well. AI startup Mistral this morning out with an even larger open weight model. It does claim that it beats Reflections version. It's called Lechonk. These models are still expected to lag the very best closed systems here in the U.S. from open-eye anathropic. But the best.

here is that a company can take a good enough model as another option in this AI race. It could also add some pressure to open-eye and Anthropic in terms of margins as these companies like to go public, Scott. Yeah, it's a great point and a great look for us. Kate, thanks so much. That's Kate Rooney. Join now by Alder's Anka Crawford. She runs several tech-focused funds, holds a position as well in Anthropic and the private markets. Good to have you back. Have we ceded too much power to Anthropic and Open AI and thinking about their positions in this race,

knowing what we are learning from something like this? I think that there's going to be a kind of a panoply of different kinds of models. I think Open AI and Anthropic may own the frontier and there will be several other models

that will dominate kind of 80% of the workloads. So I don't think it's seating anything necessarily. We need someone to be at the frontier and be very, very good and highly intelligent, but we also need the rest in order to do the bulk of the work. I'm trying to think back to, you know, if this is ostensibly our answer to deep seek, in some ways, right? When that was introduced, the AI market cratered, right? Because there was worry about cheaper, faster, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Do we need to have a similar conversation, though, about what this could mean

to some of the other big players? And I wonder if Open and Anthropic were on the public markets today, would we see a negative reaction in the market? Because you can't really get a great look by looking at the shares today in the private market. How do you assess that? So I think when Deep Sea Capp and the reason we saw cratering in the market, and even with Kimmy, I think people just don't understand how this will land necessarily. Are the margins for Anthropic and Open AI supposed to be 75, 80 percent? Is that an appropriate margin? And we'll just have to see, Scott. I don't know exactly where they land, but I do know that, you know, you have to allow for value in the ecosystem to be, so that they can invest. And if you don't allow them to invest at the frontier,

then the frontier won't be built. I wonder, though, so I'm just back from Dallas, right, where we had this CNBC AI Forum. And one of the interviews that I did there was with an executive from AT&T. What do they do? They're using OpenAI. They're using Anthropic. And they're like, wow, it's really expensive for the kind of needs that we have to keep spending as much as we're spending on tokens. So we're going to go to a more open source model.

and it has been a game changer for companies like that. This speaks to that. And I wonder if there's more risk of other big Fortune 500 companies who spend a lot of money on their, you know, AI work that are going to make similar moves. And they look at this as something like, you know what? It's going to force our hand. Right.

And that's why I think you have to look at the kind of ladder of different models that you have. So incredibly intelligent work will be done on the frontier. When you're developing an app, when you're developing or looking for a new drug, you will do that at the frontier. As you take that to production, you will most likely move it to the workhorse in the economy, which will be mostly commodity models, whether it's nematron or reflection or some version of chemi or Deep Seek or La Chonk from France. So, you know, I think that the production workloads will remain in open source model because it is efficient on a cost per performance basis. However, a lot of the frontier innovation will most likely be done at the frontier. So again, I think you have to think of this as two separate markets.

Okay. Let's look at this market what's happening now. The fact that the mega caps are obviously back, is this now, firmly in place for the rest of the year? Are you thinking what was a broadening trade for a little bit, now got more narrow, and that's just the way it's going to be as long as rates remain elevated, and as long as the Fed's threatening to hike again, rates are probably going to remain elevated. Yeah, so I think what's happening in part is oil is coming down. We've seen the majority of rates, you know, the rate move, the majority of it is now behind us. So we're at five, Is it going to go to 5.6? Well, that's the majority of the pain that is already behind us. And so we can start stabilizing on rates, which actually helps credit spreads. And it helps,

like, financing. It gives some stability to the market in general. I think that's a little bit of what you're seeing, but you're also seeing we're getting closer to the midterms. Everyone thinks that the midterms are kind of like a catalyst for the market. And usually when you see that, the market starts to move ahead of that. And especially as you go into earnings where earnings should be pretty good. I don't see any signs, at least in the broader industrial economy and in the AI economy, that things are slowing. Okay. Let's do a stock pick before we go. We can show nebius, which is up a lot again. So we need another nebius-like pick. And you, WDC, Western Ditch. You want to talk about that. Why? Well, so Western Deges

come in from $800. It's a $400 today, and part of it, it got caught up in the memory trade. Now, one thing that people don't realize is that there's only like two players, and there's a very far distant third player, Toshiba. Recently, Western Didge had, on Friday, there was a report that Toshiba wants to take 30% share of the market. That would be lovely. You know, I too would like 30% share of the market, but you actually have to have the technology to do it. And today, there was a report that Toshiba is going to be buying one of the suppliers. The misnomer in the market is that actually that supplier is a supplier to both Western Dage and Seagate, and it is not. It's only a supplier to Toshiba. So, you know, it trades it less than six times earnings

on our 2028. Kind of doesn't make sense for this business to be trading at this kind of multiple, even if it is deemed a commodity, but usually commodities have more than two and half a player. It's like a micron like multiple. That's right. That's right. And it trades with micron and in part because, you know, hard disk drives can be cannibalized by NAND at some point. But that spread today is so wide that it's not today and it's not over the next three years. And trading in a five and a half multiple, I mean, they can buy themselves back in five years at these kind of

All right. Well, it's already up 138% here to date, so we'll track it. Thank you. Uncle Crawford from Aldger back at Post 9. Up next, private credit concerns, not cooling investor appetite for the private markets. Why alternatives remain in demand? Goldman Sachs is global head of alternatives. Kristen Olson joins us next. Welcome back. One of the big questions in the alternative space has been, would the issues around private credit negatively impact how investors saw opportunities in that space? Well, a new survey from Goldman Sachs suggests the answer is no. Olson, Global Head of Alternatives at Goldman, joins us now with more. It's good to have you back. Thanks for having me. Were you surprised by the answer being no? Because, I mean, we've talked a lot

about issues in private credit over the last year. I was a little bit surprised. I would say when you looked at the overall results, people definitely, the perception of risk and alternatives definitely went up. But when you look under the hood, investors that have been educated and familiar were the ones that were unfazed. And I thought was particularly surprising on the private credit side. was over half of the people we surveyed had experienced a redemption issue or a gate. And yet, two-thirds of those said they were either staying the course or increasing their allocation of private investments. Wow.

Only three in ten said it made them more cautious. Why do you think that is? Well, look, I think the optimistic part of me thinks that hopefully they were educated and understood that there wasn't liquidity and that this potentially could be, you know, one of the features of the product. On the other hand, I think the secular trend towards investing in privates is so strong that people are going to continue to stay the course. I mean, if you look at, I guess there's more evidence of that in the fact that it's such a broad array of strategies, too, that your survey revealed. 57% of current owners are invested in private equity versus 19% of former owners, 34% private credit versus 2, 16% of current owners invested in private income.

infrastructure versus two? It's just because, I mean, it's a performance issue, too, right? They may go where the returns are. Yeah, I'm like a couple things. I think, one, you're seeing investors that are familiar with Alts adding. So 40% said they were going to add to their alternatives and they're diversified. So they might have been in private credit, but if you look now, they're adding to all those other asset classes in privates.

And then to your performance question, I thought what was interesting was 97% of the people we surveyed who owned Alts said that they were. happy that these, 93% were happy with that they owned Alts and 97% said they performed as expected or better. Huh. I want to go back to the education thing because I think that's interesting. Satisfaction with the products themselves is not the issue, as the results suggest. As people become more educated, there's a correlation, obviously.

More educated you are about this asset class, the more money that is going to continue to flow there. Can you draw a straight line? Definitely. Overall, only half of the respondents were familiar with ALTS. And then when you dig below the surface, you see, in a lot of the different questions we ask, the more familiar someone was, the less risk they perceived. And you actually saw that for someone who's never done ALTS, if they felt they'd been educated and where they were familiar, they were five times more likely to initiate a private investment over the next 12 months.

So very meaningful jumps from education. So there's a real opportunity for advisors to be getting in front of clients and trying to explain to them why they should own private investments in a diversified balance portfolio. How much do you think the, you know, I guess for lack of the better word, hype around AI is playing here. People want access to companies that are not yet public so they can get that in the private market. People want access to other areas of AI like, okay, so software, obviously. with what's happened in private credit, but private credit is, private lending is going to be happening in other parts of the AI food chain too, and people want exposure to this booming trend.

It's 100% of a large trend that's spurring interest in private markets, right? As you said, people want exposure to these transformative companies where so much of the value creation is happening in the private markets. And then you see all the areas, to your point, they're affected, private infrastructure, lending to the space, right? It really does, it is a through line and kind of all of the private investments that we're seeing. Like when we're talking private infrastructure, are we talking about like data centers, like things? Data centers, chips, you know,

all of the supply chain that's going to feed into what we need to fuel the data needs for AI. I think the other number that surprised me, 92% of millennials currently own alternatives. Yeah. Just behind that. So I think they started much more native, you know, learning about private investments,

in particular to your point, looking what's happening in the venture and growth space and seeing all these companies that they're much closer to and recognizing if I want to participate, I've got to get familiar with investing in private markets. And so I think they're going to continue to add. We even saw that they're interested in putting it in their retirement accounts if that's a possibility. Wow. Really interesting. Thanks for coming by and sharing this information. Kristen Olson with Golden Sachs. Up next, we track the biggest movers as we head into the close. Brandon standing by with that for us. Hi. You know, Scott, a storage shakeup and agricultural upgrade and a hot quarter for potatoes.

Three stocks making moves as we head into the close after this break. All right, well, less than 15 until the close. Back to Brandon for the stocks that he is watching. What's at the top of your list? Yeah, first up, Scott, Seagate technology dropping today after Bloomberg reported the data storage company is competing with Toshiba in a bid for TDK's magnetic heads business for hard disk drives. Shares of the company are down about 9.5% today. And then next up, we have Corteva climbing after James.

AP Morgan upgraded it to overweight, citing potential in the agricultural company's cost structure and its crop growth profiles. Corteva is up, as you can see, about 12 percent on the upgrade. And then finally, shares of Lamb Wesson surging. After reporting better than expected earnings and revenue in the fiscal first quarter, the producer of potato products also lifted its outlook for the year, citing its cost-cutting initiatives and growing demand. That stock up now about 8 percent, Scott.

All right, Brandon, thank you. Brandon Gomez. Up next, Constellation Brands, getting ready to report. report results at the top of the hour. We're breaking down what to watch for when those earnings hit the take. We'll do it in the market zone. We'll do it in the market zone. Mike Santoli and Bartlett, Holly Mazaka are here to break down these crucial moments of the trading day plus Oliver Renick, standing by live from the Cibo Global Markets in Chicago. Brandon Gomez watching Constellation brands ahead of the print in overtime and Julia Borson looking at shares of Skydance.

Gets everybody in a minute. Mike Santoli, you first. What are your observations on this day? Yeah, I mean, certainly net positive. It's never bearish when the major index has hit new highs, as they have today. That said, there's always something that's sort of drawing against the conclusion that it's an all-clear. And I think today you would look at things like small caps and banks. Yes, it's a broader rally. Yes, there's more participation. But I do think that, you know, one of the costs of having a market that goes sideways

instead of actually correcting across the board is that you don't have those kind of comprehensive oversawl conditions. of a sudden you're going to get a momentum push out of it. And so it's a little bit of trading one thing against another. We got relief on yields in oil. That's obviously good stuff for sort of the cyclical parts of the market. But I don't know that you're going to look at this and say that we're definitively in a new higher range for the S&P specifically. I need a little more proof. What's on the plate for OT? Well, we'll tackle all that. We've got a chief investment officer from BlackRock as well as Kronsky about his technical observations. Also, Salvin Richter,

pharma analyst from Goldman Sachs, who went to China, is going to talk about where the biopharmac industry there might be a threatening opportunity to our drug. Oh, okay, good stuff. We'll see you in Mel in just a little bit. Mike, thank you. Let's go to Chicago to the CBO global markets, Oliver Renixplan Options Action. Where? Hey, Scott. Everybody's in a pretty good mood here on the floor today, but there's no shortage of haters on the tape.

The two biggest options trades actually strike me as skeptical. With volume and spy, 20% above the average, the biggest trade of the session was someone buying puts. A very chunky 100,000 lot of 655 strike puts worth $61 million, expiring in March, a strike about 18% lower. Now, they also sold $17 million of the 500 strike puts against it to define their risk and make this a spread. But what's most telling is those 655 strike puts they bought are the cheapest they've been. in three months. So they probably think this is a valuable hedge, aka buying cheap Vaughal and Vicks did hit 14 handle today. And then separately in Meta, it was a weird one here, but a big one with someone selling almost $70 million of in the money calls also likely some sort of hedge

as Meta's muse becomes the face of this rally, Scott. All right, good stuff. Oliver, thank you. Oliver Renick, Brandon Gomez, Consolation Brands reporting in just a little bit. What should we look out for. Yeah, right. That's right. That's right, Scott. This quarter is really a test of whether its beer business is stabilizing. Wall Street expects about three and a half percent revenue growth topping $2.54 billion, with earnings of $356 a share. But investors will be focused less on the headline beat and more on demand for Madelo, Corona, Pacifico. The company's premium beer portfolio has continued to take share, but broader beer consumption has been uneven with consumers pulling back, going out less, spending less. Not pressure has been particularly important for constellation. It has

over-indexed exposure to the Hispanic consumer as well. The other items to watch, whether management can maintain its full-year outlook and offer evidence that share gains and Mexico capacity investments can outrun a tougher alcohol backdrop right now, Scott. All right. We'll look for those earnings, Brandon. Thank you. Appreciate that for very much. Julia Borsen now on Skydance. Tell us more as this deal closes. Well, Scott, Skydance stock is down over 4% as the company's co-CEO's David Ellison and Enon-Kreeze get to work. The big challenge, they're promised $6 billion in cost-cutting and synergies within three years while also adhering to the company's commitment to state attorneys general to produce 30 theatrical releases a year.

Now, a key concern for investors is the company's nearly $80 billion in debt, which now bears $400 million more in annual interest payment than it would have had the debt been sold a few months ago when treasury yields were about a percentage point lower. Now the newly combined leadership faces the challenge of integrating the companies and their their products. Raymond James, writing, quote, we also expect some near-term revenue pressure from overlapping streaming subscribers where we estimate about 35% of Paramount Plus subscribers overlap with HBO Mac subscribers. Scott? All right. We'll be watching. Julia, thank you very much. Holly Mazoccas sitting next to me here at Post 9. When you sat down, you said,

are we going to talk about something other than the Mag 7? I mean, do you think does the market want to talk about something other than the Mag 7? Well, as we're going into fresh eyes today, it's clear the market is pretty focused on the narrow portion of the AI trade. However, there are opportunities here to be selective and really look for those stocks that allow you to participate and be in without being all in on the semiconductors and hyperscalers. But the operative word there is selective. Does that mean you still think we're going to be in a concentrated-ish market that you do have to be so selective to find the names that are outside of where, you know, the,

the big flow is? Yes, I do think this is an opportunity as we head into earnings season to find those companies that can really continue with very durable earnings and demonstrate that they have diversified earnings stream beyond just the AI pieces, and also companies that are truly innovating and using it within their productivity base. Okay. I love that you came with stock picks, because normally we don't even do that at this time when we're waiting for the bell, but I love that you did. Amphanol. Why do you like it? We love Amphanol because it's a great little company that goes into the connectivity space. You can really think about the AI growth without betting on a particular product, without betting on a particular hyperscaler, where Amphanol has about

40% of their revenue tied to growth in AI and communications data. However, it's diversified beyond into automotive, into industrial, into the growth in the space technology. not like it's undiscovered. I mean, you're looking at the stock, it's up 31% year to date. Absolutely. It has been, but when we look at it, there's still opportunity for continued growth in earnings. And we also like that it does have that really durable earnings base behind it. Okay, so you're still looking for things that can ostensibly play in the AI theme, just maybe not so many of the obvious ones. That's exactly right. I would also start looking at those companies that are unloved in this area, the market.

where we've seen rates go up and they've sold off companies like Nextera, companies like waste management, where they are seeing opportunities to really use AI towards innovation and creating improved margins on the bottom line. Next era like a utility, which obviously is, you know, those stocks have looked terrible lately because bond yields have backed up. You think that's going to, that dynamic's going to change? Investors are clearly selling the entire sector without really appreciating that there's opportunity here. 30% of next year's earnings are coming from growth and clean energy, a lot of

which is going into the continued build out of the data center place. So we think that there's opportunity for investors to really dig in, look beyond just sector exposure, and start to be selective where you have your exposures here. What about waste management? We got a lot of trash at the data centers or what? We do. Think of waste management, like an infrastructure company that tends to have a big focus clearly on waste, on collections. What we like about it is that you're seeing growth in their smart trucks and growth of actually utilizing AI in the way that they build out their plants. And it's incredibly fascinating to see the bottom line,

$300 million to the bottom line that they're starting to see from the growth in their smart trucks and into their manufacturing facilities. Got like 15 seconds, literally. But we could close above $7,800 for the very first time on the S&P. surprised we're here given everything that we faced? I think we are surprised that we are here, but we've seen incredibly durable earnings, and now's the time to be selected.

We'll see, now we need to back it up. It's great having you here, Holly. Thank you. Holly, thank you. Holly Mazaka joining us here. They're cheering, they're clapping, and they might as well, because, as I said,

it looks like we are going to get that first-ever close on the U.S. and team above 7,800, and in fact, they did. I'll see you tomorrow.