Closing Bell - Closing Bell: 10/8/25

Episode Date: October 8, 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.

And welcome to closing bell. I'm Scott Wobner, live from Post 9 here at the New York Stock Exchange. This maker breakout begins with stock searching for more new highs today, led by what else technology. Here's the scorecard with 60 to go in regulation. The majors, they are all green today. A big day for many of the chip names, more follow-through for AMD following its deal with Open AI. Cyberstock's doing well, Palo Alto, hitting its own new record high today. AI power names, whoop, they're jumping too. Constellation getting an upgrade. G.E. Vanova, Eaton. They're also in the green. As you see, Dell shares, they're ripping again. The company upping its outlook on Tuesday with Michael Dell saying no signs yet of an

overbuild in data centers. That stock, a nice one up near 8%. It does take us to our talk of the tape. All AI all the time. And whether it is still okay to buy the names leading that revolution and this market higher, for that matter. Let's ask our panel, Dan Greenhouse, Chief Strategist for Solacea Amorosso, Chief Strategist for Partners Group. Both happy to be sitting right here at post-nines. Good to see you. See you. All right.

So this, I don't know, the whole market, this whole week, is all about AI deals. Is that the- Shocking the diversions from previous weeks. That's all we need to just continue to move higher in the market? I mean, clearly that's been what's working. It's not now obviously you've got health care. Savita upgraded the sector over at BAML, but you've got some of the healthcare names like Eli Lilly, Thermal,

Fischer, some of which Brian just mentioned at the end of the last hour. Woken up. Yeah, the area's woken up a little bit. But tech's doing the heavy lifting. It's not just AI, it's cyber arc, it's crowd strike. It's a lot of those type of, Palo Alto, you just mentioned. So, so yeah, the size of those companies and the deals that are being struck are obviously enough to drag the market higher, but it's also important to note, it's not as if nothing

else is doing well. Look at United Rentals and Caterpillar, not really AI plays. It's a really big winner today, right? Look at tapestry on the retail side of things. There are other names, not as many as you would like, but there are other stories out there. But the biggest story remains AI, and these deals that we seemingly are getting every single day, sometimes more than one in a day. Just run with that theme? I have two ways to think about it. Near term, yes, you run that with that theme because that's

what's supporting the earnings growth of the S&P 500, basically. That's what's supporting the economy as well. If you look at sort of spending, infrastructure spending on tech versus non-tech, it is all about tech. So for now, you go with where the growth is. But I do have to say, Scott, looking at the deal that we got today, for example, there's really a couple of things that I was a little bit concerned about. You know, one, this is not the first deal, but one of several, which has this circularity, where your investor is also your supplier and then you buy the chips from the supplier. You get the point. It's not at one instance. And then the other thing that I actually found concerning is the structure of the deal itself now has something called the

special, the SPV, the special vehicle, which maybe is now allowing for some structuring and some off-balance sheet financing. And, you know, you start to put all those pieces of the puzzles together and just everybody's exuberance about the theme. I think that does warrant some caution. You know, not now, not yet. But as investors, we want to approach it very carefully. And, you know, when we think about investing, for example, in data centers, we want to be very clear who's actually taking the capacity that we're building. But I do think Scott longer term, you know, we should be looking beyond the infrastructure layer of AI and be thinking about who is actually building the business applications, who's building the software.

If I can frame this real quick for the viewers that may not be aware, why what Anastasia is talking about and why the graphic we just showed is relevant, because late in the 90s, what later became known as vendor financing became quite prominent. The idea that the larger companies like Lucent, Google at Kids, Cisco were providing unsecured loans to smaller companies to purchase their products, which are. artificially propped up demand and revenues and eventually contributed to the decline in the 2000-2002 bare market. I would just push back real quick, and not that you were asserting this, but on this narrative,

at the time, a lot of it was on secured loans, now a lot of this equity financing, the warrants in the AMD deal, I think, were struck at a penny. And also, importantly, we know about this, whereas back then it was a little hidden. And so the fact that press releases are being put out, Jensen's doing interviews, letting people know about it, takes a little bit of the worry away. Speaking of Jensen doing interviews, Jensen did do an interview with Squawk this morning, where he was asked specifically about similarities between now and 99. Listen to what he said.

What's going on in the world versus what happened in 2000 is just dramatically different. You know, back then, as you recall, there were pets.com, hospitals.com, and all of the Internet companies combined was, what, $30 billion in size? If you look at the hyperscalers now, that's where the first tranche of AI infrastructure is building. If you look at the AI, the hyperscalers have about $2.5 trillion of business that's already operating today. Biggest companies doing the biggest amount of spending with the biggest balance sheets, far different, at least according to Jensen Wong, from what we saw in 99. in a week in which a lot of very well-known people, investors, CEOs weighing in on this topic.

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, when you look back then, the biggest and the best companies, Microsoft, Cisco, et cetera, these were not cash poor companies. They were not losing money. They were not free cash flow negative. Levered free cash flow was not negative. And they were good quality companies. They just overinvested. I think, again, the number was 80 million miles of fiber enough to wrap around the earth 3,000 times. We're probably doing something like that now. We just won't know about it for the next couple of years. I would push back on that assertion. I would also add, he mentioned Pets.com, and I think this is important. Pets.com did not file to go public until February of 2000. So did Webvan and a number of other

companies that people of a certain age will certainly remember. All of that was in the total blow off top that was late 99 and early 2000. There's a lot going on right now about which we should be concerned and probably laying the groundwork for an overinvestment and a decline down the future. But if you think that this is akin to 1999, I'm sorry, but you were not there in 1999. It was way more exuberant than this. Speaking of blow-off tops and froth, there was a note in the Fed Minutes, which were just released in the last hour, which caught our attention on this show, because it plays exactly into where the markets are and where some think they're likely to go. Our senior economics reporter, Steve Leesman, is here with more. Now, this particular line, and I thought about this right when you were bringing it to us, quote,

Some note financial conditions suggest policy may not be particularly restrictive. So that says to me, well, the stock market's at record highs. We as the Fed, we're watching this AI mania, like all of you, are watching this AI mania. And you got people coming on CNBC talking about big blow-off tops like you got in 99. And maybe we should wonder what role we might play in helping the market get from here to there if we continue to cut interest rates because some of us don't think we're very restrictive now and look what's happening and we've only cut once. Steve? Scott, I think it's an important line that you point out here, but I need to just focus your attention on the first word you said.

Some. That tells you it's a minority viewpoint right now on the Fed that some are looking at this, but the main thing is that after cutting by that quarter point, which was the first cut that they had since December, most participants thought it would be appropriate to ease further over the remainder of the year. Now, the minutes did show this Fed divided over the risk and how much and how quickly to cut Scott because of this debate over just how tight policy is, comes in part from some looking at like the booming stock market and other things saying, hey, financial commissions there don't show me that policy is very restrictive right now. So, Scott, I'll just leave it right there and just throw it back to you and say, it's some now, but there is a

larger contingent on the Fed that thinks the Fed remains restrictive and needs essentially to cut further with this line and these minutes telling you, hey, you should maybe not be so confident in the speed and the timing of those rate cuts. At least we know if nothing else, Steve, and I know you have to go, that they're watching what's happening in the stock market. At least some are. I mean, they all are, but some are watching it maybe closer than others in thinking about the big picture and perhaps their role in it. Right, and Scott, let me emphasize one thing. The Fed has a hard time figuring what to do at normal times,

and it's going to try to figure out what to do without a lot of the data that it normally has. That's one thing. And the stock market may be an indication of that, but you don't know also, Scott, if the stock market is kind of whistling past the graveyard, so to speak, in the sense that it's going up and is exuberant, perhaps, as Dan suggests,

not as exuberant as it was in the late 90s, but it's still rather exuberant, without the same data that the Fed lacks, the Fed doesn't have either. So that's an important consideration right now. I think the key is that the Fed is debating how restrictive it is, looking at the stock market and saying it's an indicator out there that we want to watch, but it's just as blind as we are right now. I got you. Steve, thanks so much for sticking around. Steve Leasman, our senior economics reporter. Well, it's not just AI, but another area of the market. Some say is showing signs of some froth.

One of the street's top technicians among them. He's Jonathan Kronski, BTIF. He joins us now. You put out a note today, quote, the memes are back in town. New ETF launch has shades of late 21. Tell us more. Yeah, hey, Scott. So, yeah, 21 was the initial meme frenzy with GameStop and AMC in early 2021. But it wasn't until December 8th, 2021, when it actually got around to launching a meme ETF where you could invest in the so-called meme stocks in an ETF form. So at that point, that's right about when the NASDAQ itself was topping before it's bare market.

Then fast forward to November of 2023, the meme index at that point was down about 80% from when the ETF launched, and the ETF actually closed. And so I think the performance kind of spoke for itself. And since then, the meme index has come running back up about 100%. And today, actually, the meme ETF launched again, started trading. So it's a different number of stocks, different type of stocks, a lot of quantum computing, but the sentiment is still there. And oftentimes these ETF launches and closures can kind of mark turning points and kind of give you a good gauge of sentiment.

Do you want to, speaking of, weigh in on the idea of froth and excess in the market and what certain charts may be telling you? Yeah, I mean, so it's more of the same, really. we have this dispersion, massive dispersion under the surface where a lot of the meme and retail favorite stocks and AI stocks have been doing quite well. Some of them are probably a bit extended for our liking. And then on the other side of the coin, you have a lot of the real economy. I mean, take a look at the restaurant index, which is hitting almost as low as it was in April. And then you have to really look at some relative performance. You can't always tell an absolute performance, but look at the relative performance of the airlines, hotels, home builders.

You go down the list of a lot of the consumer-facing parts of the market, and then, not to mention some of the credit-sensitive parts of the market, like private equity and some of the business development companies. So there's just a lot of dispersion under the surface, and I think it speaks to the fact that the actual consumer might not be doing as good as the market says, but that doesn't mean the overall market, you know, necessarily is at a top. I'm betting you're looking at a lot of gold charts these days like everybody else is trying to figure out what they're saying about where it's going.

I think the prevailing thought seems to be it's going higher. There's above 4,000 yesterday, first time ever, only extending it today. What do you think? Yeah, so this is, gold's a tough one for us because we are believers in the long-term secular trend that's been in place for quite some time. But there's periods within that that you want to be a bit cautious and you get maybe not the best time to buy. We think now is one of those times for a couple of reasons. One, gold itself is about 26% above its 200 moving average. That spread is about as wide as it's

been over the last 15 years. And all five prior times when you got to that spread saw either meaningful pullbacks or at least a pause. Most recently, it was in April this year when we saw about a four or five-month consolidation. We also have extreme volume today on the GLD the ETF. It's going to be the highest since April. And gold tends to see extreme volume on the upside, unlike equities which see volume at market bottom. So there's a lot of reasons to be a bit cautious. Again, I don't think it's the final high. I think the trend is still firmly in place, but, you know, there's going to be probably better entry points in the months ahead. All right, Jonathan. Thank you. Jonathan Krinsky, BTIG, back to the panel. Dan Greenhouse,

Anastasia Amoroso still here. What do you think about gold's move? I think it's telling you, I'm interested in what Anastasia has to say about it, but I think it's telling you something about... Are you trying to deflect to her to answer the question if you don't want to? I'm happy to jump in. No, I... This ain't my first rodeo, pal. I'll be short and quick and provocative. Like, I think it's telling you something about faith in the credit of the United States.

It tells you a little something about inflation. Obviously, there's enormous central bank buying and diversification in that sense. So you agree with the kinds of things that Ken Griffin's been talking about? To some degree, I do, although I would say Ken Griffin is agreeing with me, but that's a semantic argument. Yeah, I think there's undoubtedly some of that that's in the conversation. for sure. Yeah, I mean, I think the market participants worry about a lot of things. They're not necessarily expressing that in the stock market. They're expressing it in gold. And one of the concerns that I hear often is the concern about inflation, even though in near term we're

convinced that we've tampered down inflation. I think that thought is lingering in people's mind, that what if the Fed cuts rates, but inflation actually still keeps going to 2026? The other concern, somebody asked me the other day, why is it that we don't even react to geopolitical risks anymore. You know, we have so many geopolitical flashpoints and we just dismiss them. And maybe we don't actually dismiss them. It's just the way that we hedge against them is in gold and in other asset classes. Because why would you sit out your time in the equity market, which was propelled by AI, where you can have that and you can have gold as a hedge as well? But that's kind of the whole Paul Tudor Jones thing. It's like, yes, there are worry signs

out there, but if we're in a moment like October 99, before we got to the top and the crash of the dot-com bubble, the NASDAQ doubled in that period. So investors don't want to miss out. Even if they know that down the road it's going to end poorly, they may not have the quickest feat, I think, to use another analogy that Paul Tudor Jones was talking about to get out of the market, they're going to ride it now, as long as they can ride it because the gains are potentially too good to miss. That's right. And I think down the road is the right analogy, because let's think about the macro for a bit and the sort of the AI trade. You know, the macro the Fed is going to be cutting interest rates. And we do have a real chance of supporting the labor

market, which is weak, but it's not tremendously weak. So if they do deliver the 75 basis points, I think the cushion the profit margins of the companies that are trying to absorb the tariffs, and they have a chance to reinvigorate the labor market. So if that's the case, you certainly don't want to leave that economy. And then the other point is, yes, we do worry about the potential for oversupply. That's, for example, building with all of these announcements. But if you look at data center capacity today, it's still about 2.6%. So that oversupply may be coming at some point, but that point is likely not a couple of years from now. Well, Michael Dell was talking about it yesterday on CNBC, where he's like, well, we'll probably get to a point where you build too many data centers, but he's not seeing any signs of it now, nor I don't think is anybody else, which is why the stocks like Dell and like Oracle and a lot of the power names, like Constellation Energy, got an upgraded day, Eaton was on the move, Gever Nova was on the move.

That's why those stocks continue to run. That's why they're the new growth stocks in this market. It's hard to have a top when every day you roll in and there's a new investment headline promising X amount of billions of dollars being committed. It's hard to end while that investment cycle is still ongoing. There will be a point where it ends and it will probably end poorly. But there's still so much money going in this direction. How does it end while that's happening? Okay.

That lets us end on the idea of the Fed and talking about financial conditions. so much money. There's so much money out there. They're cutting interest rates, right? The world's becoming more liquid, literally, because all central banks are cutting interest rates. Is that fueling part of this? And is that a concern that they're going to play a role in letting it get too out of hand? I don't think it has played a role as of yet, because I think a lot of what's going on is, for lack of a better word, organic. And I'm sure there will be people out there who at me on Twitter and tell me organic is not the right word, because this is all our official. But there's a lot of, there is demand here. I mean, every single one of the hyperskills

keep telling us. And Jensen said it the other morning on CNBC, again, that supply is not keeping up with demand. So that story's ongoing. Is the Fed going to help juice this a little bit? I mean, probably we're transitioning from a scenario where the AI CAPX has been funded out of free cash flow into an era when it's going to have to be increasingly, not exclusively, but increasingly funded out of debt. And to the extent that the Federal Reserve is lowering interest rates, and to the extent that the treasury market reacts to that on the downside, then this is going to be favorable to that investment cycle. That's what last point, too, is like that's typically what inflates the big bubble and then ends it, right? You first, you're cutting interest rates and then

your hiking interest rates, and then the party ends, the music stops, the record scratches, and everybody goes home. Right, but one thing we haven't yet talked about, the impact of this AI build out in the labor markets. You know, you actually see more and more companies mention AI as the reason for layoffs. So maybe, just maybe the Fed is cushioning the labor market, it doesn't necessarily need to ignite the inflation. All right. We'll leaving it there. Anastasia, thank you. Dan Greenhouse, thanks to you as well. We'll see both you back here soon. Two Christina, parts in Nvelas now for the biggest name is moving into the close. Tell us. I've got to start with the chairs of AMD popping nearly 10% today after hitting a new all-time

high and on pace for its best weekly gain since 2016. And those gains come on Monday's news of Open AI looking to take a 10% stake in the chipmaker. The media is CEO, Jensen, Wong told the NBC this morning that the deal is, quote, imaginative, unique, and surprising. Shares almost 10%. And AST Space Mobile soaring on news of a deal with Verizon to provide customers with cell service from space starting in 2026. The terms of the deal were not immediately clear, but according to AST, it will bring direct-to-service connection via space to cell phone users on Verizon plans, quote, when needed.

Shares up over 10%. And shares of Dell rising another 8% today after a 3.5% bump to, just yesterday as Wall Street really digest the company's updated financial guidance, several firms raising their price targets, citing stronger growth potential, of course, because of the company's AI servers. Did you think it was anything else? It shows up over 8%. Scott.

All right, we're just talking about that one. Thank you, Christina. We'll be back to you soon. Got some news out of D.C. Amon Javers here with those details. What do we know? Scott, we know from the IRS that they're furlowing quite a few people at that agency. A new notice just posted on the Internet revealing that the Internet revealing that the

IRS is going to furlough about 34,000 employees. That's roughly half of their workforce is being considered non-exempt from furlough during the course of this government shutdown. So that's a lot of people who are going to be leaving work in the federal workforce starting today. A bunch of people, about half the workforce, will be considered exempt and therefore will be continuing to operate the service. But they will be losing a lot of people, and that's indefinitely until this shutdown is resolved. Scott, back over view. Okay, Amen, thanks for the update. Appreciate that. Amen, Jabbers in Washington. We are just getting started on the bell.

Up next, AI and IA. That's right. We're talking health care and the heartland, with one company disrupting that industry. We'll explain. We're live at the New York Stock Exchange. You're watching closing bell on CNBC. Welcome back. One of the areas sure to be impacted by AI and the revolution is health care. Our next guest company trying to change that industry calls itself the operating system for next gen health. John Lensing is Open Loop Health's co-founder and CEO, and he is with us on sets.

Good to see you. Thanks for coming on. I appreciate you having me. Thank you. All right. So the operating system for next gen health, what does that mean? People want convenient health care. So Open Loop is focused on taking non-health care companies and turning them into health care delivery centers overnight. So think about getting sexual and reproductive health care through a dating app, or think about getting urgent care through a grocery store chain or weight management through a gym. Open Loop enables all of these companies to turn themselves into health care companies overnight. You'll work with doctors' offices, nurses.

You automate workflows, take notes, different components of writing prescriptions, outreach. It's like a full stack of stuff you're trying to do. Everything top to bottom. The docs, all the tech, the legal, the regulatory components, the billing, as well as the fulfillment for pharmacy and diagnostics, whole lineup. One billion dollar run rate, so you're young, obviously, and growing, but you're profitable. Yeah. How old is the company?

Four and a half years old. Your story is interesting, too, is that we're teasing it as AI and IA, Iowa, because we need to get out of the off the coasts, you know, and get out there and see what's happening in the Heartland. You guys are based in Des Moines. Tell me more. How did this all come about? Born and raised in Iowa, a small little farm town, decided like medicine, went into the field, graduated medical school, was wanting to go into reconstructive surgery. but started Open Loop really as a passion project to address a lot of the accessibility issues I was seeing. So when I was in grad school, patients were driving four to five hours, one way to come get the care they needed. And so this is my way of sort of giving back to my state, giving back to the Heartland, and trying to start a company to address a lot of those problems.

Okay, so we're talking about AI, obviously, every day on the network. How does this, how does AI play into what you do? We view AI in sort of three big buckets. You know, first and foremost is clinically efficiency. That's where everybody's talking about. You know, all the scribes that have come out recently, streamlining documentation, streamlining coding, making physicians faster at their work

and decrease their admin burden. Bucket one. Bucket two is more on the patient engagement side of things. How do we take patients and keep them on program, keep them on therapy, and keep them more engaged with their overall health? So think about proactive outreach, nudges, knowing where and how they're spending their money and how that correlates to their health and proactively pushing them different directions, clinical insights. And the third category would be market expansion.

How do we take these non-health care companies and turn them into health care companies by embedding them with AI, infiltrating them with clinical operating systems so they can take their audiences now and better leverage them into a health care ecosystem? Are we getting to a point, and I know you do some of this, patient interactions with AI agents. Are we just going to get to a point where we as the patients are just going to be talking with an agent and that's going to be the first step of our interaction with the health care system? Is that the future of how this is all going to look? I mean, we're already there. I mean, that's just the fact of it. And, you know, the majority of our AI agents will meet with the patient first. They'll do the full clinical intake. and then at the very last part of the visit,

will an actual physician step in to review the work that's been done by AI? The technology is already there for them to fully do visits. We're just not yet at a regulatory standpoint where that would be allowed. So what happens next for you guys? Continue to raise capital. How do you think about the public market? Tell me. You know, profitable as a company, so we don't have a need to raise capital.

If we do go out and raise additional capital, it would be to accelerate additional infrastructure development. what are new capabilities that we don't yet have that we need to add in. And then from there, I think the world's our oyster. Public markets are definitely interesting. We've been eyeing those and exploring opportunities, but we'll just have to see what's in the cards. First time here at the New York Stock Exchange? First time.

All right. Hopefully not the last, right? From the heartland to the mecca of capitalism. It's good to have you here. Thanks for being on. Thank you. All right, it's John Lensing, Open Loop. He's the co-founder and CEO.

Still ahead. Auto Stock's getting hit in a session today. We'll tell you what's weighing on those names. Coming up, the bell's back after this. Coming up next, why Star Tech analyst Dan Ives says Pop the Popcorn for this tech earning season. He'll tell you the names he is betting on the most next. All right, we're back on the Bell Tech earnings kickoff in just a few weeks. Our next guest says it will be a popcorn moment for AI.

Joining me now, Wedbush's Dan Ives. It's good to see you. I don't think anybody is really surprised to hear you say that, given how bullish you've been. Is there a name that you're most bullish about of all the companies that you cover and people are so used to hearing you speak about. Scott, I'd say it look, about 30% of the deals have been accelerated on the Microsoft side. I think that continues to be when I look at Azure and where they are in AI. I mean, that's why I believe Microsoft, you know, is trend toward a $5 trillion mark cap.

But that's the one to me this quarter that sticks out front and center. And look, and that's bullish for just use cases, what we're seeing across the board as Nadella is sort of leading the charge. $5 trillion market cap. So I'm actually kind of surprised that of all the names that are out there, Microsoft is the one that you've chosen. Sure, the stock's performed quite well, but it hasn't performed the best of the group. Why? I think Street is underestiming what this demand looks like. I mean, look, I could say, you know, six months ago it was Alphabet, right?

And that sort of, I think, caught up a bit, even though we continue to be very bullish in that. But I think it really just comes down to, like, what we're seeing in the field from all the partners, from these cloud accelerations. Street is underestimating the hyperscale or demand, and that goes for Google, that goes for Amazon, goes from Microsoft. And I think that, when I look at next year, you're, I think, ultimately, underestimated numbers across the board for tech by 15, 20%, and underestimating CAPX by probably 30%. That is why we feel it's a get the popcorn out moment. for tech stocks. But you don't feel like you're overestimating anything. And I know you talk about these, you know, the popcorn moment. They think some people fear that people are eating too much cotton candy, right? Yeah. Big sugar high. You heard more of that. It was Ken Griffin talk about

a sugar high this week. Do you as an analyst, do you think you're going to be able to identify when things look like they actually have gone gone too far? Yeah. Look, that's my job. I mean, That's why, like, I travel around the world talking to customers, talking more customers later today. It's trying to understand what the demand curve looks like, what the use cases look like. Even on software, names like MongoDB, Snowflake, of course, Messy of AI, Palantir, and others. But that's what we're focused on. And as we continue to still see it accelerate and the demand plays out.

To me, that's why we stay pound the table, sort of bullish, going into year end. We've talked about NASDAQ 24 to 25,000, and that continues to sort of be our view. Still two to three years left in this tech bull market where we are in this AI cycle. And you don't look at any of these circular deals, so to speak, and raise an eyebrow in any way, wondering whether it all really is going to lead to the promised land? Look, it's a great question. I get like some of the concerns out there, you know, especially some of the. like myself, with Carver Tech stocks back in the 90s.

The difference here is that it's the use cases and ultimately the build-out. That's the validation movement. And when you look at some of these deals, I think it's just laying the foundation for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. But when you look at Open AI, for every dollar they put in NVIDIA, in AMD, they're going to get $12, $15, $17 in revenue. And I think that's why I'm not concerned about it, because you're building really the foundation.

for enterprise and consumers over the coming, you know, decade. And that's why overall in tech, as it goes into the second, third, fourth derivative, across chips, software, autonomous, the grade, right? I mean, names like Akko, G. Vanuva, and others, you know, nebiscis. I think that speaks to our view. The ripple effect's going to be massive here in tech. I may have said this to you. I said it the other day, and I can't remember if it was directly to you,

Apple, feels like the afterthought in all this again. again. I mean, the stock has had actually a really nice move. No one's really talking about it much, but it's on the precipice of a new closing high, right? The first, in fact, since December of 2024. What happens from here and why? I think it's going to be a massive outperformer, Apple. I mean, that's why we've stayed with it, despite obviously them not being on the outside looking when it comes to AI, it's for two reasons. One, it's that Google Gemini partnership. I think That's going to be the game changer for Apple. That's going to get them into the AI game.

And that's very significant in terms of the biggest install base in the world. The two is that, look, numbers are going to move up. Because look what's happened in China from all of our tracks and will be in Asia next week. I mean, it's trending, what, 5, 10% above expectations? That's not factored in. And it goes back to, like, the last few months, right? I mean, the street's been extremely barris on it.

You're starting to see a little more positive. I continue thinking New York City cab drivers barrage on Apple. That's a good thing relative to what I think is a stock just starting this next phase of acceleration. How much are you thinking about what ultimately might come out of the Open AI, the Sam Altman, Johnny Ive relationship? I think they've bought the company for like $6 billion. So they've already made an investment in large degree for some kind of device. we would think, right? Knowing who Johnny Ive is and what he's done in his career.

Are we underestimating what could ultimately come out of those two brains and what impact it could be on a company like Apple? Look, I think that's been the shot across the bow. I mean, especially someone like Johnny that knew is Cupertino as well as anyone. And I think that's going to accelerate Apple in terms of this move with, Alton, with Google, Gem, and that could be other partners. But Scott, I just keep going back to, like, it's the 2.4 billion iOS device. It's the 1.5 billion iPhones.

Biggest install base in the world. They will be a toll collector because the consumer AI revolution goes through Cupertina. And I think that's why you're going to start to see a much different cook over the coming months, over the coming year when it comes to AI, despite obviously what was really a black eye moment, if you look over the last called 12, 18 months. Dan, to be continued. Thank you. We'll see you. Knife's Wedbush. Up next, we track the biggest movers into the clothes, and Christina is back with that. At the top of your list, tell us, please. I can't tell you the exact name, but it's a

space company landing another big contract, a copper miner jumping on bullish clothes, and an air taxi maker sliding on a half billion dollar stock sale. All of those movers next after this short, short break. All right, we're 15 from the bell. Back to Christina now for the stocks that she is watching. No more secret. No more. I have to tease. That's a tease to commercials. I never share. And so the secret is revealed its rocket labs matching the color. I have a few viewers already commenting. Another big contract. The deal with Japan-based satellite manufacturer, IQPS, is for three additional rocket launches. That's on top of the four existing upcoming launches between the two companies. This is a SpaceX rival. And it said its next launch with IQPS, again from Japan, is scheduled for November. Free port, Mac Moran, jumping about 5% on two positive analyst calls. after some recent volatility in the copper miner.

City upgraded shares to a buy alongside raising its copper price forecast. Wells Fargo saying it agrees with the copper bowls launching coverage of Freeport and calling it a top pick 5% higher. And then shares of Jobi, let's end with them. Aviation sliding after the electric air taxi maker priced a secondary stock offering at a discount.

Joby is expecting to receive gross proceeds of about $514 million, which it would then use to fund its certification and manufacturing efforts When they do an issue, it's like that, dilution of shares. That's why it's down about 7%. Yeah. All right, Christina, thank you.

Thanks. Christina, Patinevallos. Up next, we'll tell you what's weighing on the auto names today. Plus, J.P. Morgan, Private Banks, Tom Kennedy, he's standing by. He'll tell us what he thinks about these markets in its final moments today of the trading day. We're back after this in the market zone. We're now in the closing bell market zone. CNBC senior markets commentator Mike Santoli and JPMorgan private banks, Tom Kennedy,

here to break down these crucial moments of the trading day, plus Leslie Picker following a big call today on the private equity stocks and Phila Beau tracking the action in the autos. Mike Santoli, to you first, we have a nice little ramp as we get closer to the finish and it is in the NASDAQ. Exactly. Well, the Russell, too? Russell's up near 1%. Yes.

So you have a kind of a mechanical buy of a pretty trivial dip yesterday. It is definitely led by usual suspects. We get reassuring words about we're still early in AI. One day we're panicky. One day we're pretty comfortable. So I think that's all on trend, right? And so you can't really outthink or really overthink the trend. Trailing Returns in the S&P, 24% annualized. It's not bad. We haven't had a dip in a while,

but I look at the places that aren't playing along, and consumer cyclicals are one of them still. So I don't know if that means that we're supposed to take a macro message from that. I know Leslie's going to talk about private equity. Jeffries getting smacked around today because of some private credit losses. So, you know, I feel like it's not just a monolithic story about everyone's happy about the Fed cutting and AI. Let's just go to Leslie then, because she's going to tell us about this. call for KKR, right? Yep. So obviously there's been a lot of

movement in this space, and not all alternative stocks are created equally. Over the last few months, stocks with more exposure to private credit, think Ares, Blue Owl, and Apollo have underperformed those with more private equity exposure, like TPG, Carlisle, and to some extent, KKR.

Wolf Research out with a note today, raising the price target of KKR, implying the most upside to any other alt-name or M&A brokerage firm in their coverage universe. The firm says it's, quote, leaning into private equity geared names given torque from normalizing monetization activity, in other words, a healthy exit environment through sales and IPOs, plus idiosyncratic fundraising and wealth and a more discounted valuation.

The firm is more cautious around private credit names because of concerns about defaults and bankruptcies, which they believe will persist in the near term. This call doesn't totally make sense to me because if those concerns do materialize, private equity would be impacted as well as equity is lower in the capital structure, meaning they'd be wiped out before private credit if that were to really materialize in a big way, Scott. Yeah, well, that's why you're on the case, Leslie, because you understand this space very much. We'll be talking about it a lot. I have a feeling in the weeks and months ahead. That's Leslie Picker. Fill the bow now on autos. Tell us more.

Well, it's mainly European autos, and that's what we're going to look at, Scott, because they were hit by changes. The EU is putting in place in terms of steel quotas and steel tariffs. So as you take a look at Mercedes, Volkswagen, BMW, all of them under pressure today, largely because of the changes instituted by the EU. They've announced that their tariff-free quota for steel is going to be dropping. In other words, there's X amount that can be brought in without a tariff. Well, that new limit, that's tariff-free, it's dropping 47% compared to 2024. any excess steel, any amount beyond that tariff quota, will face a tariff of 50%. That's the pressure and the concerns about inflation that are hitting the European automakers.

Also take a look at BMW. Now, this was the big loser today, not just because of the tariff issue. The bigger issue is that they warned about their profits being lower than expected. Why? Sales are slowing in China. That's a big component of BMW sales. And so as a result, BMW down more than 8% today. Scott? All right, good stuff.

Phil the boat. Thank you very much. Tom Kennedy, of course, as I said, is here with us, JPMorgan, Private Bank. Mike Santoli's along still as well. What's your view? Good to have you, by the way. What's your view on where we are, where you think we might be going from here? Yeah.

On the eighth day of the government shutdown, what do we get? A new all-time high in the SP-500. Get worried about a lot of these events, and the market is responding and looking through tariff news, looking through the government shutdown. We can take the broad signals from the market, adding on a little bit on the private equity points, we know credit spreads are at all-time highs, or all-time tights. We know the equity market is all-time highs. We're not talking about enough is that interest rate volatility has fallen precipitously

in the last few months. Right now, if you look at the move index, it's actually lower than where it was when the Fed started hiking rates in 2022. We've come a long way, and that can add more fuel to getting invested and maybe even that call on private equity. I mean, do you feel like this market, like many? euro pining on is just destined to go higher from here. There are too many positive forces behind that movement versus whatever risks are on the other side. Yeah, the traditional weight.

I do think that's right. I do think we're going to see continued gains in the stock market and see good performance from financial assets. Leverage in this economy is concentrated exclusively at the government level. Consumers are sitting in the best position from leverage They've been almost in the history of anyone in 40 or under, and then also at the corporate level, leverage is quite low. So the fundamentals can drive things. I think there's a lot of folks focusing on AI. Scott saying AI is the bubble. Two really important indicators to follow.

Are there earnings outpacing their spending on CAPX? So far for most of these hyperscalers, that is true. I mean, they're saying it could be a bubble, but it's not a bubble. I mean, even if it is, like, does it matter today? You know what I mean? What are you going to change your investing strategy? If you believe every word that Paul Tudor Jones had to say on this network the other day, are you going to do anything differently today?

If you truly believed it or you had perfect foresight, I don't know that you'd do much different, although I will tell you that by mid or late 2001, nobody was feeling smart for having caught the last six months if you didn't sell it at the top. Because you were lower from the year-end close in 1998 three, four, five years later. So I guess my point is, I don't think it's the relevant context to frame what we're looking at yet. So, in other words, you can go up a good deal from here, and we're still not really talking about the level of just steep acceleration we saw back then, of profitless prosperity and all of these names. I'm more focused on a kind of garden variety, short-term, low-quality, frothy rally in parts of this market, not in Vidia going to one-night. No, but like the Jonathan Krinsky saying, the memes are back.

That's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm talking about the memes being back. I'm talking about looking at that meme ETF, which is just launched, relaunched today, and five of the 18 stocks are quantum computing names. Joby's in there, okay, which has no revenues in a $17 billion market cap because it's going to have electric helicopters soon. I mean, maybe it's all going to work out. My point is people are indiscriminately buying these things.

And that can just be kind of, you know, kind of skimmed away without much damage to the real economy under the right circumstances, or to the core of the AI theme. Got a thought about that? I think this is right. These anecdotes of these firms that are not making any money actually seeing gains, but the big zoom out, firms that don't make any profits right now, year over year improvement in their stocks and aggregate is trailing the SP 500. I think if you saw that inverted, then you're really worried about a bubble growing.

I think it is inverted in the Russell, like the unprofitable, low quality parts of the Russell since April, since the low. Okay, I think, I agree, Mike. You've got to just take, what's your window that's going to matter there? Since the low, which was six months ago today, I think. I mean, the S&P's up literally like 2,000 points. Oh, yeah. Right?

And we're going to close today, literally, at yet another closing high. NASDAQ is certainly set to close above 23,000 for the very first time ever, as all of you can see on the bottom of your screen. You stay with this, stay with NASDAQ, stay with AI, stay with hyperscalers, mega-caps. Yeah, I think you do. I think you stay with them until you actually see the CAPEX have to be. Cut, just earning hard to keep it up. All right, good to see you, Tom.

Thanks for being here. John Kennedy. It goes for us, so you'll hear the bell going to ring is green, and it's going to ring in yet another. Record closed for the S&T and the NASDAQ. As we said, first time over 23K for the NASDAQ.

We'll see you tomorrow. In the overtime.