Closing Bell - Closing Bell 11/12/25

Episode Date: November 12, 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 the Dow heading for history. The first ever close above 48,000 within reach. Here's how we look with 60 to go in regulation today, barring a pretty dramatic turnaround. We're going to hit that mark today. Certainly looks like that. As you see, the majors, we're well above 48,000. Thanks to health care, financials.

They're among the best sectors today. A new high for Goldman Sachs. The whole group's doing well. We'll show you that one because it is a record high at free. percent. Tech, as you heard already, it's taken a bit of a breather today, though not shares of AMD. They are surging following the company's first investor day in some three years. Elsewhere, footwear and apparel company on holdings is ripping following its earnings report. Take a look at that of 19%. We'll track it right into the close. It is one of the day's best performers. All of that

takes us to our talk of the tape. Another major milestone for your money. The Dow closing in on history. For more on how high it can climb from here. We welcome in. Brian, Belski. He is the founder and CEO and chief investment officer at Humulus Investment Strategies. It is good to have you on what looks to be a record-setting day yet again. Brian Belski. Yeah, Scott, it's really exciting. We like it when stocks go up. And, you know, I think for us, the most gratifying thing in your open was this kind of broadening out of what's happening of health care doing very well after the sector is dramatically underperformed. In finance, today as well. So, I mean, we're not surprised to see some better performing areas come in,

but obviously we're very, very happy with respect to the markets over the last couple of weeks. Is this what an Everything Rally looks like? We're hoping it's going to continue to develop into an Everything Rally. The broadening out isn't happening like we thought it would in a more consistent basis. We think that's going to be a trend that really unwinds and happens into 2026. Scott, but this is a very good sign, especially considering the move in healthcare, which we think is very, very promising. We're starting to get back to fundamentals. People are focusing on cash and cash flow within health care, and I think that bodes very, very well for fundamental

investing. So you think we're going to have more of a broadening in 26? Do we get away from this highly concentrated trade? Well, you know, some would say there's been so many different studies on this, Scott. And we've done, too, that, you know, it's not so bad to have this very concentrated thing. And the markets have shown that the last couple of years. So we're not going to bite the hand that feeds us. But I think being a purist like ourselves, we want to see more stocks do better, more companies perform along those lines. And we're seeing that in the numbers with respect to where earnings are coming out. You talked about some great mid-cap stocks that have come out with great earnings. So we're starting to see that stock by stock.

you know, my old adage, the stock market is a market of stocks. So we're starting to see it bubbling up from the stock level. And I think from the wherewithal of the longer-term secular bull market, which has been our thesis now since 2009, I think that just bodes better and better and better news from a fundamental perspective as you start to see these companies actually perform fundamentally and especially on the earnings growth basis. I mean, markets obviously don't go up forever.

I hear you on the call from 2009, a secular bull market. But where are we, do you think, in the cycle? That's a great question. And we've said when we moved our target to 7,000 recently, we said stocks are rarely linear for long. And we said that there's probably going to be some sort of a pause in here. And we're probably going to be too low on our 7,000, quite frankly. But at the end of the day, I think on this cycle, this part of the bull cycle, which we were in print on talking about in November of 2022, we're three years in. So if you go back and look at history, Scott, and you know this very well,

that the third year of the bull market usually is the weakest of the three of the bull. And that clearly has not been the case this year because of what happened in April and kind of the slingshot that sent us higher again. So I happen to think that that 2026 is not going to be as strong as 2025, low double digit returns. We'll take those. That's pretty positive. And I do think that at some point we're going to have another cyclical bare market like we did in 2022, like we did in the fourth quarter of 2018. We're going to have another one. The timing of that is probably going to be pushed out several more quarters. If you had to make a guess, what's the next health care? Like the thing that's been sleeping that people are not paying any attention to and is

going to have the potential to have a pretty good 2026. There's something that jumps out to you right away? Yeah, consumer staples. You know, it's a, it's a sector that we, we hate to hate, we love to hate, I'm sorry, because they're expensive. Remember, the two best consumer staples names Walmart and Costco are really big giant discretionary retailers, but they've become more staplish. There's been a lot to hate about how expensive they have been in terms of PEs and earnings growth. I say the other one who has to be REITs because REITs is an area that is obviously more rate dependent than my favorite contrarian play of all is, as you know, small caps. We've been waiting for small midcap to really get going. And if the cycle really gets

going in terms of lower interest rates, they're already there fundamentally, Scott. Small midcap stocks are already there fundamentally in terms of earnings growth, cash flow, and importantly, they're paying dividends. So I think of all three of those areas that I mentioned, consumer staples on a sector basis, REITs on a sector basis, perform an asset class. basis, it's got to be small mid-cap. B, I'll let you run. Thank you. Had to hear from you on a day like today. What looks to be a record setter for the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

That's Brian Belski. We'll talk to you again soon. Now let's bring in New Edge Wells, Cameron Dawson, and True, it's Keith Lerner. They are here at Post 9. So history is going to be set today. You agree with what Brian said? Yeah, I think we're still in this environment where you have two major things dragging markets higher. You have earnings estimates that continue to be revised higher, continue to make new 12-month

forward highs, and you have positioning that remains just neutral. So because earnings are moving higher, that supports risk appetite, that supports people needing to be pulled into this market, and because positioning is neutral, there's still cash on the sidelines that needs to get invested, and thus we think that you could continue to see this chase, as well as dips get being bought rather quickly. That's what this chase starts to look like, what we're witnessing now. You're not really running towards the mega caps. You're running towards all of these other areas, which haven't done quite as well. Yeah, well, great to be with you, Scott. And Cameron, I don't want to give up on tech. I think we're having a bit of a rotation,

probably has furthest of go, but tech, in our view, is still the dominant theme of this bull market. When we look at earnings, the earnings are the north star of this bull market, but when you look under the hood, the earning estimates for tech over the last three months are up about 8%. That's double the S&P 500. We just saw today the AMD talking about 35% revenue growth for the next three to five years. So if the economy pick up ticks next year, inflation comes down, and we have this kind of Goldilocks scenario, we will see more of this rotation, but I don't want to give up on tech. I still want to be aware.

But I know it's suggesting giving up on it, but you sounds like you're making the case for continued outperformance by it. If we're talking about the next six, 12 months, yes, over the next month or two. Six 12. Yeah, I would, we're still overweight tech, we're overweight communication services. And we're going to stick with that until we see the earnings momentum actually shift relative to the rest of the market. It's been interesting.

I mean, we have had a little AI anxiety lately for a variety of reasons. maybe, you know, that's in part why a lot of the mega-cap stocks have been down today. Of late, it's been a little more volatile. Dear Jabots has taken a look at that. I mean, you can point to a number of different factors, Dee, as to why we are anxious about this trade. Yeah, and I mean, if you take it all together, here's what it comes down to. The skeptics, they are getting louder while the spending. It just continues unabated.

You had Michael Burry continuing to warn against a bubble, posting a meme on X most recently, mocking the bulls who continue to justify what he sees as hype. Jim Chanos is getting in on the action, too, throwing cold water on Anthropics' latest data center plans. That's spending, though, from Anthropic, $50 billion earmarked for AI infrastructure. It pales in comparison to what OpenAI has put out there, $1.4 billion, and what the mega-caps are planning to spend on CAPEX next year, close to $700 billion. Now, that alone, sure, it's enough to make investors jittery, but now you layer on how

it's increasingly being financed through debt. And then, of course, the risk takes on a new edge. Now, Bank of America note this week, pointing to, I like this, the watchout and the get tells for booms and bubbles. It concludes that there are plenty of watchouts right now in the AI trade, like market cap concentration and Meg 7, valuations, global buy-in. But the get-out tell, sort of that red flag, like rising rates and spiking yields, BAA says that they aren't there yet, meaning that the big shorts, like Burry, like Chano's, must buy their time. There's also Lisa Sue this morning on Squawk Box. She said the demand is accelerating, and people are starting to get real productivity

out of the AI use cases. I'm certainly hearing that here as well at this AI conference in San Francisco. And here, you know, you have the true believers, Scott, the people building in the space. Even so, it's not all straight optimism as it has been in years before. There's more talk this time around of things like profitability and free cash flow, even IPOs. So certainly that trade is evolving and the market's trying to figure this out with all of these different voices and data points. Yeah, good point. All of those. Dee, thank you. Dear Gebosa, setting that up for us. I mean, what should we think about the level of spending, but now the debt part of the picture starts to come into focus?

And we're talking about it a lot more. We've seen it in the past. Debt is in part a great few. to a bull market, but it can also eventually be the great destroyer. When you are growing earnings 30, 40, 50 percent on an annual basis, you can get away with a lot of spending kind of no matter how you fund it. But the challenge is that the mega caps are going to see much lower earnings growth next year. META will go from growing earnings 47% this year to shrinking earnings by 2% next year. So now all of a sudden, all of the benefit of the doubt that you had kind of evaporates because you don't have the earnings growth that gives you the margin of error.

So we think that it will be really interesting how the market continues to digest the slower earnings growth and if weaker stock prices actually causes the companies to rethink their CAPEX plans because we certainly saw that in a year like 2022 into 2023, those years of efficiency. So we think we're probably entering a very different phase of this AI CAPEX cycle only because the earnings growth is slowing. How does that fit with your perspective that you still think tech's going to outperform? Yeah, well, those are all good points. They're all valid points.

And on the margin, we're taking on more debt. But we're also, these companies are highly rated companies, have a lot of cash flow still, even though that is coming down somewhat as far as free cash flow. And they're doing this because there's such demand, there's a huge demand for what's coming. And I think at the end of the day, as long as those earning estimates move higher, we want to stick with it. And I would say that the bar was high coming into this year, and they exceeded it. And I expect that next year they'll exceed that bar again.

But, I mean, the earnings growth is, obviously, if it's not slowing now, and it sort of is, it's going to, it's going to at some point. Are you going to be willing to pay the same thing you're paying now, the same P.E. you are now in a slower growth environment? Well, right now, if you look at the technology sector, around the 30 PE, right? So that compares to the technology bubble around 50 times. And over the last year, the technology sector is up about 30%. And so that's, we've had a big move off the lows, but not extreme when we look when we kind of zoom out a bit as well. And we still have a lot of macro uncertainty. We're expecting a slight uptick next year.

But at the end of the day, when people feel good about the economy, you'll see more of a rotation out of tech. But what happens, what we've seen over and over again is when there's some uncertainty, money comes back to tech. And with this secular story is still underway, I don't see something that necessarily changes that because they're taking on more debt short term. What's looming do you think with Nvidia's earnings report? or do we already feel like we have a good idea of what's going to happen just by virtue of the spending numbers that we've seen from all the hyperscalers? It's kind of a tell on what we're going to get, right? I think it's less important what NVIDIA actually reports

because it's likely to be a beaten raise and it's more important how the market reacts because if you get a beaten raise that looks fantastic on the surface and the stock trades down, that certainly tells you that the buy-side expectations are higher and positioning is likely very crowded. So it's more about the reaction and less about the next. numbers. What do you think about that? I think that's fair. I think the other thing what we're

seeing is like the equal weight index underperformed by so much over the last three months, six months, there's mean reversion. People want that trade to work. So I think, you know, if they have good numbers and they sell off a little bit, maybe that rotation trade continues, but I think six months now, for 12 months from now, that money will come back where that secular growth is. And semiconductors continue to be an important part of this build out. You mentioned some of the macro concerns that are out there a second ago. I mean, one of them is a case-shaped economy that we have. right the consumer at the high end feels great the one at the low end not not so much next week we

actually get a you know several earnings reports from from retailers are we going to be reminded of this issue next week right in our face again probably but it's not a surprise we're calling it a two-speed economy as two-speed stock market as well i think that's why in some ways that that tech and the growth side has outperformed because there's more confidence there again i think the question is next year with the Fed cutting rates, with some of the tax policy, with maybe a little bit more clarity around terrorists, do we start to see a little bit of an uptick where investors gain confidence to move somewhat away from tech? I don't think it has to be either or we can have a broadening out with tech store participates. But at this point, again, we're sticking with tech

and we're looking for that broadening theme like we see in healthcare over the last couple of days. It is interesting, right, the juxtaposition, if you will, of a big, splashy headline that says Dow 48,000 first time ever. And, I mean, It's like the index that, you know, Mr. and Mrs. America look at, right, to find out what stocks are doing besides their 401k statement, obviously. But then you hear from all of these, you know, restaurant stocks, the guidance is cut, the comps are down. I could go through 25 to 30 names. What do I make of that? Well, because the top part of the K-shaped economy benefits from the stock market, but the top part of the K-shaped economy is the one that owns the majority of the stocks.

And so you still have large swaths of this economy that are consumers that aren't participating in the stock market do not benefit from the wealth effect. So, you know, at the end of the day, the aggregate data is still showing that there's signs of slowing and signs of doubt. When we look at NFIB, you look at University of Michigan, you look at consumer confidence, but because you have that top end of the consumer, we're still pulling everything up, it doesn't show up in the retail sales. How would you answer the question that I asked Belski? Like, what's the next health care? What's the next sleeping giant of sorts that's going to lead the market? Because that is performing very well, as we have seen. It is the leader of today.

And it has been the leader of the week. It's had a great month, et cetera. Yeah, one thing we just looked out is when you look at bull markets, the leadership of bull markets tend to last towards the end. I know it's like what's going to be the next one. But if you look at the 90s, technology's relative performance peaked in March of 2020. of 2000. If you look at the 2000s, EM led all the way towards the end. So I think that's why I'm saying we want to stick with tech. I think the next health care is probably health care

underperformed by about 50% of the last three years. We call it the Charlie Brown sect every time it tries to pick up the ball. You know, Lucy takes it away. But I will say the technical trends are improving and the sentiment became such an extreme that it likely has further to go. I do agree with Brian as well. The consumer staples is almost in that same area. We would like to see, though, at least we're not trying to pick the bottom. I want to see a little bit of the turn in the earnings and the price before trying to catch each low, which hasn't been the right move. People think that Charlie's going to make the field goal, that this is going to last, the health care is going to win for a while. Well, Charlie has to deliver earnings, right? If you

don't have the earnings growth to back it up, you will see these rotations all be flashes in the pan, which is why the small cap rotations haven't stuck, stuck, why value rotations have it stuck. You have to see these earnings trends start to turn. And catch up with what we're seeing within growth and tech. All right, we'll leave it there. Keith Cameron, thank you so much. We'll see you soon. Thank you. All right, moving on.

Another talker today, the White House said to be considering an executive order over those controversial proxy advisory services. Leslie Picker's been following this story today. joins us now with more, Alas. Hey, Scott, yeah, it's actually an evolving story. A short while ago, the Wall Street Journal reporting that the Federal Trade Commission is investigating whether proxy advisory firms such as institutional shareholder services and Glass Lewis violated antitrust laws, citing.

people familiar with the matter, the journal saying the probe is focused on the firm's competitive practices and how they recommend voting on climate and social proposals. The report said the investigation is in its early stages. When asked by CNBC's AIMN JAVERS, the FTC declined to comment on the, quote, ongoing investigations. ISS declined to comment to CNBC. Glass Lewis didn't immediately respond to comment. Proxy advisory firms, they advised shareholders on how to vote on everything from

director nominees to executive compensation. However, a recently passed law in Texas and a separate congressional scrutiny have been largely focused on the intersection of proxy advice and ESG. Separately, as you mentioned, Scott, the journal reported this morning that the White House is discussing at least one executive order that would thwart the influence of proxy advisors and index fund managers on shareholder voting. Scott? We'll see where this all goes. A lot of people are talking about this today, Leslie, as you know. Thank you, Leslie Picker. We're just getting started here on what could be a record setting closing bell. The Dow at 48,308 looking to close above that level, above 48K for the very

first time ever. Coming up next, Plexo Capitals, Lodoney. He'll tell us what he thinks Apple potentially buying Open AI could mean for the AI arms race. Did that really happen? He'll tell us next. We are back. And as we said earlier, NASDAQ lower today. The tech trade looks to regroup following last week's volatility. For more on the state of the AI trade, let's welcome in Lowe Tony. He is Plexo Capital's founding managing partner. And we always like when you're here on set with us at post nine. So good to see you. Good to see you as well. I'm just going to get right to what we tease. Let's do it. Apple Open AI. You threw that out there to our producers. You think that's something that's possible? So let's just take a look and step back and set the context.

All right, so first of all, when you think about the playbook who has executed the best playbook on vertical integration, without question, that's Apple, right? And so I think, you know, when you think about the experience that Apple was able to create, it's because they were able to own everything top to bottom across the entire stack, from the chips to the development and manufacture of the phones themselves, to the glass on the phones, to the software, to the app store. This didn't happen overnight, right? So the way that Apple was able to do it was because they had massive cash flow coming in. So they did it over time. All right, now let's fast forward to today. Where are we today? So what we see is OpenAI looking to execute that same playbook.

They're not there yet, but clearly they are making steps into that direction, being able to do multiple deals across AMD, Broadcom, doing a deal with Oracle, being able to execute. across all of these different deals so that now they have not only sovereignty, but a little bit more control over their destiny. And I think over time, we'll see them execute a similar playbook. And you can look at some of the other elements as they move their way up the stack to the application layer, having the GPT store, people using their APIs. Now, but here's the challenge. Oh, their challenge?

Oh, gee, I don't know. Open AI is only like a half a trillion dollar valuation. So how are they going to pay for all of that? of that and that's where we're seeing these massive deals being done right most recently Oracle doing a 38 billion dollar deal for Stargate and by the way Oracle didn't have the credit rating on their bonds so they had to syndicate that across about 30 banks then we see someone like meta if we switch gears for a moment doing a 27 billion and doing it in a creative structure with Blue

Owl where this a lease back Blue Owl owns 80% of it so in essence they can by only executing four-year leases, that META can keep that off of their balance sheet. So now as an investor, you have to search a little bit harder. But let's go back to what you said, Open AI and Apple. So it was a little bit tongue-in-cheek because of how Open AI is executing the Apple playbook better. But wouldn't that be a great vision, right? I'm sure we'll get to Apple. Yeah, I mean, people could fantasize about that.

I mean, but look, let's just let's say that Apple can't do that. Can't do it. Regulatory reasons, price reasons. They always make the case. and people do as well, that they're builders, they're not buyers. Right. Will that change in some form or fashion this time around? So now, what we saw, if we were to rewind about six to 12 months ago, is analysts being very frustrated with the cadence of the new developments on AI from Apple.

When we think about Jobs versus Cook, jobs, just the pure visionary. And unfortunately, he passed, but he left enough products in the pipeline for the ultimate execution and Tim Cook to be able to execute across up until we entered the AI age. But now Apple looks like maybe that's the right approach. It's been a little more measured, a little more conservative. But now as we see these massive buildouts, people are looking at Apple and saying, you know what, they know how to do the iPhone really well. And the iPhone 17, the sales are looking pretty good.

We talked about this yesterday, that everybody is like, okay, Apple is so late to the game in AI. They're watching the party go by. The trains left the station and all that. Tens of billions of dollars from all the other hyperscale— hundreds of billions of dollars from all the hyperscalers are being spent. And now we're sitting back and saying, well, you know, maybe Apple being a little conservative with the cash spend turns out to be a good thing. Potentially, yeah.

And I think that's what Apple is really looking at now. It's, hey, we know how to build this device really well. And now we don't have to worry about the financial pressure. of doing these massive buildouts. Let's talk about these buildouts. I mean, we alluded to it a little bit with Oracle. Markets obviously been a little bit concerned. That's right.

About, you know, these companies raising a lot of debt to help with the buildout. What level do you get concerned about that? The question always comes, are we in a bubble or not? Or is this a massive buildup? But if we think back historically, you can go back to the railroads.

Well, you could have a buildout bubble. You could have a buildout bubble. And so if you think about the last, build out bubble that was probably dark fiber world com raised massive amounts of debt ultimately that debt led them to bankruptcy Verizon gobbled up those assets that dark fiber was ultimately lit up and it became the backbone that had a long run for us right you go around the earth like you know however many times they said exactly back in the day that was that was like the metric that they literally literally and if we look

at the buildouts of these data centers it's you know the chips five-year depreciation is that even too long. The chips have to get swapped out. Maybe we have new technologies that come like quantum or different types of chips that are more efficient. You look at someone like Anthropic where Plexo Capital is an investor. And we liked Anthropic because they were laser focused on just thinking about model efficiency, not doing video, just doing text only. And then that led to the end of focus on the enterprise, right, with better margins. And that led to them now having a new forecast for $70 billion and break even before Open A.I. But now even Anthropic is saying we're going to build a $50 billion data center. So I think when I start to get concerned is

once these companies really start to build out financials with the help of investors who can understand, you know, from the case of META, what does it mean to have that $27 billion off balance sheet because they already got hammered because of their margins? Yeah, but what do you, so what do you make of how META's traded since earnings? That seems to be the one. one of the hyperscalers. Like, we're not, not, I don't want to put Oracle into that, in that mix. Of the, of the mega cap text, why has meta traded so poorly, do you think? I think when we think about meta and the way that we look at both Google, Microsoft, AWS,

they have been able to better optimize the build out of the data centers for other products and services that they can offer. Meta doesn't do that. So when you think about meta, what you're really looking at is the, bet that meta will be able to use AI to be able to monetize their ads better and their ads only. And so the question that I come up with is, then why do you need to build out so much? Hyperscalers, AWS, I get that. Microsoft check. I get that Google check. But that's the question mark, especially when it's going to pound on their margins near term. And it didn't even

really factor in this 27 billion off balance sheet. Lastly, do you have any questions at this point about NVIDIA? We're going to hear from them in a week. And if you, do what's the most you know outline I think the big outlier is how should we think of as people that are investors and analysts how do we think about the life of a chip right when do those chips need to be swapped out is a five-year depreciation the right amount of time like those are the questions that I want to better understand you're thinking about that too because that's what one of the things that you know dr. burry has been posting on social media of course a big short fame and he's

been doing it a lot but he's been talking about overstating earnings because is you're underappreciating the depreciation part of the story. Jim Chanos was doing that today. It's got transparency. We don't have the transparency that we need. Even with Microsoft, since Microsoft uses the equity approach to valuing their investments, we don't know. Once that investment goes to zero, they're no longer obligated to really give us insight

into OpenAI's losses that they're taking part of. All right. It's good to have you here. Thanks for having you. Good to have you in New York. All right. I think I saw you on the list of delivering alpha for tomorrow. That's right.

I will see you there. I look forward to that. That's low Tony of Plexo Capital. Still ahead. Disney results. They are on deck tomorrow morning. The man who literally wrote the book on that company, Jim Stewart, he'll join us right here with what to expect when we come back on the bell. We are back.

Let's send it now to Christina Parts of Novelos for a look at some of the biggest names that are moving into this close today. Tell us. Thanks, Scott. Well, let's look at Bill Holdings. Those shares are surging right now and report the company is exploring a sale. The business payments firm is working with a financial advisor to solicit interest from what? A larger industry rival or private equity firm. This is according to people familiar with the matter who told Bloomberg and that's why shares have just jumped right now up 11%. McGraw-Hill shares also in the green after it raised its revenue guidance for the year. It comes as the education company saw strong, reoccurring, and

digital revenue in its most recent quarter. That digital part is key for this company. Shares, though, have struggled this year, but they're up about 24% right now. Last Monopoly's Big Bear AI jumping. I only have positive names right now. Jumping 16% after announcing a $250 million deal for Ask Sage, a generative AI platform for defense agencies. The company also beat third quarter estimates. That helped. But Big Bear really sells facial recognition and AI tools to the defense department. And it's going all in on defense. Scott.

All right, Christina, thank you. Up next, we're tracking a pair of developing stories out of D.C. today. We wait on that House vote on ending the government shutdown. Also, the president gearing up to host a slate of CEOs at the White House this evening. We'll take you live to D.C. for the latest next. A history-making day on Wall Street today, the Dow poised to close above 48,000 for the very first time ever. And barring a major surprise over the last 20 minutes of trading today, it will do just that and we'll follow it right to the end. Just as the House said to begin voting to end the government shutdown this evening.

Emily Wilkins here with the details. Hi, M. Hey, Scott. Well, look, in just a few minutes, these steps behind me are going to be filled with lawmakers that are going to begin the end of this 43-day shutdown. Basically, we're going to see a series of votes expected to go into the early evening that will finally end with that. vote to get the government reopened and pass that package that just went through the Senate. And look, at this point, sort of all the usual suspects, all the usual folks who might have voted against this on the Republican side, many of them have come out so that they're for the bill, including at least one lawmaker who voted no when they last had a similar vote in September. Now, most of the Democrats are still opposed to this bill.

We're expecting them to vote no because they did want to see more on those Affordable Care Act tax credits. But they're going to continue to try to push that issue. We're obviously keeping an eye on the Senate where there is debate going on about whether there can be a path forward and a vote promised in mid-December. On the House side, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries took initial steps today to potentially force a vote on a three-year extension. But for now, it's just looking like the shutdown will be over in a couple of hours, which means that tomorrow the government will begin to get restarted again, begin to send out those paychecks, begin to get those flights back on track and begin to get some of that government data. Scott? Good news.

Emily, thank you. Emily Wilkins down in Washington, Forest. the president gearing up to meet with CEOs this evening at the White House for dinner. Amon Javers has that side of the story for us. Hi, Amon. Yeah, Scott, not a lot of information from the White House on exactly who's going to be here, but we do have some reports floating around that we've kind of collated for you in terms of attendees. Take a look at the list here at CEOs of all the major firms are expected here at the White House this evening at about 730. The CEO of JP Morgan, NASDAQ, Blackstone, Morgan Stanley,

Black Rock, Goldman Sachs, and more all expected to be at the dinner with the President of the United States today. The White House not saying in particular why they decided on today to have this event and not saying what the president's message to these CEOs will be, but obviously a good opportunity for the CEOs to have some face time with the President of the United States this evening. We do expect cameras will be allowed into the dinner, so we might see some pictures emerging in the morning of who was here and what all was said. Scott. And one note to bring you, Caroline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, held a briefing here a short time ago. I asked her about some of those reports that we saw about frustration from the White House staff over the rollout of this proposal for a 50-year mortgage from Bill Pulte. And frustration with Pulte in particular by some here at the White House. Caroline

Levitt said simply that she's going to refer back to the president's comments about the 50-year mortgage idea saying this is something that the White House. is discussing and looking into, Scott. So it seems like it is a live ball here at the White House, at least for now. Yeah, we'll let that palace intrigue continue. Amen, thank you very much. That's Aiman Jabbers, right outside the White House, as you see. Coming up next, we track the biggest movers.

As we head into the close today, Christina Parcinevolo, standing by once again with that. Hi there. I'm back. One athletic shoemaker soaring after saying no to Black Friday discounts, plus a stock tumbling despite beating estimates, and a nuclear energy play jumping on a new collaboration. We'll have those names when we come back.

We're less than 15 from the closing bell today. Back to Christina now for the stocks that she's watching. Tell us. I'm looking at shares of Athletic Shoemaker on holding. You can see the stock is soaring almost 19% after raising its full year guidance for the third quarter in a row. But shoppers, beware. The company's also saying it won't be offering a Black Friday discount. The shoes are that popular, and I'd take a $5 bet that Scott has at least one pair.

Circle Internet tumbling about 10% despite posting Q3 earnings that beat expectations. operating expenses are climbing. The company blames growing investments and new partnerships for those higher costs. Finally, shares of ACHLO. Those are jumping about 7% after announcing the expansion of its collaboration with Idaho National Laboratory

in Advanced Fuel and Materials. The stock is up despite posting a Q3 loss of about $36 million on zero revenue. ACHLO has been on a tear so far this year, up 440%. Scott, do I win that bet? You can Venmo me the five-buck. Thank you very much. Appreciate that.

Christina Parks and Nevelos. Bye. Up next, your earnings run down. We'll tell you what to watch for when Cisco and Flutter report in O.T. that and much more inside the market zone. What's coming up next? We are now in the closing bell market zone.

CNBC, senior markets commentator Mike Santoli is here to break down these crucial moments of the trading day. Plus, Contessa Brewer is watching Flutter earnings. They are out in O.T. And Christina Parts in Nevelos is covering Cisco's results. And New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Jim Stewart is with us ahead of Disney's numbers, which are coming out tomorrow. It's good to have everybody. Mike, I start with you. Dow 48K. Yes. We're going to get a close above that for the first time ever. And it's reflective of this market tone that's taken shape the last couple of days, which is from tech and Mag 7 into older economy, especially financials and health care.

The Dow has a massive overweight in both financials and health care, not by design, but because of where the prices sit, and that has been to its benefit. You know, the S&P's staying green the hard way, in a sense. Mag 7 is down 1% as a group. The meme stocks are down a percent and a half. You've got crypto-heavy. So all the risk appetite tells are on the downside, and yet it's sort of the laggards and older economy stuff. It's an elegant rotation. Financials. Financials are the one area that are cyclically geared, and they have been leadership, and they have been outperforming, and they're working, especially the brokers today. I think that $110 million M&A fee from Goldman has gotten people's attention on that front. Nonetheless, I do think it's a tough way for the market to really

make a lot of upside headway, but it definitely is healthy rebalancing in the interim. Yeah, it picks up the slack when tech takes a breath. Yeah. We'll come back to in a minute. Contessa, tell us more about Flutter, please. All right, well, Scott, Flutter is going into this earning season with a bit of a boost this week, but shares under pressure the last three months with investors just spooked about the prospect of prediction market competition from the likes of Kalshi and Polly Market, plus gambling scandals, spotlighting, alleged cheating in the NBA and the MLB, that just raises the specter of a regulatory crackdown and public backlash. And finally, we know this football season has featured fan favorites winning.

Normally, that means the House loses. But remember, unlike its closest competitor, Draft Kings, fan duel is not solely responsible for Flutter's profits. It has the rest of the world helping to fuel the earnings here. Now, the street expects earnings per share of 84 cents, revenue of 3.9 billion, and those shares up today, one and a third percent. All right, and Tesla, thank you very much. We certainly will see what happens in OT, as we will, with Cisco. Christina is back again for that. And $5 poor.

The focus for Cisco is whether AI infrastructure demand can really offset some near-term headwinds. And I'll get to that a second. On the strength side, the campus refresh cycle is excel. accelerating Cisco sitting on tens of billions of dollars in aging, switching gear that definitely needs some upgrades. And analysts see that business growing from about 5% this year to around 7% next year. On the AI front, the company logged over $2 billion in orders just last fiscal year. We're entering Q1 for them now, or we're just past Q1, with enterprise demand ramping sharply,

but there's the federal headwind, spending likely softened in November with the shutdown, and that could be more of a risk for the Q2 guide. also competitor Arista flagged lead time stretching to about 38 to 52 weeks for key components like memory and merchant silicon. So that could weigh on Cisco, although Cisco does have some scale advantages compared to ERISA. Bottom line, though, analysts expect a top line beat on Enterprise and Campus Strength, but the guide could be limited. Shares up 25% year today. All right, Christina, thank you very much. That's Christina Ponce Neville. As I said, Jim Stewart was here with us at Post 9 to look ahead to Disney tomorrow. The most,

important thing in your mind is what? The numbers on streaming, the sports, and of course the regular streaming thing. This is like, to me, it's going to be an incredibly revealing quarter because the first time Disney is all in on streaming. We've got the regular Disney stuff, Disney Plus Hulu, and then we finally have ESPN going direct to consumers. I'd say the profit and revenue will be less revealing than those new subscriber numbers for ESPN. Are you tired of waiting for successor information?

Well, we aren't getting much, and, you know, the deadline is creeping up. Of course, I've been following this for years. It's a fascinating human drama. Look, there's no word has come out. There's still kind of talk that they're the two leading candidates inside. There's continuing speculation. They might have co-CEOs. There's even, I've heard, talk, that they'd have co-CEOs, and Iger would stay as chairman

with the two co-CEOs sort of reporting to him. Well, works for Netflix, works for Disney? I mean, none of this is completely implausible, although I think, you know, if Iger doesn't finally leave, if he stays as chairman, that's going to raise a lot of concern on the part of it. It's interesting, because I think about some of the issues that, you know, the last CEO had and didn't work out,

two CEOs would in part solve the question over, run the business, run the creative. Right. You can speak to both with two people. You don't have to find the perfect person to be both. And it's critical that they have to solve both.

Yeah, you've got the two internal candidates, Dana, the creative chief, and you've got Josh at theme parks, and those are two huge components of the business. But I've often felt they can learn the other side of the business. You don't have to be an expert in everything.

A lot of the, you know, like some previous people have come up through theme parks, through being chief financial officer, they didn't necessarily run the movie business. So I don't think that necessarily means you can't just have one of them, or you could also leave one of them in charge pretty much of that and give them a lot of autonomy

without giving them the CEO title. So I think there are ways to thread that needle. We'll just have to see what they do. Now, I have not heard of any word of them going outside the company. Really? I've talked to some big investors, you've been looking for evidence of that.

They say there's no sign that, that the Gorman-led search committee is reaching to non-Disney Candidus, but that could still happen. Because the whole word, like, the last time, was that you need somebody in that role who knows how to read a script, knows how, right, you read that, and you can tell if you can make a big blockbuster movie, but also just given some of the concerns in the creative community in Hollywood over the last handful of years, with strikes and all this other stuff,

somebody who can hold hands a little bit and say it's going to be okay. You definitely need that. But, of course, the other wild card is the technology side of the company. I mean, it's kind of old world to be thinking about theme parks and the studio when they're a big, you know, tech distribution company. Now you've got rumors that, you know, Amazon, Netflix, sniffing around the Warner Brothers situation. So you continue to see this convergence of big technology and the traditional media company. So if you were going to look outside, my guess would be they'd be looking in the technology area.

All right. It's great having you here. Always looking ahead to this. Nobody better to talk to leading up to those Disney earnings that is Jim Stewart. You follow Disney like a lot of other situations. Absolutely. What do you think? It's fascinating because up until very recently when basically Warner Brothers Discovery was put into play and the stock surged, Disney, the market concluded, has the most

defensible position among the legacy players in media, but is nowhere near Netflix's advantageous position. Disney's got twice the revenue of Netflix, but less profit. And so that just sort of shows you what's going on. with the business mix, and presumably they're sitting out this round of consolidation. Fox was a big bite. They don't necessarily feel as if they're in that position. So the market is now kind of respecting the franchise, but not really paying up for it.

And that trades at a discount to the market. It's like 19 times earnings, and the free cash flow is almost back to the prior peak. So it's a decent story fundamentally, but just you don't really see where the growth push is coming from here. It always is closely watched, and we'll look forward to that tomorrow. But we're going to clap this out into history today because the Dow is going to get that first ever close above 48,000 financials, health care. They are the story today. And that is the reason why you get this milestone.

I'll spend it in overtime with Morgan and John.