Closing Bell - Closing Bell: 11/14/25

Episode Date: November 14, 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.

All right, court, thanks so much. Welcome to closing bell. I'm Scott Wobner. Live from Post 9 here at the New York Stock Exchange. This make or break hour begins with this newly volatile stock market. What it means for the end of the year run that so many we're counting on. We'll ask our experts over this final stretch. We'll show you the scorecard first with 60 to go in regulation here. It is a mixed picture. It's a better picture than what we started with certainly. And by the way, we could actually end this week on a positive note. Even with yesterday's sizable upset, we'll track it to the finish. The MP still positive for the week by about one half of 1%. So that's certainly worth watching their mega caps are split today. Tech as a sector, though, is positive. So that's helping the overall picture. Energy, it's the biggest winner in terms of some individual names moving that we need to know about today. Walmart, their CEO is retiring, Under Armour, ending its relationship with Steph Curry. And Warner Brothers hire on reports that Netflix, Comcast, and Paramount, all preparing bids for that company.

Finally, Alibaba shares, they are selling off on an explosive new report from the FT. We'll have details for why that stock made that move midday and now sits down by some 5%. All of that takes us to our talk of the tape. Where stocks go from here as NVIDIA earnings loom large and the debate ramps up over a December rate cut. We start with our tech reporter, Dear Jibosa, and this growing AI anxiety, exactly what it feels like, Dee. Yeah, so Scott, it's not just one headline, right, but AI anxiety by 1,000 cuts. There was Meta's outlook in late October, spending now far outpacing revenue growth, then questions over Oracle's balance sheet and the increasing role of debt in the boom.

Open AI backlash, too, the awkward, who could forget at Sam Altman interview with Brad Garsner, where Brad asked him about financials, Altman snapped back that he could find a buyer for his shares, quickly followed up by CFO, Sarah Fryer, having to clarify comments over infrastructure, commitments. This week, the short sellers came for the AI trade. Michael Burry, Jim Chanos, sounding the alarm over depreciation and more spending, which just continues unabated. Scott, if I can add another red or maybe yellow flag, this ever-growing AI startup bubble in the private markets because exuberance and ever-hire funding rounds among startups, that translates into public market dependency on their burn, more earnings that are based on their valuations. This

week we talked to, I was able to talk to a number of startup founders and executives that are building in the space, the CEOs of Replit and CRETO AI, OpenAI's VP of engineering. They're seeing the demand side and they say that there is no slowdown whatsoever. Tracks things that we heard this week from the likes of Lisa Sue on Squawk Box as well. All of it adds up to a debate though that is growing louder and that is whether the AI trade is showing cracks and how deep those cracks might run, Scott. Yeah, there's a perfect setup for us. Dee, thank you very much. It really is Oracle at the center of this conversation, certainly one of the companies that are right there. Let's get to Sima Modi, who has a deeper look for us. What's happening here?

Well, Scott, just two months ago, Oracle had its best day ever, surging 36% on its record cloud backlog. Since then, the company has lost roughly third of its value. As investors question its increased reliance on the debt market to fund its data center expansion and whether Open AI can live up to its $300 billion commitment to Oracle over five years, Keybanks saying just in general, AI sentiment. is waning. And then there's the credit analyst from Bank of America to Barclays weighing in on this whole story this week with credit default swaps for Oracle gradually rising, nothing alarming but notable. However, the Bulls, including Muzzoho analysts, they say that this drop in Oracle is a buying opportunity. Other investors we spoke to say you don't bet against founder and executive chairman Larry Ellison who has an exceptionally strong track record, Scott. All right, good stuff, Seema. Thanks so much for that. That's Sima Modi. Now let's bring in Solis

alternative asset management, Dan Greenhouse, along with CNBC contributor Payne Capital's Courtney Garcia. It's good to have you both with us. Dan, I'll start with you on this topic, because I feel like there are two overarching stories that we're grappling with. It's this anxiety over AI. It's the potential rollback of expectations on rate cuts, but I really want to start on the AI thing, because I think the reporters have set this up perfectly for us. Do you feel like that is the main issue at hand, this anxiety over this trade? Yeah, for the moment, we've had a good run. Sam Altman wasn't the best on the Gersner podcast.

I think everyone who watched that for the moment was a little taken aback by the anger and the vitriol, if you will. Oh, the defensiveness. The defensiveness, that's right. And then you layer on top of it a couple of other things that happened during the week. And sure, you're going to be a little more anxious about this. But you had the AMD comments. And obviously, Oracle for all the consternation about its pullback, It's basically back to where it was before it had the big spike that at the time a lot of people said seemed excessive.

But, I mean, that's right there. It tells a pretty good story in its own right. Let's show that again, because that's what Dan is alluding to, this big jump they had on their earnings, the prospects of AI. The stock goes up like 20 percent or whatever it was. That earnings day, everybody's like, oh, my gosh, they don't normally see that. It's given it all back and then some, which tells the story as a whole about, you know, are we concerned about raising debt? Are we concerned about being over leverage to open AI, the circular nature of a lot of the deals that we've seen? This speaks to everything. They're all fair concerns. And Deirdrish showed

in terms of private markets, you've got thinking machines, which please correct me if I'm wrong, I apologize, isn't even pre-revenue or pre-earnings. It's pre-company. They're basically just forming, raising money at a $50 billion valuation, triple what it was a couple of months ago. Obviously, cursor and that story. So for the moment, there's some consternation, but I think it also has to be contextualized in the context of the rally that we've experienced over the last couple of weeks and, dare I say months. And if we have a little bit of a pullback here in some of these names, granted 10% 20% in some cases, but a little bit of a pullback, I don't think that's the worst thing in the world when the story remains, as it appears to me, unchanged.

Okay. Is the story court still intact? I'm thinking of Marietos, J.P. Morgan yesterday, delivering Alpha our event saying no bubble. We're on the precipice of something extraordinary. Are we too worked up about the debt issues, the spending, the desire for near-term returns on all of that when it's just not possible to see what the market may really want to see? I don't think we're overly, like I don't think it's an issue we're concerned about these things. I think you should be worried about when you're going to see some sort of return on investment on these things. Like you look at OpenAI, for example, they're not expect to be profitable until 2030. And the amount of money that they're, the amount of CAPX that's going in there, people are starting to question.

And I think that's exactly what you're seeing with Oracle, where people were very optimistic on the demand they put forward. But again, it's that cap X that people are questioning. And you saw this with Meta once they reported, you actually saw them, they pulled back over $200 billion in market value when people are questioning that. But I don't think that means the story is over either. I think realistically, when everybody is talking about a bubble, and that is all people we've talked about for last month, that's usually not the end of the bubble. It's usually when people aren't expecting it.

And I think seeing this sort of pullback after the great gains we've had is very normal, and especially when you're getting these Michael Burry comments, you're seeing SoftBank is taking off their Nvidia exposure. I think seeing some of that is just profit-taking. I don't think it means we're at the end of this. The viewers couldn't see you, you know, gesticulating all over. What's the problem with that? No, I just, at the risk of upsetting people, I don't, I, listen, I've never met Michael Burry.

The guy's been calling for a bare market for 20 years. So I don't know why new comments from Michael Burry that were in a bubble is anything to, and I don't think you did this per se. I agree. I just think people are skittish. And you hear a name like that who called when the mortgage back securities were down. And so people are going to trust that name. I agree with you, but I think people are skittish and they're going to hear those headlines. And that's the profit taking your thing.

It's not like he is the only one. who is raising issues about debt, about depreciation, and about spending, and bubbles. No, but again, to reiterate my point, there's a coterie of investors who have been bearished for the better part of 15 years. And there's just a moving target of rationales for why you would be bearish at any moment in time. And I implore viewers, go type in tech bubble 2014. And I'm sure you're going to find the journal article or the New York Times article of a similar number of people, similar type of people, similar names saying that tech was in a bubble then and certainly in 2021.

Okay. So maybe we had a bubble in rate cut expectations and the air has come out of that because on October 17th, okay, we were at 100% for December. We're at 41, I think, today. How much of an issue of what we're seeing in the markets is related to that? I think it's certainly part of it. I had been on with you, I'm sure, at that point, saying 100 seemed way too high for me for different reasons than has come to pass. My argument for why we shouldn't be at 100 and we should be closer to 50-50 was without the data. I think the Fed would be a little premature in cutting again, even as someone who thinks they should continue cutting into the mid-3s.

By the way, BLS, this literally just moved a moment ago. BLS, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, says it's going to release the September jobs report on November 20th. Yes. So we always think that the jobs reports are a little backwards looking. This one's going to be like way in reverse. But nonetheless, we're going to get the reports. I just want to get the details. Yes, the data is going to be helpful. I imagine the report might be. Well, that one I think was ready to go. The October report obviously is going to be the black hole, if you will. But yeah, listen, the sucking those odds out has affected markets a little bit for sure, not just because we're not getting the rate cut that perhaps the market at one point thought we did. but for the reasons, which is a little bit, in some people's opinion, a little bit stickier of inflation.

My own view is the labor market is not very healthy right now. It's been deteriorating, and you could probably warrant some additional rate cuts. But I think that's also fair with respect to the backup and treasury yields to say that that's causing a little bit of indigestion. For sure, let's show the curve. I mean, we could show what the tenure is. What do you think about this part of the argument over why the market has gotten a little more volatile this week? There we are. 415.

That's the high of a session today for the year. yield on the 10-year note. Yeah, and this was kind of the argument when the Fed was cutting last time, right, that the concern about doing that is this could actually over-stimulate the economy, and that's where you can actually start to see the long end of the curve rising. That's what a lot of people were calling for. And I think the question is, is inflation still a concern? Can some of these tariffs actually still increase inflation, whether that's late this year or early next? And we're not getting any government data coming out. So if they preemptively are cutting, it actually could continue to cause that longer-term end of the rates go up and cause further inflation.

That's what the Fed's trying to figure out here. And I don't think we're going to have a clear answer on that, especially without the data right now. Let's also be clear. We're not even suggesting, I don't think anybody has suggested in any of the interviews that we've done on any program, that this market needs a rate cut right now. Need versus one are two different things. There are a lot of other things that have been going right, which, as I phrased it earlier, would be the rate cut would simply be a cherry on top of what already looks like a pretty yummy Sunday for investors. But it's one thing that's drained away that you never want to fight the Fed, they suggest. So, all right, maybe you've got a little bit of a fight on your hands because they're fighting in the room.

We're learning that. Yeah. Listen, Steve has made the Steve Leesman, CNBC economics correspondent, has made the comments on air numerous times that you're probably at 50-50 right now in terms of voters. Well, we show like the latest, like, literally 41? The number of voters that will favor. Earlier today, Leasman said Powell doesn't have the votes. Yeah, I think that's, yeah, it's, there are enough on the record voters right now to say you're in a danger zone, if you will, for not getting a rate cut in December. But I would also counter with, to some degree, so what, whether you get the rate cut, additional rate reductions, which again, I think are warranted, whether you get them in December or you get them in the first quarter of next year, I'm not sure it's particularly worrisome to me.

You've got the comments from AMD. You've got the terrific earnings reports. Stephanie Link on the halftime report spent quite a bit of time correctly articulating all of the, well, as all viewers should, articulating all the great reports from the tech companies. We're going to get Nvidia next week. There's no indication that that's going to be a bit of a disappointment. I have no information to say otherwise. So that story, which is driving the market in a whole host of different sectors, remains intact right now.

And yes, lower interest rates will help this transition from funding some of the cabbacks out of cash flow into debt. But generally speaking, as long as that story remains ongoing, and Cisco told you again, most recently, that it is, then the benefit for the market, I think, is still to the upside in that regard. All right, I got to leave it there because I have some news that I need to get to. Dan, thank you, court, you as well. We'll see both of you soon. We are following a developing story this afternoon, an explosive one at that. A report that Alibaba Group is helping the Chinese military target the U.S.

United States. Amon Javvers is at the White House with more. What do we know here, Amin? Hey, Scott, this is coming from the Financial Times. Their report is that Alibaba allegedly provides tech support for Chinese military operations against targets inside the United States. Now, the paper is citing a national security memo that is allegedly circulating inside the White House for that claim. No comment yet from the White House on this report. The memo allegedly says the Chinese company supplies the People's Liberation Army with access to customer data that includes IP addresses, Wi-Fi information, and payment records, as well as AI-related services, and the F.T. reports that employees had transferred knowledge about so-called

zero-day cyber exploits to the Chinese Army. Now, we've reached out to Alibaba for comment. They have not responded to us yet. The F.T., though, says that Alibaba told them that it rejects these claims, saying the claims purportedly based on U.S. intelligence that was leaked by your source, complete nonsense. This is plainly an attempt to manipulate public opinion and malign Alibaba. Now, Scott, by law, companies in China have to share information with Beijing when it's requested, and that's one of the reasons why U.S. officials have been skeptical for a long time now of Chinese-owned firms that have access to vast swaths of American data. That law was passed back in 2017. So this has been the case for a while now, Scott. Back over to you.

I mean, this part, partly was at the very heart of the months, if not last few years long debate over TikTok. And it's operating in the U.S. and what we were concerned about, which is why the Trump administration just cut the deal that it did. Yeah, exactly the same issue. And on TikTok's got, I mean, we don't have, you know, any indication yet that that deal has been consummated. We know that the U.S. side has said that they would like to do a deal, and the Chinese side has been silent on it. And you can see why the Chinese side would be silent on this deal. When you imagine the scale of the reach the TikTok has to an entire generation of American voters in terms of the potential propaganda opportunity that provides the Chinese government, it is enormous.

That is a very big ask for the U.S. to ask that to be turned over. So far, the Chinese side has been really noncommittal about it, despite what you've seen from the administration saying that deal is almost certainly going to be done soon. Yeah, very interesting. Amon, thanks so much. It's Amon Javra's with the latest, as you see from Washington. You'll keep us up to date. In the meantime, let's bring in Chris Krebs.

He's the former director of the cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency. It's great to have you. I'm wondering what you make of this report, Chris. Well, look, I don't think it should be surprising to anybody that there's intelligence on Chinese-linked firms, that there's some information sharing between those firms and the Chinese Communist Party. As Eamon said, it's in the national security law. It's required to cooperate with the security services. And just given the sheer amount and the volume, the sensitivity of the data,

that a major cloud provider, keeping in mind that Alabama is a massive cloud provider on a global scale. They've got access to a lot of really, really valuable, interesting, attractive stuff. And the security services are going to want to get in there and get to it. And there's so many questions. You know, how long have we known about this? alleged activity, and what are we prepared to do about it? How would that be on your mind if you were still in the role that you had? Yeah.

So I don't know anything about this specific memo, the information that underpins it. But again, when the U.S. government takes action, there's a very sound, solid foundation in footing from an intelligence community perspective, from a risk analytics perspective, a legal perspective. And if you just look back and even the TikTok actions, the actions that have been taken against Huawei, SMIC, whether these are sanctions or designations or export controls, they're voluminous, voluminous records that support these decisions. So I suspect they're taking a hard look at limiting Alibaba activity in the United States, certainly from a defense contractor perspective, from a government contractor perspective, even financial in other

larger, more sensitive utilities. And maybe we could see either an executive action or possibly legislative action. And look, the U.S. Congress, at least last Congress, was not opposed to taking hard action against firms where there were national security risk. I wouldn't be surprised to see that coming forward. I'm wondering how we should be thinking about this, too, in the context of an AI arms race, where firms like Alibaba are right there front and center in trying to be as competitive as the United States firms are and who ultimately is going to win this fact. I remember it was just maybe not even a week ago where Jensen Wong, the CEO of NVIDIA, suggested that the Chinese are going to win, then had to walk that back a little bit,

but this is top of mind, particularly as it relates to AI. Yeah, look, I'm not sure I'm on board with whether China's going to win the AI race or not. I mean, just look yesterday you had a report from Anthropic, one of the leading U.S. labs that showed Chinese intelligence services were using U.S. AI agents, and whether that means the Chinese agents aren't good enough or ours are just readily accessible to hit U.S. targets, there is a lot of concern about modern tech, evolving tech that's being used for economic warfare, as well as good old traditional espionage. And we have to continue to stay on top of this threat. and support our own national champions to ensure that we maintain that edge.

Do you think we'll get to a point, lastly, where, you know, U.S. investors, I can look on the screen that I have here in front of me that shows me all of the Chinese tech companies, and I can see how they're trading, and we know of U.S. investors who are putting their money to work in those names. Do you think we get to a point where they are banned, where U.S. investors are not allowed to invest in Chinese companies and or they're not allowed to even list in the United States? I don't know if that's going to happen, but I tell you what is happening right now is U.S. companies, European companies. In fact, I was just in Europe earlier this week at a board meeting talking to executives

about the risk of using Chinese technology in your tech stacks. What you're going to see first of these companies that are making risk decisions on their technology stack and both how they operate in the U.S. as well as how they operate in China for manufacturing and supply chain issues of what they're using, how they're segmenting off global operations to ensure whatever happens in China cannot affect rest of world operations. That is the number one conversation I'm hearing right now in boardrooms. We will continue to follow it and we appreciate you jumping on with us. Chris Krebs. Thank you very much. I should let you know we of course are in the process of reaching out to Alibaba for comment.

We're also attempting to reach out to the Brooklyn Nets of the NBA. Their owner, Joe Tsai. He is the chairman of the Alibaba group, so we'll keep you up to date on all of that. We're just getting started here. Up next, Star Apple analyst, Eric Woodring. He'll join us. We'll get his take on these new iPhone numbers out of China.

Has Apple stock on the move today? We're live at the New York Stock Exchange. You're watching Closing Bell on CNBC. Apple shares are hired today in a mixed tech tape on positive reports of iPhone sales in China. Let's bring in star analyst Eric Woodring covers that company, as you know, from Morgan Stanley. Thanks for joining us. Good to see, Scott. Thanks for having me on.

There's something to this in China? I think it's a kind of a reflection of the. the trends that we're seeing globally, right? Of course, some markets will be weaker, some will be stronger, but China has been a market that has been in decline for 7 to 8 years. Said differently, replacement cycles have elongated significantly in China. And we're seeing a product that resonates with Chinese consumers. There's also some subsidies in the market in China. So kind of right product at the right place at the right time. Again, I'm not sure I tell you that China has turned the corner for Apple. But don't forget, you know, as we talked last time, we should take the

kind of September and December quarters together to get a reflection what's happening in China because September was capacity constrained, and we're seeing some of that benefit flow over into December now. I mean, let's be honest. Like any number, for the most part, that's positive is going to look good from an extraordinarily low pace, correct? I completely agree. Again, This is good. I'm not trying to downplay that. My point is just I think what we're seeing in China is reflective of what is happening with the iPhone 17 more broadly, which is it's the right product that's resonating with the right price price. So let me let me ask you this. I'm not going to ask you to comment on the report that we were just talking about of this memo circulating apparently from the White House that alleges Alibaba is helping the Chinese military tariff. because it's not your bailiwick. I totally get that. However, if I told you that the relationship between the two countries has the risk of getting worse before it gets better, and there's a

direct relationship between the companies that are in the United States that are highly reliant on the Chinese marketplace, like Apple is, which I think it's 20% of their revenues or thereabouts from China. If I told you that the relationship itself, was going to further deteriorate because of reports like this, and you could no longer rely on China to give you anywhere close to that number that we have relied on, what would that do to the way you saw this company and what it was getting from there? Sure. So listen, you're correcting that Apple is very tied to China, both from a supply and a demand standpoint.

I think it's 22% of revenue for Apple comes from China. So a kind of deterioration in geopolitical in the relationship between Apple and China can have very significant impacts on Apple. That's very clear. I would just say this isn't necessarily new to us. Obviously, this might be a new story, but we've seen the geopolitical relationship between the U.S. and China, ebb and flow, over the 10 years that I've covered Apple, has it gotten more intense over the last, let's call it five? sure. But ultimately, we also do see, you know, people coming back to the negotiating table. And so I don't think this is one directional, but it's absolutely true that Apple is very closely tied to China in producing iPhones and also selling a number of their products and services.

Let's pivot to another story that I think was in focus this week. A suggestion that Apple shares maybe had been moving higher because investors were starting to cheer the fact that they weren't spending nearly as much as some of the other hyperscalers on their whole AI buildout. And what was oft criticized at the beginning is now being championed because we're suddenly worried about spend and return on investment. So I guess two responses to that. One is last time I was on after earnings, we talked about how OPEX is stepping up for Apple for spending on AI. So it might not be coming in the same form as the major hypers, but they are spending. And then maybe the more important point here is there have been reports that Apple is going to white label Google Gemini as kind of the underlying driver of the next Apple intelligence platform and basically paying Google a billion dollars a year to do so.

In the context of Google spending, I think it was $52 billion in CAPEX in 2024 and just over $90 billion this year in CAPEX to build out GCP and their AI. capabilities, that's a pretty, pretty significant discount. That's a steel in some ways. And so we're basically saying that Apple is getting access to one of the leading large language models, foundation models from Google for a billion dollars a year for a company in Apple that generates over $400 billion annually, more than a billion dollars a day. So yes, if this report is true, Apple is coming to kind of the AI party late, albeit with a capable product that they're spending a lot less on than a lot of their competitors. As you think about the big picture before I let you go, a note you put out really caught

the attention of our production staff. Apple Robotics, what's cooking in Cooper Tino's Kitchen? That was the question you were asking. What is going to be served, do you think? Right. So this is important. And again, we write about robotics at a time when no one else is writing about robotics in relation to Apple. But maybe three quick points I would make. One is Morgan Stanley's

view is that robotics can be a $5 trillion market by 2050. If you compare that to the smartphone market, that's about $500 billion. So we're saying that Apple could be entering a market that is 10 times the size of their core market today. And that's just the hardware. That's not counting the application layer or software or anything like that. So when we talk about what's next, That's a really big TAM that Apple is potentially about to enter. Second point is I think a lot of people underappreciate what Apple is doing behind the scenes in robotics. Remember, they have Daisy. They have an autonomous robot that disassembles iPhones for recycling.

They've had that for a number of years and maybe a few stats to point out. They filed more robotics patents in the last two years than the prior two decades combined. They've actually partnered with NVIDIA to release the broadest data set of visual data. It's over 825 hours of data on visual data on how humans move because they have the products that can tell you that. And then also today, 25% of Apple job postings are for machine learning. It just tells you that Apple is actually in the robotics game when people don't necessarily expect them to be. And we've gone back to data is the kind of oil of AI. Apple is collecting that visual data.

That's hugely important in order to power robots. And so, yes, we're talking about robotics. It's a long, it's a long, kind of long term opportunity. But when people ask what's next, Apple is supposed to launch a tabletop robot kind of display home control in 2027. That could come a lot faster than people think. And we want to be talking about it when no one else is. All right.

Well, we're glad you're talking because you've got to. us thinking. Eric Woodring. Thanks so much. We'll see you soon. Thanks so much, Scott. All right. Still ahead. Bitcoins, Big Bad Week. Funstrats, Tom Lee. He joins us next with his tape. Welcome back. Bitcoin dipping below 95,000 today. It's lowest level since May. Let's bring in Tom Lee. Fundstrat's head of research, a CNBC contributor. He, of course, also the chairman of Bitmine. So it's good to have to have. have you. Ether's down 8.5% this week. Bitcoin's down 8. Bitmine is down 20. What's happening here? Scott, I think we're still seeing the repercussions of that April 10th crypto de-leveraging

event. You know, it was the biggest de-leverging event ever. And there are still, I think, some market makers that have some balance sheet issues that are trying to raise capital. So I think that this is leading to a market that is kind of raised. Every time we get a bit of a rally, there's some capital trying to be raised. And I think that's what's suppressing crypto for now. That's, of course, going to end soon. But I think that's led to why crypto has underperformed equities since October 10th. Can crypto treasuries, like yours, for example, can they trade as well or in tandem with a crypto?

currency itself, or does one have to trade at the expense of the other? If I'm going to see money flow into Bitcoin or crypto treasuries, wouldn't it then come out of the actual pureplay coin itself? Not exactly, Scott. For instance, when Bitmine has shareholders and institutional capital comes in, and, you know, J.P. Morgan, Invesco, BlackRock, are buying big stakes, then that capital is then used to buy Ethereum. So it's actually going back into the ecosystem, but then it's going into a vehicle like Bitmine that's actually a permanent holder. You know, Bitmine owns 3.5 million Ethereum more than 2.9% of the supply, but now that is not going to be subject to liquidations because there's no leverage used to hold that Ethereum.

And then at some point that 3.6 million or 3.5 million Ethereum is going to be staked, and then generate, you know, nearly $400 million in net income, well, that can create returns for shareholders. So in a way, a crypto treasury is actually a pretty attractive equity because there's a, you know, an income component, plus there's, of course, that ability to grow your Ethereum holdings per share. But what if, what if crypto treasuries become more favored than crypto itself? There's no negative impact for either the way that Ether or Bitcoin. would trade if just more money floods towards the Treasury part of this story? Well, one, it's a conduit because, as you know, equity managers, many of them, the 4,000,

can't own crypto directly so that, so they have to get exposure to Ethereum by buying a stock like Bitmine, and Bitmine is the 438th largest stock in America today. It's not that different than if someone wanted to have exposure to energy, they can buy oil and trade a commodity. or they can take like oil barrels at home, or they can buy an oil related stock, either a major or something in the supply chain. That's what crypto treasures are is essentially an asset class

that gives you direct exposure to the crypto asset. All right, let's pivot to the market itself. Is your confidence at all shaken in where we are and what you thought the prospects for an end of your run could be after what we've seen this week? Well, it's never fun to see markets wobble And then stocks that are quite popular, like AI and the quantums and nuclear come down so hard.

But it is consistent with the idea that, you know, we were up six months through October. So the market's overbought. We expected two weeks of consolidation, which is what we're getting. And then, of course, as you know, there's hawkish Fed Talk, so there's a bit of a tantrum the market's having. But between now and year end, we still have really good seasonals. The earnings have been good. Sentiment has flipped negative, Scott. As you could tell, I mean, the AAI went to negative 17.4.

So I'd say the risk reward is still really good for equities into year end. And yeah, I think the S&P will be over 7,000 by the end of the year, you know, in fact, maybe over 7,000 by the end of the month. No cut in December. Let's just say that that's the now the base case. And AI remains volatile. You know, the broadening trade looked pretty good at times this week to where we were thinking of, okay, maybe we're going to get an everything rally.

You think that's possible? Yeah. I mean, I think one reason the Fed is backpedaling on a cut in December is not because they have more confidence that inflation is strengthening. In fact, many of them said they just don't know, but in general they agree it's probably not. I think that there are signs that the labor market is maybe stabilizing. So you actually have a Fed waffling for the right reason,

which is, look, if the employment market's holding up, the Fed doesn't have to cut, still a good environment for equities. I'm not trying to like spin it, but it's not a bad reason if the Fed is starting to have second thoughts. Okay. Tom, I got to leave it there. I appreciate you. I've got some news that I have to get you, though. I'll see you soon. That's Tom Lee. We are now getting a statement from Alibaba on that report we discussed earlier that the company is helping the Chinese military target the United States. Amon Javras joins us now with what they're saying. Amen? Yeah, Scott Alibaba firing back here in this statement. Here's what the company is saying.

They say the assertions and innuendos in the article are completely false. We question the motivation behind the anonymous leak, which the F.T. admits that they cannot verify. This malicious PR operation clearly came from a rogue voice looking to undermine President Trump's recent trade deal with China. That's the statement attributable to an Alibaba group spokesperson. So, Scott, an aggressive response here from the company to that report from the F.T., which, as you mentioned, suggested that there is a national security memo, inside the White House, which alleges that Alibaba is turning over data to the Chinese military that could help the military in China target individual Americans. Scott.

Okay. Amen, thanks for the update. Appreciate that. Amon, Javras. Coming up next, a wild week for stocks, as you know, our panel of experts is standing by to break down the final moments of this trading week. The market zone's next. We're now in the closing bell market zone. Senior Markets commentator, Mike Santoli, CNBC contributor, Requisite Capitals, Bryn-Tockington, and Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management's Matt Stucky, are all here to break down these crucial moments of the trading day. Michael, I mean, it's been an interesting week. What are you going to leave us with? It's been a fascinating week that it looks like we're going to escape with the indexes being basically flat,

which is remarkable considering the gyrations along the way and really how much stress there were in the most widely owned and examined parts. of this market. Now, we're definitely in a somewhat bumpier, higher volatility zone. The downside this week from the highs took the S&P essentially back to where we were two months ago. We first re-sales levels. So as a matter of fact, the historically weak period of September and October did slow the rally, but it did not really do much except at this point flush away maybe some of the excessive positioning in some of the more aggressive areas of the market. I know people are taking some heart in the fact that financials hung in there. The broader tape really didn't have as much damage done.

But the crypto moves are unnerving people. Bitcoin's not getting traction. So we're just sort of wondering if there's portfolio stress that still has to work its way through. Yeah, there's your look at Bitcoin below $95,000, as we said. Leslie Picker has been watching for 13Fs, which are dropping. And she has one to tell us about, Les. Yes, Scott, the deadline is today. The one that just dropped was CO2.

It is boosting its stake in alphabet by more than 200. 50% to a stake worth about 1.8 billion as of the end of September. That's kind of opposite what we saw with Appalusa and Bow Post, which trimmed Google's parent company during the quarter. On the AI infrastructure side with CO2, though, there were some sales. Co2 cut core weave by 62%, but still holds just under a billion dollar stake. It also trimmed Invidia a bit, which may be portfolio management for them, the firm Slashing Arm and AMD as well, just kind of in that chip. space. As always, this is a reminder of these positions are as of the end of three Q. They may have changed in the six weeks since. But Scott, you know, we just spoke with Cotou's

Philippe Lafant yesterday at our delivering alpha event. We asked him his views on AI, whether it's in a bubble. And he said, when you look at previous bubbles, it's not obvious who wins. He noted we could be, quote, making the mistake of thinking that someone who appears to win ends up not winning. I don't know if you can read between the lines with the 13-half today, but at least we have kind of a fresh look at where his head is at. Yeah, we do. Les, thank you, as you've led that conversation, of course. That's Leslie Picker.

Matt and Bryn, Bryn first. So where are we now as we finish a newly volatile week in the markets? I think what's happened this week has been very healthy for the market. I think the market is saying to the oracles of the world, hey, if you're going to go negative free cash flow and you're going to saddle yourself to a private company that may have decent revenues, but it's still early days. We're going to penalize you. And I think this is very good for the other companies that are like spending like crazy, that there's only so much we're going to allow you to spend. Otherwise, we're going to penalize your stock. So I'm hoping, like,

level heads will prevail that we won't have these like daily conversations with Jensen, Sam Altman, Lisa Sue, announcing crazy big deals. And they can keep their head down, do the work. And there can be some type of sanity in the market as it relates to the spend of the money. that these companies are doing relative to their balance sheet. Matt, how do you see it? You know, I agree with a lot of what Britain was saying there. You know, since the April lows, you know, the NASDAX up more than 50%. And it's been somewhat of an uninterrupted advance.

You know, that can increase the risk profile, especially when it's been momentum led like it's translated into over the summer with non-profitable companies, more speculative types of investments kind of really leading the charge. And really, if you look under the surface of kind of the price action, this week, that's where the major damage was done, kind of taking out a lot of that froth. And I think, again, that's a healthy sign that investors are starting to make sure that they're looking at not just the upside opportunities, but also some of the risks that are present in some of this speculative behavior that we've seen manifest over the last few months.

You know, Mike, what makes people especially nervous and Bryn really hit on it is that it's not just Oracle. There are so many other companies, it's a whole trade in some specs that is leveraged to Open AI. And any stumble by that company, anywhere along the way, has not just ripple effects, but what could be waves turning into something even larger potentially. For sure. And what Open AI has obviously done is just try to knit up this web of partners and try to lay claim on scarce resources in terms of data center and processing and capital in a way that

tries to secure a head start and an advantage for Open AI, as you would do if you're competing with others. But what that also means is, and what the market is kind of registering and punishing meta shares and punishing Oracle shares is there's just not going to be enough to go around. It's not going to be winners across the board. So what does that mean down the road? And I really do think the JP Morgan report this week that said, whatever it was, you need $650 billion in revenues to start coming back to justify this level of spending over whatever number of years. That's what got in people's heads. And that's also, though, assuming that all the investments need payoff. All of them are not going to get paid off. So I don't think that

means we're at a critical moment that all of a sudden the credit markets are going to seize up or they're going to start to deprive these companies of capital. But we are going to be always with this debate. We're never going to escape the moment where it's like carefree again and everybody is going to be getting credit for being a winner. A week in which, too, we got, you know, from BFA, Michael Hartnett saying short, hyperscaler debt was one of his best idea. So it just gets people talking and it makes a market more volatile. Bryn, so taking all of that into consideration, what does it do for us over the final, let's call it, six weeks of the year? I think we're going to be bouncing around a little bit more than we thought we would because obviously the government shut down.

The data that we're going to get around the economy is going to be late and stale if we get it. I do think we had really strong earnings. So that's definitely a ballast for the market. And so I think it's going to be like what's going to happen with inflation. I will say that, you know, 55% of components in CPI are growing above three percent. And so I don't know if this December rate cut, which has already come down, is going to happen. So I think we're going to bounce around here. But this, this, this is a little bit air out of the balloon to me has been very positive, longer term, setting up for 2026. Yeah. Matt, do you think that, you know, people should. take advantage of the volatility, the pullback in the market. It seemed like it was hard to find bears out there. And this week, if nothing else, just maybe rekindled some of the negatives that are lurking out there. Yeah, you know, that's a really good point. You know, there hasn't been a whole lot of kind of bearish activity prevalent in markets the last few months. But, you know, in the background, there still is, you know, the labor market that has been softening. And while we haven't got a lot of good clean government data, obviously the last month and a half.

There has been some surveyed numbers that, you know, aren't necessarily built bullish by any means. If you look at University of Michigan's survey that, you know, ask respondents, do they expect higher unemployment rate, you know, just hit the highest level since 1980. If that corresponds to a jump in the unemployment rate, you know, that is something that's not necessarily bullish. But at the same time, we're dealing with a situation where, you know, we're in a situation where we have back-to-back really strong earnings seasons where, we might finish Q3 with mid-teens earnings growth. That by any means, it's a really strong reporting season across the board. And so it's a balanced picture. And, you know, I think the message that you take away from that is just to continue to

embrace diversification, emphasize quality and security selection, you know, probably stay away a little bit from some of the non-profitable areas of the market that have been really kind of bit up over the summertime and really starting to correct in recent weeks. Bryn, how closely are you going to be watching interest rates? we can show the 10-year here was back above 415 earlier in the session. It's certainly getting the market's attention. Yeah, we always have to watch that, right? But I will say a steepening yield curve is not necessarily negative

because it's showing you actually that GDP and growth in the economy could be increasing. So we have a steepening yield curve that's really not necessarily a bad thing. I really think it's about inflation and employment that I'm going to be focusing on more than the yield curve. Yeah, I mean, well, I can tell you. I mean, inflation is sticky. I think we are learning that, and the labor market is, you know, a little bit dicey. What if December is, in fact, a no in terms of a cut? What does that mean?

I think that's going to put the market a little bit on pause. I think the people that got back into small cap, maybe like some of my private equity trades, like Apollo and KKR, those take a rest. I think they're going to be sectors of the market that are going to retreat if we don't get a rate cut. But especially the real economy, because the real economy still has got decades, a decade of zero rates. That's those lower rates, especially in real estate and housing, to be very meaningful for the real economy, not the stock market. Matt, are we back to watching the bond market as closely as we're watching the stock market again? Well, I think if rates really start backing up aggressively from here, kind of more to the 450 area code,

that starts to impact multiples quite a bit. you know, the corrections in the market, they tend to happen because either interest rates spike up or the unemployment rate spikes up. If you get both of those, then, yeah, you can start to get some concern on the part of investors. You know, right now, you know, we've really just gone from pricing in six cuts to three to four cuts over the coming 12 months. And so this move up in the tenure, I think, is more a reflection of that reality versus, you know, an indication that things are going to be screaming higher in the bar market. Matt, thank you, Brent, of course, to you as well. Good weekend to you both.

invidia next week that's going to be invidia and the september jobs report oh yes sure who knows what that means for us exactly okay so i said that early you know i said the beginning of the show we got a chance to go out positive for the week still on the s and p i've got it positive by 0.07 percent so let's see how we settled out and i'll see you on the other side let's go to o t