Closing Bell - Closing Bell 12/1/25

Episode Date: December 1, 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, Kel, thanks so much. Welcome to Closing Bill. I'm Scott Wobner, live from Post 9, here at the New York Stock Exchange. This make-a-break hour begins with a new month and some new questions for investors about the AI trade and interest rates, and of course, much more. We'll discuss all that over the final stretch. Here's the scorecard with 60 to go in regulations, but a mostly red day throughout the day to start December. It was better than it started, but the Dow is sort of seeping back towards being deeper red, quarters of 1%. Sectors, they are mixed energy, materials, consumer staples are in the green,

everything else, though, red. Tech's not doing too much today. Invidia is higher. It takes a $2 billion stake in synopsis. We'll follow that. Apple also higher, along with Amazon. And how about retail winners on this Cyber Monday? They include Nike and Target, Walmart, Macy's, and the gap. Finally, Bitcoin, its worst day since March. Is that having an impact on the overall market? market, and maybe we'll discuss that too. It takes us to our talk of the tape. Our stock's primed for an end-of-year rally. Let's ask our panel, CNBC contributor, Trivary,'s Adam Parker, CIPC Capital Markets, Head of Equity and Portfolio Strategy, Chris Harvey, and Robin Hood, Stephanie Gild. It's great to have everybody with us. Mr. Harvey, congrats on your new gig.

Thank you. You're going to be up there on the podium because of your Miracle Day. Yes, we are. Today, tell us quickly about that. So it's a day that we, on Wednesday, what we do is we donate all the proceeds, all the commissions, all the fees from the capital markets and Van Gundy to global charities, kids' global charities throughout the world. We've been doing it for 41 years. We raised over $30 million over the last five years. And it's just a great event. And we have the kids in on Wednesday. You can see the impact. You can see that it really does affect lives. And it's just a great event for all involved. All right. Well, we appreciate you doing that, certainly. I know everybody does. And it's good to have you back. So I'm going to go with you

first. So, as I said, new gig. You left your last one with a 7,000 and seven price target on the S&P. We're at 6,800. We've got a month to go. Right. Can we get there? I think so. I think so. So we've had a lot of issues with hyperscale. They had to issue a lot of paper, whether it was Oracle or meta, so on and so forth. That paper, for the most part, is actually trading better. In addition to that, the liquidity needs are starting to die down. A lot of the issues that we've seen over the last couple weeks, we've gotten past. And I think what we are is we're in that sweet spot where things can move higher, right? The next thing is a Fed. The Fed's likely going to cut rates. We're going to look to a new Fed. And I think equity markets can begin to work higher,

though we are worried about 26 and a lot more volatility in 26. Last time we spoke, Deb, you were a little worried, right, about some of the, I think, the debt issuance and some of the other things that the market was trying to figure out. Do you then not agree that we're in a sweet spot? I think maybe for a year end we could be. I'm kind of worried about 2026. I don't actually have a target yet, but I was thinking through all of the things that we could see. And we had this sell-off last week. We've obviously recovered in some names, but not in others. And I was looking through our portfolio today, even. Some of the things that are helping are the things that have been down the most over the last three months or so. So if you have that kind of rally and things

don't look too poor in the tech sector. I think you could get it. I was looking at our prediction markets, too, which I thought was kind of interesting. And there's a 70% chance the market is applying, or at least a prediction market, that will be higher from here into year end. Yeah. Well, I mean, December is typically one of the better months. And then especially when you've had such a strong year coming into December, you usually do have a pretty good month. Are you on the page of this is going to be pretty good over the next 30? I don't think I have the skill to make one-month market calls. But you know what I mean.

Do you feel like the market has gotten through some of the issues that rattled it over the last few weeks, and now we can sort of build on what's going on here? I feel what Stephanie's saying in that, like, Moderna and Dow and Landable Cell and Chipotle and Lulu, like, bad stocks were covered as much as some of the semis did off the lows a week ago, and that's probably a good sign, that people were sort of not just going back to buy the dip of the exact same playbook. maybe that's a good sign. You know, I still think the prudent thing to do is diversify from the AI trade a little bit

just because the S&P is basically an AI index. And so can I, is that, can we find more stuff in health care? Can we find stuff in financials? Copper is that high? So I think people are still trying to find things that are a little diversifying away from the AI trade. You know what's funny, though? You could make the case, I know it would sound crazy if you did,

but you could make the case that, well, the S&P is a fine. financials index, not so much an AI index, based on the performance year to date. If you look at the performance of the group of the big banks versus the performance of the big AI names, I think people would be surprised. Yeah, I mean, we have to, yeah, I worry that, you know, we're recommending health care, recommending financials. I worry the financials is a crowded call just because I think people think their earnings estimates are pretty safe and estimate achievability is above average. It really depends what you mean if you mean J.P. Goldman and Morgan Stanley. Yeah, I do. Or if you mean the halts or other stuff.

No, Goldman, JPM, Morgan, Stanley, Bank of America, Wells. The biggest criticism I can come on, the biggest thing I'm worried about, and I think, I don't, Stephanie didn't say this, I'm going to put words in her mouth, but I'm worried that all the strategists are bullish. Like, the advantage that when you do what I do is you can sit back and hear what everyone says in their November calls, and everyone was bearish in 23 and bearish in 24, and the market ripped. Then they got bullish in 25.

The market gets annihilated the first three months of the year, and then recovers. So I think when the consensus is too bullish, it worries me. There were people who were bearish for 80% of the monster rally for three years that are now bullish. And I'm worried about where sentiment heads into January a little bit and will we get a little kind of rotation in there. So I think that's what people are asking me about a little bit more than just this next couple we trade. What do you think about that? So I think Adams are right to diversify. I think that's fair.

I think that if you're really far out on the risk curve, that's a bad place to be. There's going to be a repricing risk pretty aggressively. you're right, financials have performed exceptionally well. And I agree, a lot of things that we were talking about 12 months ago, 6, 12, 18 months ago are now coming to fruition, right? And other people are pointing that out. They're pointing out that the UberCAP stocks, margins can go higher, right? That it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, that the rich keep getting richer. And I am worried about that to some degree. And so when we're talking to people about 2026, we're saying, listen, you really want to participate to the upside. You don't have to outperform, just participate

to the upside, but protect to the downside. You want to be able to outperform when the market pulls back. We're going to have more spikes of volatility. That's where you want to really focus the portfolio. So you want this return distribution of upside participation, but really downside outperformance. Do you think that November was an outlier in the performance stack, if you want to call it that? Health care, comm services, materials, staples, financials, all those lead, technology was at the bottom. Was it an outlier or was that a predictor of what you might see for a few months? I think it was due. They had gotten really high in value, tech had gotten really high in valuations and there's value to be had elsewhere. And so I think you're going

to have bouts like that of rotations more going into next year. I think that aligns actually with what Chris just said, which is that vol of all is higher. And so you're going to have swings from things that are in favor to other things that are in favor. And especially when you have, you know, we've had so much volatility in perception, like, what are jobs? We still don't know what the jobs market look like and what the Fed is going to do beyond probably next week. Yeah. I mean, I guess we don't know how the consumer truly is. I mean, it's a K-shape or whatever you want to call it.

If you look at the shopping, though, from Black Friday and the weekend and now Cyber Monday in full swing, it was good. It was a blowout Black Friday. Courtney Reagan is live at the Visa Cyber Fusion Center. They monitor consumer spending. What do you see? Yes, Scott, this is Visa's sort of main U.S. Command Center. It's 44 acres here in Ashburn, Virginia. And it's part of this network that monitors transactions around the world, around the clock.

Visa processes about 110,000 transactions a second on a normal day. But this is Cyber Monday, so you can expect that number to be even higher, especially as the day rolls on. Now, 40% of Americans are expected to shop today, according to the, the National Retail Federation. Adobe forecast today will be the biggest online shopping day of the year here in the U.S. with $14.2 billion spent that's up more than 6% over last Cyber Monday. Visa says so far its top categories by spend this holiday weekend include apparel and accessories, electronics, and home improvement. Speaking of some of those categories, in apparel,

Captify says the top growing product searches online today. So far, American Eagle jeans at more than 200% Nike sneakers of almost 200% followed by H&M shirts, new balanced sneakers, and Lulu Lemon leggings. I noticed a lot of lines at Lulu Lemon at the stores I was watching and some others around the country on Black Friday. Top growing tech product searches from last Cyber Monday to today according to Captify Online, JBL Tour won headphones of 300 plus percent. Lenovo IdeaPad followed by the Samsung Galaxy buds, the Apple Air Tags, and then the Amazon Fire TV. stick. Those searches up more than 100%. You know, it's very interesting.

L.O.B.N. is telling me that Black Friday, Friday through midday Cyber Monday, it's Boat and Tote. That is the number one style so far. That's sort of been a hot new item as we've been harkening back to nostalgia and what's old is new again. And they're saying that units of its holiday needlepoint stocking up 22% compared to this holiday weekend last year. People are in the holiday spirit online. Yeah, they are. They're spending. Cort, thank you so much.

That's Courtney Reg. I mean, you've been mostly negative. Yeah. Anything retail related. Yeah, except for the, you know, platforms. You know, I wrote in my note, you know, yesterday that I am, you know, I thought the Coles print last week was a little worrisome, you know, big huge move. And a lot of people were short these stocks.

So I think. Including you. Yeah, we talked, I think, when Coles was, I don't know, three or four times. You said it was going to a dark place. I'll just leave it at that. Yeah, pickleball courts or whatever. Yeah, I think that's probably right eventually. But that's the point, like on the path toward pain can be big moves higher if you're short.

And there's a bunch of these companies that have 20, 25 percent short interest. So I do think I'm worried about being short the consumer stocks. I think your setup is, I agree with. People are talking about the demise of the consumer all year. But the sales are good. They're pretty good. Like companies are, you know, people are spending. Well, but how can then one be negative in the market?

If you've got, I mean, the economy's holding up. We're a little worried about the job market, but you think the Fed's going to cut rates. and then you look at what's happened over the Black Friday weekend, and then as Courtney was just laying out today, the consumer somehow is remaining pretty darn resilient. Yeah, and I'll do you one better, Scott. If rates start to come down in 2026, what can people do? They can tap the equity in their house, either through a helock,

or we can get higher velocity. We can get home sales. People say, well, the 30-year won't come down that much, but arms might, and the helix will provide that ability for people to fund themselves. So there is still capacity. Now, that's the bull case. The bear case is the job picture is much worse than we expect. What I think we're seeing, but getting back to Black Friday,

what I think we're seeing is a U.S. consumer, when they see value, until now, they're going to the marketplace, they're not finding value. When they go in the marketplace and they find value, they will spend. And that's what we're seeing on Black Friday. What are you going to say? I was going to say, I think expectations are everything, and a lot of these retail stocks have been demolished. I mean, Gap is something we've liked for a while.

We have T.J. Max, but there are other names, like a name like Decker's. It's down so much. So I think you can start to easily see, like, at least in the short term, a little bit of a bounce, because I don't think the consumers as bad as expectations. I mean, the housing thing's interesting, right? Because if you look back to the market lowest, which were only, what, eight trading days ago, BLDR's up a ton, Lanar, Pulte, the housing stuff's up. So I think people are trying to figure out what's sickly depressed that could get a little balance next year. Stocks have had, I don't know, 12 months of returns in five trading days. People are trying to play that housing call for sure.

What do you make of, it's funny, when you say the lows were, the recent lows were only eight days ago, this has been a market of V-shaped recoveries. And as Centoli made that point last week. And then if you look at every scenario that's played out of fear moment, there's been a big bounce after that. Did we just go through another one of those in the last couple weeks? I think a smaller one, right, which is why we're positive into year end. But the thing we get back to, the thing we're going to head into the midterm elections. already seeing the administration talk about affordability. Trump had Mondani in the White House. What did he run on? Affordability. What do we what did the administration talk about? What

do they do? They lower tariffs on coffee, on fruits. They're talking about $2,000 checks. They're going to put somebody in the Fed who's much more, I would expect to be much more dullish. That can unleash a lot of home equity. And there's a ton of home equity to be unlocked it. Well, I mean, speaking of the Fed, the president says he's made his choice, and we may learn it soon. Our senior economic supporter, Steve Leesman, joins us now with more. I mean, I don't know if last week was a trial balloon on the Hassett story getting out to see what would happen, but it's pretty obvious that if it was going to be Mr. Hassett, the market would like it because it would assume that rate cuts, and I mean plural, would be coming.

Yeah, Scott, I think it's interesting. I think they're floating a trial cargo jet at this point in time. The president telling reporters yesterday on Air Force One that he already knows who he's going to pick to be the next Fed chair and that quote will be announcing it. Prediction markets suggest that Kevin Hassett, the director of Trump's National Economic Council, is the favorite to fill the job. Fed Chair Powell's term ends in May. Hassett has been a strong support of the president's economic policies and called for the Fed to lower interest rates, which is what the president wants. He's one of five candidates. The Treasury reportedly is recommending to the White House. But it's unclear whether the President is actually looking over that list from the Treasury.

CNBC has reached out to the White House and the Treasury, but whether it's going to conduct additional interviews with the candidates vetted by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessett. If the President already knows who's going to pick, those interviews may have no reason to take place. The Secretary has suggested the decision could come before Christmas, but now it would seem perhaps well before that. Scott, the trade is interesting. since the Hacet name was floated. Take a look at the 10-year or even the 2-10 spread.

You can see it's a little bit wider. The play here seems to be a steepener that a dovish Fed chair would lower the short-term rate, but long rates have not really come down. In fact, they're higher since the news about HACID has broken. So maybe the bond market looking for some protection there. Maybe. I mean, you know, the day that the story leaked out,

and we touched on all of those different asset classes that we're moving in different directions. Yields did fall on that. Today's hard to make a judgment on the nine basis point moving rates, I think, anyway, because of what's been happening overseas. Japan, especially, and I wonder if it's more due to that than the bond market trying to get a read that, you know, assets want to want to lower rates more,

and that's going to be more inflationary. I don't know. What do you think? I think all that's fair, Scott. I think that that's excellent context. I would say that what's happening overseas and what's happening in the states here are sort of of the same cut of the same cloth

in the sense that there's a lot of pressure on sovereign bonds all over the world. And they're going up in Japan. Interesting movements there. We're going to have pressure here. And it's interesting because, you know, you may want as a Fed chair appointed by the president to fulfill his wishes for lower rates,

but it's unclear to me that he has that leeway to do that or that runway to do that. There's still inflation out there. And I know you guys were talking about the consumer. There's going to be huge refunds next year, maybe as much as $1,000 more on average, that's going to hit the economy in the first half of next year. So it's unclear to me how much leeway the new Fed chair is going to have to lower interest rates. He can do that, but he may do that at the expense of the bond market extracting more protection on the inflation side. Yeah. No, it's good food for thought, for sure. Steve, thank you. Steve Leasman, our senior economics correspondent. What's your thought here?

Yeah, I mean, look, to me, I think it's more about the fiscal stimulus you just talked about, and maybe the Fed balance sheet than it is the front. And at some point, we're two, three, four, one from the bottom on cut. So people are not discounting that so much as they are going to be balancing and fiscal. To me, I think the most interesting things are like, what are the consensus views and where can you have a way different view? We've had this call for a year. It was pretty bad for six, eight months. It's been better the last three months. But I think healthcare is going to be the theme that emerges as the number one area. If the whole point of AI is that people live longer and they're more productive while they're alive, the health care sector is going to benefit way more than people think. And so we're going to have a big year for health care stocks across the board.

We have a lot of old people demand services, tools, diagnostics, et cetera. That's an area I like a lot. And it's worked because Lily's been a monster. It's going to broaden, okay? And it's been, you know, stocks we've talked about in the air, McKesson Cardinal, Sincora, Quest, others. I just think you're going to see this sector be the best. prime beneficiary. The market is still got a lot of doubts about that. So that's one of my North Stars. And probably the second one is still, you know, semi's over software, which I know

we've talked about a thousand times. But I just think I'd much rather bet on that compute kind of growing up on GDP. You'll see what this week holds. You get a lot of software earnings this week. It's going to be critical. On the asset, I mean, how close are you watching to see who the name is going to be? We're watching closely, but I agree with you. I think a lot of the back up in a long, long end, which really related to the DOJ at this point in time. There's been a lot of talk that he's going to put in somebody dovish and the back end's going to blow out. You have asset in a lot of the prediction markets as 50%, 50% or more, so it's in the

marketplace, right? So I don't see that issue. And I just want to go back to something real quick on inflation and the consumer. What we're seeing with the consumers, it's going to be really hard to push price on the consumer. They're reacting to these promotions. But what we saw prior to that is they wouldn't step for price, whether it's Chapulte or other companies. And in that environment, inflation is going to be hard to really, it's going to be hard to raise price on the consumer

because they are being so disciplined with regard to where they find value. Last point to you. Oh, I think, well, if you look back in history, usually the difference between inflation and Fed funds is around 2% on average, except the QEU period. So I think we're at 1%-ish, right? now. And so I don't, I think it's to be hard really to kind of cut rates. And I don't think the tenure is going to move, especially if you're going to take all your tariff revenue and give it back to the people. So I think we're kind of where we are. And that the yield curve,

I think, is going to stay where it is, which is why I like regional banks. All right. We'll leave it there. Thanks, everybody. Good to see you. Enjoy yourself up on the podium. We'll look for you. All right. Adam, Chris and Stephanie, of course. Let's send it to Christina Parts of now for a look at the biggest names moving into the close. Hi there. Hi, Scott. Well, let's start with shares of synopsis, hired by roughly 4%, almost 5% after NVIDIA announced it had invested $2 billion in Synopsis' common stock as part of a strategic partnership. But this agreement is going to integrate NVIDIA's tool, specifically Kuda software into Synopsis chip design applications. The two companies, though, have already been

working together for years, but the deal signals where NVIDIA sees a new wave of growth. And Jensen Wong told CNBC, it's an industrial. Old Dominion, Great line. Shares are popping right now after a Bank of America, or so BMO, Bank of Montreal Capital Report, upgraded the stock to outperform. The analyst arguing the stock's 40% pullback over the past year is an opportunity for investors and an improving freight cycle backdrop is a positive indicator for the stock. Shares are 4.5% higher. Last but not least, Airbus shares lower right now in reports of an industrial quality issue regarding dozens of A320s, the A320 aircraft, according to Reuters,

The flaw is delaying some deliveries, but there are no immediate signs that has reached an aircraft in service at the moment, but shares down almost 6% at the moment. Scott. All right, Christina, thank you for that. Christina Parts of Neville. So we're just getting started. Up next, three years since the launch of the company that started the AI revolution. A deep dive on how chat GPT changed the world and the markets next. We're live at the New York Stock Exchange.

You're watching Closing Bell on CNBC. Welcome back. Since chat, GPT was unveiled. Deo Jrabosa joins us now with a look at a company that changed the world, I think you could say, and sent shockwaves through this stock market because it changed the way that people thought about the stocks they wanted to buy. I do not think that is an overstatement. It did change the world. and it has changed itself, the AI tray at large dramatically,

over just those three short years, from model as moat to the infrastructure era and Google on top. Now, here's how the Meg 7 have done since ChatGPT's launch three years ago. Invidia is the clear winner. That's not surprising. But Microsoft, the early winner and OpenAI partner trailing everyone but Apple, that is surprising. It can tell you how quickly this field changes,

and year four may look less like a model race and more like a market test. The economics, they're getting harder, break, breakthroughs, they don't stay exclusive for long, and strong open-source releases are narrowing the usable gap much, much faster. This is where engagement starts to matter a lot more as well for the trade. Data from similar web shows a meaningful shift. ChatGBTL still leads on raw volume, but users are now spending more minutes per session on

Gemini. Scott, that's a stickiness flip that suggests AI is moving from quick queries to deeper, sustained work. And that will again have implications for the trade that we know. changes quickly in year four. Yes, that is so true. Dee, thank you. Dear Jibosa, let's bring in CNBC contributor now, big technology founder, Alex Cantewitts, okay, good to see. I hope you had a good holiday. It's good to have you back. Is it overstating it to say that chat GPT not only changed the world in some respects,

but it certainly seems to have changed the way that we were interested in buying certain stocks in this market? Well, I think the remarkable thing is that the chat GPT that we have today is nowhere near what the companies are aiming for. Now, if progress stopped right now, we would have an extremely powerful technology product, one that will potentially reshape industries. I'm speaking with somebody in law recently who said that the GPT models underlying their search now has transformed the way that they do discovery, the way that they comb through documents. And you think about that's being applied in every field, whether that's legal, medical, even industrial, and we're just at the beginning. So I don't think it's an understatement to say

that today's models have transformed, but to me, what really is interesting is what happens next, whether these companies are able to accomplish their ambitions. How big of a question is it as to whether OpenAI can maintain its leadership position? It's a very big question. I think they do a great job on product. To me, Chat Chip-T is the best chat bot out there by a long shot. Now, Gemini is doing well, but I still think Chat-Chip-T holds a lead there. The question is, you know, OpenAI internally is even saying that Google has surpassed it in some areas. So do you end up getting a situation

where the chat chippys, the gem and eyes and every other chat bot out there feel very similar and they might be specialized. And for OpenAI, the entire reason why people are investing all this money in it is because they believed it would have a lead forever and that right now is up in question. Who has the best chance

of challenging them? Is it alphabet? We didn't even talk about anthropic. There are others who are sitting back and saying we're not seating any ground, irrespective of how the landscape looks today. That's not how it might look tomorrow. So it's a complex question because the ground could be seated in a number of areas. And what you might see is companies picking off little parts of what Open AI has done well. Can Anthropic go in and get

the enterprise use and can Anthropic go in and get coding? Can Gem and I go in and get some of the creativity, right, this nanobanana image generator that they have, is generating excitement the way that only Open AI products have? Can the Chinese open source models be something that enterprises use. And if you start to see the giant get nicked apart by all these different companies, that's when you start to see some real transformation in who's leading this risk. Well, would you be worried about that? Just given the interconnectivity, if you want to call it that, of the web of

companies that are so reliant in a way on open AI, because the kind of deals that have already been signed by many? Absolutely. These companies need open AI to maintain the lead. They're not investing, they're not basically helping open AI invest $1.4 trillion in That's right. Do you worry, do you have any doubts that they'll be able to meet those commitments? I do. You do? These are projections. These are like Open AI's ideas for what the revenue is going to look like. It's looking at 13, maybe 20 billion this year. To go from that to being able to fund $1.4 trillion is quite elite.

So you're putting a lot of faith in Open AI's ability to deliver to build a new category if they're going to be able to make those commitments. Well, Sam Alden to say, all right, Kantowicz, go short us. Go see what happens. Go see what happens if you do that. Of course, you can't in the public market because they're private, which says, when will they go public? Well, that's a great question. I think they'll go public when they run out of the ability to raise lots of money, right? This entire buildout is predicated on them losing money and then raising money to fund those losses. In 2028, according to reports, they're expected to lose $74 billion. $74 billion. So they're not making profit to be able to fund these buildouts. If they can continue to raise and there are plenty of sources that will give them money, they're great fundraisers.

is a great fundraiser, then they don't need to go public. They probably shouldn't go public. But once that faucet turns off, get ready to see them ringing the bell here. All right. It's good to get your perspective. As always, Alex, thanks. Thank you. That's Alex Kanchowitz. More on the crypto collapse coming up. Bitcoin tracking for its worst day since March. What's behind that drop? We'll tell you when closing bell comes back. Stanley Private Wells. Sherry Paul is back with us. The three R words, she says, will define 2026. We'll tell you what they are next. All right, welcome back.

Our next guest says a year of resets and rebounds is about to give way to rotations, reinvention, and ramp-ups. Let's bring in Sherry Paul, Morgan Stanley, private wealth. Welcome back. Thank you. So what does that mean from resets and rebounds to rotations, reinvention, and ramp-ups? Yeah, thank you for having me. I think the rotation is the broadening out of the market.

We should see beneficiary is something we've been talking about. The reinvention is, I think, I think it's basically upping the ante for installation as companies really start to figure out how they're going to reinvent themselves to meet this new economy mandated moment. And we're going to see ramp-ups in terms of capital spending, I think, beyond our wildest dreams and anything that we've ever seen.

So are you saying that November, what we saw, the dispersion in the market was a precursor to what we're going to continue to see in 26? I think that's a good way to put it. I mean, I think, again, going back to, we should have numerous resets as we kind of make new highs over the course of next year. This kind of reminds me that mid-90s period where we had

five years in a row of markets that ended the year positive. Statistically, that's usually unlikely, but this kind of has that reminiscence feels. Why do you feel that way? Well, because I think we're in this reinvention ramp up with CAPEX spending across the board, and we should see both cost-cutting and earnings expansion through that, and now that we have clarity around tariffs and policy chaos is now behind us. We got a big, beautiful bill coming online with some fiscal stimulus and some tax cuts. That's a pretty good setup. Earnings hold up, rate cuts?

We didn't even talk about that. That's right. I know. I mean, how many more things can we put in the stock? But you're counting on a lot of things going right? Well, those are all things that are directionally correct, right? So in investing, at least from where I said, we want to be directly correct in the thematics that we're stepping into and then let those things blossom over a time horizon, which is why they're rebalancing part of

This is so key. You know, my two kind of like golden rules for investors at the end of the year, twofold one, don't let the policy chaos create portfolio chaos. A lot of people made that mistake in the early part of the year. But the second one is, you know, if you don't take your profits, the market will always take them for you. And so if you're trying to squeeze in a January rebalance to avoid paying taxes in the current year, I get that.

But don't, you know, you have to get every little penny off the table here. All that said, looking for more broadening and what have you, you still favor technology. financials, and industrial. So, I mean, how do you mesh the forecast for how you see this playing out, but you still like what worked already? Right. If it's not broken, don't fix it. I mean, it's where the balance sheet is. It's where the borrowing is. I mean, the way I explain this to clients is that if you have a $10 million house, you're able to get a much larger loan against the value of that house than if your house was a million dollars. And so these big cap companies are able to be borrowing money in record ways that are going to advantage them going to

forward so we want to stay in the big caps and then I think equal with the other areas of the market like health care well I'm looking at that right now on the screen which we're showing people and that's the thing that jumps out to me yeah equal weight health care why not overweight is this the start are we witnessing the start of something big that that's what I heard prior to you coming on from other people well you know what I've been calling this is sudden return syndrome that all of a sudden like health care in the last 60 days has become sort of the bright shining star it's like the it's the hit sector it's

it's the hit sector now but as As we go into next year, now we're talking about where should we nuance in terms of where we think we're going to get an accelerant in the first quarter. So the overweights are being driven by that, but definitely I think that health care, this is what I'm saying is we have to let things bloom. When you're laying down a portfolio around thematics, that patients is involved too to allow the magic of time value of money to do its thing. Is there something that if I said, well, what messes up your story?

What is that? What would it be? You have to have thought about that. Yeah, extreme military conflict or, you know, out of left field kind of tail risk in the debt market, you know, these things that affect liquidity. Okay. Anything that affects liquidity will usually mean that we get into what I call a baby with a bathwater moment and resets in the market because the U.S. stock markets are the most liquid place to get cash very quickly. But I just wrote down the word extreme. Yeah.

The point being that you think it has to be something extreme on any front to upset this story. Well, I mean, at this point, I mean, look, we've had a war in the Ukraine now for, you know, three years, and we've had lots of military buildup in Asia and conflicts around Taiwan, and, you know, NATO has been sort of challenged in their dialogue. We're de-globalizing, and look at where we are. So I think either that's desensitizing or the world economy is stronger than we think it is, largely because of the U.S. economy. All right, we'll see you many times in 26. We'll see how it plays out. Sherry, thanks.

All right, that's Sherry Paul. Up next, we track the biggest movement. movers into this close today. Christina Parts of Nevelos is standing by, as usual with that. Hi, Christina. Hi, Scott. Well, we have an e-commerce outage that hits on Cyber Monday of all days. Plus, one casino stock getting some love from Wall Street analysts,

while an electric aircraft maker gets the opposite. Those stock movers next. Lesson 15 from the closing bell. Let's get back now to Christina for the stocks as she's watching. Tell us, please. Let's start with shares of Shopify because they are lower on this Cyber Monday, one of the biggest shopping days of the year. The Canadian e-commerce company was hit with an outage, leaving some businesses unable to manage transactions. The company said it is, quote, seeing signs of recovery, but it's still continuing to monitor this situation.

Shares are down 5%. Win Resorts shares also moving the opposite direction by roughly 3.5% after Goldman Sachs included the hotel and casino chain on their conviction buy list. Goldman said the company has, quote, best-in-class Las Vegas assets and momentum in its Macau business might actually be underappreciated, and that's why shares are up 3.5%. Last but not least, shares of Joby Aviation dropping almost 5.5% after Goldman initiated the stock at a sell with a $10 price target. The analyst saying the electric aircraft developer's strategy to be a one-stop shop suggests the company just lacks a focus and could require more time and capital than what was previously. expected. And that's our shares are lower. Scott. All right. Thank you. Christina Pards and up next. We're getting a set up for MongoDB. Those earnings are out in O.T. That and much more inside the market zone. That's next. We're now in the closing bell market zone.

CNBC senior markets commentator Mike Santoli and Intelligent Alpha is Doug Clinton. They're here to break down these crucial moments of this trading day. Plus Simomodi looking ahead to MongoDB. Those results in OT. Mackenzie Segalis today following the collapse in crypto, and that remains a story in and of itself. I know you're watching that as you assess where we are. Yeah, and we're sort of testing the linkages between equities and crypto. It feels like the market is sort of trying to underreact to the five or six percent drop

in Bitcoin today. And in general, you know, tech has not really been the thing that's led us on this 5% recovery we got in the last few days. That's probably a good thing, market trying to rebalance around. sector is actually like 6.5% below its highs. So it's trying to find another way. I think the consumer stuff has a decent tone today. There's a general feeling like spending's okay and we're going to get some tailwinds kick in in January. So so far so good, although I don't think the market has kind of gotten any kind of escape velocity. We're not back to the old highs.

We're just up to kind of the lower end of the prior uptrend. So I do think that it's got a bit to prove here. Yeah, I mean, it's a hard read too on day one of a new month when you have The Japan news is impacting global bond markets a bit, so you're not really sure what's being caused by what and what the fallout of each incident is. And it's really more, I would look at the bond move today where you have tens up to like 4.1 almost, and they were just below 4% last week. And home builders are not selling off. So you look for the kind of non-reactions sometimes to say maybe the market is going to see if this is just something blowing through in a short-term way. Seema, tell us about Mongo in overtime. Yeah, well, Scott, this is the first earnings report from MongoDB since it surprised the market with a CEO change appointing C.J. Desai, a former executive at Cloudflare and Service Now to CEO, the street has been positive on the leadership change.

City calling Desai an incredibly strong successor with strong enterprise and Fortune 500 experience. But investors want to know if Desai will double down on MongoDB's $5 billion revenue target and whether his strategy to outbeat competition from incumbents like Oracle in data management will continue to. to take hold. The stock has done incredibly well this year, Scott, up 40%. Seema, thank you. You know, let's get right to crypto with McKenzie Segalos. Tell us exactly what's going on here. So, Scott, Bitcoin has now lost about a third of its value since its record high in October. Today's slide, it is mostly retail driven with nearly a billion dollars worth of leveraged positions wiped out in the past 24 hours. Crypto proxy trades also deep in the red today from exchanges like Coinbase

to corporate Bitcoin and Ethereum holders like strategy and time. Omeli's bitmine immersion. Those digital asset treasury names are all under pressure as the MSCI weighs whether to reclassify companies that hold mostly digital assets, a move that could trigger billions in forced index selling. Now, this is all colliding with a broader risk-off backdrop, the Bank of Japan, dropping more hints about a rate hike later this month. Softer China data and a new warning from China's central bank on illegal crypto activity

has put additional pressure on Hong Kong listed digital asset stocks. Scott? Mackenzie, thank you, McKenzie Segalz. Mike, I'll just come back to you, you know, trying to think about what are the most important things to be watching in this market, maybe some individual names. Strategy seems to be worthy of watching closely. For sure. We always look at NVIDIA for the proxy on what the sentiment is around AI.

Are you looking at both? Yes, and I think the real takeaway is in general, there's so much overlap between ownership in those areas that one can impact the other. Now, obviously, NVIDIA has a bit today. that's a little bit of a shift. But strategy, you know, its announcement today, it's building what it's called the US dollar reserve, which just means cash on the balance sheet.

They're selling common shares because they have this standing filing to do so. That is deepening the negative sentiment here. And I think also just sending the message, in addition to what the MSCI index folks might do, that the marginal buyer that we thought was there is not there. And these companies are not necessarily going to be able to reload and buy,

and all these leverage positions are getting cleared out. and they're not getting put back on. So I just think this is an asset class that relied so much on the constant flow of the incremental buyer, and it's trying to figure out the clearing price without that. I mentioned earlier, Doug Clinton is with us today. So new month, some questions about AI.

Technology did not have a good month overall in November. What's gonna hold for the next 30 days, you think? I think we might see kind of the end of this volatility over the next two weeks or so. That would be my prediction. Why do you think that? If you look back at the dot-com era as an analog, any time we had a 10% correction, and to Mike's point earlier, we didn't quite get there on tech.

I think 7.5% was about the trough here. But anytime we had a correction in the dot-com era, 38 days was the average time from that correction start time to the trough. And right now we're sitting about 30 days, Scott. And so I think we're probably getting toward that psychological hurdle of it's been a month. Some of the really high-flying AI names have been really washed out. And so another week or two of volatility, I think we can get back to the AI trade working.

Yeah, I mean, I know you don't focus so heavily on it, but are you watching Bitcoin and crypto and trying to figure out what all that means for how things are going to go from here? We do. Mainly because if you go back to October, this almost seemed like the prelude to what ultimately became this correction or down draft we're in right now. And so the question is, will that happen again? My gut is that this is maybe a little bit less related this time. We've already had some of that washout, that correlative issue, I think, that we saw in November. I think now the trade can separate a little bit more. We've still got some volatility in Bitcoin, but I think now these AI assets look a lot more reasonable after this correction.

And so from a fundamental standpoint, I think investors get more constructive. You think we're going to have the same level of dispersion in 26 among the AI stocks that we've had more recently, where they've just some have separated themselves. They're not all going to trade like the monolith they once were. What do you think? I think we will see separation. I actually think going into 26, one of the big discussion points will be about distribution. I mean, the past year has really been about infrastructure buildout, who can capitalize,

who can get access to chips, and now who can get access to power? I think the new conversation will be who can distribute these products and get billions of customers addicted. Google's in a great spot for that. We own Google in our long short fund at Intelligent Alpha. And I think that that will be the question for OpenAI going into next year, three years old now, but can they maintain the distribution they've had against Google now pushing their products more aggressive? How are you thinking about chat GPT at three? It's hard to believe that it's already three years old.

Three years old and already, I mean, to Doug's point, by some being considered to be a little bit of a step behind, or maybe it doesn't have the head start that people thought they did. I've been fascinated to see how the market trades between the kind of good. Google Broadcom side of the axis, and then the Oracle, Microsoft, OpenAI group over here, as if, not that it's zero sum, but they can't all be winner-take-take-it-all. So I think that's sort of fascinating, the idea that you'd be talking about integrating ads. I mean, everything seems to migrate in that direction, ultimately. So if it's true that we're going to turn our attention to distribution and apps and consumer

interfaces. I do wonder what happens to all the market cap that's now based on an unending demand for building more in the data center. I'm sure they can coexist for a while, but that's a fascinating dynamic. Are you thinking about that too? I think, I'll say something specific about Nvidia, which is another stock we own. I mean, thinking about that washout, right, all the momentum is with Google. We're talking about TPUs, maybe threatening Nvidia's dominance. I feel like Nvidia's sentiment is almost feeling like Google over the summer. I feel like people are so negative now on Nvidia. They feel like Google is going to beat them. TPUs are the way to go. I wonder if Nvidia actually also starts to work alongside Google. You know, maybe some of the

other high-flying infrastructure names, maybe they take a back seat now to Nvidia coming back to the party. Yeah. I mean, a lot of it was sort of the adjacent power stuff where it wasn't even going to be coming online for years. That has been really sideline for the moment anyway. Whereas, yeah, it seems like there's enough capital flowing in this direction that, you know, Invidia's got the orders visible in the books. Obviously, Google can keep spending. So, yeah, it's not one or the other, but it's been really interesting to the market's preferences moving around. Good stuff.

Doug, thanks, as always. All right, one down, one down in December. And we're red, and we'll finish that way across the board tomorrow's a new day. I'll see you then into overtime with Morgan and John. Thank you.