Closing Bell - Closing Bell 3/11/26

Episode Date: March 11, 2026

From the open to the close, “Closing Bell” and “Closing Bell: Overtime” have you covered. From what’s driving market moves to how investors are reacting, Scott Wapner, Melissa Lee and Michael Santoli guide listeners through each trading session and bring to you some of the biggest names in business.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

And welcome to closing bell. I am Frank Holland in for Scott Wapner. We're live at post nine right here at the New York Stock Exchange. And this make or break hour starts with a down day on Wall Street. Take a look. Stocks are slumping. In the red across the board, the Dow down more than 350 points. The NASDAQ fraction and lower. The S&P down a quarter of 1%. Small cap's pulling back by a half a percent. This is your scorecard with 60 minutes left in regulation. Inflation holding steady consumer prices. They rose 2.4% for February in line with what the street was looking for. That news, however, overshadowed by the continuing moves higher in oil. The IEA is announcing it released 400 million barrels of oil, the largest ever from its reserves. Still, you see oil prices moving higher. Right now, WTI accrued above $87 a barrel. Software, that's a bright spot. The shares of Oracle jumping earnings and revenue beat estimates. The company also raises fiscal 27 revenue forecast.

We will discuss if it's time to jump back into that sector again with our panel in just one moment. But first you begin with the continuing moves in oil, really the story of this. this week are PIPAA Stevens with the very latest and what's driving it higher once again. Pippa? Hey, Frank. Well, oil is rising and Brent is back above $90 even after the largest tapping of oil reserves in history. With the International Energy Agency agreeing to release 400 million barrels across its 32-member countries, about a third of the 1.2 billion barrels in emergency stockpiles.

Executive Director for TBRAL saying, quote, the oil market challenges we are facing are unprecedented in scale. Now, the IEA not yet giving a timeline for when these barrels will hit the market, but said it will be at a time frame appropriate to the circumstances of each country. The flow rate, or how fast the oil can get out of reserves, is what is key. J.P. Morgan estimates a daily flow of just 1.2 million barrels per day, meaning it won't do a lot to offset how much is being lost daily in the Gulf. When it comes to the U.S. specifically, Interior Secretary Doug Bergham weighing in just now on CNBC's power lunch.

You're hearing out of the IEA today is reasonable on their part, but clearly whether the U.S. participates is up to President Trump. He'll make the final decision on that. Now, the U.S.S.S.PR is at 58 percent of capacity with 415 million barrels. Once the president decides to draw it down, it takes 13 days for the oil to be delivered. So the bottom line here is that the reserve barrels will take a bit, Frank, to hit the market. Back to you. PIPA, thank you very much. Our PIPA Stevens live at CNBCHQ.

Time now to bring in our panel. Schwab's Kevin Gordon, CNBC contributor, Stephanie Link of Hightower and Ed Clissold of Ned Davis Research. Join us. I'm going to start with you, Kevin. You're right here with me at Post 9. Thank you for being here on a day like this. So you're saying that the market's a bit sanguine about some of the action that we've seen right now. You're saying people are kind of taking it all in stride. Yeah, I mean, if you look at, and I would say at the index level, to make that distinction, I think, is really important because there has been a ton of carnage below the surface,

more so at the industry level as opposed to the sector level. level, but at the same time, similar to what you're seeing with the bounce back on software and actually tech over the past couple of days, some of that is being sort of unwound because a lot of that weakness was concentrated in tech leading up to the conflicts. I think that's an important thing to keep in mind, especially because on a day like today, you do have a lot more weakness at the headline level for the index, but under the surface, it's even worse from a breadth perspective because that participation is a lot weaker. So tech is sort of responsible for some of that relative lifter or less relative weakness.

I think it's an important distinction to make in terms of the sanguine nature of the market. Would another word possibly be overconfident? I've been talking to a lot of traders. A lot of them seem to think this whole thing ends somehow in April. And while it's certainly possible, there's no clear path to that happen. Yeah, I do think that, you know, we're going to have to start, you know, the longer this drags on, it's going to be more a matter of, less a matter of the U.S. declaring that this is over and declaring victory and stopping the, you know, the hits to Iran. And then having, you know, to really dissect, how is it going to take, how long is it going to take for operations to come back for oil production, but also oil flow? What is the

you know, the reaction function and the response mechanism of Iran and the broader Middle East, that to me, I think, becomes more of the dominant question. I think will ultimately drive the market, you know, with energy sort of being at the central part of that. Link, I want to come over to you. S&P down about 1.5% since this conflict started. I don't know if sanguine's the word that you would use, but you say it could be down even more. I'm just looking since this all started. NVIDIA's higher, Amazon's higher, Microsoft's higher.

These are a lot of the names that we thought would lift the market higher throughout the year. on the other side, the Dow is down about 3%. The S&P equal weight down even more than that. Is the broadening trade? Is that in jeopardy right now? Is that quote unquote halo trade in jeopardy right now? Well, it certainly has narrowed. At one point, the equal weight S&P was up 6.5% when the market cap weighted was flat on the year.

So that's narrowed a little bit, but I still think that we're going to continue to see a broadening out, Frank, because in the face of all this stuff that's going on, and I'm not say not to worry, but we've had Venezuela, scotis on the tariffs, we have AI and software concerns, private credit concerns, and now a war, and you're just off 1.2% on the S&P 500, and you're still up 2% on the equal weight. So to me, the economy is the thing that's driving the earnings, obviously, and earnings have been pretty good. Now, the economy, in the face of all this, is still growing at about 2, 2.5%. And the consumer is still consuming. And AI, we know the trends are very powerful. We heard a lot of good detail last night from Orrin.

That's alive and well. The food chain of AI is alive and well. That meaning the data center companies, the industrials, the utilities, the power companies. All of those stocks have done pretty well on the face of all these negative headlines. So I think it's not just Mag 7 anymore. It's broadening out. I like to see that. And on the days where we see a dip, and we have seen quite a few, and we've seen a lot of volatility, I think you want to be looking at best in class that gets hit with the rest of the broader market. Yeah, volatility. That's also a the word of this week, I would say. Ed, I want to come over to you. You're saying the market's kind of gotten over this idea of AI eats everything. However, it seems the narrative shift to

higher oil kind of eats everything. We've really seen the impact on the quote-unquote real economy. Is that better when it comes to volatility, the concerns about higher oil? I think the story of the week is volatility and the concerns over what the long-term impacts are going to be around oil. But to build on Stephanie's point, The premium that the MAG 7 traded at the beginning of the year was around eight points to the rest of the market, which is the upper end of its range the last five years. Now it's back under four, which is where the lows there was last April and also we got to the end of 2022. So we've kind of gotten through that valuation premium, and this will allow, you know, regardless of what the reason was, you know, now we can move forward. And oil could be that.

But I think that the big concerns about oil is not what's going to happen next week. But what happens in two months from now is if that going to flow through the headline inflation number, is that going to flow through to some of the jobs numbers that could bring the expansion into jeopardy? By the way, just speaking of volatility, looking at the Vicks, sitting at about 25 right now, obviously off of its highs, but still elevated. All right, everybody stick with me. We're going to be talking about J.P. Morgan, reducing its exposure to the private credit industry. Our Leslie Picker has the details.

This involves leverage that J.P. Morgan is providing to private credit funds that the asset managers used to juice their own returns, known as back leverage. The collateral for this type of financing is the underlying loans for those private credit funds, and that's what's being slightly marked down here, according to two sources close to the situation. I'm told that J.P. Morgan took this moment, did some additional due diligence across the financing portfolio, went name by name, and then they had this overlay of the macro environment and, vector-based analysis, and then from there, they determined that the loans were too highly valued. In this environment, a lot of this, of course, has to do with the revaluation we've seen recently in software. So now, what does this all mean? First, let's be super clear here that this is not J.P. Morgan clocking a bunch of losses. It's seen as rather a preemptive move. One source described it to me as pumping the brakes versus hitting the wall. There are not an onslaught of

margin calls at this time. It also does not mean that private credit clients. clients necessarily need to immediately post more collateral. That's only the case if they want more leverage. Now, what this does is it limits the borrowing capacity for some private credit managers from J.P. Morgan lines. Now, you can see shares of major alternative asset managers are slumping today, Frank. All right, big thanks to our Leslie Picker. Kevin, I want to come back over to you. When we're talking about this potential for a private credit crisis or a credit crunch, does that make you concern about the financials that have been underperforming more broadly? I also want to point out the president Pimco out saying it's kind of sloppy underwriting that led us to the situation.

Yeah, I mean, well, I think on the private credit space in general, I'm not sort of, I'm sort of stating the obvious here in terms of the opacity of that space and just the lack of visibility that a lot of us have in it. I would say if you look at the weakness in financials in particular, definitively on an equal weighted basis, it's been, you know, one of the weakest sectors, if not the weakest, you know, definitely year to date. So I think that in sort of isolation and the fact that it hasn't necessarily, you know, spilled into other parts of the market in terms of sort of that direct linkage, number one, you could say it's too early to say that. But number two, I think that there are other things at play in terms of other sectors doing relatively better relative to financials. That cyclical weakness that they may be signaling seems to be a little bit more isolated.

So I think for now, especially in an equal-weighted sense, because I think that's a better way to look at sector sort of positioning and action so far this year, it does seem a little bit more isolated relative to the rest of the market. You know, Link, a lot of talk about entry points for the market. Actually, a note out earlier, I believe from Bank of America saying this could be an attractive entry point to this market in general just because some of the declines. We're looking at these private credit names. Leslie did some great reporting about that earlier today. I think most of them are down about 20 to 30 percent. Is this an attractive valuation level for those names right now? I think for the blue chip companies, Frank, yes. So I have owned KKR in the past.

moment, but they are such a one of the very best in terms of lending and they have diversification as well throughout all of the various different subsections within private markets in general. And so I think you are going to get some really good opportunities. But I actually think that the opportunity really is in the big six public banks. I think the public banks are taking share over the private markets companies. And that is because over the last 15 years, the public banks have had an enormous scrutiny from the regulators. And now that is going to start to at least ease a little bit. We're going to get Basel 3 endgame later this month, most likely.

That's what the rumor is. That is going to unlock a lot of capital for shareholders, dividends, buybacks, and, oh, by the way, loan growth. And then when I listened to the public companies like Bank of America yesterday that was at a conference talking about net interest income expected to be up 7 percent, investment banking up double digits, capital markets are really doing well. Pipelines are strong. And we haven't even had really IPOs recently. So I think there's a lot that they have going on. And then on top of that, you've got a little bit less strict rules for them. They're not going to ease them completely. That's not going to happen. But at least give them a little bit of wiggle room to do what they're supposed to do, which is loan and lend

out to companies and to keep the economy growing. I mean, I look at the H-8 data every week from the Federal Reserve, And the numbers are really very good, especially in the C&I loans. So I think there's more opportunity on the public banks versus the private markets, but there are some in private markets that are getting very attractive for the long term. Fair point. Coming over to you, you know, Link just mentioned economic growth. That's something that you're watching in relation to the midterms this year. And the president's agenda for affordability, economic growth, national security.

And you're saying that's a hard playing in the land to get all three of them. I just want to focus on economic growth. We are seeing what appears to be the consumer slowing down. a bit or at least the expectation because of higher gas prices. Does that impact the financials in their outlook in your mind? It certainly can because right now economic growth is being driven by two things. A.I-driven CAP-X and the high-end consumer, which is really driven by what's going on in financial markets. You get down to the, say, the lower 80% of Americans by income and the savings has long been depleted and they're really having to dip into their savings for any sort of additional

spending with job growth being where it is, and you throw on higher prices at the pump, that's going to have an impact right away and certainly has an impact on investor sentiment. And so coming into the year, we thought economic growth is going to be stronger in the first part of the year, if we got a bump from the one big, beautiful bill as part of Trump's initiatives to boost the Republicans' chances in midterms, and then slow down later on in the year. But if that's going to be hit a little bit sooner rather than later, it is going to have an impact. And I think you could see that in sectors like financial. All right.

Everybody stick with me just for a second. Speaking of volatility, let's talk about the software sector and its volatility. It's front and center for investors. But the big question, is it finally investable again? Deirdrebo's here to answer that question, hopefully and much more, Deirdre. The short answer is maybe or selectively. So call it software is revenge trade service now, Polo Alto, CrowdStragg, Datadog. These names, they are bouncing on real earnings acceleration and clawing back some of those pretty heavy

losses this year. But before you call this in all clear, the broader sector IGV, it is still down 20% year to date. And AI is still raising real questions over development cycles, seat-based pricing, and the value proposition for legacy vendors. Now, one name that has not recovered as much as Salesforce, it is kicking off a debt sale today of up to $25 billion to fund stock buybacks. This is a move that is meant to signal confidence, but may just raise questions about whether that money would be better spent on the AI transition itself. And And that is the dividing line. It is the companies that are embedding AI into the product, not just talking about it, where investors are saying repricing went too far.

So selectively, yes, software is investable again. But for the next leg of the AI trade, Frank, this is a stock pickers market, not a sector bet. Our dear Drobosa, thank you very much for that look at the software sector. And right now we want to bring in CNBC contributor and big technologies, Alex Cantorwitz, Kevin Gordon, Steph Lincoln, and Clitzold all still with us as well. Kevin, thank you for being here. I'm sorry, Alex, thank you for being here. My pleasure. You've already been here. Alex, let me just ask you.

So investable is a very interesting word. We've seen software decline quite a bit. I'm looking at the IGV, what a lot of people use is a benchmark. About 27% off its 52-week high. I'm looking at other ones like the cybersecurity ETF, the CIBR, about 16% away from its 52-week high. Are the levels of these different ETFs add? Is that what makes it investable?

Or are you actually seeing upside for these companies even in the AI era? I mean, I think it is investable, but if you're going to do it, you better hold on to your seat. Yes, IGV is down, significantly off its lows, but it's not like the software industry is doing worse than it was beforehand. It's just this fear that AI will replace them. So the bad news is if you're into software that AI is going to get a lot better in the next couple months. I mean, people in the software and the AI industry talk about as if they're in Wuhan at the beginning of 2020. That's literally the language they use, that they can see this exponential growth coming that the rest of the world can't. and look out everybody.

The good news is that software is really difficult to displace. Taking Salesforce out and putting some vibe-coded application in is very difficult, and if you do it wrong, you're going to get fired. So there is a potential transition that's going to happen. It's just a much longer-term transition than I think the panic is starting to expect. Okay, so you say it's a long-term transition. I don't know if you saw this. Goldman came out with a note earlier this week,

kind of looking at this whole situation about AI being investable. And one of the points that they made is that, yeah, AI's not going to kill software, but it's going to be new AI native entrants. They're going to really take market share. And some of these legacy companies, they might just be a, quote, unquote, system of record with their installed base. Is that a real threat for these publicly listed players that that scenario could play out? It's quite possible. But, again, it's going to take a long time.

So the question is, is today's existing software just a database for tomorrow's AI applications? And there's a debate going on in Silicon Valley right now. Is the future of software? Is it something that you bolt on to existing systems? Like, is it Salesforce with a chatbot or is Salesforce data something that you access in a chat bot that your agent then goes out and connects with other systems and does something for you? I think long term there's a real argument to be made that it centralizes somewhere. But that's going to take a while.

And by the way, Salesforce will have something to say about that. It's not going to just capitulate and be like, all right, you want all my data, you want everything, export, it's going to, it's going to take some time. So they will give the customers what they want, but it's not going to be that easy. One thing to point out is that Salesforce is also down on the Moody's downgrade today. That may be kind of impacting some of their software names. Steph Link, I want to come over to you. Is there any part of the software stack that you feel confident in despite these fears of AI disruption that's going to get past this rough patch and continue to go on and not only hold on to customers, but hold on to market share?

I have the most confidence in the cybersecurity companies and that I own Palo Alto. I also like synopsis. It's mission critical software. So I think you want to be very selective. But, I mean, to me, Palo Alto has done nothing. And if anything, cybersecurity is going to be bigger than AI because of AI. I mean, you have companies that are using, they're using non-humans, AI to build code. And that's not safe. And so you are going to need cybersecurity companies. Meanwhile, Palo Alto is growing their next-gen security revenues organically at 28%. They see margin expansion, free cash flow growing. And then I think synopsis is just an amazing company with this ANSIS acquisition.

Their total addressable market overnight goes from $31 billion to $58 billion. The more complicated chips get, the more they need mission-critical software. And that is what synopsis is, and they've got a 41% share and 70% recurring revenue. So these two stocks have acted poorly, just like the rest of software. But I think when you do get some semblance of like just balance in the industry, I think these stocks will do much better going forward. So, Ed, you said sentiment was just kind of bad in the short term going into some of these disruptions we've seen when AI and also with the Iran conflict.

Is it possible? The software is just caught up in a lot of bad sentiment and we will see a recovery going in the back end of the year. And it is investable, even if there is going to be disruption, that the stocks themselves will move higher? Yeah, so our short-term semi-composite has gotten the levels that usually signifies pretty significant pessimism on the part of traders. We were there a couple of weeks ago, and now it's gotten even more pessimistic with what's gone on in Iran.

And our playbook coming into the year was that perhaps these mega-cap growth stocks would underperform. And then they usually start to outperform a little bit before midterm elections. Once all that uncertainty is priced in, it's possible. just done so much that price and end that maybe you could get a better entry point sooner. But I would emphasize that, you know, there's going to be so much kind of going through the weeds now. It's kind of a, you know, first, ask questions later situation. Now we're asking questions, and we're going to see who the winners and losers are. But we've hit an interesting situation with valuations, large cap growth versus large cap value,

just looking at a forward PE ratio, is that its lowest level in nine years, meaning growth stock, the cheapest versus value in almost a decade. So there's going to be some opportunities here, maybe not at the court style level of growth versus value, but as you start to dig into the details on. So Kevin, I want to come over to you, just kind of bringing this full circle. You've been looking at the economy.

I'm bringing up the economy because you say it's remarkable and grim at the same time. GDP's strong, but employment's kind of weak. That weak employment, doesn't that really hit the software sector when it comes to seats? Well, very much actually in keeping with, I think this whole discussion around how much labor displacement you ultimately get from AI.

I think the good news about it is, fortunately, we haven't seen much displacement if you're looking at, you know, the pace of sort of the changing occupational mix and job displacement since, you know, the release of ChachyBT, if you want to use that sort of as your proxy. So so far, there hasn't been any evidence of major dislocation. But I think that, you know, at the same time, even though you've been in this remarkable economy from a GDP perspective,

not remarkable growth relative to history because growth last year was pretty slow relative to history. But the fact that you can grow more than 2% in inflation-adjusted terms with basically no growth in the labor force is pretty remarkable, and it speaks to this really strong productivity story that we have. So I do think that so far, you know, up until this point, because of a lot of these headwinds we face from a demographic standpoint, from an immigration standpoint, you do need that technology to the extent it's being used or it will be used in the future. I do think you need it to help sort of stomach some of the pain that will come from more downward pressure on the labor force. So it is this sort of unique situation to be in.

It's a little akin to a jobless expansion, which we have experienced before, but the last one that we experienced was in the early 2000s after the 2001 recession. Obviously, we are not coming off of a recession. We're not coming off of a two-and-a-half-year bear market at this point. So that makes this environment sort of entirely unique relative to history. Alex, I want to give you the last word. I think earlier, I'm going to paraphrase what you were saying. You're saying there's some software that's mission critical. And if you don't get it right that an IT person, a chief information security officer could lose their job,

Exactly what names are those, if you don't mind name and names, or what part of a software stack is that? Is that cybersecurity? Is that CRM? What is it? So I have a rule of thumb here, and to build off what Stephanie was mentioning about cybersecurity, if your software program is just a fancy user interface on top of the database, you have problems. But if your software system is doing something else, for instance, if your software system is securing the security of your programs within the company, that's more than just UI on a database.

If you're a software system like an Adobe, by the way, is helping people be creative and can't be displaced with a prompt, then you're probably in good shape. So I think with labor and with software, we see this technology do something, right? You're like, oh, it can build a piece of software. It can build this nice UI. And then all of a sudden there's this panic.

Everybody's going to be unemployed. Or the entire software industry is gone. And I think it's just really important. The market doesn't think of it critical. Unfortunately, I think that where investors can get an edge is if you think about it critically and you say, can this actually be replaced with AI? Or does this do something differentiated that is not just a nice user interface on a database? I think this conversation is just starting. I think it's just starting. All right, Alex, Kevin, Stephanie, Ed, thank all of you. Really appreciate it. All right. We're just getting started here on closing bell. Coming up next, memory stocks might be experiencing a very big shift. How it could impact your trading playbook coming up right after this break. All right, welcome back to closing bell.

We are getting some news on Caesars. Julia Borson has that for us, Julia. Tillman Fertita is in talks to buy Caesars for $7 billion, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. On this news, shares of Cesar's have been, are now up about 5% and I believe had been halted, but they are now up, look like they were up about 4.5% intraday. Now, what's essential here is that this would be, This report shows that for Tide Entertainment has been discussing paying around $34 a share, which would be topping a bid from ICON, and that would give the company a market value of over $5 billion.

Back over to you. Excuse me. Today's shares, today's shares, yesterday's shares had a market value of over $5 billion. So this would be quite a premium at a $7 billion offer. Back over to you. Yeah, I mean, we're seeing the chart. Huge spike to the upside for Seizers right now. Or Julia Borson with the very latest on Seizers and a possible acquisition bid there.

All right. memory stocks, they were a traders game, but it looks like that could be shifting in a very big way. Our Christina Parts and Evelace is here with much more on that story, Christina. You mentioned the traders' games, so really just a boom-bust repeat for memory. That's what it's been in the past. But the executives I spoke with say the same thing. This cycle is different. HBE CEO told me directly, quote,

we will continue to raise prices because the industry will continue to raise prices. There is not enough supply for demand. He's speaking about memory. Meta just announced a new in-house AI chip today, and management told CNBC, quote, we're absolutely worried about high bandwidth memory supply, but that they've also locked in memory supply for their buildouts, so they're not as worried. SK Hynix told me that AI workloads require far more memory intensive architecture than anything the industry was built to support before,

and that's why customers are willing to lock in these long-term agreements. It's not just SK Hynix. Micron management told me customers are now more than willing to sign these agreements that go beyond just a year, so locking in memory for years to come. Broadcom, perfect example. The CEO said on his earnings call, he's locked in supply all the way through 2028. That's the first time I've heard a company actually say that. With hyperscalers crowding out consumer supply and no meaningful relief for the supply until 2027 at the earliest, memory stocks have searched.

Micron up more than 350%. Sandisk over 1,000% just in the last year. What memory management is now asking investors to believe is that this time is different, that AI has structurally broken the old boom-bust cycle and with long-term contracts replacing spot market. deals and hyperscalers locking in supply for years. That might just be the case, Frank. You know, Christina, I want to ask a question, and maybe you've answered this a million times, and I just missed it, but we always talk about the hyperscalers creating their own chips, whether they're TPUs or something else. Why are they not also creating memory chips if the supply is so tight? Excellent question. Excellent question. Just think of how difficult it is to actually make a chip in general, and how long Google, for example, is working on the TPUs, their

tensor processing units for over a decade. So to diversify even more and focus on memory, it's just a very difficult task and probably not worthwhile for a lot of these companies when they'd rather focus on the chips that, you know, are valuable for training, for inference. The memory is a secondary part. Many of them are working on that as well. I don't know the details because they won't share on the memory section, but I think it has to really do with the fact that the GPUs and CPUs, et cetera, and all of those chips are just a little bit more important for them right now to get right over anything else. All right, Christina Parsons-Nevil us with whether or not the boom and butt cycle from memory

is over or maybe it could be starting all over again. You never know, Christina. Christina, thank you very much. All right, still ahead. Former Federal Reserve Vice Chair, Roger Ferguson. He's here to tell us what he's expecting from next week's Fed meeting. And as we head out, we want to mention Caesar shares. They have reopened, as Julia mentioned, just a short time ago.

Right now, those shares spiking. They're up over 13 percent. Closing Bell, we'll be right back. Welcome back to closing bell. We're getting some breaking news in the private credit front. Let's get to our Leslie Picker for that. Leslie. Hey, Frank.

Yeah, this involves a firm called Cliffwater, which operates a flagship private credit fund. And I'm told via a person familiar with the matter that about 14% of shares were requested by its investors to be redeemed. The firm did cap its repurchases at about 7%. This was earlier reported by Bloomberg. This cliffwater is a name that you may not have heard of as recently as a month or two ago, but it's recently been in the news. It was a firm that was the subject of an investor letter that was passed around as being potentially the canary and the coal mine, as according to rubric capital for the private credit crisis.

It was also a firm that was cited in an interview that we did a few days ago with Boez Weinstein of Saba Capital, where he expected that redemption rate to be somewhere between 10 and 20 percent, and here it is coming in at 14 percent. One of his big concerns was that they operated, and this is not the majority of their businesses, but a minority of their businesses should have kind of a fund-to-fund structure where they're invested in funds, which make these redemption dynamics more challenging. And so that's something that he called out as being something to watch, something that they're watching closely. And that is part of the reason I would suspect that you're

seeing such a high percentage of shares being requested to be redeemed higher than many of the peers that we've been covering, whether it's at Blackstone's B-Cred or BlackRock HPS. 14% is a higher redemption rate than many of the other funds that we've seen. And again, across the board, many of these funds have been higher than their typical 5% redemption cap for a quarterly basis. So again, the latest name to watch, Cliffwater here, 14% redemption rate in the first quarter, Frank. All right. Leslie, picker, with the very latest in the private credit space. Leslie, thank you very much. All right, all eyes are firmly on the Fed ahead of their all important meeting next week. Here to discuss that and much more. Former Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Roger

Ferguson. Roger, good afternoon. Good to see you. Following that CPI report. Just give us your take on what you're expecting next week. I'm looking at the CME Fed Watch tool. Almost certainly a pause, according to investors that are weighing in on there. What's your view? I think investors have it right. I think next week is almost certainly a pause. For three reasons. First, the Fed at its most recent set of statements suggested very much a weight and see attitude. Secondly, I'd say the data that have not tilt the scale dramatically one way. They've been important, but not decisive. The CPI number that came out this morning was roughly as expected. I wouldn't give anyone a great deal of comfort that inflation is cooling,

but no one's a give anyone a great deal of anxiety, the inflation is picking up. And some of the earlier data, I think they're looking at the labor market. We've had two very different reports over the last couple of months, one suggesting strength in the labor market, another one suggesting weakness. I think all of this really, when you put it all together, is moving sideways, and I think it leaves the Fed where it was before, which is what you see. You know, Roger, I want to push back respectfully on this one. You say nobody's worried about inflation ticking up.

I'm looking at core CPI coming at 2.5%. That's minus energy, which we know has been volatile and also food prices. Isn't the expectation that inflation is going to be higher a month from now just due to the oil shock? Absolutely. So let's try to parse that a little bit. You're absolutely right that the core CPI is 2.5. In fact, to be fair, you know, four PCE is probably, you know, 2.9 maybe rounded. And you're also right.

Inflation is more likely to the spike because of oil and any crisis. All of that is a clear statement. The question on the Fed is, particularly with a strike from oil prices, how do you think about that? Many people have said, including many Fed policy makers, that an oil spike is going to be, quote, stagged notionary. So a rise in inflation, hopefully only temporary, a drain. consumer, I think will be to purchase other things, so maybe a bit stagnationary. So you're right to say inflation is likely going to rise a bit higher. The core question, the main question is, is that a temporary recognition of oil price

shot or is something that builds into inflation expectation or longer term inflation, which would force the Fed to move to tighten them? You know, Roger, we spent a lot of time talking about investor sentiment. I know you're not on the FOMC, but as an outsider looking in, what do you think the sentiment is? Obviously, we're waiting for the Supreme Court to make a ruling on Lisa Cook. At the same time, we have Kevin Warsh, his nomination being blocked by Tom Tillis, who at the same time says he's very impressed by him. And we've got to remember, this is a new Fed chair coming in on a board that's still going to have the former Fed chair

when Kevin Worse, hypothetically, is actually confirmed. So, I mean, as an outsider looking in, how would you describe just the thought process going on with the Fed? I think the thought process is just try to bifurcate things. The job number one is a dual mandate, low and stable prices of full employment. And that is tricky enough. They've cut through times. You saw some dissents there. And so you have a group of policymakers that are individually and collectively are working through your challenging circumstance.

That's got to be job number one. And because of only human beings, they also recognize that there's this political dynamic going on. Some of all of which, I think they're aligned around the notion of let's make sure the Fed continues to be independent. So the whole least a quick question and how one thinks about independence. I think the committee and the board as a whole recognizing the importance of the Fed as an independent central right. And then the question of leadership tied up in this whole question of independence. So if I were a member of the FOC, I'm attempting to segment my thinking. There's a policy thinking, challenging enough.

Let's get that right. And then let's all make sure that we maintain the openness to Fed. And, you know, thank goodness there are people in the Senate who are really focused on that because they're about to make some very important decisions about the leadership. All right, Fed decision one week from today. Roger Ferguson, thank you so much for being here with us. All right, coming up next, we're tracking the biggest movers as we head into the close. Christina Parts and Evelace is standing by with that.

Well, we have a soup and snacks. And I'm really sinking to lows, not seen in more than two decades. a cloud company surging on a $2 billion in Vibet, and a pizza chain may be going private. Details next. Just under 12 minutes into the closing bell. Let's get back to our Christina Parts in Evelace for a look at some key stocks to watch. Christina.

We've got to start with shares of Campbell right now because they're dropping about 6% almost 7% after its latest earnings. Revenue and full year guidance just missed estimates. Campbell's snack business actually fell by 6% during the quarter. And U.S. soup sales actually declined 4%. Specifically as lower income consumers just cut back on spending. Stock trading at lows we haven't seen since 2003. Meantime, Nebius shares.

You can see moving the opposite direction up about 15% after Nvidia announced a $2 billion investment. As part of the deal, the companies will collaborate. They already do, but they're going to be extending that partnership on AI infrastructure deployment, fleet management, inference, and AI factory design. And that development coming a week after Nvidia announced $2 billion investments in other companies like Lumentum and coherent, just spending a lot lately. And last but not least, shares of Papa John surging, 19% on a Wall Street

General report that the pizza chain is reviewing a bid to go private from Earth Capital Management, a Qatari-backed investment fund, according to the report the deal would value Papa John's at roughly $1.5 billion. That's it? I mean, I thought you'd have some commentary. I mean, do you like Papa John's? I was in my mind, I wanted

to ask you, like, you didn't see it like a Papa John's. Maybe you're more of like a domino's guy, but I shouldn't joke around or anything. I should be serious. I'm not really sure what the distinction is between those I've been to Canada a few times. You have your own pizza chain up there and pizza, I think it is? Not bad. Not bad. Yes, we have a lot of chains up in Canada that have nothing to do with America.

Okay, fair point, fair point. Well, Papa John's shares spiking right now. Christina Prattanovelis, you're more of a pizza hunt kind of person. All right, coming up next, we'll tell you what's driving. I'm leaving it there. We'll tell you what's driving shares of Uber and Tesla hired today. You can see both are up over 2%. The Market Zone.

Coming up next. And we are now on the closing bell market zone. Market Zone. Mike Santoli and Wilmington Trust, Megan Schu, they're here to break down these crucial moments of the trading day. Plus, Julia Borsten watching shares of Uber and Philabo, tracking the action in Tesla. Mike, going to kick things off with you. Looking at oil right now, oil pretty close to its highs of the trading session so far. We haven't seen a decline despite that historic release. What does that say about the oil market right now and even the stock market, all the major indices lower? I mean, mostly what it says, obviously, Frank, is nobody quite knows exactly what the next turn in this story is, how long. long we're going to have these disruptions. I will say, though, this much of a move in crude

right now, four bucks. There was a time way back last week when that was a big daily move. Right now, it's actually still kind of rangebound relative to where we've been the last few days. I think that partially explains by the equity market, while it's been restrained by crude going up, it's not necessarily been really under a tremendous amount of pressure. Now, part of that is the narrow strength in semis and some of the other AI hardware names. It's still sort of working hard to tread water is the way I would explain it. The S&P 500 is still around these levels that were the bottom end of the range for a few weeks, actually, before the Iran invasion. So I do think the market's on a bit of a short leash. Banks have not been cooperating very well, but nothing

quite is creating that real break lower to where we were at the lows on Sunday and Monday. All right. Mike Santoli, we see you coming up on OT in just a bit. Thank you very much. All right. We want to send things over to Julia Borsden for a check on Uber. Julia. Well, Frank, shares of Uber popping today on a deal with the Amazon's driverless car company called Zooks. You see those Uber shares up 3%. Now, Zooks are going to be making its vehicles available on the Uber app in Las Vegas starting this summer, followed by Los Angeles next year. Now, this deal marks Zooks's first tie up with a third-party platform, and it underscores Uber's confidence that its app is the best way for autonomous companies to grow, something Uber CEO Dara Khashahi most recently spoke about on the company's last earnings call. Uber also has a partnership with Alphabet's Waymo to offer rides in Austin, Phoenix, and Atlanta.

Now, Amazon, which acquired Zooks in 2020, is playing catch-up with Waymo, which said last month, it's now operating 400,000 weekly rides across six U.S. cities. Zooks is still testing in most of its major markets. Frank? Joya, thank you very much. I'll Julia Borsten. Now we want to go over to Phil LeBoe for a look at Tesla. Frank, Tesla shares moving a little bit higher after strong numbers out of China. look at shares of Tesla. The monthly sales for February in China, up 91% compared to February of

last year. Keep in mind, it was a really low result last year. So there's a lot of lumpiness in the first three months of the year. February overall in China, for all brands, down 15%. Domestic continues to be under pressure for a variety of reasons. But their exports, nothing slowing that down, up 58% year over years. And finally, take a look at Zili and BYD. Why are we showing you this? For the first two months of this year in China, Zili, out of it. sold B.Y. Frank, I'll send it back to you. Our Phil Lebo, Phil, thank you very much. We want to bring in Megan's shoe of Womings and Trust. Megan, thank you so much for being here because it's kind of looking right now.

Now, I said earlier, all the major indices are down. They're off their lows. The Dow and the S&PR in the red. The NASDAX just kind of hold on to gains. A big part of that seems to be more confidence in technology after oral core earnings. Do you see more investors gaining more confidence when it comes to the tech trade after this? Yeah, I think what we've seen to start the year was a rotation out of tech that was continuing from the fourth quarter of last year. And now it is comforting to see some of that basically a rotation of capital, not capital coming out of the market. And I think we've continued to think that some of the concerns around the technology sector

are a bit overdone, the buildup of CAPEX and debt as well as disruption risk. We see as manageable and are still optimistic long term on that part of the market. But I think broadly speaking, this is a really tough market to be trading in, a lot of headline risk, a lot of potential volatility. But overall, I think to see the market treading water, as Mike Santoli said, as well as the dollar protecting gold, acting as a safe haven. It seems like a pretty orderly market. So, Megan, I want to ask you a question I've been asking other people throughout the day. How do you view the fact that the S&P's only down about 1.5% since this conflict started? We had a guest on earlier. Kevin Gordon from Schwab. He said the market is sanguine.

I think another word could be overconfident. Every trader I talk to seems to believe this is going to be resolved in a few weeks. Do you share that opinion? And what happens if it doesn't resolve itself in a few weeks to this market? Yeah, I mean, the oil futures curve is definitely suggesting that this will be resolved in a matter of weeks or months, not last for a year or more. I think that is a risk that this drags on a bit longer. but historically what we've seen in the data is that geopolitical events add short-term volatility, the market moves higher, as long as the overall economic story remains intact.

I think what's important in all of that historical analysis, though, is to recognize that there's always macro factors that fold in on top of it. Today, I think the most important macro factor is the labor market, what happens with the Fed, and there I think it's still, the jury is still out in terms of the strength of the labor market. But ultimately, the duration of this could, the longer it lasts, obviously there's a risk that it spills over more to the consumer, probably more as a disinflationary impact, actually, and a hit to growth more than a hit to inflation. Megan's here from Women's and Trust. Thank you so much for being here. Really appreciate you. As I mentioned, we're seeing a bit of a mixed action when it comes to the major indices. The NASDAX is holding on in some gains, the S&P fraction. Also looking at the oil market right now, just taking a look. Oil is up about 5.5%. And that's going to do it for closing bell.

Now that's going to go over to overtime with Melissa Lee and Mike Hinkle.