Closing Bell - Closing Bell 3/18/25

Episode Date: March 18, 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.

Welcome to Closing Bell. I'm Mike Santoli in for Scott Wapner. We are live from Post 9 at the New York Stock Exchange. This make or break hour begins with the indexes backsliding after that strong two-day bounce under some renewed pressure from the tech heavyweights. Here's your scorecard with 60 minutes to go in regulation. S&P 500 off by just about 1%. It's been sitting around that level for most of the day, giving back about a third of its rally off of last week's correction low. The Nasdaq is the underperformer among the major indexes as the mega caps continue to

prove somewhat unreliable so far in 2025. The Nasdaq composite off a percent and a half. Nvidia, big part of this story, struggling, sliding more than 4% or so over the past two days even as CEO Jensen Wong delivers a widely anticipated keynote at the company's GTC conference. Which brings us to our talk of the day. With economic growth concerns weighing on investors' minds and a crucial Fed meeting underway,

can Jensen Wong refocus investors on the big picture of tech innovation and light another spark under the faltering AI investment theme. With me to discuss is our very own Christina Parts-Nevalos live from NVIDIA's GTC event, Capital Area Planning's Malcolm Etheridge, and Deepwater's Jean Munster, Malcolm, a CNBC contributor. Welcome to you all. And Christina, let's start with you.

And what are we learning so far? Well, NVIDIA is unveiling new strategies to maintain dominance amid increasing competition. And so here's what we learned so far? Well, Nvidia is unveiling new strategies to maintain dominance amid increasing competition. And so here's what we learned so far. CEO Jensen Wong introduced, there's a lot. So Nvidia Dynamo, which is inferencing software designed to scale AI reasoning models, a tumble there while cutting costs. The company as well, expanding beyond its core business, announcing a partnership with General Motors to develop autonomous vehicles and providing AI solutions both for

the vehicles and GM's manufacturing facilities. That's why you're seeing competitor mobilized stock. They actually dropped on the announcement. Last I checked, it was down about 4%. Nvidia also planning to open a quantum computing office in Boston, though you have to keep in mind whenever they talk about quantum computing, it's a minimal impact for revenue for at least you know about three to five years or so. Wong also talking about data centers that's really the focus of GTC it's GPU technology conference so announcing Blackwell Ultra for this year. Rubin which would be the next iteration for twenty twenty six and then Rubin Ultra which should be out in twenty twenty seven the back half of

twenty seven and he's promising to that the Rubin architecture will really drive down the cost and really comes at a time to when hyperscalers are nipping at Nvidia's tail with cheaper options the information had a story today about AWS doing just that and despite growing, Wong's confidence about the performance and strategic diversification, auto, humanoid, robots, the software, is really to show that Nvidia is positioning itself to remain the AI hardware leader, but also move up the stack amid all of these market cycles. Dynamo is the name, by the way.

I mispronounce it. Dynamo. There you go. Absolutely yeah so building the case further that you know there's an entire ecosystem it's all going to be kind of integrated with software and many many offshoots of the uses of hardware so we'll see if it gets some traction in the market stock is up 10% off its low from a week ago but it's struggled for the last couple days. Christina, thanks. We're going to get back to you in just a second. Malcolm, anything you've heard here that's either different from what you expected reinforcing your kind of expectations as a shareholder or what are you looking for that might be

further to build the case here? Yeah, so the really interesting thing to me is that Jensen's already starting to pivot away from data center. If you notice, as soon as we started having the conversation following DeepSeek around, whether there was still some there there as far as data center, or if we would start to see companies like Microsoft and Amazon and Facebook and others pull back on some of that capex that they promised, in the data center space, Jensen's already talking now about autonomous driving as if it's here. He's already talking with other cell phone carriers

about integrating the chips there instead of having them live inside of the data centers as a way to get to the mobile opportunity. So I think what's really interesting is he's already forecasting out years ahead where he sees Nvidia still playing a real role as far as the AI revolution is concerned rather than sort of resting on their laurels and focusing on where AI is today and where that inference is happening in the data centers today. We should mention of course Malcolm joining us from from future proof down in Miami Beach we didn't just interrupt your vacation or anything like that so that explains the backdrop.

Gene, it all sounds great if Jensen is kind of broadening out the scope and talking about all these non-data center uses and the runway he sees there. But man, this has been the cleanest, cleanest investment story for the longest time, right? It's just like insatiable demand for those GPUs, supply constraints, the massive revenue growth. And is that becoming complicated here? Has he said anything that's gonna confirm the revenue outlook, let's say, for next year? Well, if you wanna read between the lines, there was a comment about revenue outlook over the next couple quarters.

He said, no one should buy Hopper. He laughed and said, I'm the chief revenue destroyer. My salespeople are gonna hate me. But he says that comment because he knows how strong black world demand is. There's no scenario where if he was concerned about where the business is in the current state that he would make that joke. And so I think that that's one reading between the lines and I agree with Malcolm.

I think that the bigger picture beyond just one or two quarters, the central question here is how long is this growth going to continue? And that goes back to a comment that he had on their last earnings call about this 100 to a million times more compute. And by my account, he spent a third of the two hours building his case that we're still early in this build out.

And he talked about those autonomous opportunities, but I think the data center still is a huge opportunity for them. And so I really saw this as him reiterating his belief that we're still early back filling on some bold statements he made a few weeks ago. I guess, Malcolm, that's encouraging. On the other hand, I just do wonder if the customers here, the big cloud platforms and everybody else that's spending tens of billions of dollars this year

and more on trying to build out this infrastructure, if they're happy to sign up for unending cycles of this. In other words, it's not like there's no time where they can essentially say, aha, we built something, it can now scale from here. It seems like it's a treadmill. Well, I think the biggest challenge is they have to spend these tens of billions of dollars just to compete

against everyone else who's spending tens of billions of dollars to be there, right? The risk of not building and spending the money to build out that data center is way higher than it is if you spend, you overbuild, and then you don't necessarily need the capacity that you thought you did. So I think realistically, the CapEx that we've talked about

is baked in and is a firm for 2025, regardless of whether we have a suspicion that maybe they'll wanna dial that back later on. I don't think they can afford to. I think there's constant worry that my next door neighbor, Google, for example, Alphabet, Google Cloud, is going to get there if I don't spend the money, if I'm Microsoft, to protect my moat as Azure. Gene, I have a very vivid memory of similar talk about this when it came to EMC back in

the late 90s or Cisco. I wish we could stop paying you guys for this stuff, but we just can't. And it worked really well, but eventually the market might get a little bit antsy about the idea that it's not going to be sustained. And maybe that explains why Nvidia's valuation has gotten compressed.

What's your take on how the stock is absorbing all this? Now, absolutely, I don't think it's observing it very well. It is not absorbing it well. Essentially all these positive comments, if you take Jensen at face value, the stock should be meaningfully significant higher from where we're at, potentially 30, 40, 50, 100% higher. And I think it really speaks to some of that scar tissue 25 years ago and investors just reluctant around what the ultimate growth rate is in calendar 26. Right now the streets had about 25% growth. I think it's probably

going to be 35 or 40% but I think at the core there's this again question around sustainability and I think that there are some very big differences between now and 25 years ago. Continue to believe Nvidia is in a good place. The question for investors is going to be number one, immediately the narrative shifts to, what are the hyperscalers going to say in five weeks? And second is every quarter that they don't get credit kind of pushes that gets them closer to a point where they're not going to be growing at 35% plus. And so I think that that is one dynamic.

Will they ever get credit for it? I think that they will, but they're not certainly not getting credit for it today. Interesting. A quick programming note, by the way, tune into an exclusive interview with Nvidia CEO Jensen Wong and CNBC's Jim Kramer tomorrow morning at 10 15 a.m. Eastern time. So Gina Malcolm, while we have you want to get your takes on Alphabet's $32 billion deal to buy Wiz announced this morning. I guess Gene, just quickly, is this deal done out of a defensive posture from Alphabet? What do you think about the strategic rationale and the financial case? Strategic

rationale is that this is what cloud customers are demanding, essentially better integration of these security features, and that's what they're gonna bring. They're gonna continue to sell those features to other hyperscalers and other cloud providers. And so as far as the the rationale, like why now? Why restart this now? I think that it probably is a read that they feel like we're gonna get into Andrew Ferguson is gonna be a little bit more lenient towards them. I think if they had some wink and a nod that this is going to be a tough environment to

get a deal done, they wouldn't have restarted it. Remember they restarted it at a 40% higher bid than they did a year ago. And so I think it's in general a good feature for the platform. It does increase the growth rate of, if you look at Google Cloud for next year from about 25% to 27% with that addition. And Malcolm, I gather you don't own Alphabet, although the stock is starting to look pretty inexpensive. What's your quick take on it? Yeah, so I'm actually encouraged by this, assuming that the deal does go through, and

I agree. I think there's no way that they would have gone down this road of creating this regulatory headache for themselves that they didn't have a really good Understanding that it was going to pass through and I think that that's going to kick off a wave of consolidation among all of the smaller Cybersecurity players within the space because they can't compete with the Palo Alto's and the crowd strikes of the world as standalone players With such small market caps. And I think that consolidation is going to continue to happen throughout 2025 and 2026 as a result of this deal. And Gene, I've been sort of just floating the notion, it just looks by the way that the stock trades and whether it's in response to you know Alphabet's capex plans or a deal like this, that the market doesn't fully trust Alphabet on capital allocation

or that they're going to get paid back for it. Or maybe it's just that their core business is like the best business ever created and anything else they do looks like it might be a potential risk or step down from there. So at Deepwater, our view of Google has shifted more negative, and I think it's based on a belief that we're still in a bull market with AI. We think that we're going to be much higher in two years than we are today. But Google trying to navigate what's going to happen around search.

The search results base today is messy and they need to simplify. How you do that transition on the monetization piece, it needs to be much more than AI overviews. And so that dynamic has just softened our optimism. And they need to radically innovate and really embrace the innovators dilemma and to, I think, solve what ultimately is going to be the new search paradigm. Yeah, it's a tough shift, I'm sure. Gene, thanks very much for the time today, Malcolm.

Stick with me. Big news from Big Tech, not enough to save the market with stocks resuming their sell off after two days of relief. Let's bring in Citi's Scott Cronert for more on the broad outlook. Scott, good to have you join the conversation here.

So it felt like last week, we kind of halted this pullback at a moment where it could have gotten even messier, right? We sort of touched really oversold levels. The S&P gets down to 5,500 on an intraday basis, and we get rescued by this oversold rally. Where does that bring us to at this point? Well, Mike, it's always great to be on the call with you.

So we drew a line in the sand at 5,500 a little over a week or so ago. And there was a little bit of thought to it, obviously a 10% pullback from the recent FEB 19 highs. Also, what we're suggesting here, it begins to give you a better risk-reward setup before what we've been using since the beginning of the year in terms of a bear case scenario of 5,100 and our ongoing base case of 6500. But what I wanna focus on though,

that I think kind of plays to the conversation at hand right now, is if you look at the way the S&P has pulled back from those Feb 19 highs, S&P down 10%, but this mega cap growth cohort, the Mag 7 in particular, these companies are down 20 percent plus from their 52 week highs to recent lows.

So what's happened here under the surface is that you've begun to change the relative valuation construct to where the growth part of the market versus its history is starting to look more attractively valued. I'm not gonna say outright cheap or outright inexpensive, but we're less concerned about the valuation framework now than we were going into this year. And that's different from the rest of the market that actually is still more expensive versus history. My point here is that we're getting to a juncture

where you give me confidence in the growth trajectories for the MAG-7 and we think this growth as defensive component can begin to creep much more into the market narrative. Yeah, that's exactly what I was going to get at. So there have been times when that NASDAQ 100 type profile of stock has acted as defense against macro concerns. So your take on the fact that really the downside has been driven by this unspooling evaluations in mega cap tech.

Does that mean the rest of the market has not been expressing concern about this growth scare that we seem to be in or hasn't fully accounted for it? How does that play? Yeah. So I think it hasn't fully accounted for two things. So you've got the mega cap growth cohort, let's call it, it's 45, 50% of the index. Cyclicals and defensives or economic sensitives

and defensives make up the balance. They're balanced out, right? So you've got healthcare up in the year, but you also have energy up on the year. Industrial is holding in roughly flattish and financial is giving back some of last year's gains. But yeah, away from the MAG7, the rest of the index is trading much more like you'd expect around traditional macro inputs,

with the exception that I don't think that we've completely priced in a lot of the tariff risk, that still continues to be an important discussion point. For sure. And Malcolm, how are you be an important discussion point. For sure. And Malcolm, how are you thinking about that tariff risk, the sort of policy flux that we're all facing here, and whether it's going to start to flow through to earnings estimates and all the rest? Well, I think we've gotten a ton of proof already

that the consumer is feeling differently about the day to day than they did just a quarter ago. I think we've gotten a ton of proof that retail sales have slowed, we've gotten guidance from the airlines now that travel has slowed, and so I think that the longer that this tariff war continues on, the more likely that this downtrend that we're talking about is to continue. So right now we're only talking about a little bit of a correction and we keep teetering between whether it's a correction or not each day. Now we're at the about a little bit of a correction and we keep teetering between whether it's a correction or not each day.

Now we're at the risk of tipping into bear market territory for every single additional tweet or public statement that we get out of the administration. And so I think the longer this carries on, especially as we get further proof from GDP numbers, the more likely we are to be seeing something created that's a more sustained downtrend. I'm very concerned that the messaging around this, especially as the president comes out and says, I'm no longer pegging the success of my presidency to what the S&P does, and everybody's just going to have to band together and take a little bit of pain.

I don't think that investors are going to be willing to agree to sign up to take that ride with the greater economy. Right. Now, that is true, although it has been somewhat quiet on the tariff front for a couple days, maybe they don't mind seeing the market lift a little bit. Scott, in terms of how investors have sort of had their views of things change, I know you track

somewhat kind of market-based and slower moving indicator of investor sentiment and positioning, has it reset to the point and we even overshot at all to where people have gotten a little more pessimistic than the conditions warrant or no. Yeah I say on a short term basis Mike you look at

indicators like you know relative strength and you got classically oversold last week. However our Lefkovich index which is our version of a broader sentiment read, continues at what we define as euphoria. Now it tends to have a lagging component to it.

We suspect that it will probably come out of euphoria before too long, but we're quite a ways away from something that would give you a more classic, hey, this is priced in, you want to be buying the current sentiment backdrop. We're not at that point yet. And that in turn has us very eyes open. To Malcolm's point on the way that we think the Q1 reporting period is going to play out, that's really going to set the tone because what we're expecting is that a lot of the tariff noise has been just that noise, not necessarily fully reflected in company guidance

and analysts ability to model it. We think as we go into the Q1 reporting period, you'll see corporates give you a little bit better spin on how they see tariff impacts playing out in terms, in turn analysts will be able to model better. We suspect you're gonna see this negative revision bias going into the Q1 reporting period. All told, we think that's where you begin to spin down the sentiment and ultimately

set up for a little bit more structurally improved setup. Gotcha. Yeah, just a few weeks ahead. We'll be right in the middle of all that. Scott Malcolm, thanks very much. Appreciate the time today. We are getting some more details on President Trump's call with Russia's President Putin. Meghan Kassella is here with the details.

Meghan. Mike, we just got a chance to hear from President Trump directly via a post on True Social, social media, giving us some more details on that call earlier today that was at least 90 minutes in length. President Trump saying that that call was very good and productive and confirming that they agreed to an immediate ceasefire on energy and infrastructure with an understanding, he says, that we will be working quickly to have a complete ceasefire and ultimately an end to this war. So saying there that they're acknowledging there they are not yet at that full ceasefire

the US had been pushing for and backing, but saying that that is on the way. He also says both President Putin and President Zelensky of Ukraine would like to see this war end and that that process towards getting there is now in full force and in effect. I also want to flag, Mike, that we also got a readout just in the last hour or so from the Kremlin, and we actually got a few more details from the Russian side of things on just how this call went,

the Kremlin flagging that President Trump was the one to put forward those ideas on the ceasefire on energy and infrastructure, as well as something in the Black Sea, implications there for shipping and so forth, saying that there would be a ceasefire negotiated there as well. Russia also saying there will be an exchange with Ukraine of 175 prisoners, 175 on each side being exchanged. But most crucially, Russia saying it was emphasized

that the key condition for preventing further escalation in this war and working towards its resolution will be the complete cessation of foreign military aid and the provision of intelligence information to Kiev. So flagging that there, Mike, because that's a very high bar to clear and we do not know yet whether the Ukrainians or the U.S. would agree to something like that. Russia is saying they would have to see complete cessation there in order to agree to something like a 30-day ceasefire, let alone an actual peace deal.

So much more to watch, clearly more to go, even as we have a major step forward today towards that ceasefire. Mike? Yeah, for sure. Megan, thanks so much for filling in those details. Let's send it over to Steve Kovac for a look at the biggest names moving into the close. Hi, Steve. Hey, Mike.

Yeah, U.S. listed shares of Tencent music jumping after better than expected earnings and revenue for the parent rising 8% this quarter as growth in online music services and an 18% pop in music subscription revenue boosted those results. Also shares of Abbott Labs and Wreck-itt moving lower as Health and Human Services and the Federal Drug Administration announced joint operation StorkSpeed to improve the health and safety of baby formula in the U.S. HHS Secretary RFK Jr. met with formula manufacturers today according to reports in a larger move that may target baby formula makers.

All right Steve, thank you. We are just getting started here. Up next, macro risk advisors John Kullovis is back. He'll tell us what the charts are signaling that could be next for stocks. He joins me at post nine after this break. We are live from the New York Stock Exchange. You're watching Closing Bell on CNBC. I'm from the New York Stock Exchange. You're watching Closing Bell on CNBC. The major averages are falling again after a two day break from the recent selling. Our next guest says the charts are signaling

that stocks should be close to bottoming, but the risk of a longer term top cannot be ruled out just yet. Let's bring in John Kolobis of Macro Risk Advisors. He's here with me at Post9. John, good to see you. Good to see you, hi. So, you know it

seems like we got a rally pretty much on time right kind of in the spot and at the moment you might have expected it at the 10% correction level. What were you looking for in terms of the character of the rally and where does it go from here? So exactly right. So I will categorize this market as being in a high-risk oversold condition. So I don't think it's a garden varieties type of oversold. So what do we need to see? We actually need to see the market prove itself at this point.

Friday was a step in the right direction, we had a 90% up day, so we had a good breath surge off of that. But what we really need to see is that the market needs to recover at least two thirds of this decline. Classic technical analysis, you need to retrace that point. And for the non-technical geeks like myself, that's around that 50 day moving average. So we need to retrace that point. And for the non-technical geeks like myself, that's around that 50-day moving average.

So we need to see breadth confirmation and follow through to the upside, particularly around that 50-day moving average. So the two-thirds of the losses, so yeah, you're looking at trying, you wanna get back like 7% or something like that. And what would you be looking for in terms of either confirmation or concerns?

I mean, a lot of folks going into the low lower saying, look, credit markets, they've noticed the volatility, but they haven't really sent up any alarms. So to triangulate, I guess, the call, right? How are we going to make things a little bit better? So I like to look at the cross assets quite closely. I don't know where you stand on the on Bitcoin. I think you've talked about, you don't have you like it all that much. But like the as a signal, as a signal, Bitcoin is a stabilizer.

It needs to start outperforming gold, right? So that is a good, that's a metric that I follow. And gold's been ripping, I still think it's around 3,100. So gold needs to stabilize, Bitcoin needs to start to rally, that's one. Credit has started to push up. That needs to kind of stop what it's doing. CD experts have broken out of a bit of a base.

It does pretend that the trend reversal is happening there. That needs to really chill out. And the next would be just in general, just interest rates need to calm down. base, it does pretend that the trend reversal is happening there, that needs to really chill out. The next would be just in general, just interest rates need to calm down. In particular, the three month to 10 year curve needs to stop inverting, needs to stop rolling over. That's exactly when the momentum factor peaked. In January, it's the same time when that curve peaked.

So I would like to see that to start pushing up higher. Do you have a call as to whether that stampede out of the momentum names is through? Is it mostly cleaned up? Can we know? So the way that I'm viewing the momentum unwind is, is that since it's been highly correlated with the market itself, they're one and the same.

So going into this year, I didn't anticipate the momentum factor to unwind, and in turn forced me to be a little bit more cautious than I otherwise would be on the S&P given how they're together. Now we have this deep oversold condition on the market and we have a very deep oversold in terms of momentum or very overbought condition in terms of low beta outperformance. So again the condition is there for that to bottom. My sense is that if we're not falling into a recessionary type of bear market, which

odds have increased but I don't think it's overwhelming yet, that factor is very close to bottoming as well. I'm actually going to be interested in buying those names that took us down on the way up. That's interesting because during this phase, a lot of folks who for a long time have been saying, we should rotate into value, we should rotate into mid-caps or the average stock or cyclicals,

whatever it is outside of big cap tech for example are saying now we've done it you know it's kind of the markets gotten rebalanced we can go from here on the other hand late in the bull market it's not that common to sort of switch leadership I agree and it's very risk off so I think we can we ask for a lot of folks are looking for the average stock to outperform this year or even small caps outperform but historically when they outperform on a relative basis,

we're in a correction or a bear market, and that's generally how bull markets end. It's a catch down of the mega caps, while the rest of the market has already been beaten up, go down to a lesser degree. So we gotta be careful with that, that analogy, and value, yeah, getting better, that's completely a defensive rotation here at this point.

I'm not in the camp that value's going to be a long-term winner, it's still very much a growth. Yeah. So, okay, so this rally has plenty to prove, but you're sort of sticking with your ultimate upside target. Yeah, I haven't changed my upside target, so I think 6,600,

evidence hasn't been overwhelmingly enough for me to drop that. But I do think the market needs to go through a period of basing, and maybe even put in the classic double bottom, or whatever, right? You gotta rally, come back down. You need a magic bullet.

And my worry here is twofold. One is that everyone's looking for the V-bottom. We probably won't get it. That's the exception to the rule. And number two is folks are still like reacting to the news flow. Market's bottom when they stop ignoring bad news. It was good that the market stabilized, we haven't heard any tariff headlines, but how

about when we get a tariff headline that's negative, the market goes, I don't care about that anymore. We're not there yet. So that's going to take some time. So like when you break your heart, it helps. Time heals a broken heart and same with the market correction. Exactly. Time and you know, rebound, whatever you want to call it. All right, John, thanks a lot.

Appreciate it. Up next, Applovin shares sinking in today's session. We'll tell you what's driving that drop and why there has been a recent target for short sellers. And later, Julian Emanuel from Evercore ISI standing by with what he'll be watching from the Fed decision tomorrow. Closing bell, we'll be right back.

Welcome back. Shares of app love it getting slammed today with other growth stocks in that name recently also has been targeted by short sellers see the Modi here with more on that story I see my this as you know this is a software company that helps mobile game as developers advertiser apps it was a top performer in 2024 gaining over 700 percent, but a different story emerging this year. In late February, short sellers Fuzzy Panda and Culper Research criticizing the company's accounting practices, claiming that Apple Evan's AI-powered platform Axon is replicating

Emeta's ad strategy. The CEO of the company, Adam Faruhi, hitting back saying, quote, it's disappointing that a few nefarious short sellers are making a false and misleading claims aimed at undermining our success, driving down our stock price for their own financial gain rather than acknowledging the sophisticated AI models our team has built. For who he goes on to say, claims of financial and accounting and properties are factually incorrect and have no basis whatsoever. Now Wall Street has been quick to defend the stock. Piper Sandler out today with a new bullish note.

Their channel check suggests e-commerce advertiser adoption and trends look healthy and positive. The analyst there, James Callahan, reiterating a $575 price target and overweight rating. Right now, Mike, the stock is trading just around the 280 range. And it does have attributes of a momentum name. We're looking at the 30 day average volume

for Apple of 10 million shares. That's actually the highest since the company went public a couple of years ago. It absolutely became a momentum kind of mean thing almost for a little while. Yeah, it totally does trade that way. If I understand some of the elements of the bear case, it was that there were some fraudulent

like auto downloads of some apps and then maybe their gaming medias add auction system or something like that. At large what they're doing, these short sellers are questioning the integrity of their AI platform that these users are using to better understand their customers. But the sell side community, including Jeffries, among others are saying if this AI platform didn't work well, they wouldn't be buying the app love and subscriptions. So that's where the debate stands right now.

We've seen the stock remain volatile. It's down about 17% so far this year, after a big run last year. That is always like the backup. It's like, look, advertisers know what return on investment is, and presumably they wouldn't use it if they didn't have it. I do get a kick out of BTIG saying that the range of stock price target for their bear and bull case is 176 to 707.

So obviously the fundamentals are moving fast. It's hard to value the stock. It's been caught in a whirlwind here. 22 buys and only two sells thus far despite some of these claims around their practices. Street remains in favor. All right, Seema, thank you. All right, up next, we are tracking the biggest movers as we head into the close. Steve, standing by with those.

Hey, Steve. Hey, Mike. Yeah, we have another AI darling, and don't worry, it's not Nvidia falling today. We'll give you the name and reason why after the break. 19 minutes till the closing bell. S&P still down about 1%. Let's get back to Steve Kovac for a look at the key stocks to. and P. still down about 1% let's get back to Steve Kovac for a look at the key

stocks to watch the. Hey Mike look at shares at Hems and Hers they're sliding as the food and drug administration raised concerns on using unapproved G. L. P. one drugs for weight loss that including ones prescribed by Hems and Hers the firm had

outlined changes in its weight loss business and its last earnings report over supply concerns and said it may stop prescribing key ingredient compounded semi-glutide. Shares down about 9%. And shares of Palantir, they're sliding as Jeffries reiterates the defense tech stock

as an underperform as valuation continues to remain a concern. Palantir stock falling from last year's highs as government cuts weigh on that sentiment. Shares down almost 4%, Mike. All right, Steve, thank you. While stocks are negative across the board with the NASDAQ down nearly 2% at the lows, but my next guest says ongoing volatility does not yet signal an end to the bull market.

Joining me here at Post9 is Julian Emanuel of Evercore ISI. Julian, good to see you. Great to be here. So not the end of the bull market. How much pain do you expect? What have we done in terms of resetting valuations and price and expectations? So valuations have gone from very expensive, not egregious, very expensive, to just expensive. But when you think about the elements

that end bull markets, valuation alone is not one of them. You typically see what we would characterize an uncooperative Fed. That's not going to be the case this time. The Fed is going to cut rates twice this year in our view. FOMO certainly not there after the last month's performance. And then the bond vigilantes, and I think if anything, this has been a positive, the fact that whether it's due to a growth scare or a policy or what have you, yields are contained. So what you're left is then the probability of recession. Now, the dislocations from the policy uncertainty have certainly raised that specter in people's minds. We think what you're actually pricing in

right now is essentially a full-on case of stagflation. And the reason we say that, and it's not our base case that it turns out that way, is because when you look at past stagflation episodes, the market tends to average down 10 on an annualized basis. We're really trading along those lines. And you see leadership from the very defensive sectors, staples and healthcare, put that all together and us, we think a lot of the pain has been discounted.

The negativity is still quite intense. Yeah, that Bank of America Global Fund Manager survey that was out today actually had stagflation as sort of the highest answer among people is that what kind of environment are we in? We need to define that maybe a little bit. Is that just that, you know, there's an upward bias to inflation and risk to growth?

I mean, it's obviously not 10% unemployment and 10% inflation. So we actually think that there are breakpoints and psychologically, and actually this volatility volatility I think in a lot of ways confirms us. Stagflation to us is anywhere from zero to one and a half percent on US GDP. Obviously less than zero is more akin to recession and inflation core PCE at three percent or higher. Now look, the data has been mixed and there were elements of last week's inflation reports

that tell you that if we didn't have tariffs staring us in the face, we'd probably start to continue on that path towards lower inflation and it's not clear that that isn't going to be the case. Right, yeah, we're still kind of within the bounds, I guess, of that. You mentioned that we don't have an uncooperative Fed. We have the

decision tomorrow. Do you think there's a risk that the Fed is going to be interpreted as uncooperative at some point if they essentially say we're just saying, Pat, as long as possible? I think, again, part of this dialogue is separating the soft, the sentiment data from the hard, the statistical data. And the statistical data has yet to really say that we're in a substantive weakening of the economy, which is why, given all the noise around Doge and potential job cuts there, the data over the next number of weeks is likely to be important.

But look, a week and a half ago, Chairman Powell made the point that he felt that the soft data and the hard data were separate. And we do think that he's going to be able to thread the flation part of the stag flation needle. It's the stag part that's gotten people concerned at this point. And the only other piece I would sort of pull out here is, you don't think that we saw some signs of FOMO at the peak or in the fourth quarter

when we had a little bit of the momentum and the meme stocks running and things like that? No, so our view there is that that was not a sort of generalized, you know, all guns blazing capital market cycle like what you typically see for an extended period of time, prior to a top that was much more akin to what I would call in early 2021, the meme stock era, you know, essentially, a

select smaller amount of market cap was speculative, right, but not enough to really get the FOMO that you typically see at major tops. So your base case from here out is we've maybe seen the low for a while and you still kept your upside target? We're sticking with 6,800, this three steps forward, two steps back volatility is not a surprise to us. Was that the low last week?

Look, this is not going to be a V bottom. It's going to be a process. It's subject to incoming news on tariffs and Russia and this and that and the other. But ultimately we do think the pieces are starting to fall in place for what we think will be a better number of months ahead. All right, Julian, good to see you. Thanks very much. I still had gold hitting more new highs. We will drill down on that bounce coming up. Closing bell, we'll be right back.

Up next, we'll tell you what's behind some of the big moves in the EV space. And later, don't miss an exclusive interview with the Roblox CEO that's coming up in overtime. The Market Zone is next. We are now in the Closing Bell Market Zone. Biotech company, Sarepta, heading for its worst day since 2023.

Angelica Peebles has more. Plus, Phil LaBelle on what's behind the surge in Lucid and the drop in Tesla shares today. And Pippa Stevens on the rally in gold and copper prices. Angelica, so many wild swings in this business, Sarepta, over the years. Yeah, this is a company that's really seen it all and today those shares down about 27% and that's after the company disclosed that a 16 year old boy died after receiving the company's gene

therapy for Duchenne muscular dystrophy. The patient experienced acute liver failure. This is a known side effect of the gene therapy, Elevitis and other gene therapies. And remember, two years ago, the FDA approved this gene therapy for patients aged four and five after a heated debate among the FDA's independent advisors about who was most likely to benefit from this one-time treatment. And the agency last year ended up expanding that label

to all patients four and up. And that was an extremely controversial decision. For the people who oppose that decision, this death is likely only going to reinforce their doubts about the benefits of this gene therapy. And at the same time, this is an awful disease where young people lose the ability to walk over time and they typically die in their 20s.

There aren't great options. So again, something to watch here and we'll have to see what happens going forward. Right, which is why there were such hopes on the idea that perhaps there could be an effective treatment. Angelica, thank you so much. Phil, a lot going in multiple directions today in the EV area.

Yeah. Yeah, let's start off with the positive mover today and that's Lucid. Up more than 8% after Morgan Stanley and Adam Jones is the analyst who gets a lot of attention there he upgraded lucid to equal weight he's particularly interested in the potential for the company's software when it comes to AI and autonomous in the future that's an interesting call there and one that a lot of people have said look their software is reason for

potential optimism when it comes to lucid. On the downside, Tesla cut by RBC in terms of its price target, not a downgrade, but they did cut the price target at Tesla. Full self-driving and RoboTax evaluations have also been lowered as there are some questions about whether or not those two pieces of technology will deliver as much as originally expected. And then the Chinese EV maker, Zekr, is also to the downside. They unveiled an advanced driver assist technology system in China today, but it's not done much to help the stock. There you see it's down more than 5%. And Phil, just to add on to all that, you know, we, Christina just mentioning that Jensen

Wager Bavidia mentioned a potential partnership with GM about autonomous vehicles. How does that fit in? Well everybody's going there. The question becomes who gets there first and who has the technology or the software and the chips, the whole package, that really makes a difference. Everybody's racing towards it, Mike. It's gonna be some time before we know who the winners and losers are.

For sure. And as was noted, Mobileye backing up about 3.5% perhaps on that development. Phil, thank you very much. Pippa, exciting times in gold, but it's not the only thing moving here. Yeah, that's right. So let's start here with gold

because it did hit its 13 record this year as growing recession fears and tariff uncertainty push investors into safe haven trades like gold. Central bank demand is also strong against a broader backdrop of diversification away from the volatile gold from the

volatile dollar. Now the gold miners ETF is now at its highest level in more than four years. So gold is grabbing all the attention, but take a look at copper prices. They are actually outperforming gold this year and sitting just below the record as the White House focuses on jumpstarting domestic production. The metal could also soon be subject to the same 25% tariffs as steel and aluminum, which has pulled forward some demand.

You can see that reflected in the price difference between U.S. COMEX copper and prices on the LME. Now, two names to watch there are Freeport and Rio Tinto, given that they are, Mike, the largest domestic producers. So, interesting that that seems to be what's driving the copper price and maybe some supply concerns, tariff demand issues, because a lot of times the copper gold ratio

is considered to be this kind of macro indicator of global growth, right? If copper's outperforming, maybe it does suggest like a reflationary type environment, China's spending. We don't think that's what's going on here? Well, the Chinese property market has been very weak and so that has been an overhang for gold, but then you've also, sorry for copper, excuse me,

but then you've also got to look at the upside potential for copper from the energy transition And more recently when it comes to data centers and artificial intelligence It is the backbone of electrification and so now basically everyone is forecasting a supply deficit by the middle of next decade And so that is an overarching driving force here But interestingly we haven't seen the equities keep pace with the underlying commodity. It does seem like there are still some recession fears that are overhanging some of those stocks. But Freeport and Rio Tinto are really the names to watch here because if those tariffs do go into effect, then we could see the domestic producers benefiting.

For sure. All right, Pippa, thanks so much. We have 30 seconds to go before the bell. S&P 500 is down about 1.1 percent. It's just above that 5600 level. Remember, the low is going to be a little bit higher. All right, Pippen, thanks so much. You have 30 seconds to go before the bell. S&P 500 is down about 1.1%. It's just above that 5,600 level. Remember, the low reached at that 10% correction bottom

last week was just about 5,500. The volatility index has pushed up. It's giving back about one third of that two-day bounce that we did get off the bottom, with the NASDAQ continuing to underperform. That's all for closing the bell.