Closing Bell - Closing Bell: 4/10/26

Episode Date: April 10, 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.

Welcome to Closing Bell. I'm John Ford in for Scott Wapner. And this, make-a-break hour starts with the markets, trying maybe to keep its longest win streak of the year alive. Doesn't look good so far. Though, here's your scorecard with 60 minutes left in the trading week. The S&P is a little below the flatline now. The NASDAQ is the one that's still in the green, thanks to strength in big tech. The Dow is lagging down about 250-some-odd points as some defensive names are weighing on the index. If the S&P 500 can kind of crawl its way across the finish line and the green, that would make it eight straight up days.

Longest streak since May, it's a key hour helping the lead the way today. Semiconductor, software is not helping at all. More specifically, names like Broadcom, AMD, Western Digital are all moving higher into the close. On the flip side, healthcare, consumer staples are under pressure, which brings us to on top of the tape. Is the worst of the sell-off now in the rearview mirror? Let us ask our panel. Joining me now is CNBC contributor Adam Parker of Trivariate Research, Northwestern Mutuals Matt Stuckey,

and 314 researchers, Warren Pies. Guys, good to see you. Happy Friday. So, Matt, you don't look at stocks on valuation. You do it on forward EPS revisions mainly. So given the economic headwinds that we've been seeing with the Iran War, possible ripple effects for the coming months. How are you feeling about this market?

I mean, how positive can you be? That's a good question. Look, I mean, I think earnings revisions continue to be a positive undertone within the market. Albeit, there's a really important caveat, and that's that oil prices are still in the driver's seat. Until we start to see traffic really move through the Strait of War moves, you know, earnings estimates are going to be subject to a lot of revisions. And to me, I think as we start earning season, it's positive that they're moving up into the right. But again, the important overarching theme here is that there needs to be continued de-escalation from Middle East for those revisions to matter. Yeah, that EPS guide, I expect, is going to be something that we're all watching pretty closely from a number of companies.

Adam, you throw price momentum into the mix when you're looking at things. you also do look at valuation. So what's up with software here? The IGV hit a 52-week low today. WCLD 2. We'll see where they end up. Last I looked, they were down 3 and 5%. What software can you start buying here if you're interested in the valuation side? Hi, John. Good to see you. Yeah, we've had a pretty negative call on software for some time. In any medium to long-term view, we still think investors should be very underweight the group. If you're going to buy any individual software names, we prefer expensive to cheap and we prefer fast growing to slow growing. All of our work shows that slow growing cheap software underperforms. I don't want to buy software any medium to long-term view, though,

just because I think the multiple contraction you've seen so far means it likely eventually earnings miss and then eventually two, three, four years from now the sales miss. So I think the market on average is right to take the multiples lower. Well, I guess if it's justified, maybe earnings will give us some read on that. Warren Pyes, this energies and commodities action has been influencing the market so much. How much longer do you think that goes on and how can investors use it? Yeah, thank you for having me, John. I think that it's, I mean, it's all dependent on how the talks go, how the ceasefire negotiations go.

But let's just say, no one knows how that's going to exactly play out. I think that it's, the market's pretty sanguine, but we're probably heading in a direction of a resolution, timing a little uncertain. But even if we were to have that resolution in the near term, you have production offline in the Middle East that's going to take, you know, somewhere between one and four months to come back fully. That's refining capacity and then actual shut-in production. Then you have a logistical nightmare of getting enough ships out of the Persian Gulf,

delivering the product and the crude they have and then getting back. That takes you out to at least June. So I think what's happened within the oil markets has risen the price of oil from pre-war to a post-war, even in a best-case scenario, by 20-25 bucks. So, I mean, doesn't mean equity can't digest that. Normalization here, does that look like the price going down or just the price of oil not continuing to go up as much? And so what's the impact on the market, Warren? Yeah, I think the market is different than the price of oil right now. I think the market is looking at things like, are we getting incremental rate of change improvement? And can we see through to the other side of this? Whereas the price of crude oil might is going to stay elevated, I think. It's going to

stay elevated at least for the next few months and probably through the year, depending on the timeline we're looking at. I think probably $85, $90 is the new baseline price for crude oil, at least for the next 12, 18 months until we get to some kind of normalization. I think we're going to eat a billion barrels out of inventory when this is all said and done. And that's an unprecedented amount of inventory reduction for the crude oil market's 12.5% of all inventory everywhere on the water, onshore, OECD, non-OECD. And so it's a total reset to the oil market. But I do think that the equity markets can look through that, are looking through that,

and we'll be able to digest it. But that's what's going on in the oil market, from my view. S&P 500, trying to get its toe over the line into the green as we move further into the hour. Matt Stuckey, you are positive on how the market is shaking out, at least so far, X, this oil stuff that we've been talking about. How much are the financials playing into that? What are you particularly watching for in Signal from earnings season? Yeah, so we're just going to start seeing that in this upcoming week. And I think the positive is that, you know, earnings revisions continue to be strong for financials.

And against that backdrop, you've seen a good deal of multiple compression, as you'd expect in environments like we went through in March where the VIX is elevated and geopolitical uncertainty starts to rise. But what I want to hear is from members of the executive teams at, you know, these financial institutions is how is the pipeline shifting in terms of a lot of the fee-based businesses in, you know, the likes of Goldman Sachs of JPMorgan. You know, there was a lot of optimism to start 2026 that this would be a strong year for investment banking. And I think we'll see that results in the actual first quarter numbers. But the question is, is the remainder of the year? Is that strength going to continue throughout 2026? And I think there's just more open

questions given elevated uncertainty out of the Middle East, whether or not it will continue. And that's the important question that I have. Yeah. How much will they call their shots in the guides given this environment. Everybody, stick with me. Let's send it over to our Sima Modi for a check on software, which you've been talking about, Sima. You have, and John, and I just think it's important context as we even back up and look at what's been really behind the recent sell-off. We started really on Monday, those headlines from Anthropic and the latest financials that the company released that showed a $30 billion revenue run rate and also showed the number of customers spending over a million dollars in annual recurring revenue doubling in less than two months.

It comes as Anthropic under Project Glass Swing revealed its latest AI model mythos to nearly 50 companies on concerns that if this model gets in the wrong hands, it could potentially lead to some type of cybersecurity risk. But the fact that CrowdStrike, Paulo Alto, Microsoft, and Vida all signed up. That was seen by the market as an indication that this model is in fact robust in nature that, in a way, amplified the AI competitive fears. This morning, UBS, downgrading service now, city downgrading six software names. including DocuSign and Autodesk, citing the, quote, blistering cadence of AI model releases. And if we take a step back and look at sort of the price action across the IGB software, ETF, John, you'll see some of the hardest hit names, HubSpot, into it, and even Palantir in the defense software space down about 15% or more.

All right, Seema, thanks. Adam, this is the part that doesn't make sense to me about this. It would be one thing if the bad guys had come up with Anthropics, Mythos, and were thus able to find all of these vulnerabilities themselves. But apparently they haven't been able to. And the fact that Anthropic shared this with the very folks who you would hope would be able to shore up some of these vulnerabilities, might that not actually be a good thing and a sign that the ecosystem needs each other? Well, there's a lot to unpack in that, John. And I do think that you remember, just for context, when the NASDAQ went down 77% from March 2000 to October 2002, you still had,

10 rallies of 15% or more. So I'm not saying software is like a one-way ticket lower. I think there could be some rallies on the path. I'm just saying that there's uncertainty about out-year earnings disruption potential. And I think what the analysts do is they call the CTOs of the big banks, and they all say we can't untether stuff. They call the companies, they say things are fine. And really what's going to happen is these companies have to invest a lot more in operating expense

to attach AI tools, the company. companies need, and so they're going to miss on earnings. Eventually, they're going to have less pricing power. So that's the reason I'm negative on the public equities. Your question's a little more complex to unpack. And I think in terms of just the overall market, just something that was said earlier, Matt mentioned. What's interesting is the analyst estimates, not just for software, but for the whole equity market, are actually lower now in every sector except tech from where they were on Gen 1. So I think the April setup is probably fine for earnings. There's a lagged impact of higher commodities in oil. So I think the issue is probably okay. We didn't see any negative

pre-releases here 10 days into the month. So I think you probably have a pretty good earning season and guidance. That could cause a little bit more optimism. The question is about the back half numbers because the one observation I'd make about equity so far this year is the penalty for missing has been way harsher than the reward for beating. And so until the market changed its view of that, I think we still have to be wary of only anything that could miss earnings. Warren Pyes, close this conversation out with me, if you will. And I'm going to get philosophical with you. We're in yet another April where the market is being whipsod by something that's happening policy-wise, although this year is way different from last year in so many ways. Are there lessons from last year and the equity's impact that we see from these macro-driven events that you would apply here? Yeah, I will take it a different direction and say that. I think that you should try to forget the lessons you learned last year a little bit.

I think there's a general outline of the taco trade. Nobody wants to use that word anymore, which I think is applicable here. And I think that the equity markets are important increasingly to the U.S. economy and to political outcomes. So the president has a vested interest in trying to support the capital markets. But we had quite a lockout rally last year when the tariffs were over. And as a firm, we were very positive coming out of that. We got overweight equities in early May, and we're expecting a big ripping rally.

I think the hangover from this war is going to be much more complex than the hangover we had from tariffs. So I think that the lesson everyone learned is to not reduce your equity exposure, to wait for the capitulation and the policy response. But I don't think it's going to be a V-shaped recovery this year, like we saw last year. And so the lessons of last year, you might want to have a short memory when it comes comes to mapping out the path. That's my philosophical take. And I look at the charts, I think 6850 is going to be a pretty tough nut to crack. It's big overhead resistance. And I expect a little

more chopped in just a straight V-shaped recovery here. All right. Yeah, 6850 doesn't seem to be happening today, at least not yet, not at this point in the hour. Warren, Adam, Matt, thank you. In the meantime, the big banks are set to report next week, starting with Goldman Sachs, I believe Monday morning. Leslie Picker is here with what to watch. Leslie. You are correct, John. It is Goldman Sachs Monday morning. And of course, the earnings next week come after a pretty tough quarter for bank stocks. The group slumping more than 8% in the first three months of the year. That's the worst quarterly performance since 2023. Analysts attribute that to three macro factors. There's the private credit turmoil, the AI disintermediation concerns, and the risk of stagflation from the

geopolitical environment. Now, despite that overhang of unsubstaffirm, certainty, the street expects first quarter earnings to be somewhat solid, driven by strong trading revenue. The season kicks off, as you mentioned with Goldman Sachs Monday. You can see that's followed by JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup on Tuesday, and then B of A and Morgan Stanley on Wednesday, John. Leslie, there's been so much volatility in the markets and especially the energy markets over the past few weeks. Do you expect that to show up in the guidance commentary for the financials, the banks that have that kind of trading exposure? I don't know if they'll provide guidance for the forthcoming quarters or the years specifically on markets' revenue that they expect.

They usually do that at conferences, kind of mid-quarter once they get a better sense of how it's transpired. But I do expect markets and trading to be huge drivers of revenue for a lot of firms. Equities trading in particular is supposed to be a record for the quarter. About $18 billion is what the street is. expecting there. And then as you mentioned, on the commodity side, that volatility has been very strong as well during the quarter. And so that should bode well for the banks that are more tilted toward fixed income commodities and currencies, the fixed side of things. And so that's definitely something to watch for. And that may also help offset investment banking,

which has been fine. It's definitely grown over the quarter. But I think everyone was expecting it to essentially go gangbusters in 26. there's just so much macro uncertainty out there that a lot of, at least the IPO pipeline and some of the bigger deals may not have really transpired, at least yet, in the way that some have been expecting. Yeah, we've been mentioning that uncertainty in the macro now and then. Leslie, thank you. Magic word, yes. Yeah. Let's bring in now KBW bank analyst Chris McGrady. Chris, you look at the banks and the

financials top to bottom, and we were just talking about a few of the different ways that these headlines that we've seen over the past few weeks might cut. How are you portioning out what you expect to do well versus not so well and the types of banks that are going to be affected? Well, great. Good to see it, John. The quarter is going to be, I think, pretty strong, right? We've seen a ton of market volatility. The updates the companies provided as recently as early March were that this was good volatility. We're seeing good trading results. We're going to see trading results up 15, 20% year on year. We're seeing investment banking healthy. There is a timing debate of when deals may close based on the macro. But overall, the banks are entering the

quarter from a position of strength. The fundamentals to start the year are still intact. And so we're really debating the macro versus the micro, but right now the fundamentals are pretty good. Are we still in a state where bigger is better? You've liked J.P. Morgan for a long time. I think city is also looking decent to you these days. Is this a situation where the bigger players are going to do substantially better than some of the smaller and the regionals? We think bigger is the place to be. Our theme that we've been really loud on in the last year is the Triple Crown, and that scale, diversification and consistency. The largest banks have all three of those in spades.

And so what you're going to see is when one part of the business isn't doing well, they have all their offsets. So trading is an offset. Could some of the banks this quarter build reserves because of the macro uncertainty? Absolutely. But these ROEs are so strong and so resilient that they have this diversification that's built in. And when you think about what do you pay for that, right? When I started my career over 20 years ago, the largest banks traded at the lowest multiples and the smallest banks traded at the highest multiples. I think that dynamic has been flipped on its head and I think there's permanence to it. The largest banks, the highest ROEs, the most consistent That's when investors pay for. Now, what about names like New York Community Bank Corp and PNC financial services that you traditionally haven't liked? Do you like them even less right now, or is there some SAV being applied? So PNC is a tremendous company. We're market perform on PNC.

They've got a high-teens return on tangible common equity. They've got excess capital. They're growing. There's operating leverage. To us, it's just a risk reward in the valuation that's keeping us a little. little bit more selective on the regionals. New York community, which is now Flagstar. This is the name that we generally have been cautious on. We've talked about this on your show over the past couple years. This company went through a lot of stress, right? The company had to raise a billion dollars

of capital in 2024. They had a lot of credit issues. But we've recently gotten very constructive on the stock. We did a lot of work over the quarter. We think they are past the heavy lift, right? They are returning to profitability. The credit situation is improving by the day. And we're We think the big YATZE moment on the story is the buyback. We think a buyback at 80% of tangible book is a very powerful one, and that's coming mid-year. How much of a private credit narrative do you expect in these earnings calls? And will that have an impact on some of the stock movement? Oh, it'll be on every call, John.

We saw that a couple years back when office commercial real estate, the banks get pressure to disclose more. They disclose more. I think investors become a little bit more comfortable. This private credit thing is a far-reaching discussion. It's touching all sides of the financial sector. But private credit is, it's very diverse, right? The banks have significant growth in private credit, but a lot of these assets are very low risk.

Now, there's some of the prominent ones we've been talking about that have some risk. But I would expect the banks to put their best foot forward on credit. They're going to talk about how the underwriting has been very strong at the bank level. one of the benefits of regulation over the past 15 years is the banks haven't been able to do some of the riskier lending that was really part of their balance sheets 15 years ago. All right. Well, listen for it. Chris, thank you. Chris McGrady from KBW. Now let's send it over to Christina Ports and Nvelas for a look at the biggest names moving into the close. Christina. John, let's look at shares of Palantir because they're following today. Despite praise from President Trump, who said the company had, quote, great warfighting abilities. and equipment in a post on truth social.

Big Short investor, Michael Burry, isn't maybe helping the stock right now. He doubled down on his bearer's few earlier today, announcing fresh put, so bets the stock will fall in the defense software firm. Texas Land Pacific, rebounding after its worst day since March 2020 yesterday, following the death of one of its board members, prompting fears that the board members' firm could sell its stake in the company. Shares now are on pace for their best day since February up 7%. And Vera Isaac's shares are selling off today after Barclays cut its price surrogate on the stock by $450,

but maintain its overweight rating. Its move is just weighing on some of the major credit bureaus right now. You can see TransUnion and Equifax are both lower. TransUnion down almost 4%. John? All right. Christina, thank you. And the S&P, just a couple points away from break-even.

We'll see if we can make it this hour, and we're just getting started. Up next, new concerns over Anthropics' latest. rollout dominating the street today. The details behind that developing story are coming after the break. And we're live from the New York Stock Exchange. You're watching Close the Bell on CNBC. Welcome back. Anthropics' new mythos model is good at finding unlocked doors and open windows and software raising some major concerns about cybersecurity. Kate Rooney is here with the details. Kate? Hey, John. So those major concerns this week are coming out of Washington. CNBC has confirmed the Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent,

met with top U.S. Bank CEOs this week to discuss some of the cybersecurity risks from Anthropics' new model. Mythos are Hugh's son confirming that one with sources familiar with these meetings. The heads of almost all of the U.S. banks, the major banks, were already in D.C. for another event when this gathering was called, according to these sources. They also say that J.P. Morgan's Jamie Diamond was the only major banking CEO who couldn't actually attend that meeting, Bloomberg was first to report this news. The meeting, John, though, really does underline some of the risk of what could happen to financial infrastructure and other infrastructure. If this technology does get into the wrong hands, the meeting was the same day it coincided with Anthropics' newest AI model that was released. We mentioned that one, Mythos. It is only

available right now to a select group of companies, including some of the banks, JPMorgan, on the list. The reason Anthropics says right now it might be too powerful. They say they want corporations, to basically get a head start on some of the bad actors that might have nefarious plans for ramped up versions of this technology, John. All right, Kate, thanks. Now, for more on this, let's bring in Khosur, CEO, Cassie Kauserkowb,

former Google chief decision scientist. Cassie, thanks for joining me here. When I saw this and they asked me who I wanted to talk to, I said you. Because you know a lot about this technology and the ways that companies and people are reacting to, it should react to it. Now, this seems like a big deal, but it also seems like a big deal. A company that people can trust is the one that came up with it, didn't release it into the

wild, and the ecosystem gets a chance to do something with it, no? Yeah, John, what I'm seeing in the discourse around this, and I want to push back on both of these popular ideas, but one is, oh, you know, big, scary model, we'd better hide it because the world is at risk from it. And then on the other side is anthropic making a great charitable move out of the greatness of their hearts to ensure that we're all safe. So what's not happening is something new. We actually see a constant race in cybersecurity between attackers and defenders. And it's always about making sure that defenders have a head start, have better tooling than attackers if they can.

And while we have a huge leaping capability here, likely with Mythos, we're seeing rumors of 10 trillion parameters, right? Those are still unsubstantiated rumors. I would also say that we don't actually know how big the runner-up model from Anthropic is, and that's opus, but we know that likely there's quite a lot of capability increase. So who should get it? Should it be attackers first? Should it be defenders first? Fairly obvious that it makes sense for defenders to get it.

And that's the first part. The other part is big, scary model. I want to push back here and give you a little back of the envelope calculation. Let's say that it is a $10 trillion. dollar, 10 trillion parameter, dense parameter model. Then what we're looking at is a cost to run it, not a price per token that they're selling it at, which has a markup, but a cost to run it that's on the order of a thousand times more expensive than Opus, the runner up. So let's think about who we're actually going to sell something that is a thousand times more expensive to. Is that going to be for

general consumers, unlikely. Now, should we give it to all enterprises? What I see enterprises struggling with is not being able to even make use of the AI capabilities that are already available. And this is what the industry called a capability overhang. Companies can't use what they have, let alone better. So in a way, this is like a billion dollar lock pick. Lockpick is probably the wrong metaphor here, because this isn't about actually helping you break in, but helping you see where the vulnerabilities are so that you can, I guess, apply your tools. Right. So in a sense, it seems like this market is very reactive, to put it mildly, and not taking the time to necessarily contemplate all of the underlying assumptions and

capabilities that AI is bringing to the table. Fair? Yes, fair. And I also want to say why this isn't a charity move for Anthropic or any other AI company. So the first thing is, just because a company can do something well, let's say cybersecurity, doesn't necessarily mean that that's the business that they want to be in. And I would guess that Anthropics' aims are not to be a cybersecurity provider, right? Play to your strength, or if we prefer the economist's way, to your comparative advantage, not necessarily your absolute advantage. So I would bet against Anthropic wanting to become a cyber security company. But any AI company needs to understand that the language of AI, how we actually get value out of it,

and this is part why there is so much struggle with AI transformation and AI adoption, getting value out of the existing capabilities, is that we have to change how we think about AI, about our tools. And instead of thinking about the steps by which things happen, we now have a language of goals and boundaries. That's AI thinking. And securing boundaries is what we need. AI companies need boundaries secured.

It sounds like what you're saying is this isn't a case where there's a new restaurant in town that's going to put all the other restaurants out of business. Anthropic doesn't necessarily want a storefront. They're providing a revolutionary ingredient that maybe all these restaurants need to figure out how to incorporate into their menu if they're going to stay in business.

This is a bit more perhaps like cloud infrastructure. infrastructure enabling SaaS and which companies were able to actually make that transition to offering their applications differently versus some big meteor that's necessarily going to wipe out the entire software space. Yes, and also look at it the other way around. If we're thinking about AI as requiring good, secure boundaries, then it's very bad for AI providers to have a porous unsecured ecosystem. So actually, having security companies enabled is in Anthropics' best interest and open AIs and all the rest of them. So that's why I'm saying it's not a charity move.

For sure. A little self-interest there, never hurt anybody in a capitalist system. Cassie Kozikov, thank you. Thanks. Still ahead, Apollo's Torsten Slok is standing by with his first take on today's data. Higher inflation, weakening consumer sentiment. We are digging in on all of it when closing bell. comes right back. Welcome back to closing bell. Inflation coming in a bit, hotter than expected for March,

while consumer sentiment plunged to its lowest reading on record. Joining me now to discuss Apollo's chief economist, Torsten Slok. Torsten, good to see you. You're arguing that on the whole, this economy is actually humming despite consumer concerns, no? That's right, John. So the data today, of course, showed that inflation is going up

because of energy prices going up. But if you look at core inflation, which excludes food and energy, that taxi is still quite muted. And yes, we did also today see some declining consumer confidence, but there's a major difference between what U.S. consumers are saying and what they're actually doing. If you look at the weekly data for same-store retail sales,

is still strong. If look at the daily data for how many people travel on airplanes, is also still strong. If look at the weekly data for how many people stay at hotels, is also still very strong. So across the board, the daily and weekly indicators that you can monitor, they still show an economy that is, as you say, humming and still doing quite well, despite the hit wins that we're facing here from higher

energy. Isn't it fair to say that you can only X food and energy for so long before you get hungry or have to drive somewhere or have to have something shipped in for somewhere? Won't this not only ripple through the economy, but consumers start to feel it and react to it because this data is so backward-looking? No, that's so true. But this is also why the whole discussion in markets and also therefore the discussion when it comes to the economy is about the duration of the shock. The longer time that energy prices stay elevated, the higher is the risk exactly as you're saying that we will see a spillover to airline fares. Airline fares only have a weight of 1% in the CPI basket, but jet fuel prices have gone up 100%. So that's why there is over

the next several months. If we do not get energy prices to come down, there are some spillover effects to your point that will begin to show up in, of course, core inflation. But at this point, we're just not seeing that quite yet. So let's see how long time the conflict continues. But But if it does begin to wind down over the next several weeks, we should also therefore expect this to begin to have a much milder impact on the core inflation numbers. Now, I suppose this reinforces the argument you've been making for a while, that there's too much focus on the idea of rate cuts, that if there's any move, the Fed ought to consider actually hiking rates into all this strength.

Are you still holding to that? And do you think the market, the equity market, has really rationalized the idea? that we might not get the rate cuts that seem to be priced in. No, you're right because last year the story in the economy was all about the hit winds coming from the trade war. This year, the story has really changed dramatically. Now there are some tailwinds coming from AI spending. They're very important tailwinds coming from the one big bill for bill.

The one big bill for bill means that households now have seen tax rates go down retroactively starting January 1, 2025. So that means that within the next week when we all file our taxes, we will see. see that households that last year on average got $3,000 in tax-refund, this year will get tax-free funds around $4,000. All this is a tailwind to growth. So that is, to your point, raising the risk, not so much that the economy is about to slow down, but the market is exactly saying, exactly what you're pointing out, that the next cut is only expected in September 2007. It's remarkable how steady and stable the market expects the Fed to be over the next

the 18 months. So from that perspective, yes, we should continue to worry about not. only the downside risk to the economy, but also the upside risks. It sounds, though, like maybe you're saying the economy is better than people are allowing for, but maybe the market is also pricing in a little bit too much when it comes to rate cuts as well. So where does that balance out? Are we rational? No. Through two-sided irrationality? No, that's a good point. So the issue here is exactly that a lot of the adjustment we've had in the

market is because of the magnificent seven. adjusting to a lower multiple. That's been quite dramatic over the last several months. But if the forecast here is that rates are going to stay higher for longer, that does mean that we should look at the market from the perspective that the discount rate, when we calculate the net present value of cash flows for businesses, it is going to be more impacted still by the fact that rates are going to stay elevated. So the fact that rates are higher for longer, because inflation is higher for longer,

it does still set a tone for the market where we should continue to focus on. Well, if rates are not going to come down, that does have significant implications for how we think about value versus growth and how we think about the overall outlook, especially, of course, for the tech sector and life sciences where there still continues to be, of course, especially some issues when it comes to software,

but also some issues when it comes to the broader macro backdrop. Some issues for sure. You've given us some good stuff to pencil in. Torsten Slocke from Apollo. Thank you. Thank you. Up next, we are tracking the biggest movers as we head into the close,

which is just about 15 minutes away. Christina Parks and Nevelas is standing by with that. Christina. John, we have two companies exploring deals today and a streaming giant racking of bullish calls ahead of earnings. We'll have those details just after the short break. 12 minutes and change until the closing bell. Let's get back to Christina Parks and Nobleos

for a look at the key stocks to watch. Christina. Let's start with Com Vault shirts because they're surging today on the back of a Reuters report that the company is exploring a sale. Goldman is working with a data protection firm to evaluate options, according to Reuters, who are citing people familiar with the matter.

Comvalt is on pace for its best day since September. Shares up almost 10% right now. And we have more merger news. Sun Farmera is closing in on a $12 billion bid for Organin and Co. The Economic Times reported citing people in the know. It would be quite the premium to the current $2.25 billion market cap that Organin, I should say, currently has. Organin shares on pace for their best day ever, up almost 28%.

And last but not least, Netflix. Seeing another bullish call today, this time from J.P. Morgan, who reiterated the stock at Overweight. It's just the latest for the streaming giant, which has seen a number of positive calls ahead of the earnings, which are just next week. The stock is up over 24% since it walked away from the Warner's Brother deal in late February. You can see it's marginally up today, but nonetheless, trading above 102 bucks. John? All right. Christina, thank you.

Up next, we are wrapping up a big week on Wall Street. chips, crypto and booze, all seeing some big moves, that and a lot more when we take you inside the market zone. Be right back. Seven minutes to the bell. We are now in the closing bell market zone. Ed Klessold from Ned Davis Research is here to break down these crucial moments of the trading day. Christina Parts of Neville is tracking the action in the chips. Brandon Gomez watching the alcohol names on a Friday. And today on McKeel is covering the big week for Bitcoin. Christina, let's get back to you and talk this time about the

chips. I was just laughing at the alcohol comment, but it was a massive week four chips. The socks and SMH both up more than 11%. Far outpacing the S&P 500, the ceasefire really drove investors back into momentum names. Memory, storage plays. Yes, I'm throwing it into the momentum box. Sandusk and Micron, Western Digital, all surging double digits. Intel, another name up 24% this week after joining Elon Musk's TerraFab chip project and expanding a multi-year AI partnership with Google, although there were no financial details. Broadcom locked in a long-term deal to supply custom AI chips for Google

through 2031 and expanded its compute agreement with Anthropic. Speaking of Anthropic, Corweave, also on a tear signing a multi-year deal with Anthropic this morning and a $21 billion agreement with Meta just yesterday. Long-term commitments really is what investors want to see, which is why you're seeing shares up about 12%

just in the last two days. And I'll end on optical names. Lumentum and coherent because they are rallying this week more, especially today after Lumentum CEO said in the last 24 hours that they sold out in 2027 and 2028 will be sold out within two quarters. Can I get more bullish than that? John? Yeah, that might as touching AI expanding from Jensen Juan, apparently to Anthropic Open AI and some others. Now let's send it over to Brandon Gomez for a look at the big move in booze stocks this week. Yeah, John, almost happy hour. Check out some big moves in booze this week.

Brown Foreman, adding double-digit gains on reports that the company is in talks with Kentucky-based Sazirac. Now, that's the company behind brands like Buffalo Trace and Southern Comfort Whiskey. It's not the first, but the second deal being floated in the last month, French distiller, Perno Ricard, confirming it engaged in early stage deal talks for a possible merger with the Jack Daniels maker. Brown Forman up 25% since then. Meantime, Corona and Medello Brewer consolation brands also a winner this week after topping earnings estimates. The company did cut guidance for 2027 and pulled its 2028 Outlook ahead. head of a CEO turnover next week. But analysts not ready to call a rebound here yet, some identifying signs of a bottom for subdued alcohol demand. We'll have to wait and see how it

plays out, John. Yeah, we'll see if that bottoms up. Brandon, thanks. Now let's turn it over to today on McKeel, who is watching Bitcoin for us. Yeah, John, Bitcoin on track for a weekly gain of 9%. That'll be its best week since October 3rd. And that's despite mostly rangebound movement this week, driven by that risk on rally after the first ceasefire headlines, ETF outflows after that weakened momentum after the bounce. And then we saw big forced liquidations on both longs and shorts. And so, John, it looks like big players here are buying Bitcoin while short-term traders keep shaking the price around because ETF flows are net positive.

And then on-chain data is also showing long-term holders aren't selling their coins. The macro pressure and risk-off bursts are still keeping Bitcoin from sustaining gains. So look at the big winners this week in crypto. It's actually the accumulators. Those are companies whose job it is. to buy and hold crypto to increase shareholder value, check out strategy, strive, sharp link, and bitmine, and then stocks like Coinbase and Circle underperformers. U.S. Iran negotiations and inflation are what are going to continue to drive direction here, John.

$76,000 is the level analysts are watching for a broader recovery. All right, Tena, thank you. Now, as we head toward the bells, let's bring in Ed Klessold from Ned Davis Research, from FinTech to just Finn the financials for a moment, Ed. Good to have you. If I'm not mistaken, you've been. kind of about the financials, given the situation on interest rates and what people are assuming, we're going to get a lot more bank earnings next week. What do you expect?

Yeah, we're expecting the earnings themselves for this quarter to be okay. But there's a lot of skeletons potentially in the closet with what's going on in private markets, not really sure how that's going to follow through. And first, financials are one of the most economically sensitive sector. So coming into the year, we thought economic growth is going to peak in Q1 and slow down from there. You've got a little bit of a bump from the one big, beautiful bill, and then a downward slope from there. And then everything going on in the Middle East and the impact of spike in oil prices, a lot of that extra tax revenue or tax refunds are probably going into people's gas tanks. And so the economic projections going forward aren't particularly good. And so there's no reason

to get too excited about financials going forward. Do you think that the market investors are correctly positioned when it comes to the banks, especially the consumer-facing banks, given the earnings that we're about to get? Or if you look at the volatility that we've had over the past couple weeks, might there be a reality check coming with some of these numbers next week? Yeah, it's tough to say where exactly the positions are, given that people can position so many different ways with all the derivatives going going on in the market now. But I think if these numbers are not a lot better expected,

and then also to the point where the guidance going forward is going to be incredibly strong, I think there could be some further weakness in financials. There's going to have to be a lot better guidance to get people more excited about the second. How long before these energy price spikes that we've seen and at this point, persistently high price of oil before that leaks through into more areas of. of the economy and becomes more of a concern. Yeah, so this one CPI report didn't show that yet. So that's one good sign.

Yeah, we had a spike in the headline CPI, but the core was a little bit better than expected. But, yeah, this was just a few weeks. I think we're going to see this throughout the next few months, even if there's some great news over the weekend about the opening the industry of removes, and I'm not sure it's going to happen. But even if there were to be, I think we're going to see that seep through.

we haven't seen a spike like this in a long time. In fact, a gasoline increase month over months from today's CPR report was the highest on record going back several decades. So to think that we're going to get through this without any other secondary, tertiary influences on the economy is probably pretty wishful thinking. All right. Yeah, I understand where you're coming from there. Ed Klissold from Ned Davis Research, as we're in the last few seconds before the closing bell, it does not look like the S&P 500 is going to manage to stagger across the finish line in the green. That won't be an eight-day streak, it appears. But what a week it has been, rebound from some of those lower levels as it looked like that conflict, that war in Iran,

has a chance of winding down. Straight-of-four moves, though, still not open. So we continue to talk about energy prices. That's going to do it for closing down. We're going to send it over for overtime now with Leslie Sucid.