Closing Bell - Closing Bell: 4/1/26

Episode Date: April 1, 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.

All right, welcome to closing bell. I'm Scott Wapner, live from Post 9 here at the New York Stock Exchange. This maker breakout begins with another jump in stocks as the president signals a coming end to the war. Here is a look at the majors now. With 60 to go in regulation, we have had some nice follow-through from yesterday's big rally. Lost a little bit of steam in the last 30 minutes or so. We'll keep an eye on everything over this last hour. Big banks and some of the industrial names today, two of the strongest groups. It's been another pretty good day for the mega caps, led by nice jumps in meta and alphabet, and there is Apple marking its 50th anniversary today. It too is in the green. Semis are strong as well. Micron with a massive snapback today from its large and recent decline.

There's the stock getting about 8 plus percent back, but some of the other chip materials names are on the rise as well. Not Nike, though. Shares are tumbling today. It's outlook falling short of expectations. It's China business under significant pressure still. The stock down about 15%. It does take us to our talk of the tape, the investor playbook, if in fact this war is nearing a conclusion. Let's first go to Washington for the very latest. As the president gets ready to address the nation this evening, our Aman Javers is in our bureau in Washington with more. Hi, Amon.

Hey there, Scott. White House officials have started to give reporters a sense of what President Trump will say in his address to the nation tonight. But they're not indicating that the president will make any. major announcements or news, although, as we know, that can always change. A White House official tells CNBC the president will give an operational update on the progress of Operation Epic Fury, which they say is meeting or exceeding all benchmarks. He's expected to say the U.S. military has been successful in achieving all of its stated goals prior to the operation.

Those include destroying Iran's ballistic missile and production facilities, annihilating their Navy ensuring terrorist proxies can't destabilize the region and guaranteeing that Iran can't obtain a nuclear weapon. The official also says the president will reiterate the two or three week timetable for concluding the operation. We heard him say that on camera as recently as yesterday. Now, with all that said, it doesn't sound at least so far as if the president's going to use tonight's address to announce an end to combat operations or a major escalation. But we'll have to watch at 9 p.m. to find out, Yes, we will. And we will talk to you many times after that. Amen, thanks so much. It's Amon Javis in Washington, as you see.

Oil prices, the key question now, not moving all that much, still elevated as the Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed. Pippa Stevens has more on that angle for us today. Hi, Pippa. Hey, it's got some modestly lower here with oil hovering right around the $100 level. And the last of the pre-war-loaded cargoes are now being delivered, meaning the extent of the supply chalk has not yet been felt. Kepler showing that Middle Eastern barrels excluding Iranian crude in transit to Asia has plunged to just 13.5 million barrels this week down from the typical pre-war level of over 110 million barrels. And Bank of America saying today that their new forecast is for oil to stay around $100 per barrel for the rest of this year, assuming the war ends at the end of this month. And if not,

crude could average 130 for the year. Now, the energy sector is on track to snap its record 14 straight weeks of gains. B of A noting that investors are dumping individual names in favor of broad exposure, energy ETFs seeing the biggest inflows since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war. Scott? I appreciate that update from you. Pippa Stevens. Thank you very much. Now to our panel, Rockefeller private advisor, Cheryl Young, RBC's Lori Calvesina, JPMorgan's Stephanie Aliyaga. It's good to have everybody here at post-9. I get the feeling from reading everybody's notes that the common theme is that all of you are trying to look past this. to look through it to the other side as to how you should be investing,

thinking that this is going to end pretty soon? Is that fair? Hopefully. Hopefully very soon. I mean, Trump's indicating that. That's what we're hearing. We'll find out a little bit more tonight, I think. Yeah. So how is that impacting what your thoughts are on the market itself? So I think that you have to really understand the risks that we have with all the geopolitical tensions. And you also have to look at what was working prior to going into this. Energy was already up 25% year today going into the war. And people were kind of forgetting that that was already a major theme because of the massive need for energy in AI build-out in data centers.

And so I think energy has gotten really extended, but it's still a very interesting sector. It's something that I think you have to hedge right now with where it's trading. But outside of that, you have to really look at how is the economy doing. The economy is doing pretty well overall. we're still seeing really robust earnings growth in stocks. Lori, it sounds to me like you are very much aligned with Ed Yardini, who says, if Trump is declaring mission accomplished, then so are we regarding our stock market correction call. We'll probably lower our recession odds.

Once we have a better handle on whether the conflict is actually over, we reserve the right to change our mind. Nevertheless, we've maintained our 7,700 S&P 500 year-end target. Yours is 7750 and it hasn't changed. So you're in camp, you're Denny. Yeah, so we actually changed our process a little bit this year. So we're doing a 12-month forward look and we update that monthly. We haven't made any changes.

And I would say what I've been trying to emphasize to people is just take it one day at a time. I think I've said everybody needs to take a deep breath more times than I can care to remember. But the reality is that we know that we will come out of this. And so what I've really been debating is that if we're looking at sort of the short-term interim downside, are we in a Tier 1 drawdown or a Tier 2 drawdown. Now, what I mean by those, Tier 1, that's what we're in. Garden variety, 5 to 10%. Markets trying to stabilize in here.

And I think we did sort of come to the brink, whereas one of my colleagues told me this morning things we're starting to get a little dicey. If you go back to the GFC, if you don't stabilize around 10%, what we've seen in these corrections is you tend to go down at least 14. And so Tier 2 for us is a 14 to 20% growth scare type drawdown

where you're fearful of a recession or an unwind, but it's a near miss. And I found, frankly, as I was talking to investors last week, and I did a big, you know, sort of a four-day trip, frankly, talked to more investors than I can even remember. But I found that most people were sort of debating the same as well. We're not really, you know, we're starting to hear questions. Are earnings expectations going to be hit? What are your stress tests for GDP? But nobody's using the R word right now.

Yeah. Are we capable of the last two days suggesting that now we have firmly stabilized in your mind? Are we still a little dicey? How do you feel? We're still a little dicey in the sense that we haven't reached an all-clear for markets on the geopolitical front. That's absolutely still a risk. But markets don't necessarily wait until they have the all-clear, right? And neither should investors.

But the time that we get the all-clear, it tends to be too late. So you need to make sure your positions or your portfolios are right-sized to now an increased likelihood that we wind down here within a number of days or weeks. And what does that mean? I mean, it means that we can refocus on some of the fundamentals that we think are still very much intact, even with this war having lasted a month. And a lot of the resiliency that we're seeing and the upgrades we're seeing on earnings around the AI theme,

many of those names of which valuations have come down the meaningful levels. I mean, the top 10 stocks in the index are at their lowest valuation relative to the broad market that they've been in the last five, six years. The key of what you said is most especially the earnings outlook. It hasn't changed.

And if anything, it's gone up. So people are still holding on to the, the dream that earnings are going to live up to where their expectations are, even if oil prices remain elevated. And on that note, I thought Bank of America had a note that was worthy of debating today where they suggest it's oil being elevated is more of a headwind for growth than earnings and stocks in which they say, our economists bump down their real GDP forecast from 28 to 23, but energy costs are a relatively small portion of total S&P 500 operating costs. We maintain $310 for earnings, which would be 13% year-on-year growth, right? That's still pretty robust.

And that's why they say you can look through this to the other side and earnings are going to live up to the hype. And thus, if they do that, then stocks have to, right? We hope so, but there's still a lot of things that can go wrong. Scott, we're seeing disruptions, for example. Today there's news about, you know, tea being, you know, supply chain issues with getting tea to places and cosmetics. And so I think. think there's still a lot of ambiguity about what the risks to supply chains are. And I think one of the big questions I would have is there's still a lot of issues in the region where, for example, AWS got hit three times in early March.

It's not really hitting the news a lot, but there was a lot of disruptions to banks in the Middle East. There was disruption to snowflake. There's still problems that could come out of this. And remember, consumers are 70% of the economy. So when I go fill up the gas tank, I don't think a lot about it, but I can guarantee my 22-year-old does. I mean, you manage money for wealthy family offices. Are they at the point now where thinking we should stay more cautious?

I mean, your constituents, so to speak, are a different kind of investor. Yes. Extremely wealthy people who want to hold on to the money that they have. They're probably more risk-averse than many others, wouldn't you say? Well, I'm in Silicon Valley, so I get a little. lot of, I get a lot of very aggressive clients as well, Scott. And we, we tend to like stocks more than bonds just because if you have enough money, you can ride through these kind of market cycles, right? You don't necessarily need to de-risk or get scared when things go awry.

And I think the question really is, you know, is there risk to these companies in our core portfolio? If I look at the MAG 7, for example, these stocks are trading up, multiples that are finally starting to get interesting. Yeah, that's what Stephanie was saying. I mean, they've really compressed across the board. And I don't think companies like, you know, meta or Google are really at great risk because the oil prices are higher. I think they're going to work through this quite well. Is that the game changer in any way in this whole thing, Lori, is that you have had multiple

compression in stocks that some had suggested had gotten a little too rich and were spending too much money. And now they have found themselves into an attractiveness that they maybe haven't had for a minute. I think that's true for the U.S. broadly. and this AI tech part of the market is sort of the beneficiary of that. And so if I go back and look last fall, the market cap weighted S&P 500 PE, just a bottom-up calculation was at 28 times.

And if we look at where it is, as of last Thursday, it was down around 21 times. And we saw some of the big mega-cap, you know, growthy names. I can't say names on TV, but we saw some of those. Everybody knows which ones you're talking about. But we saw those, you know, just dramatically derate. And at the same time, what happened was that European valuations moved up. Canadian valuations, the most expensive on my global developed markets framework right now. Australia moved up.

And so we actually measured this the Tuesday after the Iran strikes occurred. If you looked at the U.S. versus non-U.S. on a relative P.E., we were way below the five-year average. And we had actually washed out the premium on a 20-year basis. So we're hearing, you know, both bottom up and top down, there's some resiliency. and the U.S. obviously risk in pockets, but better off than Europe or Asia. But the valuation door was also opened for both those tech names and the U.S. broadly to benefit from that outperformance and resiliency. Does the door opening especially, Stephanie, for those tech names, just invite people to walk through it again on the other side of this?

I think a lot of this depends on the duration of this conflict, of course. Let's take it at face value. Let's just assume, let's just say it lasts another two to three weeks. What the president's going to tell the nation tonight, we're going to see whether that plays out to be the case, but nonetheless, if I told you that's going to be the case, and you believe that, how does that factor into how you'd answer the question? I think the fundamentals are still quite resilient.

I mean, we're in the sweet spot right now, where so long as this conflict does not persist for many additional months, we have a handle on some of these supply constraints that could really pose an issue for these AI companies. It's after those few months that things get thornier, Because right now, I mean, you have economies like Korea and Taiwan facing the greatest pinch when it comes to prices because of this energy shock. But who depends on Korea and Taiwan for all of these all-important inputs around chips, right? U.S. companies do.

And those prices would likely be passed along to those U.S. tech companies. The good news is we're putting a lower profitability on that happening this week than we were last week. And that's helping, I think, with some of this momentum. Is the broadening trade the thing that's most at risk? Is that the thing that's changed the most within the market? Because if I'm worried now about a potential growth scare from elevated energy prices, how am I going to feel confident enough to go out onto the cyclical curve, ones that are more susceptible to a slowing economy?

I think that's right. If you looked at small caps going into February 27th, small caps are up over 6%. I mean, they're barely, barely up on the year. But the fact that you can even say that they're still green for the year is a is a stunning statement in many respects in that of itself. The fact that the Russell's green. And green today, and green today. But I think there's a little bit more risk.

I think investors are going to tend to hunker down, go a little bit higher quality. So I think those mag seven names still do very well in an economy like this. People want something they can get their hands. I'm going to know. And again, if you think about what's been moving the markets for the last couple of years, You take South Korea, Taiwan to Stephanie's point. I mean, DRAM contracts this month, quarter over quarter, we're up 90 to 95%. We still have massive demand.

And you look at companies supplying memory, for example, they're sold out for the next two years. There's still a lot of appetite for what can happen with this AI trade. And that is very positive for semiconductors, positive for the MAG 7. I think we still see stabilization towards those larger names. And I don't think you want to talk about individual names. so I'll do it. But we can look at a chart, for example, of Micron, which I know you're referring to. So you're suggesting that that pullback and ones like it were overdone?

I think it's overdone. I mean, again, not referring to any specific names. Sure, that's why I did. There's some great memory names coming out of South Korea as well. And yes, I think that they just got hammered and unreasonably so. How about the broadening trade, Laura? Is it now in some serious question? And is that yet another reason why I want to look at those types of stocks,

the MAG 7, you know, other semis, and gosh, maybe even software, which has been beaten up so hard? Yeah, I mean, look, I do think that this has reminded me a little bit of the rebound out of tariffs last year. And if you looked last year, we had this broadening trade to start the year. We had the whole tariff issue. And then we had the summer of the AI names, right? And then we got another broadening trade towards the end of the year.

And, you know, we actually have gone and looked, you know, sort of at the earnings growth dynamics very, very closely. And we said at the beginning of the year, we said we're going to lean into the broadening trade for now. But if value, if the rest of the market cannot display superiority on various earnings metrics, it's not going to last and it's going to be a tug of war. And guess what? We're right back to a place where the rate of upward revisions is strongest for the top 10 market cap names and barely impositive territory for the rest of the market. If you look at bottom-up consensus numbers for 26 and 27, there are four to six. six points ahead in that Mag 7 trade versus the rest of the market. And we've actually seen 27 numbers improve a bit in addition to 26.

So that Mag 7 trade, that AI trade, is hanging on to its earnings dominance. And people want to rotate so bad, but AI is just not letting it. Believability and durability, right? The two words that I think of maybe more than any others when it comes to exactly what Lori was saying about those names. If you have believability that they're going to continue to deliver their earnings growth, which is better than everything else, and they're durable more so than these others,

and they can withstand some geopolitical events. They're looked at as times as safety plays. That feels like it leads people back. Yeah, I mean, these tech companies are less sensitive to things like higher energy prices and even it's highening in credit conditions because of how much of this KEPX is cash-financed. And beyond that, as long as you can hold on to the belief

that we are still in such early innings of this AI, adoption boom, that is bullish for many of these companies that have already seen cloud service revenue grow 37% year over year. You guys worried at all about the backup in rates that we've had? Because it felt like a good headwindler for the market itself. Now, obviously, they started to come down, but they're back up as we have this conversation now. I think it matters tremendously. And we saw back in 2023, there was a 10% drawdown in the S&P, and the only thing I could figure out at the time was that 10-year treasury yields were moving up. And I know, I've been running stress tests like everybody else for the last month, and my first higher oil price scenario, I put in 4.5% on the 10-year yield for my PE multiple assumption.

It's a long story. I won't get into it, but it's one of the feeders into it. And within a week of having that out, I had to revise it and put in 5% because we were already getting close to that 4.5%. So, you know, and we have just seen historically for whatever reason, when you even start talking about 5% 10-year treasury yields, it adds some angst to the market. Well, you could see it. Like when we started to approach, you know, we get like 450-ish. Now, we're at 432. It's a different story. People started to feel a little uneasy about that.

Yes, yes. And they should. There's been so much discussion about rates moving down this year. And again, I just don't see, we'll see when the jobs numbers come out and more to tell there. But I think the pressure is going to be on a little bit more of an inflationary, you know, for the short-term time frame, which is not great for the stocks. Well, last point, step. No, I think I absolutely echo that. I think we're going to see rates probably set a little higher for longer.

But look, it's for good reasons, right? We don't see the rug coming out underneath the labor market because corporate America is doing quite well. And for all of the doom and gloom around AI boosting layoffs, we actually don't really see evidence of that in the hard data. But where we do see evidence of as AI boosting corporate efficiency, boosting corporate productivity. And we think ultimately that's going to be bullish for the labor market. Great having you all here. Ladies, thanks so much. We'll talk to all of you soon.

Boy, Nike, got to be one of the stocks of the data. day. Gabrielle Fon Rouge is following that on what is dragging this stock down by so much, Gabby. Yeah, so shares of Nike are on pace for a new 52-week low today after the retailer issued weak guidance and warned its turnaround is taking longer than expected. Now, last night, investors were looking for a show-me story, but all they learned was there's still more pain ahead. Sales are going to be down for the rest of the year, and its cleanup in China could persist through fiscal 2027, which hasn't even begun yet. Nike does expect gross margin to begin to expand at the end of the year,

but that could also be at risk given the war in the Middle East and potentially higher input costs. The lagging turnaround and the persistent bad news is leading Wall Street to lose patience with CEO Elliott Hills' turnaround planned. This morning, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and JP Morgan all downgraded the stock, Scott. All right, Gavin. Thank you, Gabrielle. Thank you.

We're just getting started here coming up next. Countdown to an IPO. SpaceX reportedly filing confidentially to go public. We do have new reporting today as well on the race to go public between Anthropic and Open AI. We'll ask Top V.C. Lothony for his thoughts next. SpaceX reportedly filing confidentially for its coming IPO. Mackenzie Segalis has more details for us today. Hi, Mac. Hey, Scott. So this confidential filing sets up what could be the biggest public market debut. in history. SpaceX reportedly looking to raise $75 billion and a valuation north of $1.75 trillion. Now, this lets SpaceX work through SEC review in private before opening its books to investors,

though it would still need to make that filing public at least 15 days before the roadshow. Bloomberg says the company is currently preparing for investor briefings this month to justify that valuation. The pitch is that SpaceX isn't just a rocket company anymore. It now includes Starlink, X, and XAI, while also running a massive government business that's brought in more than $24 billion. If the deal happens, it would be historic on every front. More than 20 banks reportedly on the underwriting syndicate, retail investors potentially getting as much as 30% of the offering, not to mention the fact that it would make Musk the first person ever to lead two trillion-dollar public companies. Scott? All right. Mack, thank you, McKenzie Segal. For more on what to expect

from that offering and the other major ones that are looming large. We are joined now by the venture capitalist low Tony of Plexo Capital. Welcome back. Good to see you. Thanks for having me. What are your expectations for SpaceX? Well, it's a potentially $25, $30 billion IPO, but with a very small float. So I would say it's not so much about liquidity as it is to potentially have better price discovery.

And to put that in context, you know, this deal could rival. entire year of IPO issuances. And if it prices at the high end, then we're talking about one of the largest IPOs ever. But I think we're focusing solely on the IPO as a bellwether for other IPOs, such as Anthropic, where we are an investor or Open AI, that misses a larger point. This is the first company coming to market that's really trying to control the full cost curve of AI infrastructure. And that's not just compute, but where it can. compute lives. And we've been focused so much on GPUs, data centers, and power constraints, but there's another constraint emerging, which is the location and energy availability.

You know, communities have been pushing back about power usage in their areas. Policymakers are talking about making the data centers identify their own power. And so maybe the question starts to become, what if constraint isn't just chips and power, but where compute lives? And And I think that's what also makes SpaceX very unique, being able to control launch, global data transport through Starlink, and now AI through XAI. And so a logical extension is moving compute off Earth. So I think investors are really underwriting two timelines at once. Near-term, Starlink growth, launch economics, but long-term, it could be a bet on a

completely new model for AI infrastructure. Is that a good or a bad thing? Well, I think for an investor, that is a bet that could make a massive payoff if it happens. I mean, there's a lot that would need to be in place. So this isn't something that could happen near term. But we have heard Elon talk a lot about this. We know Elon is a fan of vertical integration. We've seen that executed very successfully at Tesla, and we see him going deeper with SpaceX.

and he's talked about the ability to be able to take advantage of 24-hour solar power, the ability to have a different method of cooling, kind of figuring out how to deal with vacuums, but space is cold, so that works, and to not have to deal with any of the, you know, terrestrial regulatory issues about going into communities. So I think, you know, that's kind of the larger bet. So we have a few threads happening with this IPO. That's interesting. And the idea, too, that retail is potentially going to get a much larger chunk of this right out of the gate than would traditionally be seen. What do you make of that? Well, there's a couple of things. I go back to the small amount of float and price discovery, coupled with the fact that we know

that Elon has a massive following of fans who are clamoring to get their hands onto this opportunity. SpaceX historically has been one of the most popular names within the secondary market. So I think this is a little bit strategic as well. And again, with that small float, there's a natural constraint on supply. So again, this is going to allow for a nice discovery of what the price really is that investors will bear, especially those retail investors as well. Since you mentioned the secondary market, there was a story that moved earlier today that I thought was quite interesting. And I wanted to ask you about, I'm going to ask you to try and take your anthropic investor hat and put it to the side and just try and judge this best you can based on the story that OpenAI and the shares have fallen out of favor, according to this report on the secondary market, as there seems to be just a tremendous amount of building buzz for Anthropic.

What should we make of that? What I think we should make is what we looked at when we go back all the way to 2023 in the fall, when we first started looking at Anthropic, what we liked the most was the fact that the company was very focused on the enterprise market. And that was reflected not only in their approach to building out the infrastructure where they, Anthropic, instead of like Open AI, Anthropic doesn't do video, right? it's a much more efficient use of their compute, but then also the way that there were guardrails instrumented around the anthropic platform as well. We suspected that was going to be much more attractive to the higher margin enterprise customers. And again, focusing on those enterprise customers and their needs, so therefore not need to do things like video would allow for a quicker recovery to cash flow break even. And so we're now seeing that place.

out in a few different ways. We're seeing Open AI shift more towards enterprise, and we're seeing Open AI begin to constrain some of their efforts around where their areas of focus are going to be, most notably and recently with the discontinuation of SORA, which was a massive cost to them in terms of the compute. So I think the secondary market right now is reflecting somewhat of a repricing of risk-reward for AI, not solely for focused on just the growth dynamics themselves. Both companies are going really well, but I suspect that that is a signal that secondary investors are telling us they feel a little bit more comfortable with the risk reward of Anthropic and where Anthropic is on the valuation curve.

I almost feel like you're suggesting that what felt at the beginning like, God, such a transformational tool for for consumers. who looked at what OpenAI had done with ChatGPT and said, I've never seen anything like this before, could end up being more monetizable, if you will, at a higher rate with Anthropic and the enterprise applications that they have. Is that something that we need to focus on a little bit more? Is that what's at play here in some degree as well? Absolutely. I mean, that really summarizes it quite well.

which is why you have your job. So when I think about where we're heading with the labs, with the Open AIs, the anthropics of the world, if we look at their product line, you know, a lot of people focus on the chat experience of open AI is almost like a Kleenex of sorts. When people think on the consumer side of AI,

they often think of chat GPT. You know, that's one area. And I think ultimately my thesis is that the intelligence as a product will, converge as we get closer to AGI. And so then whether an enterprise chooses to use open AI or Anthropic, it'll be somewhat fungible in terms of general intelligence. Where Anthropic has shown great prowess is in being able to customize around specific verticals. We've all heard what's happened with Anthropic and their Claude Code, right? And so that is a signal that they have been

able to kind of take their general intelligence product, customize it for code, and come out with a very compelling application. And I've always talked about for the past two years, when we move up the stack, that's where we're going to see the most value is in these applications. The more that Anthropic begins to build out for other areas, finance, some of the work they're doing to power, the buyouts of the private equity firms, consulting. That's where I think things get very interesting is being able to make these customized solutions as applications to sit on top of the intelligence where I think the intelligence will be able to converge. And we won't have these conversations around who's at the top of the leaderboard for intelligence.

It'll be about who's monetizing that intelligence with applications that have good margins. It's going to be fun to watch. Great insight. As always, Lowe, thanks so much. That's Lowe, Tonea Plexo. Still ahead, Apple, marking that major miles. Stone today. Star analyst Dan Ives has a new note on what he expects that stock to do. We'll discuss when we come back.

50 years ago today, a company called Apple Computer was founded in California. It's since grown into one of the most important and successful consumer product businesses ever. The stock up 259,000 percent since the IPO back in 1980. And as you know, reigned for years as the most valuable company in the world. It recently seated that crown. For more, we're joined by Wed Bush analyst Dan Ives. He's with me here at Post-Nine. It's good to see you.

It's been a remarkable run, and we'll talk about what's next. But what is is the fact that the stock feels like it's a little more resilient than some of the others. It hasn't come as far off its 52-week high as some of the others. And the smartphone business, its core business, feels like it's pretty good. Yeah. I think to some extent it's been a surprise upgrade cycle in terms of iPhone 17. And then you look at the services business, that's held up, rocked Gibraltar-like in terms of what we've seen from the growth. Look, and then from AI, and obviously the disappointment in the last few years, but ironically, almost by accident, it's like they went the wrong way, but somehow they got there first, in terms of not spending on CAPEX on AI and almost waiting to something that I was self-inflicted, they now find themselves in a situation with two and a half billion iOS devices to ultimately monetize the AI revolution from a consumer perspective.

I think that's why it's been a safety blanket in a very nervous environment. It really is interesting. What was perceived to be a tremendous liability now, in hindsight, feels like it was a good decision to be more asset light than some of these other companies that are just tripping over one another to spend the tens of billions of dollars that they think is required. I'd say, look, 80% of that was, I think, by accident. Yeah, of course. I mean, seldom inflicted.

Some times the best things happened by accident. Yeah, exactly. And I think, but Cook definitely recognized, especially over the last year, that, like, they needed to change the DNA from an AI perspective. They brought in from the outside in terms of some of the Microsoft and others. And I think in terms of when you think about Gemini and Google, that's another one, like almost by accident, because by the DOJ, by that suit, by Google winning, that now opened up the opportunity to really double down as a partner with Gemini, which is really going to be their core engine when it comes to AI. But with that said, a golden 50 years. But now it comes down to Cook's legacy will be defined by the AI chapter. What do you think his best accomplishment has been in his tenure in this run?

I think first off, supply chain logistics. I mean, Apple, I think some will say, and they'll say, okay, they've lost their innovation. I actually think Cook has innovated massive, in terms of the last, call it the last five, seven years, but it's really the logistics, the supply chain. What they've built out is really unrivaled in terms of around the world. Now, obviously, a lot of that in China. And then you look, 10% politician, 90% CEO, I think his ability to navigate regards to the administration has been really one of his key parts of the success. He's got to get AI right. Right. It's too early to declare victory. Not you say. And that's why WWDC would be extremely important in June.

and they need to make sure that the consumer AI revolution comes through Cupertina. All right, I know we'll see you out there. We look forward to that. Dan Ives, thank you. Thank you. All right, coming up next, we're tracking the biggest movers as we heading to this close today. Christina Parts of Nevelos is standing by with that. Hi there.

Hi, Scott, a major chipmaker buying back a multi-billion dollar stake in one of its own factories. We'll have that and obviously much more when we come back after this short week. We're just about 10 from the closing bill. Let's get back to Christina Parts and Nevelos for a look at the stocks that she's watching. What's on your list? I want to start with Intel shares because they're jumping. You know, down from earlier, highs was still up almost 9% after announcing it's buying back Apollo's... Apollo Global's 49% equity interest in its chip facility in Ireland for roughly $14.2 billion.

Apollo spent $11 billion just a few years ago because Intel sold that stake in 2024 and says this move right now reflects stronger business momentum and could help their credit profile. That's why shares are up. R-H shares, though, are going the opposite direction, tumbling about 20% after posting earnings and full-year revenue guidance that did miss Wall Street expectations. The home furnishings company said it was hit by tariffs and bad weather, and they expect revenue to continue to decline in Q1. And then shares of Hasbro, they're falling right now, roughly about almost 5% after confirming a cybersecurity hack, and the company says it may take several weeks before the incident

has actually resolved. The Peppa Pig and Dungeons & Dragons toy maker has taken certain systems offline and is conducting an investigation to figure out the scale of this breach. Got it. All right. Christina, thank you. Christina Parts de Nvelas. Coming up next, the big weight loss win that is sending Eli Lilly's shares higher today. Look at that stock better than 4%. Details in the zone next. We're now in the closing bell market zone, Mike Santoli and 314's Warren Pyes are here to

break down these crucial moments of the trading day. Plus, tonight in McKeel is watching coin shares public debut and Angelica Peebles is tracking that action. We've showed you in Lilly a little bit earlier. Michael feels like we sprinted and now we're just a little bit tired. We need a drink. We need to catch our breath and see what's what. Yeah, to a degree, Scott. Certainly at the highs today. We spent like two hours

with the S&P 500 just hanging around 6,600. I feel like a lot of times you have one of the prospects for this tactical lows, a strong rally day and then it's about the market almost reacting to its own reactions to these different levels. That's where we are right now. I'd point out it's also a very

top-heavy performance day in terms of what's driving this follow-through to the upside, which is modest at this point. So, you know, there's tests along the way. I think you have to be open-minded to the possibility that at the recent lows, Friday and Monday, the market did price in, maybe a more prolonged and more complicated conflict with more oil disruptions. But you need confirmation, I think, incrementally here from oil and everything else to have this be more than a balance. I mean, what does the shortened week do for how you think this is? going to wrap off, right? We're going to get a jobs report, I think, still on Friday, even though

stock market's not open. So do we tomorrow just kind of just wait and see what happens between that and then over the weekend with the war? Obviously, that's a good possibility. The pattern in recent weeks has been weakness in the two days before a weekend or the day before a weekend, especially. I really think it depends on whether the market feels it's getting any sort of clarity tonight from the president and from Iran, you know, by extension. So if it feels as if, you know, we're on some kind of a glide path to something that seems like a reliable de-escalation, maybe we won't have a flare-up of nerves ahead of the weekend. But obviously, you know, the possibilities of a weekend that's 50 percent longer than normal without trading could,

could, in theory, cause some hesitation. What are you in Mel got coming up in a few minutes? Well, we have Bob Diamond, a former Barclay's CEO. He's just, in the Middle East is going to give us his take on the economy there, what the markets are contending with, as well as Chris Ferone, with some timely charts on individual names as well as the index. Oh, good stuff. Look forward to that. We'll see it a little bit. That's Mike Santoli. Tonighta, tell me more. Coin shares making their debut at the NASDAQ.

Yeah, Scott, a rough picture for the crypto asset manager, coin shares now down 25% today. This was a SPAC merger valuing the business at $1.2 billion. The timing here is so interesting, Scott, because crypto's been in the same. bare market where prices are suppressed, but institution's appetite for crypto is definitely growing their clear signals of that. I wonder how much SPAC mechanics and the overall drag on the sector today are weighing on the price.

Coin shares has a steady revenue model, profitability, longevity in the market. This is a European company about 12 years old now that definitely are not trumping the short-term selling today. But then again, the company also faces big competition from BlackRock and Fidelity, as well as specialty firms like Bitwise asset management. I spoke with J.M. Mignetti, the CEO. He said the success point isn't today. It's 36 months down the road, 18 months down the road, and that their success is going to be measured at some point by their ability to grow in this market in the U.S. Asset managers, super fun and crypto right now, Scott. I'll keep an eye on it for you.

All right. Thanks so much, Tena. Angelica, tell us more about this move in Lilly. Yeah, Scott. Well, today the FDA is approving Lilly's GLP1 pill, and now that is called Findeo. The decision gives Lilly yet another way to compete directly with Nova, which introduced a pill version of Wagovi earlier this year. So this approval alone was one key for the stock. People weren't sure exactly when we'd get that approval. And now the attention turns to how well Lilly can sell Fondaio. So CEO Dave Ricks telling me that he's encouraged by the uptakes so far from Novo's Wagoe pill. In just a few months since it launched, about 600,000 people have received prescriptions for that drug. An analyst I talked to say that they're going to be closely tracking prescriptions here, since that's a

faster signal than waiting for quarterly earnings when you actually get those sales results. And they realize that this is a new brand. So prescriptions might not take off as quickly as we've seen with the Wagoe pill. And on the recent stock weakness, Rick's the Lilly CEO, he says that people can write what they want or trade against Lilly, but that their job is just to deliver. And so now we'll be looking to see if the company can indeed do that, Scott. All right, Angelica, thank you. Angelica, Peoples.

All right, Warren, we still need to take the 200-day back, right, before we can feel better. I'm sure you're going to tell me that. Yeah, I think that, look, this is like a headline-driven market, so it's hard to put a bunch of risk on or take risk off, as we've seen the last couple days with this face ripping rally. But I think they have to rely on tactical. So we broke out of this longstanding consolidation. And the good news is we've re-intered into that range, which is actually a pretty good sign when you break down that maybe the lows are behind us. That number is 6538. The next thing we're looking at is the 2008 at 5640.

And then a 50% retracement of that correction, that almost 10% correction we have in the S&P 500, would take us to 660. That would basically say, if you go back to history, look at 10% corrections that by most cases that we're done, we've seen lows. So those are the numbers we're going to be watching. Everything's going to come from what we hear from the president tonight, though. Yeah, I mean, we think we know what we're going to hear. I'm not sure what difference that's necessarily going to make for the market. What do you make of the money that's come back into tech?

I think it shows you where the underlying strength is. If we remove the disruption from the war, you know, like we've talked about, if you could get back to February 28th before all this started, you know, what are the underlying trends in the market and the economy? I think that the secular trend that everyone wants to flock to is the AI store. and the meta group underneath that right now are the semis in the scramble for compute. And so everything we track says that that is continuing to pace.

And so I think everyone's wanting to get back into a normal cycle, but it's kind of impossible right now until we get a little more clarity. Yeah, let's try and get some stability too with the big bank stocks, right, which are better today. But you need to put a few things together there. Yeah, absolutely. I mean leadership's been a problem for this market all year. We've had energy and staples, which have been the strongest sectors,

financials and tech have been negative on the year, and they've been laggard. That's the reason we downgraded stock back in February. It was like the canary in the coal mine. You'd have to get that leadership back into a healthy place. Otherwise, we're just going to just going to pop around a bit. Warren, appreciate you. As always, we'll see you soon. That's Warren Pyes.

We'll wrap it up. We'll go green across the board today. President speak tonight, and I'll see you tomorrow.