Closing Bell - Closing Bell: 5/13/25

Episode Date: May 13, 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.

Alright guys, thanks so much. Welcome to Closing Bell. I'm Scott Wapner live from Post9 here at the New York Stock Exchange. This Make or Break Hour begins with new records within reach. How quickly things have changed in this market over the past handful of days. We'll ask our experts now over this final stretch how far stocks can really rally. In the meantime, your scorecard looks like that was 60 to go in regulation. NASDAQ is leading the way yet again. It is a big day for shares of Nvidia and coming up we'll tell you what has that name on the move by some 6 percent today. We're on Amazon watch 2 this hour that stock on its longest winning streak since December.

Kate Rooney will join us and tell us more about that stock's recent run and Tesla shares up 10 percent on the week which is only two days old at this point we'll watch those two up another five and a half percent today it takes us to our talk of the tape whether new highs are possible and much sooner than many had expected let's ask Dan Greenhouse he is Solis alternative asset management's chief strategist with me here at post 9. The rebound in this market has been incredible as Bespoke points out just a short time ago. The last time the S&P erased a 15% year-to-date decline in under six weeks was 1982. It says a lot about what we've

done here. I think it says more about the drop than it does the rebound because there is a symmetry here as a lot of market practitioners know. Oftentimes the speed or the rapidity with which you experience declines says something about how fast you come back thinking out loud because I wasn't aware of that stat. Something like the Thai Ba crisis in 97 comes to mind. The devaluation 2011 took a little longer. Not the devaluation, the downgrade. that's that something like the Thai Ba crisis in 97 comes to mind the the devaluation 2011 took a little longer not the devaluation the downgrade so I think there's something to be said for how fast we've come back but at the same

time just to repeat that sell-off was 20% basically top to bottom on worst case outcomes that were really unlikely to come to pass and since then have proven unlikely to come to pass and so then have proven unlikely to come to pass. And so in conjunction with a pretty strong first quarter earnings season, I don't know why you wouldn't have recouped most of if not all of that decline. Yeah, but I mean, you know, last Thursday or Friday, I don't know if you had many takers on 5900 on the S&P by Tuesday. No, that's fair.

And the thing that makes it different from all the other things that you mentioned, those weren't self-inflicted. Those were existential potentially issues that came up that needed to be dealt with, currency crises, etc. This was an own goal. Sure, but the fact that it's, to use your phrase, an own goal doesn't really matter. I think obviously investors were very concerned about the likelihood of 150% tariffs, let's say, on our largest trading partner, $440 billion of imported goods. And in some respects, reacted accordingly given those headlines. My point was you just could have thought about this a little more rationally and seen the

headlines for what they were, which was publicly based negotiating strategy, agree or disagree with the course. And again, this is a semantic debate to some degree. I think the bigger issue in the short term here is forget the rapidity of the decline, the importance is we are now above where we were on liberation day, and we are more importantly above

the 200 day moving average. And so how and the whys and all that we can put aside, and now the focus I think should be on holding that 200 day moving average. Yeah, but give or take I don't think this is a conversation about Semantics at all. This is a conversation about fundamentals fundamentals last week were deemed to be deteriorating at a reasonably Quick pace, I mean, I know the jobs report was better than expected, but you had in. You had recession expectations everywhere, seemingly ratcheted. You had, you know, this tremendous dense fog that was over corporate America, mudding the situation up for what, you know, was going to lie ahead.

Now I feel like you have a wholly different environment. We still have tariffs, obviously, on China, but I don't know, I feel like the whole narrative of the market's changed. So I would push back on the characterization, as you put it last week, that things were deteriorating. What you had was sentiment deteriorating and expectations deteriorating.

Okay, that's fair. That's fair. And you're right to point that out. But one could easily bleed into the other, right? Bad sentiment. Yeah, no, that's fair. That's fair. And you're right to point that out. But one could easily bleed into the other, right? Bad sentiment. Yeah, no, that's fair. And sentiment in the market was pretty terrible. Yeah, people were really worried.

And the point I kept making coming on, and I know Stephanie Link was doing much of the same, was, hey, it's not just the jobs data. It's the earnings report. It's the commentary. I always talk about Visa and MasterCard and Capital One this morning, Bread Financial, a much smaller Issuer gave an gave an April update and it was pretty strong Costco put out sales It was fine in terms of how companies are doing in the world right now They're still doing really well and I get it that what we're talking about and what we're worried about is again

30 60 90 days in the future, but at least right now I Again things look pretty darn good. Yeah, we're going to have the potential of a self-inflicted recession. Now it feels like we've all but taken that off the table. I mean, you've got a number of people out today taking their projections way down. A number of firms are all saying, okay, I need to lower my expectations on that at the same time that an Ed Yardeni brings his price price target on the S&P to 6500.

He was at 6000. He'd come down a couple of times. He's like the situation he's he's usually a bull. Yeah. He's like, well, it's kind of undeniable that we may have a problem. And listen, I get and listen, Kostin and Ben Snyder over at Goldman did the same thing, taking back up a couple of oil analysts that had taken four or five bucks out of their TI and Brent forecast, put them back in.

So I get why people, and I acknowledge this, while it was happening, I get why a lot of analysts and economists would have been worried about what was going on if you took everything that was being said at face value. My point was I just don't think you should do that and to your point you've had however you want to describe it caving concessions negotiating positive negative Trump or not you've had a number of headlines that have suggested well the this is much more likely to be just a negotiation to try to achieve an end here an increase in beef exports maybe we can solve that problem or maybe we

can get Harley-Davidson's into Vietnam. And so what you have is this public negotiating strategy on the part of the president, which drove a lot of people crazy because of the vociferousness and the extreme way he was talking about this stuff, and I get it, but I doubt we were going to shut down global trade. I doubted we were going to shut down global trade. I mean, it was already in the process of happening. You know you had the prospect of empty shelves, which is politically not exactly a place you want to be.

We're not going to have empty shelves. Listen, there's data that we can track on ships going from port to port, from Shanghai to Los Angeles, etc. etc. Yes, there's a bit of a slowdown. But not that you said this, but the people out there saying you're gonna have empty shelves in a month, I never really bought into that and I think the shipping data bears that out. Okay, so now what? That's where we need to take the next step, right? The foot goes forward where? Now. So now we've retaken Liberation Day levels, I can't believe I keep saying a Liberation Day, but April 2nd levels, we're above the 200-day moving average and you listen there is a real issue now, which is we do have 10% across-the-board tariffs

on essentially all imports. We're going to have 25%, 35%, whatever the number is percent tariffs on our largest trading partner. And the question becomes, who's going to eat that? I don't think companies are going to be able to pass all of that on. The consumer is going to bear some of this, but profit margins are going to bear some of this as well. And that's why Walmart's report later this week becomes so crucial, given that they're

the largest retailer by exponential amounts. What they talk about and how they characterize their ability to continue to pass on some of these price increases is going to be crucial because I think a lot of other retailers are going to key off of that. All right. Nasdaq is the big winner yet again. It's up better than 6% on the week, including nearly 2% today. A huge topic of conversation today in Riyadh at the Saudi U.S. investment

forum. Nvidia CEO Jensen Wong, among those, a who's who of U.S. CEOs in attendance there are Christina Partzanevoulos is starting us off with that story. Christina, big day for Nvidia. Yeah, because the market cap hit over $3 trillion again today. On news, like you mentioned, of a deal with Saudi Arabia. CEO Jensen Wong is there with President Trump. And like you said, a who's who of American CEOs all rushing to secure deals now that the Trump administration has given them a green light to sell advanced AI technology to the kingdom. This really marks a significant policy change from Washington. So up until now, companies

like NVIDIA, AMD, needed special US licenses to export their most advanced semiconductors to many Middle Eastern countries like the United Arab Emirates or Saudi Arabia. Why? Over concerns of close relationships with China. NVIDIA's rival though, AMD, also partnering with Saudi today to build AMD-based AI computing centers.

And so that's why you're seeing shares up over 4% today, Nvidia up over 6%. But I'd like to just point out, Nvidia would really have to ramp up Blackwell production, that's their most advanced AI architecture, to supply these quote, hundreds of thousands of chips to Saudi Arabia, which means we only may see the bump in revenue

in 2026 and into 2027, Scott. Big moves for both of those names and many others in that space that you follow. Christina, thanks. President Trump noting Jensen Wong's presence in Riyadh today and mentioning another tech CEO who was not there. Where is Jensen, by the way? Where is he? He's standing here. Where is he? I just saw that. Thank you very much, Jensen.

I mean, Tim Cook isn't here, but you are. What a job you've done. Well, our Steve Kovach joins us now on that moment, which we thought was a little fun to chat about today while the president was on stage there. Yeah, I'm not gonna pretend to get into Trump's thinking, but Tim Cook does seem to live kind of rent-free in the president's head. That's because they had that relationship in the first term, and of course, going on

into the second term, this $500 billion investment Apple has. But let's talk about what Musk, Elon Musk was doing there, because he was there as well. We saw Tesla shares big time. He gave some brief remarks on stage, a couple of announcements here tied to Saudi Arabia. The big announcement though, Saudi Arabia has approved the Starlink service from SpaceX for aviation and maritime use. So there's another big potential customer for SpaceX. The rest of the talk though was more vintage Musk talking up robo taxis and of course those

optimist robots. He even said that he had the optimist robots do that little Trump dance for the Saudis in a demonstrations And he showed that to the Saudi Chrome Prince MBS of course and then he also predicted that everyone is just gonna have a Personal robot sort of like he compared it to Star Wars like as personal see-through PO robot falling around and helping you out And finally he said they're planning to bring Tesla's RoboTaxis to Saudi Arabia, although no timeline for any of that.

So you got Starlink, robots, and RoboTaxis all coming at some point to Saudi Arabia. But I would note, Scott, only one of those products actually exists today. We know Tesla's valuation is tied to the belief those other two robot axis and robots will eventually drive some massive profits When that happens anybody's best guess Scott I thought it was interesting too and when Musk was talking about robotics and making the difference between You know making sure it goes the way of a Star Wars per se or Star Trek or whatever versus a Terminator Yeah, that's because it wouldinator. Yeah, that would be ideal. Because he brought up both. That would be ideal.

I'm sure there are plenty working on the Terminator bots, but yes, this is more like a personal helper type thing. That's the vision that they have for these options spots. But again, I just note all the excitement around humanoid robotics, they're so far off. We hear so many people talking about it, but don't get too excited yet. They're nowhere close to going into full production yet, Scott.

No, but fun to talk about it. Especially to hear Elon Musk talk about it. Yeah. Yeah. It's like a side by a presentation. Yeah. No kidding. Steve, thanks. Steve Kovac. Amazon also making news today around a $5 billion investment it plans to make in the kingdom. The stock meantime on a very nice winning streak of its own. Kate Rooney following that money force. There's a look at the chart over the last handful of days. A nice little run. Yeah, Scott, it's a five day winning streak for Amazon at this point as CEO

Andy Jassy does spend time in Riyadh today. He was alongside President Trump, also some top tech CEOs, as you guys have mentioned, and Saudi crime Prince. Jassy was actually expected to take the stage at that investment forum, but that actually ended up being canceled after some delays. Some other speeches, including President Trump, went long. Still, Amazon is making a new push in the region today. AWS, the cloud side of the business, unveiling plans to invest $5 billion in Saudi Arabia.

It's a strategic partnership with Humane. It's a newly created company to drive AI innovation in the kingdom. AWS, though, had already committed $5.3 billion to building data centers there, and then its e-commerce site. When you think about the broader, Amazon does also operate in the region. Today is just the latest commitment by Amazon. It's also an example, Scott, of the private sector's role right now in strengthening ties between Washington and Riyadh.

There is some tense history though when you think about Amazon. You got the founder, Jeff Bezos. He has been critical in the past of Saudi leadership after the death of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi and an alleged phone hacking incident. No signs though today of any animosity, at least from what we saw between current CEO Andy Jassy and the Saudi royal family stock. Up about 10% on week, some tariff relief involved there, but it is still negative here today, Scott. Back to you.

All right. Following the money for us as always, Kate. Thank you, Kate Rooney. Big Technologies, Alex Kantrowich joins us now for insight on all of those stories. He's a CNBC contributor, Dan Greenhouse, of course, is still with us. We figured it was a good day to hear from you because it really was tech front and center in Saudi. What'd you make of all of it? Well, Scott, there's a lot of money to be made

if you partner with Saudi Arabia. The kingdom talked about investing $600 billion in the United States, and after defense, AI, technology, those are the places that you would look for if you want to make a big splash. And this is coming at a time where Saudi Arabia is trying to maybe not reposition itself from oil, but certainly trying to diversify what its future is going to look like, you know,

post-oil or if oil becomes less of an important part of the mix for that country. And AI is front and center there. It's something with a massive growth potential and it's something that takes a lot of money to build. We've seen the bigger the servers, the better the models. And what does Saudi Arabia have? It has a lot of money, it has a ton of energy, and it has few checks and balances, so you won't have to go through some of the regulatory jumps

that you would in the United States. And that's why all these CEOs are starting to play ball and there are many are out there in Saudi Arabia today. Well, they're running these companies for a reason. They're smart. They see opportunity where opportunity may exist, new markets that maybe didn't exist before, and they're gonna do everything they can to lean into that.

That's the bigger point you're making too. Definitely, and the imperative for growth is massive. I mean, where is Nvidia gonna find the future, where is Nvidia going to find the future growth? Where's Amazon going to find the future growth? We talked before earnings, before Amazon earnings came out last week, they grew 17% hitting expectations. Remember the whisper number was around 20% or people were expecting 20%. So how do you bump that 17 to 20%?

You go to Saudi Arabia, you have the kingdom buy into the AI Vision and by the way, you have Microsoft right behind you. They are growing 35 percent, of course on a smaller base So you're gonna see companies trying to find these new markets the traditional markets I wouldn't say they're tapped out, but they're not getting to the companies are at such a high base of revenue right now you need to get into these sovereign funds and these countries into these sovereign funds and these countries, into these countries' budgets. And what we're seeing with Nvidia and Amazon is both of those companies seeing that opportunity, and you're right, trying to capitalize on it,

because the imperative is there from the market, they need to show those numbers, and if they don't, they're gonna have some problems. It's pretty clear that the market likes when Elon Musk talks about the future rather than politics, right? Because every time he does and he talks about AI or robotics or autonomous It seems to be good for the entities in which he controls and runs like Tesla which today is up almost 6% on its own

Absolutely. I mean Elon Musk became Elon Musk not because of his political acumen. He became Elon Musk because of his vision for technology. I mean, think about Tesla. That is a story stock. Yes, they have cars, but people are buying it for the self-driving cars. They're buying it for the robots. And by the way, he's in Saudi Arabia. What's good about that for him? Well, it's a country where you, again, you don't have to cut through as much red tape to get things off the ground. And Steve, right before me, talked about how we don't know when autonomous cars are coming from Tesla. Well, if you cozy up to Saudi Arabia, you launch a pilot

there, you get millions of miles driven or billions of miles driven in your autonomous cars, you have a safety record that you can talk about. You can then be a step closer to bringing that back to the United States, and then you have your vision live. So it's possible that by cozying up to Trump, Musk got his way into the kingdom today and he's able to make some of these connections. But I think Saudi Arabia would have done these deals with him no matter what. I mean, when you think about technology, there's few like Elon Musk to bring a shine to your country. And you're totally right.

I think his focus on the technology and not the product and not the politics side of this is what's going to get him much further than the bumpy road that he's been taking since Trump's inauguration. Speaking of closing up, if you want to use that terminology, I mean, Jensen Wong, for example, we didn't see him at the inauguration, but we've seen a lot of him lately. What do you make of the way he seems to have deftly navigated his relationship and his company's relationship with the White House? You just had the chip restrictions, obviously, evolving, and there are still many questions to be answered here but he

seems to have positioned himself and Nvidia pretty well. Absolutely. Look one thing that you don't hear from Jensen Wong is this save the world type of talk. He's very clear about the power of technology, what he wants to do with technology, and he's a great businessman. And I think everybody who's watching Nvidia knows what's happened to do with technology, and he's a great businessman. And I think everybody who's watching Nvidia knows what's happened to this company over the past few months, which is that the US trade relationship with China,

no matter what happened over the past weekend, has become shakier. And Nvidia counts on China to do business. They had to write off billions of dollars in potential sales because of trade restrictions. So what happens? You lose one market, if you're a good businessman, you go after another.

And this idea that they're going to start shipping 18,000 GPUs right away to Saudi Arabia with the potential for hundreds of thousands makes that China sting hurt a little bit less. And so to me, it's Jensen not playing politics here. It's simply doing what's right for his business. And again, speaking about the growth imperative, N, Nvidia is back over 3 trillion market cap. That means there's going to be pressure on that company to grow and they're going to need deals like the ones they are announcing with Saudi Arabia to be able to justify the valuation.

Good having you. Great insights. Thank you. We'll see you soon. Alex Gantiewicz, CNBC contributor joining us with Big Technology, of course, back to Dan Greenhouse. I mean, how do you see this whole thing? An area of the market that seems to be now primed, more than many others, to do really well

once you get this trade stuff on the back burner rather than the front pages. Yeah, I don't think the story, I've said this before, like I defer to Alex, he obviously knows way more about a lot of this than I do, but I don't think the narrative has changed very much. When you look at the performance, we talk about this all the time through the prism

of Nvidia and Broadcom, etc., etc., but take a look at the chart of Vertiv and Eaton and Train Technologies and Quantum. Yeah, a lot of the power and quantum computing stocks, but I guess my question to you is, there was a pretty good cloud over these companies. They reported earnings that in large part were better than feared. They doubled down on the belief that they're gonna continue to spend

the level of CapEx that had helped them all along. And as I said, week to date, since we got the news with China in this detente, the Nasdaq's up 6%. That says this is an area that investors still believe could lead this market higher. Yeah, no, I think that's probably right. And I would just add a lot of the cloud was the anecdotal reports that Amazon or Microsoft might be pulling back on some data center investments. And then you've got the reports and Facebook is still going to spend $70 billion or whatever the number is.

It lend credence to the idea that this was more any data center spending adjustments are more about rationalization than a pullback on the larger story, which also you saw after the Deep HowMet, which I know Jim Lavithal talks about, take a look at RTX, Boeing. There's a lot of other stories coming out of Saudi Arabia and the trade and tariff story that aren't just tech. And while from their size, Google, Amazon, et cetera, are just mathematically gonna lead the market higher. I defy anybody, take a look at a chart of Boeing,

for instance, or HowMet. We've got the ITA up on the screen more than just today, if we can, maybe a couple of days or a couple of weeks there's another story going on here as well it's not just Ryan Mattel and Leonardo and the European defense companies something's going on in the US as well I would just say we have some really amazing people in our control room and on our team none are named Bobby none is named Bobby so I don't believe maybe you need to learn the names of our team invite me up to the control room one day you're not okay you were never One is named Bobby. I don't believe that. Maybe you need to learn the names of our team.

Invite me up to the control room one day. You are not. I'll bring cupcakes. You were never welcome, now you most certainly are not. Jane Greenhouse, thank you for joining us. We'll see you soon. Thank you. To Christina, parts of Nevalos again

for the look at the biggest names moving into the close. Hi there. Hi, well let's talk about United Health right now. Plummeting. And this is as CEO Andrew Witte steps away for for personal reasons. You can see shares down about 18% He's gonna be replaced by former CEO Stephen Hemsley who led the company from 2006 to 2017 The company is also suspending its full-year guidance citing high medical costs United Health is down about 50% just in the last six months or so

Let's talk about Palantir though moving the opposite direction touching an all-time high up about almost 10 percent on pace to close with the market cap north of 300 billion dollars. The stock has been a favorite of retail investors who have helped push it up more than 650 percent higher since the start of 2024. All right, Christina, thanks. We'll come back to you in a little bit, Christina, Parks and Ne'll come back to you a little bit. Christina, parts of Neville. We're just getting started here up next. Former Dallas Fed president and former U.S. trade rep

Richard Fisher. He maps out what he thinks the Fed's next move was going to be now in the wake of the China tariff rollback. He'll join us after this break. We're live at the New York Stock Exchange. You're watching

Closing Bell on CNBC. MUSIC All right, welcome back S&P, turning positive for the year now as China trade developments over the weekend lift the index for a second day. Let's bring in the former Dallas Fed president and former US trade representative Richard Fischer to discuss. It's nice to see you again. Welcome back. Thank you, Scott. I was deputy US trade representative,

not US trade representative. Our bad, our bad. We like to give promotions around here. It's just the way we roll, but it's good to have you nonetheless. Thank you. Okay. Your qualifications speak for themselves.

Let me ask you this. I almost feel like every question you ask a guest today versus last week has to be different whether it's about the Fed whether it's about recession whether it's about almost anything the trajectory of the market the economy and what have you. Do you think Jay Powell today is thinking about things differently than he was just last week. I think you have to be careful Scott to form immediate judgments.

This is good news. The best part of it is Scott Besson is now at the helm, and there's rationality and rationale that's being worked into this. But it's too early to tell. You can't instantly analysis. To me, as you know, never really works. Instant reaction is not the best thing on the planet. So I think we have to wait and wait and see what the consequences are.

I mean, that seems to be the words of the moment, right? He said those exact words or variations of, like 20 times, right, during the news conference. Which way, I guess it boils down to, let's see if they wait and see, and then they have to make a decision. If the unemployment rate goes up and inflation remains a little bit sticky,

despite the CPI today, which way will they lean? They seem to be unable to answer the question because right now it's unanswerable. But what will they do? Well, it's unanswerable, like you just said. They're like any business. Still can't tell. We have a 90-day brief here, which is welcome.

We hope it'll be a good time to negotiate things down even further. But how can you model this out, Scott, if you don't know what the variables are? And I think they're gonna wait and see. It's quite possible they may even wait and see as far as September. But hopefully we'll get some clarity coming fairly soon. Is that your

expectation? I mean the market clearly has moved thinking that September is going to be the earliest. You know look and the president continues to weigh in as he did yet again today calling Powell late. What's wrong with too late Powell? Because he talks about inflation coming way down from gasoline, energy, groceries, and as the president says, practically everything else. I know that the chair himself has said they're not going to be swayed at all politically, but the president's not going to stop. That's his right. He is president of the United States. He has his opinions.

He's a real estate guy. Of course, he loves low interest rates. Scott, again, look at what it's costing small businesses to borrow money, almost 9%, small, medium-sized enterprises. It's important what the Fed does. But the fact is the 10-year treasury is still roughly 450. It may go higher.

It depends on how the market views this balance between treasury's financing needs and the supply. So there's only so much I think the Fed can do to affect businesses, but we'll just have to see whether or not there's an urgency to cut rate, whether or not it's clarity to get that done. And right now, I don't think they have that clarity. None of us do. I mean, if you look, I'm glad you mentioned the 10-year because I was going to bring it up

earlier this afternoon, hitting four and a half percent, right? How much of an issue do you think that is potentially for J-PAL and company? I don't think the Fed affects the 10-year rate here. It's really a matter of the cost to carry of the U.S. debt. It is growing. It's not shrinking. It doesn't look like the tax bill is going to do a whole lot to shrink it. We'll have to see. I hope they get a better outcome here. And we'll have to also, we also know the Chinese not buying our securities anymore. They're coming through, quote, household accounts internationally as well as domestically. They're not official accounts that have that ravenous an appetite anymore for US Treasury So I'm praying that the rate stays where it is

But it could go higher and the Fed does not affect that with their movement in Fed funds Unless they make a very strong statement that inflation is completely under control and I don't think they can do that right now let me ask you though, you know that factually that the Chinese have changed the way they view U.S. assets like treasuries and that it's a material change that's gonna have a longer lasting impact, not just a we'll show you sort of negotiating position?

I think it's more, even if it's not a negotiation business, it's a reality. They're just not accumulating treasuries like they were before. So we've seen the numbers slow down in terms of their consumption of U.S. treasuries. Limited appetite or they're full and we'll just have to see. The question is who's going to buy our treasuries as they get issues and particularly Scott, I'm worried about the seven and 10-year issues that were financed originally a little about 2% or maybe a little bit less, now rolling over into a 4.5% atmosphere. We'll just have to see how well the Secretary of the Treasury is able to work the curve.

I want to add one other thing real quick. He's exceptional. And I'm so glad that Navarro and Letnik have been moved over and that Vesin, who's immensely talented man, is taking control and taking the helm here on trade in particular. He's got a lot to do. That's important. Well, because you brought that up, I'll make my final question. How do you think this all ends with China?

Scott, I've got a long history there. I was part of the team that negotiated. I was a note taker actually for Deng Xiaoping back in the 70s. I negotiated with Charlene Barshefsky, everything with China, including their accession to the WTO. They take advantage of you. It's the non-tariff barriers that count.

They lie, they cheat, they steal. They steal your intellectual property. And I think we're going to have to be very, very careful here as to what's actually effective. This is an opening. And we'll just have to see, because bear in mind, Xi can put his people through a heck of a lot of pressure for the longest time.

We can't do that, we're a democracy. And I think they're gonna try to steer around us. I'm just not trustful anymore, because we were taken advantage of by the Chinese. And I know their methodologies. I was part of that negotiating team along with Charlene. We did an awful lot there. But they come out every time, steered around the legality of what we were doing.

And I think we have to be extremely careful here and be really, really tough. And I'm hoping that Besant at the helm for Donald Trump will be a tough guy. Remember, it's not the tariffs that are the big issue here, it's the non-tariff barriers that make it very, very difficult to deal with the Chinese. It's great to get your insight, Richard. Thank you very much, Richard Fisher,

the former Dallas Fed president and the former deputy US trade rep as well. We'll see you soon. Thanks, Scott. Love you, Adam. All right, you be well. Up next, Aldrich Dan Chung. He'll tell us how he's playing the big growth names in this market right here, Post9, next.

We are back with today's advance, the S&P only about 4% away from a new high. Joining me here at Post9 with his playbook for the markets, Aldrich CEO and CIO, Dan Chung. Welcome back. Thank you, Scott. Mass, a heck of a time to have you. As I said to Richard Fisher, I feel like the conversation today is just wholly different than it would have been if you were here last week.

Do you feel like your entire view on the world ahead has changed as a result of this détente? Our view hasn't changed that much, but you're right. It's amazing. Like one month ago, literally, the market was at bottoms, right? Yeah, I said, I mean, it's the fastest recovery from, you know, the S&P being down 15% year to date since 82. Yeah. It's been a remarkable turnaround.

Yeah. Is there more to go? I think there is. I mean, it's clear that China and the U.S., the biggest trade relationship in the world, both sides are trying to come to some agreement and they're already, of course, making steps to sort of cooling down the heat. So I think we'll see better progress on that to come. New highs? Is that the next stop? I mean, is that realistic to start really thinking about? I mean, it is realistic in that the first quarter earnings, by the way, were quite strong, about 10% earnings growth on the S&P. So the economy was strong going

into this, the earnings confirmed that. We know that this market sell off was really policy driven, right? And if the policies start settling down into something more positive, then I think we can go on to new highs. Right. I mean, you know, we've said, obviously, I think people would agree. This was a self-inflicted situation. Whether you agree with it or not, it's almost irrelevant. The fact is it was, in your words, a policy decision, but now the policy's been rolled back, at least for the time being, from the most extreme aspects of it. Do I need to think about recession anymore? Do I need to think about a more dramatic

slowdown of earnings? All these things that I was modeling for until the weekend's headlines? So I think recession, I don't really think we never really thought it would be in the cards, although many thought recession odds were at their highest in years. thought would be in the cards, although many thought recession odds were at their highest in years. We think clearly that there are some fundamental growth trends in AI that reasserted themselves very strongly during the earnings season. Microsoft had an incredible quarter. Most of the AI-driven names had great quarters.

That trend is underlying and growing. Meanwhile, the consumer actually stayed relatively strong, And in fact, many in advance of tariff increases rushed to buy things. And so that actually resulted in a little bit of unexpected strength even in the consumer. Is that where you're advising your clients to stay towards the upper ends of the AI trade, the mega caps? I certainly think that there's an opportunity here in the mega caps and in the AI trade and we think recession is unlikely. There's probably going to be some signs of slowing maybe in the second and third quarter because a lot of businesses, especially in the small and medium business ones, did pause major decisions during April and that might have a slight effect

on the June quarters that we report but I think the markets Clearly fully prepared to look through that. Sure, but I mean your large-cap holdings in terms of growth, which is really, you know You're you're bread and butter It's how we talked to Ankur Crawford when she's here, right? Nvidia, Amazon, Microsoft, Netflix, Broadcom, Meta, Apple, those stocks that have had such a dramatic comeback Can can they still outperform? Can they get back to that leadership role or if we think that a recession is less likely

and now we start talking more about tax cuts than trade, do we go towards other cyclical parts of the market that have better value at this point? That's a great question. I think one thing to be cognizant of is the tech sector is very special in the US. It's driven a huge part of the earnings growth in the S&P over the last decade. And we don't really see any fundamental trends that would derail that to cause a major shift into other sectors.

So while I think other sectors are going to do well, today we saw some interesting news in the solar industry. Nevertheless, tech is powering the new economy. Tech is powering AI. Tech is powering e-commerce. And so I think there are still opportunities. A lot of those stocks like Amazon are still well below their highs. Yeah.

It's still powering the conversation too from here to Riyadh as we learned today very well. It's good to see you again. Thanks for coming by. Thank you. That's Dan Chung. Up next, we track the biggest movers into the close. Back to Christina for that. Hello. Hi Scott. Well, solar manufacturer shares are climbing and a Swiss sneaker maker is surging. I'll tell you why those stocks that she is watching tell us first seller because it's up about what almost 25% today as the Republican tax bill makes its way through the House Ways and Means Committee Wolf research also upgrading the stock saying the company could receive about $10 billion in tax credits through 2031 also saying its domestic production capacity would be a big boom for the stock. So again, up 24%. And let's talk about shares of Swiss sneaker company on holding surging after a Q1 beat across the board guiding slightly lower profit for 2025 after incorporating quote, higher

levels of planning uncertainty, including the tariffs implemented by President Donald Trump. Investors though, as you can see clearly just shrugging it off stock up over 12% on pace for its best day in more than a month, Scott. All right, Christina, thank you. Still ahead, we'll break down the move in Coinbase today. We're back on the bell just after this break. Big news for Coinbase. We will tell you exactly what is going on in the market zone next. We are now in the closing bell market zone. CNBC senior markets commentator Mike Santoli here to break down these crucial and final moments of the trading day. Tonight McHale will join us on Coinbase joining the S&P.

Phil LaBeau on Boeing's latest delivery numbers coming up as well. But Michael I'll turn to you. 19K on the NAS and we're 4% on the S&P from a new high. Yes, continuing to clear more hurdles. A lot of follow through, a lot of the so-called escape velocity indicators saying that this is a very good low, and we may be reasserting an uptrend here, have been in place.

That being said, it's another one of those days today. It's kind of narrow and top heavy. Nvidia is accounting for about half of the net gain in the S&P 500. You know, we should probably pause a little bit here, but it seems more safe. Volatility index, interestingly, has not been able to stay under 18,

even as the market has kind of lifted. So I wouldn't be surprised if we kind of took a pause and hesitated a little bit here. I would keep an eye on treasury yields, because they're on the upside. You got four, four and a half. 30 years or above 490 again. I don't really like to draw a direct connection

to the tax bill and the fiscal situation in real time to what's going on with bonds, but it's getting some attention. It's one of those things in theory with trade, put off to the side for the moment that could maybe halt the rally. All right, come back to you in a minute. Tonight, a Bitcoin in the spotlight,

and so is Coinbase because it is about to join the S&P. That's right, come back to you in a minute tonight a Bitcoin in the spotlight and so is Coinbase because it is about To join the S&P. That's right Scott ending the day up a whopping 25% here on that news that it's joining the S&P 500 next Monday It'll be replacing discover financial and Coinbase is pacing for its best day now since November 6th And it has erased its year-to-date losses with that rally Analyst today cheering the stock's big upside potential, saying shares will benefit from passive inflows into funds tracking the index.

Oppenheimer's Owen Lauer has been calling this moment as a key catalyst to watch for months now. Said today that the lack of institutional ownership of Coinbase thus far has been part of the bare thesis for that name, but has now become more of a strong tailwind and he raised his price target on the shares. Just a few months ago, Scott, this company was in an intense litigation with the SEC that of course was dropped by the agency when the Trump administration moved in just four years after it went public through a direct listing.

So a huge feat for the company and the industry at large. Scott? All right. Yep. Taneya, thank you. That's Taneya McHale. Phil LaBow, tell us about Boeing. Stock's above 200 again, Scott, at a 52-week high. The reason? We got April orders and deliveries, and these were not spectacular numbers, but they were solid numbers, and they continue to show progress, and that's what investors want right now. For the month, they delivered 45 airplanes, two to Chinese

Airlines before China said, we may not take airplanes, though they are reportedly now back in the mood to take Boeing aircraft. Year-to-date delivery is 175, max deliveries year-to-date, and this is really the number that people are focused on. Up to 133 as for orders, the industry has just been lackluster in terms of orders,

eight net orders for the month of April. I'm showing you a two-year chart here of Boeing. Why? Because you got to go back more than a year to see this stock over $200 a share. Today they announced Avi lease out of Saudi Arabia, ordering up to 30 737 Max planes. The backlog, Scott, now stands at 5,643 planes. All right, Phil, thank you. That's Phil LeBeau. Nice move for Boeing shares. We got the two-minute explains the backlog Scott now stands at 5,643 points. All right, Phil, thank you. That's Phil LeBeau, nice move for Boeing shares. We got the two minute warning, you heard the animation.

What's on your mind here now for what you're looking forward to next? You know, this is the best comeback from a 20% decline in the S&P 500. Intraday we got to a 20% decline except for the 2019 example. So that was like the big drop into the end of 2018. Fed pivots, it was also related to trade war,

and we got that rally. So therefore, again, it's hard to expect us to keep going up at this angle. However, if the AI trade and Mag-7 are still, are back in gear, anything can happen because they've really done nothing together on a six month basis. And then you have the real kind of speculative kind of high speed stuff.

So Palantir, I know you looked at before, Palantir's dollar volume today, 16 billion, double what Apple traded today. It's one tenth the market cap. That's the kind of thing where you just basically say people are revving the engines again for that kind of trade that doesn't really have to do much with fundamental stuff. You get a Saudi bump.

Well exactly. The carp was there, right? Jensen Wong was there. The one person who wasn't there who was called out today, I'm using calling out obviously in a soft sense, was Tim Cook. No exactly, but that sort of tells you the kind of market we might be getting back into, which is vibes and memes and what moves the fastest. So let me get a piece of that because I don't want the market to get away from me.

So again, at some point that gets overheated, but for now I think big institutions still have more exposure to build up if they're going to catch this move. OK, we are green almost everywhere today in terms of the majors. Obviously the Dow being dragged by UNH. And that's a big story in its own right. Take what we got, though.

I'll see you tomorrow.