Closing Bell - Closing Bell 5/27/25

Episode Date: May 27, 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.

All right, thanks so much. Welcome to Closing Bell. I'm Scott Wabner, live from Post9 here at the New York Stock Exchange. This make or break hour begins with surging stocks, which have once again taken the S&P within 4% of a new all-time high. The president delaying another tariff threat. That's all the market really needed today. A drop in yields, no doubt, helping a bit too.

We'll show you the scorecard here with 60 to go in regulation. A strong day for the majors led by tech and discretionary those sectors among many others every sector is green today Tesla a very big contributor there Elon Musk says he's back to sleeping in the office investors like that news 6% almost will have a special report coming up consumer confidence beat the timing couldn't be any better either just as many big-name retailers are set to report their earnings this week also on deck of course Nvidia They report tomorrow in overtime. Most of the chips are higher ahead of that. A big losing streak in one part of the chip space could be about to end too.

It does take us to our talk of the tape. Whether the tariff twists and turns even matter for stocks anymore. Let's ask Dan Greenhouse. He is Solace Alternative Asset Management's Chief Strategist with me here once again at Post 9. It's good to see you. Good to be seeing you. On this big day. How would you answer that question? Do the tariff twists and turns even matter anymore?

I think they do matter. And I think you see the performance in the market today up almost 2% right now, ostensibly only on the suspension of the tariff, which was just imposed 20 minutes ago. So I think clearly the market's telling you that it still matters, but I think the sentiment underlying that question is valid,

that at this point, do investors think that tariffs are as, contribute to as much volatility in June as they did perhaps in April, May? The answer to that is probably no. Well, because when the most recent threat came out about Apple and the EU, many of the notes that were passed around were like, this is absurd, this is not going to happen. And the market acted after an initial little bit, kind of the same way. Yeah, but to be clear, I don't know. The 25% tariffs, listen, on Apple specifically there's

obviously legitimate legal questions about whether you can apply tariffs to one company and one product, but which is why you saw the president later amend this to be on smartphones in general. But I think the people who follow Apple have made this quite clear, and I think the numbers look right to me. You're talking about a relatively modest margin hit,

100 basis points for a company that has margins well into the 30s or 40s. They could handle 25% tariffs. I don't think it would be a death knell for a company that has margins well into the 30s or 40s, they could handle 25% tariffs. I don't think it would be a death knell for the company. We're talking about a few hundred bucks maybe per phone. Easy, easy for us to say. But I think my bigger question is.

Well, hold on. That's on top of the retail price, which is not what's tariffed. I think the actual number probably going to be around $100 or less on what would actually be the increase in the iPhone price. Don't quote me on that. Get your boy from Morgan Stanley who you like having on. Good rate. That's right, Eric.

Good rate. You reiterated overweight again on the stock today. I don't have the price target in front of me, but he's still bullish. I think the greater point is the more we get tariff bark, the less we're going to think there's actual bite, and thus the market does something similar to what it's doing now, maybe not at the same magnitude, but it just brushes it off as a sort of, yeah, right. Well, for now, that's correct. I think the issue for markets,

and this gets back to what we've talked about the last few times I've been on, where my certainly relative optimism has been tempered more recently as we've approached back to the highs. I think that the question now is the year right in two months is a much more difficult question because then you're gonna start to see presumably some impact from these tariffs.

They're not gonna be as dramatic as people originally thought. They may not be as dramatic as people currently think. And you heard that from Urban Outfitters and Ralph Lauren William Sonoma even Decker's you just reported the tariff is going to burden is going to be borne by a number of different parties but you're going to start to see that by the middle end of the summer and then the question becomes how does

markets react to that. The other big thing today is the move at yields right the drop like 10 basis points or so in yields you throw throw up the 10 year, look at that 10 year, 30 year, what have you. That's a critical part of this story. You couldn't continue to have yields back up, could you? Not if you wanted the stock market to hit a new record. I don't know. I mean, probably not in the short term.

That's for sure. If we continue to move higher for 64, 74, 80, you might've had some equity turbulence, maybe even a meaningful pullback on the order of call of 5 or 7 percent, although whether that's meaningful is a separate conversation. But certainly lower yields in an environment in which growth is holding up and earnings have been strong is better than the opposite, that's for sure.

But I also haven't been one who's largely been crying about the 5 percent on the 10 year. Obviously the path there, the volatility and the velocity with which that level might be achieved, could tell you something about equity performance. But in terms of discounting cash flows, I don't know that 5% is deleterious in a medium term sense.

So while I'm saying you might have a three, five, seven, maybe even a 10% decline over the course of that move higher, as long as the economy continues to prove and earnings do what I think they're gonna do, call it 280, 300 bucks over the next couple of quarters, then the path for equities is still higher. Hey, Adam Parker's most recent note was like, you know what, I actually think that maybe earnings

are gonna be less impacted than many of us, or many including us, he says, originally feared. You think that's gonna be the story for many? That the greatest fears about all of this says it was gonna be such a dramatic hit on earnings, that the market's multiple wasn't gonna be defended because earnings weren't gonna be good enough, and now maybe that was overblown?

Yeah, listen, that's been my thought from the beginning. And let's go back to the retail companies that we've seen report in the last couple days. I mentioned Williams Sonoma, Urban Outfitters, Decker, as I mentioned. Pull up a chart of Urban Outfitters. It tickers Uncle Riz, Bussin, Nancy. Please. Please throw up the chart of Urban Outfitters.

On the call, they address tariffs. It's a thing. But when you look at the stock chart, clearly the stock chart, the investors are telling you a longer term one than just today chart the investors are telling you, a longer term one than just today please, is telling you that tariffs aren't nearly the concern that perhaps people thought. Because all those companies, Williams-Sonoma, Urban, etc. again, told you, well we're not going to bear all of this.

The number one thing that we're doing is we're going to start reaching out to our vendors, to our suppliers for what I'll call burden sharing. And you're going to hear a lot more about that in coming days and weeks. And that's the point. That's why tariffs are not gonna be as bad as detrimental to margins to echo Adam's point as perhaps originally thought. We'll come back to that in a minute.

The other big story in the market today, the chips, which are green across the board as everybody has their attention turned to Nvidia tomorrow in overtime. That's when the earnings hit. Christina Parts-Nevoulos is here with that. Yes, everybody wants to talk about Nvidia and for good reason, but the chips in general are having a pretty darn good day. Yeah, bouncing back. The Sox ETF poised to break a seven

day losing streak. Every single constituent of the Sox ETF is trading higher. Like you mentioned with Marvell leading the pack. This is Marvell Technology. It's also pacing the Nasdaq 100. Marvell reports earnings on Thursday. There are other names out there, not just Nvidia. And if the momentum continues, it could finally snap its own three-month slide. Though Barclays is tempering expectations, noting investors remain less enthusiastic

about Marvell's custom chip prospects compared to Broadcom. AMD, another name jumping, look at that, maybe 4% higher on an HSBC upgrade from reduced to hold. New Middle East spending commitments are a potential demand driver going forward for this name. And then last but not least, I have to talk about it, of course, because it's important. Nvidia gaining 3% today, but still remains stuck in this $130 to $140 price range and still down a year to date.

Oh, now almost up 1%. Analyst expectations heading into earnings are notably muted. China export restrictions could pressure both revenue and margins. Plus, there's concerns of black well production delays earlier in the quarter, but that seems to be mitigated now. Still, most on the street expect a second half wrap, meaning any post earnings weakness would likely attract a lot of buyers into this name as usual. Scott.

But if there's a complication in all of it, it's the chart you just showed. The stock's having its best month in a year, so it's a really big ramp into the print. Where expectations were low and there wasn't that much excitement, well, now maybe there is because it has to live up to that move. Yeah, you're 100% right. And if anything, there was, I think it was the Bank of America that pointed that out as well,

that although expectations, the price has been stuck within a range, you haven't really seen estimates on the sell side analysts come down that much. So we could be set up for disappointment if the H20 ban really impacts impacts revenues dramatically and we see a miss this upcoming quarter and a miss specifically for July revenue guidance, Scott. That's really important.

I'm seeing anywhere between like $43 to $46 billion. If that misses, then you can really see a lot of disappointed people that bought into this name. Yeah, but there were firms out today saying, you know, they may miss on revenues, it's expected, and H20 could be one of the weak points, but stay strong and stay along the name. We'll see. Christina, thanks. Exactly.

That's Christina Partsanevalos. The other big deal here is the expectation that this is, how much does this market need NVIDIA to be good tomorrow? I still think NVIDIA is as important as it ever was. It's still the poster child for the story, the AI data center development story. If you look at the performance of the stock today and recently as Christina noted,

but you also add in Vertiv and Train Technologies and all the companies in the universe. I think the, I mean listen, the report's probably gonna be fine. I think people want, not I think, people clearly wanna hear about the export restrictions, whether they're developing a lower power chip to sort of circumvent those restrictions,

some of their rack sales with the cooling systems. There's a lot in this report that people are gonna be focused on, but whether the quarter hits or misses aside, the narrative remains in place. And you heard this from all the companies that reported CapEx expenditures are the same, if not not higher it just doesn't seem to me like there's a threat to the story in the short term here irrespective of what the quarter

does maybe not specific to that but if the market as a whole decides that it's gonna stop at least with one ear paying attention to the tariff stuff because it doesn't believe that the worst is actually gonna happen maybe there actually is a broadening in the market away from the concentrated move of late that we've seen in the Nasdaq, right? The Nasdaq in a month is up 10%. So you could have money start to funnel into other areas at some of the mega caps expense despite how great in love they are. Sure, but I don't know that it's been that narrow. I mean, look at some of the hotel. It's up 10%. Well, I'm not saying it hasn't been well what I'm

saying is look at Marriott and Hilton and some of the hotel companies look at McDonald's back to a high Texas Roadhouse Chipotle a bunch of the restaurant stocks not Lockheed and and and General Dynamics but what was Raytheon RTX and how met and a bunch of the aerospace and defense companies, both GEs, not GE healthcare, both industrial GEs, have done very well. On the bank side of things, on the broker side of things, Goldman, Schwab, Morgan Stanley, Schwab was going broken not that long ago, and now it's basically at a high, and of course you add in any number of other sectors. So I don't know that it's been that narrow.

It certainly hasn't been as strong and as broad as I think I would have liked, but I think a lot of this market is telling me those worst case outcomes are certainly not coming to pass. Come back to you in a second. Let's bring in Phil LeBeau because he has many movers in his orbit today. Starting with Tesla, Phil, which is having a great day. And maybe all, because the numbers out of Europe

were terrible, but the commentary out of Musk was I'm coming back and sleeping on the couch again in the office, and that's apparently all you need. And look, when he tweets about, or posts, I should say, about business, it generally has a positive impact on shares of Tesla. And really, there are a couple of things to keep in mind when you look at the rally today for Tesla shares. First of all, he made it very clear with the post that he put out over the weekend, hey, I'm here to focus on X, XAI. He mentioned SpaceX, they've

got a launch going on in the next couple of days here, and that he's focused 100% on Tesla. That's part of the optimism is there. Also the RoboTaxi launch, that's coming up next month, plenty of optimism there. And when there are weak sales, as you mentioned Scott, out of Europe, look, it's having a limited impact and these were ugly numbers. Tesla and Elon Musk, he told David Faber, look, we've had a transition in terms of the Model Y and that's been an impact around the world.

Look, you can't sugarcoat this. Tesla is European sales in April down 49% when the entire market for EVs up 34%. Bottom line is this, Scott, I think we're in this period here where Elon Musk said it best when he talked to David Faber. He said, it's autonomous and it's optimist. And the optimism regarding both of those, that's what's driving this stock higher. We mentioned that many stocks in your orbit today are higher. And Dan was talking about some of the restaurant and retail names

that are but the airlines as well both United and Delta from what I've looked at today are still pretty strong. Absolutely, they all had in the higher move earlier in the day some of that they've given back a little bit but they had a strong holiday weekend that's good news for the airlines consumer sentiment shows that while there may be a little bit of softness domestically, it's not gonna fall off a cliff here. And then take a look at shares of Southwest. It was upgraded by Jeffries to hold,

and they also are instituting baggage fees, which start tomorrow. And as much as you will hear some loyalists to Southwest saying, I'm not gonna fly them, they always said that it would be free bags. People are still gonna fly them, Scott. And they're gonna make a lot more money. It's good for the bottom line here, and that's why this stock is moving higher.

All right. Good stuff, Phil. Thanks for covering all that for us. That's Phil LeBeau. Now let's bring in Ali Flynn-Phillips, Obermeyer Wood president and partner. Dan Greenhouse of Solace, of course, is still with us. Ali, it's nice to see you. So what do you make of this market here? Oh, what a dial back of tariffs can do. Yeah, so thanks for having me. And I think Dan covered several good points. One thing we should spend a little talk about is this market feels like we're all going through whiplashes

and why. And the real reason to us is there's a huge disconnect between the hard data and the soft data. So recent economic reports, earnings reports, are painting a really good picture showing the economy's unsolved buildings earlier this year with pretty reasonable inflation data as

well as a resilient labor market. Those are the facts, it's the hard data which again paints a good picture. But if you move to the soft data, if you think about the CEO sentiment, you know, in terms of overall forward guidance,

etcetera, that's real, we're seeing the reaction to in terms of the trade uncertainty as well as the budget uncertainty. And that sort of disconnect that yin yang between the hard and the safflower. That's why the market feels like it's trading more on feelings than facts these days. Yeah, Dan, I mean, you more than many have been steadfast in believing that the consumer was going to carry this market higher. Ali's points well taken.

The soft data around the consumer has been horrific. Sure. Right? You go from like the worst read ever in sentiment since 1950 to now you get a beat. We're all wondering whether the soft data is going to turn up into the hard data as it relates to spending. We really haven't seen it all that much to this point. Is this the key, the consumer hanging in?

I don't know if it's the... Well, listen, the consumer hanging in is always the key. That's a fair point. I think the data this morning bears out, and if you did not see, consumer confidence this morning was reported much larger. I think it was the single largest monthly jump since the GFC. I think the problem with a lot of the sentiment data, Scott, you just mentioned that sentiment was basically the lowest since the Great Depression or whatever. That does not mesh sentiment at that depressed of a

level, does not mesh with what's going on in the real world in terms of the unemployment rate being low, wages ticking up, the stock market at a high. That tells me that something else is going on and that something else is the constant bombardment of people being told the economy is terrible, it's about to turn down, prices are going up, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And to some degree, it's hard to any one month is not a trend to make, but it's hard for me to argue anything other than the fact that those dire predictions have not yet come to pass help explain why consumer sentiment jumped in the month.

I mean, the market getting back to a high certainly helped some of that but I think a lot of this is that people are being told the world is about to fall down all around them and it has not as of yet and they're starting to feel a little bit better as a result. Ali you're a trusted advisor with many accolades to your name. One of the top women advisors in 24 Forbes the best in state women advisors list as well but best in state wealth advisors last year as well my point in bringing all that up is people look to you at times of volatility what are you telling them today to the question of should I even pay attention to this

tariff news anymore. Oh first and foremost a few things that just remind people that we're in here for the long run. And as much as in terms of traders benefit from the day to day action, a long term investor, steady is key. And they also is volatility breeds opportunities. So the key thing is really focusing on as we see these extreme moves, let's take advantage in terms of some of these price declines and actually buy things on sale.

Good example also is diversification. We've talked a lot about technology and Tesla today, but let's get into some other sectors. Good example is CME Group. We like having exposure to the exchanges. Exchanges do very well when you have volatility. And if you look at this year alone, you have four of the highest trading days ever

since 2013 and 2025. And three of them have been in this quarter. When you see a move like that, that leads directly to in terms of seeing these earnings, they pay a 4% dividend and they have a really nice diversified base. Other thing also is we're talking about the US, let's look overseas.

Let's look at SAP. SAP really benefits from this continued move from the premises to the cloud. You see even Microsoft talking about how they have to move more so, and these sort of companies moving onto the cloud will actually benefit those sort of players. And then you also want something

like a Brookfield Corporation, which is a diversified asset manager, has a lot of infrastructure plays, is trading at 13 times earning. We would love to find a company like that. So showing investors these sort of opportunities and terms of their long term perspective that's how you keep people

studying environment like this and the earnings report tomorrow that everybody's going to be fixated on Nvidia in your mind how important is that. It is I mean it's one of those where it's important particularly keep talking about it- but also

given the fact that. Whenever you're going to see this market continue on is just insatiable demand within the AI space. To us what we're looking at is information on the black well rollout as well as. And the video enters I have some offsets to the China

weakness. Either through other other regions or other model lines. So it is important it probably will dictate the sentiment for the next month. But the key thing is it continues to actually flow through and have its 60% revenue growth that people are assuming year over year. AI to us is still having a good exposure and we like Nvidia.

Yeah, Dan, I mean a reminder of nothing else that this is the trade that people continue to believe in and want to pay up for if they have to. Yeah, I mean listen, NVIDIA's got 40, 50% revenue EPS growth, so if you're paying up for anything, it should be that. I think the legitimate question within the context of the MAG-7 is the same two questions that we've always been asking, which is one, why are Google and, I mean we know the answer, Google and Meta having market or sub market multiples and Apple trading at the premium that it does. I think those are much more legitimate questions for the MAG-7 trade than why people are paying for 50% EPS growth in the case of Nvidia,

just because it's less than the 200% we were getting a couple of quarters ago. The trade still seems to me to be working. The CapEx commitments are still there. I don't see any reason why that wouldn't continue for the immediate future. We'll leave it there. Dan, thank you.

Ali, we'll see you soon. Thanks for being with us today. Thank you so much. All right, let's send it to Christina Parts-O-Nevel-Us now for a look at the biggest names moving into the close. Christina. Thank you, Scott. Well, Hologic shares surging on a report

that TPG and Blackstone offered $16 billion to take the medical technology group private. Hologic rejected the offer, but people familiar with the matter told the FT, there is a chance talks could be revived. And that's why you're seeing shares up almost 14% its best days since 2006. Meantime US listed shares of PDD holding plunging after the Chinese retailer posted disappointing first quarter results. This is the

parent of Timo. Profit fell about 47% from the last year amid intense local competition and uncertainty from tariffs. That's why shares are down 15 percent, Scott. All right. We'll see in just a bit. Christina, thank you. We're just getting started here. Up next, top financial adviser Richard Saperstein is back. He'll tell us how he's navigating these markets as we head into the summer. We're live at the New York Stock Exchange. You're watching Closing Bell on CNBC. see. Strong day for stocks following another tariff delay and with May almost in the books

the question now how to put the markets into the summer. Let's ask Richard Saperstein he's Treasury Partners founding principal and CIO. Welcome back. It's good to see you. Thank you. Speaking of, so if we look ahead to the summer and we use today as a sort of a guide point, are we supposed to now buy the bark, so to speak, like buy the the Trump bark about tariffs because we don't believe that the bite's actually gonna happen? The bite could happen, but it's important for investors to look past the tariff turmoil and look at the environment

where we'll have deregulation, more on-shoring, think about the tax bill, immediate expensing from a tax basis, greater opportunities for M&A. So the environment post tariffs will be a great environment for investing. Now in between that, we have uncertainty which could cause a slowdown in the next two quarters. So I think that the Doge cuts might have an impact,

but I would look to the environment post tariffs into 26 versus looking in the immediate volatility right now. So you're looking through all of it? Yes, that's how you have to invest in this period. But what about the back half of the year? Are you looking past that too and just now solely thinking about 26? Yeah, we've been adjusting asset allocations

and we have some cash, we still maintain very high equity positions, but as you know, we've been purchasing a lot of municipal bonds. Still? Yeah, still. The opportunity is still there. What stops that opportunity? The rates plummet below the 10-year Treasury rate. Right now, it's above the 10-year Treasury rate, so you're getting over 100% of the taxable rate in a tax-free security. Second, if the economy slows in the back half of this year, rates will go down and those bonds will outperform. We're also reducing small cap exposure and actually adding to large cap tech

because as you know we've been long-term holders a large cap tech. So I know that but reducing, did you miscalculate something with small caps to think they're going to do better than they have? Yeah, you know typically we were diversified across the cap table and what we've been observing in the last few years is that small cap has been underperforming probably for a couple of reasons. is that small cap has been underperforming, probably for a couple reasons, meaning a lot of companies are remaining private for a longer period of time right now. And so then when they go public, they're not small cap. They're multi-billion dollar companies

in the large cap space. Secondly, the small caps that are doing very well, they're emerging to become large caps. So we're finding underperformance in the small caps, so we're reducing exposure there. We've been gradually doing it, but we're actually repositioning those funds into large cap tech, adding to our positioning.

I mean, higher rates are an issue too, right? And that's one of the, every time rates go up, yes, the Russell goes down. Correct, it's inversely related to interest rates. But that's not to say that if we got to slow down in the economy... That's not good for small caps either. Exactly. So there's good reasoning for us to be, within the context of an overall asset allocation portfolio, reducing our small caps. What about rates in general? I mean, they obviously were making the market nervous every time they started to back up.

Is that still one of the most important things that you're watching? Look, for the last few months, all I'm hearing is the end of American exceptionalism, capital outflow, dollars crashing, rates are going higher, we're getting tariff-induced inflation. I don't see any of that occurring. You don't? No. Why not? If you're a large investor, if you're the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund,

where are you gonna put your money? You're gonna, you know, the size of German stock market is the size of Apple. So where are you gonna put $500 billion or $250 billion? You need the American markets for liquidity. And in terms of exceptionalism, where is there growth? The growth is in United States technology stocks. Sure, there are some around the world, but for the most part, if you're a large investor and you want growth, you've got to own US large cap tech.

Okay. So then there's a bid under these stocks for the foreseeable future in part because of that. For extended periods of time. Think about this, the S&P's operating cash flow is what, 5.9%. The eight stocks I follow in the large Captex base, the operating cash flow is 5.7%. So it's virtually the same as the S&P, so why not own the stocks that are growing the fastest? Why don't you own NVIDIA? Why don't you answer your own question? I can't own every stock out there.

Oh, but come on, man. That's a standard answer when somebody just missed it. Well, why don't you own that one? Well, because I'm long a lot of the stocks that are benefiting from data center growth and expansion. And think about, you know I've got a huge overweight in some utility stocks, right? Yeah.

And they- Like Vistra and NRJ. And NRJ, the two of them. And they've proven to be very correlated with data center build out, which is probably part and parcel to how Nvidia is doing. You missed Nvidia, is that? Yeah, I missed Nvidia.

That's good, that's what I was just trying to get you to say. Yeah, I missed Nvidia. Come on man, I'm gonna raise you up. Okay. Knock you down a little bit. That's OK. Saperstein. But we get it. We get our fair share of great allocations and equities.

You do. That's why you're always on the list of Barron's top advisors. So thank you. It's my pleasure. It's Richard Saperstein back here at Post 9. Up next, Premier LaCrosse League co-founder Paul Rabel. He joins me right here at Post nine up next Premier Lacrosse Lacrosse League co founder Paul Rabel. He joins me right here at Post nine.

That sport is riding high big time these days. We'll catch up with him next. We're back. It was a big weekend for the cross enthusiasts as Cornell won its first national championship in nearly 50 years. Big Red beating Maryland 13 10 in front of 35000 fans in

Foxborough Massachusetts on Monday. Our next guest considered by many to be the greatest lacrosse player ever. He co-founded the premier lacrosse league which begins its seventh season this Friday

up at Albany. Paul Rabel is the league's president and joins us here post nine. Welcome back Scott. Thank you. lacrosse player ever. He co-founded the premier lacrosse league which begins its seventh season this Friday up at Albany. Paul Rabel is the league's president and joins us here post nine. Welcome back. Scott. Thanks for having me. Never gets old I guess when we call you the greatest lacrosse player of all. Well I'm sure C.J. Kersh fans will contest that. He's going to likely win the tour time in two days and was our number one

draft pick. That guy's shown on screen with Cornell. OK. About this weekend you're up there. Is lacrosse having its moment for the most part right now? I mean, 35,000 people in a football stadium to watch lacrosse, and then you're about to do your own thing. Yeah, the women's final four set an attendance record as well. We'll see ratings come out in the next day or so through ESPN.

But I'm anticipating probably 800,000 people watch with a peak of a million. So that's really powerful. I think the other macro trends is, in addition to what we've done at the PLL and college, you look at the growth of the women's game and then LA 28, having lacrosse back in for the first time in over 120 years. So we launched the WLL,

I think after the last time you and I sat down, that's performed really well. And then as we continue to build, we're looking at sites of the universal language of lacrosse being back in the Olympics. So this is the seventh year, as we said. Are you today where you thought you would be seven years ago? I think when we reflect, we would hope to be here.

And as an entrepreneur on that journey, you should be really agile and create as much optionality as possible. You and I talk often about the media environment and how that shifted and more advertising dollars are going towards streamers than they are to the traditional cable bundle. The first time that's happened was last year. So as a league that's wholly owned

in the team sports landscape, it is slightly different. So we're continuing to iterate and grow. You continue to attract some pretty premium partnerships to partners. Lexus last week and just US Bank which you've announced today. What do you think the draw is for these premium brands to your sport? Well Lexus and US Bank now are the 12th and 13th Fortune 500 company that has now came on to the PLL and WLM partner. US Bank is our official bank

and our wealth management partner. They look at our audience. There's 48 million fans in the US. 60% of our fans have a net worth of greater than a million dollars. 66% of our ticket purchasers have kids in the household. That comes from Ticketmaster, who's a landmark partner of ours.

So we have families, we're younger, they're native to the streaming environment, which is all attractive to brands and networks. What's the typical anthology of your players? Are they career guys who are gonna be in your league, and the women who are in the women's league? Are they looking for jobs on Wall Street, on the side? I mean, how are you thinking about all that? Well, I remember our first headline when we announced the PLL was Wall Street backs professional

lacrosse league because there is a trend of, if you look at a school like Cornell and Johns Hopkins and Notre Dame. Duke and you're going on the list. You're going to have a great work life opportunity so long as you graduate and you have a good GPA. So a psychological hurdle that we are overcoming is having our players do both and that's sort of what NFL players did in the 60s and 70s. It wasn't too long ago where Sterling Sharpe's wage in the

NFL, that was in the early 90s, was $350,000. So if you look at the increase in growth of professional sports over the last 30 years in particular, we're trying to expedite that curve and get our players full time living in market and getting meaningful salaries. What do you guys make? What do you what do your players make a season? We have some players making over $100,000. You do? Yeah. And if you look at the NW cell and the WNBA and their growth and meteorites deal and sponsorship, they've taken a 35 K minimum salary now and for exit. When you're an emerging league you think about things like housing and other ways to help players become more

full time so we have a marketing division that creates marketing addendums for our players and you really have to be holistic in the approach and that's why we're wholly owned at that. I mean you said emerging are you emerging or are you established? What do you consider yourself? I would say US bank considers us established and that's why they've came on and frankly in a multi-year term and we're in year four of our existing media rights, zero four four with ESPN

and we're really excited about an upcoming announcement around what the future of long-term media value can look like for the PLL and the WLL but you're absolutely right, established but we still have that sort of entrepreneur's growing mindset. So you're going to announce soon what your new media rights deal is? You've already negotiated it out? Yes, we're making the final negotiations now.

Has surprised you where the numbers have gone? Sort of. I mean, we talked about the shift in advertising dollars to streamers. I would say that it's for one of two reasons. The networks are putting more focus on their streaming platforms and you're seeing an uptick in ad-supported subscribers. So now about one out of every two subscribers

on Netflix is doing ad-supported and their advertising revenue has jumped to $2 billion. If you take ESPN, they have more than double the amount of advertising revenue and the question is why? It's live sports. So you're not just finding advertisers for every seven to ten minutes during a television or film.

You're getting integrated advertising throughout the entire broadcast. Okay. Eight teams, 25 players. That's where you are right now. Yes. Expansion plans, if yes, when? Well right now we're touring. So when we have two games over over a Friday night and two

games over a Saturday night that model sort of fits. You still have the touring model. Yes. So you don't have teams actually based and playing in the cities in which they

represent everybody tours and plays. And therein lies the opportunity. So we've built something of sustenance where we've created a supply demand curve. We've grown the lacros opportunity. So we've built something of sustenance where we've created a supply demand curve. We've grown the lacrosse audience. We've built commercial value around the PLL. The next step will be getting those teams full time in market and

shifting the touring model to a home and away economics model. Good to see you again. Best of luck as this new season starts. That's Paul Rable. Thank you. Thank you. All right. For more on all things sports and business, you can head to CNBC.com slash sport. Coming up next, we track the biggest movers. As we head into this close, Christina's back with more. Tell us what you think. I am seeing a media company diving headfirst into Bitcoin with a massive capital raise while movie theaters are celebrating their biggest Memorial Day weekend ever.

We'll break down those stock movers after this short break. We're about 15 from the closing bell. Let's get back now to Christina for a look at the stocks that she is watching. What's on the list? Trump Media, because those shares are sinking after it announced it's raising $2.5 billion in capital to buy Bitcoin.

It comes as this truth social parent looks to evolve into a more of a financial services player, or as some say, become a proxy for Bitcoin like GameStop did and Strategy. Shares are down 10% right now. And then I just want to point out Brinker International. Those shares are up about 6%. The ticker is EAT.

This is the parent company of Chili's. Chili's just in the last quarter really saw a sales turnaround. And so that's keeping investor confidence in this name. There's been numerous price target increase, analysts upgrades and so shares are up almost 7% Scott. All right, good stuff. Thank you for that. Christina Partsenevola still ahead. Run down to what to watch for when Box reports top of the hour. We're back on the bell right after this. We're now the closing bell market zone CNBC senior markets commentator Mike Santoli here to break down these crucial moments of the trading day.

Julia Borsten on a record breaking weekend at the box office plus two earnings out no tea today. We are watching Giorgio Bossa on box Steve Kovac on Okta. Mike I begin with you. Every sector is up and nicely so is about as broad as you could ask for. Yeah every so often you know in the last several, the market does remind investors of upside risk, especially at a time when investors are being pretty forgiving about the near-term economic numbers. You know, we bounce off of the multi-decade low

in consumer confidence, and it's treated as an upside surprise. You have a less negative than expected Dallas Fed. So basically, the economy in this interim period when we're waiting for finality on tariffs is being treated innocent until proven guilty. It almost sort of de-risks the macro fundamentals and then get a 3% pullback last week.

You obviously have some relief on the treasury yield front and it's enough to get us here. I mean, we've kind of sleepwalked for the last few hours, which is kind of bull market behavior. That kind of quiet grind higher above 5,900 again, I keep pointing out, midday Wednesday we were at 59.35. So we're kind of just meandering around this range and making sure almost nobody gets too comfortable

on either side of it. Yeah, well, I mean, big tech's a good place to look today for the big winners. It's certainly one of the better sectors. And then all eyes are gonna be, we're gonna talk so much about it over the next 24 hours, but what really is hanging in the balance now for Nvidia? Yes, and that's actually been one of the reasons

we got back as far as we did from the early April losses, that nothing big picture has changed on the AI investment front. So presuming Nvidia kind of ratifies that view, that it's steady as she goes. Now, it doesn't mean that Nvidia numbers themselves presuming Nvidia kind of ratifies that view that it's steady as she goes now It doesn't mean that Nvidia numbers themselves have served as much of a upside catalyst for the market In fact, the last time it did was a full year ago. Yeah the last three quarters

It was either the market kind of plateaued or continued to pull back at that point So it's kind of interesting if you if you gave somebody the numbers that in video is going to report in 25 hours Right now. I'm not sure you'd know what to do with it in terms of trading It's kind of interesting if you gave somebody the numbers that he's going to report in 25 hours right now I'm not sure you know what to do with it in terms of trading. Well because look the stocks had a big ramp It is it's a little bit of a look at it right now The end of that chart there shows you this comeback from below a hundred to now pushing the door on one one forty I'll come back to you in a minute Speaking of stocks that are up Julia Disney is one and you'd have to think it's because of those box office numbers this past weekend.

That's right. There was a record Memorial Day box office, and the biggest winner of all of the media players here was Disney. As Lilo and Stitch live-action remake has already grossed around $90 million more than the entire run of the 2002 animated film. This is a big win for a film with a roughly $100 million budget, and it makes Disney the only studio to top $2 billion at the box office so far this year. Another winner, of course, Paramount, Tom Cruise's final installment

on its Mission Impossible franchise, delivered a franchise best with particular strength at IMAX movies. Shares of IMAX did gain nearly 5% on the strength of the week, excuse me, 4% on the strength of the weekend, as well as a bullish note from B. Riley. Cinemark shares up about 3%. And then AMC Entertainment shares, it does tend to trade like a meme stock, those shares up about 23%.

Now this big record breaking Memorial Day weekend does bring the year to day box office up 22%. It also bodes well for the crush of summer big budget films that are coming up ahead from Disney, Warner Brothers, Discovery, Universal and others. Back over to you. All right, Julia, thank you, Julia Borson. All right, Dee, tell us about Box.

What should we watch out for? Hey Scott, so the Cloud Content Storage and Management Platform, it has been emphasizing its AI initiative. So any insights into consumer adoption rates of new features and their contribution to revenue growth will be key areas of interest for investors. Revenue growth, billings, momentum also, especially in light of macroeconomic conditions.

Box shares, they are about flat on the year, but up 25% over the last 12 months, Scott. Okay, deep thanks. Steve Kovach, Okta, how about that? How about that? We'll keep it short and sweet for you. This is the first quarter of their fiscal 2026, and we already have some guidance from the company on what to expect for this quarter, and it's pretty much in line with what estimates

are saying, too. Revenue, we're looking at up 10% to 680 million and adjusted earnings of 70 cents a share. The outlook also came before President's trade war really got started. So look out for changes on the call on that outlook due to some economic uncertainty. This gives us, of course, some insight if businesses

are gonna pull back on their cybersecurity spend, something I'm always watching with these companies when we talk about recession. Let's let it back over to you Scott. Alright we'll see you a little bit. Steve Kovac thank you very much. We're gonna go out close to the highs here Mike. You're better than 720 on the Dow. You've taken back 5900 on the S&P and the Nasdaq. I mean you know what can you say about the comeback and the move that that those stocks have really had. You've been thinking a lot too about the summer.

Yes. And after, you know, look, May's gonna be over before we know it now, and then we're gonna really be starting to think about what the summer's gonna hold for stocks. Yeah, I mean, actually, some of the action that I felt like summer in terms of the mode of trading. But I do think that you have to have a couple things

in mind for the context. One is, when you've had this magnitude of comeback from a 15 plus percent decline in the S&P 500, when you've gotten to within 3% of the old highs, historically, you've always within months gotten back to the old high. So it's very, very rare for it to be a pure head fake to have this much of a rally. So that you maybe can consider supportive. Obviously, it's only 15 instances over 80 years, so it's not like you can bring it to the bank. So you have that on the one

hand and then this idea that you know we're giving a little bit of a pass to the economic numbers right here. I still keep fixating on July though. Just a lot of things going to come together. We can think whatever we like about how tariffs are going to end up. I think right now we're pricing in a more benign scenario. Everybody comes on and says 10% across the board, maybe a little higher on China, as if we can bake that in. If that is the case, I'm sure we can work around it. Keep in mind where we're treading here to. The S&P's down on a six month basis.

We first got to the levels we're trading at right here before election day, or right around election day. So it kind of shows you we've been sort of revving the engine a little bit. And if things go okay, then you're looking at, okay, 2026 earnings as we're gonna start to look at to key off of this summer are around $300 for the S&P, 20 times that's 6,000.

That doesn't mean it's cheap. It means you can make some basis if yields aren't gonna go crazy and the economy is gonna hang in there. I think that's a framework people feel like they can live with. So many things have been tariff and trade fight skewed that it's really hard to get an accurate picture

on what the real economy looks like. It's a lot of soft data bad, but is it gonna bleed in? Companies saying this, that, and the other, all the uncertainty. And we're gonna have to wait and see. And maybe we do get those real answers into the June July you get the jobs number coming out labor indicator within the consumer confidence report wasn't great but that kind of stuff hasn't matter for a lot all right it's a big Tuesday here

obviously we'll go out green across the board