Closing Bell - Closing Bell 5/27/26

Episode Date: May 27, 2026

From the open to the close, “Closing Bell” and “Closing Bell: Overtime” have you covered. From what’s driving market moves to how investors are reacting, Scott Wapner, Melissa Lee and Michael Santoli guide listeners through each trading session and bring to you some of the biggest names in business.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Guys, thanks so much. Welcome to closing bell. I'm Scott Wobner live from Post 9 here at the New York Stock Exchange. This maker breakout begins with chips and no dips. Why Micron keeps going up and what could cause it to drop. Key questions as money continues to flow into that stock and into that space. Let's show you the scorecard here with 60 to go in regulation. All the majors are on track for record. Close has been a nice turnaround from what's been a pretty muted session. Yes, still muted a bit to the upside, but nonetheless, green across. the board, yields down, oil down. That's helping sentiment overall. A new high as well today for the Russell, which has been on quite a tear lately, the small caps. Look at that. Up 17, near 18% year-to-date. Best performing of the index is anywhere. Elsewhere, Z-scaler, not doing so well, plunging today. Its guidance didn't meet lofty expectations. Not that it was bad. Just hard to be good enough in this kind of market. Salesforce and Snowflake, they're in focus today. Both stocks reporting earnings and overtime. We'll talk to the analyst, Dan Ives, about that trade coming up. Stephanie links, he's sitting on my left. He's got a lot riding on one of those. It does take us to our talk of

the tape, the chip rip and how long that trade can run. Let's bring it Christina parts of Nevelos for more as we just watch at least Micron go up, up, up, and away. Yes, to your point, no dips. But the chip rally as a whole is taking a breather today. You can see the socks is down about a 1.5% after five straight days of gains. So definitely context when you zoom out. But memory, like you mentioned, bucking the trend. Micron just crossed a trillion-dollar market cap for the first time yesterday. And a lot of that moose scot is technical. Upside bets keep buildings, so the market makers have to buy to hedge, and that feeds the rally even higher. So it's just a cycle. Momentum favorites are continuing, though. The storage name, Seagate, Western Digital.

You can see green right now. I was going to say Sandisk was getting a boost, but you can see it turns negative. I did get an upgrade from Barclays to overweight with a 2,300 price target shares are only at 1583 right now. Across the memory complex and to answer your question, how could this, you know, sector keep going? The setup is the same. Pricing power is improving. Long-term contracts are giving these companies more stability than they've had in past cycles. And Bulls will argue these stocks are so cheap they could double and still look cheap. So what we may be seeing now is the beginning of a real re-rating. Meanwhile, I have to point out, InVidia, is a little bit quiet again here. There's this growing sense that maybe mega-cap names are being used as funding sources,

while money chases more immediate upside elsewhere in semis. Yeah, amazing to watch. Thank you, Christina Parsonavilos, Micron's parabolic move, giving some investors bad memories, get it, of the froth of the late 90s. Dear Gebosa, with that part of our story today, hi, I see what you did there, Scott. So the anxiety that I'm hearing here on the ground is less this is dot com all over again, more are we underwriting AI demand before we actually know the unit economics. Companies, they're blowing through token budgets, inference costs, they're showing up in margins and customers are starting to ask whether they actually need the most expensive frontier model for every workload. Now, that matters for Micron and the memory complex because the whole AI supply chain,

it's being priced off the idea that demand stays enormous and price insensitive. In 1999, the internet was real too. Fiber, routers, servers, data centers, they were all essential, too. But markets modeled perfect demand before the economics settled. The internet, yes, it changed the world, but it still crushed a lot of stocks. AI can be real and some AI supply chain valuations, they can still be overheated. Both those things can be true. The question is whether memory stays scarce, long enough, and profitable enough to justify these trillion-dollar companies. Scott. Oh, that's a perfect setup. As we all marvel at what's been taking place. Deirdre, thanks so much. Deirda Bosa. We're joined now by Doug Clinton. He's the

intelligent Alpha founder and CEO, also Deepwater Asset Management. It's good to have you back. Of all the numbers, and I said this on half today, of all the numbers that stand out and make a sit back and say, holy cow, Micron reached a trillion dollars in market cap only 48 days after it first valued at $500 billion. For example, Nvidia took 490 days to pass the same benchmark. Is all this kosher with what's happening in this market? Well, Scott, they hit a one trillion dollar market cap with about a 10 forward PE ratio. And so if you look at the numbers, it doesn't really feel that insane. I think the core question though, Scott, it gets back to what have prior semi-cycles taught us about this industry. I think bears would tell you that when you see these

names trading at these low PEs, usually that signals the end of the cycle that we're living in and you want to buy these names when the PEs actually look really high. So the question is, is this time different to Templeton's legendary quote? I think this is one of those 20% of the times where it is different because the demand is still there. I think that you're seeing companies like Microsoft, they moved away from Claude Code because people were using it so much internally and spending so much on tokens. I think they couldn't just. the budget. And so I think you'll continue to see these data center buildouts support the valuations that we have right now on Micron and the memory complex. I don't know if bears would

tell you there's a problem. Truth tellers would look at history and say there's an issue because these are traditionally, and this is what you're alluding to, our cyclical areas of the market chips are highly cyclical. What you're saying is that this time could really be different, which is why the in price action doesn't necessarily raise the same flags as if the valuation was sky high, which it is not. And I always think, too, when you're when you're thinking about these technologically driven bull markets, it's always about right now. Right now, I don't think this time is different. Now, if Micron triples from here in the next three months, maybe then we start talking about

things being a little bit different because that prices in an entirely different reality. But I think what we're seeing right now is just the market continuing to catch up to the demand that the hyperscalers and the AI infrastructure builders are really seeing, both in terms of the need for the hardware, but also on the consumer and the enterprise side, using the software more and more. But you still think then this is reality and not fantasy. The stock's obviously pricing in a lot of growth. We're not exactly sure if we're pulling forward a ton of demand, whether there are double, and triple orders, whether all of this great feeling is going to last to justify the move we've seen in the stock in a really short period of time. I think there may be some of that to your point, too, Scott. There probably is some double ordering. There's certainly a lot of thought about

how can the hypers, the AI data center builders, sort of maintain their ability to access these things that are supply constrained right now. But I will look back again. Dot com eras. We're sort of referencing and people are using this as maybe an analog, to go back to that era, the dot-com boom, it lasted six and a half or seven years, depending on when you put the start date. But through those seven years, there were about 10 times that the NASDAQ pulled back 10%. We've seen the QQ pull back about four times 10 percent so far in the AI boom. And so if you think about, you know, what does a correction even mean here? I don't think it means that everything's over, we're going down 50%, all these names need to be totally re-rated.

What I do think, though, is if you think about how fast things have moved, maybe things slow down a little bit. Maybe we see what we saw two weeks ago, which was a 5% pullback in the SMH. I think that's totally reasonable, but I certainly don't think the trade is completely over. Well, you're fortunate. You own it personally, and Deepwater owns my cron as well, which leads to my next and my last question for you, if you don't own it already, and you look at a person. price target, like Barclays puts out today, of 1175, up from 675, can you buy it today? Can you own this

stock if you don't? I think you can. Yeah, I absolutely think you can. And I think if you think about the world in the next 12, 18, 24 months, I'll give that kind of time frame. I think that's what you kind of have to think about if you're entering Micron today. I wouldn't enter it today with the hopes that it keeps going up 20, 25% every week, I'd really try to zoom out and think about the cycle's not over yet. The PE is still reasonable. And even if there is a sort of, you know, a slowdown, let's say, in the stock market for these types of names, I think your downside is probably somewhat limited relative to some of the other big names that have moved a lot just like Micron because you do have that PE support that I think is real and durable for the next couple years.

Doug, appreciate it. As always, Doug Clinton, joining us once again on closing bell. Now to our panel, CNBC contributor, High Tower, Stephanie Link. Stratigis is Chris Ferone and Vesgo's Brian Levitt. Good to have everybody with us. Steph, you don't have this one, but you have Marvell, which reports earnings, which is in kind of the same bucket of stocks that have gone crazy. Yeah. So how are you feeling about our conversation that we just had and how it leads into what you're feeling right now? So I am a little worried about Marvell only because it's up 140% year-to-date.

Expectations are really high, but I like the story long-term. AI is a revolution. We've been talking about it for years. And the top four, this is the thing. If you think the top four MAG-7 are going to continue to spend, the cycle can continue for a very long time.

They are going to spend $761 billion this year, which is up 75% year-over-year-over-year, Scott. And I think the forecast for next year are too low. 1.1 trillion is expected. I think that's a plus sign. And what we've talked about in the past is it's not just these companies that you want to own as they are spending and then eventually they're going to see returns, but you see that whole food chain, which is so powerful, data centers grid power. And that is so powerful. And that's the momentum for these entire other sectors and stocks. So I'm nervous that the semiconductor stocks are seeing the FOMO for sure. But I believe that. we're going to continue to see the spend. And if I believe that, I want to stay involved. And if there's a pullback tonight in Marvell, you know, I'll be probably out there buying. So, Chris, you, you are strategist by trade, but you speak technician also. So how does somebody who wears those hats look at the trade in this market and what do you come out with?

I think you have to stop with the discussions about fundamentals or P.E.s here because this is entirely a price-driven move in these names. And, you know, I agree. agree with the logic that you actually don't want these to be cheap. They're trading like commodities. Commodities get cheap towards the end of the cycle, not the beginning. So I would be careful using valuation to justify either bullish or bearish here. I certainly don't know when the game is up on these stocks. But you're talking about Sandus 230% above the 20% of the 200 moving average micron, 170% above the 200 day. You have to be putting chips in your pocket here. And I think maybe. Pardon the pun. Right. And I think maybe, yeah,

And I think maybe more importantly here, be committed to levels that matter. A lot of these names have written the 20-day moving average up the entire way. If you're going to get a deeper correction here, I would suspect the 20-day average probably have to go first. But, I mean, over-bought. You're describing an over-bought scenario in most of these names, which doesn't necessarily mean anything. Yeah, I would maybe make a distinction between overbought and parabolic. We strive to seek out overbought stocks. I mean, overbought stocks generally give you very good forward returns.

then you jump some line where you really get into the parabolic category here. I think we're now in the parabolic category here. And who might say that these can't go up another 20, 30%, 40%. I mean, if Micron came in 30%, it would just be back to where it was two weeks ago, right? So we've got to put this in a little bit of context. I think you're in really rarefied air here, and you've got to be putting, I think, some profits away. Has it put, Brian, the market itself in any bit of rarefied air? because, I mean, the targets from many shops continue to go up. Goldman takes theirs today to 8,000 on the S&P,

in large part because what are now the biggest stocks in this market, and now Micron as a trillion-dollar market cap company, is one of those in the club, are leading the index higher much more so than people had expected. Well, that is true, but you also have to realize that the economic backdrop or the backdrop in general is slowly getting a bit better here, too. seen oil prices peak. I believe we've seen interest rates peak. They're coming down together. We've got inflation expectations contain. The economy continues to remain resilient. And so what you're likely to see, if you remember, coming into the year, we were all talking about broadening. We're all talking about more of an expansion trade. You've seen small caps do well year to date. They're starting to come back on. So a lot of investors are saying to me, this all seems too good to be

true. And perhaps they're speaking of a handful of names. It hasn't been the market really since February 28th that we had anticipated. And now with oil and rates likely having peaked, you get back towards that. Okay. Everything rally. I mean, the other Chris Harvey sat here the other day and he raises target to I think 8,020. In part on the belief exactly what Brian's talking about. Yield's coming down, oil coming down, and a lot of other stuff going up, things that haven't participated, areas that you love, parts of the cyclical area of this market. I mean, financials have traded poorly. Discretionary hasn't really traded well at all. Ex-Amazon, some names have. A lot of names haven't. Are we on the precipice here of a big broadening move? I mean, I hope so. I'm playing that,

for sure. I was beating the market handedly in January and February because we did have a broadening out, and it has been very narrow since then. If you get a resolution with this war, yeah, the war sort of cut that trade off. It sure did. And if you get a resolution, then Brian's going to be right. And I think all of us would agree that inflation is peaked and interest rates come down. And maybe you can start to appreciate the earnings side of the equation, which there were really good earnings across many sectors. And only technology and Com Services really got rewarded. So I went back to see what the playbook was in January, February. and it was energy that outperformed materials, utilities, but really tied to the grid, right?

Industrials tied to data center built and all of that stuff. And by the way, housing. Housing was up 12% in January and February. So maybe we can get that group to come. And if we could, that would be so positive for the economy because we're growing 4% without a housing cycle. So if we get a housing cycle, we can actually see an acceleration. And that's why you would want to lean more towards cyclicals, not abandoning technology. maybe they just take a pause for a little bit.

Are we on the cusp of that? You know, I think when you look at what the momentum stocks have done over the last, you know, eight, 12 weeks, you know, in a world where the macro got very uncertain, momentum actually became the certain quality out there. And I think if you get some resolution, whether it's around or other issues, and you kind of go back to an environment

where there is some more certainty, it, I think, breaks the fever in some of the momentum stocks. You can go to other places of this market. I think discretionary is really important here. It's very oversold. The bar is exceptionally low. I mean, the UMIS confidence last week, I think, was the lowest in history. So the bar is low.

We have started over the last four or five days to see a little breath of light to come into some of these socks. You've seen some turns in restaurants. You've seen some turns in retailers. I think you've got to stay really on top of that over the next couple of weeks. For confirmation, that rates down, inflation down, oil down is sustainable. By the other, Staples also did really well in January and February, I believe. They did, I know. Right? And they've acted horribly. You know, last couple days, a little breath of life coming to some of the consumer stuff, both staples and discretion. If you think about it, it's two years in a row where we've had this nice setup for a broader market only to be disrupted by a policy decision, whether it was, whether it was tariffs or whether it was the war in Iran. If you think about 2025, we got back on it as we improved some of the policy clarity. It wasn't as if tech didn't do well, but the markets got broader. But as Chris,

points out, and he uses the word certainty, the certain quality, right? Investors are not all of a sudden going to feel less certain about the power and durability of tech earnings to really want to even necessarily go to other places. If you have enough momentum behind the kind of trades that we've seen, really going to get off that train? You know, Scott, what I think this all speaks to is this has been such a rotational market. That tells me that money doesn't want to leave. the asset class of equities. And I think ultimately, there has to be a meaningfully higher bond yield for money to actually leave the asset class. One of the things that, you know, is a pretty persistent feature of melt-up bubble-like environment, whether it was Japan in 89 or NASDAQ in 99,

is bond yields go along for the ride there at the very end. In 99, people forget, 10-year yields, went four to seven. So I don't think, you know, 4-65 on 10s last week was compelling enough of not attractive enough. Not compelling enough or attractive enough to be the substitute. for equities yet. That's what we get these very rotational moves. I think earnings still matter, Scott. And we talked about this yesterday on halftime that seven sectors in the S&P 500 had 13% plus earnings growth. If earnings are going higher, eventually that matters, right? I mean, and maybe we're just going to continue to have a concentrated market until we get more certainty. But if you wait for certainty, we're going to miss a price valuation. The next three quarters to

Steph's point, the earnings estimates are all 20 plus percent. Now, obviously skewed by the top end of the space of what tech is going to deliver, which just did 50 plus. Right. So it is a rising tide sort of lifts all earnings boats from the absolute number. But to Steph's point, it's not like the other sectors are just delivering duds. They were still, you know, lower to mid single double digit. Yeah, absolutely.

Like she said, seven of the sectors, double digit. And the other thing is it's not only the earnings growth that you're going to get. where's the discount rate going? And, you know, coming into the year, the market was pricing in three cuts. Now it's pricing in a hike with barely little incident to the broad indices, nothing to the credit market. What happens if that starts shifting again? What happens, you know, and I'm watching... Does anybody even take the idea of a Fed hike seriously? No, I didn't. And I'm watching inflation expectations come down now. I don't care what the market thinks it's pricing in. Five-and-break-evens are basically on the tights over the last number of weeks. I'm comfortable with it.

been three years coming in as well. So if you can get back on some type of easing path with the earnings that we have, the backdrop remains good. So what's the risk? Is it rates, to your point, sort of getting away from us a little bit higher? Is it oil? No resolution in the Middle East, which that doesn't even seem like it's a real. I think you just spoke to the possibility. When you look at two Q, three, Q, four Q, Q, earnings, we have raised the bar of expectations considerably. I mean, really big difference from the reporting season that we just got. through. I mean, you talk about the April, May reporting season, the bar of expectations was relatively low. The results were exceptional, but off a low bar. I think when you start to look out, particularly

into weaker seasonals, get to mid-July into August, I think the bar of expectations is certainly a bigger hurdle. That's fair. It's rates in my mind. Mine, too. If rates go higher, if they go above, if the 10 year goes above five, you're going to get switchers. And that's a problem for the equity market. and that and higher rates is indicative of higher inflation. And that means why would we have higher inflation? Well, you know I'm worried about like, I love this AI revolution, but it is inflationary. And so even if we get a resolution in the war, I'm not sure you're going to get to 2% inflation, but I don't think it's going to get away from us.

We just got to get through the Iranian continent. These cycles usually aren't with policy tightening. And I don't see us going there. Mike drop. We'll talk to you soon. Thanks, everybody. We're just getting started here coming up next. man versus machine, what Robin Hood just rolled out. It could reshape who's really calling the shots

in your portfolio. Kate Rooney's following that money for us. She'll join us in a couple of minutes. We're live at the New York Stock Exchange, and you're watching closing bell on CNBC. Welcome back a lot of talk about what tasks AI agents might do in place of humans in the future. Well, you can now add stock trading, portfolio management, and credit card purchases to that list. Robin Hood unveiling that new feature today. Or Kate Rooney here with more on that story. Hi there. Hey, Scott.

Yeah, so this is a first for the brokerage industry. Robin Hood is now letting clients connect outside AI agents. So think of chat GPT or Claude directly into a trading account and then executes trades on their behalf. This is going to happen in a separate account. Robin Hood also telling me customers can limit access. They can ask for sign off and basically permission for the AI agent to make that trade disable it as well. If something does go wrong, they're rolling out with equities first. they did say options, crypto and other assets and asset classes are going to be coming next.

The company does also warn that AI agents can make mistakes, misunderstand instructions, and then generate losses. They say at the end of the day, customers are the ones responsible for any sort of activity in their accounts. It also is bringing in the concept of spending as part of this. The other half of the news today, they're rolling out agents for shopping to make purchases automatically in a similar way. So this is a major test, though, Scott, for how comfortable consumers are and clients for Robin Hood are, letting AI fully manage their money so far. It's really just been used for advice versus actually going out and placing the trade. Robin Hood did tell me they designed this around the current

regulatory structure. And there are some questions, Scott, about how good this technology is at the end of the day in picking stocks. Brave, brave new world. And I would assume that if this goes well, that others are going to follow suit. That's what I'm hearing, Scott. I was just talking to a broker analyst who said there's going to be, this is going to be closely watched. The Schwabs and Fidelity of the world have sort of dip their toes saying, yeah, you can use an AI agent for advice, but they haven't gone in this direction. Robin Hood, if you think of sort of the history of this as a startup brokerage firm, they were the first to do free trading, they were the first to do really overnight in a big way. They did fractional trading early on, and the rest of the

industry followed. So this could be another scenario where they put the engineering work in, they build the tech, and then the rest of the brokerage industry sees if it works and then follow suit. A disruptor for sure. Kate, thank you. It's Kate. Rooney. Coming up next, rewriting the rules of college sports. New details behind a new bill working its way through Congress that could very well reshape the big money in college athletics, details. And they are really interesting when we come back. Welcome back, the biggest shakeup in decades to the college sports landscape, a step closer this hour as a bipartisan bill is announced today in Washington. Our Alex Sherman joins us now with more. What do you make of this?

You know, Scott, this is called the Protect College Sports Act, and really that's what this is. This is a series of proposed guardrails to put around what many people refer to these days as the Wild Wild West of college sports. This is a fairly wide-ranging bill. It'll take you a long time to read it. But here are some highlights from it. There's a series of different issues here, starting with the idea that there would be only one college transfer per. athlete without penalty, the penalty meaning that they would need to sit out a year or there would be some sort of delay before starting next season. That would be a big change. Right now,

athletes can sort of hop from school to school every year. Another thing worth noting, there would be a limitation on athlete eligibility to a maximum of five years. This would prevent athletes from sticking around in college for six or seven years, keeping on collecting those NIL paychecks that would sort of force them out the door, either to a professional career or to the rest of their lives. There would be no former professional athletes coming in and playing in college. I know this has been sort of a point of consternation for certain college conferences. Even politicians have come out and said this seems a little ridiculous that professional players can kind of hop back into school and play against college athletes.

One more thing to note, the legislation would prevent schools from poaching a coach from another school during that sports season. So all of these different rules meant to kind of restore some sense of normalcy and certainly guardrails around what has been really a messy situation in college sports. Yeah, I mean, the last one, the poaching coaches from another school could very well be called the Lane Kiffin rule, given what happened at the end of the last college football season where he had accepted another job. and his then former program, obviously, was playing for a national championship. The other one, too, that needs to be discussed is a possible salary cap, which is included in this legislation, given where the NIL conversation has gone and the arms race that has taken place, that is significant. Yeah, I think the issue with the salary cap, though, is still, and in fact, I would say this may be the weakness to this new legislation, is that there's only so much you can do from a Congress standpoint

within the guardrails that were set up by the Supreme Court that basically allowed these sort of third-party NIL collectives outside of the system of actually the inter-system of each college that will spend money, which has a current cap that rises and rises on the own player. So there's basically two ways that a player can get made. And right now the problem is that these NIL collectives still exist. So if you have these wealthy individuals, they can come over the top and spend, you know, 10 million, 20 million, who knows how much money to pay these players. And that throws the whole system out of whack.

It will be interesting to see as these conversations go by if there's anything that Congress can do to really limit that part of it so that there is a true salary cap on the total amount of spending per school that counts these NIL collectives, which still exist as part of it, to really level the playing. Field. I mean, the big question, too, can it even pass? Just because it is a bipartisan written bill, can it actually pass the Congress and become a law and truly change the dynamic of college sports? Yeah, it's a weird dynamic, right? Because we're not used to Congress coming in and sort of devising the rules for an association like this.

This used to be the NCAA's job, but the power was sort of yanked out of the NCAA. and that's why everyone kind of by default is now looking to Congress to come in, but absolutely agree that there's still a long way to go before something has actually passed. And I would imagine particularly the big conferences like the SEC and the Big Ten will have a large say in what does and does not get past, if anything gets past, as they usually do, because they have made it nearly impossible for some of the lower conferences who aren't able in some of the schools, obviously, to raise the kind of money. that they can to compete on that playing field.

Alex, thanks. Appreciate it. Alex Sherman. Still ahead, meta shares are popping today. We'll tell you what's behind that late day pop right there. Star analyst Dan Ives right here next. MetaShare is turning higher within the last hour as it announces subscription plans for its most popular apps.

Star analyst Dan Ives here with us to react to a chart that we're going to show you right now, which did get that midday pop reacting as if this is. is a major revenue opportunity, is it? Look, I think after all the capbacks of their spending, I mean, this is a, I view it is almost a major step in the right direction because it comes down to three and a half billion users. How are you going to monetize it? And I think the subscription, they've obviously played around with it. This is what investors want to see.

Now it's about how do you monetize the user base? This is really, this is not the end step. It's just an interim step as they integrate more and more AI into that user base. that's going to be the monetization. I think that's something where the stock is not reflecting. Still, I think some of the revenue opportunities that we'll see over the coming year. You've got 900 outperform. You mentioned investors want to see it. Do users want to see it? Are they going to be willing to pay it? We're only talking about what seems to be, according to some of the reporting gear, three to four dollars a month for a sub for Insta, Facebook,

and WhatsApp. Yeah, you start to get any sort of adoption. You start to now look at revenues that could be up two, three, four percent. And then so on as the adoption curve increases. So I think it's something that investors are not really factoring in that they were going to do something like this. I think from a timing perspective, it's maybe come earlier. It shows a confidence in terms of their ability to roll it out. And look, this is going to just be a continued narrative, whether it's Microsoft, whether it's Mether, whether it's Apple, how you're going to monetize AI. Chip companies have shown how they're going to monetize just like software. You're talking, okay, that's interesting.

You say it reflects a confidence on their part to do this. Some may look at this and suggest that it shows their, you know, late, a little late to the game on how they're going to monetize AI beyond their core ad business. And you just throw in a bunch of stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. Zuckerberg, apparently at this shareholder meeting also said, or at least he opened the door for a cloud business. Is that a moonshot or is that legit? Okay, I think cloud, obviously, that could be maybe a bit more of a moonshot, but to me it's okay, how do you slowly diversify a way on the advertisers? That's going to continue to be, obviously, bread and butter, but you look at what they're doing, it's going to continue to be diversification. And I view that as a positive because

their install base is unmatched. So as they monetize it, you know, part are bullishness in terms of you know, where I talk about $900 and ultimately, you know, what could be higher. This is a key, prove it year for Zuckerberg and meta. It's a step in the right direction after, obviously, a quarter where it was all about capbacks and obviously that was more of a dog ate at the homework type of conference. Well, let me ask you this, because as you were talking, I was looking at stock. So it's down almost 4% year to date. How much pressure do you think they're feeling inside that building?

And how much pressure is he feeling himself, Zuckerberg, to deliver something that's going to wow the market and wow investors back into the name. Because outside of Microsoft, which is down as well on the year, everything else seems like it's a pretty good story to tell. Outside of these two. Pressure is definitely in building,

because when you're spending $120, $130 billion from a cap-bax perspective, they need to now show. and I think that the wake-up call was the last earnings call. Because when you contrast that with Amazon and obviously others, for meta, that's kind of put in meta in the investor penalty box. You got to start to show it. Next two or three-quarters, this stock's either at $750,800 or it's where it is or lower.

The point is this is kind of a fork in the road period, in my opinion, for meta, but a step in the right direction in terms of the rolling this out. But they keep finding themselves in the penalty box. You know what I'm saying? Like, no, it wasn't just after the, this last quarter, it was like two quarters ago. Sure. They were in the penalty box with a major penalty before.

Like, they can't stay out of the box. How do they stay out of the box? Look, and I think for them, that's the quagmire, because they're trying to really turn around a cargo ship in a river. I mean, they're trying to make a massive transformation while investors are obviously watching every single move. When you think about the hypers or chip companies, they're kind of front and center in terms of ones that are going to benefit from AI.

Meta, we'll see Apple in a few weeks. You look at Microsoft when it comes to, you know, one where it's still guilty till proven innocent. These are the names now that now need to show. It's not just about talk. It's about execution. Real quick, real quick. Apple, New High, you just mentioned WWDC.

We'll be there. So that stock's up. And how much pressure is on Salesforce tonight with their earnings? I mean, from a pressure level, If there's pressure on meta, there's even double the pressure on Beniof and sales force. Because it comes to back against the wall, I think they ultimately start from an agent force perspective. Can you get that over, you know, ultimately to a point where it could be three, four percent of revenue? But this is a prove it period.

Look at Z-scaler. They're here. Look at crowd strike and pow out on the other side. That's right. Fork in the road period for tech, key few months ahead, key earnings night ahead for soft. All right, Benny off on Mad Money to not. night, a snowflake on with with Jim too. Covered a lot. Thank you.

Thank you. As Dan Ives. Coming up next, Jack, the biggest movers as we head into the close today, what looks to be a record setter. Christina Parts and Nvelos has that for us. What do you see? And we have some retailers climbing on some earnings for surprises, and one casino stock getting a big vote of confidence from Wall Street. While those movers, next. Almost 10 from the bell.

Back to Christina for the stocks that she is watching. Let's start with Abercrombie and Fitch, because those shares are about 10% hire after a reporter an earnings beat, but a miss on revenue. The retailer said the Iran conflict directly impacted sales of revenue in Europe, the Middle East and Africa falling roughly about 10%. But shares are still having their best days since November, again, up 10%. And MDM shares are climbing on an upgrade to overweight from neutral JPMorgan. The firm says Las Vegas strip growth should improve in the coming months as U.S. leisure travels remain resilient and because people love Vegas. shares up almost 10. All right. Seeing a few in the zone. Christina Parts of Nevelos. Up next. Your earnings rundown. Sales Force, Snowflake, Marvell. They all report in overtime. They're all big. Got the setup next.

It is time for the closing bell market zone. Mike Santoli and Northern Trust. Joe Taney is here to break down these crucial moments of the trading day. Oliver Renick, standing by live from Cebo Global Markets in Chicago, looking at the action in small caps today. Another record setter there. Your overtime setup, Seam Modi, watching. Salesforce and Snowflake. Pristine is watching Marvell Force. Michael, I'll begin with you on track for record closes across the board. Yeah, I mean, just enough to put us over the line. I keep mentioning, we're not that far from a 20% run off the March 30th low. You're starting to see a few more signs of just some of the leadership areas being a bit tired and not able to really push ahead today, though,

you know, manage to get some of the things like depressed cyclicals in play, especially on the consumer side. So all that seems like it's kind of handling this push and pull of the indexes. Outside of Micron, that is, of course, that one's still managing to go higher. But I know banks down 1% today. So it's not really that clear a narrative here of continued momentum, but a wait and see in a pretty benign way about what's exactly going to come through with the straight. And also, I guess we're going to have to test the proposition that might be a kind of a sell-the-news moment or maybe just an occasion for more rotation. Six minutes from now, what do you got in O-T?

Well, we're actually going to do a little bit of a deeper dive into software. Obviously, we have the big reports coming, but also the Z-scaler miss and the huge sell-off there. We have an analyst talking about the cyber stocks and as well as Salesforce and Snowflank. Good stuff. Look forward to that. We'll see in just a bit. That's Mike Santoli to Oliver at the CBO who's looking at the Russell and Smallcaps. That's right, Scott. Small caps aren't getting much love from options traders, even though the IWM ETF is even with the cues in the last year. Among the three major benchmark index ETFs,

the IWM has the most options premium skewed towards puts. 70% of today's total dollar amount traded. By volume, almost three times more puts are trading than calls, and 70,000 more puts were bought than sold. This could reflect interest rate nerves, which tend to have an outsized impact on this group, but bonds are on a six-day win streak. and the action in TLT is not outwardly bearish.

But we do get inflation, GDP, and jobs data tomorrow. And perhaps the message here is that if you think stocks need to cool down, the small caps might be the most at risk. One standout trade for you, an $8 million put spread buying the 277, selling the 271 strikes looking for a 7% slide through mid-June, Scott. Okay, Oliver, thank you. Oliver Renning. It is a very big earnings evening. Evening, Seema, you first on CRM and Snow.

Listen, Scott, I think a lot of focus really will be on Salesforce, given the depressed performance in recent months, CEO Mark Benihoff needs to approve three things, right? First and foremost, more enterprise wins. New customers that are using Salesforce's AI platform, Agent Force, to complete tasks. Plus numbers that show adoption is growing. Right now, Agent Force makes up less than 5% of total sales. The street will want to know how Agent Force can become a bigger piece of the pie. Plus, any color on Salesforce's ability to retain talent amid several high-ranking executives leaving for the big AI labs. Shares are trading at a steep discount, as we've been discussing today, 13 times earnings.

It's 10-year average is around 40. So the bar is a little bit lower right now as we wait for more details on adoption. And again, how Agent Force is tracking, Scott. All right, Seema, thank you very much. Christina Marvell may not get as much love as Micron, but it gets a lot because the stock chart looks all. awfully similar. Yeah. So that's exactly how I was going to start those. Chairs are pulling back today, but posting four straight record closes heading into the print, more than doubling this year. The momentum really comes down to a few things. Marbell has emerged as a top player in AI

optical connectivity, the networking that links chips together inside data centers. Then there's also the Amazon relationship. Wall Street is very bullish on Amazon's custom tranium chips, and Marvell is a key partner building out those particular chips. And then you've got InVita also making a $2 billion investment back in March into Marvell, which analysts are calling a validation of its optical leadership. And the Microsoft pipeline is growing as well. J.B. Morgan says the Maya chip program is on track to ramp in the back half of this year with estimates suggesting it could be worth more than $2 billion in revenue next year. The question is whether all that good news priced in. All right. We'll see what happens. Christina. Thank you. That's Christina Pardsonel. All right, Joe.

These are big earnings. It's been an unbelievable market. What are your thoughts here? as we're on pace for record closes across the board yet again. I think we are on pace for this record close. There's clearly a lot of momentum behind this market rally. But I'll go back to our position at the very beginning of this year. We were of the view that heading into 2026, you can no longer rely on multiple expansion. We're at this point in the cycle where you have to start seeing the fundamentals. You have to start seeing earnings do the heavy lifting.

And what have we observed so far? Again, we're heading into records. But it's important to remember here that multiples have actually compressed since Because the earnings have been what you hope they would be. Is there enough momentum to keep the earnings momentum going to continue to justify the kinds of moves that we're seeing in the microns and other names within this market that have gone parabolic? Yeah. Well, I mean, let's not let's not kid ourselves, right? Tech communication services, really, it's been mega-cap tech and this AI narrative has been doing the majority of the heavy lifting with respect to earnings over the course of this year.

But I take some comfort in knowing here that even just over the last couple of months, you've seen earnings estimates for the S&P 500 new hire, right? So we're now looking at roughly 22% year-of-year-year earnings growth for 2026. That is on the back of margins, which are actually moving up. And again, this isn't only mega-cap tech stocks. When you look at margins, profit margins, for the equally weighted S&P 500, that is also inching a little bit closer to record level. So there's some operational leverage here, and I think that's a healthy sign. You call in for a broadening, or is it going to stay top-heavy with tech? I think we have to see a broadening. In order for this to have some,

some legs, think about where we are in this AI cycle, right? You can break it down in phases, you know, phase one is the hyperscalers tech. It's a lot of the chips. Phase two is industrials. So think about a lot of the industrial companies now that are seeing some very meaningful earnings growth as a result of CAPEX spending just a couple of years ago. Phase three, I think, is where the rubber meets the road. That is where broad-based adoption comes into play. We're still in the early signs of that, looking to see where companies across sectors leverage artificial intelligence, not only to improve productivity, but also to genuinely create real profit. Appreciate you being with us.

That's Joe Tanias, you hear them. Once again, they're cheering because once again, they always cheer, but they cheer with good reason or extra reason today. Because more closing record highs across the board for the major averages. There it is. Russell, new record there too. Offended in overtime, but those big earnings are losing. and I'll see you tomorrow.