Closing Bell - Closing Bell: 7/9/26

Episode Date: July 9, 2026

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

Welcome to closing bell. I'm Scott Walker, live from Post 9 here at the New York Stock Exchange. This maker breakout begins with a bounce back and in momentum, whether it means that part of the market has found a bottom. We'll show you the very latest coming up. In the meantime, the scorecard with 60 to go and regulation looks like that. Pretty good day across the board. Tech, definitely the story today, semis are sharply higher. Apple is moving closer to a new high. We're going to look at all of that a little bit closer coming up. Good day as well for many of the restaurant-related names. We'll have much more on that, too. good moves across the board. First, though, breaking news from the Fed. Our Steve Leasman has that for us. Steve. As promised last week by Fed Chair, Kevin Warsh, he is out now with the names of the people

on his task forces to rethink how the Fed is doing its business. He said the Fed's commitment to price stability and maximum employment is unwavering. It issued the following statement, Scott, saying the U.S. economy has changed significantly over the last generation and never more so than right now. Each task force will carry. carefully consider whether policymakers means and methods, analytical tools, and policy approaches can be improved upon. So let's go through the names. On the communications committee, which is designed to review how the Fed conveys policy

deliberations, there's Peter Fisher. He was head of fixed income at BlackRock and at the New York Fed from 85 to 01, including heading the Fed's accounts, a SOMA account over there. He has been a member of the Shadow Open Market Committee and criticized Fed communications, saying the Fed's decision-making and communications process is broken and has been for some time also. He's criticized reliance on forward guides. Arminio Fragco is also on that. He's the former president of the central bank of Brazil, as well as previously reported, Mervin King, the former governor of the bank of England.

Balance sheet policy. Raghara Rajan, as you know, a frequent guest on CNBC, the former governor of the Bank of India and from the University of Chicago, as well as Jeremy Stein, the former Fed governor from 2012. to 2014. And Karen Dynan, Professor of Economics at Harvard, she was in the Obama administration in the Treasury from 2014 to 2017. On data, here it gets pretty interesting. Raj Chetty, very well-known economist from Harvard University. Doug McMillan, former president, CEO of Walmart. They have a lot of data. And it'll be interesting to see what he thinks about that, as well as Kevin Murphy, Professor of Economics at Chicago, on the Productivity and Jobs Task Force.

Well, there's Mark Andresen. We sort of thought he was going to end up on one of the of these panels. In addition to everything you know, Mark Andreessen is as well to remember, he is one of the Czech bros that my colleague and I, Matt Peterson, wrote about, who knew Kevin Worst going back to Stanford in 2013, or, sorry, earlier than that. He knew him from his days at Stanford University. Asha Sharma, Vice President, Xbox CEO from Microsoft and Charles Jones Professor of Economics. Finally, on inflation, an interesting group, Greg Mankew, who you know well also, from Harvard of Council of Economic Drivers under George Bush, 03-05. Thomas Sargent, very famous economist, Nobel laureate for his research on cause and effect in the macroeconomy.

And finally, William White, Howe Institute, former economic advisor for the BIS, who seems to be best well known for being among those Scott who predicted the 08 financial crisis. So a really interesting group. Some of them may be leaning in the ways that Kevin Warsh wants to move the Fed, but none of them really, all are going to be, I believe, well respected in the economic and monetary policy communities. Have you started to game out, Steve, even before you got these names, but now that we have them on the ledger, which area will lead to the fastest reforms that Kevin Worse wants to instill in this new Fed of his? That's a good question, and no, Scott. I mean, I think if I had to think of two of the areas that he wants to move the fastest,

in, I would say communications, which, you know what? He's already moved in that direction with the 132 word statement, as well as not putting his dot in. So that's sort of in process as we speak. And I think balance sheet. Now, I think he wants to come to some decisions or consensus on balance sheet relatively quickly. That's been a big area of his, but I think the execution of that is going to take quite a bit of time. Data is something that's going to happen slowly over time. But as you know from my reporting, Scott, and what we're doing here at CNBC, there's a whole lot of new ways in terms of big data to think about and understand the economy. I know the Fed is already doing that, and it looks like Kevin Warsh wants to accelerate it. And productivity is a very big deal.

It's probably the most important of all. I would suggest he would take his time in that regard. You know, I'm thinking about the comms one and the fact that two of the three are former international central bankers that just strikes me. me as interesting. I'm wondering if there are and have been different communications strategies from other central banks versus the way that U.S. central bankers have communicated with markets over the years? Yes, there have been, Scott, but pardon me, it's worth pointing out. Kevin Warsh in 2014 wrote a paper for the Bank of England about communications in which he said, you know what, go from 12 meetings down to eight, because stuff doesn't change that often,

and talked about the idea of greater quality communications rather than quantity. So that's something at the Bank of England, and they've adopted that as well. I don't know about the Central Bank of Brazil. I do know Armenia-Fraga. He's a super nice guy and super smart guy, but I don't know exactly how Brazil does that. But certainly other banks talk more, other banks talk less. there's no given way to do it, I think that Kevin Warsh, as almost all central bankers I've known, will say, you know what? Steve, we talk to you because we think it leads to better

monetary policy. If we didn't, we wouldn't be talking to you. Now that you brought this other thing up, is there any possibility that we could see fewer Fed meetings here? And would that be at the purview of the chair, or would that have to go through Congress? I just don't know how that works off the top of my head, you probably do. I actually don't, Scott. I don't know if the number of meetings are mandated by the Federal Reserve Act. I don't think that anybody is thinking about fewer meetings. I think the need for the Fed to come together and think about the economy on an eight-week or six-week schedule is probably something around which there is consensus. But whether or not there needs to be a press conference

after every meeting. It's worth remembering that Powell's the one who went to press conferences at every meeting. And the reason he did that is because he felt like he could not move rates unless there was a press conference. So he moved it to every meeting so that every meeting could be potentially live and there would be a press conference. But that's not in Granite Stone. That's a choice of the chair as well as the dots would be a choice of the committee. So all of this stuff can change. I don't know that they're talking about fewer than eight meetings a year every six weeks or so, but I suppose it's possible. Well, reforms are coming. That's the bottom line of this reporting from you. Now we know the name.

Steve, thanks so much. That's our senior economics correspondent, Steve Leesman. Back to the markets. One of the big stories, no doubt, semis. And the fact that they are surging back, it really started towards the end of our program yesterday when the NASDAQ went green. And it's really followed through today. Our Christina Partinevolos is following that. What do you see? Well, you talked about it, the full bone reversal. And the timing really couldn't be better, specifically for tomorrow's SK Hynix debut on the NASDA. You rewind to yesterday afternoon when buyers really stepped back in, memory trade had been, we can say deflated, SK Hynix, Samsung,

micron, each falling roughly 20% from their highs earlier this week, tipping into bare market territory. That pullback was about the charts, not chip demand. What do I mean by that? Part of the unwind came from worries meta had overbuilt its compute, but a fresh report showing meta's capax is actually going up, flip the script, lifting semi-cap names. You can see on your screen.

as well as ERISA networks, the most meta-exposed of the group in terms of revenue percentage, add micron raising investments today, an applied material CEO saying its long-term visibility is improving as customer share plans past 2027. All of these names are moving higher on those news. And the result is that nearly every SOX member is in the green today, socks being the ETF, with only in Vida, you can see if it barely down half a percent. Also, Nvidia, cheapest valuation is seven years, by the way. stealing this line from Missouho's Jordan Klein, he compared the group, the chips group, to the Knicks in the finals, down and then off on a monster run. One day doesn't necessarily make a trend, but per the Kobesi letter, the SOX-CTF pulled in its largest daily inflow on Tuesday since the fund launched 25 years ago.

So the buyers are stepping back in. A strong Hynix open tomorrow. The biggest ADR listing on record could put momentum back into the momentum, trade, Scott. Yeah. Thank you. Christina, appreciate that very much. Christina Parts in Nevelos. Well, Apple is nearing a new high. It is less than 1% away as we have this conversation. Mackenzie Segalos has been following every move. We'll see if it happens today. If not, it seems a formality at this point, Mac. It really does, Scott, less than $3 off of their all-time high. Apple now just has $16 billion separating it from NVIDIA's market cap. But it's really all about the company becoming the demand-side winner of the AI buildout. Apple has $16 billion. 2.5 billion active devices, pricing power, and a services business already tied to that installed base. As Josh Brown put it to you on halftime report, while the hypers scalers spend

hundreds of billions on data centers and building frontier LLMs, Apple gets paid no matter which model wins. And as Apple works to optimize the iPhone for AI, it helps that the company is in talks with the startup working to compress AI models, including Alibaba's Quinn, by up to 15x, which makes it possible to run these models locally on device. Now, yes, there are lingering questions around memory and a report that Apple cut iPhone 17 production on softer demand. But for now, the market is rewarding Apple for distribution, free cash flow, and the ability to buy back stock while everyone else pours extra capital to CapEx.

Scott? Thank you very much. As I said, it's about 0.8% away. 31740. That's the number it has to hit. It did lastly in the basically a month ago, June 8th. So we'll keep our eyes on that too. We couldn't help but notice the move in many of the restaurant stocks today.

They're popping our Brandon Gomez following that, as always, joins us now. Hi there. Hey there, Scott. Yeah, the industry catching a bid today. After a volatile week so far, investors rotating into consumer discretionary stocks. Now, one catalyst appears to be Starbucks after a Bloomberg report that the coffee giant is developing its own in-house AI tools that could, eventually replace some software from vendors like Microsoft and IBM. Investors may be betting AI could streamline store operations, reduce costs, and speed up the

company's turnaround. Look, that'll be one more area to focus on this quarter. Optimism spilling over, though, into the broader space, lifting Dutch bros, Chipotle, Shake Shack, Darden, among others. Big picture, though, hasn't changed here, Scott. Restaurant stocks remain caught between hopes that AI efficiencies can boost margins and concerns that consumers are still pulling back. You're to date, you can see the group there largely lowered Dutch Bros. A bit higher you to date, DRI as well. All right. Good stuff, Brandon. Thanks. Brandon Gomez. Bringing the panel now, CNBC contributor, High Tower, Stephanie Link.

J.P. Morgan's, Gabriella Santos, and New Edge Wells, Cameron Dawson. Everybody's with me, obviously, at post-night. Steph, I'm just going to start with you. I mean, just playing off what Brandon was talking about before we get to tech and this bounceback. You made such a great call in Starbucks. We saw it's up 26% year-to-date. What do you think is happening here with this particular story? What else do you like in that space, if anything? Well, the CEO is getting it done, and he's getting it done. The turnaround much faster than expected.

This is Brian Nicol. He had a great track record at Chipotle. The stock was up over 1,000% when he was the CEO of Chipotle. So now he's doing his thing. He's got all kinds of plans in place to fix the stores, to fix the products, service, and all of that. But I think on top of that, now you have this catalyst about AI and what they could do there in lowering cost. because we got to get those margins higher. That's the one beef on the name, right?

Because he's spending so much fixing it all. So that's the one thing that I'm watching closely. But I also think discretionary is poised to outperform between now and the end of the year. Should oil prices stay even here? They don't even have to go down more. We're already off 35% from the peak scene back in April. I mean, it's the only negative sector year to date. So there is only one way to go from here.

But your other move today really plays into how we begin our program and what we're witnessing in the market over the last, you know, session and a quarter, if you will. And that is the move that you made that we documented on halftime, buying Nvidia for the very first time. There are buyers out there who are just not going to let these stocks get too far away from them in either direction. This is best in class on sale. Aren't we supposed to buy low and sell high? And the stock is trading at 18 times forward estimates on PE, 15 times EBITDA, the cheapest since 2019. Cheapest in seven years, right?

You heard Christina say that. The $19, the cheapest. And I had never owned it. I chose Broadcom, and I did well there. But I want to own best in class. They've got 97% market share in GPUs. They've got excellent software, proprietary software that's hard to duplicate. The stock has underperformed the group by 53% year-to-date and 72% in the past year.

I've got to think that there's some catch-up here when a company is growing earnings at 100%, revenues at 80%, gross margins, 75%. And free cash flow, they're going to have $206 billion. in next year. Like, all of that is so compelling to me. I don't have a catalyst per se. I think the quarter could be it, but I do think I'm going to stay patient on it, and I'll keep buying more because, you know, it's hard to chase some of these other semiconductor names, even though they've had such a nice run, and now we've had a pullback, they're still up a lot. How do you, Cam, view what's going on in this market? Make sense of it for us?

Yeah, look, I think that we still have to respect the fact that the market is still very much in an up trend. And that 50-day moving average has been incredibly, resilient despite all the things that we've thrown at it, even though we've had a re-engagement of the war, you had a brief uplift in oil prices. And all that comes down to is that we've been in a world where earnings have been so resilient. 12-month forward earnings estimates are up 20% year-to-date. And so in order to get to those price targets of 8,000 plus by the end of the year, all you have to assume is that we get to 2027 numbers of $400 a share now, put today's valuation on it of 20 times, And that's how you get to 8,000.

The big question is, can we still trade at 20 times? Is this a market that still deserves that somewhat premium valuation? And we have seen a big derating in things like the Mag 7, including Nvidia. You certainly have a bigger weight within something like semiconductors, which is more cyclical and arguably deserves a lower multiple. So in order to get to 8,000, or not to get to 8,000, you have to effectively argue that you can't keep trading at 20 times. Yeah.

How do you see it here? So I do we very much agree that the earnings and upward earnings revisions momentum keeps this market moving higher. What I think I can add here is how much the AI story has dramatically changed this year. Mag 7, what mag 7 and being one example, but really how quickly investors have moved on from that theme. And not because the earnings isn't there or the valuations hasn't become more supportive, but because of the earnings surprise and the second derivative. of the earnings growth. When you say the surprise, how strong it's been? The earnings surprise. So every single quarter, when we look at earnings growth for this magnificent group, it's not just are you growing earnings, earnings nearly 30%, but by how much are you surprising expectations?

And they keep beating, but by how much is really what has changed for the group. Two years ago, they were beating by 15 percentage points. Now they're beating by five percentage points. Now they're beating by five percentage points. And so I think this is a really important lesson for memory and all of the hottest stocks, that the turn there comes not because the earnings really fall off a cliff, but because it has become fully appreciated. Are we there yet? Probably not. But clearly the magnitude of that rally is moving a lot faster than it did for the mag seven. So I do think the theme moves on a lot more quickly too. You're starting to get to the point where, you know, there are more notes sort of echoing what you're doing in terms of looking at Nvidia and saying,

you know what, now's the time to buy it. I'm not sure, you know, if I'm going to pick the exact perfect level now, but the stock's the cheapest, as we said in seven years. On the same day that Morgan Stanley Wealth Management's Global Investment Committee says the valuation premium for the mag seven over the other 493 is now at 10%. That's the lowest in over a decade. Okay. Goldman today, buy the dip in the hypers. I've been doing that. I've been underweight MAG 7 for a couple of years now, but I've been playing the whole AI theme via the food chain that we talk about. So I've done it on the industrial side, the data center builders, the grid manufacturers, because we have to repair it, power. That's the way I have kept up with the market, because it's the same exact trade. But now I'm looking at the MAG 7, and a lot of them have fallen pretty substantially. You know, I own meta. I'm not happy about if they potentially do an equity raise, and there's rumors out there that they're going to do $220 billion. CAPX next year, which is not going to make me happy. But Amazon on the flip side is actually down substantially, and it trades at 13 times EBITDA. There's historical averages at 18 times, and there's

a lot of ways they can win. AWS is accelerating because they doubled the capacity. You're going to see 28 to 30 percent AWS growth this upcoming quarter, which I think at this valuation is underappreciated. And then, of course, they're going to win in retail. They are winning in retail. Advertising is a juggernaut. And their new chips, custom chips, could be $100 billion run rate revenue by 2030. So there's a lot of ways you can. So I agree that you want to pick and choose the names in Mag 7, and I'm slowly adding and increasing my exposure.

Cameron, we're at 7,540 on the S&P. City says we can get to 8,100. Under these circumstances, you need two necessary conditions. First, a rationalization of hyperscalor return on investment, supporting the longevity of the CAPExpan. I think everybody kind of agrees, like, We need to see the ROI. And then they say, secondly, increasing confidence in a soft landing, if not Goldilocks, economic conditions.

We consider both optimistic but achievable. How would you assess what they say? Yeah, so on the Mag 7 front, the reason we have seen so much derating, their valuations have fallen by a third, is because if you look at each individual one of these names, their free cash flow generation is down 70, 80, in the case of Amazon, over 100%. So the market's effectively saying we don't like the fact that you're burning all this cash and you're going to have to raise more capital. So the big question is if Mag 7 pulls back on that CAPEX even just slightly, do we see an unwind in the semiconductor trade? This is now an industry group that's 19% of the S&P 500.

It has massive operating leverage, which is one of the reasons why operating margins in the S&P 500 are at a new high. So the big question is what's good for the goose, meaning the mag 7, will it be bad for the gander, meaning the socks trade? And could we see that be the tradeoff where Mag 7 recovers, but we start seeing an unwind in some of those AI infrastructure names? They're not pulling back on the spending. In fact, they're finding new ways to get the capital to do it. Whether it's, you know, what was free cash flow is now hitting the debt market because it's open and welcome for business. You had a, you know, what was at Amazon is the latest to join the club. And I think there are two important points to add to what Cameron was mentioning, which is that we've seen a lot more dispersion within the Magnificent 7 groups, specifically hyper-scalers. where really a stock has been rewarded not just when it increases capex, but when it increases

revenue expectations in line with that capax. So that's number one. Can you start to monetize the stuff in the near foreseeable future? The second thing is raising capex, but are you raising the volume, meaning the compute capacity, or are you raising the nominal amount because the price is going up given how capacity-constrained these semiconductors are? And I think if you start to see capax be increased because of capacity, maybe that's something that can be better absorbed for both groups, at least temporarily. Do you think Steph's going to be right with the idea that discretionary can be, you know, really strong over the second half?

Again, the only sector in the red, albeit only by 1% overall, but it's the only one year to date that hasn't done much of anything. It's the anti-oil trade. We think that you still have to see gasoline prices fall. There's still 85 cents above where they were pre-war. So in order for that trade to work, you certainly have to see oil prices come in, gas prices come in, inflation start to fall. Real wage growth turn positive. That's why the discretionary trade hasn't worked is because real wage growth has been negative. All right.

We'll leave it there. Cameron, thanks. Gabriella to you as well. And of course, Stephanie Link. The AI race to go public getting a lot of attention at Allen and Company's conference out in Sun Valley, our Julia Borsden is there. She spoke with OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, joins us with the highlights. Hey there, Julia. Hey, Scott. Well, Sam Altman, join me here to talk about OpenAI's new AI model announcing that it's 54% more efficient than rivals on coding tasks.

He said that's great for their enterprise customers, also saying their new voice model they introduced just yesterday will benefit their enterprise as well as their consumer business. And with OpenAI leaning into enterprise ahead of its expected IPO, I asked Sam Altman about his timeline. Just yesterday, SpaceX closed at its lowest price since going public. How does that performance shape your outlook about your timing for your IPO? We're not a space company. Are you going to be going public this year? I don't know. Okay.

I also interviewed Brian Schimp, the CEO of Andrel, and when I asked him about when they're going to go public, here's what he said. We're not in any rush. So the beautiful thing with the American capital markets is we can continue to fund the scale and we can continue to stay private as long as we need to. So for us, you know, the other side of this is it's a very unpopular notion, but we define a successful IPO as if our investors got a good return three years from, you know, actually going out. A bad time to do that is in the middle of a hype cycle. And so we're, we're not in a rush to go out. When he said hype cycle, I asked him what he meant by that. He did say he thinks that the expectations of future growth

are incredibly high, says the market is not particularly rational right now. Scott? Julia, real quick, why so cagey do you think from Altman today to you? Why the complete unwillingness to even engage on that topic, do you think? Well, look, there have been reports that they filed confidentially, filed an S-1 confidentially with the SEC. So there are probably restrictions about what he can say. I also think everyone's watching the market right now to figure out how it's going, what's going on in terms of the geopolitical questions, and I think he doesn't want to be held to anything. We shall see.

Watch the calendar. Julia, thanks so much. That's Julia Borson. We're just getting started. Coming up next, the World Cup win, big for media. Alex Sherman following the money, breaking down which companies are willing to spend billions on the media rights for the 2030 World Cup. We're live from the New York Stock Exchange.

You're watching closing bell on CNBC. All right, welcome back. record-setting ratings have been a key feature of this World Cup. It does set the stage for the next media rights deal, which our Alex Sherman has been reporting on leading the way on that. He joins us with the very latest. What do we know now? Nice, Scott. Yeah, you got to credit FIFA for the timing around this because the auction for the 2030 World Cup and the 2034 World Cup, the next two men's World Cups, is going to start quite soon after this World Cup ends.

FIFA wants something done within the third quarter. of this year, which is the quarter that we are in right now, ending in September 30th, in terms of discussions around which media companies want to buy the media rights for these to World Cup. So from my reporting, it sounds like Disney is interested, YouTube may be interested, Netflix may be interested, Amazon may be interested. None of these companies really should be that big of a surprise, because as the sports world has moved towards streaming, more and more of these large streamers want the most

valuable inventory for their services, which are now ad-supported, as opposed to, say, five years ago. The price for this will see right now Fox pays $485 million for the 2026 World Cup rights. Adon Telemundo, which has the Spanish language rights, it's about a billion dollars in total for this package. There's no doubt that FIFA is going to want more, given the extremely high ratings that we have seen for the U.S. Belgium game, for the England-Mexico game, which, believe it or not, had 44 million viewers had even more viewers combined between Telemundo and Fox than the U.S. Belgium game had.

That goes to show you how popular soccer is with the Mexican audience and Spanish-speaking fans in this country. Telemundo actually had more viewers for that game than Fox did. Add it all up, media executives are thinking that the total package may go for $1.5 billion. A couple media executives said maybe even as high as $2 billion the next time around. Scott. I mean, you said it shouldn't be a surprise the names that are on this list, but I think you could make the argument that of, and I don't think it's an argument, that of the three, that Disney would be the one that would be the most cost-sensitive

as they sort of overview all of their spending on media rights. I think Disney probably would be the most cost-sensitive. That's right. How would they have the smallest overall balance sheet when it compared to Netflix or YouTube, which of course is owned by Google, which has an enormous balance sheet? What I would say is that the one thing Disney offers that those other two companies don't offer is a broadcast network. And FIFA is on Fox this year, which does still reach a fairly sizable audience that has decided that maybe they don't want to pay for a lot of subscription services. So Disney would be able to put the games on ABC.

They could put them on cable on ESPN. And they could also put them on either the ESPN streaming service or Disney Plus or maybe some combination of the above. and perhaps that package would be appealing to FIFA. When do we know? When do you think this will all go down? We should know, I would say by the end of this year, we should absolutely know who the winning bidders is, maybe even a few months before that.

All right, good stuff. Alex, thanks. That's Alex Sherman. Quick programming note as well. Make sure to join the Game Plan Summit. It's happening next week at Fanatics Fest right here in New York City. Amazing guest lineup. Newly Free Agent.

LeBron James will learn more and request your invite by scanning the QR code or visit cnbc events.com forward slash game plan coming up next big market call today from ed yard denny he's here next welcome back stocks can rise another 10% this year that is the view of our next guest ed yard denny president of yardinney research back at post nine with us welcome back thank you very much all right i think people would take that 82 50s your target what gets us there yeah earnings uh earnings analysts today believe that earnings are going to be 400 to share next year. You multiply that by 20, you've got 8,000 on the S&P 500. But meanwhile, they're going to be raising their numbers the way things are going. They just keep raising their numbers for

next year. And then, of course, the multiple could just stay here, which is 20, which is relatively high, but it reflects the perception that the economy is resilient and not likely to have a recession. Pressures all know for earnings to live up to the hype you're talking about, right? Well, that is the risk, actually, is that expectations are so high that if we don't beat them, the market may have some sort of pullback. But I think at the end of the day, earnings matter. So even if we get into the second quarter earnings season, and it turns out that instead of being up 23%, which is what they're expecting right now, we're up 20% or even 23% there might be some profit taken. We just saw this over the past couple of days where people kind of got nervous on some. semiconductors, I took them profits, and then there was a bunch of people that said this is a good

opportunity to buy, so the dip buying is still there. But don't you think that any sniff of a slowdown in the earnings growth that you're talking about, like you suggest, that would lead to a pretty decent upset in this market. This whole house is being built on the idea that earnings are much stronger than people expected them to be, and those expectations, as you say, are only continuing to ramp up. Well, I've been very bullish on earnings all year, and I haven't been bullish enough. The industry analysts keep raising in the numbers, and they're plugged into the companies, and I think these are realistic estimates, but you're right. I mean, look, the good news is this has not been a P.E. lead bull market of late. It's been an earnings-led market.

No doubt. And I think it continues to be an earnings-led market. Everybody's looking for reasons to worry about it, whether it's AI fatigue or whatever. But the reality is you can't You can't beat earnings as long as they keep going up. What do you make of the, I guess, what looks to be the changing makeup of the market, though today it just looks like we're back to where we were before with the semis rally again and momentum. But the market definitely trying to figure something out. It's been volatile in that space. You've seen a lot of this stuff over the years.

What does it mean? I have. And I thought before the war that from the end of last year, I thought that we would be seeing a broadening of the market rally. And I think that was happening until the war hit, and suddenly everything sort of went back to kind of almost a fetal position. People just kind of getting into the stocks that had had the momentum. But now I think we're going, we're resuming where we had left off. I think we're seeing a broadening of the market.

We're seeing small cap stocks doing extreme well. The Dow Jones has been making new eyes. And I think with the Dow Jones, everybody knows those companies. They know what the business is. AI, they're not quite so sure how it all adds. up to a real business. If we're going to get to 80-250, does tech have to lead us there? I don't think so. I think it doesn't, I wouldn't want to see you take a dive because you need tech. I mean, technology and communication services now account for 45% of the S&P 500 market cap.

So we can't have those taken a dive, but that's where a lot of the earnings strength has been. And the valuation multiples have actually gone down. They've actually gotten cheaper because the earnings numbers have been so strong. But you can't get to 8250. unless you have a pretty good and strong and robust performance from the mega caps, right? I mean, how do you get there without that? That's the tricky part of this market, setting pretty lofty targets on the S&P, which is going to be driven by the bigger stocks in the market, and those are the ones that are having some issues.

Well, I think they may underperform for a while, but we have a lot of potential for outperformance in financials. Health care has been just sitting there doing nothing. Well, it's woken up lately. Yeah, I'm recommending overweighting health care, industrials, and financials, and market-waiting tech and communication services. Oh, okay. We'll leave it there.

We'll see what happens. Ed, I appreciate it, as always. I said, you're Denny right here post nine. Up next, the biggest movers. As we head into the close today, Christine is back with that. Hi, there. Hi, well, we're seeing AI infrastructure expanding into Europe. A Bitcoin miner makes a big power plant, Texas,

a major media merger faces legal trouble. We'll have the details after the break. Less than 15 to the closing bell. Back to Christina now for the stock that she's watching on your list at the top is what? Cerebris, because those shares are popping on a major European expansion, another one here in the U.S. The AI Infrastructure Company plans to bring its total data center capacity to 2,000 megawatts in 2027, and also plans to bring its first European capacity online by the end of this year. Cerebus also in news later today said they're going to be expanding their AI system production at a Flex facility in California.

That's why you're seeing Flex shares. up over 5%. Mara Holdings, gaining as the Bitcoin miner said it will acquire land in Texas from a renewable fuels company to build out its power capacity. The site includes more than 1,200 acres and will help grow its Bitcoin mining capabilities, and that's why Mara's on pace for its best days since February 6. Shares are up over 10%. Last but not least, Paramount Skydance shares moving in the other direction, specifically on a Reuters report that several states are planning to file an antitrust lawsuit over its acquisition of W. The suit could come as soon as just next week.

And also a new Wall Street Journal report highlighted the $80 billion in debt that is hanging over this deal. Shares down 4%. Scott. All right, Christina, thank you very much for that. That's Pristina, parts of nevertheless. Airlines leading the transport today. Transports Delta takes center stage with earnings tomorrow before the bell. Plus, what's behind today's drop in Astrosenica shares?

That and much more inside the market zone. We're now in the closing bell market zone. Mike Santoli and Gavelli Funds, Kevin Dreyer, here to break down these crucial moments of the trading day, plus Oliver Renick, standing by live from the Cibod, Global Markets in Chicago, Angelica Peebles, with what has AstraZeneca shares tanking today, Phil a bow with what to expect when Delta earnings hit the tape before the bell tomorrow. Mike, I'll come to you. We're on track. Let's just go with Apple first, okay? We're on track for a record close for Apple. Probably won't get the intraday all-time high, but it looks like we will, in fact, getting closing high here. Yeah, Apple, kind of distinguishing itself, as it often does from the rest of the Mag 7,

just kind of feeding off of different dynamics. It's a bit more defensive. Nobody's worrying about overspend. And it's definitely showing the benefits of that. It's one of the areas that this market, that the index, is drawing some strength from at a time with a lot of kind of these opposing currents below the surface that are pulling in different directions. You've got the 70s up 3.5% today, up 3% plus for the week. That basically is the story. That's what's holding this market in place around 7,500 for now.

The question is whether, you know, everything else just been resting and going sideways and having these little bouts of outperformance is going to build into something that's going to get the overall market on a kind of accelerating trend or not here. Because we're two months in bouncing around the 7,500 level. What do you make of what's happened with momentum, right? Just when you count it out, it roars back, just when you think it's back, it breaks down. That's exactly kind of how it operates usually. I think with everybody realizing, though, that sometimes, you know, these things can overshoot

pretty far in either direction. And so one day doesn't tell you that this has been solved. I do see things like Mag 7 net and gross positioning among hedge funds is really down toward a low. That doesn't seem to be responding, though, as much as some reassurances that the overall CapEx picture, rental of GPUs, all those things still say, okay, no real change. So let's take a shot. I think the Hynix deal market. reckoning isn't hurting either here. What are you guys going to do top of the hour, about six, seven minutes away in overtime? Yeah, among other things, we got Matt Bryce in a web, but she actually upgraded Sandisk today, raises price target a lot, stocks, is responding or at least

participating to the upside. We're going to just see how much more is left in this trade and whether it really is a, you know, industry that's changed for good. All right, good stuff. We'll see in a little bit. You and Mel, of course, in overtime. Mike, thanks. Oliver at Cibo. Options, action shows what? Seems like bullish blood pumping against Scott. The biggest trade in queues today was someone spending $24 million, buying $30 million worth of 730 strike calls in the queues expiring July 31st and then selling $6 million of the 73740 strike call spread against it.

Taken as one trade, it needs the cues to hit 750, aka an all-time high by the end of this month. But judging by open interest, it looks like this was likely someone buying back calls that they had earlier sold, arguably not quite as bullish as opening a new directional position, but it still means someone with very deep pockets, suddenly got cold feet, that the NASDAQ won't make new highs this month. It was the third biggest options trade in the entire market today. And by the way, the other two were bullish as well.

A $50 million deep in the money purchase of spy calls and a $7.5.5.5. $60 million long-term bullish bet on nuclear business, Oklahoma. Scott? All right. Oliver, thank you. That's Oliver Renick. Let's get more on that Astrosenica move. Angelica, what's happening here? Yeah, Scott. Well, Astrosena and Ionis, their partner, they're both sliding after their heart drug failed a phase-through trial. And that really caught people by surprise because the street widely expected the study to work. And so the failure, completely taking people by surprise, you know, sometimes we expect things to fall, but this is just an outright fail.

So what happened here is this drug, Wayneua, it's already approved to treat ATTR polyneuropathy. And this trial was supposed to help those companies also treat the heart manifestation of this condition. So ATTR cardiomyopathy, it's become incredibly competitive. And the condition, it used to be thought of as rare, and it's actually turning out to be relatively common. And that's part of why you're seeing so much competition. And so for years, really, Pfizer sold the only drug specifically for this condition. And then a few years ago, in recent years you've seen on Nilem and Bridge Bio, both enter the market. And now this failure takes out one competitor entirely. And so now these dynamics

have totally shifted. And that's why you're seeing some move. And, you know, what's interesting, though, is that Alnilum earlier today, they were, you know, the stock benefited really from this. But now you've seen those, have them paired those gains. And now it's also down on the day. And part of that is because, in one hand, this should benefit them in the near term. But it also raises questions about their next generation drug and whether that trial will face some of the same problems that plagued AstraZeneca. Scott? All right. Angelica, thanks. That's Angelica Peoples. All right, Phil. Delta charts a standout. Here come the earnings.

Yeah, and we'll find out tomorrow just how much the impact of falling jet fuel prices had on the second quarter results. Do not be surprised if Delta beats the street, because I can tell you from talking with analysts, they say, well, the estimate is for a buck 48, but let's be clear here. We're not entirely sure how quickly jet fuel prices were falling, what Delta paid, the tickets, fares increase. So many variables there that the estimates are all over the map. Demand strength, we'll talk to Ed Bastion about that, as well as whether or not the company changes its guidance for 2026.

And as I mentioned, the key metric that is going to determine a lot of what happened in the second quarter for Delta, and really for all the airlines, jet fuel. It was down 23% in the second quarter. Now, this comes at the same time that Delta and other airlines were raising their fares. So he had a couple of things moving in opposite directions there, Scott. We'll be talking with Ed Bastion exclusively about it tomorrow morning on Squawk Box. Do not want to miss what he has to say about the outlook for the rest of the year. Yeah, the chart tells a good story. That's what I was talking about. Bill thanks, Phil Leboe. Kevin Dreyer is sitting next to me,

the Gabelli Asset Fund. He oversees that. I'm really curious how a value investor views this current market, because the market's trying to figure some stuff out around growth and value. Yeah, well, I think it's great because there are a lot of catalysts. We like catalysts. They're very important change agents. They can surface value. There are a ton going on in the market right now. I mean, we just talked about Delta. Planes, travel.

You've Honeywell just spun off Honeywell Aerospace at the end of June. They've got a lot of great content with Boeing and Airbus, with Boeing both in the narrow bodies. Triple seven, very important, Dreamliner. That's going to be a great stock. Stocks 22 years or so now. We think it could be 400 to a few years. That's good surface value.

You like RCI, which is on the list. It's Rogers Communications. How much of that, you guys are still MSG, right? Big MSG fans forever. Forever. How much of this is about that playbook as well? Yeah, so, I mean, they're a good company. Ken is a good market for telecom.

They've wireless and cable. But what they're doing is they're buying in 25% of an entity called MLSE. That owns the Maple Leafs and the Raptors. We're going to combine that with the Blue Jays, which they already own. They'll eventually sell a stake of that, take down debt, and they're in a good market. And we think that the value is a lot higher than the 33 or so of the ADR trades at right When do you think this spin-off of the teams is going to happen for MSG? To be determined, it's, you know, they're exploring it, we'll look at when it happens.

We know the values there. The good news is the values of the NICs and the Rangers are only going up over time. Well, certainly, certainly the NICS. I mean, after what they obviously just did, it's good to have you here, Kep. Thanks. We're going to hear the ring in a moment here of the bell. So really fixated on Apple. Let's just show Apple again because it is going to,

by all accounts here, get that new closing high. It's not going to get the intraday one, but you are going to get a new closing high for shares with Apple.