Closing Bell - Closing Bell 8/13/26

Episode Date: August 13, 2026

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

All right, guys, thank you very much. Welcome to closing bell. I'm Scott Wapner, live from Post 9 here at the New York Stock Exchange. This make or break out begins with stocks at record highs and questions over whether investors are too bullish or not bullish enough. We'll ask our experts over this final stretch. Take a look at the scorecard here with 60 to go in regulation. We've picked up a little bit in the last few minutes, that lower PPI print sending yields lower. Stocks higher, the S&P crossing above 7,800 for the very first time. Momentum and AI infrastructure name. They are higher this afternoon. Take a look at that. Nice gains. Sandus leading the way, 15%. How about Cisco, though? Speaking of earnings, not rewarded for its beat and raise, the stock down near 10%. And Cerebrus is down after its earnings failed to meet high expectations down by more than 12%.

We're going to track both of those right into the finish. Netflix's a big story today. Those shares are surging as a big name is back in that stock. We got those details ahead. It does take us to our talk of the tape. the record-setting rally and how high stocks can really go is rate, hike, fears subside, and earnings continue to impress. Let's welcome in our panel, Trivariates, Adam Parker, Partners Group, Anastasia Amaroso,

and Requisite Capitals, Bryn-Talkington. Adam and Bryn are CNBC contributors. Welcome, everybody. Good to have you here, Adam. So here we go. I mean, 80-100 now. City says that's in the line of sight. Yardinney raised his target again yesterday.

The street's been doing that seemingly. all week. You're feeling pretty bullish too, aren't you? Yeah. I mean, to me, 8100, is that like a 12-month view? I mean, that's only like a few percent off. No, I know, but that's what's happened with this market. It's forced people to just keep bumping up their expectations,

which is why I ask the question. Are we too bullish or are we not bullish enough? You know, I do institutional meetings with investors, portfolio managers, and I'd say it's mixed. I mean, I think some people are pretty cautious, and I think other people think there's a lot of upside. I don't think it's all one side where everyone's, you know, incredibly bullish. Why are they cautious?

What do you hear? Well, either people did really well on a relative basis, you know, Jan through June and got really hurt in July on the pullback. And so they're a little more, you know, maybe gun shy or, you know, they relatively underperformed and missed a lot in the early part of the year. And then they caught up a little of July. I don't know that many people who nailed it during both. So maybe that's why I don't feel as much, you know, universal bullishness as maybe, you know, the rec, you know, getting the 7,800 would indicate, right? So, look, I think the earnings trajectory is good, and the fundamentals have been strong. I think the consumer, no matter how you

slice it, is held up better than a lot of the pundits predicted. And so I think that data is supportive. I think on the other hand, you know, as you know, I've never been a big follower of the Fed because it's just a moving target. I hate it when people say, oh, at 3 percent, 10-year, the market won't work. And then that goes to 3.5. And then a year later, it's 4. and it's four and a half. The market can work at 5% 10 year yield if the economy's strong. Sure, but you do care whether they hike or not, and the edge has been taken off a bit this week. For sure. For sure. And I just didn't think they were going to. And so it doesn't surprise me. But to me, I think current fundamentals are too strong for the market to have a major pullback.

So how would you address the question I asked at the top? Too bullish, not bullish enough? If you look, for example, fact set today, okay? S&P's highest revenue growth since Q4 of 2021. If that doesn't impress you enough, it's the highest net profit margin since they began tracking it in 2009. Yep. The way I would answer that is appropriately bullish. I think the market is appropriately bullish right now. And first of all, let's talk about earnings and, you know, 50% year over your earnings growth in second quarter.

Even if you extrapolate what actually really drove it, which is Amazon and Google, you still got something like 32% earnings growth. And if I look at the rest of the year, and if I look at all the various indices, not just the S&P, but excluding Mac 7, developed markets, small caps, all of those are likely to deliver earnings growth in the 20 to 25% range. So I think we're appropriately bullish for that. I do think we're appropriately bullish, Scott, because also, if you look at the software space, software is actually rallied and rebounded, and so did semiconductors. And I think the markets came to the realization that maybe we did not actually appropriately price in all those risks into software.

And let's talk about earnings and software. 2% of the companies or more have reported 84% of them actually beat earnings expectations. They delivered a surprise of about 9 or 10%. So for all the death of software that has been declared, that's actually not at all what's playing in the numbers. So we put that risk for the time being kind of back at bay. And then, you know, to Adam's point, I was also not in the camp that Fed is going to raise interest rates.

Either now or in September. And the data now supports that, too. It seems like inflation is moving in the right direction. super core inflation is actually annualizing 1% on a three-month average basis. So how do you hike against that? So for now, Scott, the bottom line is I think the markets are appropriately pricing all those things in. Bryn, I even hear people using the Goldilocks word, especially now if you think that inflation

is going to continue to come down, earnings are going to continue to stay up, the market multiple isn't overly stretched in their mind. So what do you say? I think that the wall of money, the CAPEX spend, the excitement, that the U.S. economy is really being driven a lot by what's happening in AI across, up and down. I think it's hard to be bearish on the market. I do think that the skepticism, you know, is very healthy in the market. Like I know myself, I think Adam, we were in the market in the 90s, in the late 90s. And people that were there do have those scars.

And so I think a lot of people that are skeptical are like, where are we in the 90s? Are we in 95 or 98? But that to me is so positive because it does keep a lid on things. And I think to me what I'm looking at is you've just had this massive move. A week later, by the way, after situational awareness and the Cospi kind of crash, finally a week later, these memory names are really starting to cook again. and so we'll see how high they can go. But I think that we're getting those animal spirits coming back

and you had those the sandists, et cetera, really just ripping the past two days. And so we'll see how much momentum these names can have after that big fall that they'd had the month before. You think they can have a lot. You said the other day that Micron's going to double from where it was the other day. I think we're supposed to say here, Bryn,

there's no way you were old enough to be investing in the 90s. I think he's supposed to say that. And now we can, you know, acknowledging her youth, Now we can answer your question, which is, look, I think Micron could double. I think Nvidia could go up a lot higher. The way I'm thinking about the world is the first upward revision was May of 23 for Nvidia. Everyone says it's a 10-year capital spending cycle plus or minus two.

Let's say it's eight to 12 years. We're not even halfway into the fundamentals yet. There's no way the stocks are going to anticipate the end of the cycle this early. Sure, you can get meaningful drawdowns because you have 600, you know, levered or inverted ETFs and you've got all the action of zero-day options. But where are we headed? Like, we're headed higher because the amount of money these companies are going to generate in the next year or two is just massive. And the amount that they're going to spend to generate it, right?

That was an interesting and I thought well-written, as usual note from Goldman's Tony Pascarillo, who's head of their global hedge fund coverage, who writes today, if there was one other takeaway from the reporting period that struck me, it was the growth rate of cloud revenues for the hyperscalers. Part and parcel of that, Microsoft and Amazon drew a clearer link between AI CAPX and return on invested capital. as long as that linkage exists and the stock market rewards it, I have a hard time seeing any slowdown in spending. That makes perfect sense, right? Yeah.

What hurts a lot of long-only institutional investors, as we've talked about, is if these grade eight, mag, seven, whatever, if they outperform. A lot of them are underweight either because of 525 rules or because they think that their spending is not going to be merited. And part of me takes a step back and says, wait a minute. So some of the smartest people in the world that work at the most successful companies, I'm supposed to assume they're stupid and I'm smart. Like, that doesn't feel right to me. I would assume that a lot of their return is going to be pretty positive and that what could happen is these companies separate more and more from everyone else, creating like this bimodal distribution where small companies can make it and they make it,

and then a lot of people in between are hurt. So I think the markets are assigning too low a probability that they'll be successful with the spend in a lot of cases. What do you think about what Tony writes and what Adam said? I do think that ROI on AI is very evident for hyperscalers. And I like that a lot because if you look at the cloud backlog, for example, for the hyperscalers. It was one and a half trillion last quarter. It's ratcheted up to 1.7 trillion, and it's very tangible. And I think investors have realized that there's a bit of a mismatch

between you actually when you actually deploy the CAPX and when you get the ROI in that CAPX, but it's absolutely starting to happen. But I really, Scott, particularly like hypers for kind of the longer term outlook. The reason for that is I do think that some of the memory chips bottlenecks will get resolved. I do think that maybe the compute bottlenecks will get resolved. And so as a result, the pricing of some of these will come in. And if you look at the trillion dollars or so of hyperscale cap X, 60% of that, give or take, is actually spent on compute. So if that comes in, and if those cloud revenues increase, that's a pretty solid position to be in. Bryn, we're going to get Nvidia's earnings a couple weeks.

It's going to be another seminal moment in this bull market. today B of A says their TAM is even bigger than we first thought for CPUs. They take it to 210 billion up from 170. They say it's overall their top sector pick. Is there any reason why it shouldn't be for a stock that you've owned now for a long time? And I think the Ford P is like going to be 21, 22. But that's the whole thing. It's like this shouldn't be a 226 stock.

We talked about this, I think, yesterday. It should be like a 280 stock, but it's not. And so I do respect the market. I think the numbers, we know they're going to be crazy. I think the SpaceX contract is big. These numbers are going to continue to get big. I just like, will the market allow this company to go to $7 trillion, $6 trillion? I don't know.

To me, it's surprising that it's only at $2.26. But that's where it's like, that is that ceiling of what is it going to take to get this stock to actually have even a market multiple with the growth that it has. We'll wait and see. But I continue to sell calls as well. I think there's still a lot of a lot of premium to be had on this name because I do think it's going to have a bit of trouble getting over that 230, 238, which is its all-time high. Do you think Nvidia's too cheap? And just to remind people, and I always bring this up just because you used to be in the trenches of the semiconductor industry as an analyst. So you know the space in which you speak. Yeah. So how would you analyze this here? Look, I think what's in a lot of the, InVitya's different than Micron, right? But I think what's in a lot of the price is that they're over-earning by a lot,

that their margins are going to have gone substantially. And, you know, I think Brennan means shorter term. Maybe it has trouble reaching the high or, you know, more of a technical short-term call. But if we're looking out two, three years, I mean, their earnings are probably going to double before the cycle peak. You know, if you say 15% of year for five years, they probably grow more than that. So I think it'll be worth $10 trillion at the end of the cycle, whatever the, you know,

buildouts done. So, you know, we're in a maybe more, right? So I think it's just in a, you know, the stock was unloved for six or nine months there. And I think it's starting to act better. Why do you think it was unwell for that period of time? You know, it's just, it's so big. There's a lot of 525 rules. I think there was less perceived upside from the retail community. You know, it's just you dream that somebody can go up a lot and it was easier to dream from March on, maybe in Micron or Sandus or something else. The 525 rule just for, people who are wondering what that means. So a lot of mutual funds have, yeah, their biggest five stocks can't more than 25%. Right, right. So, Nvidia got to be bigger than the five percent.

And so you were like structurally underweight, cap by risk management rules or the rules of your fund. So look, I think ultimately their earnings power is going to be so high. One of the things I've changed my mind on in the last nine months is I used to think all the matters is the rate of change. And then I took a step back maybe in March when we wrote sort of the note on on micron saying, wait a minute, like the level of growth is so high that. that even if the multiple contracts and price earnings keeps contracting, they can grow enough to still be a pretty good stock. And I think you're finally starting to see that again with the associated companies.

Well, it's been a great, you know, seven or so day stretch. Yeah. Right? The stock woke up last week, had one of its best weeks in years. And then you had the announcement of the financing thing, which just sort of reminded everybody about the position in which they sit. Guys, thanks so much. We'll leave it there.

Adam and Estasia and Bryn. We'll see all of you soon. All right. We have another executive departure at OpenAI plus new developments now on the Anthropic IPO. Kate Rooney has those details for us. Hi. Hi, Scott. We'll start with Open AI.

Chief Revenue Officer over there. Denise Dresser is leaving the company after less than a year. This is an abrupt and unexpected departure from what we're hearing. She was a massive hire as well. She was the CEO of Slack, went over to Open AI. Many thought she was the heir apparent to Salesforce CEO, Mark Benioff, Salesforce's own Slack. She was in charge over at Open AI. of growing their enterprise business and for OpenAI that is so key ahead of the IPO.

It's a much more lucrative side of the business versus ChatGBT and the consumer side. The company is naming Dolly Rojik to CRO. He most recently served as president and COO of Cyber Company Whiz, which was acquired by Google. We also did have news just this week, Scott, that former CEO, Brad Lightcap, is also leaving Fiji Simo a couple of months ago. She was the former CEO of Instacart who joined OpenAI. massive executive as well. She left back in June, so the latest shake up there. It does come as this company has filed confidentially to go public and so has its rival Anthropic. From what we're hearing right now, it is on track to get ahead of Open AI in this IPO race. We've heard Anthropic is now

holding those pre-IPO meetings, sources telling David Faber that those meetings have not included any information about evaluation. We are also hearing that CFO Krishna Rao of Anthropic has been running these meetings, not Dario Amade, the CEO. I have also heard from two sources, versus that a $2 trillion number is what they're floating as a possible listing price. This is based on their math and what they're looking at in terms of the recent revenue ramp. No comment, though, from Anthropic on all that, Scott. Is it fair, do you think, to look at both of these companies right now and judge one as a little bit unsettled, Open AI, and one as full steam ahead in Anthropic? Yes, I do, Scott.

I think that's the takeaway from this latest departure. You know, in a vacuum, if it were just Denise Dressor leaving, I think the history, the last couple of months here of this level of executive shakeup of not just, you know, sort of mid-level executives. These are the people running this company. Denise Dresser is incredibly important or has been incredibly important to the enterprise business, which is the golden goose of AI. It is so much more profitable. It's a piece of the business that they really need to win to improve the margin story, justify the hundreds of billions of dollars they're spending on compute. And so it's just, it does it. It's hard to overstate how important she was to the business, very public-facing name in terms of executives that were out there. So I'm talking to a lot of investors who don't see this as a great sign ahead of an IPO. They are going to have to really, really smooth that over as they go and talk to the street. Whereas Anthropic right now seems a lot steadier, at least in comparison, and they're kind of heads down with these IPO meetings and trying to plow ahead. But it's chaos overall in this industry. And you never know. I mean, we could go. buy and the opposite can flip. So too soon to say. We appreciate your insight. Really valuable. Thank Kate Rooney. Now to today's top movers, starting with shares of workday skyrocketing in the last hour or so. Contessa Brewer tells us why. What's going on? Yeah, they popped as much as 26 percent.

And then trading got halted three times within the last hour, Scott. On this report from Reuters, citing anonymous sources saying that Silver Lake, the private equity firm is in talks to acquire Workday at a deal that would value Workday at $43 billion. Workday is, of course, a human resources and financial management software company. And so what we're seeing is that the shares now are up 18 and a half percent. It does look like there is some appetite for software, even though Workday, for instance, has been down about 40 percent from its most recent highs last year and down this year as well, I think it was on the order of about 16.

percent. All right. Well, we'll watch it, certainly. It's a big mover here for us. Contessa, thank you, Contessa Brewer. Meantime, Apple opening a new manufacturing site in Texas today, all part of a big onshoreing initiative. McKenzie Segalis joins us live with more. What do we know here? So, Scott, just moments ago, we heard from Apple CEO Tim Cook and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik, and both really leaning into the scale of Apple's U.S. manufacturing push. You've got Cook saying that Apple is now sourcing chips from 24 factories across 20, 12 states, including more than 100 million chips from TSM's Arizona facility just this year. Cook also disclosing that $60 billion or 10% of Apple's broader U.S. commitment is being

exclusively spent in Texas. And of course, the headline today is the expansion of its Houston facility. Apple says it's already invested hundreds of millions of dollars there in less than nine months. And later this year, it will begin making the Mac Mini at that site. The first time that this consumer-facing product will be manufactured in the U.S. Lutnik really seized on that, saying that Apple can help lead a broader return of advanced manufacturing to the U.S. bringing not just Apple jobs, but jobs throughout its supply chain, though he didn't give any sort of estimate for the number of roles that Apple will be reshoring ultimately. And then Cook says Apple has no intention of slowing down this domestic buildout.

Shares of Apple, though, Scott, relatively unchanged on this news. Okay, good stuff. Mack, thank you, McKenzie Sagalas. We're looking at shares of Stubhubhub getting hit hard today as well. Julia Borson joining us now with a look behind that drop. Hi, Julia. Hey, Scott, that's right. You'd think that the World Cup would be good for StebHub, but the company reported a quarter in which costs grew faster than revenue. Earnings missed expectations. And despite the company raising its revenue forecast, it did not raise its forecast for adjusted earnings. You see, shares now down 11%. This implies a slowdown in the second

half, and analysts are flagging some concerns. Bank of America downgraded Steb Hub from neutral to underperform and slashes price target to $7.50 from $11, saying with the World Cup catalyst in the rear view, it sees slower growth ahead. And a sign of another headwind, the company spent nearly $2.6 million in lobbying in the second quarter in California to block a bill that would limit markups on ticket resale prices. That makes it the second largest lobbying spender in the state. And Scott, with today's move, StepHub shares are now down nearly 70 percent. in the past year. Back to you. All right. Julie, thank you. I'll see in a little bit for that Netflix story as well.

That's Julia Borson. Now shares of Tapestry also taking it on the chin today. Brandon Gomez tells us what's happening here. Hi. Hey there, Scott. Yeah, shares have been lower for most of the day. The parent of Kate Spade and coach dropping on an underwhelming outlook beyond fairly even results for Q4. Tapestry did be on the top and bottom line. The company also increased its quarterly dividend to 46.25 cents per share from 40 cents. Now, Coach has really rallied shareholders this year as its handbags caught on with Gen Z. shoppers and found viral success. Still the company saying it now expects revenue to slow down

in its new fiscal year, slowing to a mid-single-digit percentage in the second half after rising in the high single digits during the first half. The company is still seeing weakness in its Kate Spade brand, the CEO saying on Squawk on the street earlier today, they feel great about the brand, but it has to be cleaned up and reset on a stronger foundation, Scott. All right, Brandon, thank you, Brandon Gomez. We're just getting started on yet another record-setting day on Wall Street. Coming up, Pop the popcorn, Bill Ackman just made a blockbuster return to one big name stock. We have details of the sequel coming up. We're live at the New York Stock Exchange.

You're watching Closing Bell on CNBC. Welcome back. Netflix shares hired today following news that Bill Ackman is back in the name years after exiting a stake in disgust and with a sizable loss. We're covering that news along with what some are calling a major overhaul of his Pershing Square portfolio. First to Julia Borson on Mr. Ackman's Netflix sequel. Hi, Julia. Hi, Scott. Well, Bill Ackman sees a new opportunity in Netflix.

Now, even with today's move higher on his buying into the stock, Netflix shares have fallen 36% in the past year. Ackman's saying he thinks Netflix has won the streaming wars, saying, quote, we believe the company's current valuation, multiple represents a substantial discount for business with such a strong growth profile. and dominant market position. Now, Ackman first bought shares of Netflix back in 2022,

but then he sold after three months when the company reported its first subscriber loss in a decade. He took a reported $400 million loss on that sale. Now, back then, he said, quote, we have lost confidence in our ability to predict the company's future prospects with a sufficient degree of certainty. Now, buying on that dip now,

Ackman's new $3 million stake represents about 5% of Pershing Square's price. portfolio. Scott? Yeah, it's a really interesting story. Three million shares back in the name. Julia, thanks so much. That's Julia Borson. Now to those other moves that Mr. Ackman has revealed in his latest investor letter, Leslie Picker, with that story for us. And what we've said, what some are calling an overhaul of his portfolio, Leslie, as we learn about these new positions and others that he's added this year. Yeah, I think an overhaul makes sense. He runs a really concentrated portfolio, and in addition to Netflix, now taking five other new positions since

the firm's IPO, Visa, MasterCard, and SMP Global, each comprising between 5% and 6% of the portfolio, plus Intercontinental Exchange and Alcon. In a letter, he frames Visa and MasterCard as a bet that stable coins and agentic commerce are opportunities, not threats. Similarly, he thinks the market is over-indexing AI disintermediation fears at SMP Global and ICE, and he says recent fears around perpetual futures and what they mean for ICE are overblown. Lastly, he writes that the ophthalmology company Alcon can expand margins, particularly in contact lenses, as it, quote, continues to season its manufacturing platforms. Pershing Square's USA net asset value performance from the IPO through the end of Q2 declined more than 8%

compared with a 5% gain in the S&P over the same time period. But the firm did say that the portfolio substantially recovered once they were nearly fully invested, although it still trades at a very stubborn steep discount to Nav, Scott. It definitely does. Leslie, thank you very much for that look. That's Leslie Picker. For more on the Netflix position, here's shareholder Kevin Simpson of Capital Wealth Planning. So it's good to have you back.

I'm wondering what you make of this sequel, as we've called it today. Yeah, I think the Pershing Square performance numbers are going to be much improved in large part because of Netflix, Scott. This isn't the Netflix that Bill Ackerman sold four years ago. This is the Netflix that the company has become. And I think that the streaming wars have been one. I totally agree with the note. And if you look at the subscribers, 325 million subscribers is more than Disney. It's more than HBO.

It's more than Macs. All combined. So I think there's a lot to like here. Now, I don't want to lose sight of the fact that the stock's down almost 40%. It's down for a reason. There's a lot of things that Netflix needs to get right. I think they sat on their laurels a little bit. Maybe the content has suffered, maybe more than just a little bit.

But there's a lot of things that they can do with improve margins, improve content, live sports, advertising. This is a setup here that I think is very undervalued. If you look at where it was trading just recently before the decline, you had a 40 PE. everything had to go right for Netflix. It didn't, and that's why the PE now, I think a fallword around 20, 21 is very, very valuable. And I really like the stock down here, Scott. I mean, when you say that this is not the same company that he sold after three months back in 2022, others may agree with you.

They would only say it looks potentially weaker today than it did even then. How would you respond to that? Yeah, I don't agree with that. I think if you compare Netflix of 2026 versus 2022, back in 2022, you didn't know that they were going to be the dominant player. You didn't realize that they were going to have the massive win that they did. Again, this is not a perfect story. You've got not just the competitive streamers, but you've got all of the social media you're competing with and you're competing with YouTube. So there's a lot to criticize here. But from evaluation standpoint, I think that's the part that I would really lean into. in defense of the company from a bullish stance down here, Scott. Do they need to do some kind of deal? I mean, that's what got this stock moving lower in the first place. All the talk around WBD, and they didn't get it. And all I heard at that point was that was so good for the stock that they didn't do it.

And now we've heard them talk about the possibility of other transactions. I'm wondering as the shareholder, what do you want them to do? I would love to have seen those properties under the Netflix umbrella, so I'm sad that that initial acquisition didn't take place. I think you're talking about what you and I've spoken about on the desk before, which is NBC Universal. Yes, there's content there, but I think more in terms of the live sports and then ultimately how that rolls into advertising for them, hypothetically. But it really comes down to, you know, how much do you want to open the checkbook? There's tons of free cash flow here. They can certainly afford an acquisition of that magnitude.

I think it would fit perfectly in where they're trying to go. Because if you think about it, live sports is the one thing that streaming didn't have before. Must see television. You know, we're not going to sit around and watch a Yankees game or an Orioles game three months into the future and have kind of the same enthusiasm behind it. They've broken into the NFL. They've got some things going with the MLB. We know what they do with the WWE MM.

I think if they could get NBC Universal or something like that with a bigger NFL package and introduce NBA into the mix, it could take their advertising to another level. But it really comes down to fiscal responsibility. What will that cost and is it worth it to Netflix to write that check? All right. We'll leave it there. I like the fresh new do. I'll see you tomorrow.

That's Kevin Simpson. Coming up next, one of college basketball's greatest ever. coaches, Gino Oriama, now telling his story off the court. We'll hear what he told our own Alex Sherman about his new documentary and the latest controversies facing the WNBA. We're back after this. All right, welcome back from significant labor strife to inserting itself into the culture wars. It's been a tumultuous year for the WNBA. At the same time, ratings are up and so is attendance. CBC sports reporter Alex Sherman sat down with the legendary women's basketball coach Gina Oriema. He spoke about issues impacting the league and part of that conversation.

What can you tell us? Yeah, Scott, you know, for years the WNBA almost pleaded for media coverage as ratings suffered, valuations were stagnant. Teams would move from one city to the next trying to find an audience. That is not the case anymore. The WNBA has found an audience. The question is, is this type of audience the audience it wants? That's the question that I first posed. to Gino Oriama. Take a listen to what he told me. They're getting all the attention they ever wanted.

The unfortunate thing is people have hijacked it, and it's become whatever station you watch, whatever point of view you want to take, you're going to have an opinion on what's going on in the WMBA. Of course, the topic du jour is this of transgender issues. Sophie Cunningham, one of the Indiana. fever players, you know, recently saying that she was standing up for the rights of biological women. I asked Gino Oriama about this issue as well if he had a take on how players should

address the issue of transgender players in the league. Listen to what he told me. I don't know of any trans players in the league. I don't know any that have tried to play in the league and have been denied playing in the league. So it's an issue that has been made an issue that's a non-issue. It doesn't exist. I also asked him if he had any advice for Commissioner Kathy Englebert about trying to kind of get a hold of all of this. And was there any way for her to tamp down the unwanted attention?

And basically what he told me is that it's very difficult for a commissioner to control exactly what players say in a league or in this case in her league. But what she can do is push the message that the WNBA's brand and image is on the line here and make sure that your statements comport with that image. We have seen Sophie Cunningham in recent days saying, look, enough is enough here. Can we just talk about basketball again? And that may be the message we hear on a united front moving forward. Yeah, Gino's a legend.

It's a good get. He has a documentary coming up as well, right? On Apple, yes, he does. Out next week called The Dynasty. Apple did one on the New England Patriots. Now they're doing one on the Yukon Women's Program. Gino has been the coach of Yukon for 41 years

and counting. I talked to him a little bit about retirement too, but you'll have to wait for that answer. That'll be on the next week CNBC Sport podcast where the full interview between Gino and I will air. All right. Too many national championships to count. That's for certain.

Well, national championships. Gold medals made the mix, too. All right, good stuff. We'll look forward to that. Alex, thank you. That's Alex Sherman. For more on that interview, again, head over to cnbc.com slash sport. Coming up next, the Wharton School, Professor of Finance, Jeremy Siegel. He'll weigh in on this record-setting rally and how high stocks can go from here. We are back, the S&P, topping 7,800 for the very first time today as earnings continue to impress. I know they impress our next guest.

He's the Wharton School Professor of Finance Wisdom Trees, Chiefs, economist Jeremy Siegel. Professor, welcome back. I did describe that correctly, right? I mean, you continue to be blown away by the earnings momentum, yeah? Yeah, blown away by the earnings momentum and continuing good news. You know, last Friday on we talked about, you know, the situational awareness, what would you call it? Not a meltdown, a liquidity event. And it really didn't rock the market. I mean, that was a clearing event. And I think that gave confidence of people. There's some leverage built

in there, but it's not excessive. And then the CPI and the PPI report today this week are actually quite good. Golden Sachs, which is the best to look at all the details on how that affects the PCE deflator that comes out later in the month, lowered their estimate of what the

PCE is going to be, both for the CPI and the PPI said it's going to go up only two-tenths of a percent, and half of that, one-tenth of that percent, is that crazy portfolio management section of the price index that is mostly due to the rise of the stock market. It's certainly not a bad thing. So, I mean, what we got this week in terms of real data, now we do get, of course, retail sales tomorrow,

but certainly on the price, you know, I have a few. and if oil certainly stays in that low 80s, I don't see any way that Warsh is going to raise in September and the earnings parade continues. Yeah, it seems like we can scratch out the hike for September. I asked the question at the very top of the program, Professor, and I'd like your answer to it as well, whether investors are simply too bullish. For a variety of reasons, they're justified to be bullish, but some would say, well, Well, could have an earnings bubble.

Maybe this is the peak of it and other reasons as well. Or are we not bullish enough because we actually have more staying power in the earnings story than we think, along with some other issues like inflation coming down, and then the Fed eventually cutting interest rates, not raising them? And productivity, which, you know, has lagged the first two quarters of this year, but it looks like it might really pick up in this third and fourth quarter. I mean, you know, AI really beginning to come in, you know, AI not just causing the earnings to go up because the hyperscale is an all of spending on the infrastructure,

but again, as we've talked about so many times, firms using it to reduce their own expenses to increase the margins, which have been, you know, pretty stagnant for the non-tech group. if you took a look historically. Now certainly overall, and as you comment at the beginning of the program, I mean, margins overall on the S&P are at all time highs. But if you take out the tech communication, they've been relatively stable. But they can improve dramatically if they can use, you know,

what AI is designed for, and that is to reduce costs. So there's, I think, where, you know, the story can continue despite whatever happens to that AI, I'm not going to, you know, let it get slightly overbilled, what kind of competition, boy, it seems, you know, doesn't, the token decline, the stories seem to be overwhelmed, always by the results and the earnings. I do not think it's inappropriately bullish at this point. Well, what do you like the most in the market right now? What looks most attractive to you. If you were just judging the market on a price to earnings ratio, a sector, something you think is unloved, what we're not focusing on enough, because tech, I mean,

deservedly so, is sucking all the oxygen out of the room, and maybe that's your pick. You tell me. Well, you know, there is a rotation that has taken place over the last six months from what we call growth stocks to value stocks. And I think on the day that we had that a liquidity event, some people call the Leopold Lowe, after Leopold Action Program, when he had to sell out much of his position, I mean, that was an extreme, you know, shock on that. Now, we have really bounced back from that.

But if you take a look at the broader trend, that rotation is still taking place. It doesn't mean that, you know, that the MagSav and the hyperscalers and tech are going to falter. But as I say, when I look forward to potentially has the gains that aren't counted for on the future, I like the 15 PE stocks that potentially have gains from AI. And there's many companies, Anthropics, one of them that's listed almost every industry and how much potential gain you could have from AI and yet has not used it yet. And, you know, I'm not going to say specific names or not, but I think that is in the future that can continue that rotation.

And both, by the way, both can still go up. But you can have, as we see, some of those ignored value stocks rise relative to, you know, the winners of the last two or three years. We'll talk to you soon. I look forward to that as well. Professor, thanks, Professor Jeremy Siegel. The S&P is heading towards a record close yet again. Will we close above 7,800? We'll find out in the market zone next.

Now on the closing bell market zone, Mike Santoli and Truist Keith Lerner here to break down these crucial moments of the trading day. Plus Pippa Stevens looking ahead to the move in memory names today, and they are significant. We'll get to that in a minute. But Mike, we're going for the first ever S&P close above 7,800. Hit that level earlier today. We'll see if we do it. Yeah, absolutely. I would point out eight days ago, Wednesday of last week, the intraday high was 7793, so we had this modest, modest pullback rebuilt from there.

Clearly we're in a sort of re-risking phase after people had kind of cleaned out positioning at the end of July. So there's room, I think, before we get overbought and before people get over-excited to have this market migrate a bit higher. I still think we have to at least go under the premise that we may have seen, let's say, the highs in valuation going back late last year. year and early this year, but earnings are doing the heavy lifting for the moment until there's any sign of deceleration biting financial conditions are acting very, very loose, right? VIX down where it is, corporate spreads remain tame, so there's not as if there's anything necessarily actively restraining this move, but we'll see how much room we have because we didn't really get a comprehensive sort of downside reset, I don't think, in July, but it seems enough

for now. I feel like, I don't know, you know, over the last few years, the consumer resiliency is one of the big stories within this market. We'll get retail tomorrow. It'll be a good test on where we currently stand. For sure. I mean, it's not as if consumer has been the propellant of what's going on mostly in the economy, but it's certainly been steady. And there hasn't been too much reason to get concerned about either, you know,

on the credit side or on the spending side. As long as, look, we have 4.1% unemployment. That's not really a level that tends to get the economy in any kind of trouble. seeing a little bit in less than four minutes. In fact, that's Mike Santoli. Pippa, tell us more about memory. Scott, memory names are on the move led by Sandisk, which is the second best performer on the S&P 500,

after bullish comments at its investor day, helping assuage some fears about a memory slowdown. The company unveiling a multi-year financial framework forecasting revenue to grow mid-to-high teens from fiscal 2028 to 2030. Sandisk also pointed to growth in bits or its total memory storage capacity. Mike Ryan is higher on the back of those comments, though still more than 20% below its June record hit by concerns around chip pricing and a potential pullback in hyperscalor spending. Western Digital also gaining here up 7% and the DRAM ETF now up some 13% on the month.

Scott? All right, Biffa, thank you very much for that. That's BIPA Stevens. DeKeeh Lerner, we go. How bullish are you? We're still saying that our tagline is to give this bull market the benefit of the doubt that's been our tagline in the last couple of years. And Scott, I do think that in July, even though the headline index was only down. three or four percent. I mean, we did have, in my mind, a pretty good reset of the areas that were

really overheated. You know, semiconductors from the late March low to the high in June were up 90 percent, they corrected 20 percent. Tech had its, you know, fifth double-digit correction of this full market. And then we've had these laggards move up and we have more broad-based markets. So I would say we're still positive. We still like tech, but we also have the broader story with health care and financials also near all-time highs. The economy is resilient. Credit spreads are tight. And the breadth is the best we've seen in about a year and a half.

So all in all, we are still bullish. Still like this broadening story. Again, just to remind our viewers, trying to get that first ever close above 7,800. We did get above it earlier to already an all-time high. But we'll see if we can eke out a couple of points here, Keith. Answer quickly here as we head towards the bell. Yeah, I still like the Borden story, but I still think AI and tech is the dominant theme. So I would keep that long-term core position in tech and be overweight,

industrials, financials, health care, and even small caps, which have had a good run this year, but still have really underperformed since its bull market began. What don't you like? Well, one of the areas we don't like is consumer staples, as an example, a more defensive earning trends are somewhat mixed there. So that would be an area we don't like develop into national markets where valuations of mixed, earnings are somewhat weak, the economy somewhat sluggish.

So I think those are two areas in general that we're less positive about, but more broadly in the equity market, we still see upside. And the Fed's not an issue now, right? Is the Fed now a non-issue, we think, for the remainder of the year, given what happened with the inflation numbers today? Jackson Hole's looming. September seems maybe scratched out, and maybe they do something between now and the end.

What do you think? Yeah, listen, I think that's still come back in play, because, like you said, I mean, a few days ago, people are thinking it's the only thing that matter. We have a lot of reports before the next meeting. So I think that can certainly invoke some of the market in the market, but I think the biggest story is the path of the economy, which is still resilient, and the path of corporate earnings, because I recognize, and importantly next year, earning estimates are moving up at a very just pace, which is a big cause of our view.