Closing Bell - Closing Bell: All Eyes on Apple 4/30/26

Episode Date: April 30, 2026

We discuss what’s at stake from Apple’s big report in Overtime with Alger’s Dan Chung, Big Technology’s Alex Kantrowitz and Wedbush’s Dan Ives. Plus, one of the nation’s top financial advisors – Chris Toomey of Morgan Stanley – tells us how he is advising his clients right now. And, we drill down on the massive move in Eli Lilly ahead of Amgen’s numbers. 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, thanks so much. Welcome to closing bell. I'm Scott Wapner, live from Post 9 right here at the New York Stock Exchange. This maker breakout begins with the earnings download. The countdown to Apple in overtime. It is another big night for mega-cap tech. We're going to ask our experts what's really at stake here. In the meantime, I'm going to show you a record-setting score card with 60 to go in regulation because the S&P and the NASDAQ both hit new all-time intraday highs. The focus is obviously more on earnings than oil. That is the story of this. market. Alphabet and Amazon hitting all-time highs today following their own earnings reports. Microsoft and Medito, even under pressure all day long as the street worries about their massive Cappex spending. We'll ask our experts about that too. Lily is a big winner and the same is for Qualcomm today on the back of its own earnings up 14% there. It takes us to our talk of the tape. All eyes are on Apple right now. We'll begin there. Mackenzie Sagalos tells us what to watch for tonight. Hi there, Mac. Hey Scott, so this quarter is a test of whether Apple can continue its record-breaking iPhone-17 cycle momentum and show that it has a real consumer AI strategy.

The near-term setup is strong. Wall Street looking for revenue to jump 15% driven by 20% growth in iPhone. Services should cross 30 billion again. China is expected to keep rebounding. And Mac is the potential upside surprise with Goldman modeling 12% growth 3X, the strong. read estimates, helped by early traction for its budget-budget MacBook Neo. Now, memory is key to margin. Apple's better hedge than peers through supply deals and earlier buying, but that cushion may not last. It's also Apple's first earnings report since laying out its post-tim Cook era, the freshman leadership bench, a new CEO, CFO, and C-O-O are hardware and supply chain alum, so not an obvious lineup for a company trying to prove that it can win in AI. Investors also

looking at whether Apple pairs this print with another massive buyback and what the CFO says about next quarter guidance on the call. Scott? Not to mention this is a new CEO. We've got to see what happens there too. Mack, thank you. Mackenzie Seagallis with a good setup for us. Let's now bring in Alder's CEO, Dan Chung, CNBC contributor, Big Technologies, Alex Cantorwitz, and Wedbush's Dan Ives. Welcome everybody to the table here at Post 9. Dan Ives, the most important thing tonight is what? I think it's, look, in terms of number. It's clearly iPhone growth in terms of what we see, and we think they're going to beat by two, three hundred bit because of China.

But the reality is, especially with Ternus and this really the grand sort of entrance for him, it's about the AI strategy. It's really around setting this up going into WWDC that Apple is not going to be on the outside looking in on the AI revolution. I think it's a great time to be handing it off to Ternus, even though it was a surprise, relative to strong iPhone demand, services, growth. And now what I believe is Apple entering the consumer AI revolution. What stands out to me is that you're talking as if China's a plus finally and not a minus. Yeah, I mean, we just got back from Asia. We were, you know, throughout Taiwan. I feel very confident that China is going to be upside in terms of what we see on demand for iPhones. And I think the reality is this has been a surprise upgrade cycle. Maybe the stock hasn't

reacted accordingly because of AI. But you say it's going to check every. box now. You have iPhone beat. China goes from a headwind to a tailwind, and now the AI strategy, but look, filling the Hall of Famer Cook shoes are obviously almost impossible shoes to fill. Yeah. You're the shareholder here at the table. How do you feel going in? Well, agree with the fundamentals at Apple. We're actually quite a bit underweight Apple because we don't think the AI strategy is clear there. Obviously, they're going to use hardware and devices to be the access portal for most consumers. But I think there's a risk that you may need more than that, and there will be lots of new devices coming at them. So, you know, great company,

good leadership. You know, we're not as excited about the stock as we once were. What's your rebuttal to that? My rebuttal is that there's 2.5 billion reasons to believe Apple is going to be a huge participant in terms of the AI revolution, because the consumer AI revolution, they're essentially going to be a toll collector on the consumer highway. And it all starts with the subscription service that eventually will happen in terms of the models they build out. It will start with Gemini and ultimately Anthropic and others. And my view right now is that it's 75 to 100 hours per share upside. And that's not being factored into the stock. Well, it should be. Why should be factored in if everything that Dan said is true. They've had no real deliverable, if you want to use that word

on their AI strategy yet, so why should they get credit for it? A year ago, New York City Cab Drive was bearish in an alphabet. Now look at it today. The point is the narrative. I get narratives negative, but I'm going to bet on Cupertino, Cook, Ternis, everything we see with the AI strategy, and it goes back to they have an install base that's unmatched. And on the consumer side, I'm going to bet on Apple. I think we're sitting here six, nine, 12 months from now being like this was the time that

they actually see this. to slide your chair closer to Ives? Or Chung, what do you want to do? I want to stay right in the middle. I think that Ternus has a window to turn this AI story around. Where's the big AI device today? It doesn't exist. In fact, the company that's furthest ahead on building an AI device is meta. And look what's happening to them today. So Apple is not at risk of losing any near-term growth or losing share in the iPhone. The iPhone's growing 20%, which is amazing given where it's kind of bumped along over the past couple years. So Apple is not an immediate date. of losing anything right now, just because the consumer AI story has been slower.

But that being said, Turner has a window to figure it out, and I really like the way he's been speaking to the company, at least at the outset. Saying this is the most excited he's ever been to build products, and that artificial intelligence is a crucible moment for the company. How do you feel, Dan, about the handover, the handoff? Well, I mean, I think timing is interesting. I'm a little surprised that Cook didn't want to usher Apple secure. into the AI with, you know, the very much expected launch of AI devices, you know,

AI-enabled iPhone. Ternus is obviously a very capable leader, but he's unproven. How about that? I mean, this is fair, isn't it? Are you surprised, by the way, that Tim Cook is leaving before there is that in-stone AI moment that you can bank on and say, look, he may have been late. But he delivered. He's going to leave, by and large, without us being able to say he delivered on that AI finish line.

Is that fair? I'm asking you. Look, I would say, you know, and me and Alex have talked about a bunch. I think it comes down to Cook. There was a time to hand the baton. He's not going to hand the baton if he didn't feel this was the time. Now, granted, his legacy, yeah, he's leaving a little in limbo. But it's going to be Ternus, just like Alic said, it's going to be Ternus's ability to ultimately monetize AI, show the direction.

This is going to be his legacy. And I think that's why he wanted to do this now. But look, it goes back to, like, they said McRoy could win a Masters. Now it's one, too. The point is, like, this will be the opportunity for Ternus in terms of the window. All right. Let's talk about what has already happened. And those are the numbers that all, you know, came out last week.

On halftime today, we characterized Alphabet as the clear winner. Is that how you see it too? Absolutely. It's a clear winner on all fronts, and in particular, of course. And Dan is right. I mean, we saw, and many we thought that the search business was going to be cannibalized by ChatGPT two, three years ago when Chat Chbett launched. We saw it as actually exact opposite because they had the big install base with Search,

and now they powered it with Gemini. That's doing just fine and growing. It's also, of course, enabling them to invest in other areas. Now, the real winner last night, of course, was cloud services. Crowd services, just unbelievable numbers in the backlog. Man, 63% Google Cloud? Wow. And we'll likely be accelerating to basically 100%. And the most important thing is even though they're only half the size of Amazon, for example, in the cloud,

in a sequential basis, they added more revenue growth than either Amazon, which is much bigger, or Microsoft. So terrific results, firing on all cylinders also has a big audience. YouTube should not be forgotten, of course. Right. So that's my number one pick, for sure. Dan Ives, meta, the clear loser from what happened last night? Well, clear loser just because they're on the cap-back side, right? I mean, in other words, I mean, Google, they're firing on all cylinders.

I think it's an overreaction relative to what I believe will be the right strategy in terms of what they have to do on the cap-back side. Look, investors, and we've talked about it a lot, like patience is wearing thin, You either show the monization, and they're fine with capbacks. Meta, you saw some sort of, you know, some issues in terms of the numbers. You didn't want to see the cabbacks. They're the loser. I think the biggest overreaction is Microsoft.

I mean, in my opinion, Microsoft should be up today relative to the Azure numbers, relative to what you see on modernization. So that's the one I think that the streets getting wrong relative to the reaction. I mean, Microsoft, they raised their CAPX, and people are, you know, wondering when they're going to see the real benefits from that? Who stands out the most of what already happened? Is it alphabet for the good, in quotes, or meta for the bad, in quotes? At least how the street has responded to both.

Well, I'll take a different act here and say, I like what Amazon did with 28% AWS growth. Amazon's been the forgotten cloud service for a while. We've seen rapid growth from Azure, rapid growth from Google Cloud Platform, Amazon was stuck 17, 18% a quarter for a while, and they're now at 28%. 28 for AWS. And Andy Jassy is saying they haven't grown this way since they were half the size. I think that's very impressive, especially they haven't been able to sell Open AIs models. Now they can because Open AI has been released from that deal with Microsoft.

And for Alphabet, I think it's right to party now for shareholders. But not to rain on the parade, if you look around the corner, there's going to be another challenge for their AI division, which is can they build something in line with the client? called codes and the codex of the world that Anthropic and Open AI have, which is an agent that takes over your computer and does your work for you. They haven't really done that yet. That's what's next for Google. So there are still challenges ahead.

Amazon didn't raise their CAPEX. They're like the standout. What do we make of that? Is that a surprise, Dan Ives? I mean, look, I think Jassy understands right now that tightroof. And I think just like you talked about, I think you're seeing acceleration in AWS. they've actually back against the wall really starting to come through here. And I think that's the right strategy on the KAPX side.

They're doing it perfectly relative to six, nine months ago. When you look at Amazon, I think Amazon's going to continue to be the one that surprised everyone, given what we see on the AWS side. You believe that? I mean, they've got huge backlog for their training chip. They don't raise their KAPX. Their AWS growth blows people away. You get nine target hikes on the stock today.

they've just been sort of humming along. Let everybody else do what you do, and we're going to be right there at your heels, if not in front. That seems to be what Andy, Jassy, and Coe are doing out there. No, I mean, we totally agree. Amazon is also one of our top favorites, and it's partially because the quarter of the delivery

was hitting on all cylinders, really, for us. I mean, the retail business and the margins in the retail business were great. The cloud growth was actually a little light of some of the bullish expectations for 30%, but it is absolutely fine. and the margins were really good. So the thing about Amazon, I think, is really interesting

is it's, of course, the most infrastructure heavy of all of them, right? They've got the big retail business. They've got fulfillment. They also have a media business on the side. But therefore, they have the most opportunity to improve internally, to improve for their cloud clients by using AI. And that's what's, I think, missing in META's formula. I mean, Zuck had really no good explanation for what is all the spending going to result,

that actually enhances meta's opportunities, it expands its dam. Whereas Amazon is clearly showing they can improve internally, they can include their crowd services, both for themselves and for their customers. And, of course, it's extremely well-run companies. So we're very impressed with Amazon. We think the stock is actually quite attractive where it is. I mean, I'll note that Amazon on Forward Numbers is trading at like half the multiples that Walmart is, which makes absolutely no sense to make.

I think he lays it out well. The street does, I don't feel like the street doesn't, trust. I think I'll use that word, that the spending that Meta's doing is going to lead to the big payoff because it's seen them spend wildly before in questionable ways. And the stock's been punished in the past because of that. And also it's a kind of doggate the homework type feel. Like the excuses pile up. Then you look at Jassy. You look at Microsoft. You look at Alphabet. Those are confident prints. I think that's the other. thing that that stood out. So we mentioned Anthropic for a moment. We'll do it again because another

big story today. The fast rising valuation, Kate Rooney is following that very large money for us, as always, and joins us now bigger than Open AI now. Yeah, that's right, Scott. So what I'm hearing is at Anthropic right now as in talks to raise another round of capital. If it does go forward, could value the AI giant at as much as $900 billion. This is according to a source familiar with those deal talks. No terms sheets, Scott, have been signed yet. Discussions from what I'm hearing are still ongoing. Anthropic did decline to comment on this,

but it would more than double the company's value from at least where it was after its last big fundraise and put it ahead of rival Open AI, which was last worth roughly $850 billion after its record fundraise earlier this year. Both AI giants, from what we're hearing, are looking to go public as soon as the end of this year, depending on market conditions, that's according to sources.

Anthropics exploding revenue growth, though, has been the big driver and the main reason I'm hearing why investors are lining up to back them at this point. Anthropics last reported run rate was $30 billion. Sources I'm talking to say it's now closer to $35 billion, that would be up from $10 billion last year. Claude, as you guys have been talking about, it's been a major revenue driver

and the big reason folks are backing up for this company. he's got. Kate, thank you very much for that. That's Kate Rooney. A.K., I've come to you on this. It feels to me very much like Anthropic has stolen a lot of thunder here, and now they're showing it with how fast and how big their valuation is growing to. Without a doubt. First of all, the second that deal closes, Amazon's CAPEX is going to go up because Amazon Anthropic partner very closely. But the broader Anthropic story is unbelievable. I was in Anthropic headquarters less than a year ago, so about July 2025 with Dario Amade, who was proud that they had a $4 billion run rate.

Now, Kate just said it might be $35 billion. So the growth is just, it's unprecedented. We've never seen it before. And the problem for Anthropic is they're running up against compute constraints. So they have this great product in ClaudeCode that allows you to go and build anything you want. But Open AI is now coming for that business with Codex, and OpenAI has more infrastructure.

And Anthropic has historically been more restrained than Open AI on infrastructure build, but that will limit them because they're not going to be able to make. meet demand for their product. So this money is very important for Anthropics, so they're able to continue to deliver their product and potentially, you know, keep putting pressure on Open AI or even surpass them. You want a piece of either of these when they go public? Actually, we're investors in Anthropic right now, and so very happy. You chose that overopen? We're investors actually in both. Okay. Which one are you feeling better about? Well, we're extremely impressed

with Anthropic, the partnership with Amazon, and just the savviness and the intelligence of the business plan to target software coding and programming as their first enterprise market, as opposed to, say, the consumer market. All right, guys, that was fun. I appreciate everybody being here on set to have that conversation.

The Dan's and AK. We'll see all of you again soon. Software's in focus again today, but through the lens of private credit as a big name is pulling back on lending in that space. Leslie Picker joins us now with more, Highless. Hey, Scott, yeah, co-CEO, Mark Lipschult, saying on the Q1 call that the firm is, quote, working down our exposure, but it's unclear if that means they're selling software loans that they already have or holding back on making new ones. Lippschultz is predicting that there will need to be a lot of equity injected by P.E. firms into software companies to, quote, continue forward.

And he said that most will work probably quite amicably. Some will be a little more challenging. That was a direct quote there. He said the challenging ones will ultimately lead to some amount of losses, which won't affect just private credit, but public credit too and high yield and equities as well. Blue Owl's shares, though, they jolted higher in the middle of this conference call, which appears to be related to the affirming of the 58.5% target for this year's fee-related earnings margins. Consensus had been about 200 basis points lower, just amid all of the turmoil that we've seen in the first quarter. And then Lipschultz also said that because Blue Owl was an early lender to SpaceX, they opted for an equity investment too, which generated 10 times for them. Although we don't know how big the investment is and they already sold about half of it above that $1 trillion valuation, Scott. All right, Leslie, thank you very much. That's Leslie Picker. Now let's bring in CIBC Capital Markets, Chris Harvey. It's nice to have you back. Good to be back.

So if I told you a month ago that you were going to be sitting here today and we'd have a new intraday high on both the S&P and the NASDAQ, you would have said, I might be a little skeptical. But we did think that Cruz were going to go up. We did believe that there was a buying opportunity there. We did take risk off in the portfolio. It's just the speed in which we've done that is surprising. And so right now we're getting a little bit more conservative. We don't want to be greedy.

We've given an opportunity. We think the market begins to digest the gains. We've had a lot of catalysts with earnings. We need to get worse in his seat. And oh, by the way, we don't quite have peace in the Middle East just yet. I know, but it feels like the market has so looked past what's happening in the Middle East because it's laser-focused on the earnings story, which is undeniably strong. Undeniably strong.

Guidance, if you're an AI beneficiary, has been very good. if you're more of just a general cyclical, the guidance has been a little bit uncertain, a little bit unclear, which does give us somewhat of a pause. And then yesterday when we saw the Fed, you know, it looks like some of the members of the Fed are getting a little bit more hawkish than I would have expected. And so we're going to have to deal with that to some degree.

So you digest what happened last night with Mega Cap Tech, and you come away thinking what? Things are good, right? We thought the underlying fundamentals are good. We thought the guidance would be good. That's been true. Now what we need to do is we need to get the rate situation in place. We need to understand what the new Fed's forward guidance is going to be, so we understand where the cost of funds is. We also think that we're sitting on an M&A wave, right?

That's going to take a while. We have to get away from, you're right. The market has moved on, but I think we have to create a little bit more space between the turmoil in the Middle East and MNA activity. What if they get rid of the forward guidance under Warsh? Because I don't think it's set in stone that it's just going to continue the way it was. I don't think anybody likes the dot plot, including the current and still Fed Chair, who said as much yesterday. I think so. So Powell said this, Warsh has said this. Maybe perhaps we're over communicating, right?

Maybe we need to rethink the way we're going to communicate. And what I think is they're going to give better forward guidance, which means in theory and probably, in practice, that volatility in the rate market is going to come down. And if that's true, you don't need rates to come down for mortgage rates to come down. And that can be very productive in the second half of the year. Something we're really not talking about is the housing market coming back. And if we do have some sort of resolution in the Middle East, the Fed can start looking through things. I think this Fed, the new Fed, probably believes that things are a little bit more restrictive than they want.

and you can see a pretty exciting or pretty interesting housing market in the second half of the year. You think more or less talking, communicating by the Fed? What's better for the market? Does it matter? I think less talking is better. I think more forward guidance is better and more consistent forward guidance. How can you have more consistent forward guides? It's always kind of a guess, isn't it? Well, this Fed took it to a level that I haven't seen before.

We're going to be data point driven. We're going to be data-driven. We're not going to make a decision until we see the data. You have to, at some point in time, say, here's the trend in the data. Here's what we expect for the next six to 12 months. We're three to six months. One of the things that Green Spend had said years and years ago is the reason why we communicate is so people can plan. If you don't give them good communication, if you don't give them some sort of forward guidance, they can't plan.

That's bad for the economy. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Sometimes the guidance isn't believable because you just don't know how things are going to transpire. And often what they say and write on a dot plot, turns out not to be the case. So I don't know. We'll see. It's good talking to you. Thanks for being here. Good seeing. That's Chris Harvey. All right, let's send it now to Christina Parts of Nevolos for a look at the biggest names moving into the close today. Hi there. Hi, Scott. Well, demand for weight loss drugs Zepbound and diabetes medication,

Monjaro lifted Eli Lilly's first quarter results above estimates and prompted the pharma giant to actually raise their guidance. That demand offset lower prices for the drugs that also happened in the quarter. But that's why you're saying, shares up over 10%. Meantime, Caterpillar is seeing strong demand for its construction machinery. Revenue from that segment came in a billion dollars better than expected in its first quarter

report just out this morning. Caterpillar also raised its full year revenue expectations and said tariff costs will come in lower than previously expected. Royal Caribbean is jumping even after a current quarter miss as the cruise line's full year outlook topped estimates in demand for Mediterranean and Mexico cruises is already recovering.

Scott? Okay. Christina, thanks. Christina Ponce Nevelos. We're just getting started up next. One of the country's top wealth managers, Chris Toomey of Morgan Stanley. He tells us what he is telling clients with stocks at record highs just after the break. Well, if there's one thing you could say about this stock market, it's how resilient it's been, even in the face of the war and rising oil prices, enough so that stocks hit record highs on an intraday basis yet again today. For more, let's welcome in Chris Toomey. He is a top advisor for Morgan Stanley private wealth management. Back here at Post 9, it's good to have you back. Thanks for having you. Ask Harvey, if he was surprised where we are and how fast we've come back, are you?

I'm not surprised where we are. I'm surprised at how fast we came back. I mean, if you look at it, we were at a nine-month low, March 30th. We are now up 12%, over 12%. Since that, it's probably a 99th percent tile with regards to move. So this is pretty fast, pretty quickly. If you look at some of the places that were pretty frothy, they've come back and been very frothy,

and particularly look at semis that are up 40% right now. Oh my gosh, I know. Some of these moves have been ridiculous. So I would say I'm not surprised at the market's up. I am surprised at how quickly it's moved. AMD, for example, how much that's up over a month? Take a guess. 80% to your point.

80% in a month. So that underscores your point just perfectly. Does the comeback make sense to you? But we're focused on earnings. Yes. Do earnings, are earnings good enough to justify the rocket ship back? Yeah, I think there's a couple of things that are supporting this. You know, first of all, since COVID, the S&B 500's annualized at over 20%, right?

So it's paid to be patient and to buy the dips, and that's what the market's doing. In addition to that, to your point, with regards to earnings, everyone's focusing in on earnings, expectations were relatively high. It didn't seem like there was needed to be too much to make it. sell off. And we're in a situation right now. In addition to earnings being good, they're outperforming by about 10%, which is typically twice of what the average is. And then guidance is also significantly better. And importantly, margins look really good. And so how much of that is the AI starting to creep in? We're still figuring it out. We're not all the way through, but that's a lot of positives.

And then I think the other thing you want to think about is just flows, right? So you're in a situation where ETF flows have been really good. You're probably about $200 billion coming into the market. You're in a situation where buybacks announced last year $1.3 trillion. We've already had half a trillion dollars worth of buybacks. And then if you look at retail mutual funds, you're in a situation where money markets got over $2.3 trillion worth of cash. So people are waiting for that opportunity to buy the dip and they have. What about flows of capital around the world? what was thought to be another really good year for international stocks, Asia, and otherwise. Now the war has caused much more uncertainty there than here.

Right. So that has to have helped some flows come to the U.S. too, right? 100%. So you're seeing those foreign flows coming in, and that's the fly in the ointment, right? So you're at a situation right now where oil is a key barometer of where you want your capital. Do you want to be in an area that is exporting natural resources and has a plentiful supply, or are you in a situation where you need to import that? So places like Asia, where you still had expectations for some pretty good growth,

they're really looking at a problem right now where how are they going to power that growth? And then you look at places like Latin America, which has a plethora of access to natural resources, that's where you're starting to see that change with regards to flows. You talked about the durability and strength of earnings. Can we keep it up? Because that's now what matters more than anything else, right? Yeah, 100%. Look, I think if you look at it, what's interesting is that in addition to beating expectations, which are usually brought down during this period, are actually increasing. So if you look at forecasts for earnings for the next 12 months, they're looking at about 25%, which I think is very doable. I think the two things we got to concern ourselves with, one we talked about was oil, the other is the Fed. What's happening with the Fed? So we were in a situation where we went into Fed meeting where it was basically neutral, zero percent expectations for for a rate hike up or down, and we're now at a point where we're actually looking at a 10% chance

for rates to go actually up versus our original call at the beginning of the year, which were two rate cuts. So if you're in a situation where you've got oil prices going higher, you've got a Fed that it might be constrictive, that could be a real problem for the equity market. Okay, so since we went from equities to, you know, interest rates, let's talk private credit then. Okay? Because I don't think you've been with me since the whole conversation started getting a little heated. Yes.

Right? And I know you must have clients invested in private credit. Yes. Exposed. Yes. How worried are you? I'm not worried. So, you know, I think let's look at what happened, right?

We were in a situation where interest rates were in a pretty good place. Spreads within private credit were in a very good place. So you're talking about a 10 to 12 percent type of return. rates start coming down, spread start contracting, the risk-adjusted return within private credit starts going down. We started pulling money out about 18 months ago. The hedge funds looked at the public BDCs and said, hey, those guys are going to have to cut dividends. They're going to have to cut distributions. So let's start shorting them because that's going to be a big problem.

And you started to see cracks within the public BDCs. If you look at the underlying fundamentals within the private BDCs and private credit in general, outside of some of those large situations that everyone's talking about, the fundamentals are actually really good. Even that numbers look really good. Actually, defaults are coming down. Pick is basically in line with historical averages, so we don't necessarily see anything under our portfolios that's really causing this concern. Obviously, people are concerned about what's happening in software. Obviously, everyone's concerned with regards to whether they can get their money out. But if you look at the underlining loans themselves, they're in pretty good shape.

You field a lot of phone calls from clients about this topic? We call them. We don't wait for them to call us. Good answer. Good answer. So in fairness, I think the thing that you have to be aware of is, is like, you know, look, these are limited liquidity vehicles. And if you're in them, you have to understand that that's what's going to happen.

The benefit of private credit is, is if you look at most of the client's portfolios that we're invested in, you know, the maturity on these loans are two to three years, right? So you're in the interim, you're also collecting cash flow. I would actually make the argument with the amount of stress in the private credit market, spreads are starting actually to expand. It's actually starting to look like a very interesting opportunity. We're not allocating, but it's starting to look interesting. The percent of one's portfolio exposed to things like private credit is probably really small.

Isn't it? It depends on who you're talking to, right? Like if you're looking at some of these institutions that have no need for liquidity, picking up additional 500, 600 basis points is pretty attractive. So if you're an insurance company or you're in a retirement vehicle where you can pick up that additional cash flow, that's not such a bad deal. If you're talking about your average client, you're probably looking at somewhere between... Your average wealthy individual client.

I would say on average, probably somewhere between 2% and 5%. I would say if you're dealing with a sophisticated larger family, that understands the liquidity, it could be as much as 10 to 15%. That's a lot. Well, in relationship to everything else that they're doing. Wow. Okay. We'll talk to you soon. All right. Thanks. Chris Tumi. Thanks for having me. All right. Still ahead. Still ahead.

A major shakeup in the world of golf, Saudi Arabia, said to be pulling their funding from live golf at the end of this season. We'll break it down coming up. And we're all over the rally. Nasdaq and S&P both on pace for record closes today. We're back after this. Welcome back. It was a report from the Financial Times a couple of weeks ago that first cast doubt on the future of LiveGolf. Then came last night's story from the Wall Street Journal that the Saudis would end their backing of the league at the end of the current season. Still many unanswered questions. We're joined now by Samuel Agini of the FT. He broke the initial news and joined us the day that he did. Welcome back. It's good to have you. Chris be back, Scott. Thanks for having you. Okay, so you started it. Now here we are. What's your reaction now to a little more.

finality, I think, to this story. Wow, I mean, what a reaction originally. There was so much chaos, so much confusion. The Gulf world is like nothing else in sport. There's so much passion in there. There's been so much acrimony. To see this, look, to see this statement is not a surprise. This is exactly what we expected.

It's what was flagged. and the race is on to salvage something here for a live. Do you think they can do that? Is it realistic that funding can come from a different source? I mean, the Saudis had pumped, I think, $5 billion at least into this league already. Who would be there to pick up the slack? I've spoken to sources across sports agencies, sports bankers, There's obviously skepticism here because if the if a fund with the wealth of

Public Investment Fund of the Saudi sovereign wealth fund couldn't make this work then you've got to have a lot of steel about you to to think you can you can do it here and and all this reassurance that's needing to go to the partners of live now you know it's it's no small task to come in and think we've got to rapidly build a bit business level to support this. The bigger story, perhaps, in the whole thing, is that Yasser is leaving, right? That seems to have caught some people as, wow, now that, that's a ground, that's an earth-shattering movement to see that actually happen. Yes, I mean, this is a man who was on the cusp, remember, of chairing the PGA tour's

new commercial entity. but back when back in uh june 23 when uh p i f and pga tour agreed a truce that was the you know that was the working plan of this of the framework agreement um you know three years later it's it's just it's not panned out and um you know he was he was very much uh in many ways the face of this into at least in terms of the investment side yeah no doubt we'll follow the story i know you will Well, Sam, thank you. We'll talk to you again soon. Thank you so much. Sam Eugenie of the Financial Times. Coming up next, we track the biggest movers into the close today. Christina Parts of Nevelos is back. With that, tell us what you see.

I am a chipmaker surging on a surprise data center deal, a rental giant rides, a robo-taxy partnership, and a grocer just really powers higher on a raised outlook. We'll have those details next. We're about 10 from the bell. Back to Christina now for the stock she's watching. What's on your list? Well, I have to start with Qualcomm. One of my companies, it's on pace for its best date in seven years after the longtime iPhone chip supplier said it would begin shipping data center chips to an unnamed hyperscalor by December. Few details were actually provided, but those comments more than offset weak current quarter guidance in the company's Q2 report yesterday afternoon, specifically with handsets coming from China. rental car company Hertz announced a partnership with Uber earlier today, sending the stock soaring.

Hertz new Oro Mobility, which is a fleet management unit, will support Uber's Robotaxy Push, including providing charging and repairs to the AVs. The two expect to launch services in San Francisco later this year shares up 12%. Sprouts Farmer's Market, having its best day ever as resilience in a tough consumer market really led to higher sales, as well as a raised full-year outlook. Scott shares up 17%. Back to you. All right. Thanks for that. Christina Pardsonel. It's coming up next, the final countdown. Minutes away from Apple's numbers, we'll have you a last look at what to expect coming up in the zone. We're now in the closing bell market zone.

Truitts Keith Lerner is here to break down these crucial moments of the trading day. Plus Angelica Peebles watching the action in Big Pharma. Trust us. There they are. Amgen reporting in overtime, too. Oliver Renick, standing by live at Cibo Global Markets in Chicago with a look at Apple options ahead of the print. Angelica, I'm going to start with you. So you got Lilly's big move today and then the look ahead to Amgen. Yeah, Scott, a massive move today from Lilly, that company that stock up about 10% today,

and that's after the company raised full-year sales guidance by $2 billion, and that's all on the strength of its weight loss drugs, it's GLP ones, of course. And so we saw persistent strength from Zeppound in Monjaro. Those are the two injectables. Lily, also saying that they, are seeing strong initial results from the launch of its GLP1 pill called Foundaio CEO Dave Ricks telling us exclusively that they've seen about 20,000 prescriptions in the first few

weeks of that launch. And then like you said, Scott, we also have Amgen up next. Those results expected in just a few minutes. An analyst are expecting to see seasonal weakness to weigh on the U.S. revenue this quarter. They're also expecting operating margin to be the lowest of this year. But within the portfolio, I'll be keeping an eye on Amgen's cholesterol lowering drug rapatha and Amgen's relatively new, Uplenza for autoimmune diseases within the pipeline. We'll also be listening for commentary on the experimental obesity drug maritime, as well as its heart drug alpaccharan. And so we are expecting to see an interesting move on that company, and we will keep posted, Scott.

Okay, good stuff. Thanks for that. Oliver, give me some options action on Apple. Absolutely, Scott. Options traders in the stock have gotten more optimistic the longer this day has gone on. We did see this morning some bearish news. leaning flow, but as the stock extends gains, bulls are taking control of the options action. Right now, more calls are trading at or above the asking price, meaning traders are buying

those calls, not selling them, which is what we had noticed around the opening bell. One trader is even betting on fresh highs for Apple as soon as Monday. They bought almost 1,400 calls at the $290 strike for a total price of $11,000. That's a trade that breaks even 6% higher from here. Remember, Apple's just 5.5% below. It's all-time high. Now, to be sure, one could argue these bowls are the contrarians as Apple stock has fallen after seven of its last 10 earnings. But regardless, one key message is that options are pricing in a big move. Implied volatility right now points to a 3.5% swing for Apple, which compares to less than 2% on average for the last four quarters. Back to you.

Okay, Oliver, thanks so much. Can't wait to see what happens there. And thanks for the options action. All right, Keith, we are going to have a new closing high on the S&P. And as I ask you this question, we'll have one on the NASDAQ 2. The cushion's not as wide. So we'll track that right into the end. Your thought here as we approach those new milestones.

Yeah, I think new highs is a good thing. I mean, that's showing this underlying demand. And what I also like about today's action is, you know, tech has been the leadership. We pointed out last month how the risk reward had really improved there. Now it's moved up over 20 percent. And what's the market doing today? Well, tech is down, but everything else is up. So to me, that's a very healthy sign. And what is it being driven by? It's driven by earnings that continue to far exceed estimates where over 80 percent of stocks are beating estimates on earnings and sales. And in tech, it's over 90 percent. So I think all on all, you have to be encouraged by the overall action to new highs, which are supported by fundamentals. You don't think stocks are whistling past the graveyard of oil prices or the developments in the Middle East?

Listen, I think that's a risk. And within our portfolios or sector strategy, we did upgrade energy a few weeks ago as a hedge. A couple days ago, we saw energy was up, everything else was down. But I think the broader story is energy matters, but it's not the only thing that matters. This AI and tech story is probably a more dominant theme. But to be fair, Scott, it certainly presents a risk in the background. I just don't think it's the dominant theme right now. What would your download be on those mega-cap earnings reports that most of them obviously hitting last night?

We do have Apple right in front of us tonight. Yeah, well, I think they went in with really high expectations. I think all in all, they did fine. If I look at the sales numbers across the board, they were up somewhere between 15 to 30 percent. And given the size of these companies, I think that's pretty extraordinary. But all in all, after a 25 percent move off the lows in tech, a 40 to 50 percent move in semiconductors,

I mean, I think some digestion would be perfectly expected. And again, money's not leaving the market. It's just rotating into other areas, which to me is a healthy sign. Yeah, I've got two minutes to go before the bell rings. And, of course, we will get Apple. What has impressed you the most outside of those tech reports and the AI story within this market? I think, you know, small caps. Small caps have impressed me the most because normally if you said, hey, the Fed is basically going to push out rate cuts.

We have oil prices high, some uncertainty around the economy, and small caps are at fresh highs, and the relative strength has been strong. And then we looked below the hood on that, and Scott, what we found is that the energy small caps, at least in the S&P 600, is up more than 40%. Tech small cap is up more than 20%. I think it's 25%. So I think what was surprising and impressive is how well these small cap companies have done. And then lastly, more broadly, again, how we're seeing corporate.

America once again to adapt to all these kind of uncertainties that we're dealing with on a daily basis. Do you have any real worries in front of you beyond what we already talked about the war and oil prices? But the market doesn't seem to care as long as earnings expectations continue to go up and we meet the moment. Yeah, there's always something to worry about. I mean, a lot of times when it hits the market is something we're not talking about. But all in all, I mean, even today, like, you know, the Equate S&P is still slightly below where it was before, you know, February You know, large caps have had this big run, but they're only up 4% since October. So listen, if the economy shows down more, we expect interest rates move above us over 10-year above 4-50.

You see all move above those highs. I mean, there are all things that could ride over market. But again, on our base case, we think the underlying trend is still positive, and we would look at that weakness as opportunity. We'll talk to again soon, Keith. Thank you. Bell's ringing out new highs. Closing one for the S&P and the NASDAQ and now all on.