Closing Bell - Closing Bell: Nvidia’s Power Move 9/22/25

Episode Date: September 22, 2025

OpenAI and Nvidia announced a strategic partnership. CNBC’s Jon Fortt caught up with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. We run you through all the big highlights. Plus, we discuss what is next for markets with the S&P hits new highs with Solus’ Dan Greenhaus,  Neuberger Berman’s Shannon Saccocia and HSBC’s Max Kettner. Plus, star analyst Erik Woodring gives us his early read on new sales of the iPhone. And, Chris Toomey – Morgan Stanley’s Managing Director of Private Wealth Management – tells us where he sees the rally headed from here.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Brian, thanks so much. Welcome to closing bell. I'm Scott Wapner Live on Post 9 here at the New York Stock Exchange. This maker breakout begins with this AI-powered bull run and why some suggest it's far from finished. The latest example of that news made on CNBC earlier today. Invita, investing $100 billion into Open AI as that company continues to build out its computing power. We'll have more on that in a moment with Nvidia shares hitting an all-time intraday high today. Take a look at the majors, too, with 60 to go in regulation, NASDAQ, and maybe no surprise. the clear winner. Aside from Nvidia, Dell, Oracle, and several of the other power names in AI

are shooting higher today. Apple shares their higher on early indications of strong demand for the new iPhone. We do have Morgan Stanley's Irk Woodring coming up in just a bit. We're looking forward to that, but we do begin with our talk of the tape. Invidia's power move. CNBC's John Fort, joining us now from the company's headquarters out

in Santa Clara with more on that news that was made today, John. Yeah, Scott, right? In your earlier show, in halftime. We were here at NVIDIA campus, headquarters where I still am with NVIDIA CEO, Jensen Wong, OpenAI, CEO Sam Altman, and the president,

Greg Broughtman over at OpenAI. And I asked Jensen Wong, the CEO of NVIDIA, specifically about where this fits into this broader realm of announcements we've heard. Stargate was earlier in January. That was a big OpenAI infrastructure project. Was this part of that

or was this something new? He said, It's definitely something new. This is additive, this project, 10 gigawatts of AI infrastructure is additive to everything that has been announced and contracted. Remember, they've contracted huge amounts of capacity through Azure, through OCI, through CoreWeave, and all of that is powered by Nvidia, and we're really delighted working with all of these partners, and that's going to continue to grow. You mentioned the move in Oracle as well.

up even more than invidia is on a percentage basis, though, of course, invidia being a four and a quarter trillion dollar market cap company is bigger overall. But yeah, CoreWeave as well, you can see how this is adding to this overall narrative about AI infrastructure, concerns about whether the demand is there. Well, people are putting their money where their mouth is. Invidia, OpenAI, Oracle, all demonstrating that, Scott. Well, I mean, it shows you, too, John, when he was using actual numbers beyond the, you know, the 100 billion and saying it's additive. You're talking about 4 to 5 million GPUs from this one

project alone. Can you put that into perspective for us? I can't. The numbers are too big, but I did ask Jensen specifically about whether this was factored in to the numbers we got from them on the last earnings call. He said, hey, this is all new. So that puts some extra emphasis on the next earnings call for Nvidia. So investors will maybe have some sense of how to factor that instance. Invita and Open AI are not saying over what period of time this $100 billion is going to be deployed, but they did say it's kind of a gigawatt at a time. Invidia is going to make these investments in Open AI in trenches as they build out this AI data center infrastructure. Yeah, he's like, well, we do that number in a year. And now this is a single project.

So that helps give at least some perspective there. John, thanks. Fort out at NVIDIA headquarters. Invidia shares, we mentioned at the top of the show, hitting an all-time intraday high on this news today. Our Christina Partsenevolous joins us now with what it means going forward for shareholders. Christina. And that has a lot to do with CEO Jensen Wong, really calling this deal the biggest, the absolute biggest AI infrastructure project ever.

This partnership with OBI, you talked about the $5 million GPU number is huge. And that's why you're seeing NVIDIA at about $145 billion in market cap today, roughly the size The market size should save capital one. Shares jump, though, because the deal, as you heard from that soundbite, is additive beyond current U.S. hyperscale sales. And if you throw in a potential China reentry, which is still in the back of a lot of traders' minds, and that really drives multi-year revenue upside and why you might start to see some sell side change their estimates higher for NVIDIA.

The partnership also raises questions about Broadcom's role. Broadcoms surged earlier this month on a $10 billion AI chip order from OpenAI, but the market right now is seeing this Invidia deal as maybe limiting Broadcom's future, even if not everybody agrees with it. And that's why you're seeing shares down about 1%. And speaking of the sell side, right? CFRA is the first one actually to upgrade Nvidia from buy to strong buy, noting the 10 gigawatt capacity matches Nvidia's entire 2025 sales plan. The numbers you were talking about, Scott, you know, the 4 to 5 million chips in one year. They're doing that all in just this project. Yeah, it's amazing. It really is. That's why the stock is reacting how it is.

Thanks, Christina Parts of Nevelos. S&P 500 hitting new highs, thanks to that move in NVIDIA shares. Let's now bring in Solis Alternative Asset Management's Dan Greenhouse. It's good to have you here. I joked on halftime earlier as this news was unfolding. Hey, let's talk about the broadening trade. Sure. But, I mean, this sucks all the air out of the room continuously AI does,

and why investors keep staying with it. I mean, two things can be true at once. On the one hand, there are other stories that are working. And at the same time, this story is, so dominant. And every time we come on the show and we talk about should investors move away from the AI story, the argument I always come back to is just there's a consistent spade of headlines that reinforce the idea that this is the dominant headline and probably you should stick with it. And to be clear, I haven't been completely consistent about that. There have

been times where I've sort of tactically been making the case for broadening out. Solis has You've been consistently inconsistent. I think that's a fair description, Scott. This has a bunch of investments in smaller and mid-cap stocks, and so we've intermittently felt like. But when you get headlines like this, as consistently as we get them, it's hard to argue why not just stick with what's working. Right, because it raises the question, at least from me, can you have confidence in those other areas like you have in this? And it's kind of hard to when this feels like it has this durability to it that the others may not. No, but I also don't think you need the same level of confidence. So on the one hand, you have this obviously secular story that's playing out from

Nvidia and Broadcom all the way down to the industrials and what we call the AI beneficiaries. And you have enormous confidence in that in the short term here in the sense that the money keeps being spent, the CAPEX, demand keeps out stripping supply, et cetera, et cetera. But again, that doesn't mean that throughout the market there aren't other stories that are working incredibly well that are not, maybe you don't have the same level of confidence, but you can still have a high level of confidence in those stories. Yeah, so we're, we'll call it, we're $6,700 now on the S&P. David Koston at Goldman Sachs raises his 12-month S&P target today to 7,200.

He raises end of year, six-month and then 12-month out as well. That seemed reasonable to you, 7,200, 12 months? Yeah, I mean, I will remind viewers that my price target coming into the year, not that I publish in the same way that I used to as a sell-side strategist was 7,000. Obviously, Liberation Day, everybody wavered a bit on that, but I don't think 72, 200 in 12 months is a stretch at all. Now, again, there's a lot of things between here and then, as there always is. Well, that's why, I mean, the number, it sounds like a big number, but from here, I mean, it's not even 10%. No, it's not. For me, again, you have the tariff story

that lingers out there. You have the deterioration in the labor market and the degree to which that might get worse. I mean, but there are always things about which to worry in the macro. And when you look back, we've talked about this repeatedly, you look back over the last 15 years. How many times have people said so-and-so is happening? That means so-and-so is going to happen, and it doesn't. And so right now, I think 7,212 months seems like a, not a layup. You pick at the multiple at all. I mean, if you figure, okay, what's going to get you from here to there, it has to be new money coming in to stocks. Goldman's Tony Pascarillo today of the market itself says, don't fight it, don't chase it. Do I love the positioning set up and tactical risk

reward, I don't. With that said, do I think you should be stepping in front of the U.S. mega-cap tech freight train? I don't. It's a bull market. The primary trend is higher. I referenced this, paired it with sort of what Tepper said the other day on Squawk Box. I don't really like the multiple, but I'm not going to get in the way of Fed. Why would I fight that? Sure. I mean, a couple of things. One, and I mean, Tony's great, and I don't disagree with much of that. I would just say, we've been worrying about the multiple for years. And so whether it was He's not really worried about the multiple. He's like, I mean, does the setup look great from a positioning standpoint?

I don't know. It's crowded. No, but my point is when the multiple was 18, we said the same thing. And then it was 20, and we said the same thing. And now it's been 22 for some time, and we say the same thing. There is a hesitancy to a multiple at these levels that investors naturally recoil from. And I understand that. But as any number of people, Adam Parker myself, have argued on this on the show, multiples don't really do much for you in the short term.

Obviously, they tell you something about expected long-term returns, but in the short-term, they're not particularly helpful. And so whether you're 22 times or 20 times or 18 times, as we've seen, that's had no bearing on short-term future returns. We talk about investors not fighting the Fed. It appears that with inside the room there's fighting the Fed. Like there are members who want, like Stephen Myron, who is speaking today at the Economic Club of New York. He obviously wants, you know, a lot of cuts. And then there are others who say not so fast. I mean, how does that all factor into how we should be the market?

The bias right now is for, we've talked about this for quite some time, the bias is for lower interest rates. When rates were five and a half, there were a bunch of us, myself included, we were saying we should probably be at four and a half. And then we can reassess. And we got to four and a half. And now we're reassessing. And I think my view, as I've expressed on the show a couple of times, is we should probably be closer to three and a half, let's say, 100 basis points. Now, we're on the way there. We got 25 basis points.

And I think as investors, you should probably expect that. So, again, what do I do with that? Why should we expect that? The rates are up, actually, since the Fed cut last week, right? Yeah. What, the 10 years up, 30 years up? Sure. The rates are up.

Yes, right. And listen, there is a debate. The policy is not the policy. The response is the policy. And so there is an argument to be had on this discussion point. My point, I think those of us who think rates should be lower pointing to the Fed funds rate, which when you think of the rate, think of a dartboard, it is the bullseye, the rate that determines everything else. the economy is clearly decelerating.

Now, again, it's not falling off a cliff by any means. The retail sales number, earnings reports, still support that the economy is growing. It probably just isn't growing as quickly as it was. But the revisions to the labor market should be particularly worrisome for what we'll call a political organization. And so, as I said, last time I was on, and I'll repeat, if you're the Federal Reserve, you can tolerate, you don't want, but you can tolerate 3% inflation. You cannot tolerate. You just call them a political organization? Well, I mean, a Washington-based organization with political appointees on it.

Job losses are a no-go. And when you have private sector job creation now running in the low double digits, that's not okay. Well, that's why Chair Powell called it an insurance cut. Yeah, and we talked last time I was on, I said this isn't the economy. A lot of people say, why would they cut? The economy is not screaming for rate cuts. This isn't a need so much as it is. Let's take out some insurance and make sure the weakness that we've seen.

isn't, doesn't metastasized to a larger degree. All right. Stay with us. Let's expand the conversation and bring in CNBC contributor, New Burger Berman, Shannon Sacocha, and HSBC's Max Ketner. It's good to have you both. Shan, how do you see this market here? And you can include the news we got today from Nvidia, as I said, really underscoring

how we've gotten here and where people think we could go from here. Well, I think, Scott, I just want to highlight something that Dan said, because you asked him why you can still have confidence. in this particular trade given, and it's all about valuation. You can be invested in small caps at the valuation at which they're trading 5% over the S&P 500 for the Russell 2000 this quarter. We're seeing that broadening trade even today, S&P 500, Russell 2000, right about the same performance, even on the back of this AI news. And then you look at the AI trade, and you think about the fact that this still remains very much concentrated in these large

cap tech names. And so you've really benefited if you've been in those names over the couple of years. But this is an indication that this tailwind that is going to expand out to other companies is going to continue. So as long as the mega cap tech companies are spending, it allows the rest of that 493 to catch up in terms of their implementation of AI, the productivity enhancements, the margin improvement that's going to come on the tail of this, just like we saw in the early 2000s and into the mid-2000s. So our view is that there's actually a few ways that you can play this market, and they are not, you do not have to be binary in that implementation. You can have a little bit of the broadening out. You can have some of the AI

trade. But most importantly, we're still very early in terms of the transmission of that value across the broader market. Is that how you see it, Max? Yeah, broadly. I think when we look at actually evaluations, you guys were talking a little bit about it, would you look at the equal weighted S&P? In fact, you know, the equal weight of S&P is only a touch above its 10-year average. So when we strip out the effect from AI and from tech stocks, actually, it's not looking as dire in terms of valuation. I would also say what is extremely surprising and what surprised us the most this morning when we ran all of our models was that when we look at our sentiment and positioning framework, it's not like actually

positioning is getting heavier and is getting even more long. No, when we look at our positioning framework, long only investors are only about halfway in the longs where they were, you know, around January, February, where really people were thinking about going along the US exceptionalism trade. So we're only around halfway there. Long-only investors really haven't participated in that much. And then when we look also at our shorter term sentiment and positioning framework, that's been at least sending a little bit, a kind of a weak sell signal in the last four, five weeks. Even that has disappeared now. So there really isn't not even in the near term, anything that should stop us.

And I do agree, I think there is a basis for really having AI stocks and having the tech exposure, but also the broadening out where perhaps I disagree a little bit is on the rustle and not particularly a great fan of the rustle and of small caps, perhaps more sticking within the SMP and within the S&P go along the cyclicals because the better the growth numbers come out, the more radioactivity is surprising to the upside. The more some of those rate cuts come out of the price, and that already, particularly if it's on the front end, given the floating rate that exposure of the rustle. I think

that's more to be played within quality, within the large caps and then going broader there rather than on the small caps. Dan, I mean, isn't part of that answer, part of the part of what someone says the problem? Quote, in the near term, there's not anything that should stop us. That's what Max

just said. Are we getting to a point where we're Hold on, Shan, I'll come to you in two seconds. You know what I'm getting at. I know, listen, there are times where the market goes up and it's okay to be bullish. I know this is not a self-help show, but like sometimes it's okay to think stocks are going to go up. And you know what? Most of the time stocks go up. So you agree with that statement? In the near term, there's not anything that should stop us?

Well, it depends on your definition in the near term. I repeat my multi-months. Let's put it's between now and the end of the year. If we say that's the short term, can we agree on that? No. We can't. On balance. Yeah, three months basically. Yeah, but I also think, again, again, my multi-month observation here that I think the market in general and the people to whom I speak think tariffs are no longer an issue. And I'm a little nervous about, let's say, the next six months and tariff implementations and consumer demand. Do I think that is sufficient to offset the AI trade's impact on markets? I'm not sure that it is. However, I don't think I personally believe in the all-clear signal

to the same degree it appears others do. Max, what happens if the Fed doesn't cut again this year? They take a break. They bought their insurance policy, and now they're going to wait and see. In the near term, there's not anything that should stop us, you said. Would that stop us? No, I don't think so. Because effectively, I think what's good about the last couple of weeks and months really is, and that's really what sets us up with such an extremely bullish and positive mix is the level of yields, the level of rates, really, where it starts hitting valuations of credit spreads,

of, you know, P.E. multiples, equities. That is, still on our estimates, we've got this kind of danger zone model where it hits those risk asset valuations, that still sits around 460, 470. So we're miles away, even if they suddenly decide in October, actually, we're not going to go through. We're only going to do every other meeting. We're going to do December. Look, as long as they cut with a sort of six to 12-month outlook, that's still super bullish. I think it's pretty binary, really, the outlook in terms of yields or rates and what it means for risk assets broadly. As long as the Fed tells us, look, we're going to be accommodative over the next sort of six to 12 months. That's good. Where it's

only really starting to be an issue is once the Fed says, hold on, we've cut too much, things are overheating, and we're not only not going to cut, we're actually going to start hiking again, right? Or if the market really prices a big tail of rate hikes in. That's then where risk gas evaluations get hit. And we're miles away from that. I would argue it's minimum six months, because, you know, as we've heard, we do have that weakness in the labor market. A lot of that is immigration related and the reversal of immigration. That actually does allow those rate cuts to come through. And that, of course, just adds another layer to that bullishness with subdued positioning, with re-accelerating, particularly high-frequency data

and VH-I trade. And now you throw on top, you throw rate cuts on top of that. That's just an extremely bullish setup, even into your end, I think. Shan, you were saying before? What I was going to say, Scott, is that in answer to your question, I think you hit the nail on the head earlier. We're talking about a market that is now very keyed on monetary policy, not just here in the U.S., but outside of the U.S. But you pointed out the fact that we're continuing to see yields move higher on the long end. So if we think about what could potentially derail some of this momentum and enthusiasm into the end of the year, is if we do not see that kind of parallel shift downward in the yield curve and we continue to see steepening, that's going

to create some concerns that perhaps we don't get that full transmission to parts of the economy that have been responding to lower rates because they're really keyed in on the long end of the curve. I just want to push back real quick. And I don't think Shannon was saying this necessarily. Well, she'll tell you if she wasn't. She will. She will.

But listen, Shan, the 10 year is 415 to Max's point. This is a relatively speaking, a pretty low level in context of what we were just looking at. Yeah. So I don't think, to Max's point, this is really a threat to equities at all. And even if we were to back up for whatever reason to 425, or, you know, you pick. But don't you think it's peculiar that a year ago the Fed cuts and yields went up? And here we are a year later, the Fed cuts and yields go up.

Now, I'm not saying they've gone up a lot. We've only had two full trading days, almost three now. But still, it's not like they cut and all of a sudden, Rachel, like, okay, now it's time to start moving lower. No, I don't think it's peculiar at all. Because the long end of the curve is a lot of things. It's the sum of a series of short-term rates. You should be able to bootstrap, whatever.

It doesn't matter. But it is, more importantly, economic growth and inflation. and some liquidity issues at the longer end. And so if the economy is doing fine, and if you're a little nervous that in the near term, let's say the next five years, inflation is going to be 3% instead of 2%, then that's going to provide some stability, so to speak,

to rates and prevent those longer rates from coming down. Max is kind of like, well, there's nothing to bother us, yields up, who cares? If the Fed doesn't cut, who cares? Is that right to think all that? I'll just, I'll go to company specific for a second here and say, company, obviously we're out of earning season, but you still hear from a host of companies. We're going to get Costco later this week, Micron, et cetera, et cetera.

The companies that have been reporting are telling me, I read the transcripts, I listen to the calls, that the economy is doing fine, industrial demand is fine, the consumer demand is doing fine. We just had conference season, which we talked about on the show numerous times. Commentary from the bank CEOs and the retail conferences, etc., etc., said everything's doing fine. So to Max's point about nothing to worry about in the near term, at least in terms of corporate management, and what they tell me. The answer is no. In the short term, there doesn't appear to be anything particularly worrisome. Vax, I give you the last quick word to defend yourself lastly before we go. Yeah, look, in fact, I probably get even more bullish, the longer I'm on.

Look, I guess when you look at what companies are telling us, we're running a series called guidance sentiment where we look at every earning season. We look at what companies are telling us in terms of the forward-looking statements. That actually has been picking up very strongly, both in Europe and the U.S., that's typically only something that we see early cycle. So corporate guidance, even when we look at the net number of companies raising or lowering the guidance, that's been shooting higher the last four months. That's early cycle. You look at earnings revisions that's been shooting higher, particularly cyclicals.

That's early cycle. In fact, I mean, there's so many data points that so incredibly look like early cycle, even though we sit on multi-decade tides in credit spreads and all-time highs in equities. And now we throw on rate cuts to that mix. That ought to be super, super bullish. All right, we'll leave it there. Max, thanks. Shannon, thank you.

And Dan Greenhouse, thanks very much for being here on set. Thank you for you for you. All right, we'll see you soon. Let's send it to Christina Parts of Nevelas. Now for look at the biggest names moving into the close, Christina. Let's start with Terridaeim because those shares are leading the S&P 500 S after Cisquahana increased its price target on the stock to $200 from $133. That's a 66% implied upside from Friday's close.

analysts say the chip test equipment maker is gaining traction with its collaboration with Taiwan Semi for specifically for GPU wafer testing. And so that's why you're seeing shares up 12%. Compass's plan to buy rival anywhere real estate for $1.6 billion has the stocks moving in opposite directions. The all-stock deal will give the combined companies an enterprise value of roughly $10 billion. You can see Compass sinking right now, 16%. Anywhere real estate up 47%. And last but not least, Steve Madden up on a Piper Sandler's upgrade to overweight from neutral. Analysts also increasing their price target to 40 bucks. The firm citing fast inventory returns from the fashion company and also tariff relief.

Steve Madden is up almost 5%, but big picture down about 20% so far this year, Scott. All right, Christina, thank you. Christina Parts de Nubulus. We are just getting started here on the bell. Up next star, Apple analyst. Eric Woodring is back with us. His early read on demand for the new iPhone. and what one CEO said today about that

that might have had the stock look like that today. We're live with the New York Stock Exchange. You're watching closing bell on CNBC. Getting some breaking news out of Washington. Amon Javvers has that for us from the White House. Amen? Scott, that's right. We've got a decision here from the Supreme Court

on Rebecca Slaughter at the Federal Trade Commission, the Supreme Court in a six to three decision indicating that President Trump may continue to fire Rebecca Slaughter even as the court considers her case. They say they're going to have hearings on this in December of 2025. But for now, the president is authorized to remove slaughter from the Federal Trade Commission. The Supreme Court is going to take this case up, though, and they're going to look at this issue of what's called Humphrey's executor.

That is the precedent that sets up this idea of independent agencies. A lot of folks inside the Trump administration have been pushing to see if they can get a ruling from the Supreme Court. abolishing Humphrey's executor and giving the executive branch a whole lot more control over a whole raft of independent agencies including the federal trade commission for now though what the court is saying is that slaughter can be fired while they move ahead with this case and they go ahead and consider it in december scott back over to you all right amen thank you amon jabr's north lawn of the white house as you see early indications suggest apple's new iPhone is off to a strong start we heard as much today on CNBC from T-Mobile's outgoing CEO, Mike Sievert.

T-Mobile's iPhone sales are at all-time record highs. We just had the biggest iPhone weekend. We're up double digits from year ago, and you know what our last biggest iPhone weekend was? Last year's, we're up double-digit from that launch. Well, here with more, Morgan Stanley's Eric Woodring, he covers tech hardware for that firm. It's good to see again. It's been a minute. What do you make of what Sievert said?

Does that match with what you're hearing and seeing? Thank you, Scott. No, it's good to see you. So generally, directionally, I would say that that is accurate. I mean, I don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves because we're, you know, 10 days post pre-order period. But the early data points when you piece them together, whether it's from carriers, whether it's from lead times, whether it's from some of the supply chain,

is all pointing to what I would call a cycle that is better than we expected. I wouldn't call it robust. I think it's too early to call it robust, but early indications are positive for the iPhone 17 across the entire family of devices. But what you're suggesting is that it's still very much a show me story. Well, there's a few parts of Apple that are still a show me story, of course, when we think beyond just kind of the near term. But something that we can point to are whether it's long lead times, whether it's lines at the door in person, we can say that the December quarter, and at least near-term demand, what we've seen over the last 10 days, is directionally up year over year. Quantifying that, I think, becomes a lot more difficult. There's a lot of moving pieces

amongst all of the models, right? The iPhone 17 and the Pro Max appear to be doing the best early on. The air, kind of the opposite story, but the air is a device that you need to kind of look and feel and touch in person. When I saw it at the launch event two weeks ago, you know, it does stand out for how thin it is, but I don't think you truly appreciate that until you go to the store, and then you have to decipher do I give up some of my camera quality or telephoto lens for a thinner form factor. So again, I think we can say that early on demand indications are better, but I just don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves. We're 10 days into the launch. We've been tracking lead times back to 2017 every single week, twice a week.

I can find no statistical significance between lead times and the longevity of a cycle. So I just want to make sure we can say, good so far. Let's continue to track the data. Oh, I hear you. But the more I listen to you and sort of try and dissect the way you're saying this and your tone is it's very measured, that to me suggests that there's a long way to go before some of the major concerns around Apple can be put to the side. We need to see a very robust upgrade cycle at some point, and we need to have enough of an AI offering that's deemed credible by investors that it helps sort of end the narrative that's going to hang over this name for a while, no?

Yeah, well, let's put it in context. So since the iPhone launch, Apple is up about $20. it's up about, it's about $20 from the day of the launch. If we say that every incremental iPhone is worth about six cents to earnings, and you capitalize that at a roughly 30 times multiple, what the market is saying is that fiscal 26 iPhone units, all LSQL, are now supposed to be up about 4% not flat. That's what the stock is pricing in today. But we want to make money. We don't want a flat stock. So we need to say, okay, what can happen above and beyond that 4% unit growth and or ASP growth? And what we need to get is a slightly stronger cycle and or excitement

around foldables, which doesn't come for another year and or some form of injection of AI into the story, which Apple, to be frank, has zero in the stock price today for good reason. So there is more that we can learn and we can get excited about those factors, and those are not placed in today, but that's where the upside is going to come from. You know, selling an extra one or two million phones doesn't get this story exciting. What gets this story exciting is selling 20 million plus more phones and having an AI offering and having foldables come out next year, getting excited on that. That's what we want to look for. Can they buy that injection to use your word or they can can they develop it organically?

I don't think they're going to buy. I think we've long said that we think this becomes a natural partnership. Apple is creating some of their own technology to power Siri and Apple intelligence. Think about things like on-screen context that Apple has talked about. But when we talk about the potential for having a digital virtual assistant on our iPhone, I think Apple needs to partner. We've heard some of the reports about partner. potentially with Google or with Anthropic or with Open AI, I think that naturally makes sense.

And if we think about the kind of foundation of technology that those companies bring, it is a bit akin to search where Apple has outsourced that and become the distribution partner for search and made a ton of money doing it. Now, I believe that ultimately kind of this next evolution of AI and some of those features are somewhat like outsourced AI and Apple becomes the distribution. arm of that which you can monetize from both a hardware and a services perspective. Think of it like a CAPEX light model, so to speak. But I think partnership is the way that they go. All right. We'll leave it there. Eric, thanks. We'll see you soon. Thank you, Scott.

All right, Eric Woodring, Morgan Stanley. Still ahead. Chris Toomey, Morgan Stanley's back with his market playbook and later, crypto under some pressure today. We'll tell you what's weighing on that space coming up. Big news here is that Jimmy Kimmel is returning to his show, Disney issuing in a statement saying, quote, last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country, saying it is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive. We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday.

So Scott Jimmy Schimmel live returning tomorrow, I'm sure many of us will be watching to see what he says back over to you can you can you speak it at all julia to the the pressure that that disney really has been under from both sides if you if you want to say it that way to make the decision that they did around mr kimmel and his show but also when you have the likes of you know howard stern for example on his own serious xm show saying that he was canceling disney plus and his subscription because of the way that disney had treated jimmy kimball so it put Disney in a bit of a rough spot. Yeah, certainly Disney and CEO

Baba Eiger under quite a bit of pressure from both sides here. Number of people, industry sources telling me they feel like Iger should have communicated more clearly about the pressure he was under from the next star and Sinclair's of the world. Those local station owners who raised concerns and said themselves that they were not going to be able to air the show on the.

their local networks. So he was under pressure from that side. And then on the other side, we did hear from Howard Stern and then other powerful showrunners and filmmakers, such as Damon Lindelof, the creator of Lost, saying that they wouldn't work with Disney unless Bob Iger reversed this decision. So obviously, there are financial pieces of this at play as well, not just the pressure from the station owners, but also from advertisers. And then also the question of how much money Jimmy Kim Alive makes. And this is a show that is profitable, especially when taking into consideration the value generated on platforms like YouTube, where Jimmy Kim Alive is the most popular of all of the late night shows on YouTube.

We still need to hear from those station owners, correct, that you reference about this decision from Disney. Yeah, presumably Disney's been having conversations with them. So I would assume that they had come to some sort of agreement with those station owners about what Disney expects from Kimmel moving forward and how they feel like this will be the right thing for everyone. But certainly this is, you know, Bob Iger's thinking about his legacy here. His term at Disney as CEO is going to be up at the end of this year. We don't know who his successor is going to be, but this is, you know, Bob Iger chose to come back and run this company. And he has often been thought of as a real leader of the business community.

not just in Hollywood. And I think a lot of people will be looking to hear more from him about this decision and also very curious to see what Jimmy Kimball says tomorrow night. Okay. Julia, thank you.

That's Julia Borson. We'll keep watching all those stocks obviously involved in this development. Next up, Morgan Stanley's Chris Toomey. He tells us what he sees next for this record setting rally. We'll do it next right here next to me at Post 9. Welcome back. Stocks on track

for another record close. Here to share where he sees the market heading next is Chris Toomey, Morgan Stanley, Managing Director of Private Wealth Management. It's good to see you back. Thanks for having me. You say good news is already priced in. Really? Like, you think it's all in? No, I mean, look, I think we've been positive on the market. So I think the variables that we're driving performance for us were, you know, earnings breath, which is continuing to look good. Operating leverage looks good. We're in a situation where comparables are starting to look good. The dollar's weaker, which actually helps U.S. earnings.

is still high, which conversely actually helps earnings. So before the Fed actually met, we were actually positive on the market and kind of leaning into our bulk case. I think what we're also seeing is that capital markets activity that we've been waiting for. You saw IPOs, 150 IPOs, we're still protecting about 200 for the year. You're also seeing M&A activity pick up almost 40%. So the market's pretty good positioning-wise right now.

I think with the Fed stepping in, that really, kind of provides a little bit of a tailwind with regards to kind of moving forward. Well, sure. So how can it all be priced in if the Fed is just cut once? No, I think I'm not saying it's priced in. I think our concern is maybe you've moved a little bit too fast off of all of this good news. I think we're still not expecting kind of a 20% rate of return over the next 12 months. We're probably looking at a more reasonable about 10% rate of return year over year here. Okay. According to my notes, you suggest, suggest that there's peaking AI spend?

Well, that would be our... Did you write... Do you submit that before the NVIDIA news came out? When we gave you our notes, it said the bull case and the bear case. So the bull case is specifically the things that we're talking about, which is you've got about, what, $7 trillion worth of cash sitting on the balance sheet. You're in a situation where buybacks are picking up. You're about a third higher than before.

And what happens is when rates start going lower, you're in a situation where companies, can also finance those buybacks by issuing cheaper debt. Credit spreads are actually at all-time lows. And that demand with regards for money markets and treasuries also starts going down when yields start going down. So we all think those are tailwinds. Now with regards to our bear case, I think there is some concern with regards to the fact that there's some fatigue with regards to AI spend. You keep seeing some of these things going on. Adoption hasn't been great. So I think some of the things that we might be concerned with, market got ahead of itself with regards to Fed cuts, market got ahead of itself with regards to kind of this AI move.

If you look at kind of retail positioning, retail is aggressively going into that market. That's your bare case. I mean, do you believe in your bare case? I mean, I ask you that because like when you see Jensen Wong today announce a $100 billion investment into Open AI and then say it's additive to whatever they've done to this point, and then you suggest that we haven't seen a lot of adoption, I think, was how you termed it. What do you mean? by that? Well, we haven't necessarily seen the adoption generate positive returns from a revenue standpoint. I think people are all adjusting to AI and adding it, but we haven't necessarily seen those radical changes that we're expecting. We anticipate seeing more of that probably

in 2026 and 2027. So maybe you pulled forward some of that return in this year that you would have gotten in 26, 27. I think the bigger issue for AI is you've got all this spend going on. The concern is where is the energy that you need and the delivery of that energy in order to make this happen? It's great. But that's why the power players, so to speak, are going up as well. Are you suggesting we're not going to have enough? No, I think that's probably the next area of opportunity for investment. The next, I mean, it's already up a lot. So it is up, but I still think we need more. We need more data infrastructure. We need more infrastructure with regards to power. We need more efficiency with regards to how we use power. So one of the things that

doing from a positioning standpoint you know we've had a lot of outsized exposure to private credit we're reducing some of that exposure and we're adding to infrastructure because we see that as a critical component to the AI infrastructure are you a believer in the broadening story in the stock market or because of announcements like you got today on this network just don't overcomplicate it just stay with with this trend it's so powerful these are the places that are going to outperform How would you answer that? Yeah, I think you want to stay the core. So I agree with Tony P. I agree with Tepper.

There's no reason to try and get cute here. You want to maintain that positioning. I do think that there's going to be a spreading out with regards to performance. We still like financials, which have done great. The big banks have done well. The investment banks have done well. We also like the alternative players, which are doing better. We also like industrials.

We think there's a fair amount of capax that we need to continue to build out with regards to some of that. tax benefit that's coming from the administration, that should also be helpful with regards to spend. So we think all of that should start to play out in other areas of the market. All right. Chris Toomey, good to see again. Right here post nine. All right, up next, Oracle popping in today's session, along with many other AI stocks. We'll talk more about it in the market zone coming up. We're now on the closing bell market zone. CNBC senior markets commentator Mike Santoli here to break down these crucial moments of the trading day. Angelica Peebles is tracking the action in Farma today, McKenzie Segalis, watching some big moves in crypto, and Christina Parts of Nebulos

is standing by. Let's talk about Oracle and those shares moving higher today. Michael, I'll begin with you. Man, if you, you know, you want to know all about AI. Just watch what happened today with Fort and those, the three, the trio that he was with that moved the stocks in the market. Yeah, it's, you know, the hazard of kind of betting against it or a call on the top or saying it's going to become a little more selective or less interesting. It's been pretty obvious. the last three weeks, I would argue. It kind of just, the dial keeps getting turned up. That being said, you know, I don't know that it's going to be enough to create a broad enough

new flush of buying. It's much more about just sort of people wanting to remain, you know, in that theme and not necessarily, you know, chasing more. You know, Nvidia's a buck and a half off the highs from the afternoon. Not going to make too much of that. But I think you can both say that is by far the most powerful force where you don't really know how open-ended it is on the other end of it. And the overall market is showing that it needs some rest. You know, the average stock is kind of pulling back a little bit today. This is a window

this week for where you might finally get a little bit of an air pocket. So I think both those things can be true at once, and in fact, both evident in today's action. Yeah, it's like move on the news. We'll wait for the specifics and we'll figure it out. I'll come back to you in a little bit. Angelica Peebles, what's going on with Farmer today? Hey, Scott, busy day in Farmerland. So Matt Serra shares are about 60% after Pfizer saying that it'll spend up to about $7 billion to buy the obesity company. And that deal is lifting other obesity names. We're seeing names like Structure Therapeutics and Viking Therapeutics also higher today on that deal.

And then on the other hand, you have Kenvue. That stock down about 7% with the White House reportedly set to link use of acetaminopin. Remember, that's the main ingredient in Kenbue's painkiller Tylenol during pregnancy to autism. And we're expecting that announcement at the White House any minute now. And so that's one to watch. But of course, Kennevue denying the link saying that the sign shows that taking the drug doesn't cause autism, but still that weighing on the stock. Scott. All right.

Thank you. Angelica, McKenzie, Crypto, not doing so well today. No, it's not. Bitcoin, Ether, and Solana all moving lower. As traders unwind the bullish bets that they piled on after last week's bed rate cut. Coinglass reporting $1.7 billion in positions liquidated over the past 24 hours. The biggest wave of forced selling that we've seen in the crypto market since late March. Bitcoin, it's down nearly 10% from the all-time high that it hit last month, now edging toward correction territory.

Ether had been the standout over the past six weeks up 12.5% since August 1st. While Bitcoin slipped 3%, but its latest sell-off is fueling talk of a potential rotation back into Bitcoin. as Ether's rally loses steam. Meanwhile, crypto-pegged stocks like Coinbase, Gemini, and Bullish are trading lower, along with digital asset treasury plays like Tom Lee's BitMine immersion and strategy. Traders say that points to fading momentum, even as longer-term institutional support remains in place. Scott? Mackenzie, thank you. Christina, this C-suite shuffle making news today at Oracle.

Tell us more. Yeah, because it's the biggest leadership move in a decade for Oracle. Saffircats stepped down today after 11 years as CEO to become executive vice chair of the board. She's handing the reins to two technical Oracle Insiders as co-CEOs. That would be Clay McGorick, who built Oracle cloud infrastructure from the ground up. And then Mike Cecilia, who oversees industry-specific AI applications, leaders who just really understand AI infrastructure as scale. Oracle, though, at this time, is just riding an unprecedented wave of AI demand.

The company is part of a consortium with Silver Lake and Andreessen Horowitz for the TikTok deal. Bloomberg reporting Oracle is also in talks with Meta for a $20 billion cloud computing deal. So overall, Oracle's really just evolved from a legacy software firm to an AI infrastructure powerhouse. And under Katz, the stock has really just surged. Even just this year alone, you can see on your screen up 97%. Now, they need technical leaders who can execute billion dollar contracts. And this also, this is speculation, could free up Katz to potentially take on a role in the TikTok joint venture in the U.S., which is still ongoing. Scott?

Christina, thank you. Mike Santoli, less than two minutes to go. So we have some FedSpeak today. We have Fed Chair Powell tomorrow. Now that's going to be really interesting to listen to in the context of more economic data that matters a lot as well. For sure.

And, you know, it sounded like the Fed speak was like net hawkish, maybe just from who we were actually hearing from today. Didn't really have much of an impact on stocks, but Treasury yields do kind of nudge higher a little bit on this, 4.15 in the 10-year. We're not in the danger zone in terms of absolute yield. But I think, you know, bank stocks are down a little over 1% today.

So parts of the market, again, are in this post-fed hangover. We got a lot of good news that everything broke right. We got to records. And there's no reason to think that the trend is overall in so much jeopardy. But things are looking like a little bit of pockets of overexcitement, I would argue, are in there. And then I also would point to the volatility index today, actually being up as the S&P 500 is up. It's up above 16. Not a major move, but it does show that maybe people are kind of getting in position for the potential for some kind of downside chop as we get into this week. And we do

face a little more of a sort of catalyst-free few days before we get to PCE inflation. Yeah, all of it matters, of course, to where this market might go in the days ahead. Michael, thank you very much. Well, you hear the clapping. We're going to have a positive close here and anything positive for the S&P, the NASDAQ, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average is going to be a new record close. And that's how this week will begin. I'll see you.