Closing Bell - Closing Bell Overtime 11/26/25

Episode Date: November 26, 2025

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

That bell marks the end of regulation, Salvation Army of Greater New York, bringing the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange. Paul Chadwick doing the honors at the NASDAQ and give thanks for another update for the markets, as the Dow and S&P make it four in a row. The Russell 2000, the leader again, up one and a half percent. More, that's for the three straight. Tech, materials, and utilities are the leaders, communication services, and health care lagging, commodities higher across the board.

We have gold hitting a one-week hide. Silver, the real standout, though, up more than four. percent, oil holding steady after hitting a one month low. Crypto also in the green, Bitcoin and ether with gains of 2% or more Bitcoin, getting back above 90,000 briefly. And we saw momentum outperformance today after the recent sell-off, Nvidia, AMD, Pallantier, Broadcom, and Robin Hood, getting some nice gains. And the VIX volatility index, getting an early turkey coma, dropping more than 35% over the four-day span. That's the steepest pullback since April. Well, that's the scorecard on Wall Street. Welcome to closing.

about overtime. I'm Morgan Brennan, along with John Ford. Ahead, it was a week start to November for stocks with evaluation questions, rate cut doubts, consumer concerns, all weighing on the bulls. But the sentiment has shifted in the past few days. So is it all and all clear into the new year? Plus is the market misunderstanding Nvidia versus Google in AI chips? Are they really playing on two different fields? We will discuss. Plus, the CEO of high-end retailer Lux experience. The stock is up 31% this year as consumers continue to spend, particularly deep pocketed

consumers. We're going to look at what he's seeing as the holiday shopping season kicks off. And now for more on today's markets move, let's get Christina Parts and Nvelas right here, K parts. Yeah, I'm in studio. Tech stocks really leading the rally today as investors keep betting on in a December rate cut from the Fed. Invidia did

recoup some of yesterday's 2.6% slide, which came on competition fears from Google. You can see Nvidia closing over 1% higher. Speaking of Alphabet went in the opposite direction, down 1% after hitting a record high just yesterday. The stock is still up roughly 69% this year on track for its best performance since 2009. And while everyone's focused on the Google and video battle, Apple quietly closed a percent or a little bit, two-tenths of a percent higher and another all-time high.

Shares have climbed over the past month as investors hunt for safer tech bets amid concerns about inflated AI valuations. Now we've got to talk about Dell. that share price climbing about almost 6% today after easing margin worries and pointing to a surge in AI server orders. Robin Hood also popping today. I'm focusing on that, I guess, the positive. Almost 11% on news. It's launching a futures and derivatives exchange with market maker, Susquehanna. The move expands its prediction market offerings where users can bet on everything from sports to maybe what John Ford's going to wear one day or Morgan to federate decisions.

And last but not least, retailers closed hire led by urban. Urban Outfitters, up roughly 13%. The company hit record sales and net income in the third quarter, driven by strength in its namesake brand, urban Outfitters, and its digital channel as well. Some big moves today. Christina Parks and Nevelas, thanks for breaking them down for us.

Now to the bond market. Rick Santelli is in Chicago with more. Hi, Rick. Hi, Morgan, indeed. You know, this morning, 8.30 Eastern, we had initial jobless claims coming $216,000, a seven-month low. Listen, there's a lot of anecdotal thought about where the labor market is. If you just looked at initial jobless claims, it certainly looks like it's well-behaved.

Now, if you look at a chart of what's going on in two-year note yields after the beige book, well, consider the range today, 346 to 350, and we've basically been hovering right in the middle of the range. So the beige book didn't really move the needle much. Look at twos and tens. That's a one-month chart. They're basically both hovering near one-month low closes. on the yield basis. And finally, here's the chart of the day. Ten-year U.S. minus 10-year European boons. The difference there are 132 basis points is the closest those two yields have been since July of 23,

28 months. John Fort, back to you. And telly, thank you. And now what a difference a few trading days can make. Before this week, the major averages were having a rough November. Nasdaq was down nearly 7%. But since Friday, Everything's taken off, it seems, tech leading the way and the S&P up more than 4%. So does this bullishness in the past few days give investors an all-clear for a year-end rally. Joining us now are Victoria Green from G-square Private Wealth and Jim Schmigel from SEI. Guys, welcome. Victoria, AI, such a flighty trade.

I mean, Google's down, then Google's up, and then, you know, invidia's doing whatnot. Can you believe in it? Do you just stay in it? How are you treating it? Look, I think that AI is still alive and well in middle inning. So this to me is keep calm rally on, keep your core tech. I like a lot of the Mag 7. It's good to see Google catch up.

Google was asleep at the wheel. Finally, Google is fully awake now. Jim and I 3 came out well. This new chip is great, but we need more chips. Navidia, I don't think this dethroning a king. It's challenge, it's competition, but there's so much marketplace growth. They think it's good for everybody in this space. We need more chips coming out.

We saw Dell talking about, hey, and HP. We need more memory chips. All of this bodes well for conditions. continued expansion for me in the technology space. I get the multiples are not cheap, but that isn't usually what kills off a bull market. High multiples aren't usually at risk, and I think this could continue to climb because we have so much growth and momentum behind it. And the earnings growth is driving it forward. It's not just we're taking on debt and we're going to have stagnant earnings, and that's going to be a problem. Earnings growth, I see continuing

to accelerate exponentially. I might not be Dan Ives bullish, but I'm not sure that's human physically possible to be quite as bullish about tech than Dan Ives, but I am fairly bullish still on the sector. I know actually bovines who are not as bullish as Dan Ives. Jim, when it comes to how you're treating this market, how much of it is global positioning and how much of it has to be cautious given the highs that we've seen not too long ago? I think it has to be cautious from evaluation perspective, Frank, but also from a concentration perspective. So this is something that we've been talking about for quite some time. Of course, we think AI is a game changer. No one. doubts that. But the question is, do investors really need to be so heavily concentrated in one

theme within their equity portfolios? Global investing, which a lot of U.S. investors in particular are still heavily overweight the U.S. even though it's such a massive percentage of the global markets, that makes sense to be adding to the portfolio here. But we're neutral risk assets. We're not calling for anything to go off the rails. We think we have it certainly have it all clear for the next two weeks. We have Fed blackouts, no speakers on. the horizon. We should all send Fed Governor Williams of Pumpkin Pie for kicking off this nice little rally between now and the next Fed meeting. But concentration still equals fragility in our minds for the end investor. Diversification is the answer. Go global is our theme into 26.

Okay. Sounds good. Victoria, you like AI. You think it's intact. What else do you like here? Because this is a market that does at least into year end with this rally seem to be broadening out somewhat. Sure, absolutely. And that's such a good thing because that was the knock on this rally earlier. It's just technology. Nothing else is working. Guess what's worked best here in November? Healthcare has challenged everybody else. Health sector's up about 10%, about 800 bits in front of the next sector. And you're seeing great runs in names like Johnson and Johnson has quietly put together 13 winning days in a row, the longest streak in the company's history of 9%. You're seeing pharma move nicely. These are all good things, industrials, financials. And for me, I also like the health

sector. I think health is paying ketchup still. They have great legs there. I don't mind a little bit of value in the portfolio. I agree you can't put it all quite in seven stocks. But I look at this and say, how about breath? Breath has been phenomenal in these last four days. We might have to call this the Williams rally because he does seem to have put a put behind it. But consumer stocks as well, there's something you can't ignore. You know, I think Costco's going to sell something like three to four million pumpkin pies over these three days here. Consumer spending, Hilton's hitting all-time highs. You're seeing cruise lines head all-time highs. airlines are doing well. Consumer spending is expected to grow three to five percent.

There's so much in this market to like that I do like some of those value names, just to take a little diversification, a little hedge against some of the vol in AI. Jim, just to dig a little more deeply to what you just said about 2026 going global. 2025 was very much a global bull market. So how do you play that going to 2026? Oh, I could just make sure that you, at the very least, have a cap-weighted allocation to the global markets. So from a fiscal stimulus perspective, a monetary stimulus perspective, and of course, valuation, we still see some tailwinds in the global markets. We also think that dollar is going to enhance those returns for equity investors.

So that's looking at your equity allocations, roughly about 30 to 40 percent of that. That can be in global, including emerging markets, which are also positive going into the new year. Finally, Victoria, you like health care, which had been really underperforming until recently, which part, is it the already successful names like Lilly or something else? I like a look beyond Lilly. I mean, United Health is obviously interesting. There's some good pharma names and like Abbie. Some of the life sciences like Abbott and those guys are playing catch up.

I think Lilly is still a really great position to have. I see GLP1 getting Medicare coverage. I think that's a great core stop for you to have in your health portfolio. Absolutely not cheap. But I think the growth is still exponential for Villali going forward, especially if we get that in Medicare and get that negotiation. because I don't think they're taking quite the price haircut that people think they will because there's a lot of back-end rebating that happens between pharmaceutical companies and the dollar value paid. So I think Lily's great, but look beyond that. There's a lot of great. Amgen's out there, Abbey's out there. You know, like I said, Johnson Johnson's such a quality name on a great run there. You're getting dividends. You're getting quality. And it's a nice little and cash flow. I always love cash flow. The way I look at companies, cash flow is always king because you can't fake cash flow. Either generate free cash flow or you don't. And I love these health names because they generate. right, but loads of free cash flow. All right. Continue holding or buying gold. Jim, here?

We are holders and we're holders strategically. So that's the opposite of the cash flow, obviously from Victoria's standpoint, no doubt about it. But instead of cash flow, the correlation profile is what we like there. So not only do we see still strong supply and demand and balances in favor of the precious metal, but we also think that in a total portfolio context, this adds a layer of diversification from a weak dollar or a stubborn inflation perspective, which just makes sense for total portfolio. All right. Jim, Victoria, thank you.

Happy Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving. Up next, let's look at the big divergence in Nvidia and Alphabet shares this month and how much they're even battling each other in this AI race. And later, we are going to take the pulse of the high-end consumer. When we speak with the CEO of the online luxury retailer LuxEx Experience over time, back in two. Welcome back to Overtime Deere among the worst performers in the S&P 500 today, finishing down

about 5.5%. That's despite beating Wall Street's earnings and revenue estimates. Guidance was the worry for investors. The maker of farm and construction machinery forecasting 2026 net income well below street expectations, saying it expects tariff costs to double when it faces a full year of higher duties. Deer saying it has been recovering its tariff costs by raising prices on its equipment and that it expects that dynamic to continue into 2026. And now Alphabet's up in Video Flat this week as investors latch on to the idea that it's not just Google's AI models catching up, but it's AI chips too. That coming after a report that Google might sell its specialized AI chips, TPUs, to meta for its AI needs, but there might be a lot less to this

Google chip deal than meets the I if it happens. For more, let's bring in Ben Baharan, CEO Creative Strategies. Hey, Ben, good to see you. Happy Thanksgiving. Google's chips are potentially useful to meta because they could be customized for massive AI tasks in a specific cloud, like, say, video recommendations and real say. But most companies don't have AI needs at that scale, and they want to work across multiple

different clouds. So is Google really competing with Nvidia? Yeah. I mean, I would say no. I mean, I think we got to remember, right, the first customer for TPU. is primarily Google, right? They've built those for their services, everything from YouTube to search to Gemini, as we see today,

and it runs very, very well on that as a specialized platform. And you're right, meta, maybe a couple of other names. You're seeing this around Anthropic, right, who's going to do a deal and has trained and run on TPUs. But really, the architecture or the architectural compatibility with GPU is much more programmable, much more flexible across the stack is still why we see a lot of public workloads, so third-party customers' workloads.

And remember, Google in GCP has a lot of Nvidia as well that they will continue to need to offer their customers. So really not competitive in the chip sense, but obviously, right, they are running a whole host of software on their own chips, and that's, you know, worth noting for what it is. Here's my metaphor that I want to run by you, since we were making bullpuns earlier. It's like if Google's supplying especially raised beef cow

to McDonald's for the quarter-pounder, you know, and McDonald's has its own ranches because it sells billions of burgers. That doesn't mean steakhouses and everybody else is going to buy the same cow because they want to have different options, local bookchers, that they're going to buy from or at least a standard type of beef. And that's more what Nvidia sells, right? Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think, again, right, just the general purpose natures of GPUs in this,

I think just lend themselves to architectural compatibility across clouds, right? And don't, you know, forget, right? NVIDIA has the largest install base by a large factor of GPUs. This matters, right, to software developers. So you're absolutely right. The specialized nature of things like TPUs or other custom basics are great when that software is highly optimized for it. And that's why you see first parties use it more than third parties. And the question will be, will third parties in public cloud start to adopt these more than they do?

Invidia GPUs, and that's not a dynamic we see today. Now, at the same time, this does fall into the same bucket as Amazon, AWS, having its trainium and Inferentia chips, Inferentia, much more relevant now that there are more inference workloads running on these models that have already been trained and figured out. How are you modeling how much those cloud providers

are going to save an AI from their own chips and how much market share that's going to keep away from Invidia? Yeah, I think a lot of it comes down to how much of their own workloads they'll optimize. I mean, the way I look at this too is Google is the most successful at this custom ASIC strategy when it comes to an AI accelerator, I think what Traynium has done

into some degree in friendship, but I think this aligns around Traneum as a multipurpose chip going forward has been great, but again, failed to acquire third-party customers, which is what you need, right, at scale. So there's a lot of reasons why this makes sense to run your workloads on,

how much that takes away from Nvidia, I'm not sure, but at the end of the day, right, we're in what I'm now calling a gigacicle of this industry, one of the largest dollar tam expansions we've ever seen. There's so much money to go around, if you believe, numbers like $700 billion or a trillion dollars in 2030. And right now, it seems like Nvidia is going to have the vast majority of that. So, Ben, is there, is there an VMware-type play that's going to emerge across these different clouds? Once we have, you know, Reneer on AWS, that's maybe specifically

good at Anthropic, but you also want to run Anthropic somewhere else. Does there need to be an AI middleware type layer so that you can actually... actually get the financial benefit of efficiency on a given cloud, but also get the programming benefit of not having to write specially each one. Yeah, absolutely. And I do think a lot of people talk about this, especially if you talk to all of the cloud vendors, right? They're trying to say, we want to optimize this stack so you don't have to make this massive

lift and shift for your software. You can just run it wherever you want. That's just not where we're out today, but 100%, especially because I think multi-cloud, multi-a-I-cloud deployments are going to be a thring across enterprises, meaning that going to want to put portions of those workloads everywhere, they don't want to custom tune all these things. They want one standard programming language or one optimization set and then have the options to run that whatever is best for them, whether that's speed or economics or performance or something like that. So I think someday we'll get there, but we're still

what feels like a long way off from that reality. Cross-platform AI software play is coming. Ben Baharon from Creative Strategies. Thank you. Thank you. Well, up next, Mike Santoli puts this year's S&P 500 gains into historical perspective following a very dramatic, very wobbly start to the year. Plus, fast money Steve Grasso is going to join us on whether Bitcoin investors should keep holding on for dear life as the crypto carnage. Maybe rages are. Let's bouncing back a bit.

We'll be right back. Welcome back to overtime, Autodesk, a big winner in the S&P 500 today, up more than 2%. Deutsche Bank upgrading the software maker from hold to buy, hiking its price target from 345 to 375, citing its better than expected earnings and guidance raise for the fourth quarter and full year. The stock has underperformed the broader markets this year, up just 3% overall. Well, the S&P 500 is up about 15% on the year, on the surface. It's pretty normal gain. To answer the final stretch, does the market have the momentum to break higher, or are we nearing resistance here?

Well, Zahner, Markets commentator, Mike Santoli, is here to dive into some of the key levels. Hi, Mike. Hey, Morgan. Yeah, I mean, the market has rebuilt some upside momentum. It's answered some of the common complaints, right? You go back a month, people say, oh, it's too narrow a rally. It's all about AI. We've actually had a pretty broad-based recovery over the course of the last four trading days.

You're up four and a half percent. And you've kind of regained that uptrend that we lost. briefly, or at least are on the verge of doing so, that we did lose briefly enough 5% shakeout. We reset sentiment, got back to September level. So all to the good so far, I'm not clear to me that we've really pulled the slingshap back far enough to get it all the way to the new highs. I would also point out, while seasonals are strong right now, last year, you only got a few more days of upside after Thanksgiving at the end of a strong year before you had a pretty

rough finish in the final few weeks. So there's nothing guaranteed about the calendar. Here is how markets this time and in past years have performed following a 15% or greater setback in the S&P 500. This is from Stratigas. So this is the current path. We're obviously outperforming the typical run from a 15% correction or greater pretty close to the average at the lows recently. And then the median you see is actually a little bit less aggressive. Massive variation around these averages and the median.

But it does show that things tend to slow down from here, if not actually. fall apart, Morgan. All right. This is really fascinating to me, but I want to shift gears and talk to you about another historical pattern that starts to tend to take shape at this time of the year. And that is the Russell 2000, the small caps. We've seen some strong trading activity there in the last couple days. Some of the technicals there are in focus, too. And some traders pointing to this idea that perhaps the January effect, when small caps outperform large caps, could be taking shape earlier than usual. Your thoughts? Yeah, I mean, in recent times, that has been pulled forward to some degree, right? So it's more of a mid-December to mid-January story, although even there,

it's become a little bit less reliable. I mean, part of the theory behind why it was working for so many years was that, you know, small caps get sold in tax-lust selling strategies, and because they're less liquid at the end of the year, they have more time to catch up. And last year's laggards tend to do better at the beginning of a following year. We may have the makings for something like that because, of course, it was a rough stretch. But six of the last nine years. The Russell 2000 did not outperform the S&P 500 from that mid-December to mid-January stretch. So it's one of those things you keep in mind. It seems like you have the ingredients for it to work, not sure that it's necessarily going to play out. Okay, I got one

more for you. That's seasonally based, and that is retail. We're going into the holiday season here. What does that usually mean for consumer stocks? It means they're about to peek out. I mean, ironically, the market kind of front runs the holiday shopping season. And then in December, there's a little more chop and give and take. Really aggressive moves, though, in some retailers I was noticing, obviously this week. Some of them are heavily shorted, and so you do have still the possibility for these spring-loaded upside moves. You saw it in Coles. Even Macy's is up like 12 percent, I think, this week.

So obviously they were depressed, and so, you know, maybe there's some latent buying interest that hasn't yet been manifest. All right. Mike Santoli, thank you. Now it's time for a CNBC News update with Leslie Picker. Leslie. Hi, John West Virginia's governor says there are conflicting reports about the condition of two national guardsmen who were shot today in the nation's capital, after earlier saying they both died in the incident. According to President Trump, who is in Florida right now for the Thanksgiving holiday, a suspect in the shooting was severely wounded. It's not clear yet what led up to the shooting, which took place at a D.C. metro station less than half a mile away from the White House.

President Trump says the U.S. won't invite South Africa to next year's group of 20 meeting in Miami and that he would stop all payments and subsidies to the country. It comes after the U.S. boycotted the G20 summit in South Africa after alleged human rights abuses against Afrikaners, the white South African of Dutch, French, and German origin. And a quick check on travel prices before the Thanksgiving holiday, for those of you driving to see family, regular gas prices have come down about five. cents from a week ago and two cents from a year ago, according to AAA. Gas prices have remained remarkably steady throughout the year, and holiday travel isn't yet

bucking that trend. I'll send it back to you guys. All right, Leslie, thank you. Up next, the CEO of luxury retailer Luxus experience tells us whether he sees any signs of a slowdown among high-end consumers this holiday shopping season. And later, find out why the traditional 60-40 portfolio is still alive and kicking after years of many doubting that strategy. Stay with us. Another green day on Wall Street, the Dow and S&P, closing higher for the fourth straight day, all three major averages on pace for their best week since late June. Tech and utilities led another bullish day for the small caps,

but the Russell did close off its highs. Coming into today, the Russell 2000 had rallied more than 1.5% for three straight days. A few big movers in the techs. space, Dell jumping after strong AI demand on the flip side, HP, moving lower after dropping its earnings projections, Z-scaler dropping 13% after posting an operating loss, and paid your duty, another big loser, off 23% on mixed results. And crypto, trying to stage a comeback after a rough month, rallying more than 3.5% still down about 18% in November, though.

Yeah, we're going to dig a little more deeply into crypto later this hour, but in the meantime, lots of attention on the consumer this week. The latest retail sales data showing some cooling and consumer confidence has fallen, but we are kicking off the holiday shopping season and a number of retailers did report strong results. Joining us now in an exclusive interview for a look at the state of the consumer, specifically the higher end consumer, is Michael Cleger. He is the CEO of Luxor Group Lux Experience, and Michael, it's great to have you in the show. Welcome. Thanks for having me, Morgan. So I want to start here, stateside in the U.S. We got Beige Book this afternoon, and one of the things they

noted is that overall consumer spending declined further, but higher-end retail spending remained resilient. What are you seeing? Well, as you know, as a company, we focus very much on the high-end consumer, those wardrobe-building luxury consumers, and we see continued momentum. Just in the last quarter, the top end of our customer base, which accounts for 40%, had double-digit per capita growth in revenue, and we continue to see that momentum, although at the high end of the market, which is our core business. What do you expect for the holiday season? We go in with a very solid momentum at My Teresa, but also at Nataporte and Mr. Porter.

So we expect that the trend of buying into high-end, ready-to-wear, high-end, fine jewelry, That's one of the subcategories that has performed very well in recent quarters. And typically also the year end is, of course, the season where expensive bags are bought. So we look at some really high-price items to go through our warehouses out to consumers. I know you just touch on this a little bit, but what is hot and what's not? And not just from an items and goods perspective, but also from a brands one. Well, for some quarters, we have seen what the industry has termed silent luxury, so really high-end, logo-free, very well manufactured high fabric, cashmere-type products.

You can name the row, you can name Brunello Cuccinelli, you can name Zena. But what we have seen since September, when the fashion weeks around the world, have seen a little bit of going back to color. an embellishment. We've seen some really nice festive season, glitter, glamour, fits again with the fine jewelry trend that we are seeing. So silent luxury brands continue to be very successful, but it may be that glam makes a comeback. And of course, you're in the e-commerce business. So navigating an evolving trade landscape, how are you doing that? And what are your expectations for tariffs and things like de minimis as we go to 2026?

No, that was a big topic this year, as we have seen changes in policy for made in Europe coming to the United States, but also made in Asian markets like China and India. So there have been a lot of changes. Changes are never great for consumer sentiment. But we have seen since the summer that there has been now. clear clarity for the consumer and business has picked up and the minimus for our type of business was never a big threshold we always had most of our shipments over 800 US dollars so that has not really impacted our high-end business but we really like

that at the moment we see stability our consumers just looking at the KPI's have seen a very good year, stock markets up, real estate, stable commodities. So the fundamentals are in place. We just need consistency, and that drives sentiment more than the fundamentals, where for our consumers, this has been a very good year. You sit at a unique vantage point in terms of inventories. What are you seeing on the inventory front? And how are we setting up with retailers and some of these high-end brands going to 2026? inventory levels are very important in our industry because ideally you really have a perfect match between demand and inventory levels if supply exceeds demand there's always a risk that some retailer some brands start discounting which is not a good thing for our luxury industry we've seen some big oversupply of products in 23 but since then overall in the industry there has been a much better calibration

between supply and demand. So our full-price business, which is, of course, very good for achieving excellent margins down to the bottom line has picked up tremendously over the last eight-quarters. So we expect that inventory levels match demand.

We are cautiously optimistic for, again, double-digit growth. And if that happens, then we're in good shape as a sector overall. All right. Michael Cleger of Lexington. experience. Great to have you on and happy Thanksgiving. Thank you. Happy Thanksgiving. Jewelry and

handbags. That was my takeaway there for the holiday season. Both nice gifts to get. Up next, a look at the woman behind a company creating the AI instruction manual for both humans and agents. And take a look at the airlines today. The sector closing higher as the TSA says it expects to screen more than 17.8 million people from Tuesday to December 2nd. Sunday's expected to be one of the busiest days in TSA history. Be right back. Welcome back. If the trillions of dollars worth of market excitement around AI turns out to be real,

it'll be because AI made us more productive. We'll have discovered better workflows, empowered people to get more done. In my Fort Knox series, I spend hours with some of the most innovative CEOs learning what makes them tick and what they're building. Today, meet Jennifer Smith, co-founder and CEO of Scribe. What motion capture does to help elite athletes, Scribe aims to do for knowledge workers, capture the essentials of their process so they can improve. Early in life, Smith learned the urgency in staying ahead of technology trends. She grew up in Rochester, New York, where her dad was

an engineer for Kodak. Once prosperous town turned bleak as Kodak fell behind. Every year, there was like a big layoff at Kodak, and so there was a family conversation at the dinner table the night before. Okay, dad, what if tomorrow's your pink slip day? You know, what do we do? Like, we're going to have to move. We can't stay here. There are no jobs here. And so it was always, it always felt like we were one foot potentially out the door and not being able to stay. We were fortunate in that my dad was able to stay and retire there. But I think it gave me, again, this sense of like, there's no sure bet in life. Smith later built a career in consulting at McKinsey before Silicon Valley lured her away.

She loved analyzing client processes, finding who did it best in building a playbook. is about using AI to do that in the digital world at scale. Two weeks ago, the company announced that it raised a $75 million series C round at a $1.3 billion valuation to take that to the next level. The very natural question we've been getting from Scribe users at the beginning is, okay, great, you help me understand how I do things today. Can you tell me where to improve? And so we released a new product a couple weeks ago that answers that exact question.

It helps you understand, like, what are the actual workflows? Like, you're a manager. What are the workflows that actually power your team? Like, what are the core things? Who's doing it? How often? And then it'll guide you to, like, how can I actually make those better? Where are there places where people are wasting their time,

where they're doing things that are unnecessarily painful? And then how can I use better tooling, including AI, to be better at the thing I do? So the takeaway, an AI instruction manual to drive real productivity. AI needs a process. and so do people. Investors should keep an eye on innovators like Scribe that are figuring it out because they could give an early signal of when the beleaguered software group of stocks can gain momentum. Well, Bitcoin bouncing back a bit today, but it's been a disastrous month for crypto. Up next, fast money, Steve Grasso tells us whether he's starting to buy the dip.

And as we head to break, CNBC spoke to small businesses across the country about the impact of tariffs, including how they have forced some entrepreneurs to raise money through crowdsourcing. We're one of the fastest growing brands in the outdoor industry growing year over year. Male and co-ed brands are prioritizing their male audiences. So women's product has been neglected as a result. So Wildry launch to bring women better fitting, better performing, and better looking apparel pieces. pieces. We launched a WeFunder campaign, which is an equity crowd raise, to enable our community

to own a piece of the Wild Right brand. Not only was this very aligned with our brand values, but it also helped us come up with the cash to cover our tariff bill this fall. To date, we've raised just shy of a million dollars from our community, and that will help us get through the fall at the very least. If you look at all of the metrics of our brand, it's really a strong engine. But we are being suffocated by these tariffs. All of our cash is going to pay for tariffs rather than to invest into our brand.

Most of our debt is secured by my house. So that's certainly a big cause for concern personally and for my family. But I also have a team of employees, American citizens who I employ and I'm very committed to. Yeah, it's just been an emotional roller coaster for all of us and a huge distraction for the growth of our business. Welcome back to overtime, Bitcoin bouncing back today, but it's been down 18% this month. After reaching a record high above $100,000 in early October, Bitcoin mining companies are also being crushed. Names like Riot, Marathon Digital, Iron, Clean Spark, those are all down double digits in November.

So can Bitcoin rebound before your end? Well, joining us now. Grasso Global CEO and fast money trader Steve Grasso. Steve, it's great to have you back on the show. Welcome. Thank you for having me. All right. Bitcoin, what do you think here? Yeah, so this should be a seasonality. This should be a great time for crypto. Obviously, in October, we've seen, you know, tremendous headwinds. I do believe that since we've gotten that out of the way, maybe higher prices.

Okay. Higher prices for Bitcoin, or are you looking elsewhere in the crypto space? Yeah, so Ethereum is what I, so I switched out of Bitcoin and I'm in Ethereum now and I own it through Ethereum gray scale mini trust. You can be in and out of this a lot easier than the actual crypto. And that's a problem. That's a problem because the actual holdlers, holders are not the same as they used to be. And what I mean by that is if you own an ETF, you can sell it, you can buy it and you can buy it a lot quicker and sell it a lot quicker, then you can. then you would have the propensity to do it if it was just the coin. So for me, you wind up, I hear you getting in there.

So for me, I think it's changed the dynamic. So it's made it maybe more volatile than people would have thought because they thought the ETFs would take the volatility out. I think it's actually making it worse. Okay, so along those lines, I'm wondering what you think about how much more volatility might be built in. Bitcoin's earned a big association with the risk trade, but is there anything jenga-like in the Bitcoin

investors market right now, like these leveraged bets, strategy, et cetera. I just wonder if you see any possibility, the volatility could suddenly force key players to sell when they don't want to. Yeah, I don't think that's the case. I think there are other headwinds, John, but I think, you know, it's strategy.

We've heard sailors say that no matter what, he's a buyer of Bitcoin. So it just matters. He'll buy it on the way down, buy it on the way up. There is beta to owning that stock versus owning the actual crypto. So maybe one and a half times goes down. Why don't he says that, Steve, but what if he stopped, what if he has to stop, maybe you won't sell it, but what if he has to stop buying? And we sort of have this new dynamic in the market when retail investors who didn't used to

are using ETFs to make these kinds of, you know, 3x leverage bets. Yeah, I think that's always 3x leverage best, always have time decay on them. And when you're talking about a crypto or a commodity, they could put undue pressure on anything. And it works both up and down. So I think your care or your worry more accurately is probably warranted. But I think most people will buy this dip in crypto. And I think we're sort of out of the woods into a year end. if that makes sense. Okay. So, Steve, we talk a lot about the correlation between crypto and

stocks, the broader averages. What do you think? And how does that set us up for the rest of the year? Yeah. So if you look at crypto, it's definitely bifurcated with the rest of the market. And it doesn't look to be correlated. It's its own entity. And we had a hack back in October. I think you're starting to see the ripple effects of that. I think there's a lot of things that happened underneath the headlines. And, you know, when you look at the market and you look a crypto, if you were long just the market, you don't feel as terrible as you do if you're long Bitcoin. All right. So the sell-off has been drastic in Bitcoin. I think that we could see both things rally into year-end. Usually this is seasonality. This is a bullish time for both

Bitcoin and the market, but I think more of sideways to hire versus spikes higher. Steve Grasso. Thank you. Happy Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving. You can catch Steve and the rest of the fast money traders coming up at 5 p.m. And we talked so much in recent years about whether the traditional 6040 portfolio is dead. Up next, Mike Santoli's going to look at that strategy. It's not only alive, but rewarding investors this year. And scan the QR code right there on your screen right now for a special limited time opportunity. This is to join CNBC Pro for exclusive analysis, real-time data, deep dive reporting. You don't want to miss it. Stay with it.

us. Even in a year when U.S. stocks are powering higher, old school diversification is quietly back. Mike Santoli is two to break down what's held up and why. Mike? Yeah, John, maybe slightly surprising. The 6040 portfolio, 60% equity is 40% fixed income as reflected in the AOR ETF, which pursues that strategy, is exactly matching the S&P 500 return over a one-year basis. And it's doing it the way it's supposed to, which is indebted. Down turns, it's preserving more value, acting as a cushion because of those bond holdings. By the way, bonds didn't even rally huge in the April tariff panic, but they definitely held enough of their value that you see that it outperformed during that correction and then has actually managed to keep up. Even over a two-year basis, bonds have done relatively well since we had the peak in inflation.

And, of course, the Fed started cutting rates. Another kind of diversification, global, also working at least on a one-year basis. This is all stocks outside the U.S., vastly outperforming the S&P 500 going back one year. Although, if you go back three years, the U.S. still has a massive advantage, like 20, 25 percentage points over the rest of the world, thanks to the Mag 7 outperformance, guys. Any particular character, Mike, you've noticed within the bond market as it's kind of started doing its usual thing again? Any particular groups across Munis, corporate junk, et cetera, that's really perked up? I mean, most of it has been in the same direction.

It has been riding, holding its value or doing a little better than that. But you have seen spreads tighten on the corporate side. So if you look at the riskiest parts of the corporate bond market, they would have outperformed over the last year or so. Although, you know, if you look at shorter duration is also where you've seen a lot of the, you know, the benefits. Because you see short-term rates going down with Fed cutting rates. And then intermediate term paper has done reasonably well. Also, it's really on the longer end. Tens and 30s have not had that much of a move in terms of yield lower.

So therefore, that means their prices have not gone up as much. But, you know, everything is mostly held in there. MUNYs have definitely not been as strong as you might have thought. They're kind of getting left behind. You've got, you know, issues perpetually with liquidity and all the rest of it. So that means that I know that some bond market folks are believing that MUNY's right now. have a little more value to them if you were, you know, if you were so inclined. How much are retail investors off sides? Because there were all those stories, at least from

a year ago, about how so many, even older investors had put most of their, the huge majority of their eggs in the equity basket. Well, they're not off sides in the sense that stocks have still done well, but they definitely have not gotten the diversification benefits enough. It seems like they'd rather hold cash than bonds if they're going to diversify. at all. And of course, maybe even gold is getting filtered in there and private credit is being shopped to everybody if you have a full service advisor. So I do think that there's a potential down the road if, in fact, it's a bonds over stocks type environment where, of course, you would have some kind of recessionary outcome. That would be where investors would get a little bit penalized

for having too much inequities and not enough in bonds, which still, as the Fed cuts rates and economies weakened, they still tend to rally. All right. Mike Santoli, have a happy Thanksgiving. Now you as well. Thank you. Well, don't forget, the market here in the U.S. is closed tomorrow. So we will be dark, but we will have a special program for you on Black Friday. Be sure to tune in. It is the Black Friday edition of closing bell overtime.

It's at 1 p.m. Eastern because it's a half day for the markets. And, John, in the meantime, S&P 500, fourth straight day of gains. We're now tracking for a more than 3% gain this week. Keep in mind, volume tends to be light here, and they're still goings on around the globe, even as it quiets down here in the U.S. Be careful out there on the road, everybody who's traveling for Thanksgiving, and good luck at the airport.

All right. Happy Thanksgiving. That does it for us here at overtime. Fast money starts now.