Closing Bell - Closing Bell Overtime: 12/31/25

Episode Date: December 31, 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 for the year. So ringing the closing bill with the New York Stock Exchange. Ryan Seacrest doing the honors at the NASDAQ as Times Square gets ready for the ball to drop to close out 2025. And that ends trading for the year. The market's last day showing some losses, but relatively small ones. The Dow's down about 300 points. The S&P down about two thirds of a percent plus. The NASDAQ and Russell 2000 about the same.

every single S&P 500 sector in the red today. Real estate, energy, and materials among the worst performers. Materials hit by another bad day for metals. Gold, silver, copper, all down after being down and then up and that down again. Another big loss for platinum down 17% this week. Nike making a notable move today after CEO Elliott Hill buys a million dollars worth of shares. Also recently, Nike board member and Apple CEO Tim Cook has increased his Nike stakes, spending roughly $3 million on stock. Well, that's the score card on Wall Street on this last

day of 2025. But winners, stay up till the ball drops. Welcome to closing about overtime. I'm John Ford. Morgan Brennan is off today. And here's the scorecard for 2025. Another fantastic year for stocks in the books. The Dow up 13% S&P 500 with a 16 plus percent gain. And the NASDAQ, the best of the bunch up more than 20%. That is the third straight year of double digit gains for those major averages. And for the NASDAQ, that's three straight years with a 20% gain. Over the next hour, we're going to look back at the year that was. We're also going to look ahead to the potential market-moving events of 2026, including big changes likely at the Fed. As Jay Powell's term as chair expires, although it's technically possible, don't expect President Trump is going to renominate him.

So who will get the job? And how will it change the Fed? That is coming up. But first, let's start with another banner year for stocks and commodities. Christina Partsen-Nevelas has some of the biggest winners and losers. Christina. Oh, thanks, John. The S&P 500, like you said, closed out 2025 at about 16% gain. It's the third straight year of double-digit returns. Nasdaq did even better. You mentioned that up nearly 21%. Well, the Dow really lagged with a, well, I should say lagged the other two. You know, I'm almost up 13% on the year hit by lack of tech exposure. But today really marks the fifth straight year, the S&P 500, traded lower on the final session of the day. But the index still wrapped its eighth consecutive month of gains, the longest monthly

winning streak in eight years. The big story, though, for individual stocks, we know it. The picks and shovels play on AI infrastructure just absolutely crushed it this year. Western Digital surged nearly 290%. Memory Makers, Micron 239, Seagate, 219%. These weren't just the headline AI names, but really the suppliers feeding the data center boom. You also throw in Robin Hood in the posting triple-digit gains, down today 2%, but up over 200%. You name it the predictions market, crypto really helping this name climb higher. On the flip side, though, ad tech struggled. Trade desk was one among the worst performers, as digital ad demand softened.

On the year, it was down 67%. Commodities stole the show, though, this year gold surging about 64% as best performance since 1979. Silver was even more dramatic, up 140%. Copper hitting record highs on AI infrastructure demand. struggle, though, down nearly 20% in oversupply concerns. And I don't want to be a Debbie Downer, but as we

flip the calendar year tomorrow, maybe wake up a little bit tired, history does suggest caution. The market typically dips on the first trading day of the year, John. All right, so this is like a pre-dip for your chips tonight. Yeah, and my drinks and my chips

and all that. Yes, yes, the drinks too. Now to bonds and currencies in a year that saw multiple rate cuts by the Fed and weak performance from the dollar, Rick Santelli. isn't Chicago, Rick? Yes, John. Boy, what a wild year. And buckle up because we're going to go around the world with seven charts.

If you look at a 10 year, it closed the year at 416, down about 40 basis points. Remember, as John pointed out, 75 basis points of cuts. It was totally reflected in 2-year, which was down 77, but only down 41 and a 10. Now, let's go towards Europe. Look at their boon. Close 237 last year, 286 now, up nearly 50 basis points. U.S. down, Europe, up. And if we look at what's going on with the Japanese government bonds, their yields have been soaring.

If you look at their 10-year, 108 to 206 up nearly one full percent, historic move. Now, let's go to the foreign exchange, shall we? Euro versus the dollar. And remember, euro is the biggest part of the dollar index, about 57%. 57.6%. It was up nearly 14% on the year. The pound versus the dollar, pound was up nearly 8% versus the dollar. Here's a weird one, okay? Historic rise in interest rates in Japan. Normally, that puts their currency on turbo thrusters. What was the outlook? Well, the outlook was for a very bullish yet, and it nearly closed unchanged on the year against the greenback.

And finally, one that's really been moving of late is the change. Chinese yuan. The dollar versus yuan, well, the dollar's down a little over 4%. And much of that has occurred just in the last six weeks. So, John, it really is a wild year and fixed income. But maybe the biggest issue of all is how the U.S. yield curve is going out at the widest, steep as it's been in nearly four years. Back to you. And happy new year. Happy new year, Rick. So after a year of big gains in the market, a stable economy, a consumer that is spending and a Fed that's in easing mode. Are we setting up for another bullish run? Join me now is Ryan Dietrich. He is chief market strategist at the Carson Group. Ryan, an early happy new year to you. I know you're

bullish here. If I'm looking at this from investors' perspective, 2026, I'm more concerned about valuations hanging in there than I am about the fundamentals. Feelings. Can feelings stay this good or get any better next year? Yeah, John, thanks for having me back. Happy early New Year, everyone. I know it was football games on, so thanks for watching us. You know, I'll get there at one second. I want to point out, last training day of the year down. This is five years in a row now. The last day of the year was lower. I just look for it came on. That's never happened before. So there's an interesting record. As you look in the next year, I mean, valuations are stretched. Honestly, we would have had this conversation 12 months ago. We probably would have

said evaluations are a little stretched. I think the way we would look at. at this is, yes, this is still a bull market. We get into the weeds of it. It's a global bull market, John, right? Europe, it continues to do well. Emerging markets are trading exactly where they were, like at the 2007 peak right now. So you could say there's some areas that very well could continue to have some upside. We think this global market is real, but have a diversified portfolio because around the globe, things are not nearly as expensive as the U.S. And you could have heard that for 20 years. Sometimes things are cheap for a reason. But last comment. It's a global bull market. And if you don't like some of the parts of U.S.,

we think there's a lot of opportunity around the globe in 2026 as well. Bulls a little fatter in some other areas of the world up through the last couple years. There's a lot of talk about American exceptionalism and whether the domestic markets here were going to continue to outperform the rest of the world. They didn't in 2025 as well as U.S. markets did. So does that international outperformance, relatively speaking, continue in 2026, does it get more dramatic? Yeah, that's the ultimate question for portfolio managers around the globe. We think it can continue.

Again, look at the German Dax. I mean, Germany is extremely important. It's one of the most important stock markets out there. Earlier this year, Germany broke out just above levels they are trading out in 2007. To us, it's hard to think that this breakout that's taken place around the globe is going to end right away, right? And I get it. 2017 is a perfect example.

U.S. did well. but the rest of the globe degrade. Everybody said, oh, get your diversified portfolios, everyone. And what happened? You should have been in the large cap tech U.S. for the last, you know, several, several years. But we do think, you know, four most dangerous words, this time's different, Sir John Templeton. I do think this time's different, right? We do think that this global recovery, reacceleration is real. And this global outperformance, I'm not saying the globe's going to outperform the U.S. by a lot next year like it did this year. Europe outperforming the U.S. but almost 40% this year. That's the most we've seen it like 20 years. But I think there's still a lot of opportunity around

the globe, John. You got gold that had a great year. Silver had a great year. Domestic stocks had a great year. International stocks had an even better year. Where do you go for balance in 2026 when so many things are doing well? I mean, bonds? Well, and you mentioned bonds are bonds. The Barclays Ag was up over 7% this year. That's the best year for bonds since 2020. So I mean, everywhere you look, I guess crypto didn't do as well. But everywhere else you look obviously did really well. Well, I think our take is this. There's still reasons to think this bull market's alive and well, right? There's bull market's in its fourth year here in the United States. You look back in history, John, going back 50 years, once a bull market gets to this point, the average is eight years. The shortest is five. Now, we're not blindly saying just go all in on equities here, right? I do think having a little more commodities. I mean, silver, I think it's down 10% today. I mean, that's a wild ride. We know it's stretched. But big picture, silver is just breaking out above levels. It was traded out decades ago. Copper levels decades ago. These breakouts, we think, are legit and real.

You want to have some commodity exposure. The money we run at Carson Group, we have some very small amount of managed futures as well, commodities. We are underweight bonds relative to stocks. But again, we have probably more international developed than just about any other RIA, the size of us. And we think going into 2026, it still makes sense to be over at equities with that globally diversified portfolio. Well, congratulations. If you're already there in the international, then, for a great 2025. Ryan Dietrich, thank you.

Happy New Year. Thanks, John. All right. Well, another focus for investors in the year ahead. The changing Fed, and it was a wild year for the chair, Powell and company. Powell coming under fire from the president who called him Mr. Late, an enemy and even a loser, suggesting a few times that he would fire him. But he didn't. The president also toured the Federal Reserve with power. Powell verbally sparring with him under hard hats over the costs of an ongoing renovation, with Trump now floating the idea of suing the Fed chair. just this week. The administration also taking aim at other members of the central bank, including Fed Governor Lisa Cook, who Trump tried to remove from her role in August. That case

is currently in litigation. While Powell's term doesn't end until May, the administration started naming potential successors earlier this year with 11 candidates originally under consideration. Starting next year, four new presidents will be voting members on the FOMC. Joining me now is Neil Dutta, head of economic research at Renaissance Macro, along with our Steve Leasman. Guys, an early happy New Year for both of you. Neil, how dramatic you expect this change at the Fed to be? Well, I mean, typically, you know, continuity is key. Obviously, that's not what we're seeing right now, and it's unlikely to be the case.

But the one thing I would just say, John, is that if you think the point, the point of the point, president is just going to be able to put in whoever it is he wants and that he's going to get a devish policy outcome as a result, I would tend to resist that approach. I do think you do have a lot of sort of heavy hitters coming into the Fed, particularly among the regional Fed presidents, folks like Lori Logan, Beth Hammock, and they're not going to be convinced that it makes sense to ease policy significantly on the anticipation of some sort of economic golden age or some kind of productivity boom. I don't think they're going to be convinced of that. I mean, most economists sort of take a show me the money type approach. I mean, you can't just start

front-running things you have yet to see. And there's a lot of enthusiasm for a productivity boom, but that's not yet, in my opinion, in the data. And they're going to want to wait for that before they start doing anything about it. Steve Leesman, yesterday, your pencil was still working. your pencil wasn't down yet. You weren't ready to share what you thought was coming up. Have you worked it out? Is your reporting done enough? I'm still working it out, John, and it's still a major question.

I'll be reporting in depth on this on Friday, we decided, because they didn't want me not to have to work on the New Year's Day. So, you know, the question being, will Jay Powell stick around? He'll still have two years left on his governorship. Of course, his term as chair. ends in May. But as for expectations, I think it's really interesting, John, to look at the Fed Fund's outlook. And you don't see a whole lot in there. If you take a look at this chart, what this chart tells is a story. The story is this. Probably perhaps Powell does one more cut before he

leaves in May. And then a new guy comes in, it will be a guy, I can say that, and probably cuts once more. And then you see there, December, John, it's still a 3% funds rate in the futures market. And in fact, I don't show it there, but if you extend it to 27, it's still 3%. So there's an expectation, and this may be picking up on precisely what Neil was talking about, which is that whoever you put in there, whomsoever you put in there, they still have a committee to deal with. This committee is still going to be beholden to the kinds of ways that they make policy based on a Fed funds model and their expectations for interest rates as well as their inflation expectations and that there's only so much this chair can do in terms of being able to want a policy

but not necessarily be able to get that policy into effect because they have to bring the committee along and you don't want a chair that's either going to A, B, Arthur Burns, the famous Fed chair who gave us a inflation that Volker had to vanquish or B. have votes like seven to five or eight to four consistently with your committee against you. Neil, what does the Fed do about this case-shaped economy? Or is there very little if they can do? I mean, it's this constant tug of war between the labor market and inflation concerns. But which way do you go? And what's the key data in the first half of the year that holds the most sway? Well, I'm sort of, I think, in the minority among my peers. But I don't think

there's really much of attention, and I think that'll be revealed in the data as we go into next year. You know, the Fed currently has on the board one rate cut, I think, in the median projection for 26. And historically, frankly, it's been a reliable thing to sort of bet against that. And I don't think the goals are really intention. I mean, if you look at what consumers are saying about the job market, job finding rates are getting very difficult. So even though initial claims are low, it hasn't kept the unemployment rate from going up all year. And I suspect that continues. The housing market, despite lower mortgage rates and Fed cuts, builders are going into the new

year with the most unsold inventory since 2010. So for me, it's housing and labor. We're talking about the markets. Take a look at home building stocks or Lenar going into the end of the year. It's not necessarily an encouraging thing. Not at all. So as labor markets get more slack, I think that'll take care of the inflation that everyone's so worried about. All right.

Well, get ready for that ball to drop. And for the fun to begin, Neil Dutta, Steve Leesman, thank you. Coming up, Apple's AI do-over after a rough 2025, the company is setting up for a high-stakes year. As it tries to prove it deserves to be in the big leagues in AI, what will it take, we'll discuss. Plus, from software to hardware to picks and shovels and energy, the AI training. moved beyond the mag seven this year can they all be winners in 2026 or will one sector come out on top overtime's back in two welcome back to overtime the magnificent seven stocks had a solid year they all ended in the green but there was a big divergence in the gains at the

top alphabet up 65 percent enthusiasm over its AI push helping to lift shares remember when the opposite happened. Invidia coming in at number two with a 40% gain, but the gap between number two and number three, quite large. Microsoft is next up 15%, followed by META and Tesla, both up 12, rounding it out. Apple and Amazon, both up single digits. Now let's get to one of the specific Mag 7 names. Apple, underperforming this year, but like the rest of us, a new year, is a chance to do better. Steve Kovac joining me with a look at what Apple needs to do to make 2026 better. We've been waiting more than a year now for Apple intelligence to really show its intelligence. I did some month math on my fingers about this. So they announced Apple

intelligence in June of 2024. If this comes out in March, as they, as most people think it's going to be, that'll be 21 months from announcement. And you know this, John. Apple rarely announces something, especially something major, like artificial intelligence system for the iPhone, and they failed to deliver on it. So they get them all again next year. It actually turned not okay for the stock this year. You noted it was a kind of unperformer for a lot of the big mag seven peers. But at the same time, it's been up about 35% since that moment in the Oval Office where Tim Cook gave that trophy to Donald Trump. Now it's all about AI. So let's talk about what we're expecting. Of course, it's that upgraded version of Siri. But the way I've been

thinking about it, John, is it's not just, is it good or can it match chat GPT and all those kind of things like that? What is really important is it has to be so. good that convinces people to upgrade their older smartphones in order to get this Apple intelligence system. That was the thesis last year ago when we were talking about Apple stock hitting all-time highs in December of last year. It was all because of this idea that this AI version of Siri was going to come out and super cycle those iPhone sales didn't happen. What we did see, though, is the iPhone 17 shows some growth not because of AI, but because of new designs and cool hardware features. So as for the AI, first,

what to look for. Yes, it has to be good, but it also has to drive hardware sales unless Apple decides to change their mind and make it a subscription service like the rivals. I don't see that happening. That would be them kind of going back on their original promise for this thing. That would be. And I've got to say, I use an iPhone or two. I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything. There hasn't been some other built-in AI feature in another operating system that's making iPhone users go, ugh. Exactly. I need this, yes. So, why not? And I think, and that's, well, this is what Apple says. They say, we cracked it. And a lot of people are excited about this because it uses all the personal data on your phone. It does it in

a private way. And Apple's sales pitch for this version is chat Chb-T can't dig into all your emails and all your contacts and so forth. And your apps, by the way, and link into the apps in a way that this system is going to allow. So you can't necessarily tell Chatchabit to talk to and neighbor apps and do tasks for you. Apple claims this version of series going to be able to do those sorts of things. That's why people were so excited a year ago, and that's why people are so disappointed they failed to deliver it. Well, we'll see if the excitement comes back. We'll see. March. Thank you. Yeah. Well, let's dive deeper into that AI trade and what could be in store next year. Check out the top performers in the NASDAQ 100 for 2025. Western Digital,

Micron, Seagate, all names on the hardware side. On the other hand, major underperformers, software names like Adobe, Workday, Data Dog, with investors skeptical about AI monetization. So should investors expect a catch-up trade on the software side in 2026? Join me now is Lowe Tony. He's founding managing partner at Plexo Capital and a CNBC contributor. Lowe, a lot of people cautious about 2026 being that great for software here. What will it take? Well, first, thanks for having me.

And to piggyback on what Steve said, I think I just want to mention that what's important about Apple is that even if their AI execution stumbles slightly, their economics still protect them. And that's very different from a company like meta. And that difference, I think, is the real story if we dive in, in particular to the Manus acquisition. Maybe we can even walk through a few definitions that I think are important to frame the context and to look for things in 26. First, let's think about training. That's a one-time build cost, but where we're moving is to inference, which is the ongoing operating cost of actually running AI in the real world.

Or you can think about it this way. Training creates capability. Inference determines profitability. And inference economics, which is a concept we've been writing about extensively this year, is the study of really who pays for AI every time it runs and whether that revenue scales faster or slower than the cost. And this is good context to talk about Apple, meta, and inference economics, I think, are going to be important to watch for 26. But I think there's a potential bottleneck here that we don't talk enough about, and that's workflow and human culture.

There are certain ways that people are used to getting things done, and there are certain ways that people have organized their data centers and their data. I'm not sure that enough companies are in position to scale their AI use just because of how they're structured and how they do things enough in 2026 to capture the full expectation of the market in what this software is going to do. It's a really important point, John. I appreciate bringing that up because when we talk about the cost to build out infrastructure, typically we're talking about the cost for training infrastructure, which is very GPU dependent. Again, we can go back to to Apple. And what I look at with Apple is the fact that even if they stumble, they really have

minimal exposure to this concept around this massive buildout because they're not really spending money on large scale buildout. It's really happening by the third party apps. So AI can almost feel free to the users because Apple's not exposed to those marginal inference costs. Right. So really, you know, Apple benefits from AI without being on the hook for the inference cost. Microsoft, their exposure is a little bit lower. But with the model from Microsoft, inference is pretty much just built into their existing model of seats, licenses, and contracts. So those absorb the inference costs. Now, Google is really interesting because of their vertical integration. We've talked a lot about their TPU chips. and their TPU chips are within one data center that manages all of the services that handle billions of

users, handles Google Cloud. It even handles the developers that use it. And then as well, it also does a dual purpose with AI, both handling a lot of the training for the models, as well as the inference. And so when we think about Google's business model, they don't subsidize inference. They tax it. Now, if we were to think about meta, you know, that's, where there's some exposure because meta really monetizes attention and so you know the inference costs can rise faster than monetization unless their pricing power improves and i think that's why one of the reasons at least that they made the the manis acquisition and and what meta is trying to do here with manis is you know manis is good at making AI into tasks and workflows so it kind of

helps META to fix their balance sheet in a few, or fix overall financials in a few ways, right? They fix the balance sheet with the Blue Owl transaction, which took $30 billion off their balance sheet. This MANIS acquisition kind of helps the P&L by making some incremental revenue. And, you know, look, META's been working on their own ship. They've also been talking with Google about potentially using TPUs. Yeah. So that could help cash flow. Well, we'll see if customers are ready to use.

use all that at scale. Lo, Tony, thank you. Thanks for having me. New Year. Well, today doesn't just end the year for the markets. It ends an era. Warren Buffett stepping down, CEO Berkshire Hathaway at 95 years young. Our system doesn't go back far enough to show stock performance for is more than 50 years

at the helm. But over the past 20 years, Berkshire is up more than 750%. Will the new CEO be able to continue those gains? That's next on overtime. Welcome back to overtime. The U.S. markets did quite well in 2025. Many international markets did better. Brazil was a top performer up more than 30 percent, despite its government turmoil.

Japan up 25 percent on anticipation of economic and fiscal reforms. Excitement about its new prime minister, also helping to drive gains there. Europe, a winner with Germany, one of the standouts, as it continues to accelerate spending on infrastructure. and defense. Other winners include Mexico, Spain, and the Hangseng, the Hangsang, having its best year since 2017. And the Chinese Shanghai closing out its best year since 2019, right on par with the S&P. Well, it is the end of an era, as I mentioned, at Berkshire Hathaway, as Warren Buffett steps down as CEO after 60 years at the helm. Buffett transformed a struggling textile company into an

international trillion dollar investment powerhouse with stakes in everything from railroads to candy to insurance and running shoes. So how is Berkshire doing as Buffett takes a bow? Let's bring in senior markets commentator Mike Santoli. Mike? Yeah, John, so many ways to measure this. Obviously over the very long term, simply nobody, no investor, no CEO can compare with the returns. Berkshire Hathaway got 50,000 percent or something like that over those decades. However, the stock has trailed the S&P 500 on a one, two, and three-year basis. So since this bull market started, Berkshire Hathaway, which is right here, has not been able to keep pace with the S&P 500, which of course has been goosed by a lot of the big tech leaders. However, it might be more

relevant to compare Berkshire Hathaway with something like an 80% equity, 20% fixed income portfolio, which is this ETF here, a total return basis, by the way, which kind of reflects the massive of cash holdings that Berkshire has maintained for a while. As you see, it's basically performing on par over a three-year period with that sort of a benchmark. Now I'm comparing Berkshire to some of its component pieces, right? It's not just a stock portfolio, far from it. It's actually you got utilities, one of the biggest utilities. It's a biggest operating unit within there alongside railroads and KIE is the insurance ETF. Of course, GEICO and General Ree are massive pieces of the company. And you see, you know, Brooks are essentially performing in line on a

year-to-date basis with how that kind of some of the peers has done so far. Not a lot of outperformance. One that I think is fun, 20-year basis, Berkshire Hathaway versus J.P. Morgan. This takes us back to just about when the current J.P. Morgan was formed under Jamie Diamond, Bank One merging with J.P. Morgan Chase. And you see that JPM almost catching up, and actually on even a like a 19-year basis. J.P. Morgan looks a little bit better. So maybe J.P. Morgan kind of assumes status as another one of these paragons of stability within the financial sector that Buffett has held for a while here, John. Mike, I want to go back to that first chart. How much of Berkshire's underperformance is intentionally them taking their foot off the gas?

Because I take it, that big change right there is April of 25, where, I mean, at that point, Berkshire was up above the S&P and the I shares 8020 ETF, but then things changed pretty dramatically. Wasn't Berkshire raising cash for most of the year? I would say, well, they've allowed cash to build up, absolutely. And I do think what this does show is that the market treats Berkshire Hathaway as the ultimate defensive haven when there is stress in the economy or the markets. And, you know, if you think about the Mag 7, all those huge stocks, Berkshire Hathaway, for a lot of the year was the very largest market cap outside of the Mag 7. So if money's kind of coming out of the leaders because you're worried about the future, it was finding its way to Berkshire. The other

piece of it is right here, basically, at the utter peak. It was also the utter peak of Berkshire's valuation on a price-to-book basis. That was the Friday before the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting where Warren Buffett says, guess what? End of this year, I'm no longer CEO. So it was all these excuses coming together at the same time. Overall market stabilized, you don't longer defense, and yeah, at least some investors who are worried this is an expensive stock no longer going to be led by the same guy come next year, although I don't think it should continue to underperform just for that reason. Okay, well noted. Mike Santoli, thank you. Time now for a CNBC News update with Kate Rogers. Kate.

John, President Trump announced moments ago he will remove National Guard troops from Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland. The resident suggested the government would be back, quote, perhaps in a much different or stronger form, and claimed the troops had reduced crime in the Democratic cities. Another New England Patriots player is facing charges, defensive linemen. Christian Barmore is accused of throwing his daughter's mother to the

ground, according to a police report. The allegations came to light one day after receiver Stefan Diggs was accused of slapping his private chef and choking her. And congressional Republicans are calling on Minnesota governor Tim Walz to testify over alleged social services fraud.

Minnesota officials have disputed those claims, which were sparked after a conservative influencer posted a video claiming without proof that daycare centers operated by Somali residents misappropriated tens of millions of dollars, John. Back over to you. Thank you. Well, 2025 was supposed to be a great year for Bitcoin as President Trump positioned to be the crypto president worked for a while with a new Bitcoin high hit in early October. But since then, Bitcoin's lost 30% of its value in less than three months enough to wipe out all of 2025's gains. So what happens next year?

Overtime's back in two. Welcome back to Overtime. One area of the market that did not crush it this year, crypto, with Bitcoin at any of the year, down 6%. That's 30% off its October high. So what's in store for 2026? Joining me now is Nick Carter. He's a founding partner at Castle Iin Ventures

and a co-founder of Coin Metrics. Nick, Vix is under 15. The NASDAQ was up 20. percent this year. Gold had a great year. What happened to Bitcoin, particularly at October? Why did disconnect from everything good? Yeah, it's a great question, honestly. I think part of it, you know, part of the underperformance this year was some of the returns were pulled forward last year as there was a lot of anticipation for Trump's election and his inauguration. And, you know, he delivered on the things he said he was going to do, but some Bitcoiners may have wanted him to go further and, you know,

actively buy bitcoin and put it in a strategic bitcoin reserve that didn't happen but then why didn't the same thing happen to stocks i mean the stock market certainly got excited about president trump and yeah went through its ups and downs but ended way up yeah it's a good question i mean frankly the retail interest the hot ball of money so to speak has been in these you know more buzzy sectors like quantum or a i data centers rare earths the interest just hasn't been on the crypto space this year i think that's okay in terms of the fundamentals and what we're trying to do here but Yeah, it's been a tough year for Bitcoin. There's no denying that. Are the fundamentals driving this, or is there more of a feeling about it being the hot thing,

the way to go for risk, and the fact that AI infrastructure has become more of that thing? Has it taken the heat away from crypto? Yeah, AI has sucked all of the energy out of the room. It's, you know, kind of a generational influx of capital into AI. And I think, you know, any other sector that's competing for, for investor eyeballs and attention and dollars would suffer by that yardstick. But I think the fundamentals driving Bitcoin, you know, as a meaningful store value are still intact. The fact that we're, you know, looking at debt crises in the developed world, the continued

debasement of the dollar. These are things that people worry about. Those certainly haven't gone away. But isn't that why gold is up? Yeah. Certainly gold's part of the trade. And this is an interesting thing that Bitcoin and gold have decorrelated, actually. this year. That's unexpected, I would say. But yeah, I mean, you know, Bitcoin and gold, two sides

is the same coin, in my opinion. So why are the fundamentals, those fundamentals, working for gold, but not working for Bitcoin? It's a question that's puzzled a lot of the folks in the crypto space this year. One of the reasons why there's been some pressure on the price has also been these DATs, digital asset treasury companies. These sucked up a lot of coins, and they're now trading at massive, these are companies like Microstrategy and many imitators. Now they're mostly trading at discounts to net asset value. That's one thing that's weighing on the price of the spot assets as the market tries to cause those two things to converge. Maybe we'll get some more and better sense of what's driving things in 2026. Nick Carter, thanks for helping

to unpack what we know and what we don't. Happy New Year. Well, I had the financials were a standout this year with some of the biggest names ending the year at new highs, but The best performer in the sector has nothing to do with an actual bank. We will reveal the mystery chart ahead. Welcome back. Let's get some picks heading into the new year. Joining me now from the NASDAQ in the heart of Times Square is Guy Adami, risk reversal media co-founder and a fast money trader.

Watch out for falling balls there, Guy. But let's start with... That's an excellent point by you, John. Words to live by. For sure. I learned that early. So City, you like City, it's up 66% this year, but only 89% over five years.

You think this year's run can continue. I do. And happy New Year, John, to you, to everybody there in E.C. I guess Morgan's not around today. Happy New Year to her. I'll say this. To answer your question, yes, I think there's more to the upside. And, you know, we're trying to make this into a bit of a math problem.

If J.P. Morgan is worth three times tangible book, which, you know what, I'll give that to them. I would submit that Citibank should be at least half of that. And half of that gets you about $155, $160 stock. I think that's what you can see at some point this year. I think Jane Frazier's done a remarkable job. The restructuring is absolutely working. They're getting bigger by getting smaller. I think the stock is going to continue to surprise people in 26. So City number, that's my first pick for 26, yes. Okay, let's see what's behind door number two. Yes, sir.

Lionsgate Studios. Now, this is, I mean, it's a two and a half billion dollar market cap, but acquisition target? I mean, why do you care about that? That's exactly right. Michael Burns used to come on the show in the early days of fast money. By the way, if we get to January, it's 19 years, believe it or not on the show, and you'll be like, if, well, you never know in TV. I'll say this.

I think Lionsgate, when the dust settles with this Warner Brothers Discovery thing, I think people are going to say, what's the next target? And content is king, and their library is extraordinary, and I think it's undervalued. So I think you could see a double in Lionsgate early next year once this whole Paramount Warner Brothers' Netflix thing gets sorted out. Okay. Well, you say you never know about getting the next year. That brings us to structure therapeutics. Yeah.

Stock nearly doubling after showing strong results for its GLP1 drug earlier this month. You think the gains continue with the losses? I do. And so GPCR is the name we've talked about. They obviously had that huge move about a month or so ago where the stock was about 108%. Since then, it's sort of done a bit of a back-and-fill. But, you know, they have this GLP1 that actually looks like it's going to be quite successful. And I think in the world of Big Cap Pharma, these companies like the Merks and the Bristol's and the Fisors,

they would rather buy a company with something that they know works and pay a high premium for it as opposed to taking a flyer. So I think, again, in 2026, there's a very good chance that you see a double in this. name. And I'm not the only one. There are a lot of biotech analysts out there that feel the same way. So Lionsgate, GPCR, letter C, stay away from flying objects in Times Square. I dig you, John Fort. I dig the whole team there. And happy New Year to all of you. By the way, Christina Parts of Nevelace was here. She wanted to say hi. Brian Sullivan wanted to get makeup on because he has to. But he'll be hosting tonight. We have a friccacy going on here in Times Square. That's great. Christina's already planning on drinks. She was talking about it at the top of the show.

Now, like many overtime viewers, I've spent a couple quarters at least thinking about the gold you have stashed around your house. That means your house has gotten a lot more valuable this year, guy. What's the outlook on your house value, given all that gold in 2026? House value, notwithstanding, I will continue to say, despite the recent setback this week, gold story has not changed in any way, shape, or form. Central banks continue to buy gold. This de-dollarization will continue. I think one of the things early next year is going to be this renewed selling in the U.S. dollar, which will be supportive of gold, and central banks are not backing off.

So any pullback in gold, in my opinion, needs to be bought, and the mining stocks are absolutely telling you that, John. And any time you want to come over, we'll drink a scotch, check out some of those tiny gold bars I have would be my honor, sir. That would be great. And, hey, I'm glad you didn't hide Bitcoin around your house because it wouldn't be worth as much at the end of 2020. I mean, on these disc drives, I don't know. A guy had Donnelly, thanks. Don't miss Guy. Happy New Year and the rest of the fast money team coming up at the top of the hour.

Now, up next on overtime, what we learned in markets this year, or at least what Mike Sand totally learned. He's still learning. Always learning. We'll be right back. Welcome back to overtime from tariff turmoil that led to stock stumbles to fighting with the Fed, to political plays, to open AIs. market influence 2025 had many narratives, all of which our senior markets commentator Mike Santoli followed closely. Mike is back. Mike, what stood out to you? You know, John, lots of reminders of things we tell ourselves going into a market year, but sometimes are hard to remember in the

moment. One of which is it does pay to be a buyer of panic, and sometimes something close to a V bottom does happen when you have a steep sell-off. That was this right here. All right, maybe not a V. Maybe it's a little bit of a contorted W. But what you also have to remember, is even if you were to have bought this decline during the tariff panic, when it first got to a down 10% level on a unit date basis or from the all-time high, it was about right in here. Okay. So you definitely did not catch the low, but look at where you ended up. So, you know, timing doesn't always matter if you're trying to be opportunistic and just put the odds in your favor. Also, I do find it interesting that just when everyone thought we were in for the year-end rally, we just flattened out. And the last

three monthly closes have been within 1% of one another. So who knows if we're rebasing or stalling out? We'll see what happens next year. Take a look here. A big picture lesson, diversification has started to pay off again. You were talking about global markets. This is the rest of the world versus the S&P 500. What I find particularly interesting about this is the absolute symmetry in terms of the way these things have moved since the low, right? So S&P 500 had a worse of it in April, but it's really just been about flows into equity assets in general at a pretty specific and kind of synchronous cadence. Finally, another diversification measure 6040. We keep talking about it. It worked this year. This is the ETF that tracks. It doesn't

say full total return, but you see 13.4% on a year-to-date basis. The total return is more like 16-ish percent or 17, and S&P 500's total return is in the 18 or so area. So basically, diversification helped. The long-term average for 6040, by the way, It's more like 70%, maybe nine, depending on the period you're looking at. So obviously, we've done well, even as bonds themselves, we're, you know, up, but not a lot this year. Mike, another big thing in 2025. They're not a lot of surprises or unknowns in life after the Santa Claus thing gets full of for us early on. But one that remained in markets was the identity of the mystery broker.

And now we no longer have that because you're revealed in yesterday. Do you feel lighter? Do you feel better or is there something missing? Honestly, I am relieved to be cleared of this whole exercise. I don't want to call it a gimmick because I didn't intend it to be a gimmick. But I do like that people are able to kind of evaluate his views in the context of a specific individual who has a certain kind of career and experience and view on the world. So kind of bearish long term on a secular basis.

Things like this run we've had from 2009 might be kind of in its latter phases, but not about really next year. It's much more about how we should set our expectations for. maybe subdued returns in the decade to come. Do you have any more mystery people? Do you want any more? I don't really want anymore, but people keep volunteering for it. That's not how it works.

That's what I wonder. I wondered if you had some volunteers. Mike Santoli, always great to spend a year with your insights. That's going to do it for overtime for 2025.