Closing Bell - Closing Bell Overtime: Apple AI, Media M&A Tensions and What China Sees Next 12/8/25

Episode Date: December 8, 2025

Kevin Mahn, President and Chief Investment Officer at Hennion & Walsh, and Victoria Greene, Founder and Chief Investment Officer at G Squared Private Wealth talk the broader market outlook. Tom Rogers breaks down Paramount’s hostile bid for Warner Bros. and the potential market impact. Our Steve Kovach breaks down Apple leadership departures and the company’s AI strategy. AWS CEO Matt Garman and Accenture’s Julie Sweet discuss enterprise and cloud demand trends. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Rabel marks the end of regulation. Sunoco ringing the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange in SIGO doing the honors at the NASDAQ. And stocks sliding today after a big rally over the past two weeks. The Dow lower by 250 points, S&P 500, down half a percent. The NASDAQ down a little less. The Russell, just about flat, but today's loss is merely denting a strong recent rally. The S&P 500 had been higher nine of the last 10 sessions before today. Friday it closed within 20 points, a third of a percent of an all-time.

high. Now 10 of 11 sectors are lower today. Communication services led lower by Netflix and Google, discretionary materials and energy, also losing more than a percent. Technology, the only sector in the green. Chip stocks gaining the SMH semiconductor ETF, getting back within a tenth of a point of its all-time high. But the big stock story of the day is paramount, launching a hostile bid for Warner Brothers Discovery offering 30 bucks a share, WBD stock closing right around. $27. We're going to have more on that coming right up. That's a scorecard on Wall Street, but winners stay late. Welcome to closing bell overtime. I'm John Ford. Morgan Brennan is off today, but let's get right to the markets because we did see this recent rally, at least

pausing today. Let's get more on the action from Christina Parts of Nevelas at the NASDAQ. Thanks, John. It was a very stock-driven session today, too. Tech was the only sector to close positive. Like you mentioned, comms or communication services, as well as materials, both falling 1.5%. And the reason I bring up materials is the worst performer in the entire S&P 500 was air products and chemicals, dropping by a wide margin after announcing partnership talks with Yara on low-emission ammonia projects. You can see shares closing almost 9.5% lower. Another name that closed lower with Tesla. Those shares closing over 3% lower after Morgan Stanley reversed its bullish stance,

downgrading the stock on just valuation concerns. Over here at the NASDAQ, Marvell was the worst performer, hit by a report that Microsoft is in talks to ship business, from Marvell to Broadcom. However, J.P. Morgan, in a note, pushed back, calling the headlines quote, noise and reiterated their overweight rating. Noise or not, though, you can see Broadcom on your screen closing almost 3% higher on the news, lifting other chip names, Lamb Research, memory maker Micron, also 4% higher, but that has to do with just some memory supply concerns and prices going up. One bright spot, Warby Parker, jumping today. After announcing, it's going to help Google develop an AI-enabled glass, AI glass, I should say, set to launch

in 2026. You can see Warby Parker closing 13% higher. So a very stock-specific day on Wall Street, John. Oh, Google Glass is coming back by Warby Parker. Restina, thank you. It's going to be stylish. Yeah, it's always stylish. Stocks might have posted losses today, but they're still on track for the third straight year of solid gains. My next guests say 2026 will be another bullish year, but see more bumps in the road. Joining me now, Victoria Green from G-Square Private Wealth and Kevin Mon from Henion and Walsh. Guys, welcome. Kevin, are there any more major catalyst left for the market this year? Should we just sort of count on these minor moves back and forth?

Yeah, as I understand this, there may be a hawkish cut coming up on Wednesday, and that could bode well for the markets, believe it or not, John. As going back to 1950, the Federal Reserve has cut interest rates on 23 different occasions when the S&P was within 2% of its all-time high, as it is right now. In all 23 instances, the market move higher over the next 12 months. by an average of just under 14%. Now, of course, this time could be different, but I do think the bull market continues to make its run

and notch its fourth consecutive year in 20206, but there'll be many more bumps in the road along the way and much more short-term volatility than we saw in 2025. Victoria, we also get Oracle, Costco, and Broadcom this week. Of those, which do you think is the most consequential, given, yeah, I mean, Oracle has been an, AI story that's popped and faded. Costco, very important read on the higher-end consumer. Sure. I think it's Oracle, because if Oracle blows it out of the water, they can kind of

silence all their naysayers and revive the AI trade and say, hey, everything's well and good. We can support this CAPEX. We're not concerned about CDS. They really have to show aggressive revenue growth and excessive future growth. They need to have a beat in a raise. It can't just be a beat. But this is the show-me-time for Oracle. Everybody's doubting Oracle. Oracle needs to come through here that would go a long way to soothing some of these AI valuations and AI capax and debt concerns that have dragged the market. Should we expect that though, Victoria? Because, I mean, their last quarter where the stock popped wasn't great on the quarter itself. It was on their projections for the future. Yeah, if they give a massive raise and say,

it's coming down the pipeline, we're going to be able to pay for all this debt that's getting issued. I don't see a problem with that. As long as they beat EPS, it's going to be heavily weighted to what's coming down the pipe in the future. Is the demand there? Is the revenue growth there and are the margins there, right? That was the other knock. If they're doing all this work with Open AI, but it's minimal margins. You know, there were some talk. I think FT had said, hey, they're basically paying, you know, open AI to host for them.

So Oracle needs to come through and say that revenue growth is here. This five-year plan we're laying out is still intact, if not better off than we thought it was going to be three months ago. It's going to go a really long way to soothing investors. Kevin back on the macro side, you don't think investors should count on more cuts soon after the one we expect this week from the Fed? Yeah, I mean, if they do cut interest rates this week, that moves the Fed funds target rate into a range at three and a half to three and three quarters percent.

As I understand it, unless they updated this week, their neutral rate is three percent, which would suggest to me, if I'm doing the math rate, we only have 50 basis points more of cuts to get to neutral or two 25 basis points cuts. I don't think we get anything in the first quarter. Remember, that's going to be Chair Powell's last two live FOMC meetings before he's replaced his chair. So we may only get one rate cut in 26 and one in 2027. The big outstanding vote here? Yes, yes.

That could change everything. Once that new Fed chair comes in, we expect them to be more dovish. And perhaps we get that all in 150 basis point cut when that happens in the spring. Bringing this Victoria back around to this Netflix acquisition, is M&A a market issue? We did see IBM stepping in, but perhaps some question about whether the president is going to smile on this Netflix Warner move, given that he said he's going to be weighing in on it. Yeah, and Warner Brothers is the girl.

Every guy wants to take to the prom right now. I mean, obviously Paramount's coming out strong with a bid. Not going to lie, Derek Kushner being involved with that bid is going to muck the waters up a little bit about who's getting favorable treatment. But we'll have to see. Like Netflix felt very confident. And they came out at the UBS conference today saying, we expect this deal to go through. They felt like they got pre-approval a little bit, went to Trump.

to talk to him about it. Obviously, his comments about this, this might be beat too big, might spook investors. But what's curious to me is that Paramount making this massive bid for 30 a share, all of a sudden went up 9% while Netflix continue to go down. You'd think at some point investors are going to say, well, we punished you for doing this big merger, but now we're going to punish you that the merger may not happen. It's a little confusing reaction on the stock, considering how much Paramount and Warner Brothers moved on the announcement today. Eminet, though, is great. You know, it shows that the deal market's alive and well. It shows that interest rates coming down allows for some companies to move out.

It could be great for private equity, for small caps, for companies that could be a great acquisition target. And that's great for banks that are going to get paid to put these deals together. All in, more M&A, more activity. It's a wonderful economic signal. We'll see how much will be allowed. Victoria, Kevin, thank you. My pleasure.

Well, the fight for the future of Hollywood. Taking a new turn today, Paramount Skydance, launching a hostile bid for all of Warner Brothers at $30 a share in cash. And it comes just days after the company agreed, to a deal with Netflix for $27.75 a share in cash and stock. Paramount's offer is for all of Warner Brothers, while Netflix is only interested in the streaming business, HBO, and the studios. Paramount CEO David Ellison joined our David Faber this morning,

saying their deal is pro-competition. Our deal is pro-consumer. It's pro-creative talent. It's pro-competition. And we believe that when you actually, to further contextualize, There are $30 in cash, or sorry, $30 a share, is basically $17.6 billion in cash more than the $23 in share that they signed up. Warner Brothers says it will carefully review and consider the new offer and aims to advise stockholders on the board's recommendation within 10 business days. Joining me now is CNBC founder and contributor Tom Rogers.

He's also a senior advisor to Vercent Media, our soon-to-be parent company. Tom, does it matter which of these companies gets? uh... warner uh... does it matter to the industry and how it goes forward from here uh... thanks for having me john and let me just say at the outset i'm speaking for myself and not uh... versent on this uh... i think certainly there are factions within the industry that uh... seem to care uh... labor has uh... come out hard against uh... netflix

uh... i'm not quite sure why uh... given the fact that uh... the paramount synergies are higher than what Netflix synergies will supposedly be under this deal, meaning Paramount will probably get rid of more people than Netflix will, from an employee point of view. I'm not sure that that would be a basis to distinguish the deals in Paramount's favor. But I think overall, if Paramount and Warner merge, you're going to have Paramount and Warner merge, going to have a classic two studio situation come down to one if Netflix and Warner merge. It's not that clear, but I would think they'd want to keep the Warner Studio alive.

Netflix hasn't had that much success with original movies. They've had a lot of success with leasing access to studio output from other major studios, and the difference is probably theatrical marketing, and my guess is they'll keep that up. To my understanding, the other part of it is the concern that under Netflix an algorithm will be running the business and deciding what kinds of movies and TV shows get made and who gets to star in them, and that even though there might not be as many job losses up front, there might be some real losses down the line. How do you weigh in on that? Well, I think both parties will be data-driven and both parties will be gut-driven when

it comes to what movies they decide to make. I'm not sure that's a consequential difference either in terms of which party wins here. In the end of the day, I'm not sure those industry factors are going to decide this. I think that in the end, it'll be how to shareholders value two different bids. I don't think we've by any means seen the end of this. I'd be surprised if Paramount stopped that what was essentially their previous bid that they are now saying they'll go to shareholders on. I'd be surprised if that wouldn't be raised to factor in breakup fee. Tom, who needs it more?

I think Paramount clearly needs it more. It's the weaker competitor. Netflix certainly has a game in its own right. I've been a huge bowl on Netflix. Netflix said there's nothing that's a must-have. This is beginning to get priced as if it is a must-have for them. But having said that, I don't think it is a must-have for them. I think it's a much more important acquisition.

from Paramount's point of view. How much M&A do you think needs to happen in the industry and how much of a signal do we get on whether it can happen based on how this turns out? Well, depending on how this turns out, there are probably other moves that happen by other parties down the road. Clearly, global scale really matters in the streaming business. There are not that many ways on which it can be achieved.

I think Netflix has already achieved global scale. Paramount hasn't for Paramount HBO's global footprint, which is developing rapidly, is much more important for its streaming business. But again, this is going to come down to how shareholders value the two. I think a lot is being made of one. of one regulatory path versus another. But whatever Paramount thought it had by way of a regulatory advantage relative

to its relationship with President Trump, President Trump came down pretty hard on them today relative to their 60 minute segment. So I'm not even sure that will be that much of a factor in the end of the day. You expect it to take a while to figure out? Yes, I do. I think this will go on for some time.

I think how the cable assets are valued here will clearly be something we'll hear a lot about since it's a key part of the board's analysis in rejecting the all-cash paramount offer. And my guess is this isn't just going to be one round. We may see more than one round until the shareholders vote, it's not over, and that's going take a while. Yeah, Ellison's and these hostile bids. We've seen a part of that before. Tom Rogers, thank you. Thanks for having me. Well, the latest on Apple's supposed brain drain and the one top exact who says, contrary to a report, he's not going anywhere. And check out shares of our mystery chart. Stocks up more than 120 percent so far this year, which would make it one of the top

performers in the S&P 500. But it's not part of the index yet. Overtime's back in Welcome back to overtime. Time to reveal our mystery chart. Shares of Carvana jumping today following news late Friday, the stock would be added to the S&P 500. Also getting helped by a bullish note from Bank of America, raising its price target on the stock to $455. That's just above where it closed today at a new all-time high. Also being added to the index CRH was a cement company and comfort systems and AI cooling plan. Now to a stock that's been in the S&P for quite a while. Shares of Apple hitting an all-time high today for the four straight session as analysts come out defending its AI efforts, but also swirling around the company,

reports of a brain drain or executive exodus, several execs leaving. One in particular staying catching attention. Steve Kovac joining me now. Steve, Johnny Shruji, very important to Apple because the chip strategy has driven so much success in vertical integration and performance. Lose the AI guy, no problem, but you've got to keep Johnny. Sruji is one of those singular talents at Apple all day. I've been calling him. He's kind of like the Johnny Ive of chip design, right? And the reason why that MacBook you're using right now,

the reason why it turns on so instantly and has great battery life and can handle a bunch of processes without the fans starting to spin is because of Johnny Sruji. It's because he used those arm chips that's such great success in the iPhone, made them more powerful, brought them over to the Mac. And by the way, there is an AI element here, though. Before Chat Chb-T even existed, before we were talking about AI and the way we talk about it now, he laid the hardware foundation for AI to run on Apple devices, those neuro-processing units that are part of those MacBook chips,

that enables Apple intelligence and will enable more things in the future. So he sent out a memo this morning, kind of knocking down that Bloomberg report from over the weekend, saying, I don't plan to leave any time soon, but it does come amid this exodus of executives. Last week, we saw several leave, and then months before that, going to meta, going to open AI, and things of that nature. So this is a big one that they're actually keeping. Typically, Apple's core in technology and marketing stays pretty stable. Folks like Craig Federigi, Greg Jawswick, et cetera. Even when people leave, they stay on as advisors for a long time.

Phil Schiller, for example, is what you're seeing right now unusual, or is it more part of a cycle? Both. It's both. It depends on the, it's a case by case. We're seeing some people leave voluntarily. A lot of people, Alan Dye, the software designer who left last week, that was, that's seen voluntarily. And he, you know, put it like a weird post on his Instagram with like a sub-tweet of a Steve Jobs quote, you know, basically say I'm a smelly later guys, I'm out of here, Apple. Other people like John G. Andrea, who was the artificial intelligence boss, he messed up. Let's be honest. He didn't. He didn't. not deliver what Apple promise who would deliver. So Keyes out. And Craig Federigi, who you just mentioned, he's now in charge of this big Siri project. What we have to pay attention to, though, John, is where does the monetization come in? And Evercore put out a really good note about this this morning. Let's just say, for argument's sake, this new version of Siri, they actually get it right. It comes out in this spring. Well, how do they make money on it? They already said they're going to give it out for free. What they've got to do is get people to upgrade. It has to be good

enough, you have to have a 15 Pro or better in order to use this new version of Siri, so maybe it has to be good enough to get people to buy those devices. Stretch that out as more features get enabled onto this Apple intelligence system. Maybe they start charging for it. Maybe it becomes part of the services business. And then one thing Evercourt didn't mention, but I've been talking about all day today, is the AI devices. Next year, we're expecting glasses very similar to what meta makes coming from Apple and also a smart home product, AI tool to control all your smart home gadgets. Those two are not going to work if this version of AI Siri doesn't get off the ground and work really well. So those are the things to watch out for as far as

not only does it has to be good. It has to be good enough to get people to run out and buy products that are enabled by this new AI technology. I'd be shocked if after the debacle so far Apple puts out something that doesn't work. Yeah, exactly. They've got to get right. Coming up, we are two days away from a Fed decision where most expect a rate cut. But long-term bond yields are moving higher. Mike Santoli is going to be here to explain what that might mean, and the volatile world of biotech stocks. Huge gains in several names today. The details behind those doubles coming up on Overtime. Welcome back to Overtime. We've got some big movers in biotech to show you. Let's start with structure therapeutics. Got a weight loss drug that helped people

lose as much as 35 pounds or 15% of their body weight over an eight-month trial. You can see it up 102% wave life science is also storing on trial results for its weight loss candidate, saying its drug reduced fat without the loss of muscle, which can happen with GLP1 drugs. See it up 147%. Lysley, chimera, jumping on positive data for its drug to treat eczema, saying the drug relieved itching in a small early stage trial. Now, longer term yields are creeping higher again, just as the Fed gets set to the side on rates, testing the downward trend that we have seen since last year. Senior markets commentator Mike Santoli is here to take a closer look at what the bond market

is pricing in right now. Mike? Yeah, John, so here's the 10-year treasury yield. You see a couple of things, if you just observed the chart. One is every time you've barely gotten below 4 percent, those sellers came in. So people sell bonds. It means yields go higher. And then that downtrend definitely is being tested from the full year. More specifically, though, from May.

That's basically the angle we've been declining at. So lower highs, lower lows. And now maybe we get above that. Now, I don't think the absolute level is particularly threatening at this point. You see, we've been well higher than this at different times this year. And, of course, global yields are going up. There's an expectation, even globally, for a little bit of a quickening of the economic pace. Commodity prices have been going up.

So this isn't so alarming. And we're probably not going to be able to price in too many more Fed rate cuts after Wednesday as well, unless it's about an inflation panic. And it doesn't seem to be. Here is the yield on the 10-year Treasury inflation-protected security. So this is the yield that you would earn after the rate of inflation. So when this goes up, it's the non-inflationary part of bond yields that's going up. It's called the real yield, compensation for whatever risks you might have, maybe of more issuance by the government.

But you see, it's on the rise, although, again, not at super-threatening levels where we got before. So this sort of shows you that while we might be concerned that we might trip a threshold where risk asset valuations get tested by higher bond yields, it's not yet at this point telling us that the fight against inflation is over in a bad way. In other words, that inflation is going to get the better of us? Is that really the risk that the risk assets that have been kind of important to the core spirit of this market get freaked out if the yields don't respond to the rate cuts and are stubbornly a bit higher? Potentially, yeah. Nobody quite knows what that tripwire is in terms of yield. I think a lot of folks are looking at things like 430, 435 on 10s, something like that. I would also say it really does matter what corporate debt and other kinds of bonds do in reaction to treasury yields going up. Right now, corporate spreads have been pretty well behaved. So if you saw yields going up and also people getting nervous about the credit market, that's worse than just people saying, okay, growth's going to be better. Maybe the Fed's going to be on hold for a while, and so yields can back up a little bit into the end of the year. All right.

Mike San Antonio, see you again soon. Time now for a CNBC News update with Bertha Coombs. Bertha. John, while the FBI agents fired this September for kneeling during a 2020 protest are now suing the director, Kash Patel, to get their jobs back. The lawsuit claims the agents were trying to de-escalate the situation when they were backed against a wall by a large crowd protesting the death of George Floyd, and they were claiming they faced illegal retaliation. The Kremlin says it still has not received word on U.S.

Ukraine peace talks held in Florida, which followed a U.S. delegations meeting with President Vladimir Putin in Moscow last week. Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, called the talks constructive but difficult, and said after a meeting with European leaders today, that Ukraine will share a revised peace plan with the U.S. tomorrow. And Disney extended its contract with late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel for at least one year, keeping him as the host of Jimmy Kimmel live until at least May 27, according to Bloomberg. Kimmel was suspended in September over comments following political activist Charlie Kirk's assassination after FCC chair Brendan Carr threatened to pull ABC.

license. He was back on the air. Not too long after that, though. Back to you. Can't believe that was just September. Bertha, thank you. Well, any minute on overtime, we're expecting earnings from the Home Builder Toll Brothers. And speaking of earnings, remember the excitement on Oracle last quarter? Stock soared the day after, but gave up all those gains and more in the three months since. So what happens this time around? We'll talk about it. Come right back. Welcome back to overtime with trillions of dollars of market value on the line in 2026. I spoke today with AWS CEO Matt Garman and Accenture CEO Julie Sweet about what will define the year in the AI journey. I also asked Garmin fresh out of his AWS reinvent conference last week about his flagship AI infrastructure project, Rainier, and its marquee customer Amphropic, also doing a big deal with cloud competitor Google in recent weeks.

Rainier's been fantastic. So today, you know, Anthropic trained their latest generation of cloud models all kind of running on Rainier and to fantastic results. I think you've seen the anthropic business continue to grow really rapidly. You know, with regards to working with other clouds, like there, there are customers that work there that like to use other customers and Anthropic wants to support all of those as well. So that's not surprising to me. And in fact, it would be surprising if they didn't want to go do that. As a business, that makes total sense to them. But we are still their primary provider, and we continue to have a great partnership with them on that front. Accenture CEO, Julie Sweet, told me measurable value from AI agents will be the

major theme for 2026. It's about how you use it. So you have to build the business case. And the number one piece of advice I give CEOs is, is whatever that business case is, needs to be embedded in your actual KPIs that you run the business. So when we invest in AI at Accenture, it becomes part of the financial plan and any other metrics, like if it's speed to market, for example. So that's how you get ROI. So when we set our financial plan, if we're expecting to improve costs, then the margin that we're expecting that part of the business to deliver reflects that assumption. Right? And too often these projects around AI become separate initiatives. And then the CFO says,

wait a minute, I'm not seeing it in part of the PLO, the P&L. And so that's where Accenture, you know, and AWS come together. We create the whole transformation, right? The tech plus the process and everything, what the business case should be and then help our clients be able to embed that business case, you know, into their P&L expectations or other metrics. There's a lot of of different kinds of business outcomes. Finally, I asked Garmin about the AI horse race with Google's Gemini model, getting attention recently. I also asked about NovaForge, Amazon's new offering

that allows customers to customize AI models as they're being trained. We really want customers to use the absolute best model. And if off-the-shelf models are delivering the absolute best performance, it's fantastic, and it's why platforms like Bedrock have a whole bunch of model choices. But we do think that that customized model is something that customers have wanted to do for a long time and just hasn't been possible, right? They've been tried to use kind of open weights models to try to get to that customized place, but they're not quite good enough because you have to do it at the end of the process and you don't have full access to the training data where you can mix that in.

We actually want to deliver differentiated performance and differentiated costs, part of what that's what our Silicon Strategy really delivers, as well as differentiated choice, differentiated security, and at the end of the day, a differentiated value where you can actually take your data, get value from it and run. And so, you know, I think it's fun to see all the new technologies that come out. And I think it's important to see who's investing. You know, we're investing over the long term to make sure that we have a great set of models with our Nova models. I think you see Google investing and Open AI investing and Anthropic investing. All four of us are investing in building some of these really large models.

And we'll continue to and you'll see which one's better day one versus day two. but I think those will leapfrog back and forth. I think from the investment point of view, you see AWS growing faster than the other cloud providers in an absolute basis. You see us investing in data centers and capacity and power, both for 26 as well as 27 and 28. We're in this for the long haul,

and we're in this to build for customer demand. And from Autodesk to Intuit, lots of major application software companies also building specialized models. Well, Toll Brothers' earnings are out. The stock head and lower a couple percent initially. Diana Oleg has the numbers. Diana.

That's right, John. We have mixed results coming in for the luxury home builder in Q4. EPS came in at $4 and $0.58 a share versus estimates of $4.89. Revenues of $3.41 billion versus estimates of $3.304 billion. Home sales gross margin of 27.1%. Estimates were 26.9%. And deliveries were actually a little better than their estimates. So they came in higher.

Average delivery price, though, was $992,000. That was versus estimates of $975,400. I want to read to you the commentary from Doug Yearly, who said, given soft demand across many markets, we remain focused on running our business in a disciplined manner and consistent with our long-term strategic objective of maximizing returns for shareholders. We continue to balance price and pace and are actively managing our spec starts and inventory on a community by community basis to best match local demand conditions. So, again, we know it's soft out there.

We have not gotten any government data on the homebuilders. But so, you know, mixed results for toll. Again, they're less influenced by mortgage rates because they are the luxury homebuilder. So that's the results for Q4. All right. Diana, thank you. Now, up next, why China could have a big advantage over the U.S. in a key part of the growing AI arms race.

We'll be right back. Welcome back to overtime in the race. for AI dominance, the U.S. still holds a commanding lead in software, but China might be closing the gap on AI hardware, from chips to factories to the final gadget in your hand. In this week's China lens, Eunice Yunus Yunn looks at how that country is trying to carve out its own edge in the AI race. Meta has sold millions of its AI glasses worldwide, but the Chinese have caught on. More than 70 Chinese companies are creating competitors, and in the race, with the U.S. in AI, China's expertise in hardware could be an advantage.

The advantage comes from the fundamental route that China is a nation of manufacturing. Today, the competition is on the software, the models, the agents, the applications. But soon, it will move to devices. And real-time translation is popular. Hi, I just arrived in China. Do you have any recommendations for restaurants? to go to Beijing, the day, the first-dun-can-day-one-time-threat-you-to-beckyton-koyah. Eyeware from companies like Inmo and Rokid sell overseas.

Xiaomi and Alibaba's are found only in China, embedded with the tech giant's own AI. This credit card-sized AI device is meant for the workplace. From as far as 26 feet away, a large boardroom... I'm a CNBC reporter, and I have a lot of questions. The Alibaba Ding Talk. A1 can record, transcribe, summarize, and analyze a meeting. When you still hear people outside China talking about what the future of an AI device might be, the market is full of AI devices here already.

This creates this kind of feedback loop again to make the AI's even better. Baby, you jumped really high. This contraption using Tencent and I FlyTech AI is built as turning Chinese parents into English-speaking foreigners, an AI foreigner. It can also help foreigners chat with locals. Oh, Eunice from Beijing, do you know, see Uptan-Durface? Wow. And Eunice, from the other side of the world, joins me now here on set. It's like you jump through a wormhole there.

How impressive are these devices, or is it something that a phone, a smartphone, could adopt and just as easily do? Well, it's a range. I mean, when I was testing out different products, some of them a little bit clunky. I mean, you saw the translator. It felt very cumbersome. People thought I was crazy when I was asking the questions on the street. But it was surprisingly quick in terms of trying to plug it in, set it up and then actually go out there. And that's true for, say, the ding talk as well. And then the other, the glasses, I mean, the translation was really, really quick. It's just that you're seeing, because there's so many AI devices and people are embracing. them and companies are embracing them with the backing and push of the government. Because of that, you just see so many more devices and so much more usage of them. You know, stay with me. I'm going to watch you to weigh in on this. So we've got some breaking news on NVIDIA. Amen Jabbers has the story. Amen? John, that's right. We've got a new social media post from the president on NVIDIA. The president's saying on social media just moments ago, I have informed President Xi of China

that the United States will allow NVIDIA to ship its H-200 product. to approved customers in China and other countries under conditions that allow for continued strong national security. President Xi responded positively, 25% will be paid to the United States of America, the president says. He goes on to say in a very lengthy post that this approach will also apply to AMD, Intel, and other American companies. So the president's suggesting here that the U.S. government is going to take 25% tax effectively, on chip sales to China from invidia in this category and then also he says he's going to apply that approach to other american companies so

maybe a cost of doing business here for invidia there's a lot of questions around this john of whether uh... china needs this category of chip the president says this deal will not apply to the blackwell and reuben categories uh... but it will apply to the h two hundreds john back over to you all right and thank you kind of an inverse tariff it's sounds like. Eunice, how is this likely to be received in China? Is it a sign that President Trump's

strategy is working, a sign that China's strategy is working? I think that the Chinese companies are going to be very pleased. But from my conversations with various tech companies that are using these chips, that there is a computing power disadvantage. So what they've been doing because of all the politics is there are a lot that want to use Nvidia chips, but they're also diversifying, and they're using Huawei chips, but there's friction between a lot of Chinese companies and Huawei. They don't want to be too dependent on Huawei either, so they're looking to diversify their tech stacks. And a lot of people that I speak to there say that because the government has been giving them a lot of breaks on energy, they've been able to very, you know, not very efficiently still use a lot of these Chinese chips. We'll see if this move will help American technology crowd out the Chinese technology. I guess that's the effort. Eunice, great to see you here. It's great to be here.

Well, Oracle shares have had a rocky ride recently, but the stock's still up more than 30% this year. Up next, Surat Sethi is going to tell us how he's trading Oracle ahead of earnings on Wednesday. Be right back. Welcome back to overtime. Let's take a look at this week's trading catalysts. On the earnings front, tomorrow we'll hear from AutoZone and Campbell's before. key AI check-ins with Oracle and Broadcom later in the week. Thursday, we'll get a read on the consumer with R.H., Costco, and Lulu Lemon reporting.

The week's data reports include Joltz reports, that's job openings and labor turnover survey for September and October, and of course, there's the big Fed rate decision as well. Joining me now is Sarat SETI's managing partner at DCLA and a CNBC contributor. Surat, Oracle, I mean, their quarter. at least the quarter itself, last quarter, wasn't the big thing. It was the pipeline. What, if anything, can they do this time around to rekindle interest, do you think? What are you doing with it?

I think, so what we did was when the stock jumped. We trimmed it a little bit, but we still like it. I think, John, Oracle's got to talk about the future and really not just the promises, but just the execution on it. And the two things I think that are going to be really important for us as investors. one is to understand what's the cash flow going to look like because right now it's negative cash flow so is that going to be what we're going to expect for two years and then also what are they going to do about the debt because i think the debt overhang on oracle

kind of reminds a lot of investors that hey this is reminiscent of just are we building without a future so i think addressing those two things are going to be really important because the stock's given back you know over 30 percent of what you know the pop it had last If you have a strong invidia position, can you add to it at this point or you just pat yourself on the back? I think you should wait because invidia is so tied in with Open AI, Oracle. I mean, we've talked about the circularity. Today you have the news that potentially they could be selling more to China.

Stocks done really well. You've got some competition on its heels of Google and other chip companies. I think you wait. You might get a better chance just with the overall market, but I wouldn't add to it at these levels. Does NVIDIA trade against Broadcom more these days, or are they all part of the same, both part of the same AI trade? Is Broadcom likely to do anything that affects NVIDIA, or does it tend to be the other way around? I think they all trade along the same way. I mean, it's all pushing towards, you know, the North Star.

And as demand increases, I think that's what you're looking for. The big fear here, John, is there going to be too much supply or do one of the hyperscalers cut back? And if that's going to happen, it's going to affect almost everybody. What about the consumer? We're going to get some high-end consumer sense from Costco. Yeah, you know, what's interesting is if you look at Walmart had really good numbers, that was good for the consumer. Target did not.

So what are we going to expect here from Costco? I think that's going to be really important. It's been a couple of weeks since we've had that data, and that's going to be really important going to, especially the Christmas season, as people expect, what is retail going to do? Do the wealthy continue to bail out the broader consumer situation? Yeah, you've got that K-scale economy going with the wealthier spending. They're spending on travel, leisure.

You look at Amex, you could look at Delta. You know, those stocks are all doing well in terms of airline. It's really the lower end, and you saw the consumer pulling back, especially kind of when you saw Chip Holti and a couple of the other. So I think there's going to be a key focus on that. It's going to be a key focus. One other thing on what the Fed's going to do, but that's just for short-term. rate. So I think we're going to be looking as to what the long-term does in that sense.

So all of that is interrelated as it ties into retail, it ties into tech, because we're always waiting to see kind of what the numbers look like over the next couple of days. Yeah, that's most people. All right. Surratt, thank you. Sarat, thank you. Thank you, John. Berkshire Hathaway, shaking up its leadership as Warren Buffett gets set to retire. Up next, Mike Santoli's coming back to take a closer look at the stock and whether it's officially lost the Buffett premium. Welcome back to overtime. Berkshire Hathaway shares falling more than 1% after announcing its long-time stock picker and investment manager Todd Combs is stepping down to join J.P. Morgan.

And it comes as Berkshires on track to lag the S&P in Warren Buffett's last year as CEO. Mike Santoli's back, taking a look at what that shakeup means for the stock from here. Mike? Yeah, John, well, at minimum it means that incoming CEO Greg Abel is kind of shuffling around his direct reports and actually sort of rationalizing some parts of the management structure. In terms of the stock, here's how it is performed, and this is over a two-year period, relative to what I would view as its chief component peer groups, which is high-quality equities and insurance.

Remember, more than half of the operating business is insurance, and that has struggled, flattened out a little bit this year. High quality, obviously, it's got a super strong balance sheet. Most of the operating businesses, while somewhat cyclical, are viewed as very defensive and somewhat stable. So it's kind of on par with how you might expect the stock to perform if you were not going to bestow any kind of magical investing powers on the ongoing leadership after Warren Buffett does step back as CEO. Now take a look at the valuation because I think the big part of how the stock has traded since May when Warren Buffett did announce that he would

be stepping back is that it was at an absolute all-time record high valuation of almost two times book value. It is now more of, I guess, routine, little more than one and a half times book value. That's more or less the average of the past five and ten years. So maybe you have a little bit less of a premium in there. I do think, though, that Todd Combs specifically leaving is not something that you should think about it being very different in terms of how it would otherwise perform. Because I don't think under Greg Abel, this is going to be as much about investing in public equities. It's going to be a little more of an operating type of model. Huh. So given the periods when the company has been more like that are people, our investors, the way they're

treating the stock valuation-wise, really embracing and accepting that, you think? I think that's what's been going on. I mean, a lot of people obviously own the stock because they simply wanted to participate in Warren Buffett's wisdom. There was a little bit, obviously, of a disciple type of an approach to it. But then also, its scale has been so huge, and its cash has just sat there for a long time. It's been considered this potential energy they could deploy somewhere, maybe in a crisis, but here it is now. It's $350 plus billion. They haven't done a whole lot with, and the market does not really want to give the company credit dollar for dollar for those cash holdings, even though it gives them tremendous amount of room to operate and

flexibility financially down the road. How much is the market depending on the tone of this Fed cut? The overall market is definitely dependent. They don't want to be seen as being really restrictive, but I think if they say, hey, we're getting toward neutral, market should end. anticipate that and probably be okay with unless we're looking for some excuse to back off for for for one reason or another yeah we'll see uh what the expectations are mike santoli thank you that's going to do it for overtime