Closing Bell - Closing Bell Overtime: Apple Notches First Record Close of 2025; AWS Outage & Busy Week of Earnings 10/20/25

Episode Date: October 20, 2025

Apple recorded its first record close of the year — Steve Kovach breaks down what’s behind the surge, and Mike Santoli explains its broader market impact. Scott Wren of Wells Fargo weighs in on whether Apple’s record is a bullish signal or a warning sign. Mackenzie Sigalos reports on the AWS outage and its ripple effects, while David George of Baird discusses what regional bank earnings are revealing plus reaction to Zions results. John Leer of Morning Consult assesses the “data desert” facing economists, and Barton Crockett of Rosenblatt previews what’s next for Apple and Netflix. Finally, Guy Adami of Fast Money looks ahead to key signals from gold, volatility, and earnings. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The last standard regulations, Samsara and First Student Reaming the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange, the Institute of International Finance, doing the honors at the NASDAQ. Markets jumping today. All the major averages finishing up more than 1%. The Russell, the big outperformer, Smallcaps 2000, Russell 2000, that's up nearly 2%. Hopes for a revolution to the government shutdown following comments from NEC director Kevin Hassett on Squackbox. Apple also kicking the rally into higher gear, loop capital, upgrading the stock to buy from hold. The stock hitting an all-time high today.

It's the first time we've seen Apple shares hit a record in 2025. The semi-conductor ETF, the SMH, also hitting a fresh all-time high on semi-KLA, AMD. Those are the biggest gainers. Only three of the funds, 25 components lower today. Gold jumping today after a pause in its rally on Friday. And I just mentioned Apple's first record close of the year. Well, this is the 49th record close for gold. The only S&P 500 sector is not rallying today

are those traditional safety names, utilities, staples, and the yield on the 10-year note just below 4% today. Well, that's the score card on Wall Street, but winter stay late. Welcome to closing down overtime. I'm John Ford alongside Morgan Brennan. And coming up, we're going to have much more on Apple's rally, but we're also waiting for results from Zion's Bank Corp.

Stock's been at the center of the regional bank drama, and we're going to see what it says about any potential bad debt on its books. And we are getting ready for the next big earnings. Netflix reporting right here in overtime tomorrow. That stock having its best day since April. But let's start with Apple's record high on the back of bullish analyst note. Steve Kovac joining with those details. Steve. Yeah, closing at an all-time high for the first time, John, since the day after Christmas last year. So look, we've got a surge of optimism when we woke up this morning from analysts and the financial press today. You had ever

core, adding Apple to its tactical outperform list, Luke Capital, saying, quote, iPhone 17 blows past all expectations. Financial Times. This is the best iPhone cycle since COVID and Bloomberg. iPhone 17 outselling the 16 by double-digit percentage points in China. Now, driving all this action, you have that base model of the iPhone 17 that's selling incredibly well over in China, in large part due to the subsidies from the Chinese government. We're also got early indications last week, last Friday. The iPhone Air is selling out in China. That just went on sale this past Friday after a delay of a few weeks. Now, the lead times for orders are generally longer for the iPhone than they were a year ago. That's good news. It shows demand is higher. And we're getting earnings

in just 10 days from today and Evercore in their notes saying guidance for the December quarter could surprise to the upside. And all of the shows, guys, new hardware designs and features are just better for customers. That's what attracts them more than AI and software. That's what people want from their new iPhones. Well, Steve, I've got, you know, chat GPT that app on my phone. I just wonder if the AI delay was such a big miss for Apple, which the market seemed to react to, why are people buying the iPhone 17? It's the design and the hardware changes. It's the, look, I have the iPhone air here. It's super thin. It's a different radical design than what we've seen over the last several years, iPhone, the pro models are also a different design, really good camera

features in extraordinary battery life. And like I said, even some of those pro features are now trickling down to that base model of the iPhone. There were some price increases, but not what we're expecting from tariffs. And then China, again, I keep talking about this, but just seeing that resurgence of growth in China, we saw hints of it a quarter ago. We're seeing it again here in the September quarter. We'll get more details on that soon. Of course, we have those subsidies in China helping. Yeah, big time. Talked about.

Steve Kovac, thank you. Thanks, guys. Well, today's gain pushing Apple back above Microsoft and into second place among market caps. That's behind Nvidia. So let's take a closer look at Apple's impact on the broader market. Mike Santoli is here, and he's going to weigh in. Mike.

Yeah, Morgan, obviously it's a plus in absolute terms to have Apple, making new highs, kind of catching up to some of the rest of the Mag 7. It's also a positive, I think. that the baton keeps getting passed from leaders to laggards within that mega-cap tech group just to kind of rebalance things. That being said, I don't think there are any particular predictive or bellwether properties that Apple manifests in general. Steve mentioned it was December 26th of last year when we made a new high the last time in Apple shares. Well, over the next two weeks, the S&P was down almost 4%. And it was more or less capped until the highs in February when we then fell apart.

But you go back to July of 2024. Similar thing, Apple had a really nice run. It kind of had a catch-up move to the S&P 500. It gets to a crest after an acceleration higher. And then it was sort of a local kind of short-term peak in the S&P entered a bit of a sideways face. So it's not to say that this is the kiss of death for the rally. It just doesn't necessarily translate into something carrying forward from here when it comes to Apple. All right, Mike.

I'm going to put something radical in front of you because I know we've talked. about as go NVIDIA, so goes the rest of the market. What if Apple is sort of the bellwether for the broadening out of the rest of the market? I mean, arguably, it could be the case. I see it as much more of the market kind of going after and retrieving some stocks that have been left behind. Obviously, there's specifics going on with Apple here, too. It's not just a trading chip. There are fundamentals. They've improved. You've had analysts have reasons to raise earnings estimates. So that's a good thing. I just don't think that we are in a market where it's either going to be a switch that gets flipped between the seven versus

the 493 or between, you know, tech and non-tech. It's kind of this evolving situation where, you know, the slinky walking up the stairs, you know, and sometimes all of it works, and sometimes it's just a few. So I don't know. I don't know that I would make any big declarations over the fact that, you know, Apple kind of joins the party, you know, almost 10 months into the year. All right. Mike, thank you. We'll see you again. soon. Now for more on Apple, let's bring in Wells Fargo Investment Institute senior global market strategist Scott Wren. Scott, welcome. I wonder if this level for Apple today could be a signal that AI sentiment has been overdone to the downside, those perceived as being left out of the AI story,

because A, none of Apple's competitors has eaten its lunch using AI, and, you know, people seem to be buying the features that Apple has short of the generative AI Apple intelligence that it promised. Yeah, you know, John, I think that, you know, Morgan brought up the broadening concept, and I think that's important here. It's, you know, the market's going to like, the overall market's going to like Apple hitting new highs. But, you know, let's face it, every time Apple has a product upgrade, and I'm certainly not an Apple expert, but every time they have an upgrade, you know, the market's worried about sales volumes and all this. But, you know, This latest iPhone seems to be really seeing a lot of demand.

And, you know, as an iPhone user, I can tell you that, you know, if you have the Google app, if you have the chat GPT app, I mean, you know, you're crossing paths with AI generated things every day. So for I think normal users, just your everyday users, which I, you know, I'm certainly just a regular user, you're getting a lot of AI when you use your iPhone. So I think for me, looking at the overall market, which is what my job is, I think this just helps broaden things. And it's just an overall sentiment for the rest of the market. And, you know, we're going to see good earnings from all these tech companies. We think as we move through the rest of the year, you know, the other 493, we're going to see broadening earnings,

broadening price participation as we move through 2026. So I think stock market looks pretty good in here. Is there, Scott, perhaps, another signal in here about geopolitical tensions in China? Apple potentially caught in the middle here. As a matter of fact, we've seen them caught in the middle sometimes when it comes to tariffs. It's certainly an American name that China could punish, but iPhones getting the subsidies. Apple continues to manufacture a lot of things, including a lot of iPhones in China, and it's doing relatively well there. And the fact that it's getting this bid and bad news hasn't crushed it, does that mean there's hope?

I think there is hope. And, you know, really, John, clearly in the near term here, especially if Trump and Xi meet, which, you know, they almost certainly are, you know, these trade issues are big and they were on the back burner for, you know, a few weeks or a month or two. But, you know, we saw in recent weeks just how quickly they can come to the front burner. And so I think that the market's going to have nice reactions, you know, whether you're looking at the soybean market, the stock market, when it seems. positive between China and the U.S. or at least less negative. And then, of course, you know, we're going to see some downside here if these conversations don't go well. So I think that overall, you can be hopeful that we're going to make some sort of progress here with China. At least we think so. But in the meantime, if we do see some downside, and I've told you guys this before, I mean, we've tried to be patient. We took advantage of the April pullback. We'd love to see another pullback in here. We thought it had happened by now. It hasn't. But, you know, we need to be ready to, and we want our clients to be ready to step in here because retail clients still

have a lot of cash in their accounts. They've been cautious. And a pullback is an opportunity. They're going to be nervous. But we're going to ask them to step in and buy stocks if we have the opportunity. So, Scott, in light of that, are stocks really the place to be deploying cash right now? What do you think of what we're seeing happen in fixed income with a 10-year treasury yield below 4%. What do you think about this rally we're seeing across the globe and commodities? Now, we don't have a lot of interest in Morgan and buying, you know, the 10-year treasury. We're underweight there. Don't think, you're going to see the yield on the 10-year much below 4% unless we're wrong about the economy. I mean, we think it's going to grow 2% this year,

2.4% next year. And, you know, some people out there, they're talking about a 3-and-a-quarter yield on the 10-year. I mean, I don't like can see that happening if something unexpectedly bad happens to the economy. So I think for us, the opportunity is we get a pullback, we pull some money out of bonds, and we put it towards stocks, probably midcaps and large caps. That's what we're overweight right now. You know, we continue to like financials, industrials. We like tech, utilities, you know, which had a bad day to day. But overall, we like the AI theme, and we're trying to play some tentacles from AI. And I think that, you know, investors need to be looking ahead through the end of next year at least and saying, hey, you know, modest growth,

inflation that's not likely to work its way much higher. Maybe it will a tick or two in the near term. That's a good environment for stocks. And so I think you've got to look for spots to buy here in cyclically oriented sectors that are going to benefit from a better economy and then also just that are at least somewhat AI-related. Okay. Scott Wrenn. Thank you.

With all the major averages finishing the day. up more than 1%. There's a good chance today that some website app or service that you tried to use today was down. That's following an outage from Amazon Web Services. McKenzie Sagalos joins us now with more on what exactly happened. Hi, Mac. Hey, Morgan. So more than 11 million users have now reported problems. And the count is still rising as this AWS outage drags on. Now, the trouble stems from Amazon's Northern Virginia region. That's its oldest and busiest cloud hub, still the default for countless apps and platforms. This is the same data center complex that Amazon has leaned on for years where many major platforms first set up shop. This hub has seen multiple

disruptions over the past five years. Now, AWS says it is making progress fixing the internal network failures that triggered all this, and we are starting to see service disruptions come back down. Cyber experts, also stressing this is not a hack, but it is another reminder of the risks that come with centralized cloud infrastructure. Despite growing pressure from Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, AWS still controls more than a third of the global market. Investor sentiment was already shaky heading into earnings with AWS battling margin compression and a backlog trailing Microsoft and Oracle.

This outage does not help. The question now is, does Amazon raise its $118 billion annual CAPEX commitment next week to bulk up its data centers, expand compute, and potentially chase more AI demand? Guys? Matt, I wonder, there's an agentic AI challenge here, it seems to me, right? Because we're talking about AI all the time. That is sitting on top of the cloud. If this were five, ten years in the future, if you don't have people to enter the phones

because the agents are doing it for you or analyze your sales or crunch your numbers, does a cloud outage become a work stoppage for companies? I mean, it seems like the stakes are only getting higher for the economy as we rely more and more on these resources. I mean, today laid bare the fact that perplexity doesn't have a robust enough multi-cloud strategy. I'm about to anthropic to hear whether they've suffered disruption, but we haven't seen reports of that, and that's because they rely on a mix of cloud providers, not just

Amazon, but Google Cloud. We also saw OpenAI diversify away from just working with Microsoft Azure, their Google Cloud customer as well, to prevent exactly this, John. You can't have reliance on one single provider anymore. So in light of that, Mac, who are the potential winners, if there are some coming off of this event? I mean, think about Oracle's Investor Day last week. Their backlog number, I'm looking at a chart of this, it's up to $455 billion. Azure is $368 billion.

You know where Amazon is, it's shy of $200 billion. And that's a big concern here. Yes, they are still the firm leader in the Cloud Wars, but their growth numbers year-over-year are coming down. We're seeing those compressed margins. And then backlog, which is the best indicator of future revenue, is not, looking all that promising, and an event like this doesn't help their optics problem. All right, McKenzie Segalos, thank you.

Of course, Matt Garman over at AWS would say, did say to us back in August, that they're more focused on making sure that they are future-proofing their cloud plan, not necessarily spending as quickly as some competitors. Well, we'll see if that changes now. Coming up, Zion's Bank Corp results just came out. We're going to take a look at what we should be listening for on the company. conference call coming up. And we will get you ready for the rest of this week's earnings. It is a busy week for earnings. Other big names you should have your eye on. We're going to break

it down. Overtime's back in two. Welcome back to overtime. Zions are out. The stocks pop in about three percent after being four and a half higher in the regular session. Hugh's son has the numbers. Hugh. Hey, John. Yeah, that's right. So Zion's out with EPS of $1.48 per share, and it's unclear to us how that compares with the $1.41 estimate. Revenue coming in at $861 million, which is a beat versus the $843.1 million estimate. Net chargeoffs were $56 million, most of which were tied to that $50 million charge off that was disclosed last week tied to the Cantor Group. And apart from that loss, CEO Harris Simmons saying that charge us were, quote, very benign at just $6 million. We are all looking forward to the conference call at 530 to hear more about this, guys. And as you said, it looks like the stock is catching a little bit of a bid right now.

All right. Hughes on. Thank you. Shares up two and a half, almost 3%. Joining us now for more is David George, senior research analyst at Baird. He upgraded the stock to outperform last week, saying the selling was overdone. So, David, I'm curious what you think now, the fact that we have a little pop in shares because perhaps the worst is behind us?

We'll see. Morgan, good afternoon. We, as you know, I think we're on the show Friday, but Zion's reported what we think, the numbers are obviously coming up, but it looks very good. They beat on revenue, as you mentioned a moment ago. Despite all of the panic that we saw in your network and others on Friday, where a billion dollars of market cap was taken out of this company, and despite this $50 million fraud, they made over $220 million over the last three months. So from our perspective, the quarter looks good, so far so good. And they beat on all relevant metrics. And the core business continues to perform well. So are happy that there was such a great panic opportunity late last week. So in light of that, what are you going to be

watching most closely on this call? In addition to just kind of taking a look at a general business moment, which continues to be pretty good. To any detail, Morgan, that we can get on the credit situation and kind of the plans as we go forward. But other than that, I think just kind of more of the same, get a sense as to what are the pre-provision earnings growth drivers of the company going forward and how are they performing? Fundamentally, they had, I think, 3% loan growth in the quarter, which is encouraging. Their credit metrics excluding this loss, I think it was $4 million loss. And this is a company, as we said last week, in our upgrade, they've only lost 12 basis points a year over the last 10 years. So, Zion has an

impeccable credit track record, and that definitely came through as we look at these numbers this afternoon. David, I wonder what you think the legacy of this moment is going to be in the near term for how investors value regional banks. I mean, it reminds me of the deep seek moment for AI. What was that? Last year, the year before, hard to remember. This seems like one of those moments that perhaps is going to shift the types of questions that investors might ask and the way bank risks get weighed? Actually, I would say no. I'm not a semi-analyst, so I'm probably not qualified to talk about deep seek, but I think how market participants think about banks can change on a day-to-day or a week-to-week basis. But from our perspective, it really doesn't change it at all.

I think market participants oftentimes like to try and fight the last war. And the 2023 episode relative to what we saw last week is really has no comparison or fundamental basis to be considered in the same light at all. So again, the stock prices are a function of how people feel. And again, that $50 million loss, it's important to have that context to understand that we lost a billion dollars over a $50 million fraud law. Zions earns a billion three in pre-provision earnings. So that $50 million is just two weeks of PPNR for Zion. So again, it's more just continuing to take advantage of market psychology when sentiment gets to one side. And I think that was the case here.

I think that's the lesson. Okay. Well, investors clearing clearly feeling a little better about Zions here in overtime with stock up almost 4%. David George, thank you. And that conference call from Zions kicks off 5.30 p.m. Eastern time. Well, coming up, Apple soaring to an all-time high. An analyst gets bullish on the name. We're going to talk to Barton Crockett, who still rates the stock a whole.

What would have to happen for him to boost that rating? And as we head to break, check out shares of Cleveland Cliffs soaring today. After saying tariffs on steel from foreign rivals helped steal new deals with auto companies. The company also saying it's exploring getting into the now very hot, rare earth space. You can see those shares finished up 21 and a half percent today. Welcome back to overtime. Stocks higher across the board. The Dow up more than 500 points today.

The NASDAQ up nearly 1.5%, a nearly 2% gain for the Russell. Apple, a big gainer, after a bullish analyst note, that stock hitting an all-time high, first record of the year. And though chip stocks rose to the biggest not participating, Nvidia and Broadcom, both with small losses. Now, time for a CNBC News update with Kate Rogers. Kate. John, a federal appeals court this afternoon ruled the White House can deploy members of the Oregon National Guard to Portland while the case plays out in court. Despite opposition from city and state leaders who sued the divided three-judge panel put on hold for now a lower court ruling that had blocked the deployment. Lawyers for former FBI director James Comey just filed several motions seeking to have the two-count indictment against him dismissed. Comey's attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald, wants the case dismissed on ground that it's a vindictive and unlawful prosecution by the Trump administration.

The judge has set November 19th hearing date on those motions. And Florida's Republican Attorney General says his office is issuing criminal subpoenas to Roblox. He accused the popular video gaming platform of being a breeding ground for predators. The subpoenas follow, will allow, rather, prosecutors to gather more information about alleged criminal activity on Roblox, which has long-faced questions over the safety of kids who use the platform. Morgan, back over to you. All right, Kate Rogers, thank you. Day 20 of the government shut down and already some important government economic reports

have been delayed or not released at all. With our eyes on the employment report, we are looking for alternative ways to gauge the health of the U.S. labor market. That's coming up next on overtime. Welcome back. Day 20 of government shutdown has been investors have missed out on some key government data in October, like the Jobs Report and PPI, as you can see right there. We're expecting CPI data, though, this Friday. That was rescheduled from last Wednesday. And the Jobs Report is due on November 7th. Here on overtime, we're trying to help fill that void by bringing you alternative forms of data. So today is our latest installment with a closer look at the labor market and jobs. Joining us now is John Lear, Chief Economist at Morning Consults. This is a firm that specializes an online survey research.

And John, it's great to have you on high-frequency data. What is it showing you? How do you gather it, and what is it showing you? Yeah, what it's showing is a labor market that has consistently weakened over the last four weeks. I don't think it's falling off a cliff, but we're certainly in a weaker spot than we were prior to the last jobs report. And I think the more concerning part is that we're seeing some weaknesses in segments of the population. segments of the population, particularly higher income segments, that have driven so much spending for all the companies that you showed earlier who are reporting earnings. Interesting. So why the breakdown there? I think you just mentioned higher income. I guess

what is that reflecting about the state of the economy and where the jobs are or aren't? I think it's reflecting slow but steady pass-through of uncertainty from tariffs and tariff policy into hiring. It's starting to reflect some of the substitution of capital, of labor for capital, as AI is starting to replace some workers. And I think we're also coming out of a period, right, where we had robust jobs growth, record low unemployment. And so all those factors together are contributing to this weaker situation. Again, I don't think that we're falling off the cliff, but it is important as we're trying to calibrate really important policy like interest rates to acknowledge that we're in a weaker spot now than we were a few weeks ago

and certainly weaker than we were when we last got an official data release. John, big picture, we tended to, or at least we used to, view government data as the truth. But given the size of some of these labor market revisions that we've seen lately and the challenges that the government's having in collecting accurate data by phone, do you think that changes from here even after the shutdown? and how are you feeling about the methods that you have for online collection and the way you apply models to that to extract truth versus the traditional methods? I think government data remains sort of the gold standard for government,

but look, government data was never adequate for corporate decision makers, for policy makers, or for investors, and that hasn't been the case for decades. So, I mean, really with COVID, we saw this rapid acceleration of an adoption of alternative alternative data sources that were higher frequency, allowing folks to do more deeper market segmentation. And I think the most recent government shutdown has really just sort of exacerbated that secular trend. So what are you seeing in demand then for your alternative data?

And also, what are these AI resources, the infrastructure, the tools that allow for different types of analysis and parsing going to do for the future of alternative data? The demand for alternative data has skyrocketed. Now, a lot of that comes from our use by the Chicago Fed and their real-time labor market indicators. So they're drawing on a lot of our proprietary unemployment data, job search activity data. And that has just, I think we've seen 150% increase over the last two months in demand for those data sets relative to the prior year. So really kind of an unprecedented surge in demand for labor data.

I can tell you anecdotally that that is true not only for investments, but also for corporations and CFOs who are trying to understand, what is the employment situation of my customers. I think AI will be transformative, obviously. Not only, you know, as you start putting AI on top of these models, you're going to start to see more and more unique insights being extracted, but it is worth noting, right, that the most advanced AI models right now tend to be limited

to large language models, language being the operative word there. And so, but as AI develops, you're going to see more and more empirical work, empirical work and we are certainly focused on that morning console and developing language models that can parse through our data and extract novel insights. Okay. In the meantime, how's immigration filtering through your data? Because it certainly has added to some of the noise we've seen in some of these reports over the last, I don't know, call it six, nine months.

I think immigration is a mixed bag in terms of its impact on economic activity. I mean, what we clearly see, and I've had a number of CFOs call me to say that they see weaker economic activity out of some of their stores in the southwest trying to understand what's going on. They know that that that weakness is concentrated among Hispanic workers who, or Hispanic consumers, I should say, who are maybe afraid to go out and make those in-store purchases. So there's clearly a demand impact. And then I think we will, you know, yet to see the full impact on the supply side to figure out whether or not, you know, the supply of workers, again, continues to drive prices and wages higher.

All right. John Lear for Morning Consult, thank you. Apple closing at record highs after strong iPhone 17 sales in the U.S. and in China. But can that momentum continue for the stock? And Netflix set to report earnings after the bell tomorrow, but what other name should be on your radar? We're going to get you up up to speed for tomorrow's trade. We'll come right back. Welcome back. Shares of Archer Aviation rising today as the company makes a deal with Korean Air to bring Evital aircraft to Korea.

Korean Air will buy 100 of Archer's midnight models. Archer's fellow Evital rival Joby Aviation also getting a boost from this news. But, John, the Evital revolution seems to be upon us in terms of these plans being made and being rolled out to different countries. One to watch. flying EVs. Yeah, flying taxis. Yes, exactly. Well, another stock moving higher is Apple, posted a record close after a new report showed strong iPhone sales in the U.S. and China. Stock, though, is still lagging behind some MagS. 7 names like Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta.

Joining us now is Barton Crockett from Rosenblatt Securities. Barton, welcome. So from the September event, that awe-dropping event when it was trading at 226, now it's a 262. So a kind of nice switch there. You're still neutral on it. But is Apple addressing enough of what the consumer wants that maybe this AI delay doesn't matter as much as the naysayers thought? You know, it's hard for me to get to a place where I'm going to argue that Apple is going

to be growing earnings per share sustainably in the 20 to 30 percent kind of range that would really be supportive of the 30 plus, you know, nearly mid-30. kind of PE it trades out right now. So it's a great company. It's not going anywhere. You can put a premium multiple relative to growth. But, you know, I think we're kind of at the high end of past ranges. And I don't think the growth trajectory has kind of changed so much that you need to chase it here. What does it say about either the strength of Apple's ecosystem or the relative weakness, perhaps, of the AI features of its rivals that others haven't been able to take advantage of Apple's Apple intelligence fumble and make it hurt here?

You know, it's a really interesting question. I mean, obviously, you know, the Android, Google kind of universe are, you know, marketing their AI features front and center, and yet the share isn't really switching. I think that the consumer is still learning about AI and they're able to get a lot of the features that they're interested in through the apps. It doesn't have to be built into the phone. You know, so for now, consumers are buying based on the camera, based on the battery, and Apple's doing really well with that, particularly in their latest kind of version of the phone. I think the question is, you know, in the future. And, you know, I think if you look at the product roadmap for some of the new devices they're considering and, you know, what's going to happen with the smartphone category, their AI kind of, you know, stumble is going to weigh, you know, a loom larger. unless they're able to figure this out. And, you know, some of what we're seeing in terms of their inability to kind of hired staff

competitively raises some questions we think longer term. So Barton, if I shift gears here, what are you going to be watching for when Netflix reports earnings this time tomorrow? So Netflix has had one of the most amazing content quarters, really, in its history. You know, by one measure, if we just look at views for content that's been ranked top 10 by Netflix's own kind of measure, you know, the views are up. for that content over 20% year every year, that's better growth than they had even in the fourth quarter, which was an explosive upside quarter for them. So, you know, we're looking for evidence

that they've got a lot of consumer traction. That evidence will be harder to see, though, than it was in the fourth quarter because they're not giving a subs anymore. But I think on balance, you know, good traction with content and consumers argues for, you know, a beat and raise period where they could do better than the guide and they can, you know, guide the street up for the next quarter. That darn K-pop demon hunters. It's on in every person's house that has kids, I swear. Yeah, and a popular costume, I think, is Halloween as well. Yes, that's right.

Okay, so in light of that, do you buy, do you buy the company, you buy the stock here ahead of earnings or coming out of earnings? Yeah, I think you can own Netflix here. I think their execution is tremendous. And I think the quarter setup is great. It's historically great. So I think it makes a lot of sense to own Netflix here. For a while, Barton, the positive narrative on Netflix was international growth.

For a while, people were looking at maybe gaming or, you know, things like that. That doesn't seem to be panning out in any significant way. What is Netflix doing that its media would-be competitors are failing to do? What's the strongest bull case on Netflix versus the pack right now? Well, I think that the strongest bull case is that they're taking magnitudes more shots on goal than everyone else, and they're landing a high percentage of them. So what that says is that scale matters, and they're able to spend more because they're able to scale it better.

And that data and execution matter, and they're doing both of those things really well, partly because of their scale. So this does seem to be trending towards one of the early bull cases, which is that getting biggest, fastest would give you a sustainable advantage. And Netflix is exhibiting that right now. All right. Barton Crockett. Thank you.

Great. Thank you. Well, gold soaring today as its rally continues near $4,400 an ounce. Up next, Fast Money Trader Guy Dami on how to trade it and more. Overtimes back right after this. Welcome back to overtime. Let's get you ready for tomorrow's trade today. We were just talking Netflix.

It's the major earnings report investors are waiting for, but there's more in the morning, 3M, Coca-Cola, and Defense names Northrop Grumman, R-Tex, and Lockheed Martin. Right here on overtime, we're expecting reports from Texas Instruments, Mattel, and Chuck. Well, gold jumping today after a pause in its rally on Friday, it's surging on the year. It's up 66%. Should investors trust this rally? let's bring in fast money trader and cnbc contributor guy adami guy let me say let me just say something so in the aftermath of a giant defeat yesterday which was historic oh my gosh i was i was i took some solace in the fact that i knew that brian sullivan was hosting the show

coming up in approximately 11 minutes and 45 seconds number one and two that i'd be on with you and john for talking about gold something near and dear to my heart all right so let's talk about it, because I'm starting to see the B word pop up where gold is concerned, bubble. And I was reading this stat. Gold and silver have attracted a record $34.2 billion in inflows over the past 10 weeks. The largest surge ever recorded. Can it continue? Yes, in a word, it can. You know why? Because it's not just a retail trade. It's not just people pouring into the ETFs. This has been going on now in slow motion for the last

four and a half, almost five years. It's central bank buying that has been going on at a record pace. They've been buying 1,000 to 1100 tons each year for the last four years, which doubled the previous decade's purchases at a price, which is twice the previous decade's price, if not higher. Central banks, Morgan and John, have been hedging their own ineptitude, and they're doing it in historic fashion. So despite the fact that RSIs are pinned on the upside and, you know, you're looking at standard deviations away from the 50 and the 200-day moving average in terms of the price of gold, the story is absolutely. intact. All right. De-dollarization, debasement, all the words with the start with D. Let's talk about

volatility. Because the volatility index, the VIX, was a touch above 18 today. That's after jumping to a high above 28 on Friday. So basically we've seen a collapse from Friday to Monday. Should investors trust this move, especially since, typically in October, we see a peak in volatility. Let's talk another D word, dangerous. What happened last week to get volatility to spike? It wasn't a market sell-off. I mean, we've seen sellers of that. magnitude before, and the VIX barely budges. But to your point, we saw VIX, which has been a teenager for quite some time, spike up somewhere between 25 and 27 on, again, what was a bit of an innocuous move. And I think there's leverage in the system that the volatility index is

trying to sniff out. Yes, we're back down, but I don't think bouts with volatility for the remainder of the year are over by any stretch of the imagination. Guy, let me go back to gold for a second, because people need to know. Please. People need to know. How much? How much of your portfolios in gold? Me personally? Yeah, personally. Well, you know, you're going to be shocked to hear this, and I like that question. In a prior life, I used to trade gold, and each Christmas, we would buy gold bars.

So stashed somewhere in my house, I won't tell you where are these, you know, one ounce, 10 ounce bars all over the place. So I can't speak to what percentage of my portfolio that is. But I absolutely have gold bars. Yes, and I've had them since the late 19. 1980s. So every once in a while I pull them out just to look at them. Wow. That's all. But you know what? On a serious note, there are people now a lot smarter than I, which is not a high bar that say you should have, you know, 10 to 15 percent of your portfolio should be in precious metals. And again, gold is trying to sniff something out about the broader market and about some of the, I don't know, scary things out there on the central bank front. But not only that, on the global bond market front and the global currency front as well.

Sounds like 10 to 15 percent of your home's physical value is in gold. You know, you should come over, John, come over, and we'll sort of find the fun places. Yeah. And look, can you come over here, please? That's a silver bar. This is from Brian Sullivan, by the way, see that? That's a silver bar to hide with your gold bar. Yeah, that's actually a three musketeer bar.

I was going to say, that looks like Halloween candy to me. Yeah. Well, I'm sorry to do this to you. I totally, I kill your show. I know this. I apologize. No, this is. Oh, Tim Seymour just walked over.

Bring them in. Bring them in. And Dan Nathan is here. Come over here a second, Tim. Here, we'll do. He's not miced up. We can't hear you, so hold on, look. Okay.

There's Tim. And look, look who's coming now. Dan, Nathan. It's where everybody knows your name. Where's Norm? Nice to see you. Yeah, well, it's all happening. Look at this.

It's an all-star cast here. All right, so let's crowd source this one. Busy week for earnings. I think we got something like 90 S&P 500 companies reporting. What do you think is going to matter the most here? Well, you know, Netflix, obviously, everybody looks at. I don't think that's market moving. To me, you know, the sell off recently in Texas Instruments, not training as well as their peers,

That, to me, will be interesting. And at the end of the week, you have some of the staple names as well. So Procter & Gamble on Friday, does that sort of tell the tale? I think the tail that it will tell, though, are they able to pass on cost to the consumers? And I think the answer is a resounding no. Okay. Guy Adami, thank you. Enjoy that Three Musketeers Bar. I'm a Snickers girl myself.

I think three Musketeers by the coming up now, fast money. Look at that. Underrated candy. By the way, Miles is here, too. Miles does a great job. Miles Ross. And he is just, he's throwing in the towel. All right.

We're looking forward to it. Seven minutes. Fast money. 5 p.m. Eastern. Guy Adami. Then a party at Guy's house. No, but coming up next, retail traders and high frequency funds playing a bigger role in the market than ever before. So what does that mean for the quality of this bull market?

Mike Santoli's going to give his take. And don't forget, you can catch us on the go by following the closing bell overtime podcast on your favorite podcast app. We'll be right back. Welcome back to overtime. Markets are moving fast, and so are the traders behind them. That surge in retail activity, algorithmic trading, and leverage is creating a high-velocity environment that favors speed and risk. So what does that say about the character of this rally? Markets commentator, Mike Santoli, is back, Mike.

Yeah, John, let's start with the leverage that is building up within equities. This is the 12-month change in margin. borrowing relative to the 12-month change in the S&P 500. So essentially, when this is above zero, borrowing against stock balances is growing faster than the value of stocks themselves, so investors are becoming more leverage. B of A tracks this. You see, it's not too far below where we got at the peak of the last cycle in 2021, although in broader, longer term terms here, nothing like what we saw back in 1999, of course, and this is 2007. That was probably because 12-month leverage was up, but then the stock market started to go down to that number spike.

In other words, it's building up, but it's not as if investors are really kind of out on the edge of the risk spectrum just yet. Now, take a look at the source of trading volume and how much it's changed over 15 years. BlackRock put this out today. Retail trading in 2010, this is just retail traders. The source of the volume is up from 10% of daily activity to over 20% right now. And then high-frequency funds, these are various quant funds, quasi-market makers, sort of these high-velocity strategies from 1.5% up to 11.5%. Now, these are not additive. They interact with one another, so there's some double counting. But the net effect is shorter-term time horizons are kind of now being more manifest in terms of the marginal

activity in the market every day, especially when you consider that longer-term money is increasingly in indexes, so therefore not actively picking securities, it shows you that it's a lot of churn in the near term. It doesn't mean that the market's kind of artificial or it's vulnerable or it's kind of gotten to a crazy point, but it just does show you that sometimes you can overshoot in the short term and very short term time horizons are privileged here. Mike, back to that first chart. It occurs to me that in retrospect, the 2021 tech-driven surge in the market was based on an iffy premise. that the shift to digital commerce and processes during the pandemic would like entirely stick and

it didn't. But if this AI thing turns out to have legs, this pop might not be so much compared to what happened, say, in the late 90s. No, fair enough. And also, by the way, what happened at the end of 2021 was we had a runaway inflation issue and the Fed was immediately going to slam on the brakes and entered a, you know, two-year tightening campaign. So that's even outside. of the market's assessment of the underlying technological trend and how, you know, how believable it was. So there's no, there's nothing says that this has to, you know, necessarily end in a bad way. Also, by the way, you know, the market could just kind of go flat for a little while. Borrowings can come off a bit in terms of the year-over-year change, and this chart doesn't look that

dramatic. All right. Mike Santoli. Thank you. I'm keeping an eye. In addition to all the earnings, yes, we got some tech earnings this week. We got a lot of consumer earnings this week as well. GM tomorrow morning before the bell, 3M, a lot of aerospace and defense names too. But I'm keeping an eye on Bitcoin because as Matt Maly over at Miller-Tabak put it in his note this morning, it's a good indicator of net liquidity in the system. So you want to see whether this bounce back from the recent Swoom has some legs here,

and at least today it seemed to. Yeah, we also get IBM this week, which is an interesting name because of its kind of multi-cloud positioning. So we'll be watching that. We've been talking a lot today about Netflix. So that as well. And then, you know, service now as well. They tend to come out, this time not the same day as IBM, but around the same time. All right.

Lots to watch here on what's going to be a busy week. That does it for us at overtime. Best money starts now.