Closing Bell - Closing Bell Overtime: Bitcoin nears $100K; Martin Marietta CEO On Infrastructure Under Trump 11/22/24

Episode Date: November 22, 2024

Bitcoin traded above $99,800, closing in on the key $100,000 level. Michael Bressler and Benoit Bosc, x2B co-founders, talk what’s driving the crypto right now and just how much higher the price can go. They also talk their new business as traditional-finance-workers-turned-bitcoin-advisors. Ward Nye, Martin Marietta CEO on what infrastructure spending will look like under Trump 2.0. Plus, Jason Trennert, Strategas Chairman, on the macro picture right now.

Black Bell marks the end of regulation. Barrick ringing the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange, Liberty Media and Formula One doing the honors at the Nasdaq. A Dow record close and a mostly positive finish to the week with the major averages all advancing more than 1% since Monday's open and the Russell 2000 climbing more than 4%. That's the scorecard on Wall Street, but winners stay late. Welcome to Closing Bell Overtime. I'm John Fort with Morgan Brennan. Well, coming up this hour, Bitcoin's relentless march higher. The cryptocurrency is just shy of $100,000. After a furious rally since the election, we will talk about what's next for crypto investors and just how high Bitcoin could climb. Plus, Strategas CEO Jason Trenner is going to be with us to help you get set up for next week's trade.

And the CEO of building materials firm Martin Marietta joins us to talk about the outlook for infrastructure under the second Trump administration. But we begin with breaking news from the Fed. Steve Leisman has the details. Hi, Steve. Hey, Morgan. Thanks very much. The Federal Reserve out with its financial stability report, something that is used twice a year to take a look at risks and areas that are doing OK in the financial system. And we do have a mixed bag here. They note that valuation pressures across a range of markets are elevated. They single out the price to earnings ratio of stocks towards the higher end of historical ranges and a series of other asset values that are towards the high end. Liquidity is low, they say, across many financial markets, which contributes to volatility as well. But business and household debt are moderate and are trending down, in fact, as a percent of GDP.

However, delinquency on credit cards and auto loans are above pre-pandemic levels, the report says. Business leverage is also elevated, while business debt service, or their ability to pay that debt, remains stable. Private credit, which we've been talking a lot about, has been growing rapidly, and officials say it doesn't look like a big area of concern now, but it's something worth watching. Banking sector overall, they say, is sound and resilient, with capital levels well above regulatory requirements, with some concern about commercial real estate holdings and wholesale fundings. Hedge fund leverage, however, at or near the highest level of the past decade. And in a

separate related survey done by the New York Fed that's included in this report, they asked a bunch of academic experts and other folks about what the risks are, and they found that fiscal debt sustainability is a top risk to the U.S. economy. So, John, something worth watching and some areas of concern and areas that are less an area of concern. John? All right. Steve Leisman, thanks for bringing that to us. Now let's get to the market action with Charlie Bobrinskoy of Ariel Investments and Ryan Dietrich of Carson Group. Welcome, guys. Charlie, as the Fed also points out, you say the S&P is moderately expensive here, but we're at the end of a week where I'd argue the AI trade, the AR argument held up with Microsoft Ignite arguing for more demand from

software, NVIDIA earnings coming in at or a little above expectations. Then we got the consumer taking over the narrative over the next few days with Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Couldn't sunny days justify these valuations? Sure, the sun is shining, but the question is, is how brightly and is that overly reflected in certain stocks? I mean, you know what I'm going to say. The names in the S&P 500, the Magnificent Seven, I think at this point are pretty clearly overvalued, although there's obviously lots of positives going on. But the good news is that the rest of the market, and small cap value in particular, is very reasonably priced at 13 to 14 times earnings. So we do have a bifurcated market, and we're seeing some rotation.

This week, we had the 2,500 value index and the 2,000 value index outperform the S&P. So we're getting some things to come back. But I do at this point think it's hard to justify the valuations of some of these AI names. OK. Well, Ryan, you're neutral technology as well. But once we get past the mega caps, I can't help but watch. I've been watching some significant moves. AppLovin is up about 3x in three months. Bill up 80%. Twilio 75. Atlassian 65.

C3 50%. Some of those smaller software names that have been getting beat up over time seem to have caught a bit of a bid as part of this broadening as well. All tech's not the same. No, that's right. And not all days are the same. It's Friday. So happy Friday, everybody. You think about it. I agree. I agree with Charlie there. I mean, we've come off going for a while since we're neutral tech because those big names are a little on the pricey side. Yes, that's where the earnings growth is coming from. But just look at today. It's a microcosm for what's been happening. Financials, I mean, banks like at all-time highs today. Industrials led. Small caps, mid-caps, right? That theme of broadening out continues. Is it because of the election? I'm not so sure, right? Before, I mean, I know the election was a reason lately, but right up to

the election year to date, financials was like the second strongest group. So this is nothing really new. This is accelerating those trends that we've been seeing. And I'll tell you this, though, you look at tech, yes, I mean, there are some clear opportunities out there, John, like you said, on the smaller end, the smaller cap. And those are some of the table on mid cap stocks, which we don't really talk about very much at CNBC. And maybe we should. So I want to get your thoughts on that area of the market, too, especially as we do continue to see this rotation into up until more recently unloved areas. Like we talked about Russell 2000 and small caps just a moment ago, but also equal weighted S&P. The fact that you have industrials and financials and some of these cyclical sectors continuing to outperform. Yeah, there's a lot of that truth in mid caps. Everything I said about small cap would probably be true of the mid cap space, just not quite so much. So the mid cap, the Russell mid cap value index is a little more expensive than the small cap index. But what is positive for mid caps is

there are a lot of great target M&A target names in that space, particularly banks. There's some regional banks that are in the mid cap space that in a new regulatory environment and in a Trump administration probably trade better. And frankly, the yield curve is very good for mid cap banks. Mid cap banks tend to borrow short, lend long. And so when we get a positively sloped yield curve, those mid-cap banks do very well. So I would support the idea that mid-cap is attractive, but small-cap value is really attractive. And Ryan, I mean, seasonally strong time of the year. We've talked about it with you before, post-presidential election, going into the

holiday season here. How much of this is just what you would textbook see at this time of the year, given the events we've had in recent weeks? And how much of this is really, truly unleashing of animal spirits and FOMO and TINA and exceptionalism and all the other terms I'm seeing bandied about? All those things. I mean, listen, I think it's just normal, right? After elections, we saw the VIX spike, we saw the put by and we saw the hedging, the uncertainty election out of the way and you get the upward bias. Now, here's what's interesting. We know November has been higher 10 to the last 12 years. And here we are another November really strong around Thanksgiving. So next week, that's a really strong week around holidays. Not really a big surprise,

but when you're up a lot for the year, like 17.5% for the year going into November, like we were obviously right now. The last two months, okay, have been higher 14 out of 14 times of almost 6% on average. Okay, last I checked, we're not up 6% this month yet. We still think here, Morgan, that there is more juice kind of to this. And why is it? I talk to a lot of people. A lot of people manage a lot of money. Come on, your network managed a lot of money.

The honest truth, a lot of people have still missed this rally. A lot of people have been underweight, you know, stocks relative to bonds, all that stuff. You can call it a chase. You can call it what you want. The reality, a lot of people are caught off sides, and they're still coming into this market, even at all-time highs. Well, we'll continue to monitor all of it. Charlie Babrinskoy and Ryan Dietrich, thanks for kicking off the hour with us as we did get a new record close for the Dow.

Well, let's turn to Senior Markets Commentator Mike Santoli for a look at the rampant bullishness in this market as all the major averages, Mike, did close higher on the week. Yeah, for sure, Morgan, and especially in certain parts of this market. You guys were hitting on it. Really, some areas that are just a little bit riskier, a little bit faster moving, have really gotten the benefit of the recent push higher.

Here is this ETF for the completion index. It's everything in the market outside the S&P 500. I like to monitor as a risk appetite indicator because it's not just small and mid-caps. It's also large stocks that don't yet qualify for the S&P, and sometimes there's a lot of momentum names in there. So you see that making a new high, the VXF. It's kind of a flight from quality in a sense

because the quality ETF down there, big outperformer most of this year, has been lagging in this last little stretch. So that just sort of mirrors a lot of what we're seeing. It proceeds down from crypto into those software names and others that John was talking about just a minute ago. Now, here's another way to gauge the aggressiveness of mostly retail investors at this point. This is the ratio of assets in leveraged long ETFs, those that own stocks with leverage and leveraged short ETFs, which give you more than the downside

of a given index or sector. You see basically record high ratio. We can go back to early 2021 to see it a bit higher. This is from Sentiment Trader. So they kind of track all of these related ETFs. Now, part of this is the market's up a lot and therefore the assets are going to be higher. But as a potential sentiment indicator, keep it in mind that previous peak was not an ultimate market top, but it was a little bit of a climax in that part of the the aggressive growth market. Morgan, you know, Wednesday after the election, November 6th, you came on the show. You showed some charts, as you always do, Mike. And you said there's a lot of money from retail investors and traders that's sitting

on the sidelines. It's going to come into the market now. Is that what this chart is basically signaling? It's one of the things it's indicating. And I don't even think it's about like, oh, there's this big pile of cash. Now it has to come in. It's honestly just it's the willingness to accept risk and to chase. And there is obviously a self-fulfilling aspect of this in the short term. Now, these are really aggressive instruments. If you think you want to bet heavily on an ETF that's going to give you double or triple whatever a given index does in a day, you can kind of get whipsawed pretty quickly out of that trade. But for now, it's been working and people are just sort of willing to believe both because of the positive fundamental backdrop.

And then we get past the election and then you can sort of tell whatever story you like about what this next phase is going to be before we actually have the reality of the policy in place. All right. The YOLO market. Mike Santoli. See you a little bit later this hour. Yeah. After the break, a pair of Wall Street veterans who just teamed up to start a crypto advisory firm join us to talk about how long this crypto rally can last as Bitcoin knocks on the door of 100K. Plus, Stratega CEO Jason Trenner, who's been rumored to be a potential part of the future Trump administration, is going to join us with his outlook for stocks in the Trump economy as the Dow sets another record close. Overtime's back at two. Welcome back. The Bitcoin rocket ship keeps climbing. Prices moving above $99,000 today. The cryptocurrency's market cap, the price multiplied by circulating supply. It's nearly $2 trillion now. Joining us here on set are X2B co-founders Michael Bressler and Benoit Bosque.

X2B is a crypto advisory firm. The pair launched earlier this month. Michael was most recently EVP at PIMCO, while Benoit was a portfolio manager at Millennium. Both have spent time at crypto market maker GSR. It's great to have you both here on set. So welcome. Thank you for having us. So of course, I got to start with this moment, the news of the day. And Michael, I'll start with you on this. The fact that we've seen this torrid run in Bitcoin right now, I guess just what is propelling this, especially as you have Gensler stepping down as SEC chair, you have options trading and Bitcoin ETFs and the likes of MicroStrategy going to the market to snap up everything

they can in terms of supply? Look, there's so many things happening at the same time. Obviously, the election was a big catalyst here and the markets have spoken. And you can see that that's been very positive for the market. You know, we were watching on the way over here, right? Bitcoin ticking. We said, is it going to be 100,000 right now? And we remember the celebrations we had when it was at one thousand and at ten thousand. And now here we are about to be at one hundred thousand. And I think at some point,

not too far in the distant future, we're going to be thinking about a million dollar Bitcoin price. And really, it's just a confluence of everything happening all at once. And so, Benoit, I want to get your thoughts on on why now is the time to establish this firm then. I mean, we had Brian Armstrong from Coinbase on a couple of weeks ago, right before the election. And one of the things he said is he sees cryptocurrency more broadly entering this utility phase. How do you see it? Now, absolutely. Crypto is at the intersection of technology and finance. And a lot of the founders are really technology specialists. So we wanted to come in and assist them with the financial side of their protocols and token launches.

We have seen a lot of innovation on the infrastructure side. And now indeed we are entering the consumer side where we are going to see more broader retail adoption. We think there is going to be a lot of use cases for crypto. We are already seeing it in stablecoins, in meme coins, in prediction markets around the election. There's going to be more. We see crypto gaming coming. For a lot of those applications, you won't even know that there is crypto behind it. The blockchain technology will be abstracted. And we think what it's bringing in terms of decentralization, portability, as well as data ownership will be things that will be tough to leave behind. Michael, there's a lot of opportunity here, but clearly there's also a lot of danger, as there is in the stock market, too. I mean, Bitcoin is a great spokescoin for all the other stuff out there, but there's

a lot of junk out there. And I remember a few years ago, there was a lot of, you know, initial coin offerings, gaming stuff springing up around that that never amounted much. People lost a lot of, you know, initial coin offerings, gaming stuff springing up around that that never amounted much. People lost a lot of money. How's that going to go better this time? Yeah, it's a great question. You know, we were thinking about toward the beginning of our career during the Internet creation. Right. When all these stocks were coming up and all these different things were being created. And, you know, we're seeing something similar now. And what's really great is, you know, especially with the new administration coming in that seems to be much more crypto friendly

we're gonna have new rules new regulations a clearer roadmap and one of the main reasons that Ben when I established X to B was to bring Professionalism and bring a lot of the lessons that we learned from traditional finance all of those things that made Finance be able to grow in a controlled way in a productive way and hopefully in a way that didn't hurt anyone in particular This is what we need right now. And so we're very, very optimistic that this is what's going to happen. But how? You got coins named after dogs and squirrels that are moving around a whole lot.

Does anybody need to protect the investor here? It's interesting because, you know, the industry has learned a lot from the events of 2022 and 2023. It is definitely already more secure. It's more challenging for bad actors to act in the same way. I think we're quickly learning the lessons of those events. But a lot of it has to do with education and meeting those retail users where they are at. They can go on Coinbase, Kraken, that's very safe. Or they can try to do self-custody solution like MetaMask or Phantom.

That's more complicated. But again, it's incumbent on the industry to do a better job of educating people and making it safer. How important is the regulatory piece of this, especially as you have, you know, Dan Gallagher over at Robinhood basically told our own Kate Rooney today, I'm not looking to take the SEC role, even if it's being offered. How important is it to see particularly the U.S. move forward with what could potentially be global adoption of regulations, especially as you have Trump on the campaign trail saying we want Bitcoin mining to happen in the U.S.? You've got chatter and even legislation being proposed around the possibility of a reserve, a strategic reserve.

The case for all of this, why now matters and why the U.S. being in a position of power, especially when you're talking about decentralized assets, why that needs to happen now? What's the argument? Look, the U.S. has been at the center of digital asset innovation, and now it's even more so. So, you know, a set of regs, a set of rules that people can follow and know where the roadmap is, is really what's needed. A lot of innovation in the past few years, especially, has been pushed offshore. And, you know, we're really excited because we're seeing a lot of that come back. There's just really a lot of excitement

around in general what could be done in the U.S. And we're seeing, you know, adoption not only of just from infrastructure, but also into consumer apps. Just last week, Coinbase leapt into the top 10 of the apps in the app store. Kraken just got a new CEO. It's all just in a really exciting time now that we're actually getting an administration that's actually going to be crypto forward. So in light of that, tell me a little bit more, Benoit, about X2B and what specifically you're doing. Yeah, like I was saying earlier, it's really about helping those protocol launch, like accompanying them in a professional fashion and bringing transparency and trust to the space

as much as we can. We have clients across a range of verticals, like on different chains, be it Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, but really in different thematics, AI and so on. But really about bringing more transparency, more professional players, creating that moment where people can feel safe using crypto. Okay. Ben Wabosk and Michael Bessler, thank you both for joining us here on set. Great to have you. Thanks for having us. Thank you so much. Up next, the CEO of NetApp on the outlook for enterprise spending as that stock reverses lower on earnings after an initial pop. But first, shares of building materials company Martin Marietta.

They have solid year up 20 percent. But would a rollback of President Biden's signature infrastructure bill put the brakes on that rally? Martin Marietta, the CEO, is going to join us to discuss that next. Welcome back. Infrastructure stocks have had a solid run out facing the S&P 500 over the past two years. One name that's been building on solid gains is materials company Martin Marietta. It's up around 20 percent this year and has been seen as a beneficiary of the Inflation Reduction Act and other spending initiatives, federal spending initiatives. Well, joining us now is Ward Nye, CEO of Martin Marietta. It's great to have you here on set. Welcome. Nice to be here. Thank you, Morgan. So we've seen this. We've seen non-residential activity, big projects continue to move forward, whether it's through

infrastructure, IRA. We're also seeing a lot with the data center as well. What is your sense, what is your purview in terms of how that activity continues into 2025, especially as we do have a new administration taking the helm? I think you've got several things that'll push it into 2025. One, we had a really wet 2024, so there's some backup that's on that. But if we think about the Infrastructure Investment Jobs Act, or IIJA, that was signed into law in November of 2021. And I think people would have been surprised if they would have said we would be here in November at this point. And only about 30% of that money will have found its way into the system relative to highways, bridges, roads,

and streets. So it's a $1.2 trillion deal, but only $350 was relative to hard, true infrastructure. And only 30% of that money has found its way into the system. So 70% of that is still to go. And if you think about what that means as a practical matter, much of it has to go in 2025 and 2026, because in 2027, we're likely to be in a reauthorization phase at that point. And I think with a new administration, one of the things that I think we need to be sensitive to is what will that next bill look like and how much of it is going to be driven toward hard infrastructure. As we looked at the announcement for Secretary-designate Duffy this week, it was interesting to

read what came out when his name was put there. It talked very much about just what I said, highways, bridges, roads, streets, airports. So I think we're going to see much more hard infrastructure as a percentage of this next bill. But I think we're going to see a lot of that money come through in 25 and 26. And that's just on the public side. Obviously, we have to care about the federal government, but the state fiscal condition is awfully important from our company's perspective and the nation's perspective as well. So what are you seeing on the state side? And you just talked about infrastructure. I'm going to give you two for here.

You just talked about infrastructure. But we also know that President-elect Trump has talked about clawing back Inflation Reduction Act and CHIPS Act. It raises questions. Is that even possible and to what extent? So I guess how are you thinking about some of those areas of fiscal spending versus what you're seeing on a state level? I think a couple of things. If we look at those, I think a lot of the work that we would have seen has already gone under those to date. So I think we'll continue to see work there. But I think as we're looking at a lot of that, to your point, we've seen a lot of chips activity and we're seeing a lot of AI activity as well

right now, a lot of data warehousing, data centers, and we think that's likely to continue. The other piece of that that I think we need to watch very carefully is what happens relative to energy, because these are hugely energy-utilizing facilities that are being built. So if we think about big, heavy non-residential infrastructure, and we look at the stone intensity of much of that, these big, heavy non-res projects infrastructure. And we look at the stone intensity of much of that. These big, heavy non-res projects are very stone intensive. That means a lot to our business. So is energy.

So I think to your point, Morgan, if we're looking at both the public side and the heavy non-res side, most likely over a period of years, it should be pretty constructive. So what's going to happen over the next couple of years, already baked in, as you argued, really got to look to 27 and the arguments you're going to be making to lawmakers now. And I guess we've got midterms in between now and this actually playing out as well. What is your argument for what you think the country needs infrastructure-wise this last bill didn't address? Here's the biggest single issue.

We went about 15 years with either a continuing resolution or a longer-term bill that didn't put more money to highways, bridges, roads, and streets. So we went for the better portion of 20 years without a significant investment there. And if we look at what's happened to sheer population dynamics in the United States over that period of time, it's been dramatic. And it's been particularly dramatic in states that Martin Marietta has been focused on, which is primarily in the southeastern U.S. and the southwestern U.S. And if we're looking at cities like Raleigh or Dallas or Denver or San Antonio, Jacksonville and Atlanta, those population trends have been so significant that we need to have more real capacity added to the roads, streets, bridges that are there

for quality of life purposes, but also to make sure that we can keep business moving at the pace of business. So there are two very different reasons that we need to do it. Separate and distinct from the fact that we have public safety issues. If we're looking on a number of these secondary roads across the United States, that's where you see the highest rate of fatalities. We need to invest in that. And I think there's a very clear reason from a human perspective why, but I think equally from an economic reason why. Warden, I have Martin Marietta. Thanks for joining us here on set. Great to have you. Nice to be here. Thank you so much.

Time now for a CNBC News update with Pippa Stevens. Pippa. Hey, John. NATO and Ukraine will hold emergency talks on Tuesday after Russia attacked the city of Dnipro with an experimental hypersonic ballistic missile. Ukrainian officials released the first public assessment of the new weapon today, saying it reached top speeds of 8,000 miles per hour and took about 15 minutes to reach its target from launch. The NBA is warning their players to secure their homes against, quote, well-organized, sophisticated South American crime rings. That's according to a memo from the league. The FBI briefed officials that athletes were becoming top targets. The memo comes in the wake of reported burglaries of Milwaukee Bucks Bobby Portis and Kansas City Chiefs star Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelsey,

who were targeted by burglars, which prompted the NFL to issue a similar warning. And meet Daisy. She's the grandma who fights back against scammers. Just one catch. She's an AI-generated character designed by British phone company Virgin Media O2 to outsmart scammers by talking to them all day long. O2 says Daisy has already had more than 1,000 calls with scammers since her debut last week. I could certainly use a Daisy in my life, John. Thank you. Well, NetApp reported earnings and guidance that beat the street in overtime yesterday. The stock was initially higher during and after the conference call.

It traded about 3.5 percent lower today after touching a 52-week high, still positive for the week. I spoke with CEO George Kurian about the results and how the enterprise spending environment differs from the tough backdrop last fall. It's certainly better than a year ago, John. I wouldn't call it a rosy environment yet, but it's certainly better than a year ago. I think the fact that inflation has come down, that interest rates have come down, have really helped, especially in North America. Some parts of Europe are still choppy. We have out-executed and taken share in pretty much all the geographies of the world, but it's certainly better than a year ago. I think what we see now is people are spending on the applications and capabilities that drive

growth and productivity. There isn't yet a broad-based refresh or sort of infrastructure upgrade cycle yet. And we expect that to happen over the next year if things get better. Very interesting if that comes in 25, Morgan, since that isn't something, that refresh cycle that's happening now. We're just talking about physical infrastructure and now we go to digital infrastructure. Indeed. All right, well, up next, Mike Santoli looks at one indicator that could signal a looming pullback for elevated bond yields. Plus, would you pay $125,000 to take a balloon ride to the edge of space? We're going to talk to the CEO of commercial space company Space Perspective

after Blue Origin just minted a fresh batch of astronauts at its latest flight earlier today. Welcome back to Overtime. Mike Santoli returns with a look at one factor that could pull bond yields down. Mike? Yeah, John, if it continues in this direction that it's hinting at here, this is the City Economic Surprise Index for the U.S. This shows economic data and whether it's coming in better or worse than projections. Obviously, we've been on this great run of better than expected numbers. Pretty much everyone expected a slowdown, a steep one in the middle and latter part of this year. We have not gotten it. Now, Treasury yields have actually climbed along with this measure. We've not been much higher than this, except back in that period going into 2023. And that's because the consensus was expecting a recession. So it

was easier to beat those numbers. It's probably going to be higher for this to keep lifting. So if it rolls or goes sideways a little bit from here, it might take the pressure off Treasury yields. Something else to keep in mind, take a look at the U.S. 10-year Treasury yield compared to the German 10-year government yield. And you see this real divergence and obviously different levels you can see on each y-axis. But just in terms of the rhythm and the pace, this is a pretty big gap that opened up really weak numbers in Europe for the PMI indicators, whereas the U.S. still continues to show better, better economic performance. Whether this gap opens up further or there's a gravitational pull from global yields, that could be another factor in terms of the next move for U.S. Treasuries, John.

And I guess if yields head down, that would tend to put pressure on bond prices to go up and might get people talking about the possibility of total return again. Yeah, I think that that definitely filters into the equation. Now, right now, I think we have people who are infatuated with equities for obvious reasons. And so it seems like bonds are kind of a killjoy at this point because they're dampening your performance. But, yeah, you get a rally in yields. By the way, it takes the pressure probably off some areas of the economy like housing. And then, yeah, you would basically say, oh, I can lock it in right here. And that's a good cushion for my portfolio if bond prices are firm. Morgan. Okay. Mike Santoli, thank you. Have a

great weekend. You too. Thanks. Up next, the CEO of a startup using data to help customers lower their energy bills and increase their bottom line. And Elastic, the stock, not the material, a big winner today after beating second quarter earnings estimates thanks to strong cloud revenue and forecasting stronger than expected Q4 and full year profits of 14%. Overtime will be right back. Welcome back to Overtime. Energy costs are high, not only for data centers, but also for offices. Today, John takes time out with a CEO who's using technology to lower the power bill.

Yeah, Jennifer Knuckles is CEO of R0. It's a startup with software that analyzes the usage of office spaces in large buildings and uses that data to help lighting and HVAC run more efficiently. Knuckles started her career in marketing and has moved more into operations with data being the common thread. Before she became CEO of R0, Knuckles was an executive VP at FinTech Bank SoFi. When Anthony Noto hired me, he was looking for someone with consumer packaged goods experience. And the reason for that is you learn P&O management right out of the gate. You learn very, very much to know your numbers, to run everything with a data focus. You know, the way that CPG companies, they were pretty early in

this. You use real-time data from scanner data from retail. Data is playing an even larger role in how building costs get managed, and it's gotten trickier in the last five years as hybrid work arrangements go mainstream. The building management systems that handle lighting, heating, and cooling need more granular data to understand which areas of a skyscraper tenant's floor will get used on a given day and which should stay powered down. So typically, when you go into a building, the air conditioning, the lighting has been running or the heating has been running all night, regardless if there's anyone actually in the space. This actually happens at an even exacerbated level during the day when you think about how

buildings are run. So at the zone level, at the floor level, where people are actually, you know, congregating in the spaces. And so the way that a most efficient building should run, any building over 50,000 square feet has to be a massive building management system and use the actual data available on our platform to exact control with that building management system so that the operations of the building are running when they need to be. So the timeout takeaway, data saves green. Green is in money and green is in sustainability. Companies like R0 are working to put sensors in place that gather information about office and equipment usage and efficiency. Samsara is doing it for transportation and manufacturing now in

the public markets. It's not much of a leap to imagine how AI-driven software will use that data to boost the operations bottom line, maybe help the planet, too. Morgan, that's one to watch. It's really fascinating. We'll forget rockets up next. I look at a company with a lofty goal for space tourism, betting customers will want to take a balloon to the edge of space. And Crocs having a big day. Need of initiating coverage of the footwear maker with a buy rating, citing valuation. The stock is down more than 30% since mid-June and finished up today 4%.

Earlier today, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin completing its ninth human space flight, sending six paying passengers to suborbital space in its New Shepard capsule. Other than SpaceX's multi-day, multi-million dollar orbital space flights, Blue Origin is really currently the only company that's offering regular operational space tourism service, especially since Virgin Galactic paused flights to build new spaceships. But another company is developing its own near-space option, Space Perspective. We are a space tourism company in simplicity. We take explorers, that's what we call our customers,

to the edge of space in a very gentle, very simple, pressurized capsule, a lot like getting on a normal airliner, to the edge of space where they can enjoy views and sit back and relax in the luxury experience. It's not being crammed into capsules and launched from rockets. It's a very different experience to go to about 100,000 feet and go to the edge of space. So Space Perspective offers stratospheric balloon rides. Spaceship Neptune, as its vehicle is called, will carry eight passengers above the hemisphere for a six-hour voyage that will include views of the Earth's curvature, meals, even Wi-Fi. Price? $125,000 a ticket, which is a bargain compared to $400,000 at Virgin Galactic.

And we don't actually know how much Blue Origin charges. Now, founded by Biosphere 2 crew members Jane Poynter and Tabor McCallum, Space Perspective has added Sir Richard Branson as an investor last month. He will join them on the first crewed flight, which is expected as soon as next year. Now, Space Perspective CEO Michael Savage says the startup has already sold 1,800 tickets with a backlog of $225 million. But the goal is accessibility, which is why the company has been forging brand partnerships as well. When we say we want to be accessible, that means we want to make sure that people that maybe aren't ready to spend $125,000 still have access to this experience. And so

our partnership with Oreo was fantastic. They did the Space Dunk Oreo cookie, which was one of their top rated specialties. They had Pop Rocks in it. It was fantastic. And there was a QR code for people to win a trip to space. And it's really meaningful for us to give everyone who wants a chance opportunities to come on Spaceship Neptune, even if they aren't in the demographic that's ready to purchase. And we did that with Hard Rock. We did that with Texas Lottery. We had a lot of those space Oreos here in the newsroom. But for more on this interview and this company and space tourism in general, check out my podcast, Manifest Space. Scan that QR code

right there or download it wherever you get your podcasts. Now, $125,000 might sound expensive until you consider it's 48 duct tape bananas. Yeah. And you can eat on board, too. So you can eat more than just a banana. You can get 48 flights for the price of a duct tape banana is what I should have said. Well, up next, Stratego CEO Jason Trenert on how investors should position their portfolio for next week and how President-elect Trump's looming pick for Treasury Secretary could impact the market. And don't forget, you can catch us on the go by following the Closing Bell Overtime podcast

on your favorite podcast app. We will be right back. Welcome back to Overtime. The major average is closing out a strong week, up more than 1% from Monday's open, with small caps jumping 4% week to date. The Dow is setting a record close. Let's get you set up for next week's trade with Jason Trennert. He is the chairman and CEO of Strategas, a Bayard company. Jason, welcome. So, looking ahead to the Trump years, second wave of Trump years, about to start in January. You point out that over the period of time up to now, QE for 12 years was regressive, helping the wealthy at the expense of the poor and middle class. It hasn't been that bad for the market. I think the S&P is up something like 4x over that time. Is that going to end?

No, that's the point, John. It's been terrific. If you have money, it's been great. And if you have leverage, it's been even better. But if you're just a regular person that doesn't have access to the financial markets or doesn't own a big private equity portfolio, it hasn't been so great. If you just have savings, you've got zero on your savings for the better part of 12 years. And I'm convinced that that's part of the reason why President Trump has been so appealing to people, because I think

there's a lot of people that feel that the financial system has been skewed. These solutions have largely been skewed to benefit wealthier people. Right. but I think a difficulty here is that, and maybe fold this into what you're saying, I feel like there are a lot of rich people who voted for Trump, eager to get tax cuts maintained, and then there are a lot of working class people who voted for Trump, frustrated over the very things you're talking about, thinking it's going to get better for me.

Can both things happen at the same time? Well, listen, I think having more balance in the economy, particularly from trade policy, but also fiscal policy and some monetary policy, would be welcome. And again, I'm a Wall Street guy, so I love tax cuts, but I also am an American who grew up in an environment where we didn't have any money. And so I very much am rooting for people that are aspiring to move among the social classes. And that's something that happens in the United States that doesn't happen a lot of times in other parts of the industrialized world. I'm very familiar with Italy. I spent a lot of time there.

And it's a beautiful place to spend money. It's a very difficult place to make money, very difficult place to move among the social classes. And what you want is a system where people, based on their own merits, can move from one class to the next and up and down. And that happens here more than it happens a lot of other places. I do think our trading policy, particularly China joining the WTO, again, another policy, extremely good if you own the means of production. But if you're just a day laborer or somebody that doesn't necessarily have a college education, it was really tough. And the changes happened so quickly, you didn't have a chance to adjust. And that's what I'm hoping, you know, in President Trump's second term.

I hope, you know, it's a little fairer and you go back to kind of the basics of what this is all about. So we have seen this unleashing of the animal spirits in the markets and certainly in some of the consumer confidence readings and even some of the other data readings we're getting through the market as well. How to think about, how should investors be thinking about how this trade policy, how tariffs actually coalesce, especially if that happens alongside tax cuts? There's also the immigration piece of this. And of course, having this broader conversation as you have a Fed that is on pace to cut or maybe slow down the rate of cuts. Yeah, I'll just give you my own views for whatever they're worth. If I were the Fed,

I would slow down the rate cuts, partly because you do have a new administration coming in and you're not quite sure what that's going to look like. I also think that, you know, in some ways I'm a little bit more worried in terms of the impact on the economy, I'm a little bit more worried about immigration than I am about tariffs, particularly as it relates to inflation. Because I do think if the studies have shown, if you look at the Peterson Institute, if you have mass deportation, which a lot of people support and could be good socially for society, but it also could have a very big impact on inflation, a much bigger impact than tariffs. Tariffs don't necessarily have to be inflationary, depending on whether we produce

some of the goods we're putting tariffs on. So it could be just a shift in relative prices. So I actually am not too worried about that. And I've met President Trump a couple of times. We're hardly intimates. But I very much understand where he's coming from in terms of tariffs, because U.S. consumer is the biggest, it's really the biggest prize in the world economically. And it makes no sense, in my opinion, or in his opinion, to give that away for free. There are reasons why we should negotiate. We should negotiate hard on making sure the access to those markets is something that

gives the U.S. some sort of benefit, in my opinion. I don't think that's unreasonable. I think it's actually how every other country would deal with it. And I think that's the position from which he's coming. Okay. So quickly, as we butt up against the end of the show here, deficit, we've got Doge, a lot of speculation around how all that's going to play out, too. I mean, how real is the risk of bond vigilantes when you look to 2025? Oh, listen, I think it's real. And I think, listen, this is not, we're amassing debts. The total federal debt is increasing by about a trillion every six months on average, right?

We're at $36 trillion total, $28 trillion owed to the public. And government spending is a good place to start. No two ways about it. But I think we're really going to have to grow our way out of this problem at this point, which means you're going to have to really focus on things that create productivity. But there's certainly no reason why U.S. taxpayers should waste money. And so I think the Doge is a great idea. I think it buys the Trump administration, incoming Trump administration, some credibility with the bond market and the bond market vigilantes. But it's probably not enough. I think we're going to have to do other things that spur capital formation that allow us to continue to grow. All right. Jason Trenner, great to have you on. Thanks for joining us.

Thanks for having me. Have a great weekend. You too. Continue to keep an eye on Bitcoin. Gold also having its best week in more than a year. Geopolitics is in the background. We haven't talked about it very much, but it is there and something to monitor in Ukraine, in the Mideast. Time to focus on the consumer of turkey and then of stuff. That's going to do it for us here at Overtime.