Closing Bell - Closing Bell Overtime: Chips Trade Back On 7/9/26

Episode Date: July 9, 2026

Matt Bryson of Wedbush explains why he sharply raised his price target on SanDisk and what continued strength in memory demand means for the broader AI infrastructure trade. Eric Johnston of Cantor Fitzgerald outlines his bullish call on the hyperscalers while Sonali Basak explains why investors are beginning to judge big tech on how quickly AI investments translate into revenue and profits rather than the size of their capital spending. Compass CEO Robert Reffkin analyzes the latest housing data and discusses what it reveals about inventory, prices and buyer demand. Our Julia Boorstin sits down with SoFi CEO Anthony Noto at the Sun Valley Conference to discuss the state of fintech, technology and capital markets. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The bell's bringing in to the trading day at the NYSC, Leidenberg Thalman, ringing the bell and at the NASAC, LifeMD, doing the honors. Welcome to closing bell overtime. We're live from studio be at the NASAC market site. I'm Melissa Lee along with Mike Santoli. Sox hired today as the AI trade gains team once again, and Iran tensions cool off for now.

The Dow gaining about 100 points, SB 500, up three quarters of a percent. NASAC up 1.3 percent. More on the market straight ahead. Also on our radar at the close, winners and losers of a trial for a key drug, plus the state of housing as new data drops. And we'll speak to SOFI's CEO Anthony Noto live from the Big Sun Valley Media and Tech Conference. I felt like it's the same themes over and over again, Mike.

Tech reasserts itself. Yes. It is the memory chips in particular, reasserting themselves, chips broadly except for Nvidia. Exactly. 3.5% higher by the Philadelphia Semi Index. And in broad terms, I mean, the market for all it's just kind of churned around for exactly eight weeks, when you first hit 7,500 on the S&P eight weeks ago today, it has not really lost the benefit of the doubt, right?

We're within 1% of the record high. It's been kind of alternating leadership and corrections internally, which is great, and I guess you could say that's benign. I'm kind of risking sounding like Chicken Little by pointing to all these kind of erratic moves, the crowded positioning and momentum, the idea that maybe that's going to hurt something on the downside when it unwinds. It hasn't really happened. I think the question's going to be is, you know, Are earnings, is the earnings bar really high?

A rate's going to come in and try to impinge on things. Also, the macro, for all, it's been, you know, pretty comfortable. You know, Atlanta Fed GDP is down to 1.3% for the second quarter. The economic surprises have rolled over. Nobody cares because semis are up today. And that's kind of how it's been working. Yeah. And what Pepsi said about the second half in terms of input cost rising,

inflationary pressures on the consumer, nobody cares about that either. And so it will be interesting to see if the earnings bar is set too high or if we actually confirm expectations. Yeah, and, you know, the guidance has been lopsidedly positive. So, again, everyone is primed for good things. We'll see if we get them. Now, let's get more on today's tech movers with Christina Parks and Avalos. You guys talked about it.

Semiconductor is extending their reversal from yesterday. The unwind really started with fears that META had overbuilt as compute, but a fresh report showing META's CAPX is heading higher. And that really flipped the narrative, lifting semi-cap names like LAM Research, for example, and Arrism Networks. That's the most meta-exposed name of the group. You add in Micron raising U.S. investments here and applied materials, CEO pointing a better long-term visibility past 2027, and every SOX member of the ETF was green, with only Nvidia lagging today, but just barely, not even half, just about a half a percent.

The flip side of that AI story hit software. Starbucks is building in-house AI tools to replace Microsoft and IBM systems, part of a $2 billion cost cut. IBM fell roughly 2% on fierce customers are just building rather than buying. The software ETF, though, IGV, still held up today, though, despite that. And in discretionary, cruise lines outperform.

Morgan Stanley said its checks showed calmer waters and raised its carnival estimates on lower fuel and stronger free cash flow. And then you had Staples, the worst S&P sector today. Costco dropped as monthly comparisons slowed for May. And then you guys mentioned it. Nobody really cared, but Pepsi investors cared because it fell on an EV.

PPS miss as North American shoppers tighten their budgets. Guys? Christina, thank you. Christina Partsenevolous. Shares of Oracle move higher today as OpenAAARA rolls out a new version of ChatGPT, OpenAI, one of the biggest of its customers. OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman on CNBC earlier today discussing the latest model and just how good it is.

Let's free and Kate Rune for more, Kate. Hey Mel. Yeah, that was one of the themes from Sam Malming. He was touting OpenAI's newest AI model in this CNBC exclusive. Earlier today, this was in Sun Valley. And this latest version of ChatGeebee. It's 5.6 rolled out to a wider group of users. And while, yes, Altman did argue that the tech is competitive.

The CEO really did focus on pricing. He claims it's 54% more efficient than rivals on coding tasks, at least. And then cost, he says, is what his customers are really focused on. Well, they really like our focus there. This is the first year where AI spend has been a big topic. And all of a sudden, it's a very big topic. Everyone's asking what we can do to help reduce spend or increase value. and I think our models are well suited for that.

So this release of 5.6 sole, I think it's a very welcome release. This series of models was announced last month, but the U.S. government did ask OpenAI to limit that rollout. Alman described that as a collaborative back and forth. As long as the process is understandable, fair, quick, and the government seems to really share those goals. And my guess is our next time through it with our next model. It'll be a much smoother, we understand it,

and know how to go with it better. No comment on whether OpenAI would IPO this year, in Altman's words, I don't know. We'll have to see you guys. Whenever there's talk about cost and cost concerns and comparing costs versus others, it sort of gets me concerned that it's commoditized or it's becoming commoditized. At what point do we get worried that they will be competing on price, especially as Mark Zuckerberg just today, so that they're going to aggressively price their AI model?

Oh, it's a great question, Mel. I think we're seeing this pivot from cost on its own, sort of cost per token versus the cost per output. Companies are trying to position themselves as, yes, the lower cost potentially while still being competitive, but saying the enterprises really care more about the outcome. So they're actually willing to spend a bit more if they think that they are going to get a better outcome here.

And the companies themselves, you know, Anthropic would be included in this too, although they have the most expensive model. We're seeing the discussion pivot a little bit more and there's a little bit of nuance in how they talk about cost. I think the commoditization is a risk. We've talked a lot about DeepSeek and the threat of the ultra-low-cost models. But that's what they want to move away from.

They don't want to be a commodity, whether that means, you know, owning different slices of this. Enterprise is much, much, much more profitable. But for Open AI in particular, these model launches are so important because they are also losing market share. There was some analysis out earlier this week that showed that Open AI went from about a 60% market share to about 46% now. They've got to maintain that consumer lead, and they also have to win an enterprise. So they're battling it on a couple fronts here. Yeah, there's cost the customers pay, and then there's the cost that Open AI and others have to incurred to deliver the tokens that they're paying for. So it's really multiple stages of decisions that we have to track and see how this develops, Kate.

Thank you so much. Yeah, thanks, my. As we mentioned, semiconductors leading the markets higher today, all stocks in the SMH, ETF posting gains, with the exception of Nvidia. Sandisk, once again, one of the biggest gainers in the S&P and NASDAQ 100, after Wedbush raised its price target to $2,000 a share from 1,200, the firm citing the company's strong end market dynamics and its willingness to lead the industry in raising prices to optimize gross margins. Joining us now is the author of that note, Matt Bryson from Wedbush. Matt, it's good to see you. The stock kind of got most of the way to that 2,000 target today. I mean, it was like 15% upside at yesterday's close and had a big update. I love for you to talk about what the industry structure is right now, relative to when Sandisk was spun out of Western Digital, like 16 months ago.

And I went back and looked at your initiation note, and you were bullish to your credit, but you thought it could get to 80 bucks and maybe traded six times forward earnings. I mean, it's remarkable. So has all of this radical revaluation actually made sense? I think it makes sense, Mike. It's really memory is a commodity. Back when this company came public, there was too much production. So everyone was cutting back output, but when there's too much production, it's really hard to charge a premium price. Now we're in a situation where there is too much demand, not enough supply, and there really aren't new fabs coming on until late 27.

And so we're in the situation for well over another year, and it may be well beyond that if AI demand remains robust. And so I think it's a completely new world for memory makers. Late 27 isn't too far away, Matt, and stocks usually really sniff out what's to come before it comes. And so what point do you say to investors, you know, instead of waiting until, you know, Sandus, for instance, And you said 84, 85% gross margins, your target for 27. What point do you say, you know what, it's time to abandon ship before we actually get to that point where additional production comes online? No, you're absolutely right about that. I think, though, the other thing to keep in mind that we haven't seen before is typically contracts between the memory vendors and their customers that they last for three months at most.

In some cases, like Apple, they'll last for program cycle. now we're seeing these five-year customer agreements roll out where it feels like the penalties for abandoning these agreements are relatively stark. And so for the first time, it looks like the memory vendors have visibility into longer-term cash flow, and you heard micron say it's going to be 50% of their sales. So I think there's more room beyond late 27. That's just one of the first fabs. But I think they also have to get credit for the fact that we could be looking at five years of strong earnings,

even if only half of their volume, is set at current pricing. It's really a tricky situation, right, where you could have the visibility about the fundamentals that demand's going to be there. They're going to be able to protect margins. And yet you look at what's happened, first of all, in the near term with how micron traded off of stupendous numbers. It's $200 below its highs, even with this bounce. And then, of course, what's been going on

with NVIDIA, where you also have tremendous visibility, companies done nothing wrong, earnings have gone up, and the valuation is compressed seemingly because the market is just unwilling to extrapolate indefinitely this kind of strength. Yeah, Mike, I think

you're seeing a couple things there. I think one is that whenever it looks like there's weakness, So people, I think Christina was talking about people were concerned around meta spend. Whenever there's concerns around weakness, memory acts worse because if demand falls off, then you've got this potential pressure on pricing and so pressure on gross margins. And so that's, I think, why Mike Ron is where it is versus where it was after earnings.

With Nvidia, I think Nvidia's struggle is because it hasn't moved, it's viewed as a source of funds. I also think that NVIDIA is going to continue to grow at 50, 60, 70% year on year, and we're going to wake up one day after earnings, and it will have doubled within a month. Because I don't think that growth is slowing, and I think what people don't appreciate isn't just that NVIDIA has created a market-leading technology. It's also that they have the best supply chain in the tech world right now, and supply matters. You can't get enough memory. You can't get enough substrate. You can't get enough

logic. And Nvidia's better position than anyone else. Yeah. I mean, it reminds me a lot of Apple after the first couple of iPhone cycles and it traded super cheap for a long time until they could prove that those advantages were taking hold. Matt, great to catch up to you. Thanks so much. Matt Bryson at Web. Thank you so much. With the chip and momentum trades back on today, what does it mean for the hyperscalers, Microsoft, meta, Amazon, and Alphabet, all trading at least 10% below their 52-week highs. Joining us now is iCapitals, chief investment strategist,

Chenali Bassett and Eric Johnson, Canter, Chief Equity and Macro Strategist. Welcome to you both. Chanel, it's impossible to have a view on the market. It seems without deciding whether, you know, the four hyperscalers in the Mag 7 are cheap or properly being penalized for all this spending. You know, it's so interesting.

All year long, I've been saying brought in, and broad and broad and broad, you know, a lot of people are overweight tech. now I am thinking, well, wait a minute, why have the hyperscalor has been so left behind in all of this? If you think about, I'm going to give you another alternative to the NVIDIA theory here. NVIDIA is also suffering from this idea that you have Broadcom creating all these designer models for all of these hyperscalers. Whatever way you look at it, a trillion dollars of spend expected now next year for this KAPX buildout no matter what. Capital markets have been wide open.

People have been arguably raising money in order to keep preparing for all of that. The hyperscalers are still a critical part of this. So at this point, it doesn't make sense to me that they have been this punished in all of this. So you're saying buy them? I am saying that they make sense here in the relative trade. You look at the way things have sold out and you have not seen a real rotation. When we saw the semi-sell off last week, yes, comforting that it touched the 50-day moving average and bounced right off, but you didn't actually see a real rotation either.

So we think that there's room to run here. we do think that you still need to see that monetization. So I don't want anyone to get me wrong here. There's a lot to prove, but we do think that they have been meaningfully less behind in the trade. Eric, what's your take on this? Do you think that there should be a rotation within tech? And do you think that hypers deserve a look at this point with their valuations relatively more depressed? I think they do. We think hyperscalers look quite attractive here. negativity has clearly been super high, right? Their cash flow has gone to, you know, close to zero. There's a lot of concerns around the spending, how they're going to fund it, and what the

ROI is going to be. But our view is that the multiple has been hit, you know, very significantly, many of them down, you know, 35 to 40 percent at or approximately around a market multiple with revenue and earnings growth in, you know, the mid-teens or higher. And, you know, they've been de-risk. And, you know, they've been de-risk. Ultimately, they control the compute. And so as this trade evolves, I think that sentiment with this group is going to swing. And that's one of the things that we've seen

throughout the past four years has been, there's been significant swings and sentiment around different parts of the AI trade. And I think what is next is that this negativity is gonna turn for this group. And I think it could be this earning season. I think it's going to be super important for the group. And I think the conference calls, you know, could ease some of the investor concerns.

We're going to show you ADM investor services ringing the closing bell there at Sebo in Chicago. That ends a regular trading day for options. Eric, would it be necessary for the hyperscalers, the spenders, to either signal some discipline on spending or if they don't? And those stocks recover and people get confidence about them, is that going to be a net negative for, the hardware food chain because that's the way they've been trading is like opposite ends of a seesaw. For sure. And that's going to be the most important part of all of earnings season is going to be their commentary on cap-x. And so while I wouldn't expect any sort of cut to cap-x, I think that them discussing around the ROI potential flexibility down the road in the out years and essentially

how they're going to handle. I think the market's perception has been that they're just going to, but continue to increase cap X in perpetuity without any sort of discretion. And I just don't think that's going to ultimately be right. And so I think that talking about this on the conference calls, I think can be very, very important. And just understanding where the sort of negativity is in this group and what the starting point is. And so anything they can say to assuaged investors, I think they're going to do. You know, there is one thing about this that needs to be really hashed out this second quarter, and it is what we're calling to beware of all these one-hit wonders.

The fact that a lot of these hyperscalers got really big one-time benefits, tax benefits, also huge benefits tied to their stakes in the frontier labs. Now, you know, if you believe, and what we're already seeing, is that the direction of travel for tokens is lower, then what does that mean for the valuations of the frontier labs? And so if we think that that might mean that the frontier labs will have a slower growth rate in terms of their valuation bump, that's going to impact some of these hyperscalers too. So in the second quarter, they're going to need to offset that expectation that they're not going to get as much of a boost as they were in the first half of the year. Janali, Eric, thank you.

We appreciate it. We'd open a news alert that we want to get to on the Fed. Steve Leesman's got those details. Steve. Hey, Melissa. Yeah, it's Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, Palmer. last week, he has now released the names of the people on the task forces that will be studying and recommending what could be sweeping reforms at the Federal Reserve. And of course, some of

these names you'll recognize. Many of them are really tops in their field. Peter Fisher, he had a fixed income at BlackRock. He ran the Fed's open market operations. He's on there on the task force on communications. Murvin King, of course, the former governor of the Bank of England, along with Armenia Frogger, the former bank president of Brazil. Moving on to the next task force on the balance sheet, Karen Dynan. She's a former chief economist at the Treasury under the Obama administration, by the way, along with Raga Ram Rajan, former Governor of India and Jeremy Stein, a former Fed governor and Harvard professor, who we of course have had on air as much as we possibly could.

Raj Chetty is on the Data Task Force, along with Doug McBillan from Walmart. Interesting because they'll probably have a lot of alternate data for the Fed to look at. Now, looking at the productivity and jobs task force, Andresen, who, of course, you all know, but maybe you don't know that he was buddies with Kevin Warsh back at Stanford when the two of them were in college there, Charles Jones, currently on leave at Anthropic, and Asha Sharma, who is Xbox CEO. On the Inflation Task Force, Greg Mankew, former Council of Economic Advisors, under George W. Bush, along with Thomas Sargent, Nobel Laureate Economist, and William White, former economist for the Bank

of international settlements. Well-known guys, I think, in part for being one of those ones who saw the 2008 financial crisis coming. All of this showing warship moving fast, but unclear how quickly and to what extent all of this leads to change, actual change at the Federal Reserve. And remind us, Steve, on the timeline, several months, correct? I think he said by the end of the year that he wanted these reports in. And of course, they have to be kind of socialized. You'll notice there are no sitting committee members on these task forces. So they're going to have to agree to some of these things to make them happen. All right.

Steve, thank you. Steve Leesman. Pleasure. Up next, high-stakes drug trial. We'll take a look at the winners and the losers. And we'll also get the latest on oil as tensions with Iran ease, at least for now. You're watching Closing Bell overtime, live from the NASAC market site. Cheers of AstraZeneca and Ayanas Pharma falling today after a clinical trial for their heart disease drug failed to meet its target of reducing deaths.

in a trial. The drug is for a rare life-threatening heart condition called ATTR cardiomyopathy. Shares of competitors that already have treatments for this condition closed higher today on the back of Astorzeneca's trial results. Those players include Pfizer, Bridge Bio, and Al-Niam. Al-Nallum, excuse me, although Al-Nallam did close down 3%. Canterford-Sherald, noting that Bridge Bio could claim the most market share out of those three companies. Stock is up 15%. It's interesting because oftentimes these are binary outcomes in terms of it is definitely, you know, den in its tracks in terms of the possibility for AstraZeneca for the others. It is market share gain.

But biotech, it's worth noting over the past three weeks is up 17%. It is. I mean, this is one of these crazy outperformers in recent times. It is. I mean, people have definitely a little bit of deal fever. You've had some better sentiment toward FDA. So, yeah, tough setup, I guess, for some of those. Oil falling today, as President Trump says, Iran wants to make a deal.

Stevens joins us now with the latest on oil. Pippa. That's right, Melissa and Qatar and Pakistan, also working to bring Washington and Tehran back to the negotiating table. That's according to MS now citing sources. And this does come as the latest escalation in Hormuz has already led to a slowdown in transits with just 13 tankers crossing yesterday compared to an average of 33 per day over the prior week, with most of yesterday's ships taking the Iranian route or turning off their transponders, according to Kepler. Marcus Baker from insurance broker Marsh telling me there's now an enhanced risk environment in the region, rates had started to come down, although not to pre-conflict levels, but in the past few days, they've risen again after the direct hits on vessels and are now

between 2 and 6% of the value of the vessel up from between 0.125 and 0.25% prior to the war. Now, fuel future is giving back some of yesterday's big gains, but heating oil is still up 12% on the week after Russia, the world's second largest diesel supplier banned exports following attacks by Ukrainian drones on their refineries. ULSD closing $80 above WTI yesterday, a margin that Gulf Energy's Tom Closer called incredible. The national average at the pump now ticking back up to $3.85. Guys?

And Pippa, everybody's focused on the price per barrel of oil, whether it be WTI or crude, but I was talking to Paul Sanky of Sanky Research this morning on Squawk Box, and he was saying, you know, the real story is the product side of it because those prices are firm and they could go home. higher, especially when you take a look at gasoline and the headwinds that could be facing the refiners as we head into the summer months. That's right. And, you know, we're also heading into the summer storm season. And if the Gulf Coast were taken out by any type of hurricane, that would,

you know, reduce supplies in what is already a very tight market. But it speaks to the fact that oil is really valueless until you actually refine it into those end products. And that's really where we have seen the biggest price increases, whether it be gasoline, jet fuel, or diesel. And we have this flood of oil exiting hormones. But there just isn't. isn't that same availability of refining capacity on the other side to turn out any more oil. We, through not any more products, I should say. We've already seen refiners in the U.S. averaging above 95% utilization rate. So they are really running full out.

We've seen reports of refiners around the world delay maintenance in order to be able to take advantage of these very attractive crack spreads. I will note that if China does decide to further increase their exports, they had implemented an export ban back in March, that could soften some of the tightness in these end markets. But once again, you know, they cannot make up for all of the lost diesel coming out of Russia specifically, which should continue to keep those diesel prices elevated. All right, Pippa. Thank you. Bond yields also giving back yesterday's gains. Let's get to Rick Santelli in Chicago for more.

Hi, Rick. Absolutely, Mike. If you look at a two-day chart, it's pretty incredible. Yesterday, everything was aiming up. Today, not only did we give it back, look at those twos and tens on a two-day chart, we gave back plus, meaning today we are trading under the lows of yesterday briefly, and that's something to pay attention to.

We also had a 30-year bond auction today, the highest yielded an auction in 19 years. And here's an interesting sidebar. On that task force, one of the names that Steve Leasman brought up was Peter Fisher. He has a tie-in to the 30-year bond. It was Peter Fisher as Under-Secretary at the Treasury in 2001. that canceled the issuance of the 30-year bond. It did come back, though, in 06, and it remains as significant, though not a benchmark, part of the yield curve.

Now, there's been a lot of restapening of the yield curve. On the 24th of June, it was the flattest it's been in a while, right in the mid-20s, and that was because of the two-year yield taking out the easing. Well, the steepening that's occurred since then is mostly with the 10-year yields being stubborn to the upside, as you see on that chart. And finally, the dollar yen. Today, it closed around 162.37, as you see. Yesterday, the 40-year high closed was 16260.

So we are hovering right there, very meager bounces. And the Bank of Japan, no intervention yet. Mike and Melissa, back to you. Yep, we'll be watching that. Rick, thank you, Rick Santelli. After the break, we'll take a look at the internal confusion within the market and whether it spells trouble ahead. Welcome back. Semiconductors leading today's rally once again after taking something of a breather while money rotated around the market is a broadening a good thing or could it be a warning sign? I don't know. What do you think, Mike?

It's the former until it's the latter, I think, is the way to think about it. So we keep talking about all these days with these hyperactive rotations, days where the S&P is up at 70% of the stocks are down. So there's a lot of just disagreement below the surface and stocks going their own direction. So here is a gauge of all this. It's called the S&P 500 dispersion index. It measures how much the individual stocks underneath the index are thought to be either more or less volatile than the index itself. So obviously, this is a five-year chart. It is, vastly higher than anything we've seen before. This was right after Liberation Day where you had all this crazy back and forth hyperactive trading. And the one I'm looking at more is mid-20204. That was July, late July of 2024. That was the peak in concentration in the market. And then it did give way it was a broadening trade. However, it also led to kind of an overall market correction because you did lose a little bit of traction in the whole kind of rotation there. So take a look here at something else, which I do think is a two-stock illustration of radically changing fortunes here. This is the market cap of Salesforce, the market cap of Corning.

Corning's like 100-plus euro company, and it just ramped up to a $200 billion market cap in no time. Here we go down from 300, down to less than 150 in Salesforce. If you can go back to the dispersion chart, I mean, is this why we see the VIX suppress? Yes, exactly. It's a big part of that because the VIX is based on the S&P 500 index itself. there is a mix for individual stocks, and it's much higher. That spread is also at a record. Time now for a CNBC News Update with Kate Rune. Hey, Melissa, the Army has reportedly finished its investigation into a deadly Iranian strike on U.S.

forces in Kuwait. That is according to CBS News, which now says the military is expected to share its findings with Gold Star families today. Six Americans were killed in that strike in the opening days of the war with Iran. Meanwhile, five Democratic candidates have formally. announced they will run for Senate in Maine after Graham Platner said last night he would withdraw from the race as he faces new sexual assault allegations. State law gives the party until July 27 to pick a successor to take on Susan Collins, but

Plattner needs to formally withdraw by Monday. Maine Democrats approved a tentative plan yesterday to hold a nominating convention. And finally, the airport in Palm Beach officially renamed itself after President Trump today. The Republican governor Ron DeSantis signed legislation in March to rename the Palm Beach International Airport. It will now be called the Donald J. Trump International Airport. The three-letter airport code also changed from PBI to DJT, but according to the airport, passengers will still need to use the old code to book flights until August 18th, guys.

Back over to you. All right, Kate, thank you. Existing home sales rising last month and nearly 3% increase from a year ago. So is the housing market starting to show signs of life? The CEO of real estate brokerage Compass weighs in when closing bill overtime returns. Existing home sales in June dropping 2.4% from May to 4.09 million units on a seasonally adjusted annualized basis. As home prices hit an all-time high, June sales were 2.8% higher year over year. Mortgage rates have trended higher since the start of the war in Iran, but remained below last year's peak above 7%.

So as a housing market becomes stable enough for buyers to return. joining us now as Compass Chairman and CEO Robert Refkin. Robert, great to have you with us. I want to start off with what's going on in the Bay Area because we are chatting about it, and it sounds like there's a true frenzy going on, and this is precisely because of AI. It is. And so the way we'll describe it is that we're number one in the Bay Area. The buyers are buying now because they're worried that prices are going to go up next year with the Anthropic and Open AI IPOs. There's a frenzy to buy in advance of an expected increase in prices and to put numbers to it. Last year, there are only eight homes in the first half of the year that's sold for more than a million dollars above the list price.

This year, it's 144 homes. So 18 times the demand to buy over a million dollars above the list price. The New York Times focused on this yesterday and pointed out that there was a seller who said she would accept shares in open hands. in the other words, private shares from employees for the home. So, I mean, this seems like, I guess, just the absolute most extreme example of the upper end that the stock market wealth and the private venture capital wealth is fueling things. Does it reflect anything more broadly in the country? It is the housing market.

Well, we have the case-shaped economy. So this is a continuation of that. Below the high end in the Bay Area, we're not seeing as much demand right now. but we expect that it will come through in the months ahead. We are seeing a lot of scenarios where someone comes in in their 30s. They're at one of the companies that are going public. And what I hear is they're really nice kids. And they say, yeah, I want to buy a home.

How much? Somewhere, you know, $30, $50 million. But I also need to find some homes from my family members who are moving. So they're not just buying for themselves. They're buying for their family, one or two or three homes in the neighborhood as well. So this is in anticipation of the wealth that will be unleavened. when these companies go public. So how are they paying for these homes a year in advance? They have good banks.

Okay. Lending against the stakes. There's a lot of equity. Have you done any deals where where there is an exchange of these private shares? And how would a broker be compensated if that were the case? We haven't had that scenario yet, but we have heard many stories where both side was willing to do so. And I guess more broadly, you know, it's sort of like some of the broad indicators of, you know, inventory, maybe freeing, up a little bit and activity perking up, even if, I guess, prices have not necessarily always responded nationwide. What are you seeing in general here? So at Compass International Holdings, we have a very unique perspective. We have over

340,000 agents across our nine brands globally. And what we're seeing is last year is the definitive bottom. There are four million homes that were sold last year. This year, we're on pace to go above 4.2 million. It's not a heroic increase, but it's slow and steady. Like we want to see. We have home prices are at all-time high at 1.8% up year over year. You have the inventory was up 30% last year. It's only up 1% this year, but it's the end of the error where there's not enough inventory. And then lastly, in terms of transactions, and pending transactions, we're actually up 5% year over year from a June perspective. When you say it's a definitive low, is that because you think mortgage rates have hit a definitive peak? Well, I'm just thinking

year over year, spring market is the big market. So if we're already pacing for 4.2 million homes sold in a year for existing home sales. And last year is four, it would take a really bad turn to go below for, it would take a bad turn in the fall to go below four in year. Even in the kind of peak distortion years after the pandemic, you know, you had 3% mortgages and you had all that crazy demand. There was a line that said, look, ultimately we have a locked up market. But over time, you know, people just have. have to move. There's just this natural flow of people just, you know, they can't wait for mortgage rates to get where they want. They can't wait for the asking price to get where they are. Are we there?

Well, I think we've been there for the last three years. So if you look over the last 30 years, the lowest amount of homes sold in a year existing home sales was $4 million. That was 30 years ago. And then the highest was in the sixes. The average was $5.4.5. But the last three years in a row were four, and four. And so I call it. that the must move market. The 5Ds, diapers, diplomas, diamonds, divorce, and death, when those life events happen, you have to move. And I think we can face that bottom and everything is now incremental on top of that. One more question, Robert. If you had to buy one home someplace right now, where would it be? Well, I did come on this show two years ago and I said the place I would buy,

it's on record, was San Francisco, condo San Francisco. So I was right then. Okay. All right, where would I think? With that preface. Don't go out and follow. me now. Where I would go? I think I would, God, that's a great question. I think I would choose San Francisco Bay Area, but the East Bay. So the East Bay, where to the high end of capital has not flowed from Silicon Valley, San Francisco to East Bay yet, and it's just starting to move to Marin. I think East Bay is coming. Like if I had to say, we're going to see year of year increased the most in the next year, I would say the East Bay. All right.

To do it. Oklahoma and Berkeley, we'll see where we go. And no Texas markets you didn't mention, which are really seller-driven right now. So we'll see how that goes. Robert, good to see you. Thank you. Robert Refke. It has been a rough ride for shares of FinTech SoFi, down roughly 30% this year. Up next, CEO Anthony Nodo joins us exclusively from the Sun Valley Conference to discuss

his stock's big underperformance and what new Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, could meet for his business. Welcome back to overtime media dealmaking, geopolitics, and of course, AI are dominating the conversation in Sun Valley at the annual media and technology conference. They're hosted by Allen and company. Our Julia Borson is there with an exclusive interview with SOFI CEO Anthony Noto. Julia. Thanks. And Anthony, thanks so much for joining us here today. Thanks for having me. Here in Sun Valley, there's been so much conversation about AI.

We just interviewed Sam Altman, who said they're working to bring down their costs for their customers. I know you are a customer and partner of Open AIs, and they're also reckoning with high costs themselves. How are you thinking about your AI spending? Are you thinking about decreasing your AI spending? No, we're investing heavily in AI. We just launched a new product called SoFi Coach, which is an application inside our app where you can ask SoFi Coach any question about your financial life. It really helps people get their money right, and we're excited about its utilization. We also just launched Invest Composer, which allows you to go into our investment. product and say, I'd like to invest in energy stocks that would benefit from the increased usage of AI and data centers, and we'll give you a portfolio of energy stocks that you would benefit from.

So it has broad applications and operations and software productivity that are really positive. The costs are high, and ultimately those prices will come down, but the benefits we're seeing are well worth the investment. Mike mentioned your stock is down about 30% year today. Your stock was up today, but how much do you see AI contributing to your ability to turn the stock around? Yeah, I would say the stock is more reflective of the macroeconomic environment. The whole sector has seen multiple contraction as a direct result of uncertainty around interest rates and inflation. Our business is doing incredibly well. It's the most exciting time that I've been at

SOFI. One, we grew over 40% in revenue to over a billion dollars in Q1, really strong profitability with 31% EBITDAB margins, and we had 35% member growth, 37% product growth. So the business is really doing quite well across the board. And so the performance, performance in the stock is more of a sector thing. I do think you take a longer time horizon over the last two years the stock is up about 170%. AI just adds to what we're talking about. It's the most products that we've launched in quite a while this year.

We've launched two AI products. We've also launched SOFIUSD. We're the only national bank that's issuing a stable coin back dollar for dollar. And we also will be launching SOFI tokenized deposits, which will be insured with FDIC insurance and bare interest. So we're excited about that. We also launched small, medium business lending. And more recently, to capture both AI and blockchain benefits, we launched big business banking.

So corporations can open up a bank account with SOFI and program via AI to do payments using the blockchain to do it a cost, much more cost efficiently and faster. Mike? Yeah, Anthony, you describe a range of products, which are kind of your twist, a digital version in a sense, of a lot of traditional lending and other banking products. You're lumped in right or wrong with other sort of fintech apps like a Robin Hood, which have really emphasized things like, you know, trading in prediction markets and other areas that are really away from banking, from lending, saving, etc. Is that something that is an important distinction? Is it something you think you would more want to go in that direction? We absolutely don't think we need to go in the direction of prediction markets. We have incredible growth opportunities in our core products. We think we're in a class of one. We're the only place on your phone that you can buy products such as student loans, personal loans, home loans, in school loans.

You can do checking and savings with high interest rates at 4.5%. You can invest in single stocks, fractional shares, IPOs, private equity, private investments. You also could do home auto and life insurance, all in. in the application and we give you a free certified financial planner. And we're hopefully trying to help you get your money right so you can live your American dream. There's a lot of unrest in our country. We're seeing the upheaval in different cities about the differences between halves and have-nots. Our goal is to help those people that aren't getting to where they can live the American dream to get there. And that's a simple equation. We want to help people spend less than they make

and invest the rest. It's a very different strategy and much more of a mission-driven company. Anthony, Fed Chairman Warsh is here. I know you've known him for years, and we just saw from the Fed minutes yesterday that the Fed is kind of mixed in what to do about interest rates. What do you expect to happen with interest rates? And how do you think it'll impact the health of consumers who are your customers? Sure. The interest rate environment has changed quite dramatically in the outlook for interest rates. We came into the year, originally thinking we'd have two or three rate cuts. After Q1, we gave a forecast that was unchanged and we assumed no rate cuts. And now there's a chance that there could be rate increases. And there's really a challenge with inflation versus economic issues like the home market, the home purchase market is really stalled because rates are high. And the refinancing market is also stalled. And so the Fed's going to have to navigate that and thread that needle.

For us, we're able to give our members great savings. So today, one product that we provide that gives them great relief for rates is an unsecured personal loan. We have people refinancing $30,000 of credit. credit card debt where they're paying 25% interest and we're refinancing them at 12%. That's a huge savings. They have student loans at 8 or 9%. We're refinancing them at 5%. So even in this rate environment, we can still grow quite dramatically. But if rates came down, it would be a huge tell when they're back. And I think ultimately, as we think about the housing market and getting it going again, the rates in the mortgage market need to come down. And that could come down with just balancing changes,

not with actual rate cuts. Yeah, we'll be watching this all very closely. Anthony, thanks so much for joining us to share your perspective. Thank you. I'm great to have you here. Send it back over to you guys. All right, Julia, thank you. Julia Worson from Sun Valley, along with Anthony Nodo, CEO of SoFi. Thank you.

U.S. Airlines have been flying high this year, and Delta has been leading the pack up nearly 30% in 2026. Up next, find out what to expect from the carrier when it reports earnings tomorrow and whether there's risk of jet lag hitting the stock. Closing bell overtime live from the NASDAQ market site. We'll be right back. Welcome back to overtime.

Delta Airlines is not only. the top performing U.S. carrier this year. It's also one of the big non-tech winners in the S&P 500 in 2026. The company set to report earnings before the bell tomorrow, and Phil about takes a look at what Wall Street is expecting. Phil. You know, Melissa, the big question is what did Delta C in terms of a Q2 earnings and revenue rebound relative to what was expected at the beginning of the quarter, or let's say even a month into the quarter? How much is unknown, and that's going to be the main question for everyone. Does that force the company to change its guidance for 26? Remember, they gave guidance in January, really left it alone in March and said there's too many variables.

What do they say tomorrow about that? And how much have they been able to leverage their strengths? There's no doubt that the big question is the impact of falling jet fuel prices in the second quarter. They were down about 23 percent. But how quickly they fell, how Delta handled that, that's going to be one of the questions for analysts during the conference call. also operating margins. The company gave guidance of operating margins in the second quarter of 6 to 8 percent. Where do they come in tomorrow? That will be another metric that people will be focused on. Don't forget, we're going to be talking with CEO Ed Bastion exclusively on Squawk Box. You do not want to miss what he has to say, guys, especially what he says about their view of the second half of this year.

Phil, thanks, Phil A. S.K. Honix is on tap for tomorrow in terms of its ADR list. the trading, and that should be very interesting. Big thing to watch in terms of the reception there and whether it just sort of frees up a lot of the trading interest from the other memory names. It is going to make it a lot easier for U.S. investors to buy S.K. Heinex. And, you know, microns, you know, 15% below its high, something like that. So see if it matters in that way.

And also, yeah, everyone keeps talking about how oversubscribed it is. We'll see how it actually trades because we heard it from SpaceX as well. And then, you know, obviously it had traded below the opening print. at some point. It would be the biggest pure play memory names out there when it goes. So that should be interested. Yeah, without a doubt, it's going to trade differently from the home market. It's a lot of interesting dynamics at work. That's going to do it for overtime today.