Closing Bell - Closing Bell Overtime: Curtiss-Wright CEO on Global Defense Spending & Nuclear Demand; Chips & Crackdowns: Nvidia in China 8/11/25

Episode Date: August 11, 2025

Keith Lerner of Truist Wealth and Kevin Mann of Hennion & Walsh share their market outlook. Eunice Yoon reports on China’s latest crackdown on Nvidia’s H20 chips, followed by Dan Niles of Niles Investment Management on the profit impact for Nvidia and AMD.Curtiss-Wright CEO Lynn Bamford joins in her first broadcast interview in her role on global defense spending and the surge in demand for nuclear energy. Plus, Diana Olick on employers tightening return-to-office rules.

Well, that's the end of regulation. Floor and Decor ringing the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange. Journey Medical doing the honors at the NASDAX. Stocks ending the day lower. Basically at session lows, the Dow the worst performer. The NASDAQ did touch an all-time high once again today before reversing course. Consumer discretionary and staples led today. Energy and real estate worthy S&P sector laggards. Gold moving lower, too. After hitting an all-time high on Friday, the president saying earlier today that gold bars will not be tariffed, as was reported last week. And Cryptone Ether closing in the green. Bitcoin reclaiming the $120,000 level in earlier trading, while Ether hit its highest level in

almost four years. And lots of moves in the soft commodities markets. Coco hitting its highest level in more than a month. It's still down 25% this year, though. And finally, soybeans posting their best day since July 2nd. The president saying overnight that he hoped China would quickly quadruple purchases of U.S. grown soybeans. That's the scorecard on Wall Street, but winter stay late. Welcome to closing bell overtime. I'm John Ford alongside Morgan Brennan. And coming up, we've got the CEO of Curtis Wright in her first broadcast interview,

the aviation company gaining today as it's buying back more stock. And we will get you ready for tomorrow's big earnings report, Circle. It's the first report to the public company. The stock has been on a wild ride soaring and then coming back down to Earth. Well, let's get right to the markets, though, as the NASDAQ hit another record high today before pulling back. Senior markets commentator, Mike Santoli, joins us now with more. Mike? Yeah, John, I was a familiar story with the NASDAQ essentially carrying the load for the market. It did back off and actually the average stock managed to sort of do no worse

than the headline indexes. But I do think it's worth highlighting over the last few months in particular. The NASDAQ 100 relative to the Equal 8 S&P 500. On the bright side, the Eco8 S&P 500 has had a respectable showing over the last year up 10%. But it's just obviously pales in comparison to the 27% for the big cap growth names that dominate the NASDAQ 100. So this obviously has us talking about a hyper-concentrated market again. And really, this is the way the marketplace defense is by buying those companies that seem more impervious to the macro. That is mega-cap tech. And I guess the macro is going to be worth paying attention to this week as we get the CPI number.

And I do think it's worth noting, at least, even while the bomb market's very calm, market implied inflation expectations over the next five years have ticked somewhat higher in the last little while. They're up around 2 and a half percent. And it's in stark contrast. If you look back to September a year ago, when they were below 2 percent, that was when the Fed first cut rates by 50 basis points this cycle. So obviously, it's going to filter into that whole conversation about policy and how the market's going to digest it. I'm going to come out of left field with a question here, Mike. It's about the Dow.

Has there been a time when the Dow was less Dao-y? And I just mean, growing up, it seemed like this was supposed to be the big companies that were at the heart of the economy and that have the kind of scale to drive things. It seems like the mega-cap tech names and some of those hot names at the top of the S&P 500 have taken on more of that role. And the Dow is kind of dowdy. For sure, John. I mean, I would just honestly point back to the late 90s when the Dow was considered to be a little bit of a slow poke, a little bit outdated. It was weighed down with a lot of these kind of legacy companies that weren't necessarily in the forefront of where the economy seemed to be going. And, you know, over time, it has become a lower percentage of overall market cap as some of those companies have been, you know, left in the, look, they try to keep it up to date, right?

but they've grabbed for things like Salesforce as they try to, you know, get more tech exposure. Now, Amazon is in there. Microsoft is in there. It's not that they're not represented. It's just not really steering the index the way it is other indexes. Okay. Mike Santoli, thank you. We'll see you later this hour.

Let's broaden our market conversation, though, and bring in Truist Wealth, co-chief investment officer, Keith Lerner, and Henion and Walsh Asset Management President and CIO, Kevin Mon. Great to have you both here. Kevin, you're on set. I'm going to kick this conversation off with you. We've had a torrid run since the April lows. What do you like here? Do you stick with tech?

Do you look elsewhere? I think investors are going to have to be a lot more selective to find pockets of growth opportunities for the balance of 2025. One, because of valuations, two, because of the turret pace of this bull market runs since early April, as you point out. But there are growth opportunities available. And where do you look for them? Well, from a momentum perspective, lean into those sectors that have been leading the market this far.

whether it's technology, whether it's aerospace and defense within the industrial sectors or utilities. That's where all the big spending is taking place, whether it's AI infrastructure, energy infrastructure, or defense spending. And there's plenty of good companies still within those three sectors that are trading at reasonable valuations that I think could still move higher. All right. Keith, I want to get your thoughts on this market because it does seem like we've done 180 degree turn here in terms of sentiment. If you look at some of the readings we've gotten, including this most recent survey from Bank of America. America. Yeah, well, for us, great to be with you all. You know, it's interesting. If you look below the surface, we do have a pretty bifurcated market. Only about 50% of stocks are above their 50 and 200-day moving averages. And what's notable is as the S&P continues to make new highs or over

the last week or so, the Eaglehead Index, which Mike just talked about earlier, has been moving sideways for about a month. So listen, our perspective is you had a big run. You have the bar for positive surprises has moved up. So we think we're more in a digestion. phase, likely over the next weeks and months, but we would still stick with the leaders, as mentioned earlier. We still like tech. We like communication services, and we also like utilities. But again, you know, markets are typically two steps forward, one step back. And if the market correct somewhat in time, we think that's fine, because what's really a positive, I would say, is the earnings have continued to deliver. We've seen that with the biggest

revenue beat rates that we've seen in about four years. Kevin, should investors be thinking about rebalancing, given all of the growth that many have seen in their portfolios? And what's the smart way to do it in this market without sort of losing momentum and selling too much of your winners? Sure. John, anytime the market moves significantly higher or lower, they should consider rebalancing, right? Because they don't want to stray too far from their asset allocation targets that are consistent with their own tolerances for risk. One asset class that we haven't spoken about just yet are bonds. In fact, Vanguard came out this morning and suggested that bonds may outperform equities over the

next decade. I don't know if that's going to be the case, but it does serve a reminder of the potential diversification benefit of bonds. Plus, for those high-income investors who are looking for tax-free income, maybe now they want to add municipal bonds to their portfolio. But if you've been in large-cap technology, if you've been in some of these AI names that have really run higher. Now may be the time, not necessarily to leave those names, but to trim your allocations and to reallocate to other areas of the market. Keith, what about small caps? I mean,

they really have not done as well as the big names here. But maybe there's a sense that they're cheaper. Is there a great reason why they're cheaper? Is there an argument to be made for dipping a toe in or averaging in to smaller caps? Yeah, so right now our strategy still focuses on large caps. We don't actually have a direct small cap exposure. Perhaps the reason is because as far as why you want to dip a toe in is because they're so far extended, but we don't like buying relative lows, and we're making multi-decade relative lows as well. And you said, why is it? Well, part of it, if you look at the S&P 600 index, it has half the sector exposure in tech relative to large caps. And the other thing that's happening right now is there's so much

money in the PE market and these mega-capped tech stocks, they're gobbling up a lot of these small-cap companies become before they come public. So I think structurally they've changed. It doesn't mean you can't have a balance. It doesn't mean that they won't have, you know, periods of our performance. But structurally, we still favor the large caps space as a whole because that's where the earnings trends are and they have more exposure to the kind of the secular growth. And that's the dominant theme of this bull market. It's still AI. Kevin, you said tech, you said industrials, you said utilities. What do you like in each of those sectors? I would say from the technology perspective, how about Taiwan semiconductor? Largest dedicated ship foundry in the world,

60% market share and they're developing chips now on U.S. soil in Phoenix, Arizona, for companies like NVIDIA. Aerospace and Defense, Northrop Grumman, the maker of the F2 stealth bomber that actually carried those bunker busting bombs that were used in the recent exercise over in Iran. And then in terms of power, I think of a company like Nysource. Nysource is a utility, pays a decent dividend, but they're one of the largest natural gas distributors in the country, distributing in states such as Pennsylvania and even Virginia, Virginia, which has become the Silicon Valley of data centers, critical to the AI revolution. So those are three areas I name and links.

All right, love specifics. Kevin, Keith, thank you. My pleasure. A busy weekend for Invidia as it continues to deal with the difficulty of selling chips to China. Got reports from D.C. and Beijing. But while all that's going on, Invidia stock has nearly doubled from its lows in April, right around the time our next guest got bullish on the stock. Overtime is back in two. Welcome back to overtime. Micron Technology raising its fourth quarter guidance for earnings and revenue.

The company is saying the improved outlook is driven by higher prices, particularly for AI and data centers. The CEO speaking at a tech conference today saying, quote, we feel really well positioned going into 2026. The stock has had a great year. It's up 46% so far this year and finished up 4% today. And the other big news in the semiconductor world, Nvidia and A&B. agreeing to pay 15% of their revenue from China chip sales to the U.S. government. President Trump also hosting Intel's CEO at the White House, our Eamon Jabbers, has that story for us, Amin?

Hey, John, that's right. Take a look at this video that we just got in within the past hour from our roving crew on the streets here in D.C. That is Intel CEO, Lit Bhutan, arriving at the southwest gate of the White House for his meeting with President Trump, which we believe is underway now. No confirmation of that exactly from the White House. That's Intel's top lobbyist at his side. And you can imagine the scale of the lobbying task that they have before them. The CEO's got to convince the President of the United States that he is not, in fact,

too close to China, not conflicted by China ties. He has argued that, you know, as a Malaysian, he simply does the best for the company that he can do. And we'll see if that argument holds forth today here at the White House. This is the president who feels it's within his remit to tell companies who should and shouldn't be their CEO based on what he's seeing and how he feels about that person. So a real challenge here for Intel to figure out how to handle this situation. Meanwhile, the president, I am told, has already signed the executive order on China. That is to extend the deadline for negotiations with the Chinese government an additional 90 days. That was expected to happen today.

The deadline was midnight tonight, otherwise tariffs would have snapped back in a big way tomorrow. That trade truce, I am told by a White House official now will continue for another 90 days as both sides continue to negotiate, continue to have dialogue. The president said in a briefing with reporters earlier today that the relationship between him and Xi Jinping is a good one. And then finally that news that you talked about earlier, NVIDIA and AMD, agreeing to pass along 15% of their revenue on chip sales with China in exchange for that export license from the U.S. government. The president saying earlier today in that briefing with reporters that he felt that the U.S. government should get something if it's going to give these export licenses. And what he asked for was 20%.

Invidia pushed back and said, what about 15? And that's where they settled it, John. So the question now is, what kind of a precedent does this set for other companies that need export licenses? Should companies be expecting to pay a 15, 20 percent tax for those of export licenses to the U.S. government. That the White House says is not their intent here, but no one here is saying that they'll never do that kind of a deal again. Yeah, super interesting, super unusual. And if there's a takeaway, whether it's Intel or NVIDIA and AMD, it's the ties or lack there or disentangling the ties with China and the intersection with national security. Amin Javers, thank you. The president's deal with NVIDIA comes after a weekend when China hit

back at the company saying its chips are not safe for China. Unis Yun is joining us now. from Beijing with more. Hi, Eunice. Hey, Morgan. Well, Beijing is messaging that the H20 chip by NVIDIA could be bad for the country. A social media account that's linked to State TV says that the H20 is far from safe for China, that NVIDIA must prove that the H20 has no backdoors. And it also says that installing backdoors is a U.S. condition to ease export curves. Now, this criticism comes as Chinese companies have been racing to stock up on H20 chips after the Trump administration ease restrictions on their sale here.

The age 20 doesn't have the fastest processing power, but it is good for inferencing. So that's when AI is recalling information. Most companies, or I should rather say that here in the Chinese AI industry, the inferencing is really dominant. The companies here want to be able to dominate inferencing and development. of AI as opposed to training. The thinking behind it is that the more H20 chips they have, the more people will interact with their AI models

and eventually they will become much more popular. So the other reason why the H20 chip is so popular here is that the local Huawei Ascend 910C lags behind. On paper, this Huawei chip is a bit on par with the H20, 20, but at the same time, they're just not enough of them. Huawei isn't able to manufacture them in mass. And so because of that, the age 20 has become the industry standard here. Guys?

All right. Eunice Yun, thank you. Well, our next guest says having access to the Chinese market is crucial to a company like Nvidia, even if they have to pay to get it. Let's bring in Dan Niles. He's the founder and portfolio manager of Niles Investment Management. Also, former Chips analyst at Newberger Berman. Dan, welcome.

So taking a step back here, just from an investor perspective with all of this DC news, whether it's rare earth's investments, a steel stake, now there's chips revenue. This administration is far more hands-on than we've been used to in our lifetime when it comes to the operations of business. Is that anything for investors to factor in or does it not matter? I mean, it obviously matters, John, but the question is, is hands-on positive for U.S. companies are negative. And I think for each company, it's very different. So it's certainly something I take into account. The bigger thing for me is, do you have some stability of policy? Do you have a policy one week and then it flips the next? And right now, that's what

concerns me a little bit more, is this a stable policy where things get better from here or, you know, a month out, you find out that the U.S. has banned chips to China, or you could have, you down the road, China's saying, hey, we're just going to ban the import of NVIDIA chips and, you know, make everybody use Huawei chips. So that's what I'm more concerned about to some degree. Dan, if I remember correctly, you were skeptical of the longevity of this run in the market that we've had. But, you know, in the short term, expecting that things would be good. It's been running for a while.

What do you see in this market now? Yeah, I mean, if you look at some of what I've written, I continue to believe. there's going to be a meltup between now and Thanksgiving. I mean, you can look at what's going on, right? You have the return of meme stocks or American Eagle. You've got hot IPOs again in the marketplace like Figma. You've got Bitcoin ripping to new all-time record highs. You've got blank check companies. You've got biotech companies now putting their treasury into Bitcoin to get their stocks to pop. Every tariff deal is looked at positively. The big, beautiful bill helps tax, you know, tax implications for R&D and CAPX. And then finally, the biggest

one of all, arguably, is you're probably going to have the Fed starting to cut rates starting in the September meeting. You probably get a preview of that at Jackson Hole. And so I think the market keeps running until about Thanksgiving. And then I'm expecting at 10 to 20% correction as we figure out this is demand that's been pulled forward. And holiday demand doesn't turn out to be that great. So that's kind of how I'm tactically looking at this market. I was just going to ask you, Dan, why November, but you kind of touched on it. It sounds like you think there's a pull forward ahead of that. I mean, does this feel bubblicious to you when you make a comparison with some of these things, like specs, for example, to 2021?

No, absolutely. And remember back in 2021, you had CPI start the year at 1.4%. It went to 7%. And the Fed said it was transitory. Everybody wants to believe it's transitory, and the S&P is of 27%. So now everybody wants to believe that that 38% year-over-year growth in imports that we saw in Q1 for the U.S. economy inside GDP, right? And the U.S. is 25% of global GDP, and you've got imports up, you know, 38%. Everybody wants to believe, oh, well, that's just natural demand. It clearly isn't. And you've started to see some of that give back already starting. But I think what's going to happen is these tariffs, which everybody seems to be okay with, you're going to take tariff rates, which under President Trump's first term

went from 2 to 3 percent, that 3 percent is probably going to go to mid to high teens. And that's going to start to filter through in prices. And then I think you're going to figure out that a lot of companies, as well as individuals, bought ahead of those price increases that they know are coming. and holiday sales are just going to be a little bit disappointing, and the market is obviously priced for perfection, and if you have a melt-up into it, which is kind of what you're saying, I think that's a recipe for disaster. So what would you be buying right now? What are you bullish on right now?

Yeah, I mean, you can be pretty much bullish on everything, right? Because the market just rotates from sector to sector. Like last week it was Apple, the laggards, Google, they all went up taking the market higher. And, you know, you're seeing some of the lagging sectors starting to bounce. But for me, it's more of a, you know, you have to have a barbell approach right now, I think, where have some of the mega caps that you think are doing well, performing well into your end. But you can also take some risk until the market tells you that it's actually looking forward versus being in this bubbleitious time period like you were in 2021.

So we have things in, you know, in health care, in energy, in defense stocks where we're further out on the risk curve while still owning some of the MAG 7 that we like the most like, you know, the names I've talked about before, the NVIDias in Microsofts, which we've written about. And, Dan, how much cash? Well, I mean, I think for right now, cash is not something I'm worried about because, you know, as I said, I think the market can continue to melt higher. and in that scenario, you're trying to deploy, you know, all the capital you can to take advantage

of that. And so that's what we're doing. But I think when we get to that closer to Thanksgiving or if the market tells me, hey, we're starting to get a little bit more rational, then I think you, you know, we've had over 50% cash before. And I can see that returning to the forefront and along with a lot of shorts. All right. Dan Niles covered a lot there. Thank you. Thank you. Well, coming up, it's been more than five years since the COVID pandemic, but employers are still having trouble getting workers back to the office. We're going to tell you what they're doing to bring those workers back.

And we've seen some big IPOs recently, Figma, Firefly, CoreWeave with big gains today. And we'll get you read in for Circle, about to report for the first time as a public company. That stopped with a massive run since its debut, up more than 5X over time back in two. Welcome back to overtime. Markets closing in the red today, giving up early gains. The NASDAQ hitting another record high during today's session. Bitcoin topping the 120,000 mark earlier, still right in the way from President Trump's move to allow people to buy crypto in retirement accounts. And a couple of media deals, Paramount, paying $7.7 billion for the exclusive rights to ultimate fighting.

UFC events, sending TKO, which shares higher, and Tegna, soaring about 30% as Next Star Media is reportedly in talks to buy the company. Tegna owns or operates 68 television stations, and Monday.com, the latest cloud company to get crushed after earnings. Results were better than expected, but the guidance was disappointing, or changes to Google search have been a problem for the company, according to the CEO. Well, it's time now for CNBC News Update with Kate Rogers. Hi, Kate. Hi, Morgan. Pennsylvania officials say at least one person is dead and two are unaccounted for following an explosion at a U.S. steel plant near Pittsburgh. They say multiple people have been treated for injuries, but their status is not known at this time. A rescue operation is currently underway at the plant where U.S. steel said nearly 1,300 people work daily. The company added that it's cooperating with authorities and investigating the incident.

House Democrats are planning to introduce a bill that would undo President Trump's move to, federalized the Washington, D.C. Police Department. Maryland Representative Jamie Raskin said today the measure is based on a 1973 law that gives D.C. home rule. The resolution is unlikely to pass in the Republican-held House. And the NFL is recommending additional security measures for all team and league facilities following last month's shooting at a Midtown New York City office building. In a memo sent Friday, the league said the changes will be reviewed at a special meeting later this month. Some of the enhanced measures include x-ray scanners for bags and weapons screenings. Back over to you. All right, Kate Rogers, thank you. Well, coming up,

shares of Curtis Wright jumping today after the company added to its buyback plan, we're going to be joined on set by the industrial player's CEO in her first broadcast interview. You don't want to miss it. Stay with us. Welcome back. Check out shares of Curtis Wright. Up over 3.5% today after announcing a $200 million expansion of its buyback program. This after the stock hit record highs last week after strong Q2 earnings and boosted full-year guidance. Curtis-Royt is a nearly century-old company. It's the result of a merger of companies founded by Glenn Curtis, the father of naval aviation,

and the Wright brothers who so famously made the first flight. Joining us now, on set exclusively is Curtis Wright Chair and CEO Lynn Bamford. This is our first broadcast interview in the role, and it's so good to have you here. Welcome. Thank you very much for having me here. It's my pleasure to get to talk a little bit more about Curtis Wright and share it with your audience. So I just mentioned it's almost century old company, but you're engaged in a renaissance, if you will. You're sort of positioned for the future of growth, whether it's in defense, whether it's in energy.

So I actually want to start with the energy piece of it. Okay. Because it's not the biggest piece of your portfolio, but it's growing gangbusters, and that's commercial nuclear. I guess just walk me through what that means and means for the future of the company. I'd love to. It's, it is definitely an exciting portion of our portfolio and drawing a lot of attention. And even though it's relatively small with just over 10% today, 12% to be specific, it's an important part in we're a critical supplier into the industry because we are, I'll really break it down to talk about where our business comes from in three different buckets. One is, you know, we support every nuclear power plant that's operating here in the U.S. and Canada and the U.K. and allowing them to continue to have safe, reliable operations. and do things such as the plant life extensions from 60 to 80 years. And so that's the biggest portion of that revenue today. But really starting a handful of years ago,

as the concept of small modular reactors to really revolutionize the industry where it was being invented, Curtis Wright's been working with the major SMR players, really to secure meaningful content across those reactor designs and being a critical supplier into them. Most notably, it's X-energy. Terra Power Rolls-Royce, where we feel we'll have anywhere from 20 to over $120 million of content per reactor. So we keep hearing about the promise of this new nuclear renaissance. Is it coming? And how quickly does it come?

Well, I do believe it's coming. And I think we can see line of sight to that in Eastern Europe and put out, you know, a belief in our May investor day last year that we could see one and a half billion dollars of business coming to Curtis Wright, driven by Eastern Europe, and with this administration's executive orders that were, you know, announced just a couple months ago, it has really, you know, lit the U.S. nuclear industry on fire. And it's everything from up rates, you know, to try and get more out of the current reactors, which is great for Curtis Wright. But even more importantly, the announcement that there's a goal of having 10 large reactors under construction by the end of the decade, by 2030, which is a really big deal. So we've had a longstanding partnership with Wessinghouse

who will be building, you know, these reactors. And the pace of our engagements and work to make sure we're prepared to be a great supplier to them is really dynamic and exciting. Now you also have, you're very well positioned in defense. You've got shipbuilding, but you also have defense in electronics. We're obviously seeing defense dollars grow here in the U.S., but also in Europe.

So how do you see that continuing to funnel through? It's an important part of our portfolio. And, you know, there is fantastic things happening here in the U.S. and in Europe. And, you know, starting here, you know, the priorities in the 2026 defense budget, whether it's shipbuilding, funding the industrial base, army modernization, Air Force dominance, and the Golden Dome, which is getting a lot of discussion. Those are all great areas for us where we will have meaningful content and be able to support the U.S. government. But that's not to minimize what's going on internationally.

Lynn, you got a question on the call about your purchase of NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs. And you talked about quick decision making that's necessary in defense and how those might come into play. Can you sketch out for investors what kind of scenario those would be used in and how you think you can gain advantage? Yeah, so it's an exciting new partnership that we've signed that has just to, you know, share with the viewers, gives us access to the embedded computing, the networking, and the AI arms of their technology, which is pretty unique and something we're very pleased with. And it's going to take computing to new portions of the battlefield where it wasn't before, as it enables, you know, computing at the tactical edge, which is, you know, really this concept of taking data from sensors,

computing and making an action based on that data and pushing it way out that will really advantage the soldier. And so it's early days and we'll see, but we're excited to be getting our products here in our customers' hands in just a handful more months. Are you acquisitive? We are definitely acquisitive. We're very purposeful of saying that is our top goal for using our capital dollars. As you mentioned, we did announce a share buyback today.

We had built up a bit of a war chest thinking there was a couple of targets that were going to maybe be in play for us this year. And we talked about that on our call last week that they really didn't fit through our strategic and financial filters. And so we felt it was the right time to go ahead and put some of that capital work for our shareholders with a share buyback. All right. We'll be watching for that too then. Lynn Bamford of Curtis Wright. Great to have you here on set. Thank you very much. Well, up next, Mike Santoli is back.

He's breaking down the record year of Wall Street buyback speak. speaking of, and how the boom stacks up on a historical basis. Plus, Circle set to report earnings for the first time as a public company tomorrow. A top analyst will tell us what he's expecting and how you should be trading the stock that's coming up on Overtime. Welcome back to Overtime. Check out shares of C3AI getting crushed down 25% plus today after issuing week fiscal first quarter sales guidance that CEO Tom Siebel called completely unacceptable and blamed on both

the company's reorganization and his health struggles this year. D.A. Davidson's Gill Loria calling the results catastrophic, downgrading the stock from neutral to underperform, cutting his price target from $25 a share to $13 as a result. Coming up tomorrow, we'll speak with CEO Tom Siebel about the results. Looking forward to that. Well, turning over to buybacks. The latest data shows that they're on track to reach one trillion dollars in total this year. But Mike Santoli is back to tell us why the hype may not be valid. Mike. Yeah, Morgan, a trillion dollars or $1.1 trillion, as some projections have it, that will be total S&P 500 buybacks for this calendar year.

It's a huge number, but not so much relative to the aggregate size of the U.S. equity market anymore. So this is the percentage of shares bought back. So this is the buyback total in each calendar year divided by, the market cap of the S&P 500 at the midpoint of that year between high and low. And what you see is back 2018, when we did $800 billion in share buybacks, but the S&P 500 was less than half its current value, it was closer to 4% of total market cap being reacquired by companies. Now it's a little over 2%, because $1.1 trillion on something like $53 or $54 trillion

in S&P 500 market cap today. it's just not that big. In terms of moving the overall needle, I don't think it's insignificant. Obviously, the presence of this constant corporate buying power, bidding for their own shares, is sort of seen and felt across the market, but it's not just an automatic formula for great performance of stocks. Now, take a look at the PKW is an ETF that tracks the Buyback Achievers Index. These are companies with a long history of buying back an appreciable amount of their shares. And you see over that same period I just showed from the end of 20, By the way, 2017 tax cut, that's what caused a lot of the buyback activity in 2018.

You see it's underperformed. It's done fine. It obviously hasn't been a bad investment, but it's also been no magic formula for outperforming because they, you know, the buyback achievers don't ever include heavyweights in, of course, the large dominant stocks that have been driving the S&P. You know, we had a guest on the exchange earlier today. We was talking about the IPO market. One of the points he was making is that there's fewer public companies, and then the

companies that are public have fewer shares in the market because they've been buying back so much of their stock. So I do. And that in turn has been contributing to some of these big pops and some of this froth, for lack of a better term, that we've been seeing with these companies that do go public and IPO. And I just want to get your thoughts on that as we do continue to have this conversation about buybacks. There's no doubt that a lot of the new IPOs, they only sell a small float to the public. So therefore, it's a stampede to get in, a narrow door to buy shares. and they do create this supply demand and balance. And yes, definitely, there are thousands fewer publicly listed companies in the U.S.

than there were in the late 90s. Now, most of those are kind of penny stocks, marginal companies that went away or now owned by private equity. So I do think there's something to the supply demand story and, you know, even $1.1 trillion in buybacks by the S&P 500, it's still higher likely than total equity supply coming out of new and existing companies. So I think it's favorable. It's just not something that automatically means we go higher. All right. Mike Santoli, thank you.

Well, the real estate sector has been notably underperforming the broader market over the last year. Up next, we'll look at whether the surge of workers returning to offices could spark a real estate resurgence. And later, what to expect from tomorrow's key CPI inflation report and all the big names on the earnings calendar. Stay with us. Welcome back to overtime. Elf Beauty looking good to investors today. Morgan Stanley upgrading the stock to overweight from equal weight and hiking its price target to $134 a share from $114. The firm says Wall Street's consensus earning estimates are too low, thanks in part two product pricing tailwinds. Stock fell about 10% on Thursday after a lackluster earnings report

and said it would raise prices due to tariffs, but you can see those shares finished up almost 10% today. Yeah. Well, more and more companies are cracking down on remote. and ensuring employees are coming back to the office. Diana Oleg has the details on what it could mean for real estate investments. Diana. Well, John, in the past year, U.S. companies made more progress in getting employees back to the office than at any time since the pandemic began. That according to a new report from CBRE.

Nearly three quarters of the 184 companies surveyed said they have met their attendance goals. That's up from 61 percent last year. The share of companies monitoring attendance jumped to 6. 69% this year from 45% last year, and those enforcing attendance policies rose to 37% from 17%. More companies said they expect to expand their office footprints rather than contract. Obviously, there's been a big slowdown in office development, as well as a surge in conversions to residential. Now, 67% of companies said they will either keep their office footprints the same or expand within the next three years.

That's up from 64% a year ago. for expansion, most pointed to business or headcount growth. Overall, office vacancies are 18.9%. Still high, just under that 30-year high of 19%. The wildcard in all of these numbers, of course, is tariffs. Now, this and other big plays, we're in our latest Property Play newsletter. The next one is out tomorrow. Don't miss it.cnbc.com forward slash property play

or use that QR code to sign up. Back to you guys. All right, Diana, I want to ask you about a nuance in those vacancy numbers. Prime, that very highest quality subset of Class A, I think the vacancy number is lower, right? Closer to 15%. Is their price strength, therefore, particularly in Prime, given that companies seem to be ramping up their need for space, and it was already the very best spaces were already at a bit of a premium? Yeah, and interestingly enough, in this report, it said that a lot of those companies were reporting that it was actually difficult to find more

class A office space. That's what they really want. That's what in demand. And that's where you're getting your pricing power. There hasn't been a lot of new development since the pandemic. So you're not getting more of that class A, which is, of course, in such high demand. So yes, pricing power there. It's the class B, class C. Those are looking to conversions and their pricing power is non-existent. All right, Diana Oleg, thank you. Well, Circle shares are up fivefold since going public in June. But the stock has struggled over the past month. Up next, a top and analysts on how you should trade that name ahead of its first earnings as a public company tomorrow. 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. Let's get you set up with tomorrow's trade today. Circle is the big name on the earnings calendar as it reports for the first time since its IPO, Cardinal Health, CoreWeave, Kava, and H&R Block will also report results. On the economic front, investors are awaiting the latest read on inflation from the Consumer Price Index, CPI. Wall Street is expecting consumer prices to rise 2.8% year-over-year, core 3%. We'll also get Boeing's monthly orders and deliveries, and crypto firm bullish will price its IPO after the bell. But, John, it's really inflation from a macro standpoint that the markets are waiting for.

Okay, well, we'll watch that and other types of inflation as well. Let's square those circle earnings out tomorrow morning now with Owen Lau from Oppenheimer. Owen, what do you have to believe about the future of this company to feel like you can buy it here, even around these earnings? Yeah, first of all, thank you for having me. I think you have to believe the huge disruption circle and USC can do in this market. There are a couple of areas that they can do. First one, cross-border payments. the second one, remittance, the third one, capital markets, the fourth one, consumer payments.

Some of these, TAM could take some years, maybe three, four years to materialize, but for the remittance and cross-border payment, it could become a reality in the near term. So we just got some news last week, I believe, in the last few days, about remittly, the remittance technology company, also embracing USDC and stable coins. Why will Circle benefit in particular? How much of that benefit is there to go around inside the fintech space? Yeah, this is one of a good example

that you see the further adoption of USC in the cross-border payment space, right? So I mean, the 10 is still pretty large in this space. Probably we are talking about like trillion dollars of 10 here. And I don't think really it's just a one-off thing. There will be more and more partnerships with other companies. And more and more companies, not just cross-border payment

companies, but also traditional finance companies to adopt USDC to facilitate payment as well. So to me, the opportunity is here, it will just take time to build up this infrastructure going forward. I think that's the key thing. So do you also like Owen, do you like Coinbase here since they have a stake in circle and obviously are in the stable coin space as well? And perhaps just as interestingly, the fact that Wall Street seems to be opening its arms wide to ether in this sort of new, and Ethereum, in this new age of blockchain implementation. Yeah, if I compare Coinbase and Circle valuation, Coinbase is trading around 22 times 2026 EBDA multiple. Circle is trading at about 57 times 2026 EBDA multiple. So if you look at

The valuation, it really sounds like Coinbase has more value here compared to Circle. So that's why we have an outperform rating on Coinbase. If you look at the stock performance going into the print, I think that's one of your questions. Actually Coinbase also had a great momentum going into the print, but the stock kind of like crashed after the print because the expectation was quite high. And I'm not saying a Circle will have a bad performance tomorrow, but you can tell the expectation is quite high already, trading it 57 times EBITDA multiple going into the brain. So I do think Coinbase said they put a good precedent about how the stock would trade tomorrow.

But we'll see what happened. Okay. And just to go back to Ethereum, what are your thoughts on that, especially as you see companies like BitMinds start to build out treasuries? Yeah, I think there will be more and more treasury companies building on Ethereum. Like we have, I think, a hundred Bitcoin treasury company already. For Ethereum, I think we may have like 3, 5, 10 only. There will be more and more companies coming up and buy Ethereum going forward. The good thing about Ethereum is there are more use cases built on Ethereum.

And even USDC, they also build on Ethereum and they can charge gas fee, which allow analysts to build a DCF model or look at the revenue to calculate or estimate intrinsic value of Ethereum. So from a calculation from a fundamental standpoint, it actually has a better. a case compared to Bitcoin, in my opinion. Okay. To clarify, you've got a market perform on Circle, so you like Coinbase better. Correct. Got it.

Owen Lau. Thank you. Thanks a lot. Well, don't miss Gwockbox's interview with Circle CEO tomorrow at 6.50 a.m. Eastern, Jeremy Aller. That'll be one to watch. And, of course, speaking of high-flying IPOs, obviously CoreWee reporting tomorrow, too. and we do get two more crypto-related IPOs.

We just talked about one of them this week, too. Yeah, and it's been this odd bifurcated market. I mean, various different reasons for it. We talked about C3 AI earlier. That stock down dramatically today on just a baffling revenue miss. We're going to talk to Tom Siebel about that tomorrow. But in the software space, there are a lot of mid-size and smaller software companies that just haven't been performing as well as the mega-caps.

And these aren't companies that don't have AI stories at all, it's just they're not showing the kinds of evidence and maybe the kinds of momentum that investors would need to see to associate them, some of them with this hardware and infrastructure revolution. There are sections,

of course, Palantir, ServiceNow, some of those bigger names, but the smaller and mid-sized ones, not always doing is great. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see what we get from Cisco as well later this week, as we do continue to pull these threads around the AI trade. The other thing, obviously, CPI, we just touched on it.

key inflation read, expectation that you're going to see in acceleration, both on top line and in core. How much is tariffs actually translating here? And how much is it not? As we have companies that are talking about eating some of those costs and things like mitigation, which seems to be the buzzword on earnings calls. And after that jobs report read that we got a few days ago, the macro data is just all in a very different context.

So you wonder how the market's going to react to those inflation numbers as we get them. Yeah, and we've had so much dovish Fed speak. Well, that does it for us here at overtime. Yeah, fast money. starts now.