Closing Bell - Closing Bell Overtime: Fed Chair Powell On The Hill; CrowdStrike CEO On Rising Cyber Threat From Iran 6/24/25

Episode Date: June 24, 2025

As Chair Powell testifies on Capitol Hill, BNY's Vince Reinhart offers insight into what it means for the Fed path and investor expectations. Victoria Greene of G Squared breaks down the market positioning. FedEx and AeroVironment earnings. Former Pentagon official Roger Zakheim weighs in on the state of ceasefire efforts in the Middle East while Crowdstrike CEO George Kurtz joins to talk the rising cyber threats coming from Iran. More on the wild moves in the energy market with Again Capital’s John Kilduff. 

That's the end of regulation. Tweenie Brown ringing the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange. Goldman Sachs Asset Management doing the honors at the NASDAQ. Stocks rallying today. After the President Broker is ceasefire between Israel and Iran, the S&P is now just 1%, 1% from all-time highs. Oil, the big mover of the day to the downside, falling more than 5% now lower by more than 12% over the past two days. Investors no longer betting on the possibility of a potential supply shock due to mid-east tensions. The S&P

tech sector, though, hitting an all-time high for the first time since December 2024. It's now outperforming the S&P for the year. Chip stocks outperforming with nearly all the components of the sector ETF higher on the day. AMD, Broadcom, Marvell, and Micron, which reports here tomorrow, leading the charge. Gold hitting a two week low, posting its worst day in a month. The gold ETF, GDX, lower for the fifth session in the past six. And some names hitting all-time highs. Netflix, JP Morgan, GE, Vernova,nova Microsoft and Seagate. Well that's the scorecard on Wall Street. Welcome to Closing Bell Overtime. I'm Morgan Brennan.

John Fort is off. Well coming up this hour we will get earnings from FedEx and drone maker defense contractor AeroVironment. Plus markets seem to think Iran is not a military threat but what about a cyber threat? We're gonna talk to CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz. That sector's seeing big gains this year. CrowdStrike is up 42% since the start of the year but let's dive into markets. Stocks are finishing the day higher as investors hope a ceasefire between Iran and Israel will hold. As we mentioned the S&P is now less than 1% from its all-time high that it hit back in mid-February. The Dow and S&P posting their best days since late May.

10 of the 11 sectors in the S&P ending higher. Energy, the only loser. The markets have now recovered all their losses since the beginning of the conflict between Israel and Iran. G Squared Private Wealth founding partner and CNBC contributor Victoria Green and CNBC senior markets commentator Mike Santoli join me now. Mike, I'm going to kick this off with you.

Set the stage for what we've seen this week and the fact that for lack of a better term, a peace dividend seems to be pricing into this market now. Yes, a peace dividend because you had a little bit of a peace tax or a war tax that was at least threatened a few days ago. The market operates on how are things today relative to what we expected yesterday or a couple of days ago. And on that standard, there's a lot of reason

for the market to release some tension here and rebuild equity values back to where we were four months ago. Let's keep in mind, back in February, when we traded at all time highs in the S&P above 6,100, nothing had been done to Iran's nuclear capabilities to reduce them, right? It wasn't as if that was holding back the market, but once it was introduced as a threat and then it seems to be set aside as a threat, the market can see its way clear because large institutions are still a little bit under invested, the technology theme is really working

again, earnings at least right now seem like they're holding up, credit seems fine, yields down. So in other words, the market's taking away a lot of the things to either worry or complain about and is benefiting at least for now in this run toward the old highs. Victoria, we have an S&P that's trading at 23 times 2025 earnings here. It's looking a little expensive. What do you like and are valuations rich? I don't think, yeah, valuations, nothing's cheap right now, but I think you could still continue to see multiple expansion. I think you're gonna also see earnings growth. Very moderate expectations for Q2, right? Fact sets about 4.9% expected earnings growth. The bar is really low. That's great because typically you can hurdle that well. We're really excited about financials reporting in a couple weeks and I do think the multiples could continue to expand we're in a bull market right now I think we're going to hit new highs

and when we hit new highs that is a really bullish signal we can continue to run and yes there is a lot out there but look at this market's ability to climb this wall of worry you know if you were to say oh hey, we're gonna have a direct strike on Iran and the market's gonna rally 2% afterwards, you know, over the last two days, I think everybody would elapse you out of the room. So number one, geopolitical conflict means less to the market

than it does to individual investors. Two, we need to kind of sit on our hands and not knee-jerk if we get some bad news, whether it's tariff, whether it's a ceasefire or not holding. It looks like the likelihood that everything's going to turn out okay is a ceasefire or not holding, it looks like the likelihood that everything's going to turn out okay is a fantastic way to invest this market right now.

Okay, and of course we have every major average finishing the day by greater than 1% in terms of the gains. We've got our first earnings report out, FedEx results are out, and Frank Holland has the numbers for us. Hi, Frank. Hey there, Morgan. I'm looking at FedEx shares right now.

They are moving higher after the company beat on the top and the bottom line, a significant beat when it comes to earnings. The estimate was $5.84 a share. The actual was $6.07 a share. Little bit of color in the quarter in the report, but honestly only a little bit. They talked a lot about FedEx Express,

where the business that's air delivery generates about 50% of revenue. They said results improved throughout the quarter. They also said they saw increased U.S. and international export volume throughout the quarter. They also said they saw increased U.S. and international export volume throughout the quarter. Basically alluding to the idea of a pull forward of freight ahead of tariffs or companies trying to get ahead of those tariffs. Also a higher base yield of premium for some of those services. They also say those factors were partially offset by higher purchase, transportation, and wage rates. Basically FedEx contracts a lot of

their business when it comes to their ground unit Especially to contractors looking a little bit deeper inside this report the revenues for the express business again Where they give you about 50% of revenue that's air delivery that beat estimates the freight revenues came in at 2.297 Billion also above estimates one point that may stick for investors right now You saw the stock go up and it's going down about a half a percent lower than it initially did. FedEx actually missed when it came to express margins. Margins are very important for this business. Margins came in at 8.4%.

The estimate was for 9.4%. But very important to note, it was a significant improvement from a year ago where it was 6.9%. Also, the freight business margins came in better than expected. That's also important because FedEx is planning to came in better than expected. That's also important because FedEx is planning to spin off its freight business. That's a less than truckload business

into its own separate private, excuse me, publicly traded company. There were some reports that some customers were perhaps switching services ahead of that spin off. But right now, looking at FedEx shares, they're actually moving just a bit lower. Also, guidance for the Q1, the current quarter, revenues were higher than expected, but the EPS guidance was a bit lower. Also guidance for the Q1, the current quarter, revenues were higher than expected, but the EPS guidance was a bit soft right now. FedEx shares pulling back about a third of 1%. Yeah, flat to 2% revenue growth for the current quarter. What got my attention here, Frank, is the CapEx numbers, because we know this is a company that over the past two years and under CEO Raj Subramaniam has been taking costs out of the system and

parking planes and consolidating businesses and doing things to pull billions of dollars out. And so in the report where they talk about capital spending for fiscal 2025 of 4.1 billion, down 22% from the year before, certainly noteworthy. And the fact that they reached those forecasts in terms of how much they took out of the system. But what also got my attention here, Frank, is capital spending of $4.5 billion for this upcoming fiscal year where they're talking about investments in network optimization

and efficiency improvement, including fleet and facility modernization and automation. So we're actually starting to see some of that spending maybe tick back up a little bit here. Right. Also, to your point, going back to some of the efforts to reduce costs, they actually took, I believe it was a $27 million charge for parking a few planes. Not a big number for a company that obviously generates billions, but just kind of speaks to some of the impact of their idea to optimize their network. And then going forward, you also

have to remember these are going to be two separate companies. When we're talking about FedEx freight and I guess FedEx OG or the original FedEx. You're going to need both separate sales teams and other operations. So some of that capex spending might be part of that spinoff, just basically completely separating those two companies. Yeah, and they tend to give their global economic outlook on the earnings call too. We'll see if we get that. Frank Holland, thank you. And of course, may he rest in peace. Fred Smith passing over the weekend. A great American entrepreneur who founded FedEx. Well, Victoria, wanna go back to you, wanna get your thoughts on what we just heard

out of this earnings report, or for that matter, what we're seeing in terms of the consumer, given some of the data we've been getting, and of course, those Carnival results. Carnival was one of the top performers in the S&P today. Yeah, absolutely. I think FedEx is fighting just a really weak package market. They may be struggling with the minima. So I think people are saying, if you're not going to do cost

cuts, what are you going to do for me? Because earnings are kind of stuck a little bit. So this stock was in a showy mode. Maybe the partnership with Amazon and some commentary on the upcoming year could help FedEx. But we do love the consumer and they're definitely still spending money on services. They may not be shipping as many packages and they may not be importing as much from China, but they're certainly spending on cruises. And so for us, we look at Carnival and that's a great sign for the consumer spending. You know, we'll see what PCE has to say on Friday. You know, honestly, we've seen a little bit of a suckback with uncertainty, but maybe the consumer's opening the wallet back up and

that was good for airlines. It's good for restaurants. It's good for cruises. If the consumer can continue to spend and spend domestically here and they're shopping here, they're eating out, they're going on cruises, they're getting on airplanes, they're driving that car that's very, very good for the US economy and that's something that we like to see in Carnival absolutely.

Yeah, Micah, I'll put a similar question to you, especially as we see shares of FedEx now trading down about two and a half percent here in overtime. We know it's a global bellwether, particularly where stuff like trade and geopolitics are concerned, but also how it speaks to the consumers and some of those goods volumes.

Yeah, I mean, look, there's room for some catch up here from FedEx as well as the other transport needs. If you look within the industrial sector, it's been all defense and aerospace on the outperformance side to the upside, plus Uber, and then it's been transports as the weakest piece of it. They started to converge, actually, in the last couple of days,

obviously with this sort of outbreak of peace, so to speak, the defense stocks coming in a little bit. That being said, I still think that investors in general need to be persuaded that the consumer is going to remain strong. We have 5% annualized total payroll income. That's pretty good, but you saw in the conference board, Consumer Confidence Report just this morning,

that the perception of the labor market is continuing to deteriorate. So whether it's coming through in the unemployment rate or not, there's a sense out there of just a little bit less job security or at least power in the hands of workers. So I think you have to keep it all in mind as we get through into next earning season. The capacity to spend for most of the consumers is there. Are they willing to?

All right. Victoria Green, thank you for joining us. Mike Santoli, we'll see you in a little bit. Well, let's turn now to the Fed because that also factored into what we saw in the markets today after hearing from a number of Fed officials that suggested a July rate cut could potentially based on the data Be on the table Fed chair Powell throwing a bit of cold water on that today the chair testifying before the House Financial Services Committee Saying he's still concerned about what tariffs could do to inflation. Take a listen At this time all forecasters are expecting pretty soon that some significant inflation will show up from tariffs.

And we can't just ignore that. But we're not, we're just saying let's wait and see more. That's all we're doing. Joining us now is BNY investments chief economist and former Federal Reserve director of the Division of Monetary Affairs, Vincent Reinhart. It's great to have you back on the show. Welcome. I want to start

right there because we've had a lot of Fed speak to start the week and certainly Powell with his semiannual testimony on the Hill, part one of two days here today. The market seems to be taking his messaging maybe slightly more dovish. I'm not sure it's the right way to take his messaging, but given what we've heard from others in recent days, your takeaway. So first of all, I think you're right. On net, the FOMC outcome was somewhat hawkish, a dovish rather in the sense they left two easings priced in,

but he reiterated that message that they're in no hurry. And that's the Chair Powell that showed up this morning on Capitol Hill. They're in no hurry. And he already had those Fed speakers on the tape talking about moving at the next meeting. He didn't swim up to that at all. I think sometimes market participants reverse engineer what happened in markets and put it into the words of Chair Powell.

Fact is oil prices are off 5.5%. I kind of think that you would trim your expectations of Fed firmness given that it wasn't what Chair Powell said, it's what the oil market did. So if you see energy prices fall, and even after the spike we did see, which we're coming back off of going into this Israel-Iran war, we were still lower in crude oil than we were a year ago. So if you see those energy prices continue to fall, if you continue to see signs of housing

deflation take root here, does that offset any potential inflation impact you would get from tariffs? It prepares the ground for a better pass-through of tariffs to import prices and import prices to consumer prices. The good news is energy prices are really resonant with households. I mean, you think about them when you fill up the tank or pay the natural gas bill for your house. In that sort of environment, you're more sensitive to the effects on import prices. Well, if you don't have it, if in fact you're getting a windfall, maybe you're less sensitive

and inflation expectations will be better contained. So it works in the right direction. However, the changes in energy prices are relatively small compared with how big a lift the Fed is probably expecting from tariffs. Yeah, and of course, we get that PCE inflation reading this Friday. And so far, other readings we've gotten have been tamer than expected. Mike Santoli was just talking about the labor market component of this, these early signs perhaps

of deterioration in the jobs market. Are you seeing that? And if so, if so, or if not so, what would you be watching for to know that that's picking up steam? So two parts to that. One is it's still a little early to see the tariff effects So what would you be watching for to know that that's picking up steam? So two parts to that. One is it's still a little early to see the tariff effects in PCE.

It's beginning to build. But that wave is coming. With regard to labor markets, yeah, labor demand is no doubt softening. However, labor supply growth is slowing too because of the administration's views about the border. Stricter immigration enforcement and deportation means that we're maybe even having a decline in the number of workers, but it certainly slowed the growth,

in which case you need slower labor demand to keep the labor market in balance. And that's pretty much the story of 2025. you need slower labor demand to keep the labor market in balance. And that's pretty much the story of 2025. So the risk here, and I understand the concern, is the world's nonlinear. Sometimes the labor market slows and then just cracks. It doesn't feel like we're there yet, and some slowing in employment isn't so bad when labor supply is also slowing. AI adoption.

I would imagine factoring into all of this, and we don't know to what extent yet either, but when you see Microsoft announcing rounds of layoffs, it makes one wonder. Vince Reinhart, thank you for joining me. Thank you for having me. We've got big gains for stocks today as markets bank on a ceasefire between Iran and Israel,

but a big down day for oil, that fell more than 12% so far this week as the ceasefire makes a supply disruption less likely. Defense names also lower on this news, but will the ceasefire hold? And if so, did this 12 day war move us closer or further from peace in the Middle East? We're gonna dive into all of that straight ahead.

Welcome back to Overtime. Air environment earnings are out and it was a beat. Non-GAAP EPS of $1.61 adjusted. That was much better than the $1.39 estimate. Revenue of 275, 275 million also stronger than expected. Q4 adjusted EBITDA 61.6 million. That was much stronger as well. Funded backlog, $726.6 million.

This was a huge jump from the previous year. Now for fiscal 2026, the drone maker sees revenue of 1.9 to $2 billion, thin coverage. So we won't compare estimates. To give some context here though, it's much higher than a year ago, but also remember they just closed their counter drone blue halo acquisition as well.

So that is factoring into guidance here. Shares though, down about 3% right now. Don't miss Jim Cramer's exclusive interview with Aeroenvironment CEO Waheed Nawabi. That is coming up at 6 p.m. Eastern on Mad Money. Well, sticking with earnings, but turning to travel. Shares of Carnival jumping today after reporting results. Even though earnings fell short,

it's the outlook that investors are really focusing on. Full year earnings and revenue guidance, both well above the street's current forecast. And you can see those shares finished up 7%. Now, as geopolitical risks abate, is the market right to celebrate or is it too early? Since last night, we've seen the declaration of a ceasefire, the violation of that ceasefire,

and then the renewal of that ceasefire. Joining us now is Roger Zachheim. He is the Ronald Reagan Institute Director and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense. And Roger, it is great to have you back on overtime. Welcome. Thanks for having me. Let's start right there

because markets do seem to be breathing a sigh of relief here. Are investors too excited too quickly? How much now hinges on the ceasefire holding? Well, a lot hinges on it more. Reason to be positive around this, because Israel has stated that it's accomplished its war objectives.

Iran seems to have declared a victory, even though that is really just sort of spin. And the American president said he wants this done. So all parties involved have kind of made clear statements that they want to end this conflict. And then it's always a bumpy ride till we get to the end of the ceasefire. Having said that, the Middle East is known for one thing, instability. And so sort of saying that we're at the end of this only invites

something else to happen that we don't expect. So what has history taught us in terms of ceasefires and attempts to broker bigger, wider peace deals in the past? Well, this has been a significant, almost unprecedented conflict. Iran's nuclear weapons program, the Iranian regime, has been wreaking havoc on the region for 40 plus years. So to be at this moment where you have this regime weakened, Bibi Netanyahu, the Israeli defense forces after October 7th has effected out the ring of fire around its territory

with all Iran's proxies. It's really a new day as it relates to Iran and the region. That should allow for peacemaking and I would expect there's already rumors of the Abraham Accords expanding beyond what we've seen in terms of the United Arab Emirates and some other countries making peace with Israel. We'll see if that extends the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and other countries. So I think what we'll see is an effort towards peacemaking. But first, we have to make sure that President Trump lands the ceasefire and there isn't

additional exchanges of rocket and ballistic missiles coming across from Iran into the Gulf and certainly between Israel and Iran. All of this as NATO members are meeting in Europe right now. What does it mean for defense spending, not just here in the US, but globally? And what does it mean in terms of the types of technologies that we're now going to see implemented? Well, it's a big moment out in NATO. President Trump is going to herald this moment as a great sort of celebration of his, for

what he's been emphasizing, not just in this term, but from his first term, which is we have to bring an end to the free rider problem that is NATO countries not investing adequately in their national defense. We're going to see this NATO commitment to 5% of GDP. Now, not every country is going to get there in a 5% commitment is sort of a capabilities-based approach. But overall, this is something worthy of celebration. And it reflects what I see as a Trump doctrine others are talking about in the same fashion. And that is the United States will help allies that help themselves.

No better example of that than we saw with respect to Israel. Israel saw that existential threat posed by the Iranian regime and its nuclear weapons program. It took action against that. and the United States ultimately stepped in. It was within our national interest to support. I think you're going to see the same sort of expectation and language as it relates to NATO. NATO has to lead with this investment in its defense. That's a 5% commitment. And if it does that, you will see a Trump administration willing to make its investment in the United Ukraine. The sorts of investments are really interesting. We're going to see more of the investment in the autonomous systems and drones

alike that we're seeing make such an impact on the Ukrainian battlefield. All right, Roger Zachheim, great to have you on. Thank you for joining me. Great to be with you. And of course, President Trump is headed to The Hague tomorrow. He'll be addressing NATO and the world from there. So we'll be watching in the meantime, the NASDAQ 100 jumping to an all time closing high. Money once again flowing into big tech such as Nvidia, but some investors are looking for even bigger gains outside of the well-known names and areas like quantum. But is it the best move?

Mike Santoli joins us with a look at all of that. It's coming up next on overtime. Welcome back to overtime. Let's look at chips. The Van X Semis ETF, posting its best day since May 12th. A gain for the week would be its fifth weekly gain in a row. The move highlights the revival of small trader enthusiasm

for hot tech themes. So let's bring back Mike Santoli for more. Hi, Mike. Hey, Morgan. Yeah, it has not taken very much to have the active retail traders get back into those AI-levered themes. Here you see some data about net retail buying in these different subsectors of tech.

And what's really rebuilt quickly are the very, very speculative Net retail buying in these different subsectors of tech. And what's really rebuilt quickly are the very, very speculative quantum computing names, as well as the AI adjacent power and nuclear type stocks. You see those have surged much more than software and semis, but they've also curled higher. This is by the way, as of the end of last week, Jeffery was passing this around today. By the way, it's also a reminder of how wild the post-election rally got about six weeks into it as we got through December.

And then there was a real quick gut check in those stocks. Just want to point out over a longer term span, the buzziest, hottest themes in the market sometimes do have a crescendo of buying and then go away for a while. This is FinTech, the ARK flagship ETF, and then the cloud software ETF. This is FinTech, the ARK flagship ETF, and then the cloud software ETF.

This is early 2021. They're just now kind of rebuilding barely and kind of gone nowhere for several years in a row, Morgan. But what's different about now versus 2021 is, at that time you still had record low, rock bottom interest rates, and we've gone through this period with higher rates and companies basically reexamining their portfolios and their books and pushing further into profitability.

That wasn't really necessarily the case in 21. No, it wasn't. So maybe the set of companies that are available to buy are in that category where they're more fundamentally sound. But the quantum stocks have no revenues, let alone earnings. So the interest rates should have no bearing on what you pay for that. I've always been a little bit of a skeptic

that zero interest rates directly is related to how much speculative activities there are. Now definitely, it fed a lot of the ARC themes and all the rest of it. So I do think overall, the NASDAQ is perfectly sound in terms of the fundamentals and the reasons that those stocks are moving. But the stuff that really captures the attention of the short-term speculative trader maybe

are in a different category. Yeah. He also had a lot of stimulus checks being cashed and put into the market at that time too. Mike Santoli, thank you. It's time now for a CNBC News Update with Pippa Stevens. Hi, Pippa. Hey Morgan, after the prosecution rested its case in the Sean Diddy Combs sex trafficking trial earlier this afternoon, the defense followed suit after Combs said he

would not testify and rested its case without calling any witnesses. The judge set closing arguments for Thursday. Combs has pleaded not guilty to all charges. A man accused of helping the bomber of a California fertility clinic has died while in federal custody. The Justice Department says the man was found unresponsive, though no cause was shared. Daniel Park was arrested earlier this month. Authorities allege that he provided chemicals to the bomber and traveled to California to experiment with them prior to the May attack.

And the vessel carrying several hundred electric vehicles sank late Monday after catching fire earlier this month. The ship, called the Morning Midas, was abandoned after a fire broke out on deck. The car carrier's owner said today damage from the fire, compounded by heavy weather, caused the ship to sink in the northern Pacific about 400 miles off the coast of the Aleutian Islands in Alaska. Morgan, back to you. All right, Pippa Stevens, thank you. Well, stocks soaring today on hopes about the Iran-Israel ceasefire, but oil tumbling once again down 12% this week. Where is the bottom for oil prices? Plus, some cybersecurity stocks soaring to highs have these

latest concerns about potential threats from Iran Convinced companies to fortify their virtual defenses while the CEO of crowd strike will join us with what he's seeing from the front lines next Welcome back to overtime big gains for stocks following the ceasefire in the Middle East. All the major averages up just shy of one and a half percent. The S&P 500 is now less than one percent from an all time high. Magnificent seven names moving higher helping send the Nasdaq 100 to a record closing high. All except Apple and Tesla ending the day in the green. Checking on the earnings that we got earlier here

on overtime, FedEx beating on earnings and revenue, but the guidance for next quarter is short of the street's consensus estimate. You can see those shares are down about four and a half percent right now. Well, cybersecurity stocks in focus in the last two weeks as investors began to worry Iran could launch cyber attacks in an effort to retaliate against the U.S.

The sector overall has had a great quarter with the hack ETF up nearly 18%. So could the recent concerns lead to companies ramping up their spending on cybersecurity? Well, joining us now is CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz. CrowdStrike is up 42% so far this year. George, it's great to have you back on the show, welcome. Great to be here, thank you.

So I'm going to start right there with you. How acute is the risk of cybersecurity incidents from Iran in the wake of everything we've seen right now? Well, what's important to realize is whenever geopolitical tensions rise, you're going to see a natural increase in cyber attacks. And that's exactly what we've seen. Iran has been very active,

particularly groups linked to Iran, hacktivist groups that are focused on denial of service, web defacement, and influence operations. And if you think about these nation-state actors, and we kind of think about a pyramid of evil, if you will, or you've got nation-state actors at the top with great capabilities, in the middle band of the pyramid you have e-crime, and at the bottom you have hacktivists, which are many of them with less capabilities. They enter into cyber asymmetric warfare, where they can basically be a proxy, just like in the real world, Iran uses proxies.

They can be a proxy for these sort of attacks to keep Iran clean but still deliver a destructive attack. So have you seen an increase then here in recent days and perhaps just as importantly, have you seen companies and perhaps even countries coming to you looking to fortify their defenses in anticipation of that? Well, we have. And first, we've seen an increase in denial of service attacks that happened right after the bombings. We've seen increase in website defacements.

And really, what we're starting to see is some other activities in the pre-positioning of WIPR malware and those sorts of malware activities which are linked to Iran. We've been very active, both in nation-state protection as well as e-crime. When something like this happens, it's natural for our customers to reach out to us and say, what are you seeing from a threat landscape perspective? What sectors are most in focus? Things like healthcare, critical infrastructure, financial services, These are transportation. These are all targeted industries because that's the playbook that Iran uses. They want to disrupt. They want to amplify this on social

media and they want others to blame. And that's why they use these hacktivist proxies. So it's been very, very active on our front, not only in nation state, but in e-crime as well. Have you seen others, whether it's China or Russia or some of these hacktivists also increase their attacks here in recent days? I would imagine it almost turns into an event of opportunity for everyone that's in this game. Yeah, you would think that.

I don't think we've seen anything that was abnormal from Russia or China. There's always a certain level of activity that's out there. And it would be obviously, you know, common to believe that in the height of all this confusion you see more activity. I don't think we've seen anything that was abnormal, but we certainly have seen a spike, particularly around Iran and its proxies. We talk about the secular growth story that is AI, and I realize you could do like a Venn diagram and you could lay AI over cybersecurity to see the overlap there.

Is it a secular growth story for cybersecurity? And if so, what inning are we in? Well, I think what's important to realize is that as technology evolves, and we can think about the technology curve and innovation curve, it was simple 30 years ago and it's pretty complex now. It's up and to the right. Cyber security parallels the slope of that technology curve, meaning every time there's a new technology innovation and AI is

obviously one of the main innovations we've seen over the last number of decades. You're going to need cybersecurity to be able to follow that. And you're going to need companies like CrowdStrike to be able to secure all of these AI models, all these AI agents, et cetera. So when we think about what's actually happening today in cybersecurity, the threats are growing, but then also there is this intersection of AI,

using AI to protect customers but also leveraging technologies to protect AI. And that's why we've seen such growth in the sector itself. And if you believe that technology is going to advance, which I do, then security is a natural to grow with the technology innovation curve. The world is becoming increasingly connected. Everything from factory floors to offices are becoming more autonomous and more enabled by AI. You see all this excitement right now for what seems to

be a possible reality that 2025 will be the year that self-driving goes mainstream. The flip side of this, I would imagine, is it creates more cybersecurity risk. So how do you assess that threat landscape as it evolves and how do you protect against it? Well, it's always evolving. And that's the interesting part about security.

It's never solved at any point in time. And it's always evolving because you're dealing with an adversary. that's a human on the other side. It's not just a static problem that you're trying to solve. The adversary is actually changing their tactics, their techniques, and their procedures on how they operate. So that's the fascinating part about cybersecurity, and AI obviously is going to be a big part of it,

and it's going to be bespoke AI models that are put in place to protect things like autonomous vehicles, things like factory robots, things like factory floors, etc. They all have a unique sort of exposure model, if you will, and you're going to need unique security capabilities, particularly leveraging AI to protect them because the threats are a little bit different in each one of those domains, even though you have common adversaries. And that's why, you know, from a CrowdStrike perspective, when we think about autonomous agents, this really represents superhuman capabilities, right?

The ability to gather data, the ability to make decisions, the ability to take actions. And what we're focused on is being able to protect all of those autonomous AI agents, which we feel is just a massive growth opportunity for us. George Kurtz of CrowdStrike. Great to have you on. Thank you for joining me. Thank you so much. Oil sinking for a second straight day on hopes the ceasefire between Israel and Iran will

last. Up next, a top oil expert tells us where he sees prices heading next. The the the the the the the the

the the the the the the the the

the the the the the the the the the the nearly $80 when the week started. Our next guest says there is more downside ahead. Well, joining me now right here on set is John Kilduff. He is founding partner of again, capital and a CNBC contributor. And John, it's great to have you back on set.

Let's start right there. Why are we going lower? We're going lower because we've gotten through this Morgan and Iran has been shown for what it is, which is really decimated in terms of its any kind of ability to lash out at Israel or anybody else or even anybody, any part of the region at this point. They are in hunker down mode. They are in rhetoric only mode. And thankfully, we don't have to fear their words or their missiles, apparently, at this

point. I mean, you've been covering energy a long time. You've seen a lot of cycles. You've seen the impact that angst and unrest in the Middle East has on the global energy market. Why is this time different? And is this the moment, maybe in part because of US production,

where history doesn't repeat itself? Yeah, I think it's certainly the US production piece of this has really changed the overall equation. I'll tell you two though. If you look back into the 70s, late 70s, early 80s, when it was Iran and the oil embargoes and the Arab world and the Middle East aligned a raid against the U.S. and really hating on us, to put it in the vernacular, to they want to be like us now. The Saudis are trying to diversify their economy away from oil, Neom.

They have great aspirations. So do all the other countries in the region. The only ones holding things back were the Iranians. And now they have been put in place, and it's not going to be a situation anymore where interests are all aligned, where the one thing they have in common is hating the great United States. So I think that is what is really different here. And Iran and all its tentacles have really been neutralized here.

You've heard about all their proxies in the region being decimated by the Israelis primarily. They don't have Syria anymore. The Iraqis asked the United States to stop the Israelis from flying over Iraq to show you how bad off they are. So look, this is a situation where everybody wants a better future. I really believe that, that this has been an evolution where they've gone from sort of this focus on their religion and their anti-Western positions to wanting to make money off oil. And they have the perfect president in the United States right now for that very position.

So which brings us to the other piece that I think maybe has been lost a little bit here in all of the market coverage today, and that is the fact that the president's lifted some of the sanctions on Iranian oil that is going to China. So what does that mean in terms of de-risking the Strait of Hormuz, and what does it also mean in terms of trade talks, since we're starting to get to those deadlines too, and what that could mean for oil prices? The trade talks are bearish for oil prices to the extent that we're going to get to those deadlines too, and what that could mean for oil prices. The trade talks are bearish for oil prices to the extent that we're gonna go for this back and forth

on tariffs. Like the European Union is readying a slew of new tariffs if they don't cut a deal here, I guess, over the next couple of weeks. So that'll be bearish. The whole tariff thing has been bearish for oil prices because of the potential drag on the economy. As far as President Trump letting go of the — easing some of the sanctions, it goes

to my point about getting everyone to a place where they're prosperous, you know, enough of the war, enough of the fighting. You have oil to sell. The Chinese have — want to buy that oil. And that's what's aligned — that's the new interest alignment at this point. That you know, they're sort of done, I think, with finally, with going down these roads of constant battling, constant. The Israelis aren't going anywhere.

They're the strongest country now on the block. The neighborhood has changed so much. So I really believe that this, we're watching a transformation not unlike when the Soviet Union fell back in in what 1990 or so. Wow, yeah, those are some strong words. John Kildoff. It's good to have you on and hear about that. Thank you. Well, deceptive marketing failing

to adhere to the law. That's just part of the War of Words between Novo Nordisk and hims overweight loss drugs. We've got those details when overtime returns. part of the war of words between Novo Nordisk and HIMSS over weight loss drugs. Look at those details when Overtime returns. Welcome back to Overtime Shares with Novo Nordisk and HIMSS and hers bouncing back a little bit today.

After ending an obesity drug partnership that sent both stocks sharply lower yesterday Well Brandon Gomez has the hims angle and Angelica Peebles is on the Nova Nordic angle, but Brandon. Let's start with you Yeah, I mean, let's just dive right into it the breakup. Novo says over deceptive marketing claiming hims keeps selling mass-compounded copies of Novo's will go be Illegally, that's the key word one analyst even asked about this possible tension between branded and compounded drug sales on Hymn's earnings call back in May. Now Morgan, Hymn's says the claims are false. Its compounding is legal, which is correct.

In fact, at the time of the news, Hymn CEO Andrew Dudham said the company would keep compounding. So this isn't really a big surprise here. He also said in response to the breakup yesterday that it was Novo that pressured him to control clinical standards and steer patients to Wigovia regardless of best clinical practices. In the full statement, you can see there he released on X. All right, so let's get the Novo Nordisk side of this.

Angelica. Yeah, Morgan, so Novo says that its goal was to offer Wigovia at a lower price on a site where people are already buying the compounded version of the drugs that people could switch to the real thing once the compounded version was no longer available and a novo executive telling me that novo thought that hims would pivot away from compounded glp ones and only offer personalized versions in rare cases but compounded samaglutide remained available for a fraction of the price of the name brand bregovi and novo decided

that they couldn't compromise on this issue. And in a statement yesterday, they essentially accused him of breaking the law and putting patient safety at risk. So some fighting words there for sure. Okay, now I know that some of these drugs have come off the shortage list

and that changes the legal equation for how they're offered and what that means for the compounders. But I also realize there's a huge loophole here. How big is that loophole? How gray is it? And does this now put Hems and Hers and other compounders in the line of fire for a regulatory overhaul? I would say it's that gray area, right?

And we've talked about this, but for investors, what they have to really understand is that they can keep compounding these drugs as long as it's a different formula or say a different dosage than what's commercially available, say what's offered by Novvo Nordisk and Mugovia in this case. So could they keep offering this? Yes, but it has to be a personalized dosage. So the question is, if you prescribe 10,000 patients, the same personalized dosage is that actually personalized?

And that's what's going to be discussed here. And even then, if you talk to the companies or talk to people in this space, they would argue that the personalized doses is a very narrow definition. And so like Brandon said, doing it on a mass scale is not personalized. And that's something that we will have to see though play through the courts. Lilly has already taken action

against some of the telehealth companies. I was literally gonna go there. I was gonna ask you, where's Eli Lilly in all of this? Yeah, so they have gone after a few of these telehealth sites, and we have to see how that litigation progresses. Now, if you talk to the telehealth companies, they'll say that this is about the relationship

between the provider and the patient, that they're free to do whatever they want. If they think that somebody needs that personalized medicine that they can go ahead and prescribe it. Now we have to see how that plays out. Okay, Angelica Peebles and Brandon Gomez, thanks for joining me here on set. Thanks. Well, MasterC Peebles and Brandon Gomez, thanks for joining me here on set. Thanks.

Well, MasterCard becoming the latest FinTech company to double down on the stable coin summer. Got those details straight ahead. ["The Daily Show Theme"] Welcome back to overtime. Mastercard, a big winner in the S&P 500 today. After announcing it will integrate five-serve stablecoin into its financial network.

That news also helping shares of rival Visa. Let's bring in Mackenzie Segalos, who joins me on set. Mack, it's great to have you. I want to start right there because I can think back to interviews I've done and conversations I've had with Michael Miv at MasterCard. I know Visa CEO was on CNBC earlier today.

They're all talking about stable coins, but these are companies that have been investing in the crypto infrastructure and ecosystem for quite a few years, I think, in anticipation of a moment like this. Yeah, going back to 2023, you had MasterCard launching its tokenized network. Visa's had its tokenized platform going back a couple of years now, sort of a sandbox to test out tokenizing real world assets. But now they can be more vocal about it now that we have the Genius Act progressing over to the house, potentially hard and fast rules. So this Fiserv announcement, they're launching their own stablecoin, which really starts to open up stablecoins. It really starts to integrate them into the banking core of the U.S. This is a company that serves, what, process 90 billion transactions last year. It works with thousands of banks across the country and

it's got its point of sale service Clover, which is a rival to Square. So this is a new level of integration of stablecoins into traditional infrastructure. We saw the Circle IPO a couple weeks ago. It has been a gangbusters trip for that stock since then, but under pressure today, profit taking or more skepticism setting in for this so-called stable coin summer.

So down about 15% today, but still up more than 600% since its IPO. So there is this feeling among analysts that it really is just is a matter of profit taking. You had Compass Point saying that it was trading about 20% above fair value. And also keep in mind with Circle's low free float, it's far more susceptible to these sharp price swings.

And Circle is still the go-to partner for a lot of these companies. So Fiserv said that it's considering working with Circle and Paxos on its stable coin that'll issue by the end of the year. So they're still very much a player, recently announced a partnership with Shopify and Coinbase to bring USDC to merchants.

So it's very much the go-to name when it comes to integrating stable coins into your platform. All right. Mackenzie Segalos. Great to have you here on set. Thank you. Well, let's get you set up for tomorrow's trade, new home sales, the highlight on the economic calendar. On the earnings front, we will get from general mills and winnebago before the bell micron right here during overtime and of course semis have soared and the nasdaq 100 closing at a new record high today the s&p 500 less than

1% from its record high looking back to February all stocks higher that's or I should say averages higher that does it for us here at overtime fast money begins right now