Closing Bell - Closing Bell Overtime: Government Shutdown Looms; Wheaton Precious Metals CEO on Surge in Prices 9/29/25

Episode Date: September 29, 2025

Mike Santoli weighs in on fresh AI bubble chatter as Victoria Greene of G Squared Private Wealth and Northwestern Mutual’s Brent Schutte size up the broader markets. Our Emily Wilkins breaks down the final 32 hours before a potential government shutdown. Wheaton Precious Metals CEO Randy Smallwood discusses the surge in metals, Plus, Morningstar’s David Swartz previews Nike earnings and what investors should watch next. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

That bell marks the end of regulation. Yalla Group bringing the closing bell with the New York Stock Exchange, catalyst pharmaceuticals doing the honors at the NASDAQ, and a late-day turnaround for the Dow means all three major averages, closing higher, small loss for the Russell 2000. Tech with a bit of a comeback today, one of the top sectors on the S&P 500 chips among the bigger gainers, Micron, Invidia, and AMD among those. And Chinese internet stocks also had a good day. Alibaba, a big gainer, as several analysts, raised their targets on the stock following bullish comments from the company about AI spending.

Energy is the worst performing sector as oil falls more than 3%. The market's worrying about production increases, but also oil had risen to a nearly two-month high. And the 10-year yield sliding, the bond market squarely focused on Friday's jobs report if we get Friday's jobs report. That's a scorecard on Wall Street. Winners stay late. Welcome to close about overtime. I'm John Ford. Morgan Brennan is off today, and shares of electronic arts are soaring.

The company's going to go private for $55 billion. We're taking a closer look at one of the buyers, Saudi Arabia's public investment fund, which is making a big move into video games. And we'll be talking to the CEO of Wheaton, precious metals, as gold, silver, and platinum have all been soaring recently. Now let's start with the market, says the NASDAQ's rising for the 7th,000, second straight day, even as whispers about an AI bubble grow louder. It's bringing in senior markets commentator Mike Santoli, who I believe is caught his breath from the end of the last hour.

Plenty of time. Yeah. I mean, I think these are some of the right questions to be asking about an AI bubble. It felt like a crescendo last week when it was report after report and all these headlines opening eye talking about hundreds of billions of dollars in incremental investment. I don't think the market behavior or just the general setup is to a point where you'd have to say, have this unstable, disorderly rally that's going to create bubble conditions. But I think it makes sense to be attentive to valuation, be attentive to the premises under which you're operating for why you'd want to pay this much for these businesses, and then just try to read the market action for signs that things get either overheated at times or even volatility rising along

with stock prices, which is sometimes what happens in the final blowoff phase. I think sometimes the danger is to look at history and expect things to repeat. And, We can look at the stock market today and say, well, it's not really like the market before the dot-com bubble. People aren't spending ridiculous amounts of money on companies that have no revenue. But I guess one could argue that it's kind of like what set up the financial crisis, right? People borrowing money to buy real estate that they really couldn't afford. People might be borrowing money to buy data center infrastructure that they can't use quite as soon as they need to to be able to justify this expense. The debt piece of it is definitely a growing issue that you have to watch, right?

So it was before it was like, oh, these five or six hyperscalor platform companies have the money in their pocket literally to spend on this. Now it's like, you know, $100 plus billion in debt, I think, by tech companies being raised at this point year to date. So I do agree with that. There's also this focus on how data centers, the key assets within them, of course, being the semiconductor piece of it, how fast that. they depreciate, right? The next generation is just that much better. And they theoretically, and so, yeah, it's real assets. It's a building and it's actually this operating thing, but it's something that you're going to have to constantly replenish. So I get it. I think in the near term, Morgan Stanley was out saying, look, whatever Open Eye manages to spend

through all this, if they raise the money, if they have the power, it's not in any of the earnings estimates yet. Like, it's just basically all on the come. So I think it's hard to persuade people to back away from a sector when, in theory, the earnings numbers are still going to be going up. So I agree with the general premise, though, don't expect it to go like the last time. Because whenever I hear people say, hey, it's not like the peak of the NASDAQ in 2000.

All that tells me is, oh, guess what? Then we're not poised to go down 75% in the next two years because that's what happened in 2000 to 2002. I was in Silicon Valley during the dot-com bust, and it felt like real economic disaster. But I would find when I would come to the East Coast, People kind of like, oh, yeah, that's too bad. I mean, they felt it, but not like we felt it out there.

And then the financial crisis, inversely, didn't feel quite as bad in Silicon Valley, perhaps because we had just come out of the dot-com bust and, you know, tech was starting to be vibrant again. Do you have a sense of what pieces of the market are perhaps less exposed to this AI thing, or is it the whole market, given how big the large cap on that? I don't think the whole market. I would say maybe the whole index. I don't think it's the whole economy. The index is very, very, you know, excessively geared toward the AI revenue stream.

I think there's a piece of it that's hard to isolate, which is the counterfactual. Let's say we didn't get the AI excitement coming when it did. I mean, these companies would be doing something with the money, presumably. There would be investments in some areas. Maybe something's getting starved because everybody's focused on generative AI. It's a metaverse. I do the financial sector in general. It seems okay, right?

They've kind of been prevented from getting into. to a whole lot of trouble. Maybe that's going to change in the next couple of years. But right now, it feels as if the actual systemic underpinnings seem okay. All right. Mike Santill, you see you in just a bit. The SMP 500 is tracking for its fifth straight positive month. That's its longest monthly win streak since September of 2024. So should investors expect more gains ahead despite all these headwinds? Well, let's ask G-square private wealth, CIO and CNBC contributor Victoria Green and Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Chief Investment Officer Brent Shute.

Guys, welcome. Victoria, it's been a really good September by historical standards, unless tomorrow's a disaster. So assuming it's not, should investors stay long risk? Yes, we're advising staying lost risk because we don't fight the Fed, we don't fight the tape, and there are three things going for this market. Technically, the technicals are strong, yeah, we're near-term overbought a little bit, may be messy in the next couple of days, weeks. But good, strong, long-term technicals. We have

seasonality. Q4 is one of the strongest. The Santa Claus rally typically always works. Not always, but is a very strong season. And then number three is historical. When we've had performance like this, historically new highs beget new highs. And so we look at that. We put it all together. I say, yeah, nothing's cheap. I understand that. Yes, there are some geopolitical risks, but kind of put your earmuffs on because government shutdowns typically don't mean much to markets. don't have a lasting impact. In fact, four of the last six times the government had a shutdown, the market loop was positive. So I look at all of this and say, there is a case to be long risk assets.

And if we get a dip, the likelihood it gets bought before it even goes down 5% looks really high to me. Huh. Brent, at the same time, there's a decent chance we don't get jobs data at all on Friday if we get a government shutdown. So given the uncertainty that we've been dealing with overall and data coming in a couple different ways and how the Fed's concern and shifted to the labor market. How should investors compensate for the lack of data if we lack it? Well, I think investors should remain diversified and not concentrated. To me, there is quite a bit of uncertainty, and I think the market is overlooking that.

Think about this. We have average job growth less than 30,000 in the last four months, and yet no one believes there is going to be any chance of a recession. At the same time, you have inflation, which has been stuck around 3% for 21 months right now. The Federal Reserve hasn't landed at 2% for five years, and they don't expect to for the next three, and yet no one thinks inflation's a risk. And then kind of on top of what Victoria said, the CAPE ratio is at the second highest level since 1999, and the second highest level, I should say, in the last 150 years.

And people have this unbridled belief that they're going to know exactly when valuation, which has worked historically, will begin to work again. They think they know when it's going to be time to maybe move out of some of those areas. And so to me, I think there are quite a few risks that are out there. That does not mean that you shouldn't be invested. It just means that you should stay diversified because I think there are myriad outcomes here. And that's why I would encourage people to look at valuation, look to other parts of the economy and other parts of the markets that haven't done as well, which are small and mid-cap in the average U.S. stock. And that's where I think, at least historically, you've seen broadening out from these narrow

markets, which I think you won the future once again. Victoria, you mentioned that historically a shutdown isn't something to worry too much about from an investor perspective. But are there aspects of this one that could be different? the potential for permanent government job cuts. The timing here with us not getting as much insight into data at a time when things are shifting. Is there anything that you're watching for potential concern, even though historically it hasn't been? Yes, obviously this one could be a little bit rougher than ones in the past. If we're not seeing furloughs, if we actually see mass layoffs, obviously that doesn't help anything on the labor market there.

As well as I will freely come into this saying, look, Trump has a lot of geopolitical capital. a lot of wins bank, the potential he's willing to go a little further to the brink, to push things a little further to get what he wants. I do see that also as high, because when you have that kind of political capital, you've got these wins, he's not just under his belt this year, then that makes him a little bit more emboldened to potentially take a stronger stance against and to look to get what he wants and not have to cede anything to the Democrats. I mean, if you look at the betting markets, they're saying about 70, 75 percent likelihood

of a shutdown. Historically, shutdowns only lasted a couple days, maybe two weeks. This one could be a little bit on the nastier side just because of the composition of government and kind of the dynamics of power play here that could definitely make it seem a little bit a little bit harsher, which could then obviously have a little bit more of a market reaction, as well as valuations are extremely high. So we're susceptible to kind of selling bad news anyway. So this just kind of leaves me to saying could be a dip, could be a pullback, but likely not long-lasting.

Finally, Brent, you see particular risk in large caps? I just think valuation matters. And to me, the whole conversation that we just had or you just had about, is it 1999 or not again, there are similarities there and there are echoes. And I do believe history repeats because we are the people who write history, the people who are listening to the show Victoria, you and I, we're the economic agents as well as the people who invest in markets and we're all behaviorally flawed and have been for hundreds of years in many of the same ways.

And so to me, I think the market needs to broaden out. It has after every time it narrowed, which is usually at the end of an economic cycle. And that's where I think investors should pay heed to that and think about making sure that they own things other than those AI stocks, which is where at least a lot of investors I talk to want to just concentrate because it's been the only answer to the past few years. I think that will shift once again in the future and there will be new leaders going forward. Okay. Brent, Victoria, thank you. Well, at the end of the day tomorrow, that's less than 32 hours from now, the government could

shut down. There are signs that this time the consequences might be more severe than previous shutdowns. Let's get to our Emily Wilkins for the latest, Emily. White House right now for a high-stakes meeting with President Trump, you know, there's an increasing sense in DC that right now we are hurtling towards a shutdown. The White House might really be the last chance to kind of pump the brakes, see if they can reverse that momentum. But at this point, their meeting's still going on. There are no cameras in the room, so it's not clear exactly at this point what kind of progress is being made. And just remember, as they went into this, Democrats, they're looking for something on health care, specifically when it comes to addressing the end. of those premium tax credits that would have otherwise kept prices low for the millions of Americans who get their insurance

through the Affordable Care Act's marketplace. But Republicans say that that is a discussion for after the government's already funded. And one thing's will be looking for here, if Trump weighs in on what he wants to see with these tax credits, if he's concerned that insurance might be rising for Americans. Meanwhile, we are getting a clear sense of what is going to happen in a shutdown situation. Bureau of Labor statistics confirmed that there will be no job report on Friday if the government is in a shutdown at that time. And remember, data collection is also going to pause during a shutdown.

That could mean upcoming data on jobs and consumer pricing won't be as accurate if this shutdown goes for a couple weeks. Not to mention, as you and the guests were just discussing, a large-scale federal layoff could have a lot of very serious impacts. It could be hundreds of thousands of federal employees that could be set to lose their job. Now, the Senate is set to vote again tomorrow on convenience. continuing current funding levels until November 21st. Remember, if you math the math,

they're going to need at least seven Democrats, maybe eight, given that there's at least one Republican expected to vote no. The Democrats would need to join them to pass a bill. The House is not planning at this point for coming back for votes until next week, which means that if the Senate is unable to get things done, we're really going to be stuck in a position where we could be in a shutdown for at least a couple of days, if not more. John?

Emily, the sense that I had gotten up to, this point is that the democratic leadership might be determined to show their base what might appear to be more of a spine this time than some previous incidents and therefore, you know, play this game of chicken and let the government shut down despite the impacts. Is there any reason to think that they in particular won't do that or significant voices that would vote to keep the government open while conversations continue? At this point, everything that Schumer has said publicly, everything that Hakeem Jeffries has said publicly

has basically been doubling down that they want something on healthcare in return for their votes to support this stopgap and prevent a shutdown. Now, of course, we have heard that there are other conversations going on, suggestions about what it would take for Republicans to give them to be able to keep the government funded. We are beginning to hear some reports

of potentially a shorter-term stopgap. So instead of something going seven weeks, maybe something going seven days, But I was just in a group of reporters speaking with Senator John Barrasso. He's the number two on the Senate Republican side. He basically threw some cold water on that idea, saying, look, the vote that they're going to take tomorrow is the bill that the House passed the other week ago to keep the government funded until November. And that's what they're planning on going forward with at this point. It'll be very interesting to hear what Schumer says when he comes out of this White House meeting.

If his posture does change it all, what I can say is that, well, Democrats are definitely ready for a fight this time. More so than in March, there is some serious concern. that they are going to blame if they're a large-scale federal layoffs, and a lot of them are concerned about what that could mean. It just doesn't seem like this time that those concerns are outweighing the need to show their base that they are willing to fight and push back against some of the things that Republicans have implemented. Maybe we'll have to see the polling who likely voters blame Emily Wilkins.

Thank you. We'll see. Well, coming up, tech stocks up again after a brief pullback. AI-related names are once again soaring. We're going to give you the name of this mystery stock. It's not on the Mag 7. It's tripled since February. And we'll talk to an analyst getting bullish on lamb research with demand expected to increase thanks to AI and China. Overtime's back in two.

Welcome back to overtime. Check out shares of Sandisk, the stock soaring today after Bank of America more than doubled its price target on the stock to $125 from $59 a share. Sandisk has tripled since spinning off from Western Digital in February. Demand for data storage for AI, also boosting Western Digital and Seagate. They're two of the top-performing stocks in the S&P 500 so far this year. Now turning to Chips, Lamb Research, the second best performer in the SMH ETF today. That's as Deutsche Bank upgrades the stock to buy from neutral, citing, among other things, an underappreciated exposure to foundry spending.

And joining me now, Melissa Weathers, the analyst behind that call. Melissa, how much of Lamb's business really is exposed to AI? How should investors think about how much value to give it there? Hi, John. So I would say the semi-cap equipment names, they don't have as much exposure to AI as one would originally think. So when you think about the amount of wafers that actually run through a fab, AI doesn't take up that much of the wafer capacity. Really, what you're going to be looking at is PCs and smartphone demand. And that's what really drives wafers to the fab, and then a semiconductor capital equipment spending. The thing that we really like about Lamb here is next to the GPUs, you have a very special

kind of memory called HBM, high bandwidth memory, and demand for that HBM is exploding and is a critical driver of what's driving these AI improvements. And so getting that HBM to accelerate is really helping to drive sales at the semi-cap equipment vendors because of that higher volume. So how much volatility should investor? be prepared for in this kind of call. I mean, I think when investors think about AI, they're tending to think about long-term plays where,

okay, maybe here's a name that hasn't moved yet. I can get in it and stay in it. But if this is tied to some more ancillary components in the AI ecosystem like memory, which can't have boom, bus cycles, do investors need to keep a closer eye on it? Well, I'm really glad that you showed the sandisk chart right before this, because I think that's a great example

of the kind of explosive demand in memory that you can see. Like you said, memory has been in bus cycles. We're coming out of a bust cycle after the chip shortages of post-COVID. And so I think with a semi-cap equipment name like Lamb, you can expect less volatility, definitely. You won't see as much margin volatility. You won't see as much pricing change in the semi-cap equipment names on their products. But you can still get exposure to those longer-term trends in memory and in AI complexity. How are you thinking about a name like Sandesk versus Western Digital and Seagate?

I mean, Sandisk used to be independent more than a decade ago when it was more focused on the type of Nan Flash memory that you got in little thumb drives and things like that. But now as we're talking about AI workloads and the need for high performance, Flash takes on a whole different character. We talked to pure storage about that now and then. How are the more traditional hard disk-based storage players position versus the more more solid-state chip-based storage players. How should investors think about that?

So I don't cover the hard disk guys, but I mean, honestly, the proliferation of ESSDs and the Flash stuff in the data center, that's been a big reason for why we made the call we did on Lamb. I think you're starting to see emerging applications where you can use Flash. Like DRAM, we've always known as a key enabler of AI. And Flash has always kind of been stuck in the mud. you don't see as clear applications for storage for AI applications. But now you're starting to see those applications start to emerge.

And so that's why you've seen the tripling of Sandisk and the really impressive moves in the flash docs. Yeah, interesting to see Sandisk back in a chart. Melissa Weathers, thank you. Thank you. Coming up on overtime, the largest leveraged buyout ever, a group taking electronic arts private for $55 billion. We're going to take a closer look at the surprising video game shopping spree. Saudi Arabia is on, and from EA to EVs. A key tax credit is set to expire.

So will that be bad news for EV makers, including Tesla, which is up 30% in September? We'll be right back. Welcome back to overtime. Check out shares of Moon Lake immunotherapics, losing 90% of its value, $3.5 billion market cap. The stock closed at 66 on Friday and at six today. The company's treatment for a skin disorder failed to be better than an existing drug in a trial. RBC downgraded the stock and cut its target to $10 from 67.

Jeffrey's also downgrading and cutting the target to eight. Well, car buyers are rushing to buy electric vehicles as the federal tax credit expires tomorrow. Is there enough demand to keep the EV industry going without that sweetener from the government? Let's bring in Phil LeBow for more. Phil, what do you say? John, EV sales will not end in the fourth quarter, but they will definitely slow down. This is the surge that we've been talking about for some time. We are seeing the last couple of days, a surge in demand. I've talked to the couple of dealers over the last couple of days.

They are expecting record quarterly EV sales. It'll end up being about 12% of all vehicle sales for the quarter. Average incentive right now on an electric vehicle, $9,000. That's about double what it is for an internal combustion engine vehicle right now. As you take a look at the EV manufacturers, and we're talking about the rivians of this world, lucid, and yes, Tesla as well, keep in mind that they've been pumping up the vehicles on a pretty steady basis all year long, though some of that has been curtailed by some of the automakers, and that's why EV inventory, it's now down 30% compared to the first half of the year.

About 130,000 EVs are in inventory here in the United States. as you take a look at EVs versus hybrids versus ice. Now, in the fourth quarter, it's going to be about 71% for ice vehicles. That's the expectations with EVs at about 12%. Hybrids will be up close to 15, 16%. But then it's expected to change. In fact, EV market share in the fourth quarter, talking with a couple of people today who track it closely, they think it's going to be down in the 6 to 7% range.

And finally, take a look at Tesla deliveries. And the reason we're showing you this quarter by quarter, it's been a rough use. for Tesla. Everybody knows this. These are global deliveries, not the United States. The expectation, though, for the third quarter is approximately 450,000 vehicles. If that is the case, it'll be roughly in line with what we saw last year, maybe down about 1%. As you take a look at shares of Tesla, remember that we do expect the deliveries to be announced probably Thursday morning, if history holds. Could come on Wednesday morning, but we will get them this week, John. Huh. Phil, I'm thinking about demand impacts here since we're having this conversation. And I know you've noticed

utility bills in all kinds of places have been through the roof lately. The electric bills in particular, which I imagine might be kind of like high gas prices for EV buyers. Is this potentially a one-two punch for EV demand of people who are thinking about, boy, I don't want to be charging my car at these rates? Utility prices rarely enter into the equation, at least those who have studied the psychology of the EV buyer, that's really usually not where you see people saying, is this a smart move financially on a month-to-month basis? Two things drive it, John. One, what's your monthly payment for an EV versus an internal combustion engine vehicle?

And two, that text credit that you get there, how much will that help you lower that? Those are the two things. And you take away that tax credit, that's going to have a far bigger impact than somebody saying, well, my utility bill might go up every single month. A little window into how I think, at least, even if everybody else doesn't feel, thank you. Well, it's time for a CNBC news update with McKenzie Segalos. Mackenzie. Hey there, John.

So Russia said today its military is monitoring the possible supply of U.S. Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine. The missiles have a range of more than 1,500 miles. It would allow Ukraine to carry out strikes deep into Russia. The comments came after Vice President J.D. Vance said yesterday, the U.S. is considering Keeves' request to obtain the long-range missiles. The Trump administration rescinded Biden-era restrictions on gun exports today. The rules banned sales to 36 countries deemed high risk for the weapons being diverted to drug cartels, criminal groups, gangs, and terrorists.

The Commerce Department says the change will create hundreds of millions of dollars per year and export opportunities. An actress Jennifer Garner's organic baby food company, once upon a farm, filed for an IPO today. In its SEC filing, the company reported revenue of $110.6 million. in the first six months of this year. The company makes kid-friendly pouches of refrigerated fruit and vegetable pures

that are sold in more than 2,800 stores including Target and Kroger. Back to you. All right. Mackenzie, thank you. Well, it's been a very good year for stocks. The NASDAQ up 17%, but that's not a lot compared to gold up 44%. Silver up even more than that.

Ahead, we're going to be joined by the CEO of Wheaton Precious Metals. How long can these metals continue to shine? The last, when overtime comes right back. Welcome back to Overtime, all three major averages closing in the green today. And with only one day left in September, it's likely to be the fifth straight green month for the Dow and S&P sixth in a row for the NASDAQ. Shares of App Loven, meanwhile, rising once again today. Morgan Stanley raising its price target on the stock to $750 a share.

The stock has doubled in the third quarter. And that puts its market cap at $240 billion. That's right below Goldman Sachs, but bigger than McDonald's. And results out from Vail Resorts. That company posted a bigger than expected loss. Revenue missed as well and some pretty candid comments from the company, saying results from past season were below expectations and admitting it hasn't kept pace with shifting consumer behaviors.

Finally, shares of Firefly Aerospace falling in overtime after a testing mishap. The booster stage for its Alpha rocket was destroyed. The rocket was due to launch in the coming weeks. Now, some other movers today were in the precious metals space. Gold hidden intraday all-time high. Silver hit its highest level since May of 2011, and platinum saw its highest level since February of 2013. There's one stock that's benefited from these moves.

Precious Metal Streaming Company, Wheaton Precious Metals, up 96% this year. Joining me now is Randy Smallwood. He's CEO of Weakened Precious Metals. Well, congratulations, I guess, on the price of your output going up like this. So you're CEO of a company. You don't necessarily have control over the price of gold.

But what can you do strategically in a period like this to lock in the benefit of what's going on in the precious metals market? Well, we're longtime believers in gold. First off, John, thanks to be, honor to be here. We're longtime believers in the value of gold. And so our company, what we're paid to do is deliver profitable precious metals production

to our shareholders. And that's what we have been building for 21 years. We created the streaming business model 21 years ago. And it's a, it's a mechanism that actually reduces the risk dramatically of a traditional mining investment, and yet still gives you all the upside benefits of exploration success, expansion potential, and commodity price. And that's what we're seeing right now is, of course, those returns and commodity prices coming back. And so our shareholders have access to really low-cost precious metals production through Wheaton. So what's the difference in the type of capital investment that you're making,

versus a competitor that has a different model. How is that going to put you in a relatively better position, no matter what the price of the end commodity does? So we're a financing company. We supply financing to the mining industry. So we don't actually operate mines. We have 42 employees in our company, 42 total employees. And so we supply financing to the operating mines.

And what we do is we provide that capital. We purchase these contracts in advance to get access to some of their byproduct production. And usually it's gold or silver. focused purely on precious metals. But surprisingly, most copper mines in the world actually produce a little bit of gold, a little bit of silver. And those copper miners, they're quite happy to sell off their gold to the wheat and precious metals of the world, right? And so the bulk of our production actually comes as a byproduct. It's gold from copper mines.

And that's the real advantage. It's just getting access to that good profitable production. So given that you're doing that, to what extent do you need to watch the overall macro environment, say, which is going to affect something like copper, which is used in building different than if somebody's concerned about the overall macro and they want to buy gold. Because it seems like you've got a bit more of a quantitative and risk assessment view in your model. You're exactly right, John. You hit the nail on the head on that one. It's one of the things that I think we've prided ourselves out at Wheaton is focusing on technical aspects of our investments.

And some of that comes down to the commodities, the main commodities that these mines are producing and having an image on that. One of the best ways to protect ourselves on that is to focus on assets in the bottom half of the respective quartile, or cost curves, the lower quartiles, the most profitable mines in the world. That's what we focus on investing on. So when someone approaches us that's trying to build a copper mine, we look at where that copper mine's going to fit on the copper cost curve. If it's in the bottom half of the worldwide copper cost curve, we know it's going to continue producing even in low times. Hold on just a moment.

We've got some breaking news. Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer is speaking now on shutdown. with Republicans and we never had a shutdown. And so it's up to the Republicans whether they want to shut down or not. We've made to the President some proposals. Our Republican leaders will have to talk to them about them, but ultimately he's the decision maker. And if he will accept some of the things we asked,

which we think the American people are for, on health care and on rescissions, he can avoid a shutdown. but there are still large differences between us. There was a frank and direct discussion to the President of the United States and Republican leaders, but significant and meaningful differences remain. Democrats are fighting to protect the health care of the American people, and we are not going to support a partisan Republican spending bill

that continues to gut the health care of everyday Americans. American. Period. Full stop. There's a Republican-caused health care crisis that is causing hospitals and nursing homes and community-based health clinics all across the country in rural America, urban America, small-town America, the heartland of America, in black and brown communities throughout this country. And that crisis is happening right now. And that's why we believe there is urgency to both keeping the government open, reaching a bipartisan. partisan spending agreement that actually meets the needs of the American people in terms of their health, their safety, their economic well-being, and quality of life, while also

addressing the dangerous Republican health care crisis. He laid out to the President some of the consequences of what's happening in health care. And by his face, and by the way he looked, I think he heard about them for the first time, the closing of rural hospitals, the fact that so many clinics are closing. I don't know if he knew this before, but the fact that people will pay $4,000 more a year, $400 more a month, close to $5,000 more a year on their health care premiums if we don't do anything. And people don't know what to do. The average working family can't afford that. I told him how I met a mother who was crying to me because her daughter had cancer.

and what has happened with health care, with what they have done, she's going to watch her daughter suffer and maybe die. And so he seemed to, for the first time, understand the magnitude of this crisis, and we hope he'll talk to the Republican leaders and tell them, we need bipartisan input on health care, on recisions, into their bill. Their bill does not have a, they never talk to us. Boone didn't negotiate with me, Johnson didn't negotiate with Hakein, and on the key issues, the Appropriations Committee, which has talked about three of the smaller bills, their

good bills, they said the appropriators couldn't agree and said, kick it up to the four meters, they still haven't talked. And let me say, we're deadly serious about addressing the Republican cause health care crisis because it's a deadly serious issue for the American people. is cut to Medicaid in America history. Hospitals, nursing homes, and community-based health planning is closing right now. The fact that more than 20 million Americans are on the brink of experiencing dramatically increased premiums, co-pays, and deductibles because of the Republican refusal to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits, which benefit working-class Americans.

And we pointed that out. I pointed that out. Working-class Americans, their health care, That's what we're fighting to preserve, to defend, and to strengthen. Thank you. Leader Schumer. That was the Senate and House Democratic leadership, That was the Senate and House Democratic leadership, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, talking about what's been leading up to the potential shutdown here, saying that there's still significant differences between them and the Republicans and the president as well. back to this conversation that we were having here, Randy.

How, if at all, does this kind of government impasse fit in? We're talking about Wheaton Streaming model. Does it fit into your calculations about what kinds of mines to finance, what commodities you expect to be in demand, say, in the media term? John, if there was ever, there wasn't a better advertisement for why everyone needs to have a little bit of gold in there than listening to what's going on right now in the government. It's, I think everyone needs to have a little bit of gold. I call it a comfort medal.

In times of stress, we all need a little bit of gold. It makes us all feel better. And that's, you know, challenges like this, challenges like this exist around the world. But governments are just running out of money and having to print more cash. The debt levels are higher than ever. It just bodes well for gold.

I've been in the gold business for 40 years, and I've never seen such a strong market for gold. And so this provides all the support. It was a great example right there. All right. Like meatloat, like the comfort of precious metals. Randy, thank you. John.

A pleasure. Randy Smallwood. Well, Electronic Arts shares rallying after confirming it will be taken private by a consortium of investors, including Saudi Arabia's public investment fund. Up next, hold on, hold on. Vice President J.D. Vance is speaking now. Presumably on the same subject. Let's go out to him.

But you don't shut the government down. You don't use your policy disagree. as leverage to not pay our troops, to not have essential services of government actually function. You don't say the fact that you disagree about a particular tax provision is an excuse for shutting down to the people's government and all the essential services that come along with it. If you look at what Chuck Schumer has said in the past consistently, it's whatever our disagreements are, let's negotiate with them, let's talk about them, let's figure out a bipartisan solution, but you don't shut the government down. In other words, you don't put a gun to the American people's head and say, unless you do, exactly what Senate and House Democrats want you to do, we're going to shut down your government. That's exactly what they're proposing out there.

Now, we have to remember, they're very frustrated. They say that they're very frustrated about the fact that this negotiation has not taken place until today. But if you look at the original thing they did with this negotiation, it was a $1.5 trillion spending package, basically saying to the American people, we want to give massive amounts of money, hundreds of billions of dollars to illegal aliens for their health care, while Americans are struggling to pay their health care bills. That was their initial foray into this negotiation. We thought it was absurd. We told them it was absurd.

And now they come in here saying that if you don't give us everything that we want, we're going to shut down the government. We think that's preposterous. We think it's totally unacceptable. And we think the American people are going to suffer because these guys won't do the right thing. Now, I want to make one final point here. You will hear a lot from Senate Democrats, from House Democrats, about the fact that American health care policy is broken.

Well, we know that American health care policy is broken. We've been trying to fix it for the eight months that we've been in office. But every single thing that they accuse about being broken about American health care is policy the Democrats have supported for the past decade. So if they want to talk about how to fix American health care policy, let's do it. The Speaker would love to do it. The Senate Majority Leader would love to do it. Let's work on it together.

But let's do it in the context of an open government that's providing essential services to the American people. That's all that we're proposing to do. And the fact that they refuse to do that shows how unreasonable their position. I think we're headed to a shutdown because the Democrats won't do the right thing. I hope they changed their mind, but we're going to see. I'll let the speakers say a few words. Thank you, Vice President Vance. I want to thank the President as well.

They showed strong leadership today. They invited the four leaders over here because the President is operating in good faith, and he demonstrated that very well. The problem is that Chuck Schumer and Leader Jeffries refused to acknowledge the simple facts. Let's review what the simple facts are. As the Vice President was saying, this is a. the common sense thing to do. This is the right thing to do. This is the simple thing to do. By way of review, the House is getting back to the way the regular appropriations process

is supposed to work. Twelve separate appropriations bills passed through the House Appropriations Committee, three off the floor. The Senate doing their work as well. All this in bipartisan fashion, by the way, they passed three bills in the Senate. Those bills don't match up exactly. So for the first time, in years since 2019, you have a conference committee that is being constituted between the House and the Senate. This is the way a bill becomes a law. They work out the differences. All this is happening in bipartisan fashion.

The problem is we run out of clock. September 30th is the end of the fiscal year, so we need a little more time. So what we did in the Republican majority is the right, responsible, simple thing. A clean, continuing resolution, a short-term, non-partisan, continuing resolution.

It's only 24 pages in length. Leader Thune has a copy if you want to see the exhibit. There's nothing partisan in here. No policy writer. none of our big party preferences, because we want to do the right thing by the American people and allow more time for negotiation. Now, there's a reason that Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries have come out here, stomped the feed, saying that they can't go along with this. They're trying to bring in extraneous issues. They issued a counterproposal. You should go take a look at what

they requested. 1.5 trillion dollars in new spending that is unrelated to the ongoing appropriations process. They wanted to, as you said, restore taxpayer-funded benefits, okay? Hard-working taxpayers in America. They want to take your funds and give that for benefits to illegal aliens. They want to restore that because we got rid of it. They want to prop up left-leaning media outlets. 500 million, they threw in on top of that. One and a half trillion dollars on a seven-week stop-get funding measure.

We're not going to do that. They know we can't do that. And we never have in the past. During the Biden administration, there were 13 threatened shutdowns. The Republicans in the minority did the right thing. We kept the government open. We're simply asking for the Democrats do the same. Again, I want to thank President Trump for the strong, solid leadership. He listened to the arguments, and they just wouldn't acknowledge the simple facts.

I want to thank Vice President here for showing his leadership as well. If the Democrats make the decision to shut the government down, the consequences are on them, and I think it's absolutely tragic. We've never said that was a good idea. We never believed it is. And I want you to remember when we voted in the House, We passed it out of the House. The House has done its job.

We did that almost two weeks ago. Every Democrat in the House except one voted to shut the government down. That is the record. And don't forget it. I ask Leader Thune to step in here. Well, thanks for speaking, Mr. Vice President. This right here, ladies and gentlemen,

is what we're talking about. 24 pages. It's a continuing resolution to fund the government through November the 21st. I don't know where they're saying this is some huge partisan thing. This is something we do fairly routinely. And when the Democrats had the majority, on 13 different occasions, they had the majority, President Biden was in the White House, we passed continuing resolutions to fund the government.

This is purely and simply hostage-taking on behalf of the Democrats. The Republicans are united. House Republicans, Senate Republicans, President Trump, the House has passed a clean funding resolution to fund the government until November the 21st. It's clean, it is bipartisan, and it is short-term. but it gives us enough time to finish the appropriations process, which is the way we should be funding the government. So Republicans in the House, the Senate, President United, they've passed the bill. This is sitting, sitting right now at the Senate desk. We could pick it up and pass it tonight. We could pick it up and pass it tomorrow before the government shuts down, and then we don't have a government shutdown.

It is totally up to the Democrats because right now they are the only thing standing between the American people and the government shutting down. We're all in favor of funding the government. And this is something that's been done routinely, 13 different times by the Democrats when they had the majority. So it's, to me, this is purely a hostage-taking exercise on the part of the Democrats. We are willing to sit down and work with them on some of the issues they want to talk about, whether it's the extension of premium tax credits with reforms. We're happy to have that conversation.

But as of right now, this is a hijacking of the American people, American people and it's the American people are going to pay the price. Can you miss that? You want to say a few words? Sure. We want to keep this government open. It is not good for the American people to have the government shut down for any period of time. We will manage it appropriately, but it is something that can all be avoided.

It can all be avoided by accepting a reasonable position, which is what the House has passed and what sits at the Senate desk, which is to continue to fund the government with a short-term continuing resolution. It has never been a viewpoint that one and a half trillion dollars is a reasonable amount of spending to be included on a short-term CR. This is hostage-taking. It is not something that we are going to accept, and we hope that the Democrats come back from the brink, fund this government, and allow us to move forward. Thank you. Right. What's up?

Mr. President, so just to be clear, is there room for negotiation here with Democrats? And you mentioned you believe that we are headed toward a government shutdown. Is the federal government preparing to fire federal workers if the government does do shut down? Well, first of all, we have to keep essential services functioning as well as possible if the Democrats shut down the government. And Russ has been tasked with making sure that's possible. Now, you ask about negotiations. One of the things I admired about the president, but frankly, the entire team's approach during the conversation we just had with Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries was, you know, yeah, they have some crazy ideas. Giving taxpayer money to illegal aliens for health care, that's a crazy idea.

Funding transgender surgeries in Peru, that's a crazy idea. But they had some ideas that I actually thought were reasonable, and they had some ideas that the president thought was reasonable. What's not reasonable is to hold those ideas as leverage and to shut down the government unless we give you everything that you want. There were multiple times where Leader Jeffries or Leader Schumer would say, you know what, we should be doing this. And the President of the United States would say, yeah, absolutely, let's have that conversation. But we're going to do it in the context of the people's government being open. We're not going to let you take the people's government hostage and then give you everything that you want. And that's really the state of the negotiation.

Yeah, let's have a conversation. Let's have a negotiation. But we're not going to shut down the government because we won't give the Democrats everything that they want. Can you respond to what Senator Schumer said that there were aspects about health care and things for certain people that the president was learning about for the first time in that meaning? And was the president open to a deal on the AC subsidies?

Well, I'm highly skeptical that the president was learning about it for the first time. Thanks to Chuck Schumer. But what I will say is, look, we have put a $50 billion rural hospital. fund into the actual, the big beautiful bill that we passed a few months ago because we know that under Biden administration's policies, there are a lot of small town hospitals, a lot of rural health care that was getting shut down and that was struggling. We're trying to fix that problem. In fact, we're happy to work with Democrats to fix that problem. We want to work across the aisle to make sure that people have access to good health care. We are not going to let Democrats

shut down the government, take a hostage unless we give them everything that they want. That's not how the people's government has ever worked. That's certainly not how it's going to work under the Trump administration. This is very important on health care. Their counterproposal, what Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are demanding, is that they claw back the $50 billion that we put into the rural hospital support structure. They want to take that back. We're not going to do that.

We pass that because we have to allow for that. Also, if they shut the government down, not only are troops unpaid, federal workers, and all the services that everybody relies upon, but the WIC program, the nutrition program, women, infinite children, they will not get that program. will not be funded. FEMA won't be funded. We have hurricanes off the coast of the United States right now. This is serious business. You have telehealth. You have mental health services. All that that's funded by the government would stop if Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries and the Democrats have their way. The Democrat shutdown would be damaging for the country. We can't allow for it.

All right. That was Ross Vote, White House Budget Director, Senator Majority Leader John Thune, House Speaker Mike Johnson and Vice President J.D. Vance. arguing that Democrats should pass a continuing resolution along with them, suggesting we are heading for a shutdown, blasting the Democratic leadership's approach, calling it hostage-taking, and then taking questions. Just before that, we had Democratic leaders, Jeffries and Schumer, saying that it's going to be the Republicans' fault if the government shuts down. Now we've got our Emily Wilkins to help sort through it. Emily, it doesn't look like they're any closer to agreement. John, it does not. I mean, I think Schumer said it himself when he was coming out. There are still huge differences between Republicans and Democrats. And it's interesting because you did pick up there that there still does seem to be some willingness. When it comes to health care, when it comes to those Affordable Care Act tax credits to engage, it just doesn't seem like anyone wants to engage at this point because Republicans are saying, hey, we need a clean stopgap. We basically need the government funding to continue to know.

November. I mean, heck, Vice President J.D. Vance just said it straight up that he believes there is going to be a shutdown that will start tomorrow at midnight. Now, of course, in that time, we are expecting one more potential vote on a stop gap. We'll see if there's any progress that can be made there. But at this point, just based on what we're hearing coming out of that White House meeting, it's clear the two sides aren't together yet. There was no real commitment in terms of working forward and negotiating on something for those premium tax credits. And there's just not a sign for how. we get to yes within the next step. I mean, it's less than 32 hours at this point. That's a very short time window for an agreement to come together. It seemed like a crisp, consistent message from the Republican leaders there about how they're saying it's a Democrat's fault if the government does shut down. Is there chatter that there's any room for the Democrats to do the CR and perhaps still have some leverage to get any of what they want? I mean, John, we can go back to March, right? We had saw the same story play out earlier this year. There was going to be a shutdown. They needed Democrats

helped to do so. Ten Senate Democrats wound up crossing the aisle. And what did they get in return? They got a lot of blowback from their base who said, hey, this is your one piece of leverage. We expect you to fight for us. We expect you to push for us. And so that's what they're doing this time. And their bet is that on something like health care, they will be able to potentially score some political points, if not get some concessions from Republicans on certain things, actually be able to show their constituents that they're fighting for them. And I think that's why for some Democrats, they're very open to the idea of a shutdown. Of course, others are very concerned about these massive government layoffs that are being threatened

and what that could actually mean for the government going forward. All right. It's a game of chicken, but the stakes are high. Emily, thank you. Let's get you set up now with tomorrow's trade today. On the economic front, we will get the S&P K Schiller Home Price Index, the job opening and labor turnover survey. better known as Joltz, and the latest reading on consumer confidence. And on the earnings calendar, we'll get results from French fries giant Lamb Weston before the bell

and Nike's numbers right here on overtime after the bell. Now let's stick with Nike, which will be happy to turn the calendar on September. It's the worst performing Dow component for this month. Joining me now is David Schwartz, Morningstar Senior Equity Analyst. He calls Nike very undervalued. And how long before we see the proof that it's undervalue, David? Yeah, it could be a couple quarters. Nike has really been struggling for the last two years, really, and its sales numbers have

been weak. The company's been reporting sales declines, which is very unusual for Nike. This is typically a high-growth company despite its size. And so, you know, right now I think we're probably looking at calendar 2026 before we start to see some real improvement. Nike has released a lot of new products recently. including a whole new line of running shoes under its major categories and the Nike skims collaboration which just launched a few days ago. That's Nike's effort to become a bigger player in athleisure and there's a lot of opportunity there for Nike,

a lot of opportunity that Nike in the past has not really benefited from as it should have. And so, you know, I think that this skims is a multiple year effort. And so we're not going to see immediate results, but I do think that in the past, when people bought Nike, when it's been down as it is right now, it's proven to be a great investment. And my fair value estimate is $104. So, David, the knock on Nike before this CEO was that a leadership leaned too hard into direct-to-consumer, really damaged the relationships with the wholesale partners, and left the door open to some other up-and-coming brands to eat its lunch.

What degree of confidence do you have that the new CEO is fixing some of those areas, particularly the relationship with wholesalers, with retailers that aren't named Nike? Yeah, Nike certainly has made a lot of those mistakes and has lost distribution to some strong competitions such as Hoka and on. But, you know, this industry really wants Nike to succeed. This is still the biggest company in the industry. It's still the leader in sales for a lot of these retailers. They really want to embrace Nike's new products, and they really want to highlight them.

And we're seeing that right now at retailers like Foot Locker and Dick Sporting Goods, which seem to be having a very positive view of Nike's recent product releases. The sales may not come in right away, but I think that they're setting up for a stronger 2026. The company has the World Cup coming up next summer, which is a great marketing event for Nike. And so, you know, there's a lot of things actually coming that this industry, is really excited about. Perhaps most important is any of those upstarts really significantly taking share from Nike in a way that looks durable?

Yeah, and they have taken share. There's no doubt about it, but Nike is still much bigger, and it still has, you know, this is a very large industry, this is a global industry, and there's room for multiple successful companies, and so we can see companies like Hoka and on and Adidas succeed along with Nike. The industry itself is growing every year. There's more and more interest in sportswear. It's growing in very many developing nations. And so there's still a lot of market opportunity for the main leaders in this industry. All right. David Swartz, thank you. It's a good look ahead to Nike. And it's in a day when all three of the major averages did close in the

green. The Russell was lower. And of course, we've got this issue of a looming possibility of a government shutdown. We were just hearing from a number of leaders outside the White House on that. Fernando, do it for overtime. Fast money starts now.