Closing Bell - Closing Bell Overtime: Market Playbook for 2025, Drones Are Watching You—And Making You Pay More For Insurance, Plus Nvidia's Big Year 12/31/24

Episode Date: December 31, 2024

Barbara Doran, CEO of BD8 Capital Partners, and Victoria Fernandez, Chief Market Strategist at Crossmark Global Investments, analyze the latest market movements. Julian Emanuel, Senior Managing Director at Evercore ISI, outlines his 2025 investment playbook, while Bess Freedman, CEO of Brown Harris Stevens, shares her outlook on the luxury real estate market. David Yarnold, former National Audubon Society CEO, discusses advancements in drones and surveillance technology, and Stacy Rasgon, Senior Analyst at Bernstein, provides key insights into Nvidia’s performance and future. Plus, the Santoli Dashboard tracks critical market signals, and we reveal the top-searched ticker of 2024.

Well, that bell marks the last trades of 2024. The family of Art Cashin ringing the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange. Featon Holdings doing the honors at the NASDAQ. And stocks limping to the finish line for the year with another session in the red to close out what has been a very strong 2024 for the Bulls. That is the scorecard on Wall Street, but winners stay late. Welcome to Closing Bell Overtime. I'm John Fort.

Morgan Brennan is off today. Coming up this hour, Evercore ISI's Julian Emanuel brings his 2025 playbook, including where he thinks the S&P 500 will end next year and the parts of the market he says could deliver major returns for investors. Plus, is a real estate upgrade one of your New Year's resolutions? Well, the CEO of luxury broker Brown Harris Stevens joins us with her predictions for the housing market in 2025. We begin, though, with the market and the final scorecard for 2024. The NASDAQ was the big winner, up 28% in 2024, thanks in part to NASDAQ 100 top performer Applovin, which rose a whopping 8x, 700%. Intel fell the most, down 60%. The S&P 500 closing up 23%, with Palantir the biggest gainer, up more than 340%. Walgreens was the biggest decliner, falling 64%. Now, Nvidia was the best performer in the Dow this year, up 171%, while Boeing was the biggest loser, down 32%.

And it was a decent year for the small caps, though they did lag with the Russell 2000 gaining 10%. Joining me now is Barbara Duran of BD8 Capital Partners and Victoria Fernandez of Crossmark Global Investments. Guys, Happy New Year. Barb, for 2025, same playbook? I don't know. Look for pullbacks, more volatility? Well, it's the question of the moment, isn't it? And I think what we've seen this year, we saw continual rotations as people tried to judge where we were in the cycle. And inevitably, even after profit taking in the MAG7 or some of the big cap tech names, they always came back to that. I think you still have to be long some of the a lot of these mega cap tech names simply because the earnings are there.

This year, they're probably going to be an average 20 percent next year, 21 percent. So I think you've got to stay there. The big uncertainty right now, of course, is what happens with the new administration. How much will the tax cuts be? How much deregulation? And will that be offset by high tariffs that could ignite inflation a little bit more? Or even if there's mass deportations, what does that do to both growth and need to fill jobs and wage inflation? So I think the market is going to wait to see that in terms of before they say, OK, we're going to rush into this economically sensitive and the cyclicals. We're going to wait and see. And I think that's what this week there's been no catalyst. I think this is a thin trading week. I don't think this is predictive at all of what next year will be, but I think we're going

to know a little more toward the end of the week. But I think it is pretty much the same playbook. We've just got to wait and see after the inauguration on the 20th. I think Trump, like Biden, who had a lot of experience, is going to come out hard, hard charging. He knows he's been there before and I think he's got the game plan ready. So we're going to know pretty soon and judge likely impacts on some of the new policies. OK, so, Victoria, what do you do? How long does it take to see what these Trump policies are going to be and what impact they're going to have? How soon can you start acting based on the knowledge that you're getting? Well, I think there's some things you can look at pretty

immediately after inauguration. I mean, there are going to be some executive orders that Trump can do in regards to the border, but other things are going to take a little bit longer. Things that have to go through Congress in regards to tax cuts, that will take longer, but tariffs can go pretty much immediately as well so you're going to have some elements there they're going to continue to cause the volatility that you and barbara were just speaking about and those are the things that i think you have to pay attention to right now in the near term lots of volatility going on you're going to have that rotation happening you're going to have up days and down days. So I think you look at some of the sectors that have been laggards this year

and you start putting some money to work in those or some that have consolidated. Financials is an area we've loved all of 2024. We continue to like it in 2025 as deregulation is coming. So you want to take advantage of that. The yield curve steepening, loan growth is going to be there. So I think you can go financials and even find some industrials that have been laggards and put some money to work there.

But I would be cautious because I think you're going to have quite a bit of volatility in the beginning of 2025. Let that play out and then you can put your playbook to work later. Barb, what do you do with the AI trade, particularly those mega cap or larger companies like an NVIDIA that have done so well? Can you add to those, you know, even throw meta in there? Can you add to those with valuations being as rich as they are? Do you have to look elsewhere? Yeah, it's interesting. A lot of people are talking about that.

NVIDIA is sort of the child that's being spanked all the time here. But NVIDIA still looks like 50% growth next year. Yes, it's not going to be the monster growth we saw, but Blackwell is a real deal. We don't know the delays with how much that's going to impact, a few months or a quarter. But NVIDIA is still, it's I think, a 34 times next year's earnings, which almost certainly will come up. So I still think that play is not over. This AI, it's like the internet. You know, it's like a lot of the great tech names. It wasn't over in two, three years. It plays out for eight to 10 years. So I think that names like that, you still want to be involved in.

But, you know, as we talked another time, there's the secondary plays or the second derivative plays, if you will, the software names. I mean, you've seen how well ServiceNow has done. Salesforce, names like that are snowflake. There's lots going on and those names will get stronger and there'll be other names coming up. So I think in the software sector, people, and that's what there's been a lot of talk about, the M&A, expectations M&A will pick up this year. It certainly looks like it's going to happen. And that's depending, you know, the Trump administration, there could be a lot more acquisitions than we've seen. Well, Victoria, you like the big banks. So how important is their first round of earnings

in January going to be? Well, look, banks always tend to kind of set the tone for their earnings. And as we've been talking about, earnings expectations are pretty high for this coming year. I mean, another double-digit year of earnings growth. And I think that might be a little bit high of an expectation. We don't expect earnings to live up to that. But banks will probably get us off to a good start. Solid balance sheets for these banks.

Again, you're going to have some deregulation coming in, so their guidance should be pretty positive. The yield curve steepening will be good. We're looking at loan growth, especially as you have CapEx starting to pick up with onshoring that we might see coming back into play here. Then you should see loan growth going higher. So these are all going to be elements that are positive for the banks. But I think you can also look through to some of the other financial areas like credit cards. I know delinquencies are moving a little bit higher right now, but those also have solid balance sheets, a little bit expensive. You can wait for a pullback there.

But I think you'll have a good start to earnings with the banks and their good balance sheets. Okay. Victoria, Barbara, happy new year. Happy new year, John. Well, let's get to Senior Markets Commentator Mike Santoli now for a look at the S&P's most valuable players this year. Mike? Yeah, John. So these would be the companies that added the most value over the course of 2024. Now, the S&P 500, the math is actually really tidy.

It added $10 trillion in total market cap from about $40 trillion to $50 trillion. That's 25%. It doesn't quite translate into the index percentage gain because there's some adjustments to the flow. But of the $10 trillion in added market cap, here's where a lot of it came from. Obviously, you know, Apple added, I think, $700 or $800 billion point-to-point. Nvidia added $2 trillion of that that ten trillion in market cap. Amazon Meta also adding more than a half a trillion dollars each. So this is, you know, the source of a lot of the just the big firepower of the gains.

Also, Broadcom not listed here is similar to the gain in market cap between Meta and Amazon. So obviously we talked about the concentrated performance. This is where all that dollar value has been accumulating. Now, take a look at another way of kind of assessing where we finish the year, which is for the kind of typical traditional 60-40 portfolio. Over the course of this year, we did finally reach a new high after that bear market in both stocks and bonds in 2022. But look at this pretty significant reset lower in the last few weeks. December's been tough because bond yields up. That means bond prices going down.

And this is on a total return basis. So essentially, this portfolio is sort of back to where it had first gotten to at the end of August. So it's obviously a stutter step in the gains. We're sort of dealing with a situation here where higher yields are sort of starting to work against equity values, at least in the cyclical parts of this market. We'll see as we get into the new year, we get the first flush of new flows to see whether some of the year end moves were exaggerated, John. Mike, I just got to go back to that first chart and something you said, because, I mean, you just said, I believe that NVIDIA gained two trillion

dollars of value in 2024, which would be one fifth of the S&P's total of 10 trillion in gain. I mean, is that right? Have we ever I mean, two trillion in a single year? That's that's unprecedented. I can't think of a specific precedent for that. I mean, maybe. No, there probably isn't, because, you know, it was up 180 percent. What's even more remarkable than that, John, is all those gains were in the books by the midpoint of the year. So you really got to effectively the current market cap of NVIDIA, like three point two, three point three trillion by June. So that's something I don't think we've ever seen. But you know, you probably have the Nvidia advocates

saying we've also never seen the velocity of fundamental improvement of sales growth at that scale and at that particular angle, as we've seen with Nvidia too. Very interesting to me that the stock has really just gone sideways for this long a time. It has not really had a significant or sustained pullback. It's more just kind of this prolonged wait and see moment for this three plus trillion dollar company.

Their customers, some of their biggest customers are some of the richest companies out there. So I guess just keep handing the money among each other. And they got a lot of it. Wow, Mike, what a year. I'll see you again in just a bit. Well, after the break, Evercore ISI's Julian Emanuel is going to tell us why he thinks a cycle of animal spirits could be unleashed in the market in 2025. And throughout the show, we are counting down the top searched tickers on CNBC.com and the CNBC app in 2024. We're going to reveal number five right after this break when overtime comes right back. Welcome back to overtime. The countdown to the new year is on and throughout the show, we're counting down the top search tickers of 2024 on CNBC dot com. All

right. Coming in at number five, the old standard, the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Turned in a solid performance, climbing for its fifth positive year in six. The Dow saw some big changes this year, losing Walgreens, Dow Inc., and Intel, adding Amazon, NVIDIA, and Sherwin-Williams. Meantime, the S&P 500 just closed out its second consecutive year of 20% plus gains. Will the new year bring even more upside for investors? Our next guest thinks a cycle of animal spirits could be unleashed. Joining us now is Evercore ISI Senior Managing Director Julian Emanuel. Julian, happy new year.

More animal spirits after two 20% plus years? How? It seems improbable. But, John, when you when you look at the history of bull markets, there's a couple of things here. First off, this one is still relatively young at a little over two years old and gains of around 65 percent or so, which is well below the average in both time and price. And then when you think about back to back 20 percent years, the history of the third year tends to skew very favorably. Now, the one thing that we know and we've heard from some of your other guests and we're very firm believers in it,

there's going to be a lot of volatility. But in essence, what we've got is is the bull market cycle where recessions end bull markets. We don't see a recession. But what we do see is typically the setup, particularly when you think about deregulation, for that loosening of animal spirits that we will see in 2025. Okay, so your end-of-year price target on on the S&P 6,800. What's the first major test? Where is it on the timeline that we have to pass to get there? Well, frankly, the first major test started on December the 18th when Powell basically loosed this sort of new cycle of volatility, which again, and if you think about it and going back to the

election on November 5th, this has been a market that's been three steps forward and two steps back, volatile but higher. That's what the blueprint is going to look like for us for the entirety of the year. But again, the two major milestones that we want to think about coming up in January are the start of earnings season. We expect that to be good. Although when we think about the full year of 2025, consensus is probably a little too high. But that's not necessarily a negative for markets. And then, of course, the other thing is what we're going to see when Trump is inaugurated on the 20th, what we'll see in terms of policy. We think there'll be a lot of noise, a lot of things coming out,

and just have to see how the market responds in the immediate term with the most important thing being bond yields. Julian, we did lose S&P 6,000 after Powell. That doesn't matter? It really doesn't. You know, again, when you think about it, it was such a good year that it's actually normal to have wanted to take some profits. And that's what we saw. And if you look at these last couple of weeks, a number of the highest

flyers have come off. And when we think about next year, it's our expectation that the laggards, particularly in the small cap area, are likely to outperform as they typically do in January. And you might still see a bit more profit taking in some of those higher flyers in early January. Not a surprise, but it doesn't disturb the bigger bullish backdrop. In the underlying data, it seems like the consumer has remained strong, continued spending in part because the employment picture has been so solid for so long. Does is it important for that to continue? How many shocks to the system can the labor market potentially take? Can the consumer take with stretch credit?

Well, all of that is very important, right? And look, if we took the policy uncertainty of what we're likely to see and put that aside, and then we took the fact that the market is expensive itself, trading on 22 times expected earnings for next year, those combination of things would tell you that any sort of less than perfect news, some of which we've gotten the last couple of weeks, is going to cause more volatility. So we do need to think that the consumer is going to hold in and we do need to feel that the job market is going to remain steady. And frankly, from where we see, we think both of those will hold true. Outside the U.S., what market's going to do the

best? Which one's going to do the worst? It's a tough call because actually, when you think about it in general, what we've seen is really a move away from all of the international markets and sort of crowding into the U.S. From our point of view, the greatest potential upside lies in places like Europe, where if you got some sort of solution to the hostilities between Ukraine and Russia, or in fact, you've got something, an accord in the Middle East. Those are the kinds of markets that have the most upside, because frankly, that's where the sentiment is the worst right now. All right. Julian Emanuel, we'll see about those animal spirits. Happy New Year. Thank you.

Happy New Year. Well, coming up next, the CEO of luxury real estate broker Brown Harris Stevens shares her predictions for the housing market and why some of President-elect Trump's policy goals are clouding the outlook for the space in 2025. And it's time to reveal the number four top search ticker on CNBC.com in 2024. And it is Apple wrapping up a stellar year of gains, up 30%, even without a super cycle, finishing just shy of the $4 trillion market cap milestone. Apple was the top search ticker in 2020, but has been dropping on the list ever since. Be right back. Welcome back to Overtime. The S&P Case-Shiller Index showed a slight deceleration in home

prices in October, but they're still up more than 3% from a year ago. And New York once again reported the highest annual gain out of all 20 cities in the index. Joining us now for her real estate outlook next year is Brown Harris Stevens CEO, Bess Friedman. Bess, good to see you. So does high end real estate continue a march upward? Hey, nice to see you as well, John. You know, it's hard to say. Twenty twenty four in housing was not a great year. I think we all know that the luxury market performed fairly well considering. It's hard to say what twenty twenty five will be. We do know that the bonuses that are coming for Wall Street are going to be huge.

So that will benefit the luxury market. But we still have what's called, I named it at least, the troubling trifecta, which are rates, inventory and prices. And so that's created this gridlock in housing. You know, rates are still higher than people would like. Prices are still higher and we don't have the inventory that we need. So people are sitting it out still. Sellers aren't listing. Buyers are waiting. At least now we do have certainty with the president, which is good. So now people know. But I do think we're in for a bit of a turbulent year.

It'll be volatile. I would I would expect. So there's a stat that I've had my eye on. I've been asking a couple of people about. In 2025, an unprecedented number of Americans are going to start turning 65 each year, next year and then thereafter. I think like 4.1, 4.2 million people. At what point does that start to affect inventory? People making different kinds of decisions about where they're going to live and actually giving up the low rates that they have to do something else. Well, as we know, people are also living a lot longer. So, um, and what we're seeing studies are showing us that people firsttime homebuyers are now older than they've ever been. They're nearing 40 years old, which is not good for housing. It means that young people

can't afford to buy their home. There was a study in Europe about this as well. And sellers are older today, too. So I think we're pushing everything forward in a bad way. And we need to create more affordable housing in our country so that people can buy their first home. I still believe that it's the American dream. It's the best way to build intergenerational wealth. And it's an investment in your future. And it gives you shelter. And so I think that, you know, hopefully we can start to loosen up some of rates next year and people start to get into the market.

And we have more movement because 24 was a really difficult year for people in housing. You say loosen up rates. How likely do you see that? You know, listen, that's I'm concerned. I would love to see, you know, you know, Trump, if you know, the the salt cap. I think that expires next year anyway. That could help maybe. But if there's tariffs, I think that might make inflation go up, which we don't need. And rates would go up, I think. And so, you know, it's hard to say what's going to be. That's why I do think it's going to be a lumpy, bumpy 2025. And we'll have to see what happens. I mean, the stock market's great that

it's at these all time highs. But everyday Americans are not able to buy homes. And that's just a fact. And we need to figure out ways for the private and public sector to work together. We need Albany to work together with city officials so that we can build more affordable housing. And we have not been very successful at that. You know, the legislators don't listen and they don't want to work together. So, Bess, I imagine, you know, you got a lot of folks who come to you for advice, say they got a second home and they're not sure they want to hold on to it. But boy, there's a lot of equity in it. It's been going up. They say, Bess, what should I do?

Should I hold on to this? It's an asset or should I sell it? What do you tell them in 2025? I think it's a great time to sell if you don't need it or you don't use it. I think you could really make a lot of money right now if it's a second home in particular. But again, the market is there to serve you, not instruct you. And so it always depends on people's circumstances. Second homes, this market, we need inventory. If it's a great home or an apartment and you want to put it on the market, you probably do really well. And then you can put that money in an index fund and just leave it there. And I think that's another thing that people are thinking about. So that would be my advice. But it depends on the people. Take it up, take the tax hit. Don't do a 1031. Just

actually, you know, view it as a gift, all this equity that so many people have amassed. I mean, it depends, obviously, on the person and their tax situation. You can't just throw a blanket over it. It depends on the people and who they are and what their status is. And what would best benefit them. It may benefit them to sell their home, and there may be some benefit to doing that. Or maybe there isn't, and so and what would best benefit them, it may benefit them to sell their home. And there may be some benefit to doing that. Or maybe there isn't and they should hold it for longer. Or maybe they just love going to their second home so much and their kids enjoy it that

they shouldn't sell it. It depends. You know, a home is an emotional commodity versus, you know, an index fund, which you can't live in your index fund. You can live in your home. You can hang out and play poker in your home. You can have dinner in your home. You can hang out with your kids. Your home is something very special. Yes, that is true. This year, index funds have been very special, too, though. Someone from Best Freeman, happy new year. Great to see you. Happy new year. Take care. Bye. Well, it's time for a CNBC News update with Pippa Stevens. Pippa. Hey, John. The FBI said a Virginia man was arrested this month with what it called the largest cache of explosives ever found in its history.

According to court papers, investigators found over 150 homemade devices, most of which were pipe bombs, on a property outside Norfolk. Prosecutors said some of the explosives had a logo that said No Lives Matter, a reference to a far-right movement that promotes targeted attacks. Puerto Rico's energy company Luma said more than 73,000 customers had their power restored after a near-total blackout sent the island into darkness this morning. In a social media post earlier this afternoon, the utility added that power was also restored to hospitals as well as water and sewer facilities. And a federal judge refused to dismiss a long-running lawsuit that claims Nestle Waters defrauded customers by labeling Poland Spring bottled water as spring water. However, the judge did reject some claims in the proposed class action suit, saying that the plaintiffs didn't have the standing

to demand new labels. John, back to you. Pippa, thank you. Well, up next, will growth stocks or value stocks reign supreme in 2025? Mike Santoli returns with a look at how those two strategies fared this year and if a reversal could be coming. And we are counting down the top search tickers on CNBC.com for 2024. Coming in at number three is the U.S. 10-year yield, an always popular ticker. It means it's not higher, so the ones one and two have to be more exciting. It's been in the top five since 2021.

It's been a choppy year for treasury yields with the 10-year starting the year below 3.9% before climbing, then retreating in September, and then climbing again. Be right back. Welcome back. Mike Santoli returns with a look at which strategy could reign supreme in 2025. Mike? Yeah, John. The turn of the year, it's always a time to ask whether you just let the trends ride and assume that the market is going to continue in the current vein or if you have

the chance for some kind of reversal, some catch up, some mean reversion. So here's pure growth versus pure value. This is sort of the growthiest growth stocks in the S&P versus the cheapest value stocks. A two year chart because that's kind of just after the bull market started. You see the lead, obviously, among pure growth really opened up this year. Now, that being said, you also saw healthy gains on a full-year basis in pure value, like about 10 percent higher. And that started once you got clarity that we weren't going to hit a recession and earnings growth started to kick in. The Fed was going to be cutting rates. So clearly that's a very widespread, the question of what might change this dynamic,

whether it is bond yields finally topping or the economy and some policy moves accelerating. That is a big question right now. I would also say that the valuation discrepancies are very wide, but in absolute terms, I'm not sure value is super cheap as it is sometimes at the bottom of an economic cycle. Another way of looking at a similar theme in terms of characteristics of stocks is momentum

stocks. Those are the ones that have already been doing well compared to anti-beta. It's not just low beta stocks or stable and less volatile stocks. This is an ETF that owns those low beta stocks and shorts the highest beta, most volatile, jumpiest one. So as you can imagine, a super defensive strategy, it's a hedging instrument or it's a diversifier or in a bear market, as in 2022, it holds its value. It did very well back then. This is a massive spread, though, right now. So the question is, do you sort of ride the winners continually or do you think that maybe the overall market is ready for a little bit of a switchback, John? Well, that anti-beta Christmas party must have been no fun

this year. Now, I want to go back to the first one and the growth versus value, because if I recall, right around the time Facebook changed its name to Meta, for a while it was a value stock. So what is pure growth? How much influence does NVIDIA have on how all of this turned out this year? A fair bit, but I actually think that these are not necessarily as skewed market cap wise as some of the other ETF strategies. I do think that you have this kind of blur in terms of growth and value status when you look at the absolute indexes. In fact, I was just looking earlier, the overall S&P 500 value, top two stocks are Apple and Microsoft. What they do, these index providers, is they split a given stock into some percentage of it is growth and some percentage of it is value. It has this kind of mixed nature. You know,

it's like part particle, part wave. So that's a little bit blurry. This is a little bit more about, look, wherever the earnings momentum is and the more expensive stocks, frankly, that's where pure growth is reflecting. Yeah, like 23andMe for stocks, part Neanderthal. Everybody's got a little bit. Yeah, not me. Well, one of the one of the stranger stories of 2024 was the wave of unexplained drone sightings in the Northeast that drove social media buzz and concern about surveillance. But my next guest says, never mind the drones. There are companies already looking at every square inch of your property, mapping it, and they're using that to cash in. That story's next. And it's time to reveal the second most searched ticker on CNBC.com in 2024, and it is Tesla. After underperforming most of the year, Tesla has taken off like a rocket, maybe a space rocket, since the election as Elon Musk's

political influence has grown. Shares finished the year higher by more than 60%. Tesla was the number one most searched ticker in 2021, 22, and 23. Can you guess what the number one was? Well, we'll find out in just a bit. Overtime will be right back. Welcome back to Overtime. One of this year's strangest stories came right near the end. A surge of drone sightings across New Jersey and New York that woke some people up to the busy airspace above our homes and neighborhoods. But surveillance is already big business, driving changes across industries, especially in areas like insurance. Joining me now is David Darnold. He is former National Audubon Society CEO. His new book, Geography of Hope, includes a chapter focused on how businesses are

using mapping technology to become more efficient. I also went to work for David Darnold 25 years ago this week. You're the executive editor at the San Jose Mercury News, the newspaper of Silicon Valley. So thank you for that. So let's talk about what's happening with surveillance and the drone thing. Because I thought of your book and the drone thing. Because I thought of your book when the drones thing started happening. It's like, well, there's already a lot of surveillance like really going on. Probably people don't know if they're worried about the drones. Yeah. I mean, I can't tell you what the drones are doing and it's good to see you after 25 years. But I can tell you that the insurance industry has images of virtually every square inch of the continental

U.S. and Hawaii. And what is the impact of that on insurance rates and how they're making decisions about risk? I mean, they know the condition of your roof, I guess, better than you do. So using geographic information systems or GIS technology, they know the condition of your roof. They know if you've got one of those trampolines in your backyard. They know the condition of your fence. And it not only is being used to set rates for individual homeowners, but it's being used to set public policy. Tomorrow in California, a whole new set of rules goes into place that allows the insurance industry to use these models to set rates statewide. And this came after the insurance industry threatened to pull out of California last year, as you probably know.

On social media, online, there's been this talk about people owning their data. But there's no way for you to own the data for people who are taking pictures from the sky above your home, right? There's no way. And the companies that use this, and it There's no way. And the companies that use this, it's predominantly one company called Vexel that's based out of Colorado. It's privately held. And they work with the Geospatial Insurance Consortium, which is most every big insurance company. And they take that data. They're flying in airspace where they're permitted to be. They follow all local and state federal laws. And they can take images of your property. Okay, so that part's disturbing, but the book

is called The Geography of Hope. So tell me about the hope part. So the hope part is that geospatial information is the most important technology that's all around you that most people have never heard of. And the book covers everything from the ability to ensure transparency in the Czech Republic and other countries to eradicating diseases, working with the World Health Organization. It covers a revolutionary conservation movement in Africa, Africans doing conservation for and by Africans. Covers revolutionary education techniques in England. And it shows the power of data visualization once again. And it's predominantly driven by the publisher of

my book Esri, which is a privately held Redlands, California-based company. And I guess areas like agriculture, when we're talking about things like commodities, there are all kinds of possibilities there, too. So virtually every Fortune 500 uses GIS technology. It's a competitive advantage. I can tell that it is because when I tried to get Nike and a few others to talk to me about it, they clammed up and said that it was a trade secret. So yes, everybody uses it from Chick-fil-A says that it's, it doubles McDonald's production out of any given store because it knows so much about its customers. You are unusual as a top news executive because you didn't rise through the ranks primarily as

a writer, but as a photographer. And this is, you know, partly in the era before we were talking about digital. Did you ever imagine that imagery would become this powerful, this fungible a source of information? I think that imagery, there's that bad cliche about a picture being worth a thousand words. I also think that the only way I can make sure that the idea I have in my head is the same one you have in your head is to show you and not tell you. And that's the power of GIS is that it allows people to collaborate and to share visions. And we didn't even get into AI and imagery that isn't what it appears to be. But maybe we can talk some more about that. David Yarnall, great to see you. Thanks, John. Thanks for coming in. Well, get your final guesses in.

After the break, we're going to reveal the top searched ticker on CNBC.com in 2024. And we'll talk to an analyst about the mystery name that captured so much of the world's attention. Can you guess what it is? Well, don't go anywhere. Overtime will be right back. Welcome back to Overtime. Well, throughout the show, we've been counting down the top search tickers on CNBC.com and the CNBC app in 2024. Number five was the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Number four was Apple. Number three was the 10-year Treasury Y yield. Number two was Tesla. And the top searched ticker for the year, yes, NVIDIA. The poster child of the artificial intelligence revolution. It rewarded shareholders handsomely this year, surging more than 170%, as Mike Santoli told us,

$2 trillion added market value in 2024 alone. Interest in the name has exploded. NVIDIA was the fourth most searched ticker in 2023, eighth in 2022 and 2021. Didn't even crack the top 10 in 2020. That's when you wish you bought it. Well, after the break, star analyst Stacey Rasgan from Bernstein, who's going to join us to talk about the standout

gains for NVIDIA this year and if he thinks the blistering rally will continue in 25 and don't forget you can catch us on the go by following the Closing Bell Overtime podcast on your favorite podcast app be right back welcome back to Overtime we just revealed that NVIDIA was the top searched ticker on CNBC.com in 2024. And for good reason. It was the third best performing stock in the S&P 500 this year behind Palantir and Vistra and became the second most valuable company by market cap behind Apple. The stock, though, has taken a breather since November, along with semiconductors at large with shipments, though, of the highly anticipated Blackwell chip set to launch in 2025. Could NVIDIA soar again in the new year? Well, joining me now is Bernstein Senior Analyst Stacey Rasmussen. He has an outperform rating and $175 price target on the stock.

Stacey, happy new year. Happy new year for NVIDIA. I hope so. I hope so. I'm not surprised it was the number one ticker that was searched. At this point, how could it be anything else, given the year that it's had? Tesla was close. Well, okay, okay.

But still, look, we like NVIDIA. We've liked NVIDIA. It's had a great year. It had a great year the prior year, too, right? So, I mean, this is a couple in a row. We're looking to make it three. I think we're right in front of what is potentially... I mean, we've had a number of very massive product cycles on their part.

We're right in front of the Blackwell cycle, which has the potential to be bigger than any of the ones that came before. The stock is still not expensive if the numbers are anywhere close to being right. The stock's like low 30s price to forward earnings. I mean, yeah, I think you still kind of have to be there. I don't see how you can't own it in front of the product cycle. I mean, that tends to be the best time. And we're just at the beginning of that.

So, yeah, I'm pretty positive for where this can go um uh into next year the product itself is one thing but there's also ecosystem there's also software explain to investors what it means that nvidia is open sourcing uh run ai this acquisition 700 million dollar uh acquisition yeah yeah the ecosystem is just as important if not even more important, than the hardware. I mean, there are a number of players out there that have plausibly decent hardware. You've got AMD. You've got a number of the startups. You've got the hyperscalers that are all doing their own chips. So it's not like NVIDIA is the only game in town. But especially for the enterprise customers, it's not just about the hardware. You can have on paper a great chip, but if it's impossible to use it,

that causes real problems. One of the advantages that NVIDIA has because of this massive ecosystem, hardware, software, systems expertise, everything else that goes into this, it's just really, really easy to put this stuff in place, to adopt it, and to get it into work. I mean, again, I always say this about AMD. I don't want to knock them. They've done a decent job, given where their stuff was zero a year ago. They'll do several billion, five, six billion this year. But at the same time, it's like you can buy the AMD parts,

it may take you months to get them up and running, even if they were comparable on paper, which I still actually think they're behind in performance. But the NVIDIA stuff, not only is the performance better, given all the investment in the ecosystem, you can be up and running in days. Time is money in this market. It's not just enough to have the hardware. You need everything. I started out in this business, not at the very beginning, but early on covering Apple. So everything's an Apple metaphor to me. Early on in the iPhones life, people were saying, oh, well, Samsung's got the stuff

and they make screens. And so it's just a rectangle, blah, blah, blah. But the app store, the ecosystem, the services turned out to be a big deal, not only for the phones themselves, but also iOS versus Android. How much of a parallel is there in how NVIDIA's software and ecosystem makes those chips easier to use, easier to optimize versus the competition that might even have improving chips? Yeah, it's funny. Ecosystems didn't find their way to market with smartphones either. I mean, people talk about the Wintel ecosystem. You had Intel x86 and Windows on software, and that was an ecosystem that locked in profits and helped for decades,

too. So this is not a new thing in tech. I think there's a number of historical parallels that you could draw. I'd say one maybe just spitballing one difference maybe between where we are in AI and where we are in smartphones is you did eventually get like I guess a second ecosystem that grew up. And Android like from a volume standpoint I guess is sizable relative to Apple. But all the profits are still flowing to Apple given the amount of lock-in they have. And I'd say on the AI side you don't even have that kind of like dual option right now. You've still got NVIDIA way up here and then kind of everybody else way down. Even everybody else

that's trying, they're still very, very early on. You have to remember NVIDIA has been investing in this ecosystem literally for decades. Everybody else that is trying to do this is sort of coming up. And maybe that's another difference between this and smartphones. For sure. You have the Apple ecosystem and the Android that sort of came like on its coattails. NVIDIA's got literally a 10-plus year head start on everybody else in this space. It's a tough barrier to break. Arguably, Apple did too with the roots of OS X underneath iOS. But point taken.

Stacey Rasgan, great to see you happy new year once again let's bring back mike santoli mike uh we're here at the end of 2024 you're a hard man to rattle you've seen a lot what surprised you the most in the markets this year boy um i think what surprised me the most john probably is the fact that we didn't actually have to. It wasn't a zero sum situation. So I thought if we were going to get massive dominance by the biggest stocks in the market, that it would actually be eroding in terms of breadth. And nothing else should participate.

We have 10 percent return in the equated S&P, 10 percent in value, 10 percent in small cap. There was enough for everyone to go around. It might leave a challenging start point for 2025. I'm alert to the potential warnings being sent by this action in cyclical stocks in December. Maybe the economy can't handle high rates, but point to point, a very great year. Tough to go too far wrong. Yeah. No Santa Claus rally, but other than that, you can't complain. Mike Santoli, really glad to close it out with you. That's going to do it for overtime.