Closing Bell - Closing Bell Overtime: Markets Extend Recent Strength & Tech Regains Leadership 4/14/26

Episode Date: April 14, 2026

Markets climb back to pre-war levels as tech regains leadership and investors lean back into risk. Tony Wang of T. Rowe Price highlights the return of the tech trade as semis and software push higher. Brent Schutte, CIO at Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management, explains what’s driving the broader rebound and whether it can continue. Our Steve Liesman dives into the latest on Kevin Warsh’s finances and reacts to new comments from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on rates and policy. Alastair Pinder, Head of EM and Global Equity Strategy at HSBC, assesses whether global markets can catch up to the U.S. rally. Guy Adami of “Fast Money” weighs in on whether now is the time to bet on banks as the sector tries to find footing. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The bell's ringing in to the trading day at the NYSD I&Q, ringing the bell at the NASAC, beer, biotechnology doing the honors. Welcome to closing bell over time. We're live in Studio B at the NASDAQ market site. I'm Melissa Lee, along with Mike Santoli. And we had another big day for stocks today. The Dow with a gain of 300 points, the S&P 500 higher by 1%. The NASAC up nearly two.

The S&P 500 is now just about 10 points from the late January record close and less than 1% from its intraday, all-time high above 7,000. And our markets team is at the ready. Christina Parks and Nevelas on the big moves in tech. Rick Santelli on bonds, Pippa Stevens on the drop in oil. And Steve Leesman on the efforts to get Kevin Warsh on the Fed. A lot going on, obviously, and the market is just kind of just grab the, you know, taking the bit in its mouth and run at this point.

And I think it was always the case that the market was going to just look for that window when it felt as if we were in a denouement phase of the conflict. It's all very contingent. We know it could go either way. But at this point, just kind of grabbing for the old themes in semis and AI is the rule. Yeah, I mean, meta, Google, Amazon. I mean, all of those names were higher. So the old playbook is back in play.

And it's really a terrible setup going into earnings season for us to levitate to these heights just before we report. We get all the cautious commentary, which many people expect will come. It is true. I mean, it was looking like we might have a really undemanding setup before this. 10% rally off the lows, by the way, from the intraday lows on March 30 at the S&P 500 is up that much. It's also interesting, and if you look at what's not almost back to the highs, industrials are more than 3% below the highs, equal-weight consumer cyclicals have only regained about half of what they lost during the post-Iran conflict losses.

So it shows you that the market isn't really saying everything's fine. The market is saying we can have some kind of conviction in a few themes. and also people were under positioned in a lot of those fast-moving stocks, and they're getting punished for it, I guess. While the NASDAQ is stretching its winning streak to 10 days, up 13% over that span. Christina Parson-Evo is watching today's big winners for us. Hey, Christina. Well, markets keep climbing as investors really turn their focus from headlines to earnings,

hoping they'll provide some stability and maybe even push stocks to new highs before May. The rebound is really just reinforcing the idea that you don't need to overtrade geopolitics to stay in the game. Momentum's alive, or as you both said, the old playbook in the chip space again. Micron and Western Digital closing higher, InVedia now up 10 days straight. Credo soaring after saying it would buy chipmaker dust photonics to strengthen its position in AI connectivity. Normally when you see a rally in chips or semiconductors, it comes at software's expense, but not necessarily this week. Oracle's higher again and confidence is building a newer cloud plays like CoreWeave as well as Nebius as just these AI deals. keep stacking up. The risk-on mood even stretches to crypto and quantum technology. Robin Hood

and Coinbase advance higher. They're seen as proxies, crypto miner, and also data center provider IRN, up nearly 10%. And then quantum names like D-Wave and INQ up about double digits today, fittingly on World's Quantum Day. Yes, April 14th. On the earnings front, JPMorgan trimmed its 2026 net interest and income outlook, I should say. Wells Fargo saw pressure from fees and expenses, but cities stood out with stronger growth across lending, fees, and trading. Tomorrow, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley are out. Guys? Christina, thanks. Christina Potsnavelas.

Today's rally coming as oil falls and energy is by far the worst performing sector. Pippa Stevens has more on this. Pippa. Hey, Melissa, oil prices tumbling as the White House considers additional talks with Iran. Meantime, the IEA releasing its monthly report today saying that demand destruction has already kicked in as product prices top $200 per barrel in some countries in Southeast Asia. The agency now forecasting an annual demand contraction for the first time since COVID, after previously forecasting demand growth. Dated Brent, which is for the most readily available oil, trading around $125 per barrel today.

That's according to SNP Global Energy. That is down from a record high of $144 last Tuesday, but still a $30 premium to Brent's front month contract at around 95. Now, one trader telling me we've now hit trigger levels below the low settles of last week and that a pattern is emerging, where Monday and Tuesday are risk off, but heading to the weekend, it shifts to more risk on. Sochgen, adding that open interest is now building in Brent's July contract with call open, with call open interest, increasing most notably at the $110 strike, which could indicate some now preparing for a longer conflict. Mike? Yeah, all right, some bets at least that it's not quite over.

Pippa, thank you very much. Well, the drop-in oil prices and this morning's PPI report helping to send bond yields lower. Rick Santelli, joining us from the CBO. Talk more about that. Yeah, Mike, I'll tell you, it's a weird setup because the month-over-a-month data was cool in PPI, the year-over-year data was hot. But let's go over what cool represents. It's representing against expectations. So the headline number was up half of a percent, up 0.5.

But yet we're expecting up 1.1. Up half a percent is not normally considered a cool PPI. But when you're looking for twice as much it is, the year-over-year, they were definitely on the hot side, metrics except for X food and energy year over year were higher than last month. That one equaled 3.8 double. That's the same thing it was last month. Look at a 12-hour chart of twos and tens. Not long after that 8.30 Eastern data came out, the market started moving down. Why? Oil prices. When every expert says, we're going to 150 in regular crude futures, going to 175. Well, we're not. We're going down. And boy, the dollar paid attention and interest rates did.

Look at a year-to-date chart. We close tens of 417. Look at all the inflation data we've had. Hot PCE data. And where are we now? What? We're less than 10 basis points higher on the entire year. And if you look at the dollar index,

should it close where it's trading right now? It'd be the lowest close since the day before the war started on the 27th of February. So a very big day to pay attention to Mike. Melissa Lee, back to you. Rick Santelli, thank you. Let's turn out to the big market driver. Technology as the NASAC leads once again and is now up 7% in a week.

The gains are broad-based with software, semis, and big caps all-seeing gains. The XLK, including Nvidia and AMB, stretching their winning streak to 10 straight days. The IGV closing higher after posting its best day in nearly a year yesterday and the semis ZTF, SMH, hitting an all-time high today. Joining us now on these big moves is Tiro Price Science and Tech Fund portfolio manager Tony Wong, Tony, great to see you. Thanks for having to hear. Yeah.

We're just touting some of the gains made in IGV just very, very recently, but we're still back, you know, towards lows that we saw back at the end of February or so. And I'm wondering what you make of this sort of the theme of AI destruction in the space, because just this afternoon we get a headline from the information saying that Claude is going to release another model, a web design model. We see Adobe. We see Figma trade lower. Again, on the same news, basically,

that they're going to be disrupted by AI. It happens again and again, and this group just can't, you know, catch a break on that front. Yeah, so I think that what's going on is that software is being refactored for agents and not for humans. And so I think that's a big change in the industry

and it changed to you in the economics when you think about the amount of deflation that can come to the space. In addition, I think the large language models, they're progressing at an exponential pace. And so the models are getting better, the agents are going to get better. And I think that just creates a really competitive dynamic for the legacy customer software companies to keep up.

Have you been adding to software positions during this route, Tony, are things just too uncertain still? And you'd rather stick to some of the larger names and the AI trade. Yeah, so I think, you know, longer term, I still like the AI infrastructure names, especially within semis. And so, you know, the way I think about it is that all these agents, are going to need a lot of compute. And a lot of times better memory, better networking is going to be the bottomback here. And as a result, I think that, you know, you can't see a multi-year build-out in those names. And so, Tony, that being the case, and of course, the market is really seized on that, right?

It's going after the parts of the food chain where there's scarcity and there's pricing power. We talked about, you know, sand disk and other storage and memory stocks and things like that. Are we going to be okay with a lot of the hyperscalers still sacrificing all the free cash for for multiple years, or is this kind of a one-year lull and then they can start to earn it back? Yeah, well, I think that, you know, the market will be looking for top-line growth here. And so I think the last few years have been funded by the existing free cash flow. And going forward, they need to produce more free cash flow, better top-line growth, for them to continue spending at these levels.

And so I think the RLI is going to be the thing that this earnings season is going to be really important. But I think if you look at what's going on, Enterprise adoption for AI and anthropic especially is really inflecting. And so I think this is like the time period, the time that we've been waiting for in the market to show RLI beyond just the consumer apps. And so I think that's like as long as they grow, top line growth, they continue spending cap bags and build out intelligence. I want to ask you about Intel. It's broken its streak, Tony, today. A lot of good news being pointed to is the reason behind this torrid streak that it's been on. Are you an Intel fan? I mean, do you now believe that, for instance, being part of the TerraFab validates or confirms that 18A is a commercially viable technology? I mean, all these sort of positive conclusions being drawn from a Google partnership and its involvement in TerraFab. Yeah, well, no doubt. You know, the last year, the terminal value of Intel has expanded tremendously. I think the announcement that you talked about the partnerships.

And then also, I didn't do anything about agentic. Like, it requires a lot of CPUs, actually, because these agents are like opening up browsers, doing things. And so previously, it was out limited by a number of humans, but now agents played this new TAM. And you're seeing that, you know, there's a CPU shortage right now. And there's, you know, more need for capacity. and Intel has built out its capacity over the last few years of others were probably not as aggressive. So I think that they are in a good place, obviously a lot from here to the next five years,

but I think they are in a special position in terms of where their fash are located and technology that they have. Tony Wong, thanks very much. Appreciate it. All right, let's turn to the overall markets with the S&P now back above its pre-war level and less than a percent from its all-time highs. investors turn their attention to corporate earnings. So is the worst behind the markets despite the Iran war and global energy concerns.

Our next guest says he sees the market continuing to broaden out in 2026, but the puck is shifting. With us now is Brent Chudy. He is Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management, CIO. Brent, good to have you on. So from, I guess, on the spectrum of the market has it perfectly right, and this is a justified risk-on rally to, you know, it's assuming too much and going too far. where do you say? I think more towards the latter. I don't think we're done with the conflict yet, and I think there are plenty of concerns still out there. That being said, as you open up with, I do think there are plenty of long-term opportunities for investors to lean into, largely outside

of those areas that you spent the prior 10 minutes talking about, which the broadening was occurring prior to the conflict, and now you're seeing investors run back to their favorites, which I think going forward, especially for an intermediate to long-term investor, the opportunities are in things that haven't done as well the past few years in this narrow market that we've had. Yeah, I was going to say that, you know, we've re-narrowed. As of this morning, I think at a one-month basis, only less than 30% of the S&P 500 stocks were outperforming the index itself. Before the war, we were running around 60%. Now, I guess that was somewhat based on this idea of going to run the economy hot and get fed rate cuts

and Treasury yields are going to stay tame. So have any of those inputs changed in the last month or six weeks? I think that's the risk. And that's why. I opened up by saying that I think there are still some risks that are out there. Look, this economy is doing okay this quarter, but that's because of the large fiscal impulse that we had coming into the quarter where you had fourth quarter government spending that was deferred because of the government shutdown, moving to the first quarter, plus the tax refunds that are a one-time event that are out there. That was expected to add 2.1% to overall economic growth in Q1.

And as of last week, the Atlanta Fed GDP now was running at 1.3%. The Fed also cut rates last year, which pushed the tenure Treasury as Rick, opened up to, I believe, 394 earlier. It's back up, but it's coming back down. That's where I think there could be a bump in the road here. We'll see where we go with the conflict. But I do think if you pull back and focus on the things that you can control, which I don't know what's going to happen in Iran,

and I don't know that any other guests are. This is where I think there are still opportunities in those areas for the market to broaden as AI adoption becomes much more prevalent in companies. And so we move from the conversation of hyperscalers and people are bringing it to life to society, which is going to use it to make their employees more efficient and their companies more profitable. What are the sectors where are the companies brand that you think will benefit the most from AI, aside from the companies that build out AI?

And is that a major factor in your investment thesis in any sort of non-tech companies at this point? It certainly is. And that's where if you look back to 1999, a period of time, which I think rhymes a lot with this, where you had obviously internet spending, keeping the economy going after the Fed had raised rates and cut rates, and then re-raised rates. You had an incredibly bifurcated economy there that was driven by internet spending, much like the past year, year and a half,

we've had a bifurcated economy that's been driven by AI spending. Back then, a narrow group of companies, as Mike mentioned in his opening, talking about 30% outperforming. That's where we've been the last few years and that's where we were back in the 1990-1989 period. It then broadened back out to the broader US economy

as a whole and the companies that used it. And that's where I think you'll see broader participation brought our leadership in the stock market. And I think you'll see small midcap companies which trade at historically lower levels of valuation. I think they will do better in the coming years as those benefits become more readily available to them. Okay. Brent, you know, we just want to put a pause in the conversation.

We're going to go to Chicago here and show you the closing bell at the CBO in Chicago. FACCET is doing the honors today. And with the bell, that ends the regular trading day for options. Brent, back to the small mid-caps sort of theme. Are there sectors in particular that you're looking at? I mean, I think when you buy a small cap, you're buying more economically sensitive sectors and segments versus the tech sector, which has kind of held the economy and the markets up the past few years. And so I would suggest more along those lines, I tend to focus more on broader markets rather than the narrower aspects.

But generally, when you buy small and mid-cap stocks, you are definitely buying more economically sensitive. And that's why they've been harmed the past few years and not done as well, because the broader economy hasn't done as well. it's been carried by a narrow sliver of companies tied to AI or tied to the higher consumer. And, Brent, a quick word on bonds, whether you see value there, whether it's, you know, investment-grade yields or even on the riskier end? In the here and now, I see value in bonds. I think certainly there is a gap, a real earning, a real yield that you're actually earning. I think longer term, the answer still is more inflation in this economy, and so that may twist in the future.

But for right now, given the economic questions that are still out there, I think bonds offer value. But I would suggest in the future we may be looking back towards more inflation protection as we progress throughout the year. And perhaps this conflict does go in the river mirror. And as you mentioned before, we run the economy a bit harder with the new central bank president. Brent, great to speak with you. Thanks, Fred Schuiting. Thank you. The administration moving ahead with the nomination of Kevin Warsh to Fed chair, not only did Warsh disclose how much money he has, which is a lot. But there was also an interesting comment from the Treasury Secretary.

We'll dive into all of it. You're watching Closing Bell Overtime, live from the NASAC market site. Welcome back to Overtime. Crypto Exchange confirming Krakken confirming in the last few minutes that it has confidentially filed for an IPO. Less than a month ago, Cracken froze its IPO plans amid a downturn in crypto. According to reports, the company has recently lost more than $6 billion in valuation. Bitcoin has made a bit of a comeback in the past month about 9% this month. All right, well, the nomination of Kevin Warsh as the next Fed Chair,

taking a step forward with the release of his financial disclosures, Worse would be the richest Fed Chair in recent memory. For more on Warsh's wealth, let's bring in Steve Leesman. Hey, Steve. Hey, Mike. It took 69 pages to list all of Kevin Warsh's assets. Holdings on the total reached into the hundreds of millions at least disclosure documents made public from Fed Chair.

Kevin Warshow assets in his name at least of $135 million, maybe as high as $235,000. million and maybe even more than that. Here are some of the top holdings that we identified. Among them, two funds called juggernaut, each worth at least $50 million, could be more than that. A series of investments that seem linked to Stan Drucken-Miller, T-H-S-D-F-S, and we calculate those between 22 and 25 million. Variety of holdings of different kinds of UPS stock, two to 10 million variety of holdings of Kuang, which is a Korean company, U.S.-based company that's business in Korea, 3 to 15, and DCM investments, a bunch of interesting things in there.

Talk about those in a second. Warsh has promised, though, to divest vast amounts of these holdings, if he is indeed confirmed as a Fed chair. All of them, many of them would run him a foul of Fed's ethics rules. For all his wealth, Warsh is likely not the richest person in the family. Fortune is estimated the net worth of his wife, Jane Lauder. heir to the Estee Lauder Fortune at nearly $2 billion. Beyond the big money, Warsh's disclosure documents show holdings in a restaurant,

a horse stable, and a venture capital firm that has holdings in crypto, biotech, some SpaceX, and even a robotic company that offers a robotic arm for coffee bars. And of course, one other thing, a piece of news that may be more relevant, which is his hearing is now scheduled with the Senate nomination hearing for April 21st, guys. Right. And I guess, Steve, you mentioned that some of these individual holdings would now kind of run counter to current Fed, you know, ethics rules for what they can own. I remember, of course, we all remember, Greenspan famously put all of his wealth into T-bills. Where does it, where is the line in terms of what a Fed chair or a Fed official can do now? Is it just have to be in a blind trust or something? Well, it's unclear. I don't believe a blind trust works at the Fed, although we might, he might test some of those. boundaries there. I'm not really sure. I feel pretty confident Kevin's going to do what he needs to do to get within the ethics and to set an example. The Fed has had problems there. They have been

stains on the Fed's reputation. And I don't think there's going to be one coming from this particular next Fed chair when it comes to that. The lines are he's not supposed to hold anything that that involves his business. And a lot of things involve Fed business, especially banks, bank holding stocks. He probably He's probably not supposed to be on any of the boards of directors that he's on. Still will have to leave all that stuff, Mike. This creates an interesting dynamics. You've to have somebody in the Fed who had so much wealth in the markets on any level. Because obviously, even if he has to divest, you've got a guy who's thinking about race and the impact on business and on stocks in a way that maybe other Fed chairs in the past have not.

And that's sort of an interesting setup to this whole narrative that Warsh is going to go in and cut rates. I do think so. I think it's also very interesting, Melissa, how much he's been involved with tech. And I think that's a big part of his outlook for policy as well. But yeah, I mean, it kind of creates this on the face of it conflict of interest that you really can't do anything about if you hold stocks and hold an awful lot of stocks. There's nothing he can do about that. We'll see the form these take, whether or not the instruments that he's in and the different vehicles that he's in are, are possible. public enough that we can know what he owns. I think that's going to be important part of the war show, a chairmanship. Yeah, Steve, we do also want to ask you about the comments from Treasury Secretary Bessent. Speaking this morning, he said that rates should be cut. But if the Fed wanted to wait for some clarity, he would understand.

So this is sort of interesting, given all the pressure the president has been putting on Powell. What do you make of this all? Yeah. So he would, actually, was that a little further yesterday, Melissa? And now he's still in the same camp. Look, the background on this is that the president and then along with the Treasury Secretary of the Fed have been very strong critics of the Fed for not cutting rates. And now they're sort of looking at the reality of higher oil prices, the impact on inflation, which was a little bit less today in the wholesale price report, but still elevated and maybe more to come and saying, you know what? We get that you may have to wait here.

So I don't think that the administration's criticism has had a whole. lot of effect on the Federal Reserve, and I don't expect the fact that they're suddenly not criticizing him or them to have much effect either. And, you know, not to say this was the motivation for Treasury Secretary Besson's comments, but in theory it could take a little bit of pressure off of Warsh in a hearing. If he's constantly peppered with, you know, what if the administration says you've got to cut rates right away, and it's not really the standing policy? That's an excellent point, Mike.

And what's fascinating to me is all of this time, while it's been clear that Warsh would be the nominee, and he'll likely get in. Of course, there's an issue with Senator Tillis holding up the actual moving forward of the nomination until the criminal case against Fed Chair Powell was resolved. But that notwithstanding, it's been interesting to me that all of this time, Mike, the market has not really priced in a rate cut for a big chunk of the first year of Kevin Worse. It's now just flirting with one in June. But June 2027, not June 2026.

If you look at that forward curve, they do not see Kevin Warsh coming in and have not for a while. Now, the inflation picture could change. It could change quickly. And then we might be right back on with that. But at the moment, the rate cuts are not priced in. And at the moment, is there flirtation with a rate hike, given the, you know, the conflict has gone on much longer? I'm going to double check on that while I answer this question. but I have not seen it.

I'll give you the exact odds in a nanosecond, Melissa. But I was looking at about a 35% chance of a cut. And, okay, so it's 35% right on, 36% for December, but a 0.3% chance of a hike. And you don't really, that hike, that flirtation with a hike, that hike scare is gone right now. Right. A little bit of movement towards one and three chance of a hike by the end of the year.

Now, it's well to remember, Melissa, and I think you do, how much cuts were built into the forecast beginning as soon as June of this year. That's gone. Right. Yeah. And I have to say, if we don't get a cut until June of 20, 27, it'd be probably one of the longest stretches of a Fed on hold, I imagine. Although I know it's been, we've had some extended periods in history when that was the case, Steve. Appreciate it.

Yeah, Mike, just real quick. I know you've got to go, but it's, yes, June of 27, a 54% probability of a rate cut. of a rate of a rate cut. And I think what you just mentioned, Mike, was this period in 95, which was also a period of extensive technological development where the Fed was on hold for quite a period of time. That's exactly it. All right, Steve, thanks very much. Well, don't miss Steve's exclusive interview with Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammock. That's tomorrow at 8.30 a.m. on Squawk box. Airline stocks flying high today. Yes, oil prices fell, but also merger murmurs popping up. We'll get the latest. And Bloom Energy shares.

shooting up as the stock continues to be an AI buildout beneficiary. Over time, we'll be right back. Shares of Bloom Energy jumping 24% today as it expands its energy deal with Oracle. Oracle buying up to 2.8 gigawatts of fuel cell systems to power its AI data centers. The fuel cells can be deployed faster than other power sources such as nuclear, which, of course, could take years. Bloom shares are now up 60% in a week, while Oracle shares are up 13%. Bloom Energy, probably still is the largest stock in the Russell 2000.

It's a complete whip end of the alternative power, kind of speculative momentum. And now, you know, they have something to show for it. I mean, for the backlash against status centers in terms of the impact on driving up energy costs for the average consumer, Bloom is bringing your own power. That's right. So that is definitely a way sort of around it to get around local zoning laws,

for instance, that might say, you know what, no to building out actual power plans. No, exactly. I mean, if it's really broadly successful, scalable. It's a huge win. I mean, I guess for the system, we'll see how it goes. A big day for airlines with merger talks floating around the sector. Let's get to Phil Leboe, who's got all the details. Hey, Phil. Melissa, we are a long ways from seeing a merger between United and American. Heck, it might not even be proposed. All it is at this point are reports

that CEO Scott Kirby talked with folks at the White House and said, you know what, I might be interested in American Airlines. How would you think about that? And we know from talking with the Transportation Secretary that the administration is open to the idea of airline mergers. Not specifically this one, but keep in mind, as you take a look at the largest airlines, American is the largest in the United States. They have over 20 percent market share. United is the third largest airline. Together, they'd have about 40 percent. And that is one reason why, you will probably see a number of people, if this ever got proposed, fighting it vehemently. Didn't stop the shares from moving higher today. they both did, even though I can report that United has not approached American in terms of any formal discussions.

So at this point, this is more hypothetical than anything else. And as I mentioned, there would be a lot of hurdles here. First of all, 40% market share. That would have a lot of antitrust scrutiny, especially in certain markets where they would have just an overwhelming monopoly on all the flights. Take Chicago. They would dominate that market. Other markets as well, where they are both large players, New York is a good, example of that. The state AGs are likely to fight because they would say it's anti-competitive,

and then you would have objections from competitors who would sit there and say, oh, no, no, no, no, no, you're not taking that hub and getting 60% of the flights in that hub. There's going to have to be some heavy divestitures. That's even if it gets to that point. As you take a look at shares of American, United, Delta, and Southwest, keep in mind that both United and American, and we're looking at these stocks over the last year, they both report their Q1 results next week. And that's when we're going to hear from the C. CEOs of United, Scott Kirby and American, Robert Isam. Curious what they're going to have to say about this discussion here.

On paper, Phil, I mean, it seemed like American would be a candidate. Bob Isam is, what, 62 years old? The stock is lower today than when he took over way back when. And so it would seem like it would be a candidate. But if not American, and you had to sort of move the pieces around the board, would there be another takeover tarp? Would JetBlue be in the running, for instance? JetBlue gets mentioned.

JetBlue gets mentioned by a number of people. And United is developing a partnership with JetBlue, where, starting next year, it will have some flights out of JetBlue Gates at JFK. So that's a possibility that's been mentioned out there. Although Scott Kirby, when he was asked about this, specifically, said, look, I like the relationship that we have with JetBlue and gave no indication that they would be interested in that as a potential merger. But, yeah, at the end of the day, you're right, Melissa.

If this doesn't happen, it's in the air that we're, we could start to see some deals at least proposed within the U.S. airline industry. All right. Phil, thanks. Phil Aboe. You bet. Time now for a CNBC News Update with Sima Modi. Hey, Seema.

Hey, Melissa, Congress is now down two members after a Republican and a Democrat both formally resigned today from Congress amid probes into alleged misconduct. Democrat Eric Swalwell announced his attention to resign last night after withdrawing from the California governor's race amid a wave of sexual assault allegations. then Republican Tony Gonzalez of Texas quickly followed amid a probe over a romantic relationship with a former staffer who later died by suicide. Both resignation letters were read on the House floor this afternoon. In other news, the International Energy Agency reported today

that Russia nearly doubled its oil revenues in March amid record deficits. Last week, Russia's finance ministry reported a budget deficit of $60 billion for the first quarter, surpassing the projection for the entire year. And fired University of Michigan football coach, Sharon Moore, sentenced to 18 months probation today for a confrontation with his assistance soon after he was fired in December for having an inappropriate relationship with her. He pleaded no context in March to trespassing and malicious use of a telecom device. Mike, back to you.

Seena, thank you. Well, a big stock market story early this year with the outperformance of international stocks, the Vanguard Index tracking everything but the U.S., ticker VXUS, still holding its lead year to date, but has the Iran war and the blockade of the strait of Hormuz changed the picture. We'll discuss all that next in overtime. Welcome back to closing bell overtime live from the NASDAQ market site. Another big day for the markets, Dow up 300 points. The S&P 500 higher by 1% and just about half a percent off its all-time intraday high.

The NASDAQ hired by nearly 2%. That's its 10th straight winning day. The SMH semiconductor ETF also extending its winning streak and soaring to a record high and the beleaguered IGV software ETF, also a gainer higher by about 1% on the day. But those fears of software being disrupted by AI popping up once again, Adobe and Figma turning lower this afternoon on reports Claude is repairing to release an AI website design tool. And one after-hours mover to show, Teriolv reporting preliminary results, seeing revenue of between $30 and $35 million.

Also, the company announcing a stock offering of $800 million. That stock down 7% after hours, roughly what it gained during the regular session. The S&P 500 may have erased its losses since the Iran War began, but the same can't be said for some markets overseas. In Asia, the Niki and Shanghai composite still lower. The stocks, Europe's 600, down 2%. But we see global markets rebound the way the U.S. has, or are they more exposed to geopolitical tensions and perhaps an energy price shock? Joining us now is Alistair Pinder. he is a head, EM and global equity strategists at HSBC.

Alistair, great to have you with us. Thank you for having me. Despite all the uncertainty, you actually see buy signals. Where are these buy signals showing? Well, I mean, the buy signals are coming through on the positioning side, where we've seen quant funds just been really reducing, you know, heavily their positioning. And the surprising thing, particularly in the U.S. is the data. How strong it has been.

You know, we talk a lot about that U.S. consumer and the weakness from the energy shock. But what we're seeing in the real-time data is retail spending, is still accelerating and their supports. There's supports from the tax refunds, which are currently running 15, 16% above last year's levels, and that's an extra $30 billion, just this year alone that's been given to retailers to basically offset some of this energy pressure. So I think there's elements there that make us positive,

and then you're at the earnings season, where the S&P 500 is going to probably deliver another 13% driven by tech, financials and materials. And to me, you know, that is an excellent. extremely strong number and it's probably going to be once again. So I think the setup here looks pretty good. Oh, sorry. Presumably parts of the rest of the world are not as well insulated. So I'm just kind of wondering how the difficulty might be distributed here. Well, I think you have to be very selective. So, you know, Europe is a good area where, you know, I mentioned the US consumer

has supports. Europe doesn't have that. Nowhere near to the same extent. They're much more reliant on gas imports and they're struggling. Now, you can move to Asia and you can see a similar story in parts of Japan, India, but then there are other narratives. You're mentioning the software names being under pressure. One area that I would say isn't under pressure is semis. And if you look at Korea and you look at Taiwan, that market is up 15% over the last week and is absolutely ripping. And to me, they don't have the same kind of downside risks related to these AI disruption fears, but they're winning from all of the Mag 7 spending right now. But what wins out when it comes to Taiwan and South Korea in terms of the

AI trade being strong in the scarcity of the components or the high cost of electricity because they are dependent on what is coming out of the strait? Well, it's a very good point. But the one thing that I think, you know, Taiwan and Korea have shown us, particularly the memory names and the semi-names, they have pricing power. We don't have any doubt about that. They have pricing power. And if they are seeing higher input costs, they can pass that onto the end of consumers here.

And the demand for AI chips is absolutely prolific right now. I mean, if you take the U.S. hyperscalers, you know, consensus. expectations for their CAPEX is up $100 billion alone this year. That's just revisions. So to me, you know, 20% of that is going to get spent on semis, the DRAM, the memory. Again, a very bullish narrative for the EM Asia set up here. I imagine another storyline must be in play for things like Brazil. I mean, people I know just look at what are the best looking charts, they keep pointing to Brazil. Totally. And so I think when you come to EM, there's a really nice barbell here of getting the tech and the growth is stuck in Asia and then the value.

and the commodity plays in Latam. And one of the really nice things about Latam is that, you know, if you have a fear that this energy shock is going to persist, Latam outperforms. If you're going to get a sort of, you know, a ceasefire and a de-escalation, Latam still outperforms. That's what we've seen this week because it's a higher beta play and it rallies aggressively on a week of dollar. So to me, it's one of those markets where the risk reward looks really attractive right now.

In most scenarios, we think Latam can outperform from here. If China is dragged down further because of the energy supply shock in the conflict, then does EM in terms of, you know, Brazil, for instance, does it suffer? I don't think so. I think actually kind of the opposite is that people start to look for alternatives here. And Latam is, I think, the clear alternative at this point. Alster, great to see you. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Up next, Fast Money's Guy Dami on how he is trading tomorrow's big bank earnings, including Bank of America and Morgan Stanley, and as we head to break. Checkout shares of Ford, one of the big winners in the S&V500 today. UBS upgrading the stock to a buy from a neutral, citing valuation. The name has had a solid run in the past 12 months of 31%. Over time, be right back. JAP Morgan and City beating estimates on the top and bottom lines. Wells Fargo posting a messier quarter.

You can see the reactions in the stocks. City in the green while investors press sell on Wells. The financial sector has been the worst performer in 2026, down over 5%. So how does one play this sector now? Joining us now is Guy Adami, co-founder of Risk Reversal Media and a fast money trader. Guy. everybody? Well, Michael, I would, hello, guy. I mean,

start where you like, but I would say that there's a difference between how the big banks have traded as a group and XLF, the financial sector. So, you know, there's some compare and contrast there, but how are you thinking about the position? I think you, listen, you know this better than most people, definitely better than I. The XLF, probably not the best constructed

ETF, but that's what people look at. I understand that. But let's talk about the banks. And if you had said the worst performing for this year, I wouldn't have thought it was the banks, because you've had some names that have done Pretty well. The name that we've talked about on your show, on our show, by the way, over 19 years now on CNBC's Fast Money, has been letter C. And what we've said is, listen, you know, J.P. Morgan deserves the premium multiple. But at a certain point, and Citibank was about 60% of tangible book at one point last year.

It deserved the multiple. Jane Frazier doing a great job. Look at the quarter. I thought it was a great quarter. And you say, what's the right valuation? And it just guts down to math. I don't think the Wells Quarter was a disaster, but it's more. expensive. Cities should be trading, in my opinion, one and a half times tangible book, which we talked about last night, although Tim Seymour made fun of me, gets you at about a $150 stock, and I think that's where it's going. How do you impute those results, though, into Morgan Stanley and Bank of America tomorrow? You know, Morgan Stanley is a complete different animal, I believe. I think Bank of America is more in the Wells Fargo camp. And, you know, I'm not listening to throw around nastiness here or whatever word you want to use, but Bank of America has some, I think, risks that they either

don't acknowledge or they don't fully understand. And I think it comes right down to the health of the consumer and some of the delinquencies that I think are going to start to move up. And if you put up a long-term chart of Bank of America, you'll see that the level that we just traded up to 58 or so was the same level we traded up to many, many years ago. So it's a mass, you've got to go farther back than that. So there's a massive double top as well. I think Bank of America is a sell. I think Wells is a sell. I think City is a buy. I think you'll wait and see on Morgan Stanley. There's always the case that you get this. A little. little bit of a zero-sum game when it comes to trading, right, in a given quarter, which one had a

little bit more and which one less. B of A, it's remarkable to me that the old Merrill Lynch kind of gets obscured within the size of it. But, you know, that is a swing factor for them, arguably. It should be, but I think you would agree that Morgan Stanley's probably done a better job on that front. And I think the market picks winners and picks losers. So you're right about that. But, you know, again, B of A sort of is what it is. I think it's going to fall into some trouble at these levels. I think City works. I think Morgan Stanley, you buy weakness. Goldman Sachs as well. I mean, the Goldman quarter wasn't bad. People said, you know what, Fick should have been better. They're right. And then you look at what J.P. Morgan did. And you say, you know, what? Goldman should have done a lot better.

But it's only so much to go around. That's kind of what I was getting. I think there's true to that. It's a little bit of a kind of luck of the draw. I think you would agree, though, in this space specifically, valuations matter. Sure. And, you know, you get to a certain level where it doesn't make sense either on the long side or the short side. And for City, it happened on the short side, and I still think there's some gas left on the fire for its letter C. All right, go swizzle around. I have some great gummy bears from the Harryboe family that I'm going to go get in a second. Hi, everybody. Hi, Miles.

Miles got a great haircut, by the way. Very short. We'll dive deeper into the bank trade with RBC's top banking analyst. It's George Cassidy. That's the top of the hour on fast money. All right, Amazon, adding to its recent rally following a deal that takes aim at Elon Musk's Starlink in the fast-growing satellite internet. services business. He tells are straight ahead. And as your head show, break, check out some notable

S&P 500 stocks hitting new highs today back in New York Mellon, KLA, Lamb Research, Vertive, and Garmin. Close to Bill Overtime live from the NASDAQ market side. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Overtime. Shares of Global Star surging today after Amazon announced it is buying the satellite company for nearly $11.6 billion. That's Amazon's second largest acquisition ever behind Whole Foods. Truist and Roth Capital, both putting out bullish notes on the deal, saying it'll help Amazon ramp up competition with Elon Musk Starlink and noting it brings Apple aboard as a partner, since Apple owns a 20% stake in Global Star. Amazon shares have been on a roll rallying roughly 20% this month, and it's now the top-performing Mag 7 stock this year. I do

want to point out that's kind of a catch-up move. If you go back a few years, Amazon has been a little bit of a laggard, of course, had that huge run in the pandemic. But very interesting on this level, because it's on one level, if you're a SpaceX part as he says, it validates, you know, the strategy with Starlink and, you know, how many, I don't know how many thousands of satellites we can get up there, but they have plans for a lot more. Yeah, I thought the interesting take was the notion that now, because they own spectrum and satellites, that they can actually compete with wireless carriers, and that this have been, you know, this had been a concern with Starlink for a long time, but now with Amazon,

also becoming another player, maybe that reality kind of moves up in the timeline. And so maybe you can see increased competition there and does it change their business model. For sure. I mean, I almost think that that would have to be a premise of part of why they're doing this. You know, Amazon wants to bring things to the consumer. And then that Apple connection, not just the ownership stake, but GlobalStars, the provider of satellite services for iPhones that are kind of like a last resort connectivity where you don't have cell service.

So there's some kind of an infrastructure there. I mean, you know, the economics work, you know, longer term in terms of how to, expensive it is to get those satellites up there and maintain them. But, yeah, it's fascinating. And we did look at the wireless carriers that did back off a little bit, at least T-Mobile did. Let's get you set up with tomorrow's trade today. Bank earnings remain in the spotlight when Bank of America Morgan Stanley, PNC Financial and M&T Bank, report before the bell. Transportation Logistics Company J.B. Hunt releases its results after the bell. And do not miss the first on CNBC interview with Bank of America, Chair and CEO.

Brian Moynihan, that is tomorrow 10.15 a.m. on squawk on the street. And on the economic front, we'll get March import prices and the Fed's latest beige book report. Be interesting to see the commentary there, particularly assuming that this was out in the field during the conflict. And we'll see some commentary about consumer sentiment and also input prices. No doubt about it. There's often some pretty colorful little nuggets in there, especially about cost of doing business and things like that in the beige book. Also, you know, 7,000 on the S&P. We kind of tried and failed to get above that multiple times over the past several months, and here we are at the doorstep again. So that could be in play as early as tomorrow.

We'll see. All right, that does it for overtime today. Fast money begins right after this quick break.