Closing Bell - Closing Bell Overtime: Qualcomm CEO on New Chips; AI’s Massive Buildout 9/24/25

Episode Date: September 24, 2025

Charlie Bobrinskoy of Ariel Investments helps frame today’s market action, while KB Home earnings take the spotlight. Cristiano Amon, CEO of Qualcomm, joins with announcements from the Snapdragon Summit on AI investments, and ABB CEO Morten Wierod discusses how companies are handling the surge in power demand as AI consumption grows.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Well, that's the end of regulation. S&P Global ringing the closing belt, the New York Stock Exchange. PGA of America's doing the honors at the NASDAQ. Stocks finishing modestly lower today as the tech trade wanes yet again. Treasury yields moved slightly higher today as well, but energy utilities were the S&P sector leaders. Materials and real estate lagged. Every member of the energy sector ending in the green today. Crude rose for the third straight day. Gold, though, that retreated from its all-time high today. copper climbing higher as well, hitting its highest level since late July. That's the scorecard on Wall Street, but winter stay late. Welcome to closing bell overtime.

I'm John Ford alongside Morgan Brennan. Ahead, Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Ammon, first on brand new snapdragon chips to power flagship Android phones. It's all about agentic AI, glasses, and other tech innovations from the company. Plus, the AI race heats up even more. As Alibaba makes an even bigger push into the space, we are live in China with the latest And Wall Street's rebound, slipping today as tech stalls again, is the market finally showing signs of exhaustion. Well, let's head to Christina Parks and Nevelas for a look at some of today's biggest movers in either direction.

Christina. I actually want to start with Intel because that is the newsiest thing right now, closing over 6% higher on a new headline that the chipmaker approached Apple about a potential investment. And this comes as Intel's been struggling and really aiming to improve its foundry business, according to Bloomberg. Intel, I called them. They wouldn't comment, but these potentially could be early-stage discussions. It may not lead to an agreement, but would follow recent investments from Nvidia, SoftBank, and, of course, the U.S. government just last month. As for tech, John, you mentioned it. The AI Unwind continued today. Six of the Magnificent Seven closed in the red. Only Tesla really bucking the trend. But custom chipmaker Marvell was a standout, if we don't include Intel, surging. over 7% higher to top the NASDAQ movers.

During a JPMorgan fireside chat, Marvell CEO emphasized the company is not seeing an air pocket in custom AI silicon revenues providing reassurance of just about this broader tech weakness. You got energy that led all sectors today, Philip 66, Devin Energy, the typical ones, just driving that outperformance as crude prices stabilized. And last but not least, financial closed in the red,

but alternative asset managers saw some sharper moves. Carlyle, KKR, Blue Owl, each dropped roughly over, let's call it, between five and six percent. The selling really tied to industry headwinds. Leslie Picker, my colleague, pointed out the F.T. highlighted rising default rate concerns, while Bloomberg ran a piece about some PE firms doomed to fail, really as the industry struggles with exits and investor paybacks. And so that's what's dragging the group lower.

Guys, Morgan. All right, Christina Parts and Nabilis. Thank you. Thanks. Intel. That's an interesting headline right there. It's interesting. The idea that Intel would be trying to get Apple to invest. As Steve Kovac pointed out, Apple doesn't make anything with Intel chips anymore. So really, the incentive or advantage for Apple here would be to help Intel prop up its foundry manufacturing, contract manufacturing. The concern and the opportunity, I guess, for investors to weigh here, the concern is, is this just because President Trump has forced this? investment of the U.S. into Intel that's getting some companies to throw a couple billion

here and there at Intel. Invidia did $5 billion, and then Nvidia turned around and did $100 billion in Open AI a few days later, which is what you do if you're a super mega-cap company and you really care about something as you put in double or triple-digit billions into something. What Intel really needs and really wanted for a long time now is for these major players to commit to letting Intel manufacture their chips. They don't need charity. They need business, and they need to be able to prove to investors that their foundry business is good enough that the likes of an NVIDIA or an Apple or an A&D or a Qualcomm,

we'll talk to Cristiano later, is willing to say, hey, make these chips for us. So we don't know if this would be Apple, you know, doing something because it feels like it's under pressure to do it or because it really believes in Intel. And that's what investors have to really want to know. Yeah, and I guess we're going to have to see how all of this plays out in light of that, And certainly Apple's making its own big investments into the U.S. too. And we don't have all the details around what that would look like as well. So one to watch.

All right, well, let's bring in Ariel Investments Vice Chairman and Head of Investment Group, Charlie Brabrenscoi. Charlie, it's great to have you back on the show. And let's start with the fact that small caps and specifically small cap value is really having a breakout here this quarter. It really is. Thanks for leading with that, Morgan. Yeah, it's been a while. It's obviously in the market that's been led by large cap growth for a long time.

Now, if you go back long time over. a hundred years, finance departments and academics have shown that small cap value has absolutely been the best part of the market to invest in. But that hasn't been true for the last few years, but boy, it's been true this quarter. This quarter, small cap value has been the best place to invest. And frankly, the reason we think that's happened, it was because it went into the quarter as the one sector that was pretty cheap. You know, everybody's been talking about the stock market is overpriced. Well, that's true for the S&P 500. It's not been true for small-cap value. Small-cap value is trading right on top of its historic averages and at big

discounts to the overall market. So in light of that, how much of this is being propelled or spurred by the fact that we just got a Fed rate cut? And maybe just as importantly, then, given the commentary we got from Fed Chair Powell yesterday and the fact that it's not a done deal that we get another cut at the next meeting, what does that mean for these smaller stocks? Yeah. So smaller stocks, you're right, have tend to be over weighted in industrials, in home building, in energy, and frankly in financials. And financials, regional banks do better with a lower short end of the yield curve. They do very well when we have a positively slope yield curve. They're hurt by when the Fed funds rate is higher than the 10-year rate, which is what we had. So bringing us to a normal yield curve,

which has already happened, is very good for financials, which is good for small. small cap value. But we've got lots of other sectors that are in much better shape. Things like home products. You know, I always talk to you about Residio and Mohawk, the carpet company, and home building has been very slow. And now today we got a wonderful 20% increase in new home sales. So there's lots of things going on, but lower interest rates, no doubt about it, would help small cap value. Charlie, maybe the one bigger tech company that you've liked to talk about in the past was Oracle. And Oracle has had quite a month, quite a few weeks here. How much of it have you held onto? How much are you going to hold onto after this enormous

move? Does it still represent any value? Yeah. So your partner, Kelly Evans, asked me about 18 months ago what was my favorite tech value stock, and I said Oracle. But at the time, Oracle was trading at 146 and 15 times earnings, it went to 350 and 40 times earnings. That is no longer a value stock. It's still a wonderful company with a wonderful management team, with a wonderful position in data software. As I always say, AI is all about analyzing data, and that data sits on Oracle software, so it's a great company. It's just no longer a great table-pounding stock. I have trimmed it significantly. It was one of my biggest positions. It's now a mid-sized position, probably heading a little smaller.

Well, you're still holding on to some of it, though. That kind of surprises me. Why, and what does that say about the place for AI exposed names in your portfolio, despite the fact that some of them might look pretty rich right here? The fundamentals have just been so spectacular. The adding of hundreds of billions of dollars of new orders, the tripling of the backlog, the locking in business with some of the best companies in the world, just when you have this kind of business momentum, which Oracle does,

it is not a bad idea to hold on. Warren Buffett always says, selling your winners and adding to your losers is like watering your weeds and cutting your flowers. The right thing to do here is to trim, but to hold on to a great company. I see, not cutting down the tree. Charlie Brinscoy, thank you. Thank you.

Well, shares of Alibaba jumping today, as the company says, it'll spend about $53 billion over the next few years to build out its AI ambitions. That stock has been on a heater over the last month, up more than 40%. Eunice Yuni is live in Beijing, with more on China's AI move. Eunice. Thanks, John. Well, Alibaba revealed a bigger commitment to AI.

The CEO told the developer conference that the spending on AI infrastructure would exceed its $53 billion plan over three years, that the cloud unit would open data centers in Brazil, France, the Netherlands, in 2026, and the company unveiled an updated large language model as well. The bullish outlook emboldened tech analysts who have been describing Alibaba as a serious global competitor, such as DGA's Paul Triolo, he told me the unique combination of Alibaba's huge data sets from multiple business arms, so e-commerce, logistics, with the recent release of advanced open-source AI models and in-house ASIC chips, means that Alibaba can essentially go head to head with Google in the AI data center and cloud services space. But there could be other reasons that we saw

a lot of activity in Alibaba's shares. The state media, journal for securities, the Securities Daily, recently headlined an article that said, the Alibaba stock rally epitomizes the strength of China tech. So this is encouraging a lot of Chinese investors to buy into the stock. Our CEO, Kathy Wood, also bought into Baba for the first time in four years. And this also comes as China has been pushing its brand new AI Plus initiative. And this is AI in pretty much everything. So AI plus manufacturing, AI plus health care, and that larger initiative is starting to roll out. Yeah, Eunice, I mean, I think sometimes it's easy to forget because we're so focused on the U.S. AI buildout, the fact that Alibaba is the top five hyperscalor globally.

So just how big this is, not only the move in the stock, but the investments and the reach that this name continues to have. I want to shift gears, though, because we're getting reports here in the U.S. that President Trump could be signing a deal to facilitate the sale of TikTok. as soon as tomorrow, what are you hearing on the China side? Well, on the China side, I think I'd be curious to hear what the reaction is from the U.S. National Security community, because it's very unclear to me as to whether or not bite dance or the Chinese government would be completely out of this deal, because unless bite dance is completely out, it just seems as though the Chinese government would be completely out. government would potentially have some influence. I think the question that people would have to

ask is, like, for me, as somebody who works in China, I have knowingly given up my data to the Chinese government. But on TikTok, if you're, say, a 12-year-old and you become a scientist that's important to the government, your online habits are potentially accessible by the Chinese government. And I think what is interesting, if you consider all of this stuff, that the Chinese government wouldn't allow TikTok here or any type of social media app that would be completely, you know, not completely run by the Chinese government. And also, just in the past couple of days, and in the reporting here about bite dance role, that the reporting here has been that the 20% stake of bite dance would be still the single largest, shareholder in that company. This is coming from different social media, social media app, not apps, social media accounts that are linked to the state media. So it's all not confirmed. Everything is just kind of being discussed at this point, but still, I think, important points to

consider. All right, Eunice Yun, Jun, thank you. Ahead, Qualcomm CEO, Cristiano Imo, live from the company's Snapdragon Summit in Maui. He's going to unveil the latest mobile tech, Talk about the billions flowing into agentic AI and where he sees growth. Plus, what's the best way to play the ever-growing race to power the AI race? We've got some names. Overtime's back in two. Welcome back to overtime. Okay, there, John, and we got beats on the top and bottom lines here.

EPS was $1.61. Street was looking for $1.50. And then revenue, a slight beat here, $1.62 billion compared to the $1.59 billion expected. We see shares moving up about half a percent. The full year, it was in the red just a second ago. That's because the full year guidance has been lowered just a tad. They're now expecting of $6.1 to $6.2 billion for the full year revenue. I'll send things back over here, Morgan.

Okay. Steve Kovac, thank you. Those shares are about half a percent. right now. Well, check out shares of biotech company, Unicure. The stock is up nearly 250% today. Company's experimental gene therapy for Huntington's disease showed that it slowed the progress of neurodisorder. The disease affects around 75,000 people in the U.S., the UK, and Europe. And the company also announcing a $200 million public share offering after the close. So those shares are up 200, almost 250% today. And they're up again here in overtime as well, up another 3%.

And meantime, just days after Merck got a green light from the FDA on its blockbuster cancer drug, Ketruda, our Angelica people spoke with the CEO earlier today, and she joins us here on set. Angelica, what was his take on this milestone event? Any thoughts on how Merck's reacting to the shifting stance on vaccines for children? Yeah, we covered a lot of ground. So let's start with the subcutaneous version of Ketruiter. The idea here is to give patients a more convenient way to take the cancer drug and to help Merck manage Ketruder going.

off patent in a few years. So the IV version will start facing less expensive competition in 2028 and it's Merck's biggest drug by far with nearly $30 billion in sales last year. That accounts for almost half of Merck's total revenue. The company expects up to 40% of patients will switch to the shot, which takes about a minute it's administered to a doctor's office. And meanwhile, Merck's trying to diversify its portfolio so that it's not so reliant on one drug. our goal if we can bring the breadth and the diversity of our pipeline continue to build on the leadership we have in oncology add to that growing opportunities to drive leadership in cardiometabolic in ophthalmology in HIV to us that is the approach that allows us for sustainable growth for the long term and I'm confident in that and that's why you've heard me say I see katruda as more of a hill than a cliff and I'm already looking at how are we growing beyond katruda as much as I'm worrying about Katrina itself.

And one of the big businesses that it does have, of course, is vaccines. And we talked about that as well. And, you know, there's a lot to talk about in terms of vaccines. But, you know, he said that last week watching that ACIP, meaning he felt like there was no new signs that was presented to support any new recommendations and that he worries about vaccine hesitancy and maybe people stop taking those vaccines. And Merck is down, what, 20% year to date, 30% over 12 months? That's a rough tape to deal with with all these headlines coming at them and some of their core businesses.

Exactly. And ironically, you know, nobody's talking about it at this moment, but Gardasil, that's one of their vaccines. It's for HPV. That's really what started this, you know, this whole stock decline that we've seen over the past year because they have some issues in China where the demand is falling. There's competition from a local competitor. And that was really the source of where things started. And now you have here in the U.S. a situation where vaccines are, you know, under scrutiny the other day.

the president talking about one of Merck's vaccines or MMR, right? And so now you have this confluence of factors in terms of the vaccines. And then you also have this looming patent cliff that they're going to face in 2028. All right. Well, Angelica Peebles, it's great to have you here. Here's my fun space factoid for the day. The role that Ketruda has played in the business case for commercial space stations because of what microgravity does for crystallization and drugs, Ketruda being sort of one of those key examples of successful research that has helped to bring that product to market. That's certainly a fun fact. Yeah.

Still ahead. The best ways to play the AI trade, the best, the name's best physician, and some of the biggest risks that are facing the space. We've got fast money, Steve Grasso, ready to name names. Plus, Qualcomm CEO, Cristiano Amon, is going to join us from the company's flagship Snapdragon Conference. It's been a good month for the stock, up more than 8%. You don't want to miss this over time.

Be right back. Welcome back to overtime. Let's get another check on how markets closed out the day. The Dow falling 171 points. The S&P 500 and the NASDA both down about three-tenths of a percent today. The Russell 2000 dropping nearly 1%. One notable mover, Freeport McMoran, that dropped nearly 17%. A big move for that stock.

A deadly mudslide forcing the company to halt activity at its mine in Indonesia. Freeport also warning Q3 copper and gold sales will be lower than expected. And it's time for a CNBC News Update now with Bertha Coombs. Bertha. John, the Department of Homeland Security revised the death toll this afternoon from that shooting at an immigration facility in Dallas. DHS now says one detainee was killed and two others are in critical condition. The alleged gunman also took his own life. Next, our media says it's continuing to evaluate whether to resume airing Jimmy Kimmel's late night show on its.

stations. In a statement today, Nextar said it'll continue to preempt the show while it does so. Next Star, which owns about 30 ABC affiliate stations, joined Sinclair yesterday in preempting the show's return. China's Xi Jinping pledged in a speech to the UN today to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 7% to 10% by 2035. He says the country would also boost its wind and source. solar power sixfold from 2020 levels. She's announcement comes a day after President Trump called climate change, quote, the greatest con job during his U.N. speech. John?

Bertha, thank you. Up next, Qualcomm CEO, Cristiano Amman, joins us live from the company's big chip launch. We're going to break down the big announcements and how AI will drive future business and more overtime. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Overtime. Qualcomm making news right now about its next generation mobile and PC chips. Joining us from the annual Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii in a first on CNBC interview is Qualcomm's CEO, Cristiano Ammon.

Cristiano. Aloha. A Qualcomm surprise the chips for flagship smartphones that don't carry Apple's logo pretty much everywhere. everywhere now so tell tell us what's enabled here with snap dragon eight elite gen five how will it play with agentic a i very good look great talking to you i think we're missing you here this has been a great event there's a lot going on we have a lot of announcements yesterday a lot of announcements today but yes today we're now saying two new chips uh snapdragon eight elite gen five if the fastest and most powerful processes processor we ever made i think clearly

everyone will say that it's really going to define and set the pace of innovation. I think for smartphones, for the age of AI, there's a lot going on in terms of performance, especially at a time when now there's clarity about the role of the edge, we mean AI outside the data center, and we are going to bring AI everywhere. We also talk about the future of mobile, which is now crystal clear to us. As AI agents become the center of the experience, it's not about just. just the phone, but all of the different devices that people are going to wear. We talk about personal AI. It's going to be your glasses, your watch, your earbuds, pendants, new type of

form factors. And it's exciting, John, is the thing that we've been saying for at least two to three years. Now everybody's saying it. You see Open AI talking about the edge. It's a Google talking about the edge. You see XAI talking about the edge. And it's obvious to us because the U.S. that is now computers understands you because of the models understands what you say or you're right the UI is where the human is and also the real money is on the data so that's exciting and that's what we're going to see happening with phones so given that and that you're talking about a hybrid approach where there's AI on device also some AI in the cloud you need a connection to get to the the cloud so let me ask you about that we saw Apple's iPhone 17 line go on sale

this month. The iPhone air is the first major model of theirs to use Apple's C1X modem, not one of yours at Qualcomm. Investors have known to expect this for a long time, but tell me how this positions Qualcomm now with these new Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chips and modems that you're going to argue are best of breed. How is AI performance both on device and in cloud going to be affected with those two technologies together versus the competition? Yes. I actually thought you will ask me a slightly different question, but this is another very exciting thing that is happening. As AI becomes hybrid, because the models now, the actual AI models are now cloud and edge, connectivity become incredibly important. And that is changing

for Qualcomm in two ways. One way is we talk about agentic modems, which is really seller modems that are coming, they're going to enable not only your phone, but the other devices the connect to agents. But then the exciting thing is we have been busy working on next generation connectivity for the age of AI. And one of the things we actually explained yesterday, it's about 6G. You saw the announcement from Verizon Wireless and the Qualcomm was part of it a couple of days ago. We have been busy at work. 6G is going to be the connectivity that beyond higher speed and more and faster response, also going to be the interface between those models because it's going to be a sensing network. And we announced 6G pre-commercial devices coming as early as 2028.

Okay, well, let's take it from the pocket to the tabletop here. You're also updating your PC and server offerings with the Snapdragon X2 Elite and X2 Elite Extreme. Now, you said you've got 10% of retail Windows laptop sales over $800. You've also said armed chips, you think, can take 50% of the Windows PC market before 2030. You're still far from that goal. So how are these new chips going to close the gap? Look, we just started. Actually, in the markets that we launched, we're not far from that goal. We only launch in retail U.S. and top five European markets. And then we have been working with Microsoft to expand and build and build us into more market. markets. So we're actually like so far what we're tracking, a good leading indicator number

designs. And we have now way over 100 designs. There's now a much larger number. And I feel like the same way I felt about automotive. We're building the pipeline. And as we're going to know, more markets are going to work. But what's exciting what we're now saying today is our second version of Snapchat X Elite is going to be the Snapchat X2. And you probably will not seen in the history of PCs such a leap from generation to generation in compute performance with the CPU, GPU, and AI. And the benchmarks are going to be coming out. And we're incredibly happy with the results. There's a headline that just crossed before overtime came on air about Apple potentially, at least being asked by Intel to put some money in. There

some talk about you picking up all of Intel several quarters ago. Invidia just put $5 billion, or now so we put $5 billion into Intel. Would you do something similar? We're incredibly focused on a strategy. We could not be more excited about what we're doing with AI everywhere. We're in phones, PCs and cars, and industrial, now robots in the data center. very few companies have the IP portfolio to go from 5 watts to 500 watts. This is a unique thing about Qualcomm.

We're busy, focus on the strategy. We have all the technology that we need. And we're just marching forward, I think, in the future of the company. As far as relationship with Intel, I think we said all along, we love to have more foundries. Right now, we work with TSM, we work with Samsung. If eventually Intel has a founder that is competitive, we'll be interested. but right now we're just focused on executing on our strategy.

So, Cristiano, it's Morgan, just to follow up on that a little bit more because obviously there's a big focus on the foundry business for Intel with the U.S. converting at stake into equity just a couple of weeks ago. And this idea that you need to diversify the supply chain given the geopolitical risks around Taiwan, how are you thinking about that? And what would it take for you to diversify your own supply chain in the making of those chips?

Eckley, in the companies they use leading node technology, We, most of our chips are advanced chips. You know, some of the chips are announcing today, they're actually three-nometer chips. We have chips going to two-nometer chips. And we have been off the leading node companies that are more diversified. We had probably the only semiconductor that builds advanced chips that dual design TSM and Samsung. We have both TSMC 3-Nameter and Samsung SF2. And I think the United States government had made a lot of progress.

in setting the foundation and the steps to diversify. For example, TSM in Arizona, that is a great development. We are going to be one of the big tenants of TSM in Arizona. There's Samsung in Taylor, Texas. And I think the industry needs more diversified. We want to see, not only Intel, we want to see TSM in the United States, Samsung in the United States, and we're going to use them all. Back to product for last question, Cristiano.

It's my understanding that for the meta-rayband glasses that do use Snapdragon chips, 75% of the purchasers of those are iPhone users. How do you expect the move toward Agenic AI to affect some of the platforms, perhaps the vertical integration that we saw in the smartphone and app store era? Do you think it holds firm? Do you think positions get loosened up? Do you think you have opportunities to gain share? John, you have no idea how important this question that you ask is,

and that is the essence of what we've been talking about yesterday, of the future of mobile. Here's the thing that I needed to explain it to you. Humans already decided what they wear. So when people ask me, what's the new form factor for phones? Phones are pretty good. You have flip, you have phoned, and you continue to use them. But humans wear glasses, watches, earbuds, jewelry, rings, and as agents get connected,

as I put connectivity and processing to all those devices, those are the new devices to have a gendered experience. And this is where horizontal platforms win, because we have seen those are fashion devices. I think it's very unlikely that everybody in the world, we use the same glass, the same watch. And that is an incredible opportunity for horizontal platforms. What is this is actually showing that people are going to start experiencing AI on new devices, and that can change their preference of how they think about the mobile ecosystem over time. Incredibly exciting opportunity for us and for Google. Well, if you're right, it could be a big shift.

Cristiano Amman will let you get to the stage. Once again, CEO of Qualcomm at the Snapdragon Summit. Thank you. Thank you so much. Well, coming up, how do actually trade AI? Fast money trader Steve Grasso standing by with how he's navigating that space right now. You don't want to miss that. Overtime, we'll be right back.

Welcome back in video and Oracle pulling back for a second straight day. As investors might be getting just a bit nervous about all of these AI buildout announcements. So joining us now is Grosso Global CEO and fast money trader Steve Grasso. Steve, it's good to see you. Likewise. Okay, let's start with one of the biggest movers in the past few days, Oracle, past few weeks, I should say. It's up 33% just this month. Company has a Ford PE now of 42.

What do you think? Yeah, I mean, this one, you really don't, I don't like buying ones that have already made this major move. And if you think about it, they made the move, and then they have the follow-up move. why don't you find other ones that really don't have that move yet or haven't had that move yet? I'm not saying can't go higher. The market always has momentum. Momentum usually kills the most amount of people at any given time. But I wouldn't buy it here.

Okay. Well, AIs rise also fueling energy demand, stocks like Texas Pacific Land, Halliburton, EQT, and APA all soaring this week. How do you trade them? Yeah, this is the same type of thing. But I actually believe this, John, this one has a lot more left in the tank. There is a gross under supply of energy. You need to get energy, whether it's nuclear, whether it's fossil, whether it's utilities. Whatever you think you have, you need more.

So I would go more with nuclear. I would go more. There's a company called Tallinn Energy, T-L-N. It's a very low market cap. Take a look at that market cap. 19 billion. Did you ever think I'd say a low market cap was 19 billion? Those are the ones where you find these sneaky plays in a world where it's all trillion dollar companies. I like that one. Yeah. Well, sticking with the AI theme, as you mentioned earlier with Eunice,

Ali Baba storing again today, Chinese tech giant unveiling plans to invest more in AI. The stock hitting its highest level since October of 2021 had an 8% move today. Should investors look for AI names overseas, especially as this is increasingly getting framed, Steve, as an AI arms race, or do you stick with the U.S.? Well, if you think about the deadline for U.S. and China relations, that's been ticked off to, I think, the second week of November now. You have some time to let this one run, but it's already had a barbaric run. I think you're better off going with, if you're going to go with a China play, go with J.D. J.D. is, uh, is, uh, is, uh, is, eight times smaller than Alibaba. The move hasn't happened yet. I think there's more upside

for that name than Alibaba. Think about one negative headline, what will happen to Alibaba. It'll give at least 25% of this huge move that it's already had. I'd rather play one that really hasn't been affected yet, and that's the way I would play it with J.D. Okay, Steve Grasso. Good to have you here on overtime. Thank you. Don't miss Steve and the rest of the fast money traders coming up at 5 p.m. Eastern, right after we're done with this show. And there's still time to get tickets to the next fast money live event. That is on December 11th. The gang is trading the holidays. Scan that QR code on your screen for all the info and for tickets. You don't want to miss it. And now we're getting some breaking news out of Washington. Amen. Javvers has it. Amen.

John, that's right. The Commerce Department has opened a new 232 tariff investigation. This is a national security investigation designed to investigate before imposing potential tariffs. And what the Commerce Department is saying is this is looking at the national security of imports of personal protective equipment, PPE, medical consumables, and medical equipment, including devices. That could have some impact for particularly European medical device manufacturers who import to the United States. This is the ninth 232 investigation that has been introduced under the Trump administration, the Commerce Department is going to investigate this, and then at some point, not clear exactly what the timeline is going to be here,

but at some point they will make a recommendation to the president whether or not to move ahead with additional tariffs, John. Back over to you. All right. Amen Jabbers, thank you. Now coming up, we'll speak with the CEO of a company that's helping other companies around the world become more energy efficient. Energy only getting more expensive as AI demand grows over time is back in two. Welcome back to overtime. Outside's numbers being thrown around regarding AI and data center buildouts, including OpenAI's $850 billion expansion. That's equal to the output of 17 nuclear plants.

But how is the energy grid going to handle the added load and who will ultimately pay for the increased consumption? Well, joining us right here on set is ABV CEO, Morton Villarod. Morton, it's great to have you. Welcome. Thank you. So this is one of the areas that you play in is electrification, automation, and sort of building out and modernizing of the grid. What are you seeing, particularly here in the U.S., which is a big growth market for you? Yeah, at ABV, we're helping both integrating more of that energy into the grid, but also looking at the demand side, you know, helping that build out of data centers where a lot of that new energy is being consumed. And what we see at the moment is a massive expansion of energy before, like from 2010 to 2020, it was pretty.

flat consumption since then is really starting spiking up and that is what we see also for the next 10 15 plus years a strong increase and that means it really puts a lot of stress on the power grid and we do need more power but we also need power at the right time and that is where where we come in with more of automation we've been able to balance that you know when we put if that energy comes from nuclear it can come from from LNG from gas or from renewables there are many sources to get that electricity flowing but that's the outcome that is needed on the other end. And that's what we held, both integration, but also making it available, reliable, and later on also, I think now more and more topic of being

affordable for the consumers, which is one of the key topics in the coming years. In terms of those demand signals, natural gas, nuclear, where are you seeing that? And what does it mean in terms of demand for your piece of the infrastructure pie? Yeah, for us, the biggest part is right now is on the LNG. That's a massive, big investment, especially in Texas, new capacity coming like new terminals being built. So we are involved both from fracking to pipelines and to the terminals and even on the LNG ships that comes and get that and delivers this overseas when that is needed. So this is a complete value chain where we are, say, we and a company are involved in all of those

processes both on the automation side and the electrification side. Because everything in these common, even if it's LNG and fossil, it is electric. It is, that is, and the outcome and why you need all the gas is to have more electricity. to boom that, to boost the power grid and making that we can all have the right temperature in our houses, but also that those data centers never shuts down. ABB, Swiss company, multinational, operates in regions across the world right now. How much of your investment is going into the U.S. versus the rest of the world right now? U.S. is by far the biggest receiver of capital in the company.

Right now, or last week, we announced an announcement about $110 million going into new capacity. here in the United States. We have a very, what we call a local for local strategy. We are a global company, but we serve customers locally. So about 80% of what we sell here in United States is produced in the United States. And if you... So you haven't been hit too hard by tariffs? No, this is how we have dealt with tariffs and let's say trade barriers for many, many years, because we are local in Europe. We are local in China. We're local in India. And we are local here in the United States. So this is one of the... It was important for us during the years of COVID, and a lot of the shutdowns and that's heard as well.

And then we have just continued to accelerate those local investments. So we can really be local for local in every area we operate. On all this AI data center talk, just a practical question. Is it even physically possible to stand up multiple gigawatt scale data centers, both in the U.S. and around the world within five years? It is possible because it is today. There is quite a lot of free capacity. in the grid available.

And that's, but that is really, you know, electricity. It's a bit like the highways. There is more than enough roads in the country. There should never be traffic. The problem is the peak hours. It's the when everybody wants to. And that's the same in the electric network. So what we're looking at, can we build data centers,

take one of the large one being built here in the United States now is up in North Dakota. Because there it is available energy and they don't have transmission capacity to get that electricity, you know, here to New York, for example. for example. So this is how you're able to build, that's why you build data center in special jurisdiction. It's the same we see in Europe. My home country of Norway is now in the north of Norway, a lot of hydropower available and not enough transmission capacity to the south where it's

needed. So therefore there's where Open AI and Stargate builds the biggest data center in Europe. We're planning to build the biggest data center in Europe. So this is happening all over the world. But in the next years, it will soon this reserve capacity. that sits in the network will kind of we will run out of it especially during special peak hours so therefore more capacities needed there will we have to build new power plants one of these new big data center we talk about one gigabot to put that in perspective that's like one nuclear power plant is normally around 1.2 gigawat so it's like having one large new data center you have a nuclear power plant in your backyard morton virad great to have you on set thanks for joining us thank you well up next we're going to run you through everything you need to be watching on Wall Street in the trading day ahead. We'll be right back. Welcome back. Let's get you set up with tomorrow's trade today. A big day on the economic front. We're going to get jobless claims, the third reading of GDP. It's the final reading, durable goods, existing home sales.

Jobless claims will be key after Fed Chair Powell said yesterday there was downside risk to the jobs picture. And on the earnings front, we're going to hear from CarMax, Accenture, J-Bill, and Costco tomorrow. All right. Now, when the households load up on stocks, long-term returns tend to slow. It's a pattern that's held up for decades. But in this cycle, it's looking a little different. Senior Markets commentator Mike Santoli, here to explain. Yeah, John, maybe a little bit of a break over the last decade or so.

So this is a very big picture, slow-moving relationship between how much equities are held in percentage terms by households and the forward returns from the S&P 500. A lot going on here. So you see the blue line going up. That is the percentage of financial assets among households that are in equities. You see it goes up to a little over 50% at the highs. That includes cash and everything else. And then it goes down to the lows below 20%.

So you see an example here. Right after the global financial crisis, you're down around 30% of total rock bottom level of equity exposure. the subsequent return 10 years annualized for the S&P 500 was, and this is an inverted scale, close to 18%, very, very good. So therefore, when people only a little bit, future returns are higher. So what you see here is how it kind of broke a little bit starting in the early 2010. In other words, returns were better than you would otherwise believe they should be for how much equity was owned by the public.

So right now, you see, we're back toward the peaks, okay? And so it suggests at least a little bit here that you should sort of reduce your expectations for what the market can give you over the next decade. But who knows, maybe the rules have changed, maybe equity culture has gotten to the point where the threshold is higher to be worried. I should say nothing says nothing about the short term next couple of years. It's much more longer term expected performance. But Mike, does it also say that arguably for the first time since the real technological, revolution for access to retail investors, say even e-trade back in the first.com evolution that the smart money has been the retail trader.

Like, you actually got to benefit from loading up on stocks. You did benefit. It's not clear to me that it was completely kind of at the expensive professionals, because by the way, this includes where people own in mutual funds and things like that. I do think you could say that this year, though, as people have said, retail bought that big dip in April. Professionals were defensive. Retail has cashed in on that so far. All right. Mike Santoli. Thank you. All right. We're just taking a look at the markets here, John, halfway through the week, down fractionally. Here's a fun fact to aid for you. It has been

107 sessions, maybe 108 as of today, that the S&P has gone without posting a drop of at least 2%. That's a longest streak since July of 2024. We're obviously hovering right below record highs, but volatility, expected volatility at a one-year low. That does it first year at overtime. Fast money starts now.