Closing Bell - Closing Bell Overtime: Regional Bank Turmoil, Gold Worries & Crypto’s Collapse 10/17/25

Episode Date: October 17, 2025

Bond yields remain a major story, with pressure mounting on regional banks. Our Leslie Picker and Hugh Son unpack the latest turmoil and what this week’s earnings reveal. Meanwhile, Steve Liesman breaks down new CNBC survey data showing gold as investors’ top pick — a trend explored further with Bob Elliott of Unlimited and Carole Schleif of BMO Private Wealth as the precious metal goes mainstream. Ralph McLaughlin of OpenBrand weighs in on sticky-but-steady inflation and what his firm’s data is showing about the consumer. Dan Dolev of Mizuho dissects Bitcoin’s recent fall—and top picks to take advantage. Closing out, Adam Crisafulli of Vital Knowledge previews the catalysts shaping markets next week. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

That bell marks the end of regulation, National Fallen Firefighters Foundation. We're going to close in about the New York Stock Exchange in Vesco, doing the honors at the NASDAQ, and stocks are higher by about two-thirds of percent, half to that, on all the major averages, shaking off credit contagion fears. The Russell 2000, a notable outlier, though, down about half a percent. For the week, more green. The NASDAQ's up 2 percent, the Russell, two and a half. And bouncing back today, the stocks hit hardest by the credit concerns.

Jeffrey Zion's Western Alliance. Coming up, we're going to talk to a regional bank analyst who says these are isolated cases. And crypto getting crushed this week. Bitcoin down 6%. Stocks connected to crypto, including Robin Hood and Coinbase showing similar weekly losses. FinTech analyst Dandola of Mizuho will join me with more on those declines. And gold lower today, but not before touching another all-time high. Not down enough to erase this week's gains, though.

Gold has now become the top investment in our CNBC. survey ahead of stocks. Gold is the new gold. You're bringing those details, plus a unique way to play gold. And the 10-year yield bouncing back above 4% as those fears about the banks are easing. That's the scorecard on Wall Street, but winters stay late. Welcome to closing about overtime. I'm John Ford. Morgan Brennan is off today. Let's begin with that move in bond yields. Rick Santelli, joining me from Chicago. Rick. You know, John, it has been a wild week. And one thing for sure is that the in many of the credit markets and in the funding market showed up in a big way in the equities. And that put the relationship of when the equities get a bit dicey, sometimes the best collateral is easy.

You jump in the treasuries. And as you see this two-day chart of Dow and Two Year, you can see how they're right on top of each other. Now, twos and tens week to date, this is interesting. We came back a decent amount from yesterday's drop following equities higher, of course, and we're only down about four basis points on the week. We're up about three basis points on the session. Now, here's where it gets interesting. How many times have we heard we want to help housing

so the Fed should be more aggressive and lowering rates? Well, let's really put that to the test. We did some easing on the 16th of this year. Here's a two-year and tenure on the same chart. Since that day, we're down eight basis points from when we eased 25 and twos. We're down only four in tens. Now, let's go back a year,

In SEPA 24, we cut 50, November 25, D's 25, 100 basis points. These charts go back to then. And what you'll see is two-year, well, two-year is down 14 basis points. We cut 100. Ten-year is up 36 basis points. And that's the lesson to be learned. If you're not doing QE, the long end's going to have a life of its own, sometimes outside of the direction of the Fed.

John Fort, back to you. Important lesson, Rick Santelli. Thank you. Well, the big story in the markets today, the rebound for the regional banks after several more earnings reports in the group. Markets seem willing to bet that the issues plaguing Zions and Western Alliance are isolated. Joining me now with more, our own of Leslie Picker and Hugh, guys, welcome Hugh this morning when we were talking about the show with the team. I said, you know who I really want to talk to is Hugh's son? Because I remember he did a story on Yield Street a couple months ago that got to some of these private credit-ish issues.

what can go wrong. And I just wonder if he sees any parallels or connecting points between what was at the root of that and what we're starting to see bubble up here. What do you say? I mean, I think the parallel here is. In this case, you have banks, which lended to an underappreciated amount to these third parties, these other NDFIs. The NDFI is the acronym of the day today, non-depository financial institution. So after the financial crisis, you've had all this activity being pushed out of the banks or at the regulated perimeter into these NDFIs. And the feeling was, It's not, you know, in the regulated perimeter, if these blow up, then they blow up alone. And what we've learned today in the past couple days is when they blow up, they also impact the banks,

because the banks have lent to these NDFIs. So, Leslie, the question that a lot of people have been asking is, to what extent are the banks then exposed to any contagion risk? And so far, maybe not? Well, I think it's important to delineate what is a fraud and what is a bankruptcy, because a bank. You know, if you have kind of like-minded bankruptcies, that could maybe potentially indicate there's a risk of contagion. Usually with fraud, I mean, it seems like these are kind of isolated incidents. That said, usually with a fraud, you recover less once it goes through the process potentially than you would in just a regular way bankruptcy where you may recover a bit more on the dollar. That said, you know, in talking to a couple of investors, they've seen this movie before where you have a series of frauds and then you have a series of frauds.

And then you have a series of, you know, leverage loan blowups, and then there's contagion and fear. So that is part of the reason why we saw such a big sentiment shift yesterday, because this was technically the third in a series of alleged frauds after tricolor and first brands. And so people are saying, hey, is there a pattern here? We've been told this was idiosyncratic, but they keep coming out of the woodwork. And so that is why a lot of people are concerned about broader contagion is because there is this historical pattern of, essentially, you know, fraud, and then, you know, issues in the credit markets, and then contagion and fear. And so they're worried that that's the case this time, you know, given the kind of pattern of threes.

Hugh, I've gotten fond of saying greed is a group sport. So if this is a case of greed that led to insufficient checks, it's probably not just one or two institutions that are guilty of that. Do we yet know whether this is a case of greed causing certain institutions to you get a little too cozy with some private players who aren't being careful enough. So it's greed or lack of discipline. So what you say is mirrors exactly what Jamie Diamond said earlier this week, which is, you know, you tend to find if there's one cockroach, you know, there isn't just one, there's tons and tons, and that's the worry.

And so you've had a 10 or 15-year run in a bull run in credit in which standards inevitably fall over time. And so the question is, are these banks doing enough to check that the collateral that they say they have is actually there? And in a few instances, what is head scratching for investors and us now is, you know, these cases where tri-collar first brands and in this other case, you know, this CRA group, they said that the collateral was there. And when it was checked, it wasn't because they'd double vouch for them and they didn't exist. And so the most basic thing is, you know, if the loan goes bad, I've got the collateral and I'm good. And in this case, it doesn't happen to be the case.

And so that's really what people are worrying is, are they really that bad at extending credit? you know, ultimately, banks are essentially black boxes. You don't know what they let, what the loans are, you don't know how good the loans are. You have to trust the management. Right. In certain cases, with Western Alliance, there's now a little bit of suspicion that maybe they're not worthy of that trust. My kids would say sus, yeah. Yeah, no, so I was just reading through the Zion's lawsuit, and that's exactly it. I mean, if you're lending, if you're doing an NDFI loan, it's a little bit different than when you're lending, you know, to an individual that owns a warehouse, for example.

You can show up and do your diligence and you can say, okay, this warehouse is still standing. It still belongs to the person I think it is. When you're lending to a private fund, it's a little bit more difficult to do your due diligence. So if you read through the lawsuit, what they allege is basically they thought they were first priority to be repaid in the event of a default.

And they thought they had all these claims to these deeds that served as collateral for the loans that they were making. They later found out, only after, by the way, Western Alliance sued the same borrowers, they later found out that actually they had been subordinated. The collateral that they thought was theirs was not actually theirs, and therefore they were potentially on the hook for the entire $60 million in loans that they made to these two entities. So it's challenging because the due diligence that would typically be required for something that was a bit more of a direct relationship, you know, doesn't necessarily happen in the same way.

Ouch. Well, we got to leave it there. Thank you. Leslie Picker, if you, son. Well, our next guest says yesterday's regional's route was based on two isolated cases of fraud. But as JP Morgan's Jamie Diamond said, these issues tend to be like, well, cockroaches. If you see one, there are probably more. I wouldn't know about that, though. So how seriously should investors take these credit concerns? Let's bring in Kevin Heel, senior analyst at Argus Research covering regional banks. Kevin, you say it doesn't look like it's a serious infestation yet. What are you looking at that gives you that confidence? You know, we've had a number of other regional banks report their earnings. Another ones that are weak cover besides Zion have uncovered any of the cockroaches in their portfolios. And I think that you've seen, you know, Zion's is reporting on Monday, but I think they got ahead of the game reporting that loss.

And I believe that, you know, that it will be a higher loan loss provision for them than typically they have, you know, going back to the crisis in 23, but believe that, you know, unfairly, you know, that the stock was, you know, lost to call it, you know, a billion dollars worth of value over a $50 million loan loss. Well, is there any argument that you can see that the character and shape of the. risk that's across the markets right now, might have exposed some institutions to more downside than investors would be expecting? Cautionary there, you know, without seeing, we have a couple more regionals that will be reporting. You know, I don't see any real contagion in the market where, you know, we're going to have others come out of the woodwork. A lot of regional banks, you know, loan growth has been relatively low at one to two percent

and have, you know, undergone higher, stricter underwriting on, you know, their case from, you know, in, you know, 2020, 2003 when a lot of the loans went bad, so a little stricter underwriting. So what about what's happening in commercial real estate then? How concern should investors be about that? Because there does seem to be trouble for some regionals, others who are very exposed. Yes. I think that, you know, every regional has been breaking out their commercial real estate exposure in the slide deck. We have, you know, the office space is where the most concern is.

And most of the regionals and the ones that I cover have, you know, exposure of two to four percent. in the general office space so it's manageable and we don't foresee any particular huge issues and unlike the fraud cases here there is there is actual collateral behind that the office building it's it's worth something it's not worth zero right all right Kevin Hill thank you thank you John now got a news alert on Salesforce's Mark Benioff our Sima Modi has a detail Selima. John, Salesforce CEO, Mark Benehoff, recently saying the National Guard should come into San Francisco to solve the crime issue. He's now walking back those comments saying, quote, having listened closely to my fellow San Francisco's residents and local officials, and after the largest and safest dream force in our history, I do not believe the National Guard is needed to address safety in San Francisco. He adds that my earlier comment came from an abundance of caution around the event and that he sincerely apologizes for the concern it caused.

We know Benihoff received a lot of pushback to those initial remarks, John, leading venture capitalist Ron Conway to resign from Salesforce's foundation. When we'll see how people now respond to this apology. Indeed, Simum Modi, thank you. Well, Newmont, the worst performing stock in the S&P, as the air comes out of the gold trade at least for today. You're going to hear from a former gold bull who's probably still bullish, but getting a little cautious. Plus, can the companies in the crypto ecosystem perform well even if crypto doesn't? We'll get into that when overtime comes right back. Welcome back to overtime.

Over the last two months, gold has soared up 25% while the NASDAQ has risen less than five. Investors are taking notice are Steve Leesman joining me with the results of our All-American Economic Service. Steve. Hey, John, thanks. It looks like Americans are going for the gold. Gold is soared, and it looks like the public has taken notice. For the first time in the CNBC All-America Economic Survey since 2013, gold, topping the list of Americans' choice for the best investment, 34%. That's up from 23% when we asked this question back in December.

Real estate at 32% knocked down from the top slot there, and then stocks at 25%, pretty dropping a little bit from 28. Cash, saving, cash, crypto, and treasuries pretty much holding their own for where they were. Remember, we had that big rise in crypto. Now it's been a little bit flat. Public has also noticed the stock market rally, though, judging that it's a good time to invest by, what is this here? This is gold versus stocks here. Sorry about that. 34% versus 25%.

Now on to the next screen where we talk about the issue of where we are in terms of. Do we have the next screen here, please? No, we do not. Okay, let's go to then. Look at that. Good time to invest. Thank you very much, folks. 45-43 here in terms of the good time to invest versus bad time, down a little bit, but pretty

much better than it was, if you remember back in April, when the president had those tariffs that caused a downtraft in the market. On a separate issue, we asked what the public thinks about the president's decision for the government to buy stakes in private companies, 56% saying it's inappropriate compared to just 13% saying it's appropriate. 31% though, I have no opinion. Not an issue that is well known throughout. But that figure, this 56% figure, it includes large majorities of Democrats, independence,

also 45% of Republicans who don't like the idea. Public divided on whether the president favors business too much. Take a look at this. 39% saying he's too biased for business, 43% to say, hey, president's got it just about right. 12% say two bias actually against business. Might be instructive, John. Gold is the top pick for the middle and lower income America. followed by cash.

For the wealthy of Americans, it's real estate followed by stocks. Maybe there's a reason for that. Okay. So, yeah, the All-American Economic Survey really is All-America, and that gold interest not coming from the very richest. Very interesting, Steve Leesman.

Thank you. Now, for more on gold. Let's bring in Unlimited CEO and CIO Bob Elliott, who has been bullish on gold for a long time, as viewers of this program know, but turning cautious this week and in recent days, private wealth chief market strategist, Carol Schleif, who looks at other ways to trade the metals.

Guys, welcome. Bob, say it ain't so. You cautious on gold. What does cautious mean? You selling gold? Well, I think now is the time to start to pair back and take those profits. John, you and I have been talking about gold since it was under 2000, and it's been a heck of a run. And I think the thing that gives me some pause here is starting to see a shift in that market, where before we had strong demand out of Asia, and particularly global central banks, and the West had yet to catch up. What we're seeing in the last couple of weeks is some of the strongest buying in the U.S., particularly through ETFs and other mechanisms that we've ever seen in gold. And that's the thing that's driving the surge just at a time when we're seeing global central banks actually

pair back their buying and a pretty weak demand in the East relative to the normal levels we'd expected this time a year. And so that composition's a little more concerning when you think about the forward-looking picture for gold. So look, if you're 100% in the money on this trade over the last year or two, it's time to take a little bit of profits. Okay. Carol, can gold move down the way it moved up? I tend to think of it as moving differently from other commodities. It does tend to move differently, but we've seen in prior periods when investors have piled into it, especially towards the end. And a lot of the reason you've seen some of that final push,

it has been to sort of hedge against what's going on and the gains made elsewhere and the potential volatility. And we've definitely seen in prior periods when that's happened, it can reverse course pretty quickly too. So, I mean, owning gold is a different part of a portfolio because you're not earning an income on it. It's definitely there almost like a psychological hedge, if you will, in individual portfolios because there's a cost of carry if you're owning the actual bars.

And so there's a lot of other factors that consider in that in terms of why you'd want to own it or why you'd want to turn back on some of the exposure. Carol, I thought that's what crypto was for. What does it say, perhaps, about that asset class that gold is having such shine lately? Well, I think a piece of it is initially people are still trying to figure out what crypto is. Is it a currency? Is it a hedge? And a lot of people were making it synonymous with gold. But when you look at the chart and the way it's performed,

and particularly look at the way it performed after the market closed last week and through the weekend and through this week, it's not performing that hedge yet. So is it speculation? Is it an asset class? It is a currency? People are still trying to figure that out. And sooner or later it will settle into some sort of, rhythm, if you will, but it's not there yet.

Bob, I want to go back finally to what you said at the end of your last comments, which is like take a little bit of profit. How much exactly are you talking about? I'm just wondering if you can characterize a little bit more how your sentiment is shifting and what you're actually doing here. Well, I think all of a sudden everyone's talking about gold for the first time, basically in their careers. And so they're coming in and buying hand over fist, trying to engage in a catch-up here.

And what I'm saying is that at a minimum, what you should be doing is maybe taking that original 10% of your portfolio, which is now considerably more in gold and pairing that back and rebalancing back. You might even rebalance back to what appears to be the most hated asset in the world today, which is U.S. bonds, which are at more than 10-year lows. And so that's the sort of thing, I'd say part of the story of being a strategic investor, an effective strategic investor, is not getting, you know, over your skis on the thing that's just gone up. And sometimes just taking the opportunity to diversify and moving out of gold and into bonds here is probably the most compelling diversification option that you can do right now. All right.

Yumbing somebody else's yuck. I like it. Bob, Carol, thanks to you both. Happy Friday. Coming up on overtime, air starting to come out of some hot trades. Oracle became an AI darling, somewhat briefly. But the stock has been down a bit since that day of its huge gain. And a big drop for Bitcoin this week.

Is it just a blip and a larger trend? Mike Santoli, taking a look at that when we come right back. Welcome back to overtime. Oracle, one of the worst performers in the S&P 500 today, having its worst day since January. The company revealing a strong earnings growth rate, but hinting at a dip in margins in 2028 tied to the capital needed to invest in data centers. And the stock is down more than 10% from the day in September when it saw huge gains after earnings and the report of a big AI backlog. Well, it's been a tough week for some of the market bellwethers like

financials and Bitcoin and senior markets commentator Mike Santoli. Join me now with a look at critical levels to watch to keep them in an up trend. Mike. Yeah, John. So starting with kind of the headline for the market, the S&P 500. We did get that 2.7% drop a week ago today. We spent this entire week inside that one day's range. So somewhat indecisive, but definitely not kind of crashing through this 50-day moving average, which we barely missed to the downside. So essentially, we're hovering just above that. That's a normal trend line that usually a couple times a year, at least you're going to hit. And so far, it looks more like a pause, a stutter step on the way to perhaps further gains down the road. The question is whether we need

a little more of a flush to the downside. I point out back in February when we did kind of have that unwind of momentum stocks and crack below that moving average, you had a little more of a mess on our hands because it did segue into the tariff panic. No sign that's necessarily what we have here. I want to take a look at financials. Obviously in the news, we know about the regional bank stuff, the credit issues, as well as, by the way, insurance stocks quite weak today. And you see, they've rolled a little bit. They're still above their 200-day average. That's a longer-term trend line.

But I do find it interesting that we're kind of back toward these levels here from, you know, the early part of the year. And there's your post-election high from the fourth quarter of last year. So you probably, if you're bullish, want to see this hold together a little bit. Today, we did see a bit of a bounce in most areas. American Express helping, of course, Bitcoin. Looks a little bit more stretched to the downside relative to its trend. And it's right just about at that 200-day average.

I also find it interesting. Again, you're going back to these levels that, you know, sort of look like it could matter for some folks. Now, here's the thing. It's also really technically oversold, almost as oversold as it's been over the last year or so, such as here and here. So if you wanted to bet against it, you have to be aware. It's probably spring-loaded for some kind of rally attempt before too long, John.

Mike, what is this period doing to the argument from the Bitcoin Bulls that it's a store of value, given what gold has done at the same time. Yeah, you know, it's so sensitive to the start date that you use in terms of showing how much value it has accrued and held. Because if you go back more than a year, it obviously is up tremendously. But it doesn't really behave like an all-weather store of value, something that's just going to be there in dollar terms for you no matter what. What it does show you is that there's a lot of sort of synchronicity with the innovation and risk appetite in the of this market. So it really isn't. I mean, I pointed out yesterday, it has kind of traded with

NVIDIA shares for a long period of time. So I don't know what it is. Obviously, it is storing some value. There's multiple trillions of dollars that it now represented by Bitcoin and even more with other crypto. But I just don't know if it behaves in the moment the way you might expect a quote store of value to act. Well, when you figure it out, let me know. Yeah, for sure. Thank you. Well, it's time for a CNBC News update with Julia Borson. Julia. John Hamas says it will hand over the remains of another hostage later today at 11 p.m. local time. The group's armed division said the remains were extracted from a search in Gaza as part of an effort to shore up a ceasefire deal with Israel. The group did not say whose remains would be handed over.

The Israeli military said Hamas had handed over 10 coffins of hostages so far. The Trump administration is reaching out to more universities about its proposal offering preferred access to funding. Wall Street Journal reporting White House officials invited three new schools to a meeting today after a number of schools, including MIT, turned down the proposal. And the Supreme Court is set to run out of funding tomorrow, a spokeswoman for the nation's top court said today, the court's building will be closed to the public while the government is shut down. However, the justice's work will continue, including hearing arguments and cases, including one on the president's authority to impose tariffs, and that's coming next month.

Back over to you. Julia, thank you. Well, coming up on overtime, we are continuing to wander through the data desert. With no CPI or PPI released this week, we're looking for alternate reads on inflation. That data is coming up. Next. Welcome back. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has delayed the Consumer Price Index report for September until next Friday.

But there are other ways to see if inflation is popping up in the economy. Open brand uses retail market intelligence from consumer surveys to web data. to track prices across different product categories. So what are they seeing? Joining me now is Ralph McLaughlin, Chief Economist at OpenBrand. Ralph, so give it to us straight. Do you see goods inflation out there? Hey, John.

Yeah, our September CPI report is showing. We're seeing a little more heat in September. In fact, the stretch from August to September is the strongest stretch of price increase that we've seen since the end of last year. And the biggest increases we've seen have been across personal care products, and then to a lesser extent, communications devices, small communications devices, as well as recreational products, which would include things like headphones. And the primary reason that we think there has been acceleration across those product groups is the removal or the elimination of the de minimis exemption in August. For those of you that need a refresher, the de minimis exemption previously allowed packages that were worth under $800 to come into the country, and the importers didn't have to pay any duties on them. So tariffs really didn't apply.

Well, that was removed in August. And so what that means is a lot of those small, relatively inexpensive goods, again, personal care products, small communications devices and recreational devices would have been subject to duties. And so we are seeing an acceleration of about six-tenths of a percent in September. That's up from about five-tenths of a percent in August. Now, at the same time, in October so far, you see things cooling off. there's some early discounting heading into the holiday season. I guess it's important for investors to know whether you think that's retailers cutting prices, discounting because they can or because they have to because they won't have enough consumer

demand to meet the prices where they'd like them. Yeah, you know, our early reading in October, we release a CPI now cast every 10 days and through October 10th, which that period did include Amazon's Prime Big Deal Day. And what we saw was heavy discounting, not just from Amazon, but also from retailers like Walmart that are really trying to compete with Amazon. And we've seen some pretty significant discounts, especially in that personal care space. Now, no doubt, as we go throughout the rest of October, the impacts of heavily discounting by Amazon and Walmart in early October will smooth out for the rest of the month. Now, the big question like you asked is, is that going to spill over into November and into December into the holiday months. You know, consumers have been hit with price increases pretty steadily over the past several years. You know, COVID is still in a relatively close rearview mirror. And so there's a lot of price sensitivity amongst consumers. And so we do think that retailers are going to try to be as competitive as they can,

especially going into the holiday season when consumers are, you know, up against a wall when it comes to inflation, especially of everyday goods. Do you have data showing whether or not there are continuing legs to this idea that we've seen out there that working class consumers are especially price conscious during this period, whereas, you know, more well-heeled luxury consumers who perhaps have more money in the stock market are still spending more freely? Yeah, I mean, you know, much of the consumption in the U.S. has actually been on the upper end of the income distribution. those that are in the middle or the lower end have, you know, felt a lot of price pressures over the years. So we do think, especially for cheaper, you know, affordable luxury items that retailers are going to have to be, you know, very, very competitive when it comes to pricing those goods.

And that's what we, that's exactly what we saw in the first 10 days of October with Prime Big Deal Day. It wasn't the big ticket items like, you know, big expensive things. It was smaller things. Personal care items like toothpaste. I bought a bunch of crest whitening strips. I know a co-worker of mine bought, you know, small, smart rings that were discounted. So, you know, we're not talking about the big things. It's the smaller things. I think that's retailers recognizing that, you know, those in the middle or lower income are feeling the price pressures. I won't ask exactly how many whitening strips you bought. But Ralph, thank you. Ralph McLaugh. Not enough. It's been a rough week for crypto with Bitcoin falling more than 8% since Monday. Up next, the top analyst on whether that's presenting an opportunity to buy beaten up crypto-related stocks. Plus, equity allocations of high net worth investors sitting near record highs. Mike Santoli's going to look at what that could mean for future market returns coming up on Overtime.

Welcome back to Overtime. American Express hitting an all-time high, posting its best day since April. The credit card giant charging higher after beating Wall Street's earnings estimates and hiking its full-year guidance thanks to a surge in. We were just talking about it, spending by affluent consumers. American Express was responsible for more than half of the Dow's gains today. Now take a look at Bitcoin, dropping down to just under 104,000 today. Lowest level of nearly four months, so it's back up to 107 now. The selling really started about a week ago, dragged down names in the ecosystem.

Robin Hood, where a lot of people like crypto, down over 15% since. And Coinbase posting its worst week since April, micro strategy also under pressure. So can these companies regain their momentum if crypto doesn't? Joining me now here on set is Dan Doleff, senior analyst at Mizuho. Dan, I know you like Robin Hood. How tied is it to crypto? Less than most people think, right? This is what we've been saying all along.

Like you want to be exposed to crypto, but you don't want to be exposed to crypto too much. And, right, it's like chocolate. You want a little bit, but not too much. And Robin Hood gives you sort of the perfect dose of crypto. It goes up when crypto goes up, but it doesn't go down as much when crypto falls on days like this or week like that, and that's the perfect mix. Well, how exposed are some of these names, including Robin Hood then, and maybe Robin Hood more than the rest, even outside of crypto, to just this market exuberance and the volatility

that comes with it. We just had Thomas Petrofe on yesterday with Interactive Brokers' earnings, I think in a way trying to differentiate his fortune from Robin Hood. Take a listen. Our investors are very careful, and we do not have, I mean, you know, we do not have investments in crazy overvalued stocks. That's not a problem from our customers' point of view. And I do not know if even there are many of those in the market today.

Are they exposed to the new meme stocks? Less, and that's exactly interesting, less than they were like in 2020 or 2021. So their plan is to actually 10x the business, and they're getting into verticals, which are much less volatile. They're getting into retirement. They're bringing actually assets from some of those esteemed competitors that you've just mentioned. They're getting into Asia. They're getting into Europe. So I think in the next cycle, Robin Hood will be much more insulated to these market dynamics, but not completely bulletproof, as you might imagine.

What about Coinbase? So that's the thing, right? So we're neutral in Coinbase, but Coinbase on a relative basis is much more prone to this volatility because it's got a lot of altcoins, right? And I've seen all these memes about what happens to altcoins when Bitcoin goes down. And that's how they make most of their money. So I would say in rough times, Robin Hood is your better bet. How about micro strategy?

And in general, some of these names or approaches that are using either leverage or other vehicles to sort of double and triple down on a almost religious bat. Interesting you say that, right? Like the religious aspect of it. I've been thinking about this a lot, right? But those stocks, like the Bitcoin Treasury stocks, right? And we cover, obviously, Michael Strategy. You want to own them, actually.

History shows is when Bitcoin goes up. You want to own a lot more of them because they would go up. Our prediction is actually, I mean, believe it or not, our prediction is that Bitcoin will go up by the end of the year. And that's why we have an outperform on micro strategy. So you want to own, it's rough, it's more difficult to own these names when Bitcoin has a little bit of a flu. But, you know, this is just another Tuesday in crypto world, right? Like these things happen all the time, right?

We could be sitting here together next week, and the skies will be blue and everything will be great. So you never know. Absolutely. That's why we ask you. Dan Dolev, thank you. Well, wealthy Americans are all in on equities right now. Up next, Mike Santoli is looking at what that could mean. for market flows and returns in the future.

Plus, we'll get you set up with all the numbers and earnings you need to watch next week, including one name that our trader says we'll get lots of earnings headlines, but the numbers are nearly irrelevant to the stock story. We'll be right back. Welcome back to overtime. Shares of satellite company AST Space Mobile reentering the atmosphere. Barclay's double downgrading the stock from overweight to underweight, citing an excessive valuation after it doubled in a month.

stock up about 4x so far this year. Now let's check back in with Mike Santoli to a look at what's ahead for market returns as wealthy households go all in on equities. Mike? Yeah, John, we're certainly pretty close to all. And this is Bank of America's private clients, their equity allocation right now. It's up to about 64%. The only time it's been higher in the last 20 plus years was at the end of 2021. And that, of course, was ahead of a cyclical bare market. Not necessarily caused somewhat coincidence, but it does show that these households don't really need to top up their equity exposure. Maybe they have it rebalanced out of stocks. Most of this increase recently, of course, is because the market itself is going up, not necessarily because they keep pouring fresh money into it.

Also, the counterpart cash within these portfolios is down toward a 20-year low as well. Take a look here, though, also at the proportion of equities and mutual funds that are owned by the top 20% of earners. in the U.S. This is a separate survey. This is from J.P. Morgan. And as you can see, it's kind of up there around 85 plus percent gone up over the last 30, 35 years or so. And sheriff's overall net worth as well among households is rising likewise. So it kind of shows it's a similar story with the economy that as long as households that have spare cash and are sitting on a lot of appreciated investments want to stay in the market, you can actually still find sponsorship for the overall indexes, you know, even though never easy to predict exactly how they're going to behave

if we do get a bit of a sharp pullback. This seems weird to me, though, Mike, especially given what even Bob Elliott was just saying earlier in the hour about taking some profits on gold, the wealthy are the ones who have something to lose. So doesn't wealth protection kick in as an instinct sometime during a market like this? Well, I think it would kick in general, but much more in the way probably of just timed rebalancing as opposed to, you know, let's skim it off the top. I mean, I think everybody is prone to not wanting to sell too early or feeling as if you've built up as much of a cushion. You're playing with house money.

It doesn't feel as if you're necessarily losing if you just have your gains reduced a little bit. So obviously, this is all generalization and this is the aggregates from B of A. But right now, the behavior is telling you that they're willing to ride it. And maybe some of this reflects how folks were burned by bonds and don't want to play there as much. As a matter of fact, yes. There really has been distaste for bonds for a very long time. And that's why I think there's a preference even for cash and short-term debt over longer-term bonds. Right now, you're not really giving up much in the way of yield just to stay with money markets or short-term debt.

Well, it shows why Bob Elliott is being an iconoclast with that call as well. and totally thank you. Well, the Labor Department is bringing back workers to release the delayed September CPI inflation report next Friday. Up next, what that key reading could mean to a market that's already a bit on edge. And don't forget, you can catch us on the go by following the Closing Bell Overtime podcast

on your favorite podcast app. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Overtime. Let's get you set up for next week's trade. Earning season picks up speed Monday with Cleveland Cliffs and Steel Dynamics. Dow Components 3M, Coca-Cola report on Tuesday, along with Netflix, Texas Instruments, General Motors, GE Aerospace, and Lockheed Martin. Wednesdays, Tesla, IBM, and AT&T, Thursday brings Honeywell, American Airlines, Auto Nation, T-Mobile, Ford, and Intel.

Closing out the week, Procter & Gamble, and General Dynamics on Friday. And it will be another light week for economic data if the government shutdown doesn't end. But we do know that the Bureau of Labor Statistics will release the delayed September, consumer price index data on Friday. Well, our next guest joins me with the most important catalyst he sees for investors next week. Let's bring in vital knowledge founder, Adam, Chris O'Fooley. Adam, we're not getting all the government data, so what's going to move things? Well, I wish he could move.

He's frozen. We don't have the government data, so that's why we've been giving this alternate data and also trying to pay extra attention to earnings. IBM is going to be interesting next week for a couple of reasons. On the software side, they have been picking up momentum, but on the services side, things have been challenging, and we have questions about whether AI is eating into services or if they figured out a way to augment it.

We've on this program on overtime, had Arvin Krishna, the CEO, giving us some insights into how he's trying to navigate it. that but i don't know if that's particularly on adam chrisa foolie's radar let's see if we can find out now adam what do you think yeah no i definitely think the focus is going to be on non-financial earning because we kind of move past the bank earning season um you know we're going to get intel like you said we're also going to get two really important data center reports uh wednesday morning with an phenol and and vertib both those companies are going to be watched very closely you know there's a lot of anxiety in the last couple days around the state of uh data center construction given the

sell off in Oracle and Taiwan Semi after their earnings reports. What do you think about Netflix? I mean, that's a name that had been sort of the small dog among the magnificent seven, some of those bigger names out there. You call it the small dog because it's only half a trillion in market cap, and the others tend to be up near a trillion and above, but it's a content player that's global and that has just seen profits growing. What do you think investors are going to need to see out of that?

How much might it affect sentiment? Yeah, I think Netflix will be interesting. You know, there's been a lot of controversy around it in the last couple of weeks. There's been some anxiety around subscriber trends. You know, there was a campaign online, you know, against subscriber sign-ups at the company. So they stopped providing specific subscriber numbers on a quarterly basis. I think investors will be easier for them to kind of give some color around how subscribers have tracked in the last couple weeks, you know, during some of that controversy online. But, you know, that name will be important.

You know, it doesn't get as much attention lately at some of the AI-focused stocks. But, you know, Netflix's very much an important stock, you know, throughout this earnings season. We've been talking about the regionals all day. It's been a big week with some of the issues that have come up there. How much do you think that's going to affect stocks next week? Well, you know, we're kind of through the bank earning season at this point. You know, most of the big money centers, the big trust bank and the big regions have all reported. And while they're definitely worth some pockets of credit concern, it looks like this is pretty idiosyncratic

related to a couple of specific incidents. It does not seem to be any evidence of a broad systemic problem with credit quality, if anything, in aggregate provisions and net chargeoffs for banks tracked below expectations, and all the management teams qualitatively on their calls said that they're really not seeing any real broad stress and credit. So I think those concerns are going to quiet, you know, unless we see any more evidence kind of of a big shock, but I don't think we're going to see that. You surprised what Gold's been able to do?

Yeah, it's been, you know, it's been a pretty incredible, you know, move higher. You saw definitely a pretty sharp pullback today. You know, I think there's some anxiety about what that signals for the economy about if it's kind of a deep basement trade. I think there's a little bit of anxiety around that, but definitely impressive rally. Adam, thanks. That'll do it for overtime.