Closing Bell - Closing Bell Overtime: S&P 500 Longest Winning Streak Since 2004; Wrapping A Strong Week 5/2/25

Episode Date: May 2, 2025

Unlimited CEO Bob Elliott and The Kobeissi Letter Editor-In-Chief Adam Kobeissi break down the market week, focusing on how tech and macro crosscurrents are shaping sentiment. Melius Research’s Ben Reitzes on Apple, Nvidia, and if cracks forming in the AI trade. Apollo’s Torsten Slok lays out the macro setup heading into the next jobs report and Fed decisions. Defense also gets a spotlight with Aerovironment CEO Wahid Nawabi on the impact of a major budget deal. GoDaddy CEO Aman Bhutani on the company’s latest results and why the stock is falling. Mercer’s Olaolu Aganga offers a CIO-level view of market dynamics—and three worries her clients are flagging. 

That bell marks the end of regulation. Carnival Corporation ringing the closing bell for New York Stock Exchange. Fat Pipe doing the honors at the NASDAQ. Happy Friday. Solid jobs data and hopeful headlines on trade with China sending stocks higher to end the week. S&P 500 closing in the green for the ninth session in a row.

That marks the longest win streak in more than 20 years. That's a scorecard on Wall Street, but winners stay late. Welcome to Closing Bell Overtime. I'm John Ford with Morgan Brennan. We have got a big Friday show coming your way. Apollos, Torsten, Slocke will join us with his first reaction to the jobs number and the latest trade headlines,

how it could all impact next week's Fed decision. Plus, we'll talk to noted technology analyst Ben Reitzis about the big moves for the Mag-7 this week as Apple pulls back while other mega caps lock in solid gains. And we will head out to Omaha, head of Berkshire Hathaway's annual meeting, as that stock hits record highs today. But let's get straight to today's market action.

So joining us now is Unlimited CEO and CIO Bob Elliott and Kobasi Letter editor and chief Adam Kobasi. Great to have you both here on what is a green day for the major averages and a green week for the major averages. Second week in a row that the S and P is seeing gains and it's May 2nd. Bob, it's been exactly one month since Liberation Day and the S and P has now joined the Nasdaq in regaining all of its losses since then. You use the word before he started the show here fever dream. How do you see the market here? Does this rally have legs? Well, I think the question is,

is basically the markets have priced out any impact from Liberation Day, given the moves that we've seen. If anything, actually we're back at where we were post-election in terms of, say, stocks versus bonds in the pricing. And at the same time, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the effective tariff rate is still 25%, up nearly 20 points from where it was before Liberation Day, and there are no deals. And when you look at that combination of things, you say if you believe that there's any risk

that the tariffs are not going to get fully rolled back, you've got to think that stocks look expensive here. Adam, how do you see this market here? Because stocks do look kind of pricey. We're back above 20 P.E. for S&P here. We have had, I guess I'd call it constructive trade talk this week, but as Bob just mentioned, no actual deals struck. But we did have strong tech earnings haven't been so terrible.

What moves us next? Look, I mean, I echo a lot of that sentiment. We actually put out a short note today on equities in our work. And I think really this market is entirely a product of sentiment. You had some of the most bearish sentiment in recent history going into mid-April. Now you have a nine-day winning streak, I think, for the first time since 2004, when in reality, we have improved slightly. I think we are starting to hear the right things regarding trade deals, regarding just optimism in general. But I also think that the

bull trade is starting to become crowded again. And I think a V-shaped recovery to all-time highs just does not make sense. And beyond tariffs, tariffs have been kind of scapegoated from almost everything that was bearish recently. I think there are some more cracks under the surface. I think the labor market data, if you dig into it, is not as strong as it looks. ADP data, if you look at indications that inflation could start coming up a little bit because of tariffs going forward. And then next week, you had the Fed meeting where obviously President Trump has been calling

for rate cuts for some time now. I think today's headline number on the jobs front is basically solidified no rate cut next week. I think the Fed is not in a hurry to cut rates because that's literally what they've told us. So I think right feds not in a hurry to cut rates because that's literally what they've told us. So I think right now we're overheated. I don't know if that means we go back to the low, but I think it means that we are overdue for a pullback here. Bob, to that point, we still have a disconnect between the hard data like today's jobs report and the soft like consumer sentiment. Investors look better in this market than they feel. You seem to think that the hard data is going to catch down

to the soft data versus the other way around. In a way, the past month, for the bulls out there, for those who agree with the president's policies, would argue against you, wouldn't it? Well, I think that the hard data, the challenge with it is it's very backward looking. And so you've got to start looking at in an environment where we have a radical policy shift. We have an embargo when it comes to trade from China. The ports are effectively empty at this point on the west coast. Truckers are seeing the lowest runs that they've seen since COVID. Those are all things that are leading indicators of what's likely to transpire in this economy. So we can all look at the jobs report and talk about how jobs were in April and in March,

and that's not gonna help us really understand what's likely to happen ahead. If you're gonna look at, if you have any optimism in this market, you really don't wanna be looking at the US stock market, certainly at these levels. When we look at what professional managers are doing, hedge fund managers, they're looking outside the US. And one stock market, certainly at these levels. When we look at what professional managers are doing, hedge fund managers, they're looking outside the U.S. And one of the more interesting things

that's happened over the course of this rebound is actually foreign stocks have outperformed U.S. stocks during this environment, recognizing that that broader shift that probably sparked that was sparked on Liberation Day, which is the movement of capital away from the US and towards other economies, that continues pretty much unabated even when you have about as good a news out of the US as you can possibly imagine. Okay, so Adam, when do we start to see the hard data

in the hard macro data, some of the micro type things, the port reflections that Bob was just talking about and what levels would indicate to investors that, yeah, this is really bad or maybe this isn't so bad? Look, I think you're still, you know, we're still a little bit away from there. Maybe another month or two, you start seeing the effects, especially because the data is looking back a month. And I think also, look, we're 23 days into this 90-day tariff pause, and still no deal

has been announced. There's been hinted at that many deals are coming. But the closer we get to that 90-day mark, I think markets are going to become more anxious. And I think that's something really that's why we keep hearing that deals are coming because without that constant reassurance, we've seen not only equity markets, but bond markets become increasingly volatile with yields spiking. And also I echo that point on the institutional side of things.

A lot of institutional capital, if you look at the latest data, has not rotated back into these MAG7 names that were driving stocks higher. And even with the recent earnings results, which have been mixed, I don't think that we're seeing that institutional buying yet.

So I'm not 100% convinced that necessarily we're going straight to all-time highs here. I don't think a V-shaped recovery is likely. And I think markets have discounted how much uncertainty still remains in this market right now. Okay, 23 days into that 90-day pause. Sounds like you're calling for a cruel summer. I'm gonna say that's Bananarama, not Taylor Swift.

Adam, Bob, thanks to you both. Well, let's focus now. No Ace of Base? No, it's Bananarama. Let's focus now on tech, sorry, Gen X. The NASDAQ ending the week up more than 3% with Microsoft and Meta leading the charge, but Apple losing ground on the back of earnings.

I know you saw the signs though, so I get where you're going. With uncertainty in its service segment, following a new ruling in the Epic Games case, Ben Reitzis of Melios Research joins us now. Ben, good to see you. Let's start on Apple, since we just had those big numbers last night and tariffs are a particular danger to that company.

You still got to buy on it. Why? Well, I think that tariffs are transitory and I think that they have a new iPhone cycle that'll bring in higher ASPs. I think that right now it's a little bit of a tougher quarter than we would have thought because they pulled the services guidance for the June quarter that epic ruling really the night before probably brought in some uncertainty. And when you don't guide for services, stocks going to get hit.

But we'll see how it goes. If Apple can bring out some new services, maybe change some things around with regard to its relationship with OpenAI, maybe Google, maybe folks will get a little less worried about their services revenue stream and things can recover. I actually think the tariff stuff will be pretty transitory. I'm pretty optimistic we'll eventually get a deal. We think there will be a margin hit over the long term about repatriating supply and whatnot that may be somewhat permanent, but overall we think this tariff stuff will eventually

work itself out. Let's go Nvidia now. There have been all of these questions about demand from the hyperscalers, and some of that seems to have been erased this week, especially with what Meta said about CapEx, Microsoft, too. What does that do for your feelings about Nvidia stock ahead of its earnings coming up?

Well, I think that Nvidia is in a great spot. Right now, there's a lot of doubt still. I do think that in order for the stock to break out, we got to get through these sectoral tariffs and AI diffusion. And then when folks know the rules of the road, the stock can really start to work again. That being said, I mean, it's the AI leader. If you accumulate the stock right now,

I just don't expect overnight success like as much as last year when it doubled, more than doubled. But these guys are the leader. They're doing great. They have a new product cycle, and their big web scalers are spending. As I told you last week when I was on your show, watch Microsoft. They're the thing that is really, we got to watch and they had a great quarter. They're going to spend big on cloud still too.

And then obviously Meta raised the CapEx and Amazon has to spend as well to keep up. So, it was a pretty good week for Nvidia, all things considered, but we got to get through some of that government regulation uncertainty. And then I think we can resume. Ben, Julian Emanuel over at Evercore put out a note this morning, basically said, Tina, turn around here.

There is no alternative stock trade, specifically talking about the mega cap tech stocks. And the fact that that was a trade that worked and it worked through a number of things over these last couple of years, just to reverse here into the beginning of 2025. He's arguing that it's actually coming back around again and becoming a trade again.

I wonder how you see it now that we are through so much of the tech earning season. Well, these companies are amazing and very resilient. So when things get uncertain, they can dip into a lot of different levers that companies just don't have. I mean, and the funny part now is that foreign exchange is becoming a big tailwind for a lot of our companies, which is not the best, highest multiple thing you want, but even that is going in their direction. But these companies are very resilient, geographically diverse, and many of them are indispensable products that you can't live without. So at these times of uncertainty, these kind of companies, you know, definitely

are things you want to turn to in our opinion. And like I said, with Nvidia, once we can get past some of this regulation, that'll start acting more, you know, and asserting its leadership. But we got to get through that over the coming months. Okay. Ben Wright says thanks for joining us. And I suspect we'll hear more about Apple at that Berkshire Hathaway meeting this weekend too since it is still their top or one of their top equity holdings despite having sold

some of that stock in recent months. Well, we're just getting started here on overtime. After the break, Apollo's Torsten Sluck on today's jobs number, next week's Fed decision and why recession could be coming by the summer. And you said Tina Turner, Adam, because of the music we've been talking I heard Tina Turner. Anyway, we'll talk to the US- It's not a bad thing to hear.

Yeah, she's great. Simply the best. We'll talk to the US Chief Investment Officer at Mercer which has more than 17 trillion dollars in global assets under advisement about three risks they say are facing investors even as we close out another strong week for the bulls. Overtime's back in two. Welcome back. This morning's April jobs report came in

well above Wall Street expectations. Those numbers come as investors await the feds meeting next week as well. So joining us now is Torsten Slock, chief economist at Apollo Global Management. Torsten, it's great to have you back on overtime. And let's start right there because you've joined us a few times now in recent months

as we've seen soft data softening and you've said watch the hard data to see if it follows suit. We did not get that following of suits today with the jobs report. Your takeaway? Well, I think a very important takeaway from this week is that we're beginning to hear in the anecdotes in the earnings reports that there are a number of things to worry about going forward. You saw PepsiCo point out that snack sales were lower. You also saw Chipotle saying the traffic was lower. You saw also Southwest Airlines saying that we are literally already in a recession. So when we look at this earnings season, I think the main takeaway is, first of all, that very few companies were able to provide guidance going forward. But what they

actually did say was that a number of them were pointing out that the hard data that is coming is about to be a lot weaker. So we still think that we have a voluntary trade reset recession ahead of us simply because of the very, very high levels of tariffs on China that are going to limit the 30,000 containers that normally come in from China every day and therefore are ultimately going to result in empty shelves in US stores. Along those lines, what we can control, quote unquote, seems to be the phrase of earnings season. It's appeared in over 40 S&P 500 earnings calls so far this quarter. That's according to analysis from AlphaSense.

When we talk about this voluntary trade reset recession, though, Torsten, what would that look like? Have we seen anything like that before? No, we have not, Morgan. and this is really, really important. If you think about what normally generates a recession, for example, in COVID, we got a recession, and it took time because we needed to invent a vaccine. The previous recession was Lehman Brothers.

It took time to clean up after the banking sector and in the housing market and the household sector. And the prior recession, so that was the IT bubble. And the IT bubble also took some time to get out of after the over investment into Y2K. So this time around, we have just not seen anything like this before where we had a sudden abrupt halt in trade between China and US. So the consequence will be first of course,

the ships and the vessels that are on the way will no longer be of the same numbers that we've seen earlier. The trucking industry already through this earnings season has been saying that there are issues. So when we get into later this month or the beginning of next month, we will begin to see ultimately that there are a lot of things, including prescription drugs, that we get 90% of prescription drugs that we consume in the US come from outside the US. And China is a very important producer, for example, of ibuprofen and also of penicillin.

So that means that they will have an impact in so many different ways that will be coming in the next several weeks. So Torsten, you're the third guest in 15 minutes here on Overtime saying the hard data's about to get bad. Why isn't the market pricing that in? See, I think the market is exactly, John, to your point here earlier,

it's just looking at this past earnings season and say, hey, it's actually not too bad. And it may be that if we get deals very quickly, that this could all go away. But the issue is that these deals would basically have to involve a dramatic decline in tariffs. So the risk we're really facing here is that if we do not get tariffs to come down,

including in particular, of course, on China, there is a risk here that over the next several months, we might not even have fireworks for the 4th of July. Remember, 95% of the fireworks that are imported into the US come from China and 90% of fireworks that are consumed in the US comes from other countries. So it could really be that in the next several months, like Scott Besson was saying, it is an unsustainable situation. We are going to realize suddenly in areas where no one really had looked before what

are the consequences of these extremely high levels of tariffs on China. If I'm not mistaken that first week in July is also pretty close to the 90-day deadline that we're looking for. So is that a moment that the market should look out for in early mid-July if there isn't some ink on some deals by then? Well that's the 8th of July and I'm trying to come up with a song that fits with Tina Turner here to what your previous conversation but I do think that there's a lot of issues going into this around. We simply don't fully understand in the market what's actually coming and the bottom line

here is that I do think that if we have and again the recognition by Scott Besson and others that this is unsustainable, we also have Steve Moran saying the same thing earlier today. I do think that it brings us to the conclusion that we should still expect this to be a voluntary trade reset recession, where the slowdown coming into the summer could potentially be very significant.

All right, what have tariffs got to do with it? Torsten Slott, thank you. Morgan, I didn't know about the ace of base cover of Cruel Summer, I'm sorry. Listen, you're Gen X I'm millennial. That's when that one came out. That's why this works. That's why this works Well, we got a news alert decades cover on the Fed according to the Wall Street Journal The Fed is seeking to review the secret ratings It uses to rate the health of the biggest banks

The Fed is reportedly planning to wait until Fed vice chair for supervision nominee Michelle Bowman is until Fed vice chair for supervision nominee Michelle Bowman is confirmed by the Senate to release new supervisory ratings. Bowman has been critical of the Fed's recent ratings. Let's bring in CNBC's Leslie Picker for more on the impact this could have on the financials. Leslie? Yeah, those financials, John, have been equally if not more critical of these ratings, particularly because they're largely done in secret out of the public domain, and there's no real appeals process. If a bank doesn't like the rating that they're given, they can't really discuss it with anyone. It's kind of against the law, and so they're just essentially stuck with it. And why this matters is because these ratings have a big impact on the types of activities

banks can do, the types, how many branches they can open, for example. Sometimes they lead to certain divestitures. The ways that these banks expand, particularly through mergers and acquisitions approvals, these supervisory ratings have an impact on all those types of activities. So it's something that these banks have long criticized. And they say that oftentimes these ratings are not objective. They're subjective in nature. Management is one of the key components here.

So this is something that the financials would certainly like to see happen. We'll see if it ultimately does, guys. Okay, adding to another layer of potential, I guess, financial deregulation, we'll have to see what happens here. Leslie Picker, thank you. When we come back, the aerospace and defense ETF just hit a record intraday high, first time since March.

We're gonna talk to the CEO of one of its components, AeroVironment, about demand in the space as President Trump lays out his defense budget proposals for next year. And later, the CEO of GoDaddy on whether he's seeing any slowdown in demand in this uncertain environment. As the stock pulls back on earnings, we'll be right back. Welcome back. The defense ETF ITA closing at a record

high today after President Trump unveiled his 2026 federal budget, a skinny budget proposal that includes just about a trillion dollars for national defense. One of the top performers in that ETF in the past month is AeroVironment. Joining us now in an exclusive interview is AeroVironment CEO Waheed Nawabi. Waheed, it's great to have you back on the show. I do wanna get to defense spending and your outlook and what that's gonna mean for the company. But first, you also just closed on your $4 billion plus acquisition of Blue Halo,

something we've talked about before. What is meaningful about this addition to your portfolio and how does it position you for military modernization and spending of the future? Morgan and Geron, great to be with you and your viewers. This is a inflection point for a car company and it's a historic event for our industry. If you were to sit down and design a company

that's focused on current and future needs of our military and warfare and defense, that would be AV. And this, it basically completes an enormous amount of the capabilities that we want to deliver as an innovator, a defense tech player, leading player in the industry. And so we are incredibly excited about the future. We're focused on the right areas,

and we're looking forward to a prosperous several years ahead of us in the future as well. So the fact that we did get this skinny budget proposal for fiscal 2026, we're still light on some of the details here. And we've already seen some lawmakers come out and say it's not enough, and some of the money could be bundled into reconciliation.

There's a lot that needs to be sorted out. But that being said, the fact that defense spending here in the U.S. seems to be on a trajectory to continue to grow and you couple that with recent executive orders to change the way services are acquiring weapons systems, including the Army with a big realignment that was announced this week. What does it mean for our environment? Well, to us, it's music to our ears, honestly, because the things that are priorities for the Secretary of Defense, or for our president, and for Congress,

aligns extremely well with the capabilities that we have across land, sea, space, and cyber, AI. We are a purpose-built company focused on those areas. The president is asking for about a 13% increase on the budget, which you refer to as a trillion dollar defense budget. Congress obviously would like to do more. And we know that we have serious, serious needs in our national security area. And AV is built as a company to specifically focus on those areas of importance and priority. And many of the priorities that the U.S. Department of Defense and our president and Congress

is talking about relates to the areas that AV is focused in and is in business in. So we really designed our strategy precisely to be focused on these areas to meet the current and future needs of our nation as well as our allies across the globe. Let's talk about the allies part. I think we might have just been showing some Jump 20 footage there. You recently opened up a new office in the UK and you had deals with Italy and Denmark recently. With all of this talk about Europe having to up its defense spending, how much of a

clear pathway to selling into that market do you feel that you have? Are there partnerships or competitors that you're concerned about over there? So we have a tremendous track record of success as a combined entity now. AV, by the way, we're branding ourselves as AV, as a combined entity. We have a tremendous track record of success as a combined entity now, AV. By the way, we're branding ourselves as AV, as a combined entity. We have a tremendous track record. We already export to over 50 countries around the world. The historical air environment business essentially had hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue from international allies around the world already.

We believe that there's tremendous amount of additional upside and growth because we have so many more capabilities and drones, reconnaissance drones, counter drones, counter UAS, directed energy, lasers, space communications, cyber security, and electronic warfare to offer a lot of our allies around the world and do it at an affordable cost effective manner. So yes, ARK and customers internationally continues to grow. The share of their spend as percentage of their wallet on AV is going to continue to grow because the areas that they need help with and the areas that they're concerned with we have seen time after time now

that our types of capabilities delivered at an affordable and at scale is the right answer for the market. This is precisely what we designed to do in the beginning and we continue to do that. So in light of that, how are you navigating trade dynamics and not just tariffs themselves, but also retaliatory measures when the likes of China

are adding air environment to the export control list there? You know, we're not worried about it at all. Here's why. It's not because we don't care. We do care. It's because we designed our company and our business many years ahead of this problem for this type of scenarios. Nearly 100% of our supply base is domestic. We design our systems here in the United States. We, most, you know, nearly close to 100% of our suppliers are sourced all domestically in the United States. We design them and we manufacture them here. We export them.

The cost, the actual bill of materials of our products is a smaller percentage of the total cost of our products. There's a lot of innovation, engineering, and software that goes into our systems, autonomy, AI, et cetera. So we had designed our business for these problems ahead of time. That's why we sourced things here in US,

we built here, we never left United States. And we look forward to actually supporting our customers globally. We do believe that as the market continues to grow at the rapid pace that we're growing and the market's growing, that we're going to continue to expand internationally and other markets to be closer to our customers, to be able to serve those customers effectively post sales.

Okay. Waheed Nawabi, Avera Environment. Great to have you on today. Thanks for joining us. Great to be with you. Thank you. After the break, Berkshire Hathaway has been a hole-in-one for investors, hitting a record today. Mike Santoli's in Omaha.

He's getting into the swing of the company's annual meeting. And coming up after the break, a special Berkshire Hathaway themed dashboard from Omaha, from the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting. Welcome back to Overtime. Berkshire Hathaway's annual shareholder meeting takes place

tomorrow but the festivities have already begun in Omaha and what's a party without Mike Santoli. He joins us now in Omaha with today's Berkshire focused dashboard Mike. Yeah.

Well a party without Mike Santoli is a lot more fun than one with him as we all know but there's a lot of happy shareholders here, tens of thousands of them. We are at a record high for Berkshire Hathaway shares. What I find remarkable, there's so many sectors reflected within Berkshire Hathaway. It's a conglomerate, obviously the big stock portfolio, the core insurance operations, all the rest. And yet what it mostly tends to behave as is an extreme version of high-quality blue chip

stocks. That's where it mostly travels with high quality. That's the SPHQ right here. The S&P 500 companies have the highest balance sheet quality, returns on equity, things like that. But look at how it diverged even from the high-quality basket a few months ago at the all-time peak of the S&P 500. It's been traveling more with gold over the last few months. So it shows you how it's viewed as the ultimate source

of defense, store of value, essentially just impenetrable in terms of financial strength. One of the results of that great performance though, is a pretty rich valuation based on Berkshire's own history. The price to book value of the stock is up to about 1.8 times. Last anywhere near here was right before the global financial crisis in 07.

In the late 80s, late 90s, it was also similarly expensive. So, this is one reason why Berkshire's probably not buying back a whole lot of stock, but it is one reason that shows you that this is serving as an interesting role in people's portfolios. By the way, it's really in the Mag-7. It's bigger than Tesla in market cap.

And in fact, I think it's benefited from other Mag 7 companies selling off and Berkshire getting a little bit of that capital. You know what else is better than gold? Watching you play mini golf. Yeah, we finally found an area where Mike Santoli can't analyze all the angles. It's on the mini golf. Hold on. I can I can't you want to know how many takes it took to

get them to have me missed three times. Yes. Three. Three takes. Nice. There's a chart for that as well. I've never played a round of golf in my life and I just proved it. Alright. Well, enjoy. Enjoy Omaha and we look forward to seeing you on the other side next week. Also tune in tomorrow. CNBC special coverage of the entire Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholder

meeting that is live right here on CNBC. It's also streaming on cnbc.com and CNBC. Plus Warren Buffett will take the stage to answer over four hours of shareholder questions it all starts at 830 AM Eastern. CNBC Plus, Warren Buffett will take the stage to answer over four hours of shareholder questions. It all starts at 830 a.m. Eastern. Right now, coming up, GoDaddy CEO saying on last night's earnings call, he is, quote, focusing on what we can control.

Same phrase used by the heads of ExxonMobil, Honeywell, McDonald's, and many others. He's going to join us next with how he's managing through the uncertainty when Overtime returns. Welcome back to Overtime GoDaddy, sinking today more than 8%, despite reporting solid Q1 earnings after yesterday's close. Some analysts raising concerns over the company's growth in a tougher macro environment.

Joining us now exclusively is GoDaddy CEO, Amman Bhutani. Amman, good to see you. So this is like a beat on the top and bottom here. Maybe some folks disappointed that the guy didn't beat given that you did in the quarter, but overall it sounds like you're not seeing hesitation from your customers despite the pressure on the consumer. Yeah, and great to see you.

And you summarize that really well. Yes, we beat across all financial metrics in Q1, so a very strong quarter for us. And we reaffirmed our full year guidance. Of course, John, it's still early in the year. So as we think about the quarter, we think we're off to a great start. Our customers are resilient, our business is durable.

I'd say I've never been more excited about being at GoDaddy. And in the longterm, we're creating just tremendous value for our shareholders. So my view is let's focus on the things that we do. Let's focus on the innovation. Let's focus on serving our customers and the rest takes care of itself. I guess here's my concern, Amman, is that looking at Amazon's results in advertising up 90%, Meta's results a bit into Google's ads.

It seems like consumers and businesses out there are looking for optimization with this uncertainty and there's some benefit to having digital marketing tools. How are you seeing that if it all reflected in your business? Yeah, you know, our customers need us most for marketing. And a domain name, a website, a little email solution, or just a pay link to take payments.

These are the types of solutions we offer and these are the solutions that are going to be the last things customers give up. In fact, even when a business goes down, a customer doesn't get rid of their domain name because they're not giving up the dream. They're going to keep going and try it again or try something different. So we're really happy with the value we bring to our customers and the prices we charge for them in comparison are lower.

So there's a lot of value for consumers. And in fact, as we increase our product suite, we've got more and more offerings like marketing solutions and commerce solutions as well. And just to dig into that a little bit more, I mean, you are in a very unique position in terms of the read you have in real-time on

small business sentiment and activity and also new business creation. What are you seeing? Yeah. We have great touch points with our customers. In fact, we do surveys and we did one in April. As you might expect, there's a little bit more tentativeness from our customers on the broader economy. But the core story has not changed. That story is about a customer being resilient. there's a little bit more tentative tendiveness from our customers on the broader economy, but the core story has not changed.

And that story is about a customer being resilient. When we asked them about the economy, yes, they're a little more concerned. When we asked them about their business, they still continue to the majority of them continue to be very bullish about their business. So we see that difference, which we always see, but we see that continued difference in terms of how people feel about their business. And that's what makes them resilient. They have to come back and make something happen, and that's what we're partnered with them on. So, you know, overall, I would say a little bit

of tenderness, but the consumer is still resilient and still looking to use the tools we offer them. And if I just circle back with you on earnings and specifically why the stock is down, at least one analyst has pointed out that the optics of this is that customer count is coming down and you set that against a narrative out there that price drove most of the growth in 2024. And there are questions about whether it's sustainable this year, how do you respond to that? Yeah, our focus is really on growing attached.

The idea is to bring high intent customers to GoDaddy. So not folks who are looking to buy a cheap domain or get something cheap and then not renew or buy any of our other products. We've really expanded the product suite over the last few years. We have really, really good quality products. So we want customers that want to use

the breadth of products. And that's what we're seeing. We're seeing increased average order size. We're seeing improved retention rates. We're seeing customers use more of our products. We have a fantastic new AI driven product called Aero which exposes our customers to the full breadth of our products. So we have all that going for us, it's definitely not just about price, it's about attach, it's about order size, it's about retention, it's about term length, all of

those are improving in the business. And in terms of customer count, we absolutely expect cost to grow the number of customers at GoDaddy. And yes, there are some reasons, sort of specifically last year, where we see some pressure on it, but we expect that to ease this year. And over the long term, we expect to serve more and more customers globally.

Aman Bhutani, CEO of GoDaddy. Thanks for joining us. Thank you, Morgan. Well, with companies scrambling to adjust the tariffs, deals and documents are getting scrutiny for new reasons. Today, John takes time out with a CEO whose company specializes in digital agreements. Yeah, well, Alan Tegerson is CEO of DocuSign. It's a company that rose to prominence in digital signatures.

Now, before he joined the company, Tegerson ran large parts of the ad business at Google. And the global nature of business and agreements have been part of his life since literally the beginning. He grew up in Denmark, the son of two economists, his father leaning more toward European connection, his mother toward Danish independence. Look, they weren't that far apart, but it was enough to create some debate. And of course we discussed all kinds of other topics,

but that was a big one. I remember when the Danes voted to join the EU on the 1st of January, 1973, and when they voted not to join the euro, to my father's great disappointment. So there were some tension moments. As CEO of DocuSign, Tegas is leading at a time when AI software promises to help partners agree on terms more quickly and with greater specificity. Last month the company announced updates to its product suite including tools to help customers review contracts and process forms.

If you receive an agreement from a third party we can automatically review and redline it according to your in-house playbooks. We have what we call workspaces, which is essentially any multi-step transaction, like when you complete a mortgage or when you go to the doctor's office. It's a space there where you can fill out all the forms, and all that data can be validated automatically.

And custom extractions, which is very much an AI thing, where we are essentially giving you the power to define any arbitrary thing that's specific to your company or industry. we can train on your agreements and then help you find it wherever it might appear, which could be relevant, for example, when there's external changes like we're experiencing right now in the tariff area. The timeout takeaway, spell check, but for policies. I've highlighted companies here before, like Robin.ai, that are developing AI-driven approaches

to legal language and even Deepel focused on foreign language transition for business processes. Think of the potential impact as being like spell check except for policies and ideas not just words. A lot of time when governments and companies are renegotiating agreements that could be worth billions or trillions of dollars over time, there could be a lot of value there. Morgan. All right.

Well, AST Space Mobile going skyward today after Alphabet disclosed a nearly nine million share position in the company, it finished the day up almost 15%. Get this, it's up a thousand percent in a year. Up next, we're gonna talk more about the big money flowing into space, including with the White House budget proposal.

Stay with us. Well, True Anomaly just raised $260 million in a series C funding round, becoming the latest space and defense tech startup to recently raise capital in an oversubscribed round. It adds to a growing list that also includes Andrel, Saronic, EPROS, and just earlier this week as well, Apex Space.

True Anomaly is less than three years old. It was co founded by CEO Evan Rogers, who previously served as an officer in the U. S Air Force, where he was focused on war fighting in space. When we went out to raise the serious, see, we really raised it as a defense round, and that is the purpose of this company. True Anomaly, I say first and foremost is a defense company, and it reflects a moment where the space domain has really become a warfighting domain. That started in 2017. The Space Force was stood up shortly thereafter.

And the Space Force is now just turning into a real warfighting service. And that means that it has capabilities to go buy and build and operators to go train. And we've positioned ourselves as a defense partner to provide capabilities specifically for space superiority. Well True Anomaly develops spacecraft that can maneuver near other satellites in orbit. Its Jackal vehicle has been launched to low earth orbit three times so far and this capital will be used to ramp production and also support future missions further out in space to geosynchronous and even cislunar orbit. There is no sanctuary orbit anymore.

China and Russia are deploying capabilities for geosynchronous orbit, medium Earth orbit, HEO and now cislunar space. China is starting to be very active in cislunar space. We have a responsibility to build products that can go anywhere the threat goes and anywhere the opportunity for space superiority presents itself. Now all of this is the White House's fiscal 2026 budget request,

includes more money for space through the Defense Department and despite top line budget cuts being proposed for NASA, a priority not only on Mars, but also on the moon and establishing a presence there before China does, even if some of the programs attached to it might be changing. But for more on space,

the role True Anomaly is looking to play in securing it, check out Manifest Space. That's available through this code on your screen or wherever you get your podcasts. Bottom line, John, private capital continues to flow into this sector. It's become very attractive and continues to be so. Interesting stuff.

Up next, stocks closing out another strong week of gains, making up all the losses since the tariff announcement a month ago. But large asset owners are increasingly worried about three risks. We'll lay them out next. And if you are thinking about a great graduation gift, we have the perfect idea for you. A ticket to the Fast Money Live Event, June 5th, at the NASDAQ.

Send the right message to the new grads. Start investing early. For more information, scan this QR code on your screen, or go to cnbcevents.com slash fastmoney. Welcome back to overtime. The major averages ending the week in the green. The S and P 500 logging its longest winning streak since 2004. But large asset owners increasingly worried about three key risks to the market.

According to a new study from Mercer, let's bring in a lot of the Gunga Mercer, U.S. chiefalu Agonga, Mercer US Chief Investment Officer. Alalu, great to see you as always. Okay, geopolitics, inflation, monetary tightening. If people with a lot of money are worried about those things, what can they do? You know, firstly, I'll say being doom and gloom after such a positive week is really not the best way to end. However, we do follow these trends, right?

So the survey that we use and I think we've talked about this before is institutions that have over two billion dollars in assets. Fourteen countries, so you know very very global body. We have 75 institutions that are represented. Two trillion dollars worth of assets. So we follow this to be able to get a sense for the trends that they have and some some of the concerns, yes, geopolitics, inflation, monetary tightening, that makes sense. They had 12 risks, essentially, that we looked at the volatility in markets, climate change, those things. This showed up as the top. And it makes sense given the background that we've had thus far. The positive though, is that we also looked at where they're looking to invest, where they're looking to allocate capital. Private markets, despite geopolitics inflation

and monetary tightening, private markets was still top of the focus areas with private credit and infrastructure showing up within their allocations. It was more of a balance, it was more defensive. So private markets, yes, but those asset classes are defensive. Are they looking to sell America? We did see a little bit more of a home bias in the data,

and this was coming from European institutions. So we saw European institutions were more positive on their European domestic markets, and this was in contrast to US and some of the other areas. So the home bias was increasing, but it was increasing from European institutions for their markets. Well, I mean, along those lines, the footsy one hundred today, record winning streak, 15 straight days of gains.

We have been seeing this outperformance in other parts of the world versus the U.S. Are there other you mentioned private credit and private markets in general. But are there other asset classes right now? Gold for example we've been talking about for weeks on end

that are showing some you know different some some different trends than what we've seen in the years past. Yes. Gold has been showing up. But those asset classes do tend to have a stronger correlation of positivity when there is a little bit more uncertainty and fear in the market.

So it's almost a flight to safety to some degree, but it is incredibly volatile. We don't see the large asset owners and frankly even our institutional investors really investing in those types of asset classes. And I think that's a good example of how we're doing this. We're not really even our institutional investors really investing in those types of asset classes. But it's showing up now and it does tend to show up when there

are periods of volatility. But bonds are still back. It is a balance in portfolios and private credit is a version of it, although more eliquid and has stronger protections. There are other things that can provide that type of diversification. Okay, Olaluoganga, thanks for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. It was another up-day, positive day for the markets here. S&P 500, nine straight days of gains.

The longest winning streak here for the S&P in more than 20 years. We'll see if that continues next week. The market keeps looking for clarity, either from earnings or from the macro data and for this model to get sorted out. I'm not sure it did. I'm not sure I expected so many of the important companies to both report beats, strong guides, guides at all, right? And then we got this jobs data today that was strong.

That's right. And next week we get a Fed decision. We get a few other central banks too too but the commentary there and what that strong data we got in the jobs report today is going to do for the Fed. That does it for us here at Overtime.