Closing Bell - Closing Bell Overtime: Stocks Post Best Week in Months As Ceasefire Holds 4/10/26

Episode Date: April 10, 2026

Victoria Greene of G Squared Private Wealth and Meghan Shue of Wilmington Trust debate whether the bottom is in. Cyber threats move into focus: Eamon Javers reports on risks facing major banks while former White House CIO Theresa Payton explains how AI is changing the cybersecurity landscape. In tech Pat Walravens of JMP examines the ongoing software slump. Private credit concerns also surface. Mark Malek of Siebert Financial explains why the real risk may be psychological as redemption headlines could trigger further outflows even without immediate solvency issues. Ivy Zelman, executive vice president of research and securities at Zelman, breaks down key real estate trends and what they signal for housing and commercial property. Plus, a look ahead to bank earnings and cybersecurity risks with Gerard Cassidy of RBC and the next catalysts set to drive markets. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The bells bringing an end to this mixed trading day at the NYSC, the mayor of San Francisco, ringing the closing bell to celebrate 50 years of options trading in San Francisco. And at the NASDAQ United Athletes Tour, that's former USC star Reggie Bush doing the honors. Welcome to closing bell overtime, everybody, live from Studio B at the NASDAQ market site. I'm Leslie Picker in from Melissa and Mike today. Stocks mixed on the session on this Friday, the Dow down nearly 300. points. Small loss for the S&P 500, but the NASDAQ extending its winning streak to now eight sessions. It hasn't had a longer winning streak since late 2023. For the major average, for the

week, the major averages all up 3% or more nearly 5%. For the NASDAQ, let's get right to Christina Parts Nevelas with more on today's and the week's market action. Well, the story within tech this week was AI winners over the AI at risk trade. And I mean AI risk being software, getting hit hard, The IGV down about 7%. IT service names like IBM, CGI Accenture, all under pressure today and just this week as investors really question what AI agents mean for their business models. Palantir, another name, down about 2%, despite President Trump posting that the company has, quote, great warfighting capabilities in a post.

Michael Burry, not buying it either. He's the big short investor. He doubled down on his bearish thesis with long-dated puts on the stock, arguing Anthropic is eating into Palantir's enterprise position. On the other side of the trade, chips dominated. Yay for me, because that's my beat. The Seasfire rally pushed memory and storage names like Sandisk, Micron, Western Digital, a double digits this week.

Invidia was actually up about 6% on the week, but Intel stole the show, stole the spotlight, climbing 24% after joining Musk's tariffab, and lending a multi-year Google AI deal. Neither provided any financial commitments, though. Broadcom locked in custom chip supply with Google through 2031. And Corey surged on back-to-back deals with meta and anthropic. And last but not least, optical names Lumentum and Coherent, also extending their run on bullish demand commentary from Lumentum's CEOs saying that they're sold out of demand in 2027 and 2028 is looking pretty good.

Leslie? All right, Christina, thank you. Happy Friday. Happy Friday. This week's gains coming as investors continue to monitor the ceasefire with Iran, but also inflation concerns bubbling up after several economic reports showed the delicate state of the U.S. economy as it grapples with those high energy prices. So what should investors do in this current market environment where uncertainty just seems to be the name of the era? Joining us now is Megan Shoe from Wilmington Trust and Victoria Green from

G-squared private wealth. Both are CNBC contributors. Megan and Victoria, thank you both for joining us on this Friday afternoon. Victoria, let's start with you because I know that this environment makes you somewhat cautiously bearish. What does that mean, especially in light of what we've seen with the weekly performance and a bit of a rebound in equities? Yeah, absolutely. The best week we've had since November, this is a fantastic relief rally. Number one, we need to get the straight open. Number two, we need WTI and Brent below 90. It's great. We're below 100. We're sticky here at 95, 97. And most importantly, is gasoline and diesel prices. And we saw that hit CPI hard. We saw a record increasing.

gasoline at up 21% year over year. That was really, really difficult on consumers. We saw that in PCE with consumer income, consumer spending. We saw it in consumer sentiment. All of these consumer readings saying, hey, this is a problem. My thing is, this is great, but if we can't get gasoline and diesel prices down this month, and we certainly don't get them down before the summer travel season, it's going to be very, very difficult for us to avoid a recession. Our base case remained, we can get this result. That has been the base case going into this, but the longer it stays closed, this disruption continues to wave through the markets, the more concern we're going to get that the consumer is going to break. And you're seeing that a little bit today with some of the

consumer trades rolling over. You have the AI pressure on software. It's just not a pretty mix. I am bullish going into financials though next week. I think it'll be wonderful to start talking about fundamentals again and really start to dig into earnings. And they're going to have a wonderful read on the consumer. Tone's going to be crucial. Outlook is definitely crucial. Absolutely. We will be watching that super closely. Real quick, Megan, though, I wanted to ask you about your base case, which is you still think the Fed will cut three times this year. And I'm curious in light of what Victoria was talking about with the potential for a recession amid some of these high prices. You think the Fed will look through, maybe some of the indications we

saw from CPI today, look through what we've seen with oil prices and still focus on cutting this year? We do. Our expectation is that very similar to the data that we got today, we will see some increase in headline inflation from the effects of the higher energy prices, but that that will subside our base cases also, that we will get this resolved. And more importantly, even in the short term for core inflation, will see minimal pass through. In particular, because as Victoria pointed out, we agree the consumer is in a little bit of a fragile state. There are some tailwinds from the one big beautiful bill act and tax refunds, which are coming in above prior years, though maybe a bit below what some were expecting.

And then on the headwind side, obviously energy prices are something to watch carefully. And we just see low income numbers and really fairly low savings levels as not indicative of a very strong consumer that can weather additional price hikes. And so when you factor that in with a stable but pretty sluggish labor market, we do see room for the Fed's cut. that is a little bit out of consensus right now. But I think, you know, as we think about how the future are by the end of the year, we will see the Fed having more room to cut. And that should be a tail end for the overall market

in conjunction with some pretty solid earnings that we're expecting in this quarter and for the rest of the year. Yeah, let's talk a bit more about those earnings, Victoria, because you mentioned, of course, we have bank earnings next week. You're looking forward to a greater focus on fundamentals that you expect to see

coming out of those bank earnings. I want to ask you about that. You expect beats across the board, but I'm curious if you think that's what the market will focus on. Because so far this year, year-to-date performance for the banks have been, you know, pretty much lagging most industries out there. And that has to do with sentiment. That has to do with macro concerns and private credit concerns and concerns about AI disintermediation. So you think that switch will flip and the focus will turn to fundamentals come next week when investors do start to see those numbers roll out. Well, I certainly hope so. That's our thesis. We're hoping that we finally get people to realize. Look, they're not just about credit cards. Some of these big banks, if you look at like a Goldman Sachs, 70% of their revenues coming from dealmaking, from equity trading, from fixed income and currency trading. That should be really, really strong and key one. We expect a beat on deal making. We expect a beat on trading with all the volatility. We expect them to do fairly well on net income. Hold there. We expect margins to increase. One reason we remain bullish on financials is we expect. We expect to be. expect further deregulation of the sector. I understand the concerns on private credit, but if you start to loosen the reins a little bit, you get a little bit better assessments

from the Fed, from FDIC, and you're able to lend a little bit more, that's a huge tailwind to earnings. But I'm definitely looking at tone. I think, yes, you have to beat on the quarter, but it's all going to be about guidance and outlook. You know, how dower is Jamie Diamond? How many cockroaches does he see out there? So we want to know. We want to hear how concerned are they on private credit? Are they stalking for loan loss reserves, especially on Chase and City that have two very, very large credit card factions of their companies. How is the consumer doing? Is there, are they spending? They've got such a unique viewpoint in the consumer, in the business world, that we're looking for commentary on that. But we do think they could be bullish. We think they

could say, look, the fundamentals are there. Yes, there's risk and headwinds. We know from J.P. Morgan's February conference, they said, hey, look, we expect to grow our trading and dealmaking in the mid to high teens. That's a very bullish thing for banks. You throw in lower taxes. You throw in deregulation. You throw in some stimulus from higher tax refunds that we're seeing. All of that could be very bullish for financials. Yeah, and that's essentially what Jamie Diamond said in his annual letter earlier this week that the consumer is holding out pretty well. Megan, Victoria, thank you both so much on this important market week. We appreciate your perspective. We have a news alert on AI cybersecurity. Kate Rooney has those details for us. Hey, Kate.

Hi, Leslie. So we are hearing that senior white house. officials held a meeting with some of the top Silicon Valley tech CEOs around cyber security risk in AI. This is according to two sources familiar with the matter who say that meeting last week was organized by Vice President J.D. Vance, also Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, among some other top Trump administration officials on the tech company side, a source telling us that both Anthropic and Open AI CEO were on this call. Also Google CEO, Sundarpechop. Microsoft CEO, Sotianadella, Paula Alter's network CEO,

crowd strike CEO, all of those big time tech names participated in this call. No comment yet from the companies Leslie on their involvement and no response yet from the White House side of this. Sources do say, though, the call included discussions around security for these AI models,

how to respond to any sort of cyber attacks. And it did happen amid, of course, the war with Iran. It was also a week before Treasury Secretary Beston and Fed Chair, Jerome Powell, as we reported earlier, called bank CEOs to meet in D.C. about cybersecurity. Same topic, according to sources. So all of these private meetings do highlight ongoing concern from the Trump administration around the power of this technology and what it could do on the wrong hands

and any sort of impact on the private sector, U.S. infrastructure as well. Cybersecurity, also top of mind this week after Anthropic released its new AI model mythos, which has gotten a lot of buzz. It has been rolled out to a select group of companies. And it is also, notable, finally, that Anthropic is still being included from what we're hearing in some of these closed-door meetings, despite their ongoing battle with the White House and with the Pentagon. You can read this entire story on CNBC.com right now. Sam Subin with some of this great reporting, Leslie. Back over to you. Yeah, Kate, I'm curious if it was that same model from Anthropic that really spurred these meetings as the one that spurred the CEO meetings with the bank CEOs

as well, or if it was just broader overarching AI cybersecurity threats that they're concerned about. and also the legacy cybersecurity's role kind of as this all evolves very quickly. Yeah, Leslie, that is an important nuance. So this was a week ago before the mythos model had rolled out. From what I'm hearing from sources, this was a broader topic about cybersecurity, not necessarily one particular model, which was seemingly the impetus for the bank meeting. This was broader about how do we respond? What are you hearing and really getting the expertise from some of the brightest minds in Silicon Valley

the people that are most plugged in. So, yeah, an important distinction and sort of different timing, but mythos has been the big topic this week and Anthropic getting a lot of buzz, but I do think it's fascinating that they are still in the room where it's happening and they're still being relied upon as experts in the space despite some of the animus we're seeing publicly. Yeah, you have to wonder if it's mythos or if there are other AI actors externally across the globe that they're increasingly concerned about. I guess we will continue to learn more. Kate Rooney, thank you so much for that great reporting. Now let's move on to the cyber threat specifically facing U.S. banks, as Kate mentioned, CNBC confirming a meeting between many major

bank CEOs and Fed Chair Jay Powell and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to discuss the cyber threat from AI. Amen Javers joining us from Washington now with more details. Hey, Amin. Hey there, Leslie. You know, you heard it from Kate. It's Anthropics new mythos model that's causing all this alarm. Now, the concern is that the advanced capabilities of the model could make it dramatically easier for hackers to discover previously unknown zero-day exploits and breach cyber defenses across the range of the entire internet, especially the banks. Former Deputy Attorney General John Carlin was on CNBC earlier today arguing that the government's reaction here is warranted whether or not this particular mythos model is as effective as some people fear. A lot of what we're talking about is based on anthropics description of the problem from its own testing of the tool. And we'll need to wait and see if this is the tool that is that step change in technology. Whether it is or isn't, though, I think everyone is predicting that step change is coming.

So there's an urgency now. You heard Carlin say it, an urgency now. And you also heard Kate talking about this relationship. These new concerns come at an awkward time in the record. relationship between Anthropic and the U.S. government after a dispute earlier this year. Remember, Anthropic refused to remove constraints in its systems controlling use on autonomous weapons or domestic surveillance. That angered the Pentagon, which retaliated by labeling the company a supply chain risk, which is something that's normally done for foreign

adversarial nations, and ordered that the company's products no longer be used by the Defense Department. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodi, responding that the company would not change its position and saying in writing, we cannot in good conscience accede to this request. All of that could put a layer of strain on this already difficult conversation, Leslie, around potential private sector threats to U.S. national security. Back over to you. Amen, I'm curious because it really does feel like a moment maybe in the last few weeks where the government has been more involved with the private sector in regulating AI, whereas, you know, over the past few years it seems to be a bit more of a hands-off posture. Is that a fair way?

to describe what's going on in D.C. right now? Yeah, I mean, I think this is a real sea change moment this week. And I think the thinking is going in two directions. One, you had sort of the Trump administration approach early in their administration first year, certainly, where it was hands-off, let's let AI be AI, and we need to win this race against the Chinese, so an American firm gets there first

if we're going to talk about AGI or any of these other threshold developments. Now, though, what you're seeing is this real sense of alarm behind the scenes that the AI that's been developed already could have really unanticipated consequences for the rest of the private sector. And I think when you see meetings of this level that you're just hearing about from Kate being scheduled and you see people, you know, CEOs of major companies, the Treasury Secretary jumping on unannounced, unscheduled meetings, that gives you a sense of there's a real problem. So sorry. I really appreciate your perspective here. We just have to get straight to see.

We need to show you the old mission capital ringing the closing bell at Cebo in Chicago, ending the regular trading day for options. Obviously, a very important story. Amon was just telling us about with regard to the sentiment in Washington and the change from more of an offensive posture to a defensive posture and thinking in terms of regulation as it pertains to AI. Thank you so much, Amon, for sharing that with us. Let's dig into what this cyber threat from AI could mean for businesses and CEOs. Joining me now is Teresa Payton.

She's a former White House Chief Information Officer and currently the CEO of cyber firm Fort Alice Solutions. Teresa, help break it down for us if you're in the White House right now. How are you assessing the various AI models and the threat to cybersecurity, both within the United States as well as externally? Yeah, so it's a great question that you ask, Leslie. So a couple of things because just kind of unpacking, I heard Amon say, you know, there's consternation about whether or not what was reported by Anthropic is really in reality what's going to prove to be true. And so let's just put that aside for a minute and just say, Frontier AI, which is what

we're talking about here, it is the smartest AI on the planet right now. And if everything proves to be true from what Anthropic has self-reported, that means that Mythos is now the best vulnerability hunter in the world, at least as far as we know. It's finding serious bugs. These are bugs that have gone unattected according to the reports, almost two decades. So if you're sitting in the White House right now thinking about this, you think to yourself, this is an incredible leap forward for companies to secure the systems. However, this is something that in the wrong hands becomes a weapon that companies and

And our departments and agencies are going to have a hard time defending against. So is step one, it sounds like, I mean, there's probably so much more that we have yet to learn about this at this point in time. But from a regulatory standpoint, is it better to tackle the regulatory risk and the cybersecurity risk through the maker itself, through Anthropic, or to firms it deems to be more vulnerable, obviously the banking sector and other places? I mean, what do you see as kind of the priority once the government knows that these types of risks could exist and need to be protected? Yeah, I love your question. And I have to say, unfortunately, I think it's in all of the above. And so, you know, if we're looking at it multiple choice and saying, well, we need to actually force rank if all of these are true, it's kind of force rank. They're all a number one priority because, again, with this frontier AI model, if it proves to be true, it means that maybe in quite,

it and in secret that others have built similar models and we just don't know about them. But if it can autonomously scan vast amounts of code and then chain together previously unknown security vulnerabilities and critical systems, that is obviously something that all of today's security products have not found. And that means that things are kind of wide open. So what this means is that businesses have to be looking at their security plans and saying prior to this, Is there anything on our plan that needs to be accelerated? The answer is probably yes. Secondly, are there things that are sort of on our future roadmap that we haven't gotten to yet?

And can we accelerate those? Hopefully they can get to a yes there. And then on the other side of it, all of the AI companies do need to be held accountable for how can they put in the governance and guardrails to make sure that we have safety, privacy, security, resiliency. obviously ethics too, but as it relates to businesses, you know, being able to be resilient and recoverable and being able to sort of self-heal once you detect that there might be an intrusion underway. Are they in the position to detect and secure their various apparatuses? And I asked this because, of course, the model, Ananthropic says it found vulnerability is going back decades,

essentially. And so are they in the position to even kind of see where those holes might exist and fix them before such a model is released into the wild, either by Anthropic or someone else? Yeah, this is a tough one. The question is, too, if they can find the vulnerability, do they have the right model set up within Anthropic? And this is also for the other AI companies as well, to fix it machine speed what they're finding. Because the problem is, is if they do the scan, they find the vulnerability, how do they get to the team that's responsible for actually changing the configurations and making the changes? Can they do that at machine speed or do they have to notify somebody? And is that done at human speed or

machine speed? So these are all really unanswered questions. We have more questions than we have answers right now about what this means. And that must be the reason why Anthropics said, We cannot make this commercially available yet. We have to get a consortium together. We have to discuss this. We have to figure out what happens next. Yeah, Project Glasswing, those 50 companies, given early access to Mythos so they can find and assess those potential weaknesses in their systems.

We'll see what comes out of that. Teresa Payton, appreciate your perspective on this quickly evolving technology and fast-moving story. Thank you. The IGV software ETF down nearly four. 3% second straight big loss. And this is not a new trend. Look at that chart from the year, year today losses for some of the names in that fund. Some big names cut in half or worse. Did these declines create value or a value trap? We'll answer those questions. You're watching closing bell overtime live from the NASDAQ market site. Welcome back. Shares of Fair Isaac,

ticker symbol F ICO getting hit pretty hard today, down 14%. The head, head, of the Mortgage Bankers Association saying the government is moving ahead with a plan to to offer a credit score competitor to FICO called Vantage score, Fair Isaac shares having their lowest close in two and a half years. Sticking with this idea of tech and software, Corweave posting its best day in two weeks after announcing a multi-year agreement with Anthropic. On the negative side, software worries back in focus, not sure they really ever left this week after Anthropic launched a new slate. of high-powered models, names like Adobe, Service Now, Salesforce, and Intuit, all trading at

multi-year lows. Joining me here on set is Patrick Walraven, Citizens Head of Technology, Equity Research, in town from California, which I am curious to get your perspective on what the vibe is like out there these days. But first, I want to kind of just level set with, you know, there's so much that's been made about the zero-sum game between AI and software. And I'm curious how you are seeing the line right now between. what is software and what is AI? Because a lot of software companies are saying, well, no, no, we've got all of these products.

We're pivoting. We don't have our head in the sand. We're doing things to change it. Is there a clear line at this point in time in terms of what is a software company and what's an AI company and how investors should be assessing the potential modes around them?

Yeah, great. Well, first of all, thank you for having me. It's great to be here. No, there's not. Because what we're going through is we're going through a platform transition. And the last time we had a platform transition like this was 20 years ago

when companies had to go from on-premise to SaaS, and the SaaS companies pretty much destroyed any on-premise company that didn't evolve. SAS eating the world. Yeah, and that's where we are today, which is today's SaaS companies are now facing the same kinds of pressure that they put on on-prem. Now they're facing it from AI. And if they don't evolve, you know, no one's going to go bankrupt,

but they'll drop to a really low level and they'll just flatline and then eventually they'll get acquired. So, no, everyone has to become an AI company. So even if they do evolve, though, do they have a company? competitive advantage? They can. So if you go back to the year 2000 and you look at who is the number one software company in the year 2000, it was Microsoft. They did just fine. If you look at who was the number two software company in the year 2000, it was, and this is going to test some of your viewers,

there's a company called Sun Microsystems. Where are they now? Right? So you can definitely do it, but you have to disrupt yourself. You have to push hard. If you look at what service now just announced today, you know, that would be one example. the sort of action that you need to take where they're a and i enabling their entire suite but yeah you can't you can't keep doing things the way you used to do them or you're not going to make it is that a corollary though because the technology is evolving so fast here and it's evolving in a way that is so expensive too it requires so much capex so much in terms of getting the proper talent inside your you know your home in order to create these things so

you know do you see this this this pivoting as being something that's possible yeah so Let's talk Anthropic, because that's really what we're talking about, right? So Anthropic, incredibly, this company did $14 billion in run rate revenue in February, 19 billion in March, and then $30 billion in April. How on earth does that happen? Right? It's incredible. And I had drinks last night with one software executive, and he said his entire company is taking next week off.

The CEO is bringing everyone together. No one's doing their day jobs. They are all training on Claude for a week. And then I had lunch today in the city with another. software executive, he has like 1,700 employees, and he is totally encouraging everyone to get up to speed on Claude. He's giving him all as many tokens as they want. He's like, we'll worry about the cost later. So right now there's this skyrocketing enterprise adoption of Claude. And so that's the world that the software companies have to fit into. That's the good side of Anthropic.

I've listened to you with your last two guests. The bad side of Anthropic is really scary. This new model is terrifying. You know, we should all be anxious about it. It breaks out of its sandbox. It sends a note to its researcher, hey, I'm out. It covers up his tracks, and then it decides it wants to publish the details of its exploits in some random areas. So you have to ask yourself, who do we want these models? What guardrails do we want them operating inside of? Do you really want the anthropic models operating inside an entirely anthropic environment?

Or is that the Fox Guarding the headhouse? Yeah. Does it need some more checks and balances? Yes. Yeah, I think so. I think so, right? And you look like, you know, Citizens Bank, right? It's, you know, 150-year-old financial institution, you know, one of the largest financial institutions in the United States. We use Service Now, right? And we trust Service Now. And when I get an email from Service Now asking me to approve something, I'm confident that that hasn't been spoofed and it's not something, you know, that someone is trying to trick me into doing something that I shouldn't do. So I do think that there is, there is huge value to the trust and the security and the guardrails. that are in our existing systems that may be this whole software versus a problem

that we're going to have is shining a light on. No, it's a great point. Patrick Walravens, thank you so much for joining in studio today. I really appreciate your time. Pleasure to be here. The issues with software companies have been a major cause of the private credit decline so far this year due to their exposure, but has that selling been overdone? We'll discuss it next on overtime. Welcome back to Overton.

Over time, private credit stocks have been under pressure this year. The AI-driven software sell-off has definitely spilled over into this sector as well. Names like Aries Management, Apollo, Blue Owl, and Blackstone, all down double digits. Our next guest says private credit concerns are more about sentiment than insolvency. Joining us now is Seabrook Financial Chief Investment Officer Mark Malick. I think this is a really interesting comment because you're talking about right now, default rates are fine. Pick is going up a little bit. Psychology is the real issue here, especially as it pertains to the redemptions and the attempted run on some of these funds.

How hard, though, do you think it is to change psychology? Oh, boy, that's a tough one. I think at this point, it seems like it has a little bit of a momentum of its own, right? So, if you're driving by your local bank and you see a line at the front door and the front door is locked, you know, your first thought is, should I be on that line? And so, of course, you're in this, you know, you can get into this sort of doom spiral. But the good news is, is, right, a lot of these companies don't only have these retail investors invested in them. And that's really sort of what's going to shore things up, right? You don't see the institutions that really make up the bulk of the investments in these funds. They're not online asking for their money back. However,

there are challenges for them, too, right? Because as these funds try to raise money for the redemptions, even though they're tame right now, they're selling things. And when you're selling private credit and things like that, that means there's going to be pressure on valuations and net asset values are going to be tough to figure out. So even companies that are in it for the long haul are going to be struggling with, you know, their risk models as well. So there are other potential challenges there. Yeah. One person brought this idea to me of, you know, the redemption concept. It's kind of like when people were rushing out to buy tour. paper during the pandemic. You didn't want to be the one who got to the store when all the

toilet paper was gone, essentially. You have business with private credit from the sense that you own the equities of some of these managers as well as you have clients that are involved in the retail component. What do you think this whole saga will mean for retail involvement in private credit? Do you think that this is something where maybe this was an experiment with retail? It was seen as a next leg of growth for many of these managers. And now, Given everything that's happened and the fragility and just the psychology that's involved, they'll say, you know what, why don't we just stick to institutional investors? This is not necessarily worth the reputational risk.

Yeah, I mean, that is a fabulous point, I think, because that really is what caused a lot of the challenge here, right? It's the retail money that they went after during this certain period because, again, it's all about mismatching of, I think, durations and expectations, right? Retail investors will say that they have a long duration, but for a retail investor, long duration is next week. And then even though they say that they have a long view, but insurance companies, endowments, right, they can really plan many, many years ahead. So they're anticipating keeping their money in. So once they went after the retail folks, that's when the challenge happened. And now that's going to kind of put a lot of pressure on the system, right? Even though they, in some cases, depending on every fund is different, in some cases retail makes up, like Blue Al has a couple of funds.

I have a lot of retail money in it. That's going to put a big, big challenge on everybody. But the ones that don't, I feel like, you know, they're going to be okay. But it's very hard to manage a fund if you're a fund manager, if you're constantly worrying about redemption requests and having to keep liquid. And that means you can invest less. And there are all sorts of challenges associated with that. That said, I think you're right in that retail is going to retail. I don't think that they can count on retail as much as they thought they could.

I mean, I remember seeing analysts talking about how big the market could be for retail investors. Now, of course, in 401Ks, now you're able to put these things in 401Ks. But I can tell you from the perspective of advisors who have clients, I think they're going to sort of shy away from this. There are other opportunities right now. why get yourself in a situation where your client is not getting their money out or they're worried about the valuation of their investment? Even if it's completely healthy, it just, you know, it might not be a good look at this point from a retail perspective. Right. And 401K is, of course, solve for the duration risk because, you know, theoretically you're supposed to be, have your money

in a 401k for a long time, but still some of those reputational risks that are out there. Mark Malik, thank you so much for your time today. Appreciate it. Amazon shares up 13% just this week. It's the best week in more than three years. Up next, much more on this winning week for the markets and what you need to be watching next week when earning season begins overtime. We'll be right back. Welcome back to closing bell over time live from the NASDAQ market site. A mixed day for stock. The Dow losing 269 points.

Small loss for the S&P 500, but the NASDAQ did close higher for the eighth straight session. All the major averages ended the week with gains of 3% or more. but check out this weekly gain for Intel. 23% is best week since January 2000. It's up 70% so far this year. But if we take that chart out a few years, we see that Intel is still just getting back to the levels it hit in 2021. Quite the chart, though.

Time now for a CNBC News update with Brandon Gomez. Brandon. Hey, Leslie. President Trump is planning mass pardons for his staff before he leaves office at the end of his term. That's according to new reporting from the news. the Wall Street Journal, quoting sources who say Trump has reportedly said that he will, quote, pardon everyone who has come within 200 feet of the Oval Office. Trump has granted clemency to some

1,600 people to date, many of them, allies or donors. The Department of Homeland Security is cracking down on so-called birth tourism schemes. According to an internal email reviewed by Reuters, DHS is ordering ICE agents to root out networks that allegedly help pregnant women lie on their visa applications in order to give birth on U.S. soil and ensure their child, U.S. citizenship. It's the latest push by the Trump administration to limit birthright citizenship. And discount grocery chain Liddell is building its first pub set to open this summer in Northern Ireland. The retailer says it will be associated with a nearby liquor store that offers a range of wines, beers and spirits. Construction of the pub is underway after a legal battle with a rival

drinks trader who argued the proposed pub site was not suitable for license. Leslie, back to you. Try the beer, buy it in the store. Makes sense. Sounds like one for you to follow, given your beat, Brandon. Thank you. Our higher energy prices and mortgage rates, creating a House of Wars for the spring sales season. Housing expert, Ivy Zellman, weighs in next. Wells Fargo downgrading paintmaker Sherwin Williams to equal weight from overweight and slashing its price target to 365 from 410. The analysts there citing rising raw material costs from the war in Iran and a challenging U.S. housing housing. market. So could the Iran war be worrying homeowners enough to keep them on the sidelines? New mortgage applications to buy a home fell this week compared to the previous year. The first such

dropped since last January. So let's get more on the housing outlook and the macro challenges facing the space as the spring selling season begins. With me now is Zellman Executive Vice President, Ivy Zellman. Ivy, as I was doing that reader, I was just thinking about the fact that a week or two ago, I painted a dining room in my home because I, you know, rising costs and just wanted to do it myself. It sounds like I'm not alone in terms of just fixing up my current property as opposed to buying something new. Well, I would just say good for you that you're doing it yourself. That's pretty cool. It took a very long time. I wouldn't recommend it, but. Well, I think that the war does put people at, on the sidelines and confidence is definitely a big

indicator for housing. You know, the market started off this year with the headwinds from weather. But overall, I'd say we did see some green shoots that have now, unfortunately, been pretty much sidelined. So we are seeing the, you know, housing markets sort of just be choppy and disappointing for the spring so far. How much of that is rising oil prices, making, you know, consumers worried about spending on big-ticket things like a house, and how much of it is just interest rates being sticky and stubbornly higher than maybe people were expecting as they were looking into the spring selling season? You know, I think we have a tale of two price points still. The, you know, move-up buyer tends to be more in tune to what's happening, whether geopolitical

risks or what's happening from a, you know, high-end anxiety around job losses. But the, you know, I guess high end has continued to outperform. And I think in certain markets, it's actually still doing fairly well. So as we have a tail of two price points, we still have a tail of two geographies. And I think that the first time buyer, it's really about rates. You know, I think that the rate movement, you know, has been relative to, I guess, where we were last year. We're down a little bit. But, you know, we are down, call it 25 basis points, but it's 6.4% on 30-year fixed. I don't think it's enough to get a lot of people off the sidelines or actually to qualify. with the public builders still using mortgage rate buy downs.

I think it's a great value to be a buyer of new homes right now. Yeah, absolutely. Are there specific, you mentioned, obviously, that it's not the same everywhere across the United States. Where specifically are there opportunities being generated by the spring selling season and where are things still pretty high and supply pretty tight? Well, I'd say that, interestingly, the Carolinas, talking to a first-time builder there, entry-level builder,

He said that they were seeing seasonally better than normal activity and that the war is actually stimulating some people to say, I want to buy real estate because it makes me feel safe and others that are pulling out money out of the stock market on the move-up side in places like Southern California and in Washington State, we're seeing people say, you know, that's a better opportunity than keeping my money in the market. I think that the Midwest has been an outperformer. The Northeast remains an outperformer. and the challenges that we have are really still in the sunbelt, with the exception of the Carolinas, that's where the market is still suffering from too much supply, not just on the for sale side, but across the rental space as well. All right. Ivy Zellman, thanks for watching it all for us with regard to housing and the spring selling season. Up next, a top analyst tells us whether you should buy the big banks ahead of their earnings next week. Welcome back. Let's get you set up for the next trading.

week on the economic calendar, we will get existing home sales on Monday. The producer price index on Tuesday, home builder sentiment and the Fed's beige book on Wednesday, weekly jobless claims industrial production and business inventories on Thursday and housing starts closes out the week on Friday. And then rest up everybody. The big banks are set to kick off earning season with a bang. Goldman Sachs gets things started on Monday. J.P. Morgan Chase City and Wells Fargo report on Tuesday, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley are the highlights on Wednesday, but it's not actually all about the banks because Netflix takes center stage on Thursday. For more on what to expect from those bank earnings, let's bring in RBC Capital Markets, co-head of Global Financials Research,

Gerard Cassidy, who will be resting up this weekend, I am sure. But what are you, what is your number one priority in terms of commentary from the executives on these calls? Because there is so much uncertainty. Macro has been front and center all year for these banks. I'm just curious what you are most interested in hearing from them about. Leslie, first of all, I think we're very interested in hearing about the results in the first quarter, but we expect the guidance or the outlook to be tempered because of the hostilities in the Middle East. But the other important metric, many investors, myself included, will focus on is credit quality and commentary around the the private credit developments that we've been seeing over the last four to six weeks.

And this impacts the banking system, both because a lot of them are lenders to the private credit funds themselves, as well as what it says about the potential capital markets environment. You know, how much weight would you put on all of those different elements that the banking system has related to private credit, as well as just what it says about credit quality in general and the health of the balance sheets across the same. system? The health of the balance sheets are very strong. The capital levels of the U.S. banking industry and liquidity is the best we've seen in decades. We're not as worried about the private credit exposure to the banks as we were going into 2007 with the subprime crisis or back yet

in 1990 with the commercial real estate crisis. Yes, banks do have some exposure, but it's quite low and it's very manageable. Does that mean that they're not going to have maybe some credit losses in lending to BDCs that are owned by the private equity and private credit firms. Possibly that will happen later this year or next year. But again, we think it's very manageable. The exposures are not significant. However, there is the headline risks that we all have to be aware of. Right. Absolutely. What about strategically? Because it's kind of ironic in some ways that so much of the regulation that we've seen post-financial crisis has caused banks to pull back leading to more lending in the non-bank financial sector. Now we have this whole regulatory

overhaul underway. Of course, there's the comment period and so forth. But I'm curious what you make of the potential strategic changes that banks may talk about now that we've seen some of these proposals out in the open on the quarterly conference calls, what it means for their own M&A, what it means for the types of lending they do and all of that. It's a very good question because we envision a reintermediation back into the banks for two reasons. One, the one you just cited, the regulations are changing. The regulators are adopting more flexible rules to enable the banks to be more engaged in lending to stimulate economic growth. But second, because of the issues in private credit, we think there's going to be a need for the

banks to come in and lend as the private credit lenders pull back. So I do think you're going to hear more people talk about the potential reintermediation. And that's the other big part about what we're hearing is the regulatory change is very positive for the banks. They're going to have better capital rules. And more importantly, they're going to have a codification of the Basel 3 end game sometime later this year. And it will finally be put the rest after many, many years of being out there unfinished. It will finally be finished. And real quickly, Gerard, the banks have had quite the run-up over the last few years, but they have come down a little bit this year. Would you be buyers ahead of the the earnings next week? Yes, we would. We think you're going to hear, again, very strong results,

trading results for the capital market players like a Goldman Sachs on Monday and JPMorgan, the city, B of A, and Morgan Stanley should all be very strong this quarter. Invest in banking results should be healthy. ECM will be a little soft. But I do think what you're going to hear from the lenders, the spreads are very healthy, plus the loan growth is now heading over 6, 7%. So I think you're going to hear some good stuff. It's definitely an inflection point. Gerard Cassidy. Thank you so much.

That does it for overtime.