Closing Bell - Closing Bell Overtime: Stocks Power To Record Highs; Fans Flock To Apple Stores as New iPhone Goes on Sale 9/19/25

Episode Date: September 19, 2025

Markets extend recent strength and notch fresh records. Former Bridgewater Chief Investment Strategist Rebecca Patterson on what's next for markets. Our Steve Kovach is on the ground at an Apple store to gauge customer excitement for the new phone. Vital Knowledge's Adam Crisfulli looks ahead to next week's market catalyst.     Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Well, that bail marks the end of regulation. IBM, bringing the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange, white fiber doing the honors at the NASDAQ. And once again, we've got record highs for all three major averages. Russell 2000 closing lower, however, but the Russell is the best of the bunch for the week with a gain of 2.5%. Apple's a big gainer as its new iPhones go on sale. We'll get a live report on the iPhone 17 coming up.

And speaking of, people buying expensive phones, tech and consumer discretionary, the best performing sectors. energy, the worst, as oil falls 1%. And the 10-year yield rising once again, a two-week high, following the Fed's rate cut on Wednesday. Gold resuming its rally up 1%. More and more big names coming out and saying gold need to be a bigger part of your portfolio.

Well, that's the scorecard on Wall Street. Welcome to Closing Bell Overtime. I'm Morgan Brennan, along with John Fort. We have a big interview coming up on Overtime. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik will join us. immigration, trade talks, Intel. The speculation that Scott Bessent could be Treasury Secretary and Fed chair at the same time. So much more, we're going to get Secretary Lutnik's reaction to it all.

Now, we begin, though, with another record close on the three major averages. As I mentioned, the Fed's decision to cut interest rates earlier in the week, boosting confidence on Wall Street. But since the cut, long-term bond yields have risen. One reason continued concern about inflation. Earlier here on CNBC, a brand new Federal Reserve Governor Stephen Myron said this about tariffs and inflation. I don't see any material inflation from tariffs. I see no evidence that it's occurred.

In my opinion, if you look at import-intensive core goods, they've inflated at no faster rates than overall core goods, which is not what you'd expect to see if you thought tariffs were driving inflation higher. You'd think imports would be differentially inflating at a higher pace. Joining us now is former chief investment strategist of Brickwater Associates, senior fellow now at the Council on Foreign Relations. Rebecca Patterson. Rebecca, welcome. Good to be here. Happy Friday. You see any evidence of inflation from tariffs? I think most economists do. So I'm super excited to hear what Governor Myron has to say in more detail Monday when he speaks at the Economic Club of New York. I mean, just to give you one of many examples, if you look at appliances.

Last year, the first seven months of the year, appliance prices were down 0.6%. First seven months of this year, they're up 3.3%. That's tariffs. That's nothing but tariffs. Okay. Now, in the old school, if you were concerned about inflation, you might buy gold, Ray Dalio, among the voices calling for gold to be 10% or so of a portfolio. You think that's called for?

I think 10% is an aggressive position, but I think it depends on your risk. appetite and what else is in your portfolio. But look, I've been bullish on gold for about two years. I'm still bullish at even at these levels. My original thesis was central bank reserve diversification. Central banks have bought 1,000 tons a year of gold for the last three years. That's about double the pace of the previous decade. Now, they're slowing down a little bit this year, but they're still buyers. And if you look at the World Gold Council survey, they're suggesting that almost half of the central banks they surveyed are expecting to add more in the coming year. But more recently, the bigger driver has been retail investors, institutional investors who say,

I'm not as confident as I used to be that bonds are going to diversify my portfolios. So gold is a complementary diversifier. If you look at the last 39 falls in the S&P 500, 5% or more, the average fall of those periods was about 9%. And you look at what gold did in those instances, it was up on average and the majority of those instances. So it has proven itself to diversify. By the way, over those periods, 39 falls of the S&P of 5% or more. Bitcoin, diversifier, digital gold, down 5% on average, down 70% of the time. I'm just saying.

All right. You came armed with stats. I love it. Even as we're having this conversation about gold, we've seen the dollar continue to weaken here. And we've seen some interesting moves, including this ever-steapening yield curve here. I want to get your thoughts on that as well. Well, it's not surprising to me to see the 10-year yield higher after the Fed cut. Now, in the olden days, past decades, when inflation was much lower, when inflation came down and the Fed was cutting, it was cutting because the economy was slowing and the 10-year yield would come down.

Today, though, inflation is running a lot hotter. I mean, Core PCE is on track to be 2.9 percent again in August. And so we're about a point ahead, and we have an economy that's running pretty hot. despite the labor market slowing. The Atlanta Fed is selling as GDP is running well over 3% right now for the third quarter. So when the Fed is juicing the economy, so to speak, with already decent growth overall and with inflation running higher, it makes sense that the market's going to price in longer term, higher growth, higher inflation, so that yield goes up.

It makes sense that that's happening today. We're in a very different world than the last 15 years or so. I am curious what you're seeing around the world because one of the other things that came up in Fed Governor Steve Myron's interview on CNBC this morning was the fact that some of the dynamics we're talking about here are playing out in other major economies in the world too in a week where we've had a flurry of central bank decisions overall and then sort of percolating in the background is geopolitics so I'm also curious how closely you're watching that when we've seen some of these incursions into not one not two but by my last count. three different NATO members airspace. Yeah, the drones going in. Yes. I mean, it's very scary. It's clear that Putin is trying to send a signal and test.

See how far you can go. See how the West reacts. What is it going to take? What red line before you get a reaction? I think that's another reason people are buying gold right now. It is a hedge against tail risk. But the market at these levels, you know, what are we, 10 times above the March 2009 low? That was a great stat that got thrown out earlier.

Valuations are full slash rich. Ownership is high. It makes sense that you're going to want some hedges in your portfolio of some sort because there are geopolitical risks that right now are back burner. They're not moving the markets, but it wouldn't take much to turn them into something hot, whether that's in the Middle East, whether that's in the South China Seas or whether it's in Europe, thanks to Russia. We'll cross our fingers they don't happen. But there's enough probability that they could that you want to make sure your portfolio would be protected.

If you've just gone all into equities, you're exposed. I mean, you could see profit taking be pretty painful, pretty fast. Well, the economy is running a bit hot, you argue, but working class consumers are running low on credit capacity right now. How does that story resolve, given that this economy has depended so much on consumers to keep spending? it just more of a tilt toward the well healed or does something break? I think it's so hard right now. And I really, I mean, honestly, I feel for the Fed at that meeting this week because they get information from all around the country. And even within a single state, you see that bifurcation. If you own your home, if you own equities, you've had a great wealth effect and you have

confidence and you can spend. If you are a renter who doesn't have equities and you don't have a college degree, you're struggling, increasingly so. And the Fed can only set, rates one time, right? So they have to figure out that aggregate level that makes sense for the broader economy. What you really need is policy responses from the government to try to address that. You know, what can you do? The rate cut at the margin helps growth. Hopefully that helps other people get jobs, but it's not clear that it will. Things like the housing market to address affordability, I actually have something coming out next week on that, that will be public. But, you know, we really need to be focusing on supply. We need to be focusing

frankly, on reducing some of the tariffs that are pushing up input costs, a tariff on Canadian lumber. The U.S. produces a lot of lumber, but not nearly enough. If we can reduce the input costs, if we can have enough construction workers, which includes immigrants, if we can work on permitting reform, which the federal government absolutely can help with, even though it's also state and local, you can bring down houses. Lessing that affordability crisis would help some of the people you're describing, John, at least in that sense. I still think more is needed address things like food and energy, the electricity price inflation is quickly becoming a crisis for a lot of people in the country.

I do want to go back to this idea that equity valuations are rich right now. Would you be buying into this market? And if so, what areas are still compelling? You know, it's not a quantitative economic argument, but one thing that I think we've seen from this administration, and I'll be eerily watching your interview with Secretary Lutnik later, they understand that doing well at the midterm next year means how. having a strong economy going into the midterm next year. And so if they start seeing growth go off the rails, softening more than is comfortable, making voters increasingly unhappy,

they'll pivot. I mean, we saw that after Liberation Day. Chinese tariffs at 145% didn't last very long because we saw it immediately feeding through to our supply chains. So that makes me think that if the equity market starts falling because of a macro factor that the government can address, they're going to try to address it. Now, that said, I still take a bar-billed approach with my allocation. I like tech. It's rich, but I want to be in AI beneficiaries for a structural trade. I like global defense, again, as a thematic trade infrastructure, but I also like

utilities, which are much more defensive. I don't know if I'd have 10% in gold, like my former boss, Mr. Dahlio, but I certainly think something between 2% and 5% as part of that diversification makes a lot of sense right now. Okay. Rebecca Patterson, we covered a lot with you. Thanks for being here. Always happy to see you. Well, President Trump talking to China's President Xi this morning, they discussed TikTok, a possible meeting in China.

But we may have even bigger news to talk about the White House now shooting down the idea that Scott Bessent could become Fed Chair in addition to his role as Treasury Secretary. Amon Javers is in Washington for us with more on this and where this rumor, if you will, came from in the first place. Yeah, Morgan, it was a provocative comment. by the former Trump advisor Steve Bannon on Sean Spicer's podcast that's getting the focus of attention here. CNBC obtained this comment exclusively, and in it, Bannon raises a provocative idea, the idea that he prefers Scott Besson served simultaneously as the Treasury Secretary and as the chairman of the Fed. Here's what he says. Take a listen. I am a big believer that on an interim basis that Scott Besson should be both,

the head of the Federal Reserve and the Secretary of Treasury and maybe get through the midterm elections, step down his treasury and take over the Federal Reserve. So there you hear, Ben, and saying that he goes on to explain in the clip that the reason he likes Besson is because Besson has a unique ability to translate sort of Trumpian economic ideas to the global financial markets. And that skill signals that Besson is a unique set of steady hands who would be able to handle both jobs at the same time. The White House, though, pouring some cold water on that. Here's what a White House official said about that idea a short time ago. Such an arrangement is not being and has never been considered by the White House. So that seems

to be an indication from inside the building that they're not looking at that idea that's being floated among the MAGA base outside the building. All that to say, Morgan, it's worth just paying attention to this blip just because it is circulating now among the president's base. We'll see if the president embraces or rejects that idea. We may see the president on camera one more time before the weekend here today. So we'll see if he decides he wants to talk about this or not. Amen, just remind me, where are we in terms of the latest headlines before this one, which came out, what, an hour or two ago, for the short list for Fed Chair?

Well, the president has said he's taken Besant off the short list for Fed Chair. And so Besson is off. Besson is the one doing the interviewing. And there are a whole bunch of people on that list, including the Kevin's, of course, Kevin Warsh and Kevin Hassett and others being considered. The president has said he has two or three people in mind, but he hasn't signaled a preference. Kevin Hassett, by the way, is standing right over here off camera. So maybe I'll ask him as soon as he gets done with his hit on another television network right now.

All right. Would you do that for us? Thank you, Amy. I will. Amy Chaffers. Well, we've got a market flash on Oracle. Mackenzie Seagallos has the details. McKenzie.

Hey, John. So Oracle shares end of the day 4% higher after Bloomberg reported that it is in advanced talks with Meta on a $20 billion multi-year cloud computing deal. The agreement would make Oracle a critical infrastructure provider for Meta's AI training and deployment. It also follows OpenAI's massive $300 billion cloud commitment to Oracle, really cementing Oracle's status as a bigger player in that AI arms race. Meta ended off its session lows as investors digest what cloud. what could become another landmark partnership and this scramble for AI computing power. Back to you guys. All right. Mackenzie Sagalos, thank you. The capacity crunch continues for AI compute. Well, now let's bring in senior markets commentator Mike Santoli for a look at what the charts are saying about the underlying economy. Mike. Yeah, Morgan, it can kind of tell

whatever story you might want to project upon it, but this is interesting looking at the Dow theory component. So the Dow Industrial average compared to the transports and the utilities. This is over five years because I wanted to show the separation the way the industrials have kind of accelerated higher relative to those other two. Now remember what the industrials are right now. It's got Goldman Sachs, got Microsoft, it's got Nvidia in there. So it's not purely speaking, industrials. And it's the transports that obviously are registering a lot of the stress in the physical movement of stuff and people economy. Trucking and such have struggle. We got FedEx with maybe better than feared results today. But it shows you that they're kind of churning around

familiar levels. So it helps to explain why the broad market has been able to hold up. And also, the market has been mindful of the areas that have been either tariff impact or going through a little bit of a growth stutter step. Another macro indicator, obviously widely watched this week is the 10-year Treasury yield. You guys were just talking about it. I have it here along with its 50-day average. And right around 4 and a quarter is where these two would come together if we've continued to see yields bounce. Four and a quarter, as you can see, it's been a little bit of a floor for much of this year. And until we were to get above that and really maybe go beyond into the upside with a little bit of juice, with a little bit of momentum behind it, I don't think

it's going to really alarm the stock market. I don't think it's going to get people saying, oh, we have an inflationary issue or anything like that. So we're in a pretty benign zone, and that would be your signal if we really raced ahead of those levels that maybe the trend has changed. Yeah, we've got the Dow at a record high. Yeah. Going back to the transports piece to this. It's been a while since we talked about it, so I'm going to trot it out again now, and that is Dow Theory. Does it have a place in this conversation? It's really tough to, certainly over the five-year span, it has not held the broad market back, the fact that the transports have not really confirmed those new highs.

I know the world, including me, or have been hearkening back to the late 90s and that whole business in terms of whether we're inflating a similar tech bubble to what we did back then. the Dow theory gave a cell signal, like a full two years before the overall market actually finally topped and started to buckle. So I don't know if we're necessarily saying it's obsolete, but it's certainly not one of the things you would look to first to suggest the direction of things, especially given relatively muted market cap representation by transports in the overall index. All right.

Mike Santoli, thank you. See you in a bit. Well, when Apple introduced its new phone, some critics and cynics were not impressed. But what about those Apple enthusiasts, the ones who line up outside an Apple store to be the first on their block with a new iPhone that they didn't get in the mail anyway? What do they think? That's coming up on Overtime. Welcome back to Overtime. Huge gains today in the nuclear stocks, names such as Oklo, New Scale, Centrous Energy, and Nanonuclear Energy. You can see those all right here of double-digit percentages. This continues a big week for those names. Oklahoma up more than 60% as President Trump made nuclear one of the top issues in his trade talks this week.

The U.S. and the U.K. will work together to speed up nuclear reviews and deployment and in general coming out of those U.K. meetings, John, Energy, a big topic of discussion and negotiation. For sure. Yeah. And meantime, Apple, one of the top gainers in the S&P, as its new iPhone 17 goes on sale. Steve Kovac is in an Apple store in New York City, Manhattan, I believe, right? more on customer demand. Steve? That's right, the flagship store out here, Manhattan, Fifth Avenue. It is just a zoo here, and in the best way possible for Apple, there's just, the lines just continue to stay long. The complete opposite of what I saw last year by this time of the day,

where the lines were basically just pretty much empty. And so now we're going to talk about what, sorry, we got some characters behind us here. Anyway, John. I'm sorry about this. We got a protester behind us, so sorry. We can hear you a lot better than we come out here. Yeah, I'm so sorry. Yeah, she's just screaming over me right now. Anyway, really strong signals of demand. We saw JP Morgan raise their price target on this

because of those early demand signals. And on top of that, we had Tim Cook telling our Jim Kramer. He's also seeing it as well. So we're just a lot of optimism here. We're going to get some more data over the time. So, John, I'll just send it back to you for now, but a huge day for Apple. It seems like these design changes are really spurring people to show up and come out. We'll get some more sales data over the weekend, John. Steve Kovac, thank you. I guess the bright side here is that free speech is not dead on the streets of Manhattan, Morgan.

There was a lot of speaking going on, and it wasn't just Steve Kovac. But you always got to be careful with these iPhone launch announcements and people being unimpressed watching the stock chart to see how the consumer responds to it. No, they don't have Apple intelligence, but with the air in particular, which people have been saying, maybe it didn't sell that great out of the gate being shipped to people, but once they get it in their hands in the store and compare it to the thinness of the other ones, you never know what might happen. That's right.

And of course, what this means not just for Apple when you talk about a device like that, but also some of its suppliers like Corning, which I think has played an integral role. and we've certainly seen the investment by Apple because of it in that new air design and the glass, for lack of a better term, that's gone into that design as well. Yeah, that's the term of art. And then the modem as well, since Apple's homegrown modems are an important new component feature here, if they can sell enough of these and the early numbers, early interest, I guess, are encouraging, that helps them on the margins and perhaps contributes to why Tim Cook says no tariff impact

and the price increases here. All right. Well, coming up, we are taking time out with the CEO of J-Frog. That stock has jumped 70% this year. It helps companies get their AI agents to work better and perhaps with fewer mistakes. Overtimes back. Welcome back. Pallantir, one of the top stocks in the S&P 500 today, continuing gains following its big deal to make an investment in the UK and receive a contract from its Ministry of Defense. Pallentier is now up 16% so far in September, but not quite back to those all-time highs. from early August, but certainly continuing to expand its orbit of government contracts above and beyond just the U.S., John. Oh, for sure. Well, as the largest players in technology launched chips, data center systems, and language models for the artificial intelligence era, others are rewiring the enterprise ecosystem when AI is getting work done on its own. Shomi Benheim is co-founder and CEO of Jafrog. It's a public company with a nearly $6 billion market cap. J-Frog makes tools that help software developers securely deliver the software they've built. Ben Haim knows a lot about getting work done.

As a kid growing up in Israel, he and his siblings worked cleaning houses to help their mother support the family, and they gained a reputation for being the best at what they did. I'll tell you what I think make us the best, my sister, my brother and myself, and it's everything I am, I owe to my mother. but we didn't have a choice. I couldn't afford myself to lose this job. I had to be the best. I couldn't be number two.

Number two means that someone else can take my job and I need to do it. So this is how it started. Now as he leads JFrog, it's expanding into tools that will help AI agents safely get work done on their own through a two called App Trust announced earlier this month. It addresses an enormous challenge, because when software agents are completing tasks with less human supervision, it'll lead to a lot more software getting pushed into the world and a lot more potential mistakes.

We told our customers, listen, the complexity that AI brings, the amount of software that need to be released, and the new era of software being released and managed not necessarily by human beings, requires a different thinking. And the team worked for two quarters just to build something that is aligned with our customer's expectations, having the layer that manages the logic behind software releases and having the foundational infrastructure that gather all the evidence that keeps the automation throughout the process to provide you with a better compliance and governance. So the timeout takeaway, AI traffic control. J-Frog is working with Service Now on the App Trust initiative. That was the two quarters to work together. It's another expression of a theme we touched on this week with Macroscope here on overtime, that coding project management tool that came out of stealth.

The rollout of AI is starting to solve problems. But at the same time, it's creating new ones that innovative companies could profit from fixing. Morgan. We'll continue to watch it. Well, time for a CNBC News Update with Contessa Brewer. Hi, Contessa. Hi, Contessa. Hi, there, Morgan.

The U.S. is reportedly in talks with the Taliban to return a small number of of American counterterrorism forces to Afghanistan. U.S. officials tell the Wall Street Journal, those talks are still in the early stages, but a Taliban official on social media rejected the idea of bringing back U.S. troops to the country. President Trump is planning to require people to pay a $100,000 fee to apply for the H-1B visa. According to Bloomberg, President Trump is set to sign a proclamation as early as today that will overhaul that visa program.

The proclamation would also say the program has been overused and displaces U.S. workers. But, of course, the tech industry relies heavily on that program to recruit foreign workers. And Republican Senator Ted Cruz today blasted FCC chair Brendan Carr for threatening Disney with fines or the loss of its broadcast license over Jimmy Kimmel's comments over Charlie Kirk's murder. Carr warned ABC to handle Kimmel. He said it could be done the easy way or the hard way. Cruz called that dangerous and compared car to an organized crime figure. Cruz says that kind of talk is, quote, right out of Goodfellas. Guys, I'll send it back to you.

All right, Contessa Brewer, thank you. Coming up, much more on a record day and a record week for the markets as overtime rolls on. Another record day for the markets, the Dow, S&P, and NASDAQ, all closing at all-time highs. For the week, the NASDAQ is the biggest gainer of the three up more than 2%. Now, check out a long-term chart of the S&P 500. You might remember the intraday low during the financial crisis, a very ominous 666. 16 and a half years since then, the S&P 500's up 6,000 points, roughly 900% 10x. Meantime, let's also look at the Russell 2000, the one average that's in the red today,

pulling back after hitting its first record high of 2025. Well, Chip Giant Micron is the big name on next week's earnings calendar. Coming up, we will discuss whether that report is the next catalyst that could drive stocks. Plus, the mystery stock that may not be considered an AI play by most, but one Wall Street firm says AI is the reason for hiking its price target by more than 70%. Can you guess what that is? You got two minutes until overtime returns to come up with the answer. Welcome back to overtime. Tesla, one of the top performers in the S&P 500 today, Baird upgrading the stock to buy from hold, hiking its price target to $548 from $3.20 per share.

That implies a more than 30% upside from Thursday's close. The analyst there says the road ahead, quote unquote, is chock full of catalysts. Specifically, the growth of its AI, robot, and robotaxy businesses. Now, Tesla shares have been on a role recently, rallying roughly 40% since early July and finishing today up another 2%. Well, over the last few years, Walmart's, been working to leverage its brick-and-mortar empire to build a major presence online. And it didn't take long for the world's biggest retailer to build a massive digital marketplace with hundreds of millions of products and thousands of third-party sellers.

But Walmart's digital boom has a little known and much darker underside, where some sellers steal the identities of legitimate companies so they can peddle counterfeit and sometimes dangerous products to unsuspecting online shoppers. And after CNBC shared its reporting with Walmart, the company made changes to some of its product and seller vetting policies. Our Gabrielle Fon Rouge has the story. Just down the street from Chicago's iconic Wrigley Field is Demos Pizza, known for serving up slices to hungry baseball fans.

Its menu has classics like pepperoni pies to creative combos like chicken and waffles. What's not on the menu? Luxury beauty products. But here's Demos pizza selling Lancombe face cream on Walmart's online marketplace for just $25.99, a 91% discount from its typical retail price of $280. Just to be clear, you don't have a side hustle selling beauty products on Walmart.com, right? I do not, no. We, yeah, we just make pizza here. Dmitri, Circa Nicolao, the restaurant's owner, was startled when we told him there was a third-party

seller on Walmart.com using his business credentials to sell Lancombe beauty cream. And lab testing confirmed the cream was counterfeit. That somebody could just take our name and sell whatever they would like. It doesn't feel good. During our investigation into Walmart's marketplace, we identified at least 43 instances, including demos, where a business's name and address were stolen to create a third-party seller account. Walmart declined an on-camera interview.

But in a statement wrote, trust and safety are non-negotiable. and that it has a zero-tolerance policy for prohibited or non-compliant products. Walmart said it could share more details about its robust vetting processes, but only on the condition that we would not report it publicly because it could compromise the integrity of our trust and safety systems. We spoke with more than a dozen current and former Walmart employees about the company's vetting process. Tammy Jones was one of those former employees.

She said she reviewed seller applications, have failed the initial automated process. When she first took the role, she said the requirements to join the marketplace were strict. But over time, Jones said there was pressure for management to approve more sellers. Why was Walmart so inclined to get so many sellers onto the platform? They wanted to take away from other companies

that are doing basically the same thing to be able to beat the competition. And who were they competing against? Amazon. we were told we have sellers that are leaving Amazon because Amazon is more strict. You all are more lenient. So I'm going to take my products from there

and bring it over to Walmart. Other former employees, some of whom asked to remain anonymous because they signed confidentiality agreements, told us that prior to the COVID pandemic, Walmart marketplace closely monitored third-party sellers and products. But over time, some said it became clear. Strict policies could be a big,

barrier to growth. I wasn't sure if it's something that I'm approving to be pushed through was going to be a product that could potentially harm someone or if it was a product that was fake. Just three weeks after we asked for a response to this story, Walmart issued an email to some sellers announcing it'll restrict product listings in the beauty and personal care categories. It also said it would require select sellers to participate in an enhanced vetting program that would require them to submit documentation to verify the authenticity of their products. Changes that addressed some of the issues we raised in our reporting.

To see our full investigation and all the details, head on over to cnbc.com slash inside Walmart marketplace. Gabrielle, just such great work here. I want to understand better a point that you made earlier in that report. It sounded like the software for fraud actually caught the fraud and that humans were told to override it. I hear that correctly? So what happens with the application process, and this is common across the industry,

you're going to put in your information, you know, provide any documents that the respective platform might require, and then if there's red flags, it's going to get flagged to an actual human to look it over. We know that was the case at Walmart in 2023, 2024, when this employee was there, but what changed was when she was doing that human review of sellers that didn't pass that initial automated process, she was told to... at first to call them, check them, do all those checks, and then she was told to stop doing those checks. She was pressured to approve sellers even when she had concerns about their

credentials. Gabby, great reporting, and I know you spent a long time on this particular story and digging into all the details here. I'm curious about the sellers and the counterfeits. Do we know where those are originating from, or is it sort of all over the map? So we don't know where our counterfeits that we purchased came from because they apparently came from Demos Pizza and Kiki's Chicken and Waffles and all of these other legitimate businesses that had their information stolen. But what our reporting shows and what, you know, my industry sources say is that most counterfeits coming to the United States do come from China. That's where most of them originate or other parts of Asia. You got to wonder what de minimis, the closure of

de minimis actually does to that process too here. Absolutely. Yeah, you did actually, you know, we were obviously looking at the marketplace very closely throughout our investigation and something that I did notice after April 2nd. And then later, on after de minimis is the prices were still low at some of those potential counterfeits, but they did go up a bit higher. Yeah. Well, I guess when you start with 90% off for a fake, there's some room. Gabby, thank you. Absolutely. Thank you. Well, up next, Mike Santoli looks at a new poll that could prove to be another tailwind for the market and your money. Be right back. Welcome back. Now,

we were planning to have Commerce Secretary Howard Lucknick join us right here on overtime. Unfortunately, he is still in the Oval Office for an event with the president. We're hoping the secretary will be able to join us to discuss the policy coming out of that event and so much more within the next hour of programming on fast money. Yeah. Well, now let's bring back Mike Santoli for a look at the resurgence of retail investors where they're putting their money to work, Mike. Yeah, John, so this is one of the sentiment indicators that has been the most stubborn in turning bolus, right? We've been making new highs, a couple dozen this year. We're up 35 or more percent since the April lows.

this is the spread between the Bulls and the Bears and the weekly American Association of Individual Investors Poll. So it's what they're saying, right? They're saying they're still cautious, they're still nervous. It's an older, more traditional investor crowd. It's not the retail traders that are really excited about the growth stocks. So you see it bounced finally, I guess with the Fed having coming upon a rate cut to the neutral range, basically exactly as many bulls as bears.

There's plenty of room to the upside for this crowd to still get involved. However, some other indicators are saying the money is flowing in an aggressive direction. One of them is all the money being taken in by cyclical geared sector ETFs relative to defensive ones. That's where the performance has been. Cycical groups have been really outperforming. And this is from strategists. It just shows the cumulative flow over the course of the last six months, kind of getting a little bit heated in the cyclical parts of the market. And nobody wants safety right now.

It seems from that first chart, Mike, like very often, it finds. follows the trajectory of the market, right? Very much. But this time, it's just bouncing to break even when we're just talking about all the major averages at all time highs. I mean, how bad must those survey respondents feel right now? These are people who read the news. And so it sort of feels like a kind of a chaotic news environment or it did in April.

And what I would compare it to actually is 2020. Okay, so you see it there. Where it clicked above zero in 2020, that was already several months into the company. back off of the COVID low, which was in March of that year. So I think it's comparable where it just seems like there's too much heavy stuff in the world or maybe there's too many economic challenges and the market kind of drags people's attitudes, you know, to a more upbeat place. So does there tend to be an overcorrection when that happens? People want to make up for what they missed and perhaps don't look as cautiously as I might have otherwise?

I think that could be something that's in train here. Again, I don't want to make it the case that this is a hated market and everybody's been fighting it because the flows have generally been pretty strong and the options volumes have been strong. But there is a certain reserve of caution out there among long-term asset allocator types that, yes, in theory, could be supportive of this market if it keeps up. All right. Mike, thanks. Okay. Well, up next, what's at stake for the market and for the Fed next week when investors get another key piece of inflation data?

And do not forget, you can catch us on the go by following the closing Bell overtime podcast on your favorite podcast app. We will be right back. Welcome back. Let's get you set with what to watch for next week. No earnings or economic data Monday, but Tuesday we will get results from AutoZone and Micron. Wednesday brings KB. Home, Sintas, and Thor industry's earnings as well as new home sales. Thursday's Biggs earnings reports are Costco and CarMax and will also get the latest weekly jobless claims, final read on second quarter GDP, durable goods, and existing home sales. And a key inflation reading, the PCE index, will close out the week on Friday. Well, our next guest joins us with the catalyst he thinks will be the most important for investors

next week. Let's bring in Adam Chrisafouli from Vital Knowledge. Adam, it's great to have you back on. And let's start right there. What do you think moves the market? I think for next week, the most important catalyst will be tech earnings. Micron, most critically Tuesday night. And then also J-Bow and Accenture are also going to be, I think, important. You know, the Fed and economic data gets a lot of attention, but really this market has been all about this amazing breathtaking melt-up move that we've seen in tech, given in a large part by AI. So next week, we're going to two companies that are very levered to AI that benefit a lot from

the enthusiasm and momentum, Micron, and Jable, and then a company that is thought to be potentially at existential risk from AI adoption, which is Accenture. So you're going to get kind of an interesting perspective from both ends of the of the spectrum. Yeah. And I realize you just said that maybe it's not as meaningful to this market here, but we do get a flurry of Fed speakers next week, too, and we do get that inflation reading. Is that really already baked in here? Or could that have the potential to move markets as well? I think it could definitely be interesting. You know, there definitely is not unanimity on the Fed right now. You can see that from the distribution of the

dots on the Wednesday supplemental. So, you know, to the extent we should, here are a lot of the individuals explain what, how they are thinking on the outlook. That could be interesting. The PCE also, obviously, is the Fed's preferred inflation reading. So that's going to be critical as well. I just think for the most part, we have a decent sense. I've had the data for the month of August shaped up. And so now the real, you know, the folks I think is more on the September readings, which we'll get in a couple of weeks. But definitely the Fed, obviously, is front and center. So any speaker will be important to listen to do.

Adam, you see these trade headlines having a significant impact so far? The market seems to have moved on from trade. I think companies have a decent amount of clarity as to kind of how tariff policy is shipping up and they're adjusting accordingly. You know, I think very interesting will be later in the year when we start to get the Supreme Court oral hearings in the IEPA tariff case. That's going to be in early November. So that's going to be really important. And there doesn't necessarily seem to be a consensus as to whether or not illuminating naïpa terrorists is good or bad. You know, I think you can make an argument that striking them down at this point in time could be negative for the market.

You could place upper pressure on yield given how much revenue they're generating. And also it's just going to create months of uncertainty if those were to go away. And the White House has to find new justifications to keep in place the terrorists, which they've said they're going to do. So I think for now, companies are kind of looking more at that IEPA case in the Supreme Court. that's kind of the next real big tariff catalyst. And Adam Oracle has had this amazing move over the last several sessions. I mean, really, it was just one session. It was a major move.

But it's held up. And here in overtime, it's higher by about a percent. Still and again, it was up 4 percent, I believe, today. A lot of people might have doubted it can maintain anything near those levels after it reported its guidance. What do you make of the broader message in this move from a company? that's been around for a long time. You know, you continue to see every day flurries of headlines talking about the unbelievable

momentum that's occurring in AI. So today alone in the morning, there was an article on the information about Open AI spending about $450 billion over the next five years on compute. Remember, that was the huge part of the RPO boost at Oracle. A lot of that was driven by Open AI. So that's another positive suggesting that, you know, the biggest, most prominent player in the industry continues to spend a lot of money. X-A-I, there was a lot of articles about them raising money at a $200 billion

valuation. And then right before the close, there was a report on Bloomberg about how Oracle could be striking a deal with META for a $20 billion AI compute contracts. So the headline and news flow around AI just remained extremely bullish. And Oracle really has risen, you know, to the top to become one of the most prominent names in the industry. And that continues to drive the shares higher. Adam, I'm going to ask you the same question I asked Rebecca Patterson.

earlier in the hour. And that is, how are you gauging geopolitical risk, given some of the activities we're seeing play out across the world right now, even as we do see stocks at record highs? And given the fact that we are going into sort of the big, hefty week of UN General Assembly, too. Yeah, it's definitely kind of falling down the list, I think, of things that markets are focused on right now, and perhaps that creates a risk in that there isn't a lot of focus. you know, what's happening in the Middle East doesn't really seem to be impacting the narrative. There doesn't seem to be enormous risk around oil supply, which usually is a transmission mechanism where Middle East intervention will impact equity sentiment.

And there doesn't necessarily seem to be a lot of kind of focus for U.S. stocks about what's happening in Ukraine right now. There has been rumblings in Washington and Brussels about imposing incremental sanctions on Russia and potentially buyers of Russian energy, but it doesn't seem like the kind of momentum for in action on that front. So I would say that that's going to kind of stay in the periphery for now. All right. Adam Chrisafouli. Thank you. Morgan, it really has been a market overall that's Teflon. I mean, for every time some leader, some market leader, some individual stock has a setback. It seems like something else is taking its place. And the geopolitical concerns, a lot of the macro concerns shrugged off and perhaps justifiably. Yeah. I think what's interesting is that you

had a Fed that cut rates for the first time. in nine months this week. But we actually had a flurry of central banks that took similar actions, XEU, this week as well. And so you're sort of seeing some of these similar asset class moves really globally, not just here in the U.S.

So one to keep watching. That does it for us here at overtime.