Closing Bell - Closing Bell Overtime: Stocks Stage Stunning Midday Comeback to Close Higher 3/9/26

Episode Date: March 9, 2026

Markets respond to fast moving geopolitical headlines and fresh swings in energy. Oil dominates the market conversation. Pippa Stevens tracks price moves while Helima Croft, Global Head of Commodity Strategy at RBC Capital Markets, breaks down supply risks, geopolitical crosscurrents and what it would take for crude to move higher or stabilize. Matt Stucky of Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management and Anastasia Amoroso of Partners Group assess the broader market setup and debate how investors should position amid volatility. Earnings from HPE add another data point for tech. Jason Furman, former Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, weighs in on the Fed and the economic outlook. Dan Levy of Barclays explains how higher oil prices could ripple through the auto sector. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The bell's bringing end to the trading day at the NYSC 1111 media rings the closing bell at the NASAC, the Legal Aid Society, during the honors. Welcome to closing bell over time. We're launching a studio to be at the NASDAQ market site. I'm Melissa Lee along with Mike Santoli. Big reversal for stocks today as oil prices fell after a huge overnight spike. The Dow was nearly 900 points lower at the lows, ending the day higher. The SSB and NASAC also seeing major comebacks that got a full breakdown of the market straight ahead. And a wild session for oil prices, crude hitting $119 a barrel over. night before giving up all those gains and more through the day, turning negative in the last hour.

We'll have more on the energy trade in a minute. But we began in Washington with fresh comments from the president, given the markets of bruised in the last few minutes of trading. Mike, that's right. President Trump giving a phone interview to CBS News is Ouija Jang. She took to social media to give us some of the highlights. And one of the sentences here is getting a lot of attention in the market. The president says, I think the war is very complete. pretty much. They have no Navy, no communications. They've got no air force. He added that the U.S. is very far ahead of his initial four to five week estimated time frame. Weger reports also that asked about the new Iranian Supreme Leader who was appointed over the weekend and who Trump

has openly criticized. The president told her, I have no message for him, none whatsoever. Jang reports that Trump said he has someone in mind to replace Khomeini, but he did not elaborates. So as for the straight of Hormuz, the president telling CBS news that ships are moving through it now, but he is, quote, thinking about taking it over. Trump says, he's warning Iran here. He says, they've shot everything they have to shoot and they better not try anything cute or it's going to be the end of that country. So these remarks, guys, as you look at them from CBS News, on the one hand, you see the president saying he thinks the war is complete or very complete, and he's way ahead of his time frame of four weeks or so.

On the other hand, he's suggesting here to CBS News that he has someone in mind to replace the current Supreme Leader. So how do you square those two things? It doesn't seem possible to replace the Supreme Leader if the war is not ongoing. You know, we'll see. The President has a schedule update. He's going to be giving a news conference down in Florida at 5.30 p.m.

I'm told to wait for any clarity on all this. until we hear from the president directly. All right, Amen, thank you. Amen, Javis, in Washington with the very latest. And, Mike, you and I were sitting here on the desk when those comments crossed. And it was amazing to see what the reaction was. There was an immediate bounce, of course, in oil prices. But the grab for big cap technology was immediate.

It was. Actually, it was outperforming all day, but then also just a spring-loaded response. Look, we talked last week, even on Friday, about how the market declines were very grudging. Investors did not want to really foreclose on the possibility that you would get some gesture of de-escalation. We remember what happened last April with the tariff panic, and therefore we're ready for it in a sense.

Now, what's been accomplished, if anything, that this morning's lows, the S&P 500 sat at a minus 5% from the record highs for a little while before rallying? Overnight, the S&P futures tested their 200-day moving average. Is that enough? Massive spike peak on the oil chart, massive spike peak on the VIX chart, you might be able to say the fever's broken for now,

but this goes only so far as the next comment, we might get that contradicts the one we just got from the president. So you really don't know. And the SNP has rallied up to the bottom end of the range from before last week. So stuff to be plenty to be proven here. But obviously, this shows why traders did not want to basically get super negative in the short term. I mean, if at any moment the administration can say we have this off ramp, we can declare victory because the objectives weren't 100% clear going in.

So it's not like they can say tick, tick, tick, check the box. We've accomplished all these. They can say we've accomplished our goals at any moment in time. And so the reluctance to be short or be skeptical of this market, it is in there. And then just maybe the signaling effect of, I guess, $100, and the S&P 500 down 2% on a Sunday night futures open was enough to get at least these messages out there. Exactly. All right. Well, let's turn to some of the individual movers that drove today's action.

Christina Parts of Nevelos has those for us. Christina. Well, you guys broke it down nicely three days of selling, but today the industry is really fought. back and close positive. Chips really led the way. Look at this chart over here. Western Digital up almost 7%. Sandus, almost 12% today. Western Digital, best NASDAQ performer. And a lot of these names, we throw them into the momentum category, the momentum ETF, also closing positive as well. In corporate news, Anthropic backed by Amazon, followed the lawsuit against the Department of Defense after being designated a supply chain risk. Amazon shares did gain. They were down,

but they switched and gained less than a quarter of a percent at the end of the day. InVedia closing up over 2% ahead of its GTC big tech conference next week where UBS analysts expect an AI roadmap updates throughout the company, though the bank does say it's unlikely to dramatically move the needle for shares. Microsoft launching a new enterprise AI bundle, $99 per user per month, and you can see shares did close up, ever so slightly, we'll say in the green, home builders were among today's biggest losers,

the XHB ETF was down 3% but came back slightly to close less than 1% lower today. Lenar, LGI, among the laggards. And then last but not least, fertilizer stocks continue to be one of the hottest corners of the market this year. The war in Iran choking off key supplies used in fertilizers, CF industries soaring higher today. But still close. 4% lower. You can see Mosaic up 3%. Guys.

All right, Christina, thank you. So it does today's reversal mean investors are ready to look past the geopolitical risks and turn back to the fundamentals and earnings growth that we're seeing. Joining us now is Partners Group Chief Investment Strategist, Anastasia Amarosa, and Northwestern Mutual Management Chief Portfolio Manager Matt Stucky. Welcome to you both. So a lot's happened, Anastasia, in the last few minutes in the last eight days, whatever you want to call it.

Has it created the opportunity or necessitated a reassessment of what we're expecting more broadly for this year? Are we stress testing this market? Is it time for a rethink? Yeah, no, it certainly has led to a lot of investors, ourselves included, to kind of rethink what is the outlook for the macro economy look like. And I think it's healthy to stop digest and process, but we are not changing our outlook for this market and for this economy.

And the reason being is that we don't think $100 crude oil is what we have to stress test for and embed into our portfolio outcomes. I do think that assuming the situation does get resolved over the coming weeks, we might be back to a lower price of crude oil, although some would hire them before pre-war. So that's what we have to base our outcomes on. But with that in mind, you know, you're right, Mike, the outcomes have not changed from the perspective of the consumer in the United States being on solid footing, despite this hopefully temporary price spike in gasoline. I also am encouraged by the pickup we're seeing in CAP-X, an investment really coming back in the U.S. across a variety of sectors.

So you have a lot that's going for the economy, assuming we can pare back the increases in those oil prices. So is this a buy-the-dip kind of market, Matt? I mean, what we had telegraphed this afternoon from President Trump to CBS is basically things get really bad. We'll step in and we'll give it a boost. I mean, there was also a report earlier that the administration was looking at options to, I don't want to say fix, to help the oil markets. So we wouldn't see oil prices so high. So it does seem like that there is some sort of a floor to all of it. this?

You know, I think this is just a real clear indication that oil is in the driver's seat in the near term. I mean, just from peak to trough in one day, we saw oil prices correct down 30 percent and risk assets and specifically the stock market rally throughout the news specifically when we got that headline this afternoon. So, you know, between the oil markets and the stock market, that correlation is about negative point eight right now. And so in the near term, you know, headlines like this are really going to drive the

stock market. But by the dip mentality, I think you have to have confidence that oil prices are going to continue to move lower. I think it might be a little bit too early to tell and have that level of conviction. But certainly, I think if you're looking for reasons to get more optimistic, more headlines like we got this afternoon is exactly what you need. Anastasia, I guess the idea that maybe the underlying trends have not changed very much. It's hard to argue with that. But nothing was made better by this disruption, right, relative to what we were expecting several weeks ago. whether it's the price of oil, whether it's the trade flows, whether it's the consumer confidence hit.

So I just wonder, along with the kind of little cracks we were seeing in some of the credit markets and some of the concerns over the AI investment theme, have we digested all of that, or do we have that to look forward to try and hash out from here? I mean, look, I think we're in the process of hashing it out. And look, let's take inflation and growth implications and then the rest of the drivers. I mean, when I think about inflation, the surge that we had in oil prices, that is the relationship with something like for a 10% increase in oil prices, you have a 5% increase in core CPI.

So yes, we may see a bit of an uptick in core CPI and inflation over the coming quarter based on what we saw happen this month, but I don't think that derails, for example, the case for the Fed to actually cut interest rates. In fact, if this continues, which, again, is not the base case, then the spike in oil is a consumption tax, and it does negatively impact financial markets. So I would expect the Fed to provide easing rather than, or at least look through it, rather than hiking interest rates.

So from that perspective, maybe a bit of a headwind from oil and not going to impact on inflation and growth, but not a big material change. But, you know, looking outside of that, I will say the current developments reinforce some of the longer-term structural themes that we've been thinking about for a long time. For example, one of energy independence. I mean, clearly it's here in the United States, but within that is the resilience of the grid, it's the efficiency. of the energy generation. And it's really trying to localize the supply chains and not be reliant on those global choke points. It's something that we've looked at a partners group

for a while, and it reinforces our conviction there. Matt, it sounds like you're a little bit more skeptical about what happens next in the markets, given you're saying that basically oil is in the driver's seat and a lot of us uncertain at this point. But longer term, does it, I mean, of course it matters, but does it matter to your market forecast that a Fed cut is being basically pushed

out till September at the earliest, and there's only one cut now. And the markets came in to this whole thing, thinking that there were probably two. Well, I mean, I think it really is going to be dictated by how long oil prices stay elevated. If oil stays around here, maybe moves higher for just a period of a few weeks and then comes back down to kind of where the four curve has it priced out back down to the 70s and 80s, you know, that's pretty palatable for the U.S. consumer. The U.S. consumer, we think, is pretty resilient and can handle that type of an adjustment. in price. And to Anastasia's point from earlier, these types of price spikes, if they're temporary in nature, usually bleed out into core CPI with just a handful of basis points over the coming

three months. And so from an outlook perspective, I don't think that really changes the calculus in terms of what's expected in terms of, you know, the Fed ultimately moving towards an easing posture towards the end of the year. And so we try and keep our time horizon similar to Anastasia, you know, more focused on the intermediate term. And if we go back to where we were earlier this year, we saw some of positive trends around broadening of earnings. You know, continue strong earnings growth from, you know, the technology names, but also strong earnings growth in more cyclical parts of the market, things like U.S. small caps, U.S. midcaps.

I would look for those areas to respond pretty well if we get more positive headlines like we got this afternoon. All right. Anastasia Amoroso, Matt Sucki. Thanks so much to you both. Let's turn out to the wild action of the energy markets in our, in the energy markets with oil springing to us, $110 a barrel turning negative in the last hour. Pippa, Stephen Scott the details there.

Hey, Pippa. Hey, Melissa, huge reversal. DeBi was up 30% at one point overnight, hitting 11948, but just now turning negative after President Trump told CBS, the war could be over soon and that he's thinking about taking over the strait of Hormuz. Now, Gaines had started to fade earlier with the G7 energy minister set to meet tomorrow to discuss a potential oil release. Still, Kepler's saying that even when oil starts flowing through the strait again,

it will likely take at least another week or two to reposition tankers and load crude from storage, meaning we could see a premium for WTI, which we did see trade above Brent at one point overnight. Now, this follows growing production shut-ins in the Gulf with Iraq, Kuwait and the UAE all curbing output. Saudi Arabia and the UAE do have access to pipelines that allow oil to bypass the Strait of Hormuz, and loadings at Yanbu and Fujaira are at a record high pace, but that doesn't cover all output, meaning if the straight does remain impassable, we are going to see more shut-ins. Finally, European natural gas adding another 7% today, while Henry Hub actually closed in the red down 5%, abundant shale production and U.S. export capacity at a limit

is insulating domestic prices to a certain extent, at least for the time being. Melissa. All right, thank you, PIPA. While the president says the war could be over soon, the disruption to the energy market could have ripple effects for weeks to come. Joining us now to discuss what is next as RPC Capital Markets Global Head of Commodity Strategy. Halima Croft. Halima, great to have you with us, especially after the comments from President Trump.

It seems to really impact. Can ships be moving through the strait this soon? Well, what does soon mean? Does it mean three days, three weeks, three months? I mean, that is very ambiguous at this stage. We'll all be listening at 530 because he says it's going to be over soon, but he's also going to take over the Strait of Hormuz potentially and potentially pick the Supreme Leader.

So we do not know yet what winning looks like, what the wind-down mechanism is for this war. But I think a lot of people in the market never thought we'd get this far because they thought he doesn't want higher prices for the midterm. So I think they're waiting and basically ready to jump on any sign that this is ending. The question is, when is this ending? Pippa had mentioned some of the pipelines that can... Sure, we can talk about that. What's so interesting is... Not nearly enough, though. Not nearly enough. And also, let's be clear, the East West pipeline, which is the main Saudi diversionary route, that was attacked in 2019 by the Houthis with drones. The Houthis have not entered this conflict yet. If they were to do so,

that Yambu port is certainly within a range of Houthi drones and missiles. So again, it is helping now if this conflict were to deepen and escalate, you'd have to have a scenario under which the Houthis came in, and that port would be potentially at risk. So everything is better in the oil market if the war unwinds. But if it's prolonged, I mean, we apparently have, according to Argus now, 6 million barrels shut in across the Middle East. That's the latest Argus number, more than double what we thought we'd have a disruption from Russia. Remember the Russian War drew prices up? Everyone said three million barrels would be off the market.

Never was the case. If we have just three million out of Iraq, I mean, that is material. So getting that production back up and running when the straits are reopening will be important. What do you take from the fact that we can have this type of intraday volatility in crude? I mean, you know, we went up to 120 on WTI and down, you know, below. 90. Is it just a function of stampedes and positioning, or is there that much of a difference based on slight assumptions changing about supply? I mean, I think there was a whole corner of the market that was late to get in on this story of an extended war. And when you had President Trump

saying, unconditional surrender, that really drove the run up. The minute he says, enough, people think, okay, this is Greenland all over again. They're waiting for a sign that essentially he pulls back. So it's going to be very important to see how he defines success tonight, because is he going to say we've taken care of the missiles, the launchers, the naval assets, Supreme Leader gone, I'm winding this down in a few days. That's one thing. But if it's a multi-week, that's a different story for the markets again, because you're going to have all this supply unable to get to market continuing shut-ins. Right. Some of the comments to CBS that were made indicate he says that Iran has no communications, they've got no Navy, so they're really in a

paralyzed sort of position here. But I'm just wondering, what do you think the capability is? What metrics are we using? So certainly when you talk to people in Washington, you hear the military goals in terms of launchers and missiles are largely being met. What we are struggling with are Iranian drone capabilities. And Iran has excelled at low-cost drone manufacturer. They actually export them to Russia in significant quantities. So we have not been able to deal with that issue nearly as well as we've been with the missiles and the launcher. So they retain significant drone capabilities. And again, what ships are we talking about?

Formal naval assets? We are sinking those ships. They are still thought to have potentially, you know, a thousand or more small boats that can be packed with explosives and used to mine the strait. So again, pick your weapon and I'll tell you where we are. Yeah. And there are weapons. That's key. And also, clearly, there's been no indication of whether, you know,

there's a willingness to speak to whoever is now leading the country about a ceasefire, the terms of anything. Our new supreme leader is the one whose dad was killed. He's lost his wife, his son, his mother. I'm not sure he's necessarily in the mood to bargain with us just yet. Yeah. Great point there. Belima, thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Well, HP earnings are out. Christina Parts and Love is got the numbers. Christina. HP Enterprise hosting earnings beat 65 cents adjusted on revenues of $9.3 billion, which came in a touchlight. The quarter was driven by networking, which got a boost. from the Juniper Networks acquisition,

the two companies actually emerged forces, like officially January 1st, and that integration definitely appears to be paying off. I caught up with CEO Antonio Neri on memory costs, and he said to me that they saw some demand pulled forward within the corridor, and even though they did raise prices late last year, they're expecting more increases to keep on coming.

There just simply isn't enough memory supply to keep up with demand. But despite those headwinds and costs, HPE did reaffirm its full-year revenue outlook. The company now sees revenue growth of about 17 to 22%, but they did raise their networking revenue guidance. That's really a big focus for them to 68 to roughly to 73% growth. And they also bumped their full year adjusted EPS to a range of $2.30 to $2.50, which is well above the estimated $2.35. A shares just jumping right now, 2.5%. Guys.

Christina, thanks, Christina Parts and Nevelas. Well, oil turning lower in the last hour session, as we mentioned, but crude is still up roughly 40% since the conflict in a began over a week ago. Up next, former Council of Economic Advisors Chairman Jason Furman on the potential impact, the economic fallout from higher energy prices and how it could impact the Fed. You're watching closing bell overtime, live from the NASAC market site. Got a market flash on Vertex. Angelica Peoples got the story. Angelica. Hey, Melissa, well, Vertex is saying that its drug for a rare kidney disease succeeded in a phase three trial. Now, this was widely expected people expected this drug to work, but what's important

here is how well this drug work. So they're saying that their drug reduced the levels of protein in the urine by about 52%. And that's important because Guggenheim set the bar at about 50% for the best case scenario. And you can see that stock is up about 6%. And so the question here for Vertex is whether this drug could compete in this emerging class of new drugs for this kidney disease called IGAN. And so this is important for Vertex as they try to diversify beyond cystic fibrosis. that's, of course, been their main drug and their main disease area. And so now this is a big step for them as they go and seek FDA approval by the end of this month, Melissa. Angelica, thank you.

Well, gas prices have seen a big pop in the last two weeks, but it may not have as much of an impact on the consumer as it has in the past. Take a look at this chart. This is gasoline price per gallon divided by average hourly earnings for non-supervisory and production workers. So essentially tells you how long the average average average hourly earnings. person has to work in order to afford a gallon of gas. In this case, it's about 9% of an hour, so five and a half to six minutes. You could buy 11 gallons at the recent lows in gas prices per hour of wages. So clearly it's near the 30-year lows, and it's a cushion against

higher gas prices, if not immunity. So I guess the question is so with a little more of this cushion historically, could we be seeing the impact of higher oil prices on the consumer a little bit more blunted. Let's ask Jason Furman. He's the former CEO chairman. He joins us now, Professor Harvard Kennedy School, of course. Jason, great to have you with us. Great to be with you. So is that the way we should look at it? Or there's another way of looking at it, which is maybe the less optimistic way of looking at it. And that is as a percentage of their non-housing spend, it's a bigger percent because housing affordability is so terrible these days. How do you see the impact on the consumer? Look, there's the reality and there's the psychology. Gasoline is a much

smaller fraction of the consumer budget today than it was in, say, 1979 when we saw skyrocketing oil prices because of the Iranian revolution back then, even a lower share than it was a couple decades ago. So for consumers, this could end up being a couple hundred dollars this year if it lasts. That's real money. That's not something households want to pay, but it shouldn't be catastrophic for the economy. When it comes to consumer sentiment and optimism, that was already quite low. My guess is all this news and the gas price increases are going to be a big blow to that. Will that psychology end up mattering? That we don't know the answer to. We're taking a look at this in basic, like just the dollars flowing through and then when the war is over in oil prices abate, then it's going to be over. But there's a stickiness also to higher prices that don't go away overnight.

So the consumer might be stuck paying for higher prices much longer. And then there's a trickle through of, for instance, higher fertilizer prices on food prices, which then trickle through, excuse me, as I lose my voice, trickle through to the consumer later on. How do we look at that lag effect of what could be a few weeks or a couple months of higher oil prices, but then the impact on all sorts of the other inputs that go into other goods that consumers purchase down the road that may have stickier, higher prices? Yeah. I mean, at the very least, you're talking about a ripple that lasts for months. If you look at forward prices for oil, they are elevated all the way out as far as the curve goes relative to what they were before this conflict. to be clear, they're lower than what they are right now. They're lower than spot prices, but they're higher than they used to be.

So there's a certain amount of risk built into the markets around all of this right now. And then the last thing is just what does this mean for what the Fed does? If we weren't going into this with high inflation, the Fed could easily have looked through this. Right now, the fact that we started with high inflation gives the Fed less room to not worry about what this means for inflation expectations. Jason, you mentioned that, you know, the psychology, which is always a big piece of this type of discussion. So aside from, you know, the sudden jump in gasoline prices, you do have sort of the tariff story isn't going away the way we thought it was. We got the Supreme Court decision, but then they're going to reimpose tariffs. And then maybe the unease around AI and jobs.

And, of course, we did get a negative payroll number just on Friday for the last month. So it seems as if that helps to explain why consumer confidence has been really lagging other. indicators of economic growth. What would be your advice for somebody saying, let's try to improve the actual affordability issue and have people believe it? Yeah, I mean, first of all, on the data, you said helps explain. I completely agree with that, but it only helps. Last year, consumer sentiment is measured by Michigan was lower than it was during the financial crisis and the Great Recession. I don't think anything can fully explain that. I don't think there's any economic solution that would fully solve it. But some things would help. Lower tariffs would help,

not having a big increase in gas prices would help. The first is fully within the control of the president. And the latter, maybe to some degree within his control as well. All right. Jason, we're going to leave it there. Thank you so much for joining us. Jason Furman. Well, new congressional legislation could lead to a huge overhaul of the prediction markets, find out how that could impact companies like Calci and Polly Market straight ahead. Plus, we'll speak to an analyst about how spiking oil prices will impact stocks in what he calls a sell-first-ass-later industry. Overtone, be right back. Shares of Hems and HERS soaring today after Novo Nordists agreed to sell its weight-loss drugs on the company's platform and drop a lawsuit alleging patent infringement.

Novo filed the lawsuit last month after Hems and hers launched a compounded pill containing an active ingredient in Novo's Ozempic and Wagovi drugs. Truest, writing today, the rapid cycle of litigation followed by reconciliation. underscores that while both parties lack trust, they remain bound by mutual necessity. Despite the jump today, Hems and hers shares down 32 percent so far this year. A new bipartisan bill in the House of Representatives could lead to a major overhaul of the predictions market industry. Contessa Brewer joins us here with more on this. Yeah, the markets related to Iran sparked a lot of scrutiny, as you know, and promises of a crackdown. This bill would require the CFTC to enforce bans on markets relating to terrorism,

assassination, war, gambling, and illegal activity. It would add new prohibitions on elections or government activity, and it specifically would ban sports, which make up 90% of Kalshi's trading volume. It would, though, carve out an option for states to allow sports event contracts if they choose. So, again, states' rights. Former White House Chief of Staff McMilvaney told me that this, he thinks, is a rare issue that will get support from both sides of the aisle. He's now the executive director of a group called Gambling is Not Investing, which is fighting the prediction markets. Only Kalshi responded to my request for a reaction and pointed to different legislation by Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon that would prohibit the president, the vice president, and members of Congress from making prediction bets. And Kalshi told me we support Congress and regulators taking action to police, insider trading, and keep prediction markets onshore and under federal.

regulation. That's a clear aim at Polly Market, which is based offshore. Until it's in place, though, look, these guys are treating it like Boomtown. This past weekend, Cal she posted 10% month-over-month growth in trading volume, according to Piper Sandler. Polymarket grew 27%. And this time last month was Super Bowl. So, of course, this is just like make hay while the sun shines, because the sun might not always shine. But you've got to wonder what the valuations are. You know, after these bands, if they could go into place. I mean, if there's no more sports, for instance, that's a big driver of growth there. It also makes it less valuable for a lot of these online trading platforms, equity trading,

like traditional trading platforms, to have these partnerships. Although, if you look at forecast trader owned by interactive brokers, they have really focused on financial markets, not on sports. But I was at Draft King's Investor Day last week, and I asked Jason Robbins, okay, what if this goes all the way to the Supreme Court? What if the Supreme Court says no sports? And he's like, financial markets are a lot less interesting for us. We live and breathe sports.

This is where the action is. That's what we're interested in. And that's where we think the future is. It's fascinating to me, given that it's now under the oversight of the CFTC. Because futures contracts, historically, at least on paper, they were created with the idea that there was a natural business interest to hedge something. And then speculators and risk takers take the other side of that. it's not really the case when it comes to a lot of these, you know, kind of questions out there or sports. I mean, when you sit with the prediction platforms and you ask, okay, mention markets.

Give me an example of how this is a hedge. How many times the president mentions a certain word or a CEO saying peanut butter in his earnings call, come on now. And they can come up with a pretty nimble explanation for why that, if you're an investor, you might be listening for certain words on an investment earnings call update that would trigger something. Okay. Mick Mulvaney said to me, I use the smell test. If it looks like gambling and it sounds like gambling, then what is it? Right.

Well, the peanut farmers can't hedge. That's what I'm saying. Agricultural futures are like, there's somebody who has risk in the product they create and they want to be able to offset it. But obviously, that's not the game we're playing right now. Contessa, thanks. Sure. Tessa Brewer. Time now for CNBC News Update with Sima Modi. Hey, Sima.

Melissa, here's what we're watching at this hour. The FBI is expanding its probe into alleged voting irregularities in the 2020 election, issuing a grand jury subpoena to the Arizona State Senate for reams of information on voting results in the Maricopa County, a Democratic stronghold. Now, last month, the FBI agents removed truckloads of ballots from a facility in Fulton County, Georgia. President Trump has long made claims that the 2020 election was rigged without providing ever. In other news, two men accused of igniting homemade bombs at a protest outside the official residence of New York Mayor Zoran Mandani on Saturday charged today with federal terrorism-related crimes.

Bomb technicians rendered both devices safe and no injuries were reported, but according to the criminal complaint, the two men, age 18 and 19, were said they were inspired by ISIS. And the talent agencies started by Casey Wasserman rebranded today as the team as he prepares to sell it in the wake of his past association with Gisksson. Ms. Lin Maxwell that was revealed in the Epstein files. Wasserman is expected to have a big slate of potential buyers, the firm, hiring Mollis, to lead that sale. Melissa and Mike. All right, Tima, thank you. New data from Charles Schwab shows retail traders were turning increasingly bullish on the market ahead of the conflict in Iran, but is that survey a leading

indicator, a contrarian indicator, or just noise that investors should tune now? That's straight ahead. Welcome back to closing bell overtime, live from the NASDAQ market site. A huge reversal for the markets today as the president says the war could be over soon. The Dow swung more than 1,200 points from the lows to the highs. At the close, the Dow is up 239. The S&P nearly 1% and the NASAC 1.3%. The big story today, crude, of course, WTI hitting a $119 barrel level at overnight trading, but turning lower in the last hour to close at 88. Some movers after hours, Vail resorts moving higher despite reporting an EPS and revenue miss and some bearish commentary. The company saying, quote, this has been the most challenging winter.

across the Rockies that we have ever experienced the company lowering its guidance due to weather. Stock's down 1.6%. Hewlett-Packard Enterprise also hire the beat on EPS but missed on revenue estimates. The company reaffirmed its full-year revenue outlook and said memory costs are going to keep rising. That stock is higher by 2.5% right now. Well, new data from Charles Schwab shows retail traders were turning increasingly bullish on the market ahead of the attack on Iran. And while the NASDAQ fell 3% in February amid AI disruption fears, retail investors were still buying names like Amazon, Microsoft, and others. So what might this

survey be signaling? Joining us now is Charles Schwab head trading and derivative strategist, Joe Mazzola. Joe, it's good to see you. So this, I guess, is the biggest increase in this trader index since late 2020, not too far behind where we saw in early 2022. So what do we draw from that fact? I think you draw that investors leaned into volatility when the market. markets were shaking it off. They looked at opportunities to buy dips in names that had really kind of been taken to the woodshed. You mentioned Amazon, got Microsoft and Vida up there as well, too, but Palantir had been down about 35%. And the way you get such a divergence in this number is when they're buying stocks that are exhibiting a lot of volatility, that kind of pushes up that stacks

number because it's a combination of not just buying, but also the beta that's attached to these names. As that volatility goes higher, that beta goes higher. And so if they're buying names that, you know, that are exhibiting more of that volatility and they're doing so in greater numbers. And, and Michael, what I would say is that the majority of that happened at the beginning of the month, February. It did tail off a little bit towards the end of the month, but really that last week of January and then the first week or two of February is where we saw the most buying. and to see it kind of rival what we saw in 2020, it seemed odd at first, but then as I said, as I looked through the names that they were buying, it made a little bit more sense.

I mean, late 2020, the market was in this kind of melt-up mode that was going to climax in the first part of 2021 in terms of riskier tech stocks. 2022, the first quarter there, the first part of that year, you know, that's the beginning of a cyclical bare market. I'm trying to pull out what this might tell us about investor positioning relative to where the market might head from here. Well, so here's something I found interesting as well, too, is the idea that they kind of zigged when the market's at, not just with the buying, but what they were buying, right? They bought discretionary stocks. They bought financials.

They bought IT stocks, as you had mentioned. What they sell, they sold energy. They sold staples. They sold material stocks. So they were actually kind of taking the opposite side. of the trade of what had been working, this kind of, you know, that rotation trade that we've been talking about for the last six to eight weeks where everything was going cyclical, showing that the, you know, that the market was strong underneath the surface. And what they were doing is they were

kind of picking and choosing some of the names that they thought were overdone. You know, I talked about Palatir in Microsoft. One thing I think was really interesting about what we saw from the client behavior in particular was what they did with software stocks. You know, software stocks, you know, dropped 25% year to date from, you know, from January. And at that time, they use it as an opportunity to buy and just look at what happened last week with something like the IGV. You know, the IGB was up on the week while the overall markets were down. So they're picking their spots. Joe, is this the full picture or is there options activity, which may indicate that investors

are also hedging or trying to hold onto positions that might not have been doing so well by selling calls, for instance? Sure. So there's a little bit of both. So let's. Let me talk about what I've seen in the last couple of days, and I think this would be of interest. We've talked about the energy market. We've actually seen options activity quadruple in an ETF like USO. So there's been a lot of activity there. But in terms of what you're talking about, Melissa, with the hedging activity, I think a lot of that hedging activity was already done prior to the sell-up.

And what I mean by that is you go back to that last week of February. You saw things like what we call the skew in the SPX, the put-skees. meaning puts relative to over calls in terms of how they were trading. These were at levels that were the 95th, 96th percentile. So really, really already kind of priced in what the markets were expecting volatility to be around the corner. And that was prior to, you know, the bombing of Iran. So a lot of this kind of had been taken into consideration.

We saw a lot of call selling. So a lot of clients who had been kind of reaching for, you know, maybe some of the tech stocks where they were buying those calls, in advance, they started to sell those in February as well, too. So I think that they were a little bit better position than maybe we thought they were, and they were looking for the opportunities, as I mentioned a little bit earlier, to kind of take advantage of that pullback in the software, chip sector, so on. Joe, great to see you. Thanks, Joe Mazzola. Thank you. Up next from carmakers to auto parts suppliers will discuss which stocks in the auto industry

are at the most risk from surging oil prices. Welcome back. Check out the auto stocks, underperforming the broader markets since the war with Iran began. It's even worse for suppliers in the sector, Magna, Borg Warner, Autolive, all down at least 7% in March. Is this an overreaction, or will the sector see a real impact from higher energy costs? Joining us is Dan Levy, the Barclays Senior Equity Research Analyst who covers the space. Dan, great to have you with us here on set. How do you break down this weakness that we've seen in Auto Sox? And how long do we need to see the price of oil remain high in order for you to really get concerned about the impact on sales? Yeah, so I think there's really two key questions that you have on the impact from oil prices.

First is going to be a question on mix. We know that generally there's been a correlation over the years that when oil prices are higher, when gas prices are higher, that does negatively impact vehicle mix. And we know that the industry is disproportionately profitable on very rich mixed vehicles, trucks, large SUVs. The other piece is going to be on inflation. We know that oil is an input. We know that freight logistics, those are inputs. So these are things we have to watch it.

And the question is how sustained this is going to be. And I guess what would we be looking for in terms of duration of oil prices being where they are? And then other factors, I guess, too, right? I mean, this industry has had to absorb the tariff issue, high sticker prices, a little bit of stretching in terms of auto loan terms and things like that. I mean, what's your general sense of what demand's going to look like here? Well, the interesting thing about demand in the U.S. is it's been actually really resilient.

If you look at the average price of new vehicles today, it's roughly $46,000. And this is with all of the questions on the health of consumers. If you actually look at last year, not only did we outperform on price, but we outperformed on volume as well. That 16.3 million units sales last year was above what we had done in prior years.

So we've actually seen a very resilient set of volume and price, which has been a surprise. The question really is, is how long that can sustain. I think we know that obviously there is a consumer element here. Obviously, we're mindful of the K-shaped economy. The average new car buyer today is not the average consumer. I do think at some point, you know, if this is sustained, it does start to weigh on the numbers and on the consumption. For the parts makers, at what point do you start getting concerned about the rising costs of inputs, whether it be plastics or even metals?

They actually generally have been able to pass most of that through to the automakers. I think the challenge is you have to put that in the context of what we're seeing broadly with inflation, copper, aluminum, steel, and even things that we don't put much attention. It's like platinum memory prices, right? Memory prices going up. It means even a small input when it's up, you know, 50 or 100 percent starts to add up. And so generally they've done fine in getting right. recoveries? The question is, do they get the full recoveries? And then it goes down to the automakers.

If they're absorbing a lot of this, how much can they pass it through to the consumers? I would argue that you've already seen some of that pass through with tariffs. You know, Ford and GM each absorbed, you know, a couple, a couple three billion dollars of tariffs last year. And this is now you're adding in all of the inflation. So it's really a question of how much more they can pass through is a bit of a question mark. Is there a name or two that you prefer? this point? Well, GM generally is our preferred name. And really, it's two things. One, it's you've had a very sustained strong SAR with pricing power that's held in. The other thing really is around EV losses. We know that EV losses had been upwards of $5 billion for each of Ford and GM, really related to

the lack of consumption and also the very strict regulations. That's coming off now that the regulations have been eased. And so it creates a very good case for GM. Now, we have to watch, what happens with vehicle mix. This could temporarily dent the case. But you have a stock that's trading at six times earnings. They're generating good free cash flow. They're buying back their stock. It creates a very compelling narrative. Dan, great to see you. Thanks for coming in. Thank you. Thank you for having me. All right. Well, Americans are facing a travel nightmare. Many of the nation's airports, sometimes waiting hours to go through security. Find out what's behind the log jams and how it could impact airlines when closing bell overtime live

from the NASDAQ market site returns. Welcome back to overtime. If you're heading to the airport in the near future, you may want to budget several hours to get through security lines. Phil LeBow explains why. Hey, Phil. Hey, Mike, when you tell people budget several hours, they kind of roll their eyes at first. But then they see video like we saw over the weekend of people who are in TSA lines that have stretched well beyond the airport into, in some cases, the parking lot. This is what some people were seeing in some airports. Not every airport. It depends on the airport. And the bottom line is this.

You, until we get some resolution in Washington, the TSA agents are not being paid. And therefore, you will occasionally come across some airports where there's short staffing. Has it impacted the airline stocks yet? Not really. What we're noticing in terms of, as you take a look at the airline stocks, the reason they're down in the last week is all about jet fuel. That's the primary weight, if you will, that's on the airline stocks right now. In fact, this is the worst week for the airline stocks since 2022. And that's because of jet fuel prices surging as much as they have. The question becomes, when might these TSA lines become a problem for the airlines?

I think it would have to be an extended period, guys. And you would have to see long lines become routine. We're not at that point yet. We'll see if they get something worked out in Washington. And this becomes nothing more than one more situation that the airlines confront as they go into 2026, realizing there's more headwinds here than they initially expected. Yep. Phil, thanks. Philabo. Of course, on top of higher jet fuel prices. Yeah, all the rest, right? Yeah. We'll see if we get any relief there. The market seemed to think we might have some daylight at this massive upside reversal in stock prices. Little tidbit. March 9th, 17th anniversary of the great financial crisis bear market low. Wow. That was today. We traded at 676 then. We were 10 times that today. So maybe it means something. That does it for overtime. Fast money begins right after this quick break.