Closing Bell - Closing Bell Overtime: Tech Stabilizes After Morning Drop; Who is New Walmart CEO? 11/14/25

Episode Date: November 14, 2025

A volatile week in markets as Mackenzie Sigalos breaks down the big crypto selloff and Steve Liesman explains the Fed’s dilemma. Sam Stovall of CFRA and Jose Rasco of HSBC analyze market reactions, while Seema Mody highlights the GPU-driven tech selloff and debates over Oracle and CoreWeave valuations. Futurm’s Daniel Newman on how this week fits into the broader AI narrative. Katie Stockton of Fairlead walks through the technical on Nvidia, VIX and more. Courtney Reagan discusses Walmart’s new CEO. Finally, Adam Crisafulli of Vital Knowledge previews next week’s market catalysts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Well, that bell marks the end of regulation. Tehan Ranch running the closing bell to New York Stock Exchange. Kindness.org doing the honors at the NASDAQ, and the Dow closing lower by more than 300 points. The big story of the day, though, is the rebound we saw, especially in tech, S&P 500, closing about flat, slightly down. The NASDAQ 2, but slightly higher. At the lows of the day, the NASDAQ was at 22, 436. That was nearly a one-month low. Now, today's rebound wasn't enough to save the NASDAQ from its.

second straight down week, but the down S&P did manage to finish the week in the green. Energy in tech, the biggest gainers, materials and financials, today's worst sectors, energy getting a boost from a gain in oil. And that is the scorecard on Wall Street, but winner stay late. Welcome to closing bell overtime. I'm John Ford. Morgan Brennan is off today. Over the next hour, I'm going to be asking our guests the questions you're probably

wondering about your investments. Should I be concerned the big tech valuations have gotten out of hand, or is the broader thesis intact. Does each dip represent a buying opportunity? Well, let's get started by setting the table with the big themes for the markets right now. Christina Parts Nevelis looking at stock's wild ride today. Rick Santelli covering the bond market, McKenzie Segalos is tracking the sharp declines in cryptocurrencies and Steve Leesman is looking at a looming December dilemma for the Fed. First up, Christina at the NASDAQ. John, we know everything sold off yesterday, stocks, bonds, gold, crypto. We opened even lower today, but dip buyers,

stepped in fast. Semiconductors were hit hardest this morning. The SMH opened up down more than 3%, but closed slightly ever. We'll just call it flat right now, but slightly in the green. Invidia nearly touched $180 at the open before bouncing back to 190.

Micron was a standout up about 5%, oh, 4% now on supply constraint concerns. It was the second biggest driver in the NASDAQ 100 behind DoorDash, which really just rallied on pure momentum. Same for Robin Hood and GE Verno. You can see Robin Hood. These are names D.E.

Vanova almost 4% higher. And speaking of rapid, community-driven surges, look at the meme darlings, beyond meat, GoPro, all catching bids today signaling some risk appetite from investors. At this pace, though, we're still tracking the weakest November since 2008, but November tends to be a positive month posting losses in just four of the past 17 years going back to the financial crisis. A strong NVIDIA report next week in Fed cuts in December. could give us a solid shot at a strong year end. John? Or do we spend it all in October? We'll see you, Christina. Thanks. Now with the bond market, Rick Santelli's in Chicago. Rick.

Yes, John. You know, a 12-hour chart of today's tenure really shows how aggressively we came down in yields, then zoomed right back up. What was the catalyst? Well, there was a couple. One was the equities. Let's keep that chart and team up the S&P 500 futures market. And you can clearly see that there is a high correlation there, which makes sense. And if you look at what's going on in Europe, that also had a big effect on U.S. markets. If you look at our 10-year against a 10-year guilt, the U.K. instrument, for the last two weeks,

you can see how it's pulling us up along with it. And it isn't only the guilt. It's the boons as well. And consider this. Fed Fund futures right now are pricing in the low 40% of that rate cut in December. The low percentage today was briefly under 40%. To find another 39% intraday, you had to go all the way back to February of this year.

And on a closing basis in the low 40s, you're in March of this year to show you how much we've taken back with regard to the aggressiveness of the Fed and the rate cuts, at least in the futures markets. John, back to you. Rick, thank you. And now it's not just the tech trade's been hit hard recently. Take a look at Bitcoin. It's down 23% from its 52-week high, down 6% just this week. McKenzie Sagalos joins me with a look at the crypto breakdown. Back. Hey, John, so Bitcoin is hitting six-month lows, selling off in concert with the NASDAQ,

a reminder that crypto is still trading more like tech than a hedge. But there are also signs of deeper structural stress emerging spot ETF demand. One of Bitcoin's biggest supports is slipping with funds posting a second straight week of net outflow. Thursday marked the second worst day for the spot Bitcoin ETF since launch as big allocators and treasuries pull back. Now, at the same time, liquidity is vanishing, leveraged longs are being wiped out, and funding rates have flipped negative, all driving volatility higher. Now, part of that drop in market depth has to do with capital rotating into crypto treasury

plays like strategy and Tom Lee's BitMine emergent, but now even those are unraveling, plunging by double-digit percentages on the week. Fintechs like Coinbase, E. Toro and Circle are also falling. So with spot selling, accelerating, downside hedges, building, and rate cut hopes off the table, analysts say this looks like the early stages of a broader crypto down cycle, John. Oh, wow. Okay. Well, we'll see what happens there for sure, McKenzie. Thank you. Well, the lack of data certainly isn't helping all this volatility in the market,

with the Fed now finding itself in a December dilemma over a rate cut. Our Steve Leasman joins me with a look at those numbers, Steve. Yeah, Dallas Fed President Lori Logan in just the past hour of John, adding her name to the growing list of Fed officials, skeptical about a rate cut in December. Logan's saying that she needs convincing evidence that inflation is declining to support a December cut or greater signs of a weakening labor market. She's concerned about elevated core services inflation. Logan, a voter next year, and her views highlight that the currently hawkish chance of the Fed Presidents rotating into the voter spots next year could be pretty hawkish. already appears that at least half of the voters on the FOMC this year would not support that December cut. It's reflected in the market probabilities for the December cut dropping to 40%.

They were 64% just Wednesday and 100% before the last meeting in October, and that's after Fed officials, several of them speaking out against further reductions. The probability for January also dropping now standing at around 66%. The announcement by the BLS today, just the past hour as well, that the September jobs data will be released on Thursday. It's a step, Horde's filling in the gap that Fed officials say they need to make the December call, but it's a small step. And right now, given what they know, many Fed officials leaning against that cut, and the market has taken notice, John.

Well, you wave the caution flag here on overtime just a couple days ago. Viewers know, Steve Leesman, thank you. So if you add all this together, the momentum trade unwinding, perhaps, not just in AI, but across sectors, and uncertainty about a December rate cut, with all that, where does that leave investors? We'll CFRA Research Chief Investment Strategist Sam Stoball and HSBC Global Private Banking and Wealth Management, CIO, Jose Rasko. Join me now.

Welcome, guys. Jose, what kind of rotation are you seeing here? Well, I think there's concern about the Fed, right? No question about it. And I think it's well placed because if you look at what the Fed officials have said, and we don't have a lot of data. But this, now, what's concerning for us, we're still pro-risk, you know, don't get me wrong. And we're still like equities going forward. But I think if you get a scenario where the Fed disappoints and, God forbid, you know, earnings disappoint going into Q1, there could be some repricing at the beginning of the year.

And you have to remember, we've been applauding the fact that the MAG 7 is going to slow in earnings from 18% in Q4 of this year to 14% next year, while the forgotten 493 is going to go from 2% growth in the fourth quarter of this year. to 15 percent next year, John. So we've been applauding, that broadening of the market. The concern we have is AI is going global. So demand for these products, these inputs to continue to drive this tech revolution, there's a lot of pressure on that. We may see that earnings may take longer to filter through, which means multiples could look a little pricey as we begin the new year. And so don't be shocked by a short-term adjustment in Q1 to valuations, but we think we're still pro-risk. We think the economy's good

and the fundamentals still look very strong. Okay. So, Sam, that raises a greed question for me, right? Everybody out there who's been decently invested through this period has done pretty well. How much dry powder do you take off the table now for the potential of some real volatility, some dips and some buying opportunities

over the next couple quarters? Well, John, I think that the, exposure that investors might have would be relatively minor because my research shows that while they might feel as if they're behind the eight ball right now and growth investors have been giving up some returns and seeing rotation into the more defensive areas of consumer staples, healthcare, energy, my belief is that whatever decline we get historically probably is going to be less than 10% and would represent a very good buying opportunity because as we head into 2026. As Jose mentioned, earnings are expected to be up about 13 percent, 2027.

Earnings expected to be up more than 14 percent for the S&P 500 with tech leading the way in both years. So I would tend to say that investors should be taking this as a buy-the-dip opportunity. Okay, but Jose, even a high single-digit's dip is probably going to put some people's hair on fire, those who have hair, because we haven't seen something like that in quite a while. So if you're going to take advantage of that, though, you've got to have dry powder. A lot of investors are a lot more weighted toward equities than they have been historically. So if you're in that position in your portfolio, what should you do? Well, we just upgraded hedge funds again. We think, especially at this point of the cycle,

from a global asset allocation perspective, you want to look at hedge funds. They tend to do well when the economy is slowing. And so we think that makes a lot of sense. We've over allocated there. We've gone overweight there. And then we want to play that global AI. I was just in Mexico two weeks ago and conversations with clients about what's happening in AI in some of the emerging market countries would really set what little hair I have left on fire. And so I think you really want to look at that. I agree with the comments that were made by your other guests. And I think this is a global phenomenon. I wouldn't say buy the dip because my compliance team would yell at me, but I would say it's certainly a buying opportunity

if you see any weakness in this because this trend is going on for a while. So we remain bullish. So, Sam, for those retail investors out there who are maybe playing with margin and options for the first time, and there are quite a few of those here, how should you think about this next period? How do you need to make sure your position, though you do say that you're still a long risk, I think? Yes. Well, first off, that kind of a question about margin and about options being directed to somebody who wears both a belt and suspenders is probably not appropriate. Our focus is either, you know, buy, hold, or sell of equities within the U.S. primarily. But my feeling is you just remind yourself that historically of the more than 65

pullbacks or declines of 5 to 10 percent since World War II, it's taken only a month to go from peak to troughs and less than a month and a half to get back to break even. So you've got to be very right very quickly on both when to sell and when to get back in. So my advice would be rotate, don't retreat. If you wanted to make some shorter term moves, focus on where the relative strength is, such as the S&P 500 pure value over the S&P 500 pure growth at this time, which does incorporate many of the sectors that are doing quite well right now. Love the specific advice. Sam, Jose, thanks to you both. Now we've got a news alert on Google. Mackenzie Seagalus is back with that. Mac. Hey, John, so Google is now planning to invest $40 billion in new data centers in Texas.

according to Bloomberg. The move is part of the more aggressive Cappex commitment that Alphabet made. It just disclosed in its Q3 print a plan to spend as much as $93 billion this year, putting it within striking distance of hyperscalers like Amazon. Now, this comes as Google has been landing big cloud contracts with meta, anthropic, and Open AI. It's also powering its own AI model, Gemini, and Texas. That's now home to Oracle's new AI buildout with Open AI. John, I'm out to Google, but I haven't heard back yet. All right. Imagine that. Tens of billions more dollars into data centers, Mack, thank. Coming up on overtime, Nvidia shares up 1,000% over the last three years, as everyone wanted their GPUs for their AI buildouts.

Now the market's asking how much longer three-year-old chips will still be good. Will the refresh cycle mean more spending, but less profit? We'll look at it when overtime comes back in two. Welcome back to overtime. Looking here at shares of StubHub. The stock is posting its worst day ever, down 20. 21%, now down 40% since its September IPO, well below the IPO price of 2350. The company beat earnings expectations but said it would not provide guidance for the current quarter.

Seven analysts cut their price targets on the stock today. Well, we're about three years into this AI rally kicked off by the introduction of chat GPT. The SMH semiconductor ETF has more than tripled in that time, but technology moves pretty fast. And there's growing concern that the chips bought back then might soon need to be reversed. placed. Sima Modi joins me now with more on the concerns about GPU depreciation. Seema? Well, John, as you know, high-performance AI chips do not lose value like cars do the minute they leave the dealership. Hyper-scalers like Oracle are buying these advanced GPUs at break-neck speed with the expectation that they won't depreciate for roughly six

years. But Big Sure investor, Michael Burry, weighing in this week, he thinks it's closer to two to three years fueling this debate as to whether cloud computing companies are overestimating one of their biggest expenses tied to AI data centers. Bank of America sees Oracle's CAP-X investments remaining high, even after 2030, as the majority of their costs are tied to GPUs with, quote, short, useful lives. The problem is no one has a definite answer on the life of these incredibly advanced technologies because the industry is still in the early phase of this AI infrastructure buildout. We spoke to a number of other investors who say that this transition from training to inference may also introduce cheaper, less powerful alternatives.

Seema, thank you. My next guest says Michael Burry, may be right about some specific companies, but the biggest risk remains underinvesting compared to overinvesting. Joining me now is Daniel Newman, CEO of Future Room Group. Daniel, great to have you on overtime. Finally. Okay, so this is kind of pitting Nvidia, and it's set against the big cloud players, the hyperscalers, because if you're in Vidia, you want people to need a new chip every couple of years. But if you're the cloud players in there, accounting, they want to be able to convince us that, no, these chips are going to be good for a while, right? Who's right? Well, I think they're both right in part, John. And by the way,

great to be here with you. First of all, Nvidia and Jensen will get on stage, and he will absolutely say, look, you know, the more you buy, the more you save, the next generation of chips is going to be exponentially more efficient, more tokens, better economics. But at the same time, you have to weigh that against the CAPEX, the cash burn, the depreciation impact that it might have and you have to weigh it against what customers need. And in Seema's report, she said something that is really important. And what's important is we don't know 100% yet how these workloads are going to impact these newest variations coming out from Nvidia, from AMD.

What we do know is that TPUs, we know that a number of older generation Nvidia chips, the V-Series A-series are still being used and still able to command meaningful commercial pricing from their users. But this is all about supply and demand. Right now, there is no equilibrium. So every chip that's available right now, there's someone out there that's willing to use it for an AI workload. If we truly meet some type of equilibrium towards the end of the decade, which is when we expect that to be possible, this is where that depreciation issue can get really significant for companies like CoreWeave that are taking six years. Go ahead.

I just wonder, for the likes of a CoreWeave, do they really necessarily have until the end of the decade? because chances are somebody's overbuilding here. But if you are a Google, a Microsoft, an Amazon, you have your own workloads to have to deal with so you can get useful life out of those data centers that you've got. You don't have to worry so much about overbuilding. But if you're doing this stuff on spec, aren't you potentially exposed?

Well, you bring up a good point. I do think when that supply demand curve, you know, finds that balance, that risk is there. We don't have any indicators, though, from any of our sources across all of the supply chain, all the channel checks. This doesn't really matter, John, if it's turbines, it doesn't matter if it's the concrete that they're pouring to build these buildings, or, of course, it's the enterprises consuming this technology that we are going to get there. You know, I spent time with Lisa Sue this week at AMD's Investor Day. She's one of the more conservative CEOs we know. She felt very confident in terms of doubling the size of her TAM.

Now, that included networking and CPU chips. But that number, that growth number coming from her. She's seeing margin growth. She's seeing her data center number growth. It's growing in every part because they can't find enough supply. So I do think until the music stops. But, I mean, do we have to wait until the music stops? Or if the music just sort of fades a bit, does it start to have an impact?

Because a lot of these valuations are not based on a light switch on or off, is their demand or isn't there. If demand starts to slow down and you see people having to pull their numbers and say, well, you know, maybe we're not as constrained as we were. That's going to have some impact on investors' view on valuations, won't it? Yeah, I 100% agree. I've been a little nervous about CoreWeev since it's, actually since it's IPO. I've said both the combination of a six-year depreciation model and the fact that they collateralize, the GPUs definitely creates risk, especially because there's not a lot of value-added services

in bare metal. And we're seeing other hyperscale and, of course, AI utility companies. You know, we've seen some of these Iron Limited and other companies. companies that have come up that are doing full stack, offer the energy complex, which is one of the biggest constraints, is energy, you know, we have it with memory. And right now, if you're just offering more compute, what we do know is the hyperscalers will use it, but it's not their preference. They're doing it because it gives them immediacy. Right. And once they don't have that need for immediacy, all those holding too much capacity are at risk, and that depreciation schedule

could cost some real problems. I got a theory I want to check with you off of a conversation I was having with the CEO of D-Matrix this week. And that's the idea that these biggest players who are really just burning it up in the markets right now, they're going for home runs because they have to. If you're Microsoft, if you're Amazon, if you're Google, you know that you're going to be fine when the tide goes out no matter what, because you got huge cash flow. Mark Zuckerberg even said it. So the downside is if you don't spend now and you end up underpowered and one of your competitors races ahead of you, then you lose. lose. But if demand slows down for a bit and the market goes down, well, you don't entirely lose.

You just, you know, have to stick it out for a while. So maybe these giants are playing with a better deck of cards than your investor at home, no? No, they absolutely are. If you look at when Zuck went with Reality Labs, he did this experiment. It was a much less exciting technology than AI, but he actually turned the crank, went big on investing, saw the market's reaction. He's not completely given up on it, but then when he cut back OPEX and turned back towards focusing on the company's cash machine, you saw that stock rise monumentally. He knows they can pull on this lever. And this thing about these companies, though, is they do know that they will get to the point where this turns into lower OPEX, higher revenue returns. It drives significant

growth to the business. But they're okay. They're willing to sacrifice maybe some short-term impacts to EPS because they know they're going to get there. They want to maintain their positions as leaders as the MAG 7 is the biggest companies in the world. Great perspective. Daniel Newman. Thank you. Thanks, John. Let's get to Leslie Picker now with some 13Fs. Leslie. Hey, John, yes. We have the 13F from Berkshire Hathaway. Big news here, Berkshire buying a new stake in Alphabet,

17.9 million shares worth about $4.3 billion at the end of the quarter. You can see shares of Alphabet up 1.7%. The firm also sold out, sold about 15% of its Apple's stake, but still holds about $61 billion worth of Apple. It sold about 6.1% of its stake in Bank of America as well to hold $29 billion worth of that firm at quarter end. Berkshire Hathaway also sold out of its two housing positions, Lenar and D.R. Horton, these positions are as of the end of September. They may have changed in the six weeks since then, John. All right, Leslie, thank you. Well, coming up on overtime, was this week's NASDAQ, pull back a real reversal? Or is it merely enthusiasm coming back down to Earth? One chart

might hold the answer. Plus, the end of an era at Walmart, as CEO Doug McMillan says he will step down after nearly 12 years. What's next for the retailer? And how can the new CEO keep the momentum going? We'll be right back. Welcome back to overtime. Health care, the top performing sector this week, gaining nearly 4% as money rotates out of other parts of the market. Merck, a big reason for the health care gains. It is a up 8% this week and now making a big purchase buying Sidara therapeutic for $9.2 billion. That's stock doubling today. Sadara has a drug to prevent the flu, and that has

gotten a designation from the FDA, making it a breakthrough therapy. All right, now let's bring in senior markets commentator Mike Santoli. Mike, we were down nearly 2% on the NASDAQ at the open today before the bounce. So was that move lower this week? just the market, taking a little breath after a long run uphill? Yeah, we could say taking a breath, sort of shaking out some of the complacent money. This has been a little bit more of a choppy pattern, though I'd say over the last five weeks, we've had these downside stabs a few times.

And I guess if you didn't really know anything about what specifically was happening underneath, if you just look at this chart of the NASDAQ 100 is a two-year chart relative to its own 50-day moving average, we might say, well, maybe it just got ahead of itself a little bit, had this necessary switchback to bring it back on trend. That's what happened in July of 2024. You did crack the 50 day there briefly, but you see the distance that it had reached on top of that moving average. Something similar happening earlier this year. We did crack below that average. That was the momentum unwind in February that segued into the tariff panic. Then we recover after a couple of months there. So you see that little burst higher that we had recently. So we're

just bringing into line. We did go below this 50-day average intraday today. just on top of it. No magic to it, but it just more says that the longer term trend or even intermediate term trend has not yet been broken. Take a look at this on a valuation basis. Very similar, right? We had been pretty much skirting the cycle highs, the three-year highs in forward price earnings multiple right around 28 for the NASDAQ 100 until we burst above that and got a little more of a premium to that trend. Again, there's nothing in the books that says 28's the right or wrong valuation, but it's where we have hit a ceiling a few times recently, and we do have earnings estimates going up into next year that should support

things. But here we have corrected just to below that level. So maybe this is just sort of the Pollyanna view of saying this is normal gyrations in the market around a trend. But so far, the market hasn't disproven that idea. Sure. And if you go back to that first chart, I mean, that was remarkable, really. When you look at two years worth of it, it seems like literally nothing's wrong. I mean, like we'd have to go down. almost twice as much before you even start thinking about this being off trend. It is true, although, of course, as bull markets continue and we get toward three years and there's so much more activity and volume and excitement at higher prices, when we do get

that break, even if it's just a 5% break, which we haven't really had in a while, it's going to feel as if a lot of that fresh and excited money that was put to work recently has that kind of negative reinforcement, and it can feed on itself. I'm also watching Bitcoin. There's so many elements here that we have to be wary of. I will say I just looked in the post-market trading. Alphabet is indicated higher on that, you know, stale but still interesting ownership piece by Berkshire. So that could help the index here on Monday. For sure.

And, of course, we remember April, don't we? Mike. Thanks. Well, time for a CNBC News update with Bertha Coombs. Bertha. John, Indiana Senate Republicans said today they would not meet to redraw their congressional maps as expected. State Senate President Pro Tem Roderick Bray said there are not enough votes for the effort amid a push by President Trump to change districts ahead of the 2026 midterms.

Republican Governor Mike Braun blasted the move and said voters deserve to know where their officials stand on important issues. A federal judge approved a $7 billion settlement for Oxycontent maker Purdue Pharma. It clears the path for the company to end its more than six. year bankruptcy and resolve mass lawsuits. And a new poll says Republicans are more likely than Democrats to have a good friend in the opposite party. NBC's latest national poll shows 82% of Republicans said they had at least one close friend who is a Democrat compared to 64% of Democrats who are close friends

with a Republican. John? All right. Well, there you go. Bertha, thank you. Coming up, we are covering all angles of the markets for clues as to where stocks might go from here. Up next, we're looking at the charts and what elevated volatility might mean into year end. We'll be right back. Welcome back to overtime. Stocks rebounding from the morning's losses. The NASDAQ down nearly 2% at the lows. It closed higher. But the Dow down more than 300 points, nearly a percent. A big reversal in some recent losers, including Micron, Oracle, Palantir, Nvidia, and Tesla. For the week, the S&P and Dow ending higher, the Russell 2000 and the NASDAQ, both lower. A mixed day in commodities. Gold finishing down more than 2%, crude gained more than 2%. A rough week for

Bitcoin and Ether, both falling 8%. Ether now down 30% in three months. And we want to make a quick correction. Earlier, we misstated what Berkshire Hathaway did with its stake in Homebuilder Linar in the third quarter. Berkshire Hathaway maintained its Linar stake in the third quarter, according to its 13F filing out this afternoon. We saw a bit of a relief rally from this morning's lows during trading today, but there's still a lot of volatility under the surface. What are the charts telling us could be ahead? Joining me now is Katie Stockton.

She is Fairlead Strategies founder and managing partner and a CNBC contributor. Katie, we just heard from Mike Santoli about how maybe things aren't that rough with the charts. What are they telling you directionally about what's doing well and maybe what's stalling out? You know, this week has been somewhat tough for the charts in my work. We have now new intermediate term overbought downturns with the pullbacks that we've seen from the major indices that includes the S&P 500, the NASDAQ 100, and there and also SPY, triple Q. We have those ETFs testing their 50-day moving averages.

There are some similarities between today and last Friday. They came down to their 50 days and pivoted, bounced up. But I think it might be premature to suggest that the pullback has ended because we have these new downturns in the weekly metrics. And the weekly metrics have implications for a few weeks as opposed to a few days like the daily metrics that we track. Have you seen an impact in the charts from this tendency we've seen from retail investors to buy these dips even when the institutions are not? And, you know, the retail investor has been right, at least as far as the market is faring so far. Yeah, I mean, so far, so good, right? Up until now, the 20-day moving averages have mostly been pointing higher since that April low is established.

And I do think that that's largely retail flows, it's passive flows. There's a lot of factors at work there. But, again, we have a little bit of a chink in the armor of the market as of the last couple of weeks, with volatility having increased. And, of course, we now have a VIX that looks to be entering a higher volatility cycle. And when that happens, we tend to see more volatility, and that's been lacking really up until mid-October. Well, let's look at the NVIDIA chart because that's going to be a huge impact, I imagine, on the markets next week, at least potentially, well off the highs. But, you know, at this level, I don't know, it looks interesting to me, but I'm no chartist. It is interesting. And actually, I think it's better for Nvidia to be coming into its earnings report next week, short-term oversold, as opposed to short-term overbought. But ideally, we see Nvidia stabilized near some support on the chart. It's essentially around 180 to 190, so pretty close to in line. There is some support for Nvidia. It's based on our daily cloud model. And with short-term oversold conditions there, it has a better chance of holding.

But I would be taking a wait-and-see approach rather than adding exposure if I didn't already have it because I want to see that reaction turning to see if it manages to continue to hold, given the loss of momentum, that is certainly evident in those weekly indicators. And Nvidia tends not to, well, I guess by nature lately sell off and stay off for long. If it does, are there things that tend to follow? What kind of influences the stock have now? Well, I think it's a huge, huge influence on market sentiment, especially in the retail camp. Folks are trying it to the AI trade.

We have seen some of the high flyers within the AI trade pullback in a pretty notable way. So their pullbacks now reflect a loss of momentum that's carried over to those same intermediate term metrics. So if that happens or continues to happen with Nvidia, it extends its corrective phase. I do think it will be an influence on anything that's tech-related, really, so the tech sector as a whole. And when the S&P 500 loses the support of the tech sector, that, of course, becomes somewhat problematic. So we're going to take that wait and see approach until those indicators on the weekly charts look better. We wouldn't feel comfortable adding exposure. In fact, we've been recommending to our clients for a few weeks now to be partially hedged just to mitigate that risk.

Pivotal moment coming up on overtime next Wednesday. Katie Stockton, thank you. Of course. Well, coming up, Walmart's CEO, setting his departure date. Stocks outperform rivals during Doug McMillan's tenure. We're going to talk about the big shoes. The new CEO, Walmart, is going to have to fill when overtime comes right back. Welcome back to overtime.

Let's check in on some of the stocks hitting all-time highs today, starting with the insurance giant Hartford Financial. Also, several names sprinkled throughout the health care space, drug distributor cardinal health, hospital operator HCA, and WellTower, which is a health care real estate investment trust. Well, Walmart shares closing flat today after longtime CEO Doug McMillan announced he will retire in January after nearly 12 years at the helm. Since McMillan stepped into the role in 2014, Walmart shares have risen more than 4X. So can his successor continue the momentum? Courtney Reagan joins me now.

Court, I would argue, and I know you've been laying this out all day, that Doug MacMellon doesn't get the credit he deserves. He's arguably the Satya Nadella of retail. He's the CEO of Microsoft. And he started as CEO of Walmart three days before Nadella started at Microsoft. Similar setup. Stocks had been sort of dead money for more than a decade. And now, phew.

Yeah. Well, so maybe in tech, he's not getting the recognition, but I would argue in retail, everybody looks at Doug McMillan and kind of marvels at what he's done. Now, has everything he's done always been met with fanfare and excitement? and everyone believing in it from the start? No, you might remember in October of 2015. So about 10 years ago now, McMillan came out and said,

we're investing billions of dollars in our employee wages and their training. And we're going to build these academies. Oh, and by the way, we also need to invest more than a billion dollars in our digital e-commerce infrastructure. We have to catch up. And it's going to compress our earnings for a while. Hopefully we'll return to growth in several years. And it's somewhat surprised Wall Street when they made this announcement,

even if at the time they believed it was something they needed to do. And if you look at the revenue stream in the beginning years of McMillan, it was relatively flat. But then it went from in the high four hundreds of billions of dollars to almost $710 billion in annual revenue. And McMillan did that. He set up this playbook for the long run, and he's been there long enough to see it out.

And now it's time to sort of turn the page, move on to the next leader that can finish this chapter and then build on it. So who's the new guy, and can he continue what I would argue was a cultural shift for Walmart, too, because before McMillan came on board, it was sort of the big corporate punching bag, you know, destroying small town retail, paying not enough. What are the warehouse conditions? Now Amazon's taking some of that heat, and Walmart has a little bit of a halo. Yeah, I mean, John Ferner is going to be the incoming CEO. He currently runs Walmart U.S. He previously ran Sam's Club. Like McMillan, he is a lifetime Walmart employee. He started as a part-time job, had an internship in Walmart, Mexico. His father worked for the company. His father knew Mr. Sam, Sam Walton, who founded the company, actually helped his mother through cancer treatments. I mean, Ferner is very loyal to this company, as McMillan was.

And I think it speaks to the culture. I mean, both of them feel very connected to the employee bases at the front line on the store level, because they had those jobs. And they get a lot of respect from the workforce as a result. And again, back to talking about McMillan saying, I'm going to invest a lot of money in employee wages. It's been too long since we've done that they deserve it. I think it was an underappreciated move. I think the employees feel more invested now.

The stores are cleaner. It's really been a cultural shift. And I think Ferner is a continuation of that. He's been part of this playbook with McMillan all along, but has also done a lot to improve the store to the e-commerce and that whole flywheel effect. Yeah, same time, it's tough to take over after a big stock run like that. Steve Ballmer will tell you. But hey, maybe do it when the going's good, right? For sure, for sure.

Well, earnings season winding down, thank you, Courtney. With 90% of the S&P 500 companies already reporting, stocks holding up pretty well, though, all three major averages up more than a percent since the banks kicked us off with this earning season on October 14th. Up next, Mike Santoli is going to take a deeper look at what we've heard from companies this reporting season. Stay with us.

We've got breaking news on efforts to get air travel back to normal after the government shut down. Our Phil LeBow has the story, Phil. John, the scheduled reductions continue to drop. The FAA and the DOT just announcing that the number of scheduled flights into the top 40 airports, which it was a 6% reduction today, it drops down to 3% starting at 6 a.m. tomorrow morning. That's because of improved staffing with air traffic controllers around the country. So again, the number of scheduled flight cuts from the schedule or flights cut from the schedule drops down to 3% starting at 6 a.m. tomorrow morning. John, back to you.

Good news for a lot of travelers, Phil, thanks. Now, to spark this market choppiness and questions about the economy's trajectory, corporate confidence seems to be holding up fine. Senior markets commentator Mike Santoli taking a look, Mike. Yeah, John, more companies finding the logic to try to raise guidance this latest quarter. Here's a chart going back, a bunch of years back to 2012, shows that about more than a third of S&P 500 companies have raised guidance this period. That's obviously not as much to the pandemic. I think you discount that because of the closure and reopening of the economy. But it's very comparable to what we saw at the end of 2017 into 2018, which is very interesting as a comp because 2017 was also a similar year with a relentless rally.

First year of a Trump presidency. Everyone was excited about the following year. tax cuts and all the rest of it. Raised guidance. We did then run into a volatility storm in January of 2018, so maybe we've got that going on right now or we have it ahead of us. But interesting on a fundamental basis

that the numbers are still coming through, John. All right, you didn't, on the other hand for us there from the first charts. I appreciate it. Mike Santoli, thanks. Well, from NVIDIA to Walmart to Fed speakers and maybe a jobs report, we're going to get you set up for next week's trade when overtime comes right back.

Welcome back to overtime. Let's get you set up with next week's trade. The big elephant in the room will be in Vidia on Wednesday, right here on overtime, the last and biggest of the big tech stocks, as Katie Stockton just told us, a lot of the market potentially riding on it. Elsewhere in tech, Palo Alto Networks and Baidu will report. Then retail takes over the calendar. Walmart, TJX, Lowe's, Home Depot, Gap, BJs, all hitting the tape on the economic front. Wednesday brings the Fed Open Market Committee minutes, and then we'll get existing home sales on Thursday and Michigan sentiment closes out the week. Not confirmed,

but our Steve Leasman is reporting. We could get the September jobs report next week, at least some of it. And we'll hear from six Fed speakers during the week that could give us better insight into the Hawks versus Doves debate at the Fed right now and who's who. Well, for a breakdown of what events will matter most to investors, let's bring in vital knowledge founder Adam Chris Affouli. Adam, is there really anything but NVIDIA next week? No, that will definitely be the dominant event for obvious reasons how we've had, you know, a two-week mini-bear market in tech.

There's a lot of skepticism around the AI backdrop. And so, you know, Nvidia is going to be watching extremely closely Wednesday night along with a couple of other retailers, which you mentioned, but NVIDIA definitely going to be most important. Yeah, but as you said, given the questions, the sentiment,

the buzz out there about how much longer can this go? Johnson Wong always has a broader perspective to bring about what he thinks the pipeline looks like and what kinds of innovations it's going to drive across the global economy. How much has that tended to influence then the valuations of other companies and how much is that driving the market? No, I mean, it's kind of, it's been a weird dynamic lately. You've heard from a lot of companies that have plenty of AI exposure this week. You know, we've heard from Foxcombe, we're from AMD, we're from Cisco, and everyone, is still as bullish as ever in terms of near-term demand trends.

I think the bigger question that's really kind of weight on the space is more longer term, looking out over the medium and longer term. And it's kind of skepticism and questions about translating some of these massive bookings numbers into revenue. And it's unclear if Nvidia can really, you know, can really provide a ton of guidance on that front right now, even though the numbers and guidance are expected to be healthy because we saw that from out of those other companies of suspension.

You know, AMD on Tuesday was very bullish on the backdrop. for AI chip demand going out over several years. Do you have a view on how influential these micro-earnings numbers are for the big companies in this environment given the absence of federal data during the shutdown? Yeah, I definitely think they take on, you know, even additive ports, especially the retailers, which, you know, provide more granular insight, I think, into kind of what's happening on the ground to consumer and even to a lesser extent on the inflation front. So Target at Walmart, you know, I think are really going to give you some great insight into

to support your macroeconomic positions of the U.S. economy as we start to get some of the backlog, the economic data, these companies will really be valuable. Speaking of Walmart, how about that run from Doug McMillan? And what do you think is the big challenge of the next 10 years, not just for Walmart, but for retail and how investors should think about approaching it? Yeah, I think for Walmart particularly, you know, I think he has kind of two big legacies, or several, but two main ones is really kind of, I think, reinforcing the gross. free business, which acts as an anchor for the retail franchise, and then really doing a good job

building out an e-commerce business. And so, you know, his successor is obviously going to have to continue on that trend, but he's going to have very big shoes to fill. And I think that, you know, in the morning at least, you saw a pullback in the stock, just some consternation about the transition on leadership. You know, but for retail in general, you know, I think Walmart really is in a class by itself, along with Costco in retail. And a lot of your other kind of brick and mortar that are tied to brick and mortar, you

have a lot more kind of existential questions that they're facing. I think Target in particular is one where there's a lot of skepticism on the strategic outlook. What do you make of the Fed and the position they're in right now, whether we get a December cut or no? Yeah, it's really tricky. You know, you have the odds of the December meeting fall kind of officially below 50% says they're at about 45% for a cut. You know, we've heard from a lot of Fed officials now. The Fed is very divided.

They're going to be very divided in the minutes. We'll get next Wednesday. You know, we're just going to see some of the economic data. that comes out, we're going to get the jobs report on Thursday or September. You know, I think even if they do cut on December, you get a risk in that the forward guidance that day, but pivoted in a hawkish direction. And so it may not, you know, it may not be a huge positive for the market. I really think it's really kind of looking out beyond the December meeting into Q1 the next year. And also keep in mind, there's a big wild card in the

power replacement pick, which could arrive, you know, at any point in the next couple weeks. You surprised how quickly Oracle came back down to Earth? I know, I think that stock really more than any is, is, you know, kind of demonstrates the, you know, the promise in the excesses of the AI narrative. On the one hand, they had this massive bookings that were from, and then obviously huge CEPX demands tied to it. So I think that's just really balancing. We'll see if Invidia does better. That's going to do it for overtime.