Closing Bell - Closing Bell: Tech’s Takedown 2/3/26

Episode Date: February 3, 2026

We track some big moves in software stocks – and have an all-star line-up of reporters to tell us which companies are down the most and why this is all happening. Plus, it’s a new era for Disney. We hear from Jim Stewart – who wrote the book on that company – about what could be next for the media giant with a new CEO in charge. And, we break down what to watch from Amgen, Chipotle and AMD earnings. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to closing bell. I'm Scott Wapner, live from Post 9 here at the New York Stock Exchange. This maker breakout begins with techs takedown today, which is weighing heavily on stocks and in some respects sentiment as well. There is the scorecard with 60 to go in regulation today. It is the NASDAQ, as you see, down almost 2%. It's been down worse than that. It is trying to come off of its lowest levels of the day. Some very big moves in software stocks today. And we have reporters ready to go on which companies are down the most. why this is all happening. Elsewhere, you heard Kelly talking about it, Bitcoin falling to its lowest level since the fall of 2024. We'll get to the bottom of that, too. Palantir higher after a strong earnings report, but maybe not as high as some might have expected. We'll watch that one

too. How about Walmart, topping a trillion dollars in market cap for the very first time ever? That's notable up more than 2%. We'll track it. Novo Nordisk. It's down big after warning of a sales hit this year, almost 14% in the red. That takes us to our talk of the tape. The AI-related hits, several key stocks are taking today. Let's go right to Sima Modi for the look at the hardest hit area. SEMA. Scott investors are analyzing Anthropics' latest update and the threat it poses to the SaaS companies that rent out their software to Fortune 500 companies to tackle sales and marketing like Salesforce, Dropbox, Adobe, Shopify, all down sharply today. And while strategists at Jeffries, they do say this extreme sell-off,

will create buying opportunities. We're really not seeing that today, with the exception of Palantir up about 5% on the back of earnings. The IGV software ETF on track now for three weeks of losses, even beyond traditional software. News of Anthropics, new tool for legal experts as pressuring shares of legal Zoom down 19% data analytics company, Thompson Reuters. As we sort of try to understand what happens with earnings, the two names we're going to be watching this week at Lasseon and Fortinette. Scott is set to report on Thursday. All right, good stuff. Seema. Thanks for starting us off. That is Seema Modi. Now, why is this all happening? You heard Seema talking about Anthropic and something that it recently rolled out. Kate Rooney, can you give us more information about why so many different stocks in so many different areas are getting hit the way they are? Scott, so Anthropic and all of its AI capabilities have just become this boogeyman for software companies.

They're watching what they're doing so closely, they being anthropic. So Claude was really the first leg of this. It's weighed on software sector, the sector overall software stocks. It is also causing some jitters. These tools, you've got others from Google and OpenAI, could really eat into companies' core businesses. And that is the big worry. We're seeing this repricing as Seema talked about. The latest, though, so Anthropic did add some new capabilities in the legal space.

It was sort of an under-the-radar announcement on Friday. It did not get a lot of buzz widely other than in sort of developer communities. It's a new plug-in for Claude Co-Work, which has been out there, I mentioned. does let AI agents perform legal tasks. So think of things like reviewing documents, tracking compliance. Companies are built on things like that. And so it's been digested by investors thoroughly at this point. You've seen shares of professional analytics companies. You've got RELX and Walters Clue. So some of these are European companies. But those have been down double digits. Experian also getting hit legal Zoom facts that some of these companies are

traded internationally. As I mentioned, the expanded tech software ETF also down more than 4%. But I would say there's just so much interest, anthropic sneezes, and the software companies are paying attention. So even these incremental updates are just getting so much attention. It's like a sell first and ask questions later. Kate Rooney, thank you very much for that reporting. It's another area, though, in the market today raising eyebrows because several stocks are selling off with many suggesting what's going on here

and why are these specific names down? Our Leslie Picker joins us now as we look at some of the private credit stocks. Yeah, so you've got TPG, Blue Owl, KKR, Ares, Apollo, Blackstone, all plummeting today, and contrast that with the big banks, which are mixed. And that really has to do with concerns around alternative asset managers and how that's tied to the sell-off and software in other areas that could be disrupted by AI because they have done so much in the way of financing private software companies. UBS analysts estimate that as much as one-third of private credit is exposed to the risk

of AI disruption, I Capital has said that software specifically accounts for about 20% of outstanding loans for private lenders. Now, that's a lot of concentration risk if there is a broad-based disruption that leads to a surge in default and a re-rating, a broad-de-rating of software. As a result, that re-rating of software could be a huge test for private credit, especially when we've already seen a tick-up in redemption requests at some high-profile firms. And then if that continues, kind of depending on the fund structure, these funds could be forced to offload their technology-related loans, and then at what price does that happen? So it's earning season right now, Scott, with KKR, said to disclose its fourth quarter figures on Thursday. Carlisle is slated

for Friday. Apollo is scheduled to release results next week, so we should be able to get kind of a real-time sentiment check from these executives, from these firms about the current situation. Yeah, I mean, the analyst community, you know, dot in the eyes, crossing the T's on all those questions that they will want to ask on those earnings calls. Oh, I hope so. Yeah, Leslie, thanks so much for that. That's Leslie Picker. It's not just software stocks

and the ones that Leslie was talking about taking down tech. Most of the mega cap names are lower today as well, including Invidia, which is the middle, in the middle, of some reported drama with OpenAI. Well, we just heard from Nvidia's CEO, Jensen Wong, who sat down with our Jim Kramer exclusively.

Christina Parts of Nevelos is here with what he said. Christina. Well, Scott, NVIDIA CEO is calling reports of friction with open AI, quote, complete nonsense, like you said, telling Jim Kramer that Nvidia is just thrilled to invest in the AI startup, listen it? No, there's no controversy at all. It's complete nonsense. We love working with Open AI. We are incredibly honored and delighted to be able to invest in their next round. And so we're a privilege that they're inviting us to invest for each one of their rounds.

His comments follow recent headlines suggesting trouble between the two companies. but the reality is just more nuanced. You have two distinct deals that are moving definitely at different speeds right now. The first is that massive infrastructure partnership announced in September, Nvidia pledging up to $100 billion to help Open Eye build their own data center capacity.

The Wall Street Journal says it's stalled, though the deadline of the second half of 2026 hasn't actually hit yet, so that's really important. So the Wall Street Journal is the only one reporting that it's stalled right now. The second deal is Nvidia's equity stake in OpenEI's current funding That's still happening, Scott.

Reuters reported OpenEI has been looking at alternatives for chips specifically used for inference, how AI models respond to user queries. The company, though, does already openly talk about working with AMD, Broadcom, and Cerebus for certain workloads, so that's not necessarily new. But OpenEI's infrastructure chief posted yesterday on X that Invidia quote is our most important partner with our entire compute fleet running on Nvidia chips. So the bottom line, Open AIs, at... adding chip vendors for specific needs, but NVIDIA is still the backbone for now.

All right, Christina, thank you very much for that. Another reminder, you can catch Jim's full interview with NVIDIA's founder and CEO Jensen Wong. That is tonight on Mad Money. It's a CEO exclusive and it is at 6 p.m. Eastern time. All right. Let's bring in our next guest. We rely on him a lot for his insight and expertise on almost everything AI-related. It's good to have you.

Alex Kentiewicz, of course, is here. Okay, no controversy, right, according to Jensen Wong, but friction, no? Definitely friction. I think OpenAI and InVIDIA, without a doubt, need each other. Both have Google breathing behind their necks, right? You have OpenAI and Google competing for the model. You have Nvidia and Google competing for the hardware. The way to beat Google is to team up, and that's why we're seeing these big deals,

the $100 billion intent to invest. But that being said, there is without a doubt friction. I believe the reports that Jensen is saying privately that he has some concerns, about the way that Open AI is doing business. And of course he would, because ultimately he made this big deal with Open AI when Open AI was the leader. And now you have Google right there with them. And now that is a concern for him.

Do you have issues with the way that Open AI is doing business in some respects? Or if there are legitimate concerns on Jensen Wong's part, are they valid? Are there things to be concerned about? I don't want to make a mountain out of Mojo. I would say this. open AI got a head start ahead of everybody. It built chat chip Epte off of effectively publicly available infrastructure, an architecture that even Google published,

and they were able to exploit that. There was, without a doubt, going to be a moment where the competition was going to come in. The competition is in. So the fact that the competition has made it here, to me, is not an indictment on OpenAI, but there is pressure on what that company is going to do next. So if nothing else, this raises the issue,

and I think we talked a little bit about this yesterday, I love the word that you just used when you were describing this proposed deal between OpenAI and Invidia intent. The reason why stocks go down when incidents like this happen is because the market in many respects has assumed commitment. When at the end of the day, this is intent. Intent doesn't always lead to commitment. We almost need it to to justify where these stocks have traded and the benefit of the doubt that investors have given. Oh, absolutely. And by the way, that's the biggest change I've seen in Jensen's language. The press release that NVIDIA put out when this all began was that the company intended to invest up to $100 billion.

And you hear it with Jensen, even the thing that he was speaking to Kramer about. The way that he frames us is OpenAI invited us to invest this money. We hope OpenAI continues to invite us to invest this money, and we will consider it. That is a very different line of reasoning and public relations than the initial intent to invest at $100 billion. You think that the market has gotten just overly optimistic about what everybody is going to do and deliver and we're not going to overspend, we're not going to overbuild. Don't worry about these so-called circular arrangements that have brought a little bit of consternation in the market. What do you think about all that? I think the market has had some worry there.

I mean, we saw with earnings last week as Microsoft's Cappex spend plans went up, the market didn't react very well to that. So I think we're hitting reality in a way. But overall, I would agree with you that there has been this belief that AI is going to work out, as these companies say, and we're seeing it with software today. There's so much stuff that has not been figured out yet. There's so much unpredictability and uncertainty across the entire AI world, the chip makers, the foundational model builders, the software companies. Nobody knows where this is going. You speak with them. They're not sure.

Who's going to make the most profit, where the benefit is going to be, how it's going to disrupt certain industries. And it's very, very difficult for the market to predict that, and it's made an attempt. But we're just going to continue to see this readjustment over and over again, and hence the volatility and the up and downs that we're seeing today. We're making some many multi-trillion dollar bets in many respects, and we're seeing market caps of stocks go up by many hundreds of billions of dollars on the belief that all of this is going to work out. And unfortunately, we're not going to really have the answers anytime soon.

We're going to have to see how a lot of this plays out. That's correct. A little bit of signal the market goes one way or the other. Again, with Microsoft, the build out for their AI program isn't anywhere close to complete it. But yet, the market says, okay, you're not doing great in AI down 10%. With meta, do we have personal super intelligence yet? Not anywhere close. But the market sees some numbers it likes, up 10%. And I just think we're going to be stuck in this cycle for at least the next year where the market is going to see little signals and make big decisions based off of it where they don't

fully tell the entire story. All right, that's a good last word. A.K., thanks for being here as well to help us cover and think about this story. That's Alex Kanchowitz, of course. Stocks across the board, they are lower. For more, we are joined now by our panel. Stratigis is Chris Verone, New Edge, Wells, Cameron Dawson, and Robin Hood's Stephanie Guild. It's good to have everybody with us.

What do you make of what's happening here today? I mean, there are periods of time where there are these big questions about what AI is doing for better or for worse, for, you know, society, for the market, and then for certain groups of social. stocks. It's a little reminiscent of a year ago with Deep Seek, so let's not forget that. But let's take a step back and remember a couple things. This software complex, it's not like this bare market and software suddenly began this week. I mean, these are stocks that have been in bare markets or relative downtrend for the better part of the last six, seven, eight months. We mentioned the private capital stocks, the Apollos and the aires and the blue owls. I mean,

these peaked last spring last summer. So the market's very good at attacking the weakest animals when something goes wrong. And I think that's what we're seeing here. Maybe the change over the last three or four or five days is some of the momentum stuff is getting hit now. You know, the pulling of the pin from silver was probably the beginning of that. But Micron was 150% above a 208 moving average. We wrote on Monday, it could be anything that disrupts the wind. And I think you're certainly seeing that with the high momentum names now. What does it all mean that? Well, I think that we have to bring it back down to the fundamentals, which at the end of the day, we're still in an environment where earnings estimates are still going up. But when you're

trading at 22 times forward earnings, it could be anything that causes this volatility. And we've been seeing this rotational market ever since November of last year, where we've seen a big surge in the cyclicals. You've seen some of the weakness come in the software names. And I think a question is, now that they are very firmly oversold as today, we're likely to get some kind of bounce, but is that bounce something that people sell into very aggressively, where we look back and say, those were pretty major tops in those software names. You've had some concerns, Steph, over different periods of time about where all of this is going and what the competition is going to do to certain companies that have been almost given, you know,

a free pass in the whole wrap-up around AI. What are your thoughts here? Yeah, I think we're in an environment where things are doing better than services in that, you know, for sure data centers are being built and industrial. growth is happening and that's where I think people are getting are comfortable to put their money behind. And then in retail, for example, there's recovery stories. But when it comes to software, I think what you're seeing is there was a lot of money just relying on their consistency in earnings and margins and cash flow. And I think those companies in some ways probably got a little bit

resting on their laurels like can happen when you have just like consistent businesses where you assume it can go on forever. And I think that's the unwind of this where all these people were hiding out in that. Should we still be bullish? I mean, the trend, despite a day like today, still feels up. Yeah, the trend is still off. Listen, Scott, we're in February. It's a coin toss historically, whether it's a positive or negative month. There's really good support at 65, 6,600 on the S&P. I think if you've got a correction, that's kind of the area where I would look to put more risk back on. And remember, even on the day like today, S&P down, 120 bibs, there's just as many stocks up as there are down. I mean, this is not about some broad selling under the surface.

The breadth has actually been quite good. Kind of our big call, really since September, October, has been this idea of the speculative corner of the market handing off to the real economy. And you just see more and more evidence of it with transports and chemicals and freight. That's where I think the market wants to go. That's RSP over triple Q's, that's small over large. That's where we are. And that, Cameron, can make up the difference if you, if you have stocks act like they are today, like if software just remains stuck in the mud, and now if we have to be concerned about some of these big PE and private credit names,

as long as those areas that Chris talks about are fine, we're good? Well, not necessarily, because 2022 is a great reminder that if you really do hit the largest cap portions of the market, that you can see something like equal weight outperform, but the overall index comes down because the weights of things like energy and materials and industrials aren't enough to make up that gap. I think one of the things, I read Chris's note every single morning, always says price leads data. And we've certainly saw that with the PMI yesterday, with a pop and some of the manufacturing data, but look at the energy stocks. They're rallying on an absolute and a relative basis, but oil remains in a downtrend. So is this more of just positioning

out of the winners into some of the relative losers and can it be sustained? I'd love to get your perspective because you have such a retail component at Robin Hood to what you think about what's taking place in Silver, which has gone straight memeish last week. Bitcoins, obviously, the roll over there, the competition for dollars from, you know, many of the people who use your platform. Yeah, I mean, we're seeing Silver's been at the top buy segment for a while now. And last week didn't actually scare them off. we still saw net buying into the dip, which wasn't necessarily a terrible thing if you wanted to

stick with it. We are still seeing net buying in the crypto space, and it kind of depends on the coin that you're looking at in the large cap crypto space. But I do think there's been a bit of a replacement from crypto to some of the medals for our customer base. And then they are, I mean, they did net buy Microsoft. So it's not like they're only looking at crypto. You know, they did say, like, this is starting to look cheap to them.

I mean, if you want to play the prediction markets and, you know, some of the betting markets, you only got so many dollars to go around. What do you make, by the way, of the tremendous run-up in silver and then the massive decline that we saw the other day? I mean, what began as a pretty orderly bull market, really two or three years ago, became very unorderly over the last eight, 12 weeks. When things go as parabolic as silver became, you know, for much of January, when I can't measure risk reward, I can't play, there was a point last week where silver was, I think,

140% above its 200-day moving average. There was one day where you did 45 billion notional on SLV. A typical day would be 1 billion notional on SLV. I can't play when I can't measure risk board. I thought the break on Friday and into Monday, if you lined up to how this broke in 7980 around the Hump Brothers was pretty similar, you've got to bounce off the 50 day and then you failed again. So I'm a seller of this bounce the last couple days in silver.

My suspicion is the highest are in. concern you at all, like what's been happening in the metals markets? I think as a reflection of risk appetite and some of that mumification and speculative behavior, it is concerning and you parallel that with the surge that we've seen in margin loan balances, which have grown 40% over the last six months. So clearly there's a lot of risk appetite in this market, and to Chris's point, it doesn't take a lot to potentially cause that to hit a wall. That's for sure.

Well, we'll continue to follow it, and we will continue to talk to you guys. Thanks so much for today. We appreciate it. Chris Cameron and Stephanie. We'll see all of you soon. We mentioned what's happening in Bitcoin, crypto getting crushed. Bitcoin itself falling below 73,000. That would be the lowest level since November of 24. McKenzie Segalos is tracking that money, as she always does. joins us now. Hey, Mack. Hey, Scott. So Bitcoin erasing nearly all of its gains since President Trump's reelection, dropping to its lowest point in nearly 16 months down 17% year-to-date. As investors continue to rotate out of risk on assets, amidst, tariff uncertainty and with the partial government shutdown delaying key economic data. And you can see just how tightly Bitcoin is now trading with the NASDAQ moving in lockstep with tech equities lower today.

You've got alt coins like ether and XRP part of this wider sell-off across tokens. The broader crypto market has now shed $1.5 trillion since its peak in November. And the market, it really hasn't been able to recover since that October 10th liquidation event that wiped out $19 billion. dollars and leveraged token bets. There's been a contagion effect of crypto pegged equities as well. Robin Hood and Coinbase both firmly in the red today, as are the crypto treasury name, strategy, and bit mine immersion, which is at top ether proxy.

Mike Novigrat's on the Galaxy earnings call today saying, now the question is when we find seller exhaustion. Scott? We wait and see. Mack, thanks. That's McKenzie Segalis. We're just getting started here on closing bill. Up next, Disney's new era, the media giant announcing its CEO succession plan.

And finally, we'll discuss with the man who literally wrote the book on that company, Jim Stewart, just after the break. Welcome back. Disney finally naming a successor to CEO Bob Eager today. The board selecting Parks Chief Josh DeMotto for that role, which, or Josh DeMorrow, which he'll assume on March 18th. For more on what this means for Disney's future, we're joined now by Pulitzer Prize winning columnist and CNBC contributor Jim Stewart of the New York Times. It's good to see you. Nice to see you, Scott. The weights over. The suspense is over.

Some people want to know, like, who's going to win best picture. But this is a bigger prize. What do you think of the pick? Well, I think it's solid. I think it's good. You know, I think it's interesting that they went with the parks person. I think we're sort of starting to see that in some ways Disney has become a theme park cruise ship company with an entertainment division, as opposed to an entertainment company with a theme park division.

And that is a big cultural shift there. But, look, Josh has done a great job managing that. Look at the recent earnings. It's operating income from the theme parks has been a huge percentage of their overall growth and their earnings. And he's done a good job managing it. And the reports on him, he's very personable. He gets along well with people. I would say already today the transition has been smoother than the disaster of the last time they tried this.

Well, I'm glad you bring that up because, look, Bob Chapec also ran the parks. Yes. And the criticism at the time was that's not the type of visionary, my word, no one else's, that Disney potentially needed to take the company into the future. Wasn't a creative type, wasn't like a script guru, couldn't maybe interact the way that some thought a Disney CEO should have to interact with the Hollywood community. All of those things were pointed at as maybe to why Mr. Chappek wasn't the right pick. When I hear you answer the question to this choice, I almost get the sense that Chepec maybe was the right pick just too early because Disney hadn't gone through the transition that you just said they had.

Well, there are some big differences. I know that's oversimplifying it, but I couldn't help but think that. Well, one of the problems before that I think is not a problem now is that I don't think deep down Ager really wanted to leave before. Remember, he stayed on as executive chairman of the board. He also had the title Chief Creative Office. officer, even after Chepec was announced. And that very first day when they announced it, if you look at the footage of that on CNBC, Iger looks miserable. He looks already like, oh my God, I think this was a mistake.

Now I think he is ready to step down. I mean, it was not fun going through the whole mess, you know, with the late night stuff, with the cultural wars going on, having to preside over earnings calls and, you know, analyst meetings, which is not something Iger ever really loved. So I think it's going to be a much smoother path. And by the way, Disney kind of has to succeed this time. They cannot flood this again. I reread this morning, and I know you're alluding to some of the stories that were so

incredibly well told in the palace coup, your story a few years ago in the New York Times, which sort of documented the drama and the steps that led to the unraveling of the relationship, both personally and professionally. It sounds to me as though you're convinced that this. time, Iger's ready to move into whatever next chapter of his life he wants to take on. He certainly, everyone I've spoken to, who's talked to him, has said that he has indicated that. And also, I think, look, he went through the disaster once.

He doesn't want to have this happening again. And then I think another positive thing this time, both Iger and the board spent more time probing the people who reported to tomorrow. to find out how they got along with him, what did they really think, what kind of manager was he, and they really neglected that the last time around. They looked at the results under Chepec, but they didn't really get down below and really probe to see did he along well with people underneath there. Expand more if you could on the point that you made and the one that I reacted to,

the idea that a choice of somebody who was running the parks maybe then wasn't necessarily the best pick, But today it is because they have transformed themselves into how they perhaps see what's going to lead them into the future. Well, that's true. And I think that in a way made him an obvious choice for this. But there are some risks there because I don't think Disney and the employees there, and certainly the CEO and their heart of hearts wants to think of themselves as a theme park company. I mean, the challenge is theme parks, cruise ships, you're not going to get the multiples there that you once got. I mean, there are going to be a consumer cyclical company.

And, you know, where's the growth there? Even the last earnings report, which was pretty good. I mean, the operating income growth in theme parks is single digit. You know, we're not, and we're not looking at margins of, you know, 60 and 70 percent or anything like that. So it's a challenge. I think that's going to be one of the big issues here. But one of the, I think, neglected part of this story is Dana Walden got got a big job here. I mean, she's not only president, but she's got the title of Chief Creative.

creative officer. That's the title that Eiger wanted when he stayed on the last time. That, to many people, is the fun part of the job. She can deal with the creative community. She doesn't have to deal with Wall Street analysts. She doesn't have to preside over the earnings calls. She doesn't have to deal so much with the chief financial officer. So she's going to have a big job here. And it's almost like co-CEOs, I think. I mean, they stop short of that. Clearly, Josh is still in charge. She reports to him. If entertainment vision falters, it's going to be on her. I'll have to do something about it. But she still has a very big role here. Well, which was key, I would assume, you know better than me, keeping her to, you know,

having her stay. You don't want to choose tomorrow and then have Dana Walden leave. She's too important to this company. Absolutely, especially right now. Now, I mean, over time, I assume tomorrow is going to start getting to know people in Hollywood, showing up at the, you know, Academy Awards at Red Carb is advancing, you know, people. It's not that I would have any, not that I would No, but I think it is very smart then to keep her on and give her a big job. Yeah, it's always great talking to you. There's nobody better on this topic. Jim, thanks. Thank you, Scott.

All right, it's Jim Stewart, New York Times. Still ahead, we'll break down the playbook for locking in big tech, big gains, excuse me, in one hot part of the alternatives market. The details when the bell comes back. Go big or go home. That's the playbook if you're looking for big money returns in one red hot part of the alt's market. Robert Frank is following that money for us and joins us now. Hey, Robert. It's got great to see. Well, team values in the big U.S. sports leagues have reached close to $500 billion combined. And one big reason is private equity. The NFL, of course, joined other leagues in allowing private equity firms to take minority stakes in teams. Then leading that charge is Arctose Partners. They are the only PE firm with team ownership stakes in all five major sports leagues. Now, I sat down with managing partner Ian Charles, who said that aside from being

really fun to own, sports teams are also better investments over the long term than stocks. Take a listen. Premium sports assets behave differently. They're anticyclical. They're anti-fragileged. They're uncorrelated. They're under-levered. And despite all of those really nice, durable attributes, they have performed on par with or better than public equity and private equity over really long horizons.

Now, for the full interview with Ian Charles and the best investor playbook for, for investing in sports. You can sign up for the Inside Alts newsletter at cnbc.com slash inside alts. Scott? Good for all parties involved, too, here, right? We talk about these big returns for the folks like Ian Charles and Arctose that are making the investments, but also now a necessary pipeline to capital for the leagues as valuations

have just gone through the roof. Absolutely. You've got a lot of families that have owned these. teams for a long time. They want liquidity. You got that second, third generation that wants to have a little bit of cash to do some investing. And so now they have an alternative to sell these smaller stakes, still control the team, but have that liquidity for other investments. So you're right. Good for all sides. All right, good stuff from you. Robert, thanks, Robert Frank. By the way, a quick programming note, once again, halftime and closing bell will be live

from California Thursday and Friday. We're going to the Bay Area ahead of the Super Bowl. We'll have big interviews with Joe Montana. He's got a new playbook we'll tell you about. We can't wait to do that. Super sports investor George Pine, Michelle Gass, of course the Levi CEO, the namesake stadium for the Super Bowl. Brad Gersner on the current state of AI and Mark Gannis. He knows more about the inner workings of business and finance related to NFL dealmaking and the other major sports too. And we'll talk to everybody and we can't wait. Coming up next, we check the biggest movers as we head into the close. Christina Partsonabalos is standing by with that. Hi there. Hi, Scott. Well, a major bank acquisition is sending shares higher one name and a payment stock company hitting multi-year lows on a CEO shakeup.

Those movers and more when we come back. All right, 15 before the bell. Back to Christina now for the stocks that she's watching. Please tell us. Let's start with shares of Webster Financial because there's popping right now 8% after Spain. Santander said it has agreed to acquire the company in a deal valued at 12.2 billion bucks. The deal aims to boost Santander's presence in the United States, Webster, which is based in the United States. Webster, which is based in the state. the Northeast has seen about a 10% gain in the past year before the announcement, so shares climb even higher. The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2026. PayPal shares moving in the opposite direction, down about 19% after the company missed expectations for the top and bottom lines, guidance and other key metrics, but PayPal also announced a CEO change.

As it said, progress just hasn't been fast enough. The stock is trading at lows not seen since 2017 and is down more than 50% just in the past year. And shares, of Novo Nordisk also falling about 14.5% after a trading halt, as the drug maker unexpectedly warned that its 2026 sales and profit growth will be hurt by lower drug prices in the United States. And that's amid fierce competition in the weight loss space as well. Shares down almost 40% on the year, Scott. Wow. All right, Christina, and thanks for that. Christina, parts of Nevolo's coming up next. We run you through all the key earnings reporting top of the hour in OT, and we'll do that

in the market zone next. We're now in the closing belt market zone. Mike Santoli and Trivari. It's Adam Parker here to break down these crucial moments of the trading day. Plus your big earning setup. Annika Kim Constantino covering Amgen, Kate Rogers on Chapoel, Christina Parts de novoos on AMD. Mike Santoli, do you first.

Software no good. Some of the other tech's no good. Tech overall, not very good. No, but interestingly, the market has done its best to try and isolate the damage in those areas and some adjacent parts of the. the kind of growth stock universe. You know, it doesn't necessarily feel great. The S&P is still kind of hamstrung here around these levels. We had another test of the 50-day moving average pretty shortly after we had one last week. So it clearly is kind of spinning its wheels at the

index level. But you look at defensive stocks, low volatility stocks outperforming by a percent and a half today. And even small caps managed to find a bit over the course of the day. So it's still rotational, just in a very anxious way. And one where you kind of wonder if so much this erratic action in some of the tech areas is going to just be too much for the rest of the market to pick up. So far, it's keeping it contained. How do you think you and Mel are going to dive into it at the top of the hour? Multiple ways. Obviously, we're going to really get down into software and to some of those adjacent areas that I talked about. We have an analyst who thinks there's a couple that are becoming a buy for sure. So that is the way we're going to

lead with it. Plus, the knock-on effect on some of the private capital stocks. You guys have been talking about that as well. That's really kind of sort of right near the blast zone of what's happening in this pullback. Yeah, those are the key questions. All right, we'll look for you guys top of the hour in overtime. That's Mike Santoli. Anika Kim Constantino, tell us more about Amgen and what to expect. That's right. So we're not expecting many big surprises from Amgen this quarter. We're expecting EPS of $4.73 per share, as well as revenue of around $9.5 billion. And that will likely be driven by drugs like Repatha, which is a drug that lowers bad cholesterol. and was also recently approved for slashing the risk of heart attacks.

So that should add some nice growth there and also offset some of the declines that we're seeing for older drugs that are facing generic competition. And in terms of outlook, we're looking at EPS of $22.9.9 per share, as well as revenue of around $37 billion. But one thing to really watch here is how Amgen is faring in the wake of lower drug prices after the deal it struck with President Donald Trump in December. All right, Annika, thank you very much for that.

Kate Rogers, what about Spole? Scott analysts are looking for 24 cents adjusted on revenues of 2.96 billion for the fourth quarter for Chipotle. Same store sales expected to decline by 3%. Restaurant margins projected to be at 23.1%. Now last quarter, remember, the big storyline was a pullback, particularly in the younger consumer, opting to dine at home more due to an uneven economy. So we'll see if that trend continued into this quarter. I'm also going to be watching for Catalyst introduced in the quarter, including its protein-focused and GLP1 friendly menu.

And if that moved the needle at all for sales, the stock did have a rough 2025, one of the biggest laggards of the year, along with other fast casual names, including Kava and Sweet Green. But it's been doing well to start the year up just under 5%. And you can see it's higher into the close. Scott. Back over you.

All right. Kate, thank you very much for that. Christina, AMD. A Q4B, I have to say, Scott is expected. And that's because of strong server demand. But the real story is whether CEO Lisa Sue can really justify by the company's stretched valuation. AMD right now trades that afford earnings multiple 40% higher than Nvidia, you can just see on your screen 42

versus Nvidia's 25 times, which is a premium for a company still playing catch-up in AI. You can argue against that. Analysts project AI GPU revenue could hit $30 billion by 2027, up from six and a half billion just last year. That really hinges on the second half of 2026, specifically the ramp of AMD's Helios Rack Scale systems and the massive Open AI deal that they signed.

But concerns, there are some concerns that are mounting, supply constraints, execution risks on Helios, and the fact that key customers like Meta Microsoft Open AI are all building competing in-house chips and have investors on edge. Today's call could be somewhat of a credibility test. Can AMD really deliver concrete visibility into 2027 to justify that premium over in VITA?

Or our expectations just a little too high. All right, we shall see. It's an important one. Christina, thanks for the setup. Christina Parts and Nevelos. All right, AP, big story today, software, which you continue to suggest is a no touch, at least most of it. What do you make of what's happening today in this market?

Well, you know, what's pretty common is when you see multiples and stocks go down this much, it's not for randomness. What it means is ultimately the estimates are way too high. And so we studied the last five times software as underprivile. form tech by this much over the last 25 years, and every time the out-year earnings disappointed by a lot. So I think what the market's telling you is the numbers are two-eye. There's obsolescence risk, AI. We're going to be sitting here and just talking to our computers and a few are telling it what to code. And so that whole mental space is what's impacting the multiples. And I think a lot of the

valuations, even with this pullback, are still not particularly compelling for a private deal or anything like that. So I think you've got to stay negative. Oh, man. So you're not a by the dip, this is just getting ridiculously overdone? No, I mean, if you start really diving into stocks like Intuit or Service Now or Salesforce or others, they're still not cheap. You're still looking at three, four percent free cash full yields. So, you know, you want to wait 30 years to get your money back with this kind of, you know, obsolescence risk. I think they could be, you know, in trouble and still have meaningful downside. So I don't want to add here at all. What do you make of the, if you want to call it drama, some have called it friction, whatever.

whatever it is between invidia and open AI, if it's even anything. What do you make of the uneasiness, I guess, that some investors around the AI space are feeling because these companies are so integral and they're reliant on one another? Look, it feels dirty to lend somebody money and then they use some money to buy your products. Like, I don't think any of us are, you know, psyched about that. I don't think, you know, the amount, we know what causes cycles to end, you know, it's hubris and debt. You know, you get arrogant people and they get debt, and that's a bad cocktail. So some of that has, you know, touched open AI a little bit, I'd say.

And so there's some concern about that, no question. And the interviews that I've seen and a lot of investors have seen don't make, you know, Sam Waltman seem like he's, you know, when he talks about wanting to squeeze out short sellers when he runs a private company, that irritates public equity investors. So there's some of that hubris and that thing. I think people are really parsing semis now into four buckets, right? There's the memory guys who were in the super cycle. There's the equipment you've seen with Tara 9 and others today.

There's the AI revenue beneficiaries where Nvidia, AMD, etc. I don't know if those companies can see any more multiple expansion. So they've got to put up growth numbers that offset multiple contraction. And then there's the analog guys that are doing, you know, kind of improving. Let me ask you this. And I joke about this, but I'm serious. Like, you used to cover semis, okay? This is your discipline.

You know it better than most. If you are covering the space today and you see stocks like Micron, and we can show the one year and Sandus recently, Terradine, some of these others, I mean, what's happened in memory is extraordinary. Would you still have buys on these stocks? Or would you say, I don't mean valuation call. I got to downgrade them. I don't know. How do you think about it since you know it so well? It's closer to selling than buying memory for sure.

I think the business has improved because of consolidation. But what's different about memory than other semis is eventually, we know their cyclical businesses, eventually they're going to overbuild. And unlike other semis, their product is perishable, meaning the pricing gets killed. The other thing is that eventually memory becomes so big that it impacts the overall price of what it goes in. Let's say you sell up desktop computer, memory for $1,000, memory can't be more than $200 or something of the bill of materials,

or it starts to really raise the whole price of the box and hurt demand. So that's a different animal than, say, what analog devices, Texan or Microgrip does. So what the answer to your question is, I would be selling some of the memory stocks on strength to fund other parts, either semi-caps or the analog businesses. As usual, you saw ISM go up this week. What happened a few weeks ago? Microchip, ADI, Texan, went up. The stocks always lead the fundamentals. But I mean, the market's, you know, okay, it's a red day, but it's still, you know, most people think the trend is just fine. So would you want to just leave the weakness in tech and make you even more so want to lean into everything else?

Yeah, look, we're market weight tech, like semis over software, but being a little bit more, you know, kind of specific in semis. But I like health care. That's my biggest overweight. I continue to think 2026 of the year where you need to see companies show AI productivity. What's really worrisome to me is we decompose the grade eight, so the big eight companies, mag 7 plus broadcom, right? And we look at the other 492. The other 492 have massive earnings estimates and net margin expansion embedded in the numbers. So what does that mean?

The street's got AI productivity hitting lots of numbers. So what we're doing at TriVariate is we're searching every earnings called Transcriptor, everything we could find rated to cost-related AI synergies trying to isolate the companies that we think have a better chance. Because the thing you're noticing today, look at PayPal, the penalty for missing estimates is way, way harsh. And so you just got to make sure if you own stocks, they don't miss. And I think that's a key focus for us as we look at the estimates in the second half

the year. Yeah, I mean, even some of the companies that have really done well in earnings have seen either bad price action or just lackluster. And that's something to watch too. Adam, I appreciate your time, as always. always that's how very is Adam Parker joining us here in the market zone as we get ready to ring them out red the Russell's going to be green otherwise a rough day especially in tech though we did come off the lows and decidedly so as the bell rings I'll see you from the

bay the Bay area as we get ready for the big game and overtime with Melissa and Mike