Closing Bell - Closing Bell: The Countdown to Nvidia 8/27/25

Episode Date: August 27, 2025

The biggest stock in the market gearing up to deliver the most important earnings report – arguably of the entire season. We break it all down with CNBC contributors Josh Brown, Bryn Talkington and Stephanie Link along with our Kristina Partsinevelos. Plus, former Fed Vice Chair Roger Ferguson weighs in on the fight for Fed independence. And, we track some massive moves in the retail space ahead of some more high-interest reports in that sector. 

Welcome to closing bell. I'm Scott Wobner, live from Post 9, here at the New York Stock Exchange. This make a break out begins with Invidia's moment of truth. It's earnings a little more than an hour away now. What is riding on it? The bull run for stocks? The entire AI trade? We'll ask our experts those very questions, including shareholders Josh Brown and Bryn Talkington. They'll join me in a bit. In the meantime, we'll show you the scorecard here with 60 to go in regulation. Pretty decent day, in fact, as we enter this final stretch, green for the majors. and we're trending for a new record high again on the S&P 500. We will watch that closely. The financials helping to lead the way today.

They're hitting their own record high. Energy stocks doing quite well. We're watching all of that. And how about shares of software company MongoDB surging following their blowout earnings report? Look at that, up 36%. It takes us to our talk of the tape. The biggest stock in this market delivering the most important earnings report arguably of this entire season. Let's welcome in our experts.

CNBC contributors, Bryn Talkington, Josh Brown, Stephanie Link, our own Christina Parts of Nevelos, who's at the NASDAQ. It's good to have everybody with us. All right, the options market is pricing in a 6.2% swing either way, following the print for a stock, as we said, the biggest in the market. Josh, it's 8% of the S&P 500. It is 10% of the NASDAQ 100. How are you thinking about this going in for a stock that has run? and run hard into tonight's number. So, Judge, I'm usually the guy that comes on and says,

ah, this is no big deal, or we're hyping this up too much. I don't think so in this case. I think this is a very critical report for NVIDIA, and I think it really does matter to the market. And maybe that's now become consensus. I'm not sure. I want to start with what we already know. Cloud hyperscalor CAPX is absolutely surging across the board,

And we just got reports from all of NVIDIA's biggest customers, giving us the evidence that we need to feel confident that that should continue at least for the next couple of quarters, which is why this company is close to all-time highs going into the report. Quarterly cap-ex spending has risen from $44 billion at the end of $23 to over $90 billion when you just look at the five largest customers or five of the largest customers. So Microsoft, for example, is a $17 billion quarterly run rate on CAPEX, Alphabet is $22.5 billion, Amazon's $32 billion. Invidia doesn't get every dollar of that, of course, but nothing noteworthy takes place without Nvidia being part of it. That's how we got to where we are, and that's what we know so far. What we're going to find out tonight, specifically, in my view, the things that will really matter the most, we have the China situation resolved. So it's really going to be about the sell-through of Blackwell, specifically, the G.B. 200, which is the current latest generation, that's the standard, if there's such a thing, AI super chip. It's two

Blackwell GPUs on a chip with one Grace CPU. So the GB200, just to give you an example, Oracle is deploying thousands of these in liquid-cooled racks, and they have already said they plan to scale up to over 100,000 G.B. 200s in what they're building. The next thing, so we need to know how that's selling. The next thing is the GB300. So if you think about the GB 200 as, let's say, a Ferrari, this is the Formula One. This is for the largest large language models and for massive workloads. That's going to launch in September, and the street, Judge, is going to ask about the timing? Is that still on track? And what are their early indications? In my view, those are the big things to watch for, and those are the things that are on the minds of the sell side.

It's interesting, Christina, that Josh, the way he frames this, says the China issues are now resolved. Maybe the biggest question coming into tonight won't be answered coming out of tonight. And that is what portion of their revenue, what is the big revenue number if it does include China or not, something we might not learn about until we get to the call from Jensen Wong himself. And if they even give us a number that reaches the upper echelons of what the whisper number has risen to, which is extraordinary in and of itself. Tell us more. Yeah, you are highlighting the disconnect between what could happen post-earnings report, you know, that happens at 4.20 p.m. Eastern and then when the earnings call happens.

And I see that because the street is not anticipating any China revenue for the last quarter. That would be the one that we're reporting on. And the reason is because of, like you said, you had the export bans, and then the licenses were only granted in August. The quarter ended July 31st. So we could assume that they're really not going to make much money from China. And that's a big drop when the previous quarter it was like 13% of total revenues. To your point about the whisper number, which you're seeing as high as $55 billion,

some by-side analysts are actually including some revenue dollars in that $55 billion number. So if we don't see that guide hit that number, you could start to see the stock sell off. But now's the disconnect. Jensen Wong is a great storyteller. And on the call, he is going to speak about the potential in China, the market in China, the $50 billion tam over there. And he may not specifically say, hey, we're making new Blackwell chips, and I'm become best friends with the president. And he's probably going to allow these chips to go through. But you could assume that he's alluding to the future market. And so that could help to change things around and help the narrative coming.

from China. Wren, what's the most important thing you need to hear tonight as a long-standing shareholder? The clock ticking down below an hour and 14 minutes until it all goes down. Well, last quarter, if you listened to the call, we had Jensen bought because Jensen was not Jensen. He literally read from a script the whole report. And so I think he was really trying to thread the needle between the tariffs, between President Trump, between Xi Jinping.

And so to me, I want to hear old Jensen speaking extabraniously, you know, in his regular voice versus last quarter was from a script. I think what's important, though, for investors is that since that chat GPT moment back in what November of 2022, Nvidia is up around 1,100%. And so there's not a surprise here. This stock has just been a beast. I also think, though, for investors this time last year, their revenue growth got was about 120%. We're now expecting this year for 50%. So I do think we're going to continue to see that revenue growth come down and normalize. And to me, I think that the important reports were the ones we've already heard from Facebook, from Google, from Microsoft, from Oracle that are already

spending these billions of dollars. And so what I want to hear, I think China is actually very important. I think one of the first questions is going to be, if they don't bring it up, is about the 15% that the U.S. government is going to take from their sales. And I do think people want context around China since they did write off that $4.5 billion for the H20 chips last year. So I do think China's important. It's a huge market. We want to see if they have any visibility to get that earnings growth to continue to be in those high double digits. Let's not gloss over this point that you just made. And we have a chart that matches up against the story that you are trying to tell. The tremendous gains that you say, NVIDIA has made since December of 2022,

up 1143 percent. Look at that versus the gains of the major tech names in the late 90s over a similar period of time. In other words, the enablers of the Internet versus the hyperscalers of the AI boom. You make the case that there is no historical precedence for a major tech company to rally further from here, given the extraordinary numbers that we've already seen? I'll just ask you plainly. You think the stock's up too much? Well, I mean, so, you know, Data Trek, who did really great work, put this chart together, and so I was sharing that chart from them. No, I don't think the stocks run too much. I think the stock has followed earnings. And so the earnings have followed. If you have an earnings chart,

which is not there, by the way, the earnings. charts going to follow that. I just think it's important to understand in the past two and a half years you've had this monster return on top of monster earnings, but it's not like it's a surprise. And so I do think as revenue numbers have gone from 120% to year for 50% per year, I don't think they're going to ramp back up to 100%. So I do think there's a lot priced in. This is still one of my favorite companies. I'm just saying this is not a new story. And so like investors need to understand what the performance have been of the company over the past few years. And that's why I don't think, I think really the AI trade is hinged on the hyperscaler spending,

which Nvidia is just getting the majority of that market share. I'm looking at, you know, how much these major name companies have rallied, let's say, on a price basis on the 600-plus days post-1995, the seminal moment in the adoption and the if you will, of the internet and the explosion of it relative to the largest companies in the market that were at the forefront, the soldiers marching at the very front. Microsoft was up 346 percent, Intel 500 percent, Oracle 195, compared over the same time frame, Nvidia, up 1143 percent. Stephanie Link doesn't own this stock. I know she wishes she did. She's gotten a lot gains out of Broadcom. She tells us that every time. I have to. Now, what gets you to buy this

name? Anything tonight gets you into this stock? I mean, maybe. I'm always looking, right? But in the past year, Scott, Nvidia is up 42% and Broadcom is up 84%. So Broadcom has really seen a catch-up trade. Rightfully so in my mind, because they have a diversified revenue mix. They have the highest best in class gross margins, operating margins, and free cash flow per share. That all being said, NVIDIA is certainly an amazing company. But when you have, it's overowned. You have 90% of the sell side have buys on the stock and very, very high expectations. You know, I'd say the same thing about Broadcom.

I just think that Broadcom is a little less understood. Not by much, but a little. Even now? Yeah, I do. Yeah, because I do think that the margin story is interesting. And that is the thing that I'm going to be looking forward with NVIDIA tonight. because we know Blackwell is going to lead to an upside surprise in the revenue number. We're all expecting that.

But what does it mean for margins? Because I think that the mix shift is so important. And I think you're going to see the company reiterate core gross margins of 75%. That's the key to me. That's the reason why Broadcom has worked because they have been able to see margin expansion in addition to the top line number. So we all know about the hyperscalers, $400 billion a year. This is not going to be a demand problem.

at all. This is a high expectation story at this point in time. So to answer your question, let's just say it does sell off 10, 15%. I don't see that. But if it does, it's possible I'll add. But I do have other exposure with regards to AI. And that's unlike the industrial side of things, which are equally as strong, which have done just as well. And they're spending just as much, not as much as the hyperscalers, but they're spending a ton of money. And I think both companies, Broadcom and Invidia, are both winners over the long term. Josh, relative to the numbers that I read earlier and Stephanie's perspective behind it as well, is Nvidia overowned? Is it overhyped? Is it overdone?

Well, everyone in America owns it. If you have a 401K, it's your biggest position. And that's not because you chose. That's because the market voted and said, this is the best company in the market right now with the highest growth. with the best margins and with the best outlook. It could change. We could see some back and forth. We could see maybe someday Microsoft or Apple flipping InVIDIA, but like everyone owns it.

So I can't argue. I would have to say maybe not overowned, but it's plenty owned. Maybe that would be the way I would phrase it. As I mentioned on the show last week, there are now 30 individual ETFs focused on the AI theme. What do you think the biggest position is in most of them? so no it's not a hidden gem does that answer but here's what i want to get across and i almost jumped out of my skin when we were showing those charts of invidia versus like cisco microsoft intel from the

prior uh internet boom actually and nobody believes me until i show them this invidia stock price has not kept pace with the growth of its earnings specifically um chart kid mad at my shop did something this week that went like mini viral, we looked at the forward earnings expectations 12 months out for Nvidia and charted it back to the release of chat GPT, which was roughly Thanksgiving of 2022. And in point of fact, the growth of those forward 12 month earnings estimates is 1136%. Invidia's share price is up just, just 964% over the same period of time, by which I want to tell you, the stock price went from $5, remember it split, to $178 over the same time frame, Judge. Its forward PE actually shrunk. It was 38.2 times earnings at that point

when it was mostly video games and crypto to now 33 and a half times today. So this is not a story where Wall Street lost its mind and we've bid this stock up to absurd levels. it's not even keeping pace with the rate at which they've been able to grow earnings. And I think that's important context for people who are asking us the question right now, should I stay or should I go? Yeah. Christina, how do you look at that? I know you're probably astounded as you cover this company,

just seeing all the hype around it, seeing how the CEO themselves become a rock star of sorts in this industry and transcended that in and of itself. But the stock appreciation to this point going into what seems to be loftier and loftier and loftier expectations. Yeah, he is a rock star. Don't forget he did sign a woman's chest. But to that point, the evaluation, and you talk about loftier, it's still trading, and this is what the Bulls will say, it's still trading below its five-year average of 36 times.

It's still trading below Broadcom. Yes, it's higher than AMD. Yes, it's higher than the average NASDA composite stock, but overall, it's still cheaper on a, a five-year basis. For the actual company, though, in terms of demand, Josh mentioned the hyper-scalers. We have to think, too, there's other hints in the market. You had Hon-Hai, which is Foxcon, essentially. They make the racks for Nvidia. They guided. They said that their Q3 will triple in terms of racks produced from Q2. That is a good sign for Nvidia in terms of getting supply. The other keys are like Corweb, for example. Corweb rents out GPUs. They're

going to be really capex-heavy spending a lot in Q4. So that's spending a step. to come. So you have the neoclouds, which Corweave falls into that spot. You have sovereignty eye, which is really hard to quantify, but possibly something that Jensen Wong speaks about on the call, you know, Arab Emirates or France or whatever countries or regions are spending money on NVIDIA. And then you have the continuous demand from the hyperscaler. So I feel like he's really going to talk up all of the other avenues to showcase that demand is going to keep going, especially within inferencing, which is the next leg of this conversation and something that NVIDIA is starting to really showcase their strength in.

Steph, let's take our own next leg of this conversation, if you will. And let's talk about the market impact to all this, just like beyond NVIDIA, J.P. Morgan's trading desk says, the market needs a solid print to prevent triggering a pullback. It appears that a solid print will also trigger a rotation as some downside fears are assuaged. In that scenario, look for cyclicals and small caps with the U.S. dollar dictating demand for international and EM equities. You want to weigh in on that as we spend a little time figuring what all this means to this market? Yeah, and so you mentioned that Nvidia is 8% of the weighting in the SMP 500. So it's a big weight, and semiconductors also are a very big weight.

And to the extent, Nvidia falls, so are the rest of semis, but it might be temporary. I think it will be temporary because of all of what we're saying, the underlying demand. If we do get a pullback, and we've been talking about September kind of being a rocky month in the market, and I expect that actually, just because we're up 30% from the April lows. But I look back in this past week, Scott, we got a Fed pivot. So we went from maybe one or two cuts to maybe three by the end of the year. We have economic data that actually has been pretty good. PMIs, you know, I look at them and obsess about them. And the composite is the best number since December of 2024.

the manufacturing, the best since 2022. Credit card data spend actually accelerated in August versus July. So, oh, and by the way, the sat we got today was M&A hit $1 trillion at the end of July this year. So there's activity. And so all of this is to say it's not just about NVIDIA. It's about the overall economy. And I don't think NVIDIA's report will derail the economy and the momentum that we have. No, let's flip it.

Do you think that a solid report tonight triggers that broadening trade to go further? I think there's some questions about it right now after having a pretty nice go of it and then having some questions depending on what you think is going to happen with the rate cuts. If NVIDIA knocks it out of the park tonight, are we all go for this big broadening move in the market? Well, we have been seeing the broadening move, right? We've seen financials. We have seen materials. we're starting to see discretionary. How about housing? We are starting to see the broadening,

in addition to pockets of technology doing well. I'm kind of excited in a way that technology has actually pulled back a little bit, like 10, 12 percent from the highs. But we can talk about crowd strike, if you like, down 17 percent. Invidia's down 10 percent. So I think like expectations are a little bit more muted. But so the point being is I think Nvidia is going to be a strong report. How it reacts, I don't know. But the bigger picture, is that the economy is doing well, and it has a lot to do with not only NVIDIA, but this whole theme of AI, of cybersecurity, of power, grid, data, center. This is a huge, huge time in our country, in the world.

And one report is not going to derail it, and I do think, to answer your question specifically, yes, I think we're going to continue to see a broadening. Christina, I'm going to let you run and get ready for the top of the hour, because I know you got a lot ahead. Thank you for being with us. I'll continue with the others, because we will talk about CrowdStrike. I mean, the cyber trade, Josh, of late, has not been good. CrowdStrike hasn't traded well.

A lot of these other names didn't trade well. Palo Alto had a good earnings report. If you look at the performance of these stocks since that report, it hasn't been docked out of the park. What's going on? Look, I think these are stocks that most of them that you're citing have doubled or tripled over the last couple of years. And sometimes huge gains like that need to be consolidated. Can I please remind you and the rest of the panel, Nvidia was in a 35% drawdown from a tie at one point this year.

Did anyone think that meant there was something like seriously wrong with Nvidia? Not really. There's just an ebb and flow of enthusiasm for these companies. But I think big picture, like if you're out there hunting for Rule of 40 stocks, almost all of the cyber names are eligible for your investing dollars. And I just, frankly, I don't see how it changes. Now, what could happen is that there isn't any more consolidation. And these competitors, the ones that are left, tear each other to shreds and margins

maybe aren't as great next year as they were this year and the year before. So I accept that there is some risk. But like, we have this incredible secular tailwind. I know Stephanie agrees with this idea. It's like, you're definitely fishing in the right pond because, but, Cyber security budgets are not coming in. And if we think all of this money in CAPEX, $400 billion, is valid and is really going to happen, well, all that does is ratchet up the risk. More AI means more cybersecurity.

George Kurtz told me that, and he's repeated it on several occasions. And I ain't going to argue. So, you know, if we're bullish on AI, then we're bullish on cyber. End of story. I got you. But, you know, Bryn, the cyber. Library ATF's having its worst quarter since 2022. Something's going on.

I don't know if this conversation about whether AI is killing software, and it's just caught up in the down draft that we've seen of many of the names, but when you're having the worst quarter that you've had in three years in a sector that has as much enthusiasm as Josh and Steph talked about as anything in this market, what's up? I mean, I think there can be some digestion in CAPEX spend from the big, companies that are taking contracts from these cyber security companies. So I agree with Josh and Steph about the secular trend. But cyclically, companies that are adding and increasing

cybersecurity do it in a lumpy manner. And so I think that that's part of what's happening. I do think that regarding your comment about, which a lot of people are saying, is AI eating software. I mean, I think that's such nonsense. From the enterprise perspective, like I recently reduced Dell added to Salesforce, bought Salesforce, because in no universe are we going to take our private client data and stick it in an LLM and just hope for the best and not think about hallucinations? And so I do think maybe some of the cybersecurity has gotten caught up in that. But I think within certain software like the sales force of the world, the market has just gotten it completely wrong about AI somehow taking over these large enterprise companies

like a Salesforce that I think you're actually going to get stickier and stickier as they're adopting their own AI so we as companies can use our own our own information in a secure manner. I mean, Salesforce is down 7% in a month and 25% year to date. So maybe there is this value. I think it's a headcount risk. I think it's rotation. I think it's rotation. I think you've got to take the money from somewhere. And the technology has done so well. as all of us know. And if you want to buy a new sector or new stocks, we're going to get it from. You got to sell something and buy something. And so on the margin, maybe people are just trimming some technology. I don't think that's the right thing to do over the long term, just given all

the things that we're talking about from these trends. And I firmly believe AI, just exactly like Josh said, hey, because of AI, cybersecurity is going to be bigger. And these are, we're talking a trillion total addressable market in dollar terms between now and 2030. You want to be part of that. But we'll see there's ebbs and flows i also want to own financials i also want to own industrials i might even want to own some energy i got to get it from somewhere today all right josh real quick because i got to go with a point you were just trying to make sorry to interrupt but i think the the what's ailing the software sector is the concern about hiring the slower pace of hiring the concern about the the state of labor market because all of these enterprise license

deals from sales force and other SaaS software companies are sold on a per head base So if AI means we need less people, doesn't mean they'll disintermediate sales force, but it could mean there are less people in need of having that license. I think that's the cloud that's been hanging over those stocks. And maybe it's wrong. But that's what I think the concern is. All right. Well, I feel like we're set up. We're set up for this big moment shortly after the top of the hour.

Thanks to you guys, Bryn, Josh, and Steph. President Trump's moved to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook escalating the fight. debate over Fed independence. Our next guest is a former Fed Vice Chair. He's now a CNBC contributor. Roger Ferguson joins us now. It's good to see you. Welcome to our show. Thank you. Nice to be here. What do you make of this whole Lisa Cook story? Well, look, I think you put in the right context. This is really a story about trying to undo what has been 90 years of Fed independence. What most people don't know is 90 years ago in 1935, the Congress restructured the Fed. It removed executive authority, executive branch authority,

by taking the Secretary of the Treasury and the controller of the currency out of the monetary policy discussion, made a number of other technical changes, and the whole goal was to give the Fed independence in doing this very important thing which is setting monetary policy. And now for the first time, we're seeing a direct effort to undermine that it seems to Let me ask you to respond to a editorial today by the Wall Street Journal editorial board, which asks the question, what if Trump runs the Federal Reserve? They say, quote, his firing of Lisa Cook shows he wants to put monetary policy under his personal control. He may succeed, but the country will live to regret it.

They go on to say, quote, the criminal referral is a threat to other Fed governors, cut rates or else. Is that how you see it? I see it roughly the same way. So the big picture is that the strength of the dollar, the trust in U.S. Treasuries as a safe haven investment, all of those things depend very much on an independent Fed. If you look around the world, the move has been towards independent central banks because experience has shown that an independent central bank setting monetary policy without influence from the executive branch has proven to be for long periods of time the best way to create

both secure and strong markets and a great strong sense of confidence in the underlying currency. So I think the editorial that you've just quoted feels to me as though it has exactly right. Do you think that any part of the mechanism of the Fed needs to be retooled, rethought, reorganized in any way, shape, or form? Look, that's a very broad question. One can always think about modernizing any institution. However, you have to be careful about timing, cost, process for doing all of that. You know, the Fed itself has been rethinking its monetary policy framework.

Chair Powell announced some pretty important changes to the monetary policy framework last week in Jackson Hall. So no one should come in to any institutions say this is pristine, picture perfect, nothing could possibly change. Having said that, the main goal and objective is to maintain an independent central bank. And anything that threatens that, I think, as the editorial says, is a long-term threat to the health and viability of the U.S. dollar, the U.S. Treasury, as a safe haven asset, and ultimately the citizens of the country.

the Fed is the only institution by law that is focused on maintaining purchasing power by keeping inflation under control. Nor the part of the government has that obligation, and all citizens, I think, have now come to recognize inflation is an insidious tax. They want to avoid having that fall into partisan hands, I believe. And so it's not just markets and sophisticated folks, such as those watching your show,

but it's average Americans, low-and-moder-income Americans, that also depend, though they may not know it, depend very directly on the Fed's independence and the control of monetary policy to keep inflation at bay. Let's talk about that monetary policy before I let you go, because you have a bit of a hot take, I feel, which is that you would suggest

the most likely scenario moving forward is that we get a hawkish cut. A single cut in September, perhaps, and then the Fed takes a wait-and-see approach to see what actually happens with inflation. That would suggest the market might be a little over its skis. Is that how you see it? That is how I see it right now.

Now, let me say very quickly, it's a data-dependent Fed, more data to come in. But today, let's just look at the facts as we see them. Inflation, by many measures, is stuck well above the 2% target. Some measures suggest that core might be actually roughly around 3%. We have a very strong equity market, as you've been reporting. Financial conditions are not excessively tight. The labor market seems to be slowing, but there may be some structural issues there.

Supply and demand may both seem to be in balance at roughly 4% call it full employment, a little bit more, 4.1, 4.2 unemployment rate. That's full employment. And so I believe, yes, at this stage, based on the data that I see, that I see, perhaps one and done, a hawkish cut, and then wait and see.

The Fed has got to focus in on both sides of its mandate. And right now, there are risks to both inflation, not coming down, and also some risks in the labor market. But none of that, I think, is being resolved immediately. It's a provocative thought, and we ourselves will have to wait and see, I think. Roger, thanks. We'll see you soon.

My pleasure, thank you. It's Roger Ferguson joining us. Up next, your retail. rundown. There's a big moves in that space today ahead of some more high interest earnings reports in OT. We'll wrap them up for you coming up after the break. As we come back on the bell, take a look at shares of Coles jumping in today's session. Courtney Reagan is here with what is driving that big move today of near 23%. Hey, Cort. Hi, Scott. Yeah. So Cole's interim CEO, Michael Bender, told me that he's happy with what

happened in the quarter better than expected, but there's still a long way to. go for its turnaround. Comparable sales are still lower, but thanks to lower expenses, earnings did beat by a wide margin. Coles also increasing its guidance for the full year, and Bender said he's excited about the holiday offering that Coles is going to be presenting to the season. And he told me that the middle and lower income consumer are still what he says strained, which is actually helping sales of its private label brands. And he also said the report out yesterday saying that Cole's negotiated payment terms are really just a part of what he calls normal hygiene.

It happened back in March. And the suggestion that Coles is in any way in some kind of delicate cash or financial situation is, quote, in my humble opinion, not true. And what a 24 hours for Travis Kelsey? American Eagle shares are popping after he popped the question on news that the retailer will do a limited time collaboration

with the NFL star and his brand true colors. Ah, just in time for him to tell us he's going to be Mr. Swift. Now, of course, we've got a lot more earnings still to come. After the bell, we'll hear from Urban Outfitters, five below. And then tomorrow, Dick's Sporting Goods. We've got Victoria Seeker. We've got Bath and Body Works and many, many more, so stay close. Scott?

Courtney, thank you. That's Courtney Reagan. Speaking of popping, by the way, the market is. And we're heading for a record close on the S&P. We're tracking the biggest movers, in fact, as we head into this close, Steve Kovac comes back to tell us what he's looking at. Yeah, I hope you're hungry there, Judge, because from biscuits and gravy to Jans and jellies, we have some tasty stock movers coming up when closing bell returns after this. Let's get back now to Steve Kovac for the stocks that he is watching.

What's at the top of your list? It's all food here. We got Cracker Barrel shares firmly in the green today. After the company reversed course on its controversial logo change, shares fell sharply after the initial logo change sparked sharp criticism online, including from President Trump, but have mostly recovered those losses. Meantime, Krispy Kreme is in the red, but off the day's lows after it was downgraded to underweight from neutral at J.P. Morgan. Analyst cited the donut chain's canceled partnership.

with McDonald's and called the company's proposed turnaround plan high risk. And J.M. Smucker is in a sticky situation today after it missed across the top and bottom lines in Q1 earnings and forecasted current quarter earnings to decline around 25% due to lower gross profits in its U.S. coffee division. The company did raise its fiscal year revenue guidance, though. She shares off 4%. Steve, thanks. Steve Kovac. Still ahead.

We hear from top analyst Gene Munster for what he is. is watching when NVIDIA reports in less than an hour, much less than an hour. In fact, the bell is coming right back. Countdown is on. There it is. 30 minutes, 25 seconds. We're going to run you through the key numbers to watch in that high-stakes report coming up in the market zone, which is next. We're now in the closing bell market zone.

CBC senior markets commentator Mike Santoli is here to break down these crucial moments of the trading. Plus, the earnings report we've been waiting for. All the hype comes down to this. Christina Parts of Nevelace in Deepwater Asset Management's Gene Munster. And what's a watch for from NVIDIA? Christina set the stage. Your last word on this is what? Massive expectations.

Stock up 34% in three months, crushing the NASDAQ S&P 500. The street whispers stretch as high as $55 billion in Q3 revenue guidance. But that bullishness really hinges on Blackwell demand and specifically on China sales starting to recover after export bans. U.S. officials began granting NVIDIA limited export licenses in August, but the quarter ended in July, so recapturing that market is going to take time. With CEO Jensen Wong calling China a $50 billion market opportunity, even a small slice would definitely be meaningful, but Scott Goldman, a few others are warning.

It may be, quote, difficult for the stock to outperform given the lack of concrete new drivers beyond what's already priced in. Scott. G. Thank you. Christina parts of the other list. Gene Munster, to you, the guidance is going to be key. How big does the number have to be beyond what the street expects, the so-called whisper

number? Now, Christina nailed it's 55.5 is kind of the whisper number for the guidance for July. The imprint number 53.5. I went back and checked. There's 42 analysts that cover NVIDIA, 18 of them, only 18 have changed. their estimates after the July update for the curbs. And so that's why that whisper number is higher for October. And the answer question, Scott, is if you look at the past few quarters in terms of what

a typical upside is, they really need to say something like 56.5, and then they use this plus or minus 2% language. It's going to be in the press release, the sections outlook, it's right there at the top, it'll be easy to get to. But I do caution, that's the number I'm looking for. I think the 56.5, it's a 2% guide-up, kind of similar to guide-ups two and three-quarters ago. I do want to mention is that if you adjust for the curbs, the guidance for July was actually

of 17% higher. So it was a plus 2% guide up, plus 2, and then they had this huge guide up, but it got muddled in all what was happening with China. And my point is that that first number we see in the outlook section, that number that I'm expecting to be 56.5. There's so much context around it that we're going to have to wait for the call. How much of it is the H20? How much are they expecting the timing or what's their timing for this new lower-powered black will of chip, Scott?

And so when I put all this together, I think back to the Grinch, the noise, the noise, the noise. There is just an unprecedented amount of noise. We're going to have to wait through the earnings call to really start to parse what is going on with NVIDIA's business in the near term. Well, Mike, there's almost an unprecedented level of gains behind this stock, not only into, a print over a reasonably short period of time, but in a longer period of time, as Bryn Talkington was mentioning earlier, since the launch of Chat GPT, roughly 1,000 days ago, 1145% is the gain for NVIDIA. You look at roughly the same time period, around 95, birth of the internet.

Not a Microsoft, not an Intel, an Oracle, or a Cisco, we're up even close to that. Well, and also coming off a company that already had pretty good size to it. So basically you're adding, let's say, $4 trillion in a relatively compressed period of time. Too much? You've added $2 trillion since early April. Well, I don't know if it's too much because you've also never seen revenue growth at this scale and speed among other companies. I mean, maybe Microsoft at its peak was doing something similar based on numbers in the late 90s. I guess everything that Gene ran through tells me why there's almost no edge to this.

the gaming of it in terms of what the normal guide-up is and what the normal outperformance relative to by side whisper numbers makes it very tough to figure exactly how it goes from here. What I think is really important is does the street take away from this the duration of this strong growth? Not just what the third quarter is going to look like, not what they have in hand, but just this idea of do we have another year and a half when we can plug in these great growth numbers or are we almost at a deceleration point? Don't know if we're going to get those answers today. I think the market is very comfortable, even though the stocks, you know, obviously rebuilt all this value and it's not cheap anymore. It's in the low 30s of a forward

PE because the overall market has shown rotational resilience and ability to survive even after a disappointing response by NVIDIA stock on a quarter. Gene, how do we reconcile all of that? The tremendous amount, as Mike said, of market cap that this company has added in not that long a period of time. Well, I think I generally just don't look at that, don't look in the rearview mirror. There's been just a significant change in terms of how the world operates, and I think that that's representative. And I just want to jump, add on to what Mike said. I mean, he really captured the headline here.

It's about what the reading between the lines, about what that means for next year, for fiscal 20, 27, calendar 26. The streets at 29 percent. Two weeks goes at 27 percent growth. Three months goes at 22 percent growth. And this, that's really what this all comes down to, is that investors, we still talk about Cisco and how it blew up 25 years ago. Because hardware is scary. You don't sleep well at night, owning hardware. And so that's the edge that people are going to try to get some comfort on. And I'll just mention this, is three months ago we talked, and I mentioned that we're in the third inning of the AI infrastructure build-out. Today, I think we're in the second inning.

So I actually think I'm actually more confident, despite all these big numbers, despite the $4 trillion market cap. Now, I'm not saying it's going to trade up tomorrow, but I think that the takeaway, when people read between the lines about next year, is that those numbers, that 29% growth number ends up being between 30 and 35% after the revisions. Mike, it's hard to crack the bulls. It's hard to make them crack. There's a great deal of comfort because of how the market's behaving, bonds are changed, and the cyclical indication. who says, looking okay, we're going to get a Fedray cut. So, we're somewhere in between comfortable and complacent.

I'm not really prepared to say, broadly speaking, everybody's brushed out. But maybe not forward. Gene, thanks, Mike, of course. I'll continue, thank you to you. We're all going to go down about 20 minutes time. Market didn't go down today. It went up. In fact, the S&B 500 is a new record closing high.

I'll see tomorrow.