Closing Bell - Intel, Oil, and the Data Center Boom: Inside Market Momentum 10/23/25

Episode Date: October 23, 2025

Markets react to a flood of earnings and shifting sector stories. Ohsung Kwon, Wells Fargo Chief Equity Strategist, joins to break down where stocks go from here. Matt Bryson of Wedbush analyzes Intel’s results, while Arjun Murti revisits the oil trade. Plus, Diana Olick unveils CNBC’s new Housing Survey, and Alex Ramirez of Guggenheim explains why data center dealmaking is exploding. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

That bell marks the end of regulation. NYIC International Day, ringing the closing bell with the New York Stock Exchange. Vince Holding doing the honors at the NASDAQ and stocks rebounding from yesterday's losses. Big jump in oil prices as the Trump administration slaps more sanctions on Russian oil. Makes for oil's best day in four months. Given that move, it's no surprise. Energy is the best performing sector in the S&P 500 today. Tech, also a big gainer.

Staples was the only sector in the red. And before we get to today's flood of earnings reports, Check out the moves from stocks that reported in overtime yesterday. Tesla with a strong rally off its lows at the open. Big bounce back for IBM, too, down just fractionally at the close, but couldn't quite turn positive. Huge gains for both Alcoa and Las Vegas Sands. That's a scorecard on Wall Street, but winters stay late.

Welcome to close about overtime. I'm John Ford. Morgan Brennan is off today. Ahead, we'll get earnings from Intel. Stock is up 60% in the past three months, driven higher in part by the government stake and its partnership with NVIDIA. So can the company deliver here the numbers and instant reaction?

Plus Wells Fargo's head equity analyst says winners will keep winning in this K-shaped economy. He's going to join us with his picks and the catalyst that will keep the rally going. And is it finally a buyer's market in housing? We'll have the results of CNBC's new housing market survey. Now for more on today's markets, let's get to Christina, parts of nebless. Christina. Well, given oil prices moving higher after the new Russian crude sanctions, announced Wednesday. The energy sector saw the biggest gains led by APA Corp, Valero, Marathon, Petroleum,

all closing on your screen. Look at Valero, almost 7% higher. Then we had the quantum computing stocks such as D-Wave, quantum regetti computing, I&Q, quantum computing, really showing some sizable gains throughout the day following a Wall Street Journal report that several companies are in discussions to give the U.S. Department of Commerce equity stakes in exchange for federal funding. However, a Commerce Department this afternoon told the NBC that the government is, quote, not currently negotiating equity stakes. And so you really had the sea-sign, lots of back and forth on this story. But nonetheless, all of these names close up much higher. Do you waive at least 13% higher? Moving on. And if we could show

super micro, a computer cut its revenue outlook for its fiscal first quarter after some customers delayed taking delivery on their orders. And that's why you saw shares fall almost 9% today. But on a year-to-day basis, the stock is up 58%. And last but not least, the Korean economic daily reported yesterday that Samsung and S.K. Hynix are raising the supply price of memory by up to 30% in Q4. And so that's why you saw Memory Makers Micron and then Western Digital both closed higher and Sandus hit an all-time high closing almost 14% higher, John. All right, Christina, thanks. Now to the bond market as we await tomorrow's delayed CPI report. Rick Santelli is there in Chicago, Rick. You know, John, as if on Q, equities close, lots of green and the interest rate complex

on their high yields of the session. But that shouldn't be shocking as you look at the 12-hour chart, revisiting 4% for the second time. 12-11 New York time was the earlier touch. We're touching now. The last time we had an intraday violation of 4% was on Monday. The last close above 4% was on Friday. And in between then and now,

yesterday's with the low-yield close of the year, actually going all the way back one year at 395. All maturity's parallel shift on the yield. curve, John. All maturity's yields are up about a handful, five basis points. As you look at this last chart, that's the year-over-year core CPI at 3.1

percent, which is what we expect tomorrow. These numbers should be hot. You want to tune it at 8.30 Eastern to see what the bomb market thinks of the new read on September CPI. John Ford, back to you. Rick Santelli, thank you. Intel earnings are out. The stock is trading

above 40 bucks a share in overtime, meaning it nearly doubles here from January 1st, Christina Parts-Nevilus has the numbers. Christina. Hi, it was a little bit of a messy report, John, for Intel given some accounting changes. Intel posting a 23-cent adjusted profit and better than expected revenues of 13.65 billion. The company also beat in their product segment but missed with its foundry business. The AI of PC also have double digits, and I say that because I caught up with Intel CFO Dave Zizner just moments ago,

and he told me that they are pretty short on supply because the data center refresh is happening, quote, faster than anticipated. They met demand with inventory on hand, and he's saying that they're going to be behind in Q1, probably Q2, maybe even Q3 because of this supply crunch. He said they're also doing a good job shoring up cash on their balance sheet. Of course, we know why. The U.S. government's cash injection.

They also got money from selling a 51% stake in Altera. Invidia has a deal with them, but has yet to pay in. So once Nvidia does pay in, Zizner said that they could have about $35 billion in cash. Speaking of Altera, I bring that up because they just sold their stake in September. So Wall Street consensus numbers may not reflect that also why we're not comparing EPS guide. Lastly, given the U.S. government is now Intel's biggest shareholder, I did ask Intel CFO if Intel needs to brief the government.

And he said, we don't tell them how the numbers are going to be before the quarter, but we talk to them like any other big shareholder. He also said they're making progress with their advanced chip processes like 14A, but they're still not going to put in supply until they have, quote, real firm brand, and they're not expected to announce any customers. We'll get more on the forward of guidance on the call at 5 p.m. Eastern guys.

Interesting moment for the stock. Now up 6%. Christina, thanks. Well, stocks overall today recovered from early morning declines, Tesla and IBM significantly paired their losses despite concerns about their numbers. The move highlights something for our next guest's thesis on the market right now.

Winners keep winning in a case-shaped economy. with me as well as Fargo chief equity strategist, Osung Kwan. Osang, great to have you here on set as well. So this whole winners keep winning thing. Give me your take also through the lens of the banks that just reported, regionals versus big, wealth-focused banks versus bigger consumer names. What's it telling you? Yeah, it's really a K-shaped bull market.

Whether you look at high-income versus low-income consumer, whether you look at it with an industrial, long cycles that continue to do well versus short cycles that continue to struggle and to your point within financials capital markets big banks continue to do well regional banks are struggling so this is really a k-shaped economy and a bull market and what's also interesting is that if you look at productivity gains since chatsypt came out for the s mp 500 productivity surged after 20 years of essentially no growth but if you look at productivity gains for the for the Russell 2000, it actually fell since Chachapiti came out, which is pretty surprising.

And it was actually across the board, across all sectors. So it wasn't really because of sector composition. I think it was more because of size and the scale and being able to invest in AI to increase efficiency. Well, let's get some more data, at least on the micro scale. Ford earnings are out. The stock initially down about 3.5%. Phil LeBoe, has the numbers.

You know, John, when you look at these numbers in the third quarter, strong numbers from Ford, They beat by a wide margin. Company earning 45 cents a share, well above the street expectation of 36 cents to share. Revenue, 47, just over $47 billion, $4 billion greater than what Wall Street was expecting. The metrics within the quarter, you're looking at an EBIT of $2.6 billion for the quarter, flat with comparison to last year. Ebit margin, 5.1%, a little below 5.5% last year. and then the other metrics, cash flow, free cash flow of $4.3 billion, well above where they were last year. Each of the divisions, remember Ford breaks it up by their three divisions here.

Commercial vehicles continues to do very well, a profit of $1.98 billion in the quarter. Internal combustion engine vehicles, $1.54 billion profit. EVs, despite spelling more EVs, they lost more money compared to a year ago. lost $1.41 billion with the EV business. The tariff cost impact, it's going to work out to be about a billion dollars this year. That's well below what many thought it was going to be when the tariffs were first implemented. And then there's the question about their supplier in upstate New York of aluminum. Novellis is the company.

They had an aluminum fire. We did a number of stories about it over the last week, week and a half. And the question was, how much will it hit the bottom line at Ford? Ford says the shortage of aluminum, and it's not completely knocked out that plant, but it is substantially restricted in what it produces. The impact will be $1.5 to $2 billion this year at Ford. But the company is announcing that to make up for F-150 and Super Duty production that is down because of the shortage of aluminum, Ford will be boosting F-series production in 2026 by 50,000 vehicles. They will add 1,000 jobs at their F-series plans in Kentucky and in Michigan.

So that will help them offset some of the impact they're noticing short-term in terms of the supply of F-series pickup trucks. In terms of the guidance, their EBIT guide is $6.6.5 billion, down about a half billion dollars compared to what was previously expected for the full year. And their free cash flow for 2025, $2.3 billion. Bottom line is this, John, they are seeing an impact. because of the novellas fire, but they're going to be making up for it by increasing F-series production next year. And when you look at the Q3 results, they beat the street by a wide margin earning, what, 45 cents a share in the street was expecting 36 cents a share. John, back to you. Phila Bo, thank you. Lots of great detail in there. And the stock off the low is now down about two, two and a half percent. Osung, I'm not going to ask you specifically about Ford, but there

was a lot in what Phil was saying about tariff impacts, about labor. We get this deletious. laid CPI report tomorrow and there are questions about inflation's continuing effects on the economy. What are you looking for in that report that's perhaps going to signal whether the market continues to hang in or whether there are pressure points to be concerned about? Yeah, I mean, I think CPI tomorrow is going to be binary. I do think the risk is skewed to the upside though for the equity market because I think heading into this week, I think the setup this week was pretty unfavorable for.

for the equity market because we saw no AI earnings and AI earnings were really dominated by regional banks and industrials, which are obviously seeing more headwinds than AI. But if you think about the setup for next week, we have all the hyperscalers that are coming out. We have the Fed meeting and US-China meeting. So I think all of which are probably

going to be more positive for the equity market than negative. So unless CPI comes in really hot, I think the risk is skewed to the upside that investors might wanna position more bullishly into those events next week. Okay, then what about gold, right? It's been on this torrid run, but I doubt dollar devaluation probably has something to do with that,

not sure how much of that continues. I'm not sure a good week for the markets overall and perhaps more stability, if that's actually good for gold, if people are using it to hedge against their concerns about how long this goes, how should investors position that in their portfolios? I think after the sell-off, gold is a great entry point for gold.

I think what's really driving, gold higher these days, is really devaluation, not just the dollar, but really the fia currency devaluation. So, I mean, I'm sure you heard that term being thrown around quite a lot. We actually came up with a measure to gauge where we are in the currency cycle, which is M2 money supply divided by the gold price. So essentially, the number of ounces of gold that the entire money supply in the economy can purchase. So if that goes up, that's revaluation, goes down, that's devaluation. We went back all the way to the 1800s and found that we in the fourth currency devaluation cycle that started in 2022, which coincided with the

Russia-Ukraine and the hiking cycle. And based on regression, we found three drivers of the currency cycle, the budget balance, so fiscal deficits, debt-to-GDP, and inflation, all of which are probably going to remain negative for the future, which means the devaluation cycle likely continues. And the reason why that matters for equities and gold is, historically, the S&P 500 always underperform gold during devaluation, which is happening right now. So I think it's a great hazard against owning, you know, S&P 500 and against devaluation.

Love the explanation. Osang, thanks. Thank you. Osang Kwan. Well, we've got a news alert now on Target. Melissa Repco has the story. Melissa. Hey, John.

We just heard from Target that in a memo to employees, it's announced that it's cutting 1,800 jobs across the company. That represents about 8% of Target's corporate workforce. It's not cutting any roles to stores or to supply chain, but that represents the largest major layoffs in a decade, John. And in a memo to employees, its incoming CEO Michael Fidelke talked about evaluating the organization, and he said that this cut is meant to get the company back to growth faster. In the memo, he said, the truth is the complexity we've created over time has been holding us back. Too many layers and overlapping work has slowed decisions, making it harder to bring ice.

Diaz to Life. Michael Fidelke is taking over officially in February. He's succeeding long-time CEO Brian Cornell. And it's interesting that he's been overseeing an effort to kind of get that company turned around. Its shares are down about 65% since its all-time high back in 2021 when it was seeing a lot of gains from the pandemic. And so this has really meant he phrased it in the memo to get to move faster as an organization, not so much meant as a cost-cutting move on. But, of course, that will be something at Bester's watch closely. For sure. Rough go with those job losses, right? As Ford is trying to add them as well, Melissa, thank you.

Well, coming up, instant reaction to Intel's earnings report. Stock's moving higher right now and overtime by more than 5.5% after beating on earnings. The chief financial officer saying current demand is outpacing supply. We're going to dig into those comments. And oil with a big gain today, but still down 13% this year. The Oil Services ETF, OIH, now pacing for its best week since November 2024. Can the energy trade once again be a profitable one? Overtime's back in two.

Welcome back to Overtime. Let's get back to Intel. Those shares are higher in overtime by more than 6%. The company topping revenue estimates beat in their product segment but missed in the foundry business. The AIPC unit, also up double-deged digits. Joining me now is Matt Bryson, semiconductor, and hardware research analyst at Wedbush. He's got a neutral rating on Intel.

Matt, I'm looking at the gross margins here, which had been an issue for investors, until the federal government bought in. I mean, given that it's chasing this demand issue, demand strong, supply not keeping up, but their margins are still pressured, I guess because of their ability to load the fabs here, Is Intel doing a lot better? I think the end of markets are a lot better. So Micron told you the PC market was going to be flat at one point. Now it's going to grow mid-single digits.

I think you're seeing that Intel's numbers. I think you're seeing the fact that AI is pulling standard servers, and that's creating more demand for Intel's own products. And that's what Intel is showing. You're not necessarily that the company's in better place, but that it's at markets are in a better place. So given that at these levels, if it's trading here tomorrow, the stock has basically doubled since January 1st,

what do you have to believe to believe it's worth it? Do you have to believe that the Foundry strategy is going to work? Do you have to believe that they're going to get more customers than they have or compete more effectively with AMD? I think that's exactly what you have to believe. I think that's what you had to believe coming into numbers, too, at these valuations. And the problem is we just don't know, right?

So Intel's Panther Lake product, which begin shipping next quarter, that's going to give us the first look at 18A, so their next boundary process. And that's when you're going to get some feel for whether Intel's really executing or whether they're still going to have some problems versus AMD on the product side. Client computing group, more of the PCs, was up 5% year over year. The data center and AI group down 1%. Your read there?

I think that AMD in both cases is taking a bit of share. I think that what that is telling you is in part of what end markets are doing. But I don't, I think it's end markets are better and certainly better than the last quarter, and that's why we have revenues where we do. How should investors factor in this AIPC? idea. I mean, it seems like a term for the higher-end PC anyway. I'm not sure to what degree end customers are actually buying PCs specifically for AI right now. And based on how that category gets defined, how the double-digit move should be analyzed. What do you say?

Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. So an AI PC is a high-end PC. It's just about what the specs are. So just nomenclature. I think what Intel is going to tell us in part is that a lot of the demands that they're seeing is, or their lower-end skews. And so non-A.I. PCs, I don't think that's what's driving things. I think there's a corporate refresh cycle in place because it's been since COVID that the corporations have had the same PCs and they're just updating their products now versus there's really an AI cycle. All right. We'll listen for the call for sure. Matt Bryson, thank you. Now, coming up on overtime, Mike Santoli is going to explain why today has historically been a great day for the markets.

And more airline earnings are rolling in, why some are flying high and others seem to be facing turbulence. Overtime, we'll be right back. Welcome back to Overtime. A first class day for one airline stock, coach for another. American Airlines flying high today after posting smaller than expected losses for the third quarter. and beating revenue expectations. Forecasts for the fourth quarter and full year also beat estimates. The CEO telling our Phil LeBeau that while July was a, quote, miserable month for them,

things are improving. On the flip side, Southwest, among the worst performers today, despite posting a surprise quarterly profit. The CEO saying that the company is making the most significant transformation in its history and he's confident in the progress. Investors, however, don't appear to be as confident yet. Well, according to historical patterns, today's date is the best for four three-month returns.

But Senior Markets commentator Mike Sankoli, joining us now to put things in perspective. Mike? Yeah, John, so these broad historical patterns are just that, right? They're just sort of a general tendency that tends to sort of be a, maybe a broad guide for exactly what you should expect this time of year, all else being equal. The thing is, all else isn't always equal. So today on the calendar, October 23rd, is right here. And this is from Jeff DeGraff at Renaissance Macro, showing that on average, the three-month forward return for the S&P 500 is close to 3.5%. That's not bad, right? That's three months worth of gains. You're talking about a 14% annualized return over the sweep of many decades. And so the odds are in your favor. I would just say, let's take a look at what happened three months ago, right? So at the very end of July, it would have been, by history, the single worst day to buy for a three-month time horizon because it's one of the only time.

of the year on average, you were looking at a loss over that span. What happened since then? S&P 500 is up more than 5%. So obviously, as I always say, this stuff is climate, not weather. And the other piece of it is one of the reasons for this cadence in the second half of the year on the seasonal pattern is that there are enough really severe crashes and corrections in September and October that it kind of tilts the overall averages. Well, we didn't get that this year. So it's a little bit of a different setup. I would just say, you know, maybe. keep this in the back of the back of your mind, but don't use it as the basis for trading. And it's not that that day in the market is a good day for stocks.

It was that buying on that day gives you the best three-month forward return, just on average, not necessarily that it's a crystal ball. Exactly. So that your entry point on that date, here's what historically has happened over the course of the next three months, exactly. Yeah, well, this bull run is made every day if you go back. And, of course, the other piece of it, of course, is that, you know, it's asymmetrical, right? The market's up over most timeframes more than it's down. So, therefore, maybe seasonal patterns that imply positive returns have a slightly higher probability of coming true.

All right. Every day is almost a bad day to try to time the market. Exactly. Totally thanks. Well, time for a CNBC News update with Bertha Cubs. Bertha. John, the U.S. stepped up pressure on Venezuela's Nicolas Nicolas Maduro after it reportedly flew Air Force B-1 bombers near his. country today. According to the Wall Street Journal, which reports the bombers remained in

international aerospace. The flight comes as the U.S. has carried out at least seven strikes in the Caribbean since September, and after President Trump suggested the U.S. could look to hit land targets. Democratic lawmakers in Virginia say they're planning to draw new congressional maps ahead of next year's crucial midterm elections. So far, Republicans in Texas, Missouri and North Carolina have enacted new maps to help the GOP pick up additional house seats in the 2026 elections. Californians are now voting on whether to approve new maps there that would add up to five Democratic seats. And the Trump administration announced today that it would again allow oil and gas drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The announcement today from the Interior Secretary reverses moves from.

the Biden administration to restrict projects in the 1.5 million acre area. John? Bertha, thank you. Well, oil moving higher after the U.S. hit major Russian suppliers with sanctions, but is the stage set for a tighter oil market next year? We'll have more coming up. Plus, no contracts, no coffee. That's the Starbucks Union's message as members get ready for a vote to authorize a strike. We will look at what it means for the company heading into the key holiday season. Over time, we'll be right back. We've got breaking news on Google.

Mackenzie Segalos has the story. McKenzie. Hey, John. So Anthropic is dramatically expanding its partnership with Google Cloud, locking in access to up to one million of Google's custom in-house chips and a deal worth tens of billions of dollars.

Now, the move will add more than a gigawatt of compute capacity by 2026 and it marks Anthropics' largest commitment yet to Google Cloud. Anthropic CFO, Krishna Rao, says the expansion ensures that Claude can meet surging demand from over 300,000 enterprise customers. And now, while Google powers this next phase, Anthropics says it remains committed to a multi-cloud strategy, capitalizing on tech from Amazon, Google, and Nvidia. Now, to put this into context, Open AI over roughly the last month, has signed commitments for 33 gigawatts of future capacity for its Stargate project. So yes,

that scale dwarfs Anthropics 1 gigawatt agreement. But I will say this, John, unlike some of the deals that we've reported on lately, this one is already locked in and expected to be online by 2026. All right, Mac, thanks. Well, stocks ending the day slightly higher with the NASDAQ leading. Semiconductor stocks saw nice gains and Tesla reversed its losses. Honeywell, leading the Dow and NASDAQ 100 today, it's best showing since April after strong results and a guidance raise,

gold reversing a two-day slide, rising just over one and a half percent. The Beyond Meat Mania cooling off today with the stock falling. This comes after yesterday's volatile move with the stock unable to hold on to gains after more than doubling. And moving here and overtime, Decker's outdoor shares are down. EPS and revenue beat, but guidance coming in weaker than expected. International sales did rise nearly 30%. Domestic up 1.7%. Ford is volatile after hours, turning green now up more than 3% after initially dropping 4.

The company beating on EPS and revenue, saying tariffs cost the company a billion dollars, which is less than expected. Ford will add 1,000 jobs in order to boost its F-series production. And Intel, higher after a beat. Now up 8.5% the CEO is saying AI is accelerating demand, creating attractive opportunities across the portfolio. Intel noting it was the fourth straight quarter of improved execution under a new CEO. Well, another mover today was oil. Prices moved higher after President Trump introduced new sanctions on two of Russia's biggest oil companies. Crude posting its best day since June 13th, now on pace for its first positive week in four,

was today's action an overreaction, or is the energy trade back after a week, a few months? Joining us now is Arjun Merti, partner at Veritan. Arjun, a lot of this seems to be driven by the macro, and certainly in this administration, the headlines. can change quickly. How much can investors bank on this? John, we've been here before. We've had a bunch of bouts of geopolitical turmoil, both bullish and bearish. Bullish, the sanctions on Russia announced over the weekend. We saw Israel, bomb Iran. And previously, we've had bearish headlines, whether it was Liberation Day tariffs or spiking China-U.S. Trade War escalation that led to oil selling off. In both cases,

bullish or bearish, you've wanted to fade those geopolitical headlines. And I suspect that And I suspect perhaps that may be where we are at again today. Because global demand doesn't seem to be increasing sharply? There's a bigger point here where people have been really bearish coming into, I'll say, the fourth quarter and worried about the first half of the next year. We think oil is in a broader bottoming phase where developing world demand, I think, is doing better than most people fear. But we've had OPEC kind of untapped there, you know, unleash the oil back onto the market.

We just need to work through some of that. Our view is that within the next one to six months, somewhere in there, we're going to find our structural bottom. And then things like developing market demand growth, shale maturing, and OPEC having run through a lot of their spare capacity kicks back in, and the oil trade could be more sustainably back on at that time. Do you have an expectation of where that structural bottom might be? I it's always tough to predict the short-term price.

Could we see price break below 50 for some very short period of time that's possible? To me, the bigger point is that whatever that low price is, is it 55, 50, 45, 45, something like that, it's likely to be short-lived. Again, I think we're working through a lot of what has been a two and a half year downturn since Russia, Ukraine peaked. We're in that bottoming phase, and I don't think oil is anywhere near as oversupplied, as the super bears out there say, but even I have some amount of oversupply again for the next several months. How much does weather and winter play into the energy trade this year? Always an issue.

It's especially true for natural gas. It'll play a role in oil as well. And that, I think, helps create that sort of over, under, and the time frame. Colder winter, we're going to bottom sooner, warmer winter, then maybe we have to wait until spring before we can really declare, you know, pound the table back into the sector. All right. Arjun Mertie, thank you. Thank you. Coming up, details from CNBC's brand new housing survey, what's really happening in the real estate market, and the health care sector has had a big run off the lows. We'll tell you which stock is holding back the group today. Stay with us. Welcome back to overtime. Take a look at chairs of Molina Healthcare. That stock is the worst performer in the S&P today after cutting its 2025 full-year earnings guidance. The company blaming rising medical costs and its marketplace plans for the miss.

They expect that to continue through the end of the year. The stock's had a rough year down about 46%. Well, all real estate is local. Hard to move a house. So those national housing numbers might not tell the whole story. They miss the trees for the forest. That's why CNBC is launching our own housing market survey, talking to realtors about what they're seeing in local markets.

Diana Oleg, joining me now with the results. Diane. Well, John, this is kind of something like a sidewalk. survey. That's what I'm calling it. Each quarter, we're going to ask real estate agents from across the country and in a cross section of neighborhoods just what they're seeing on the ground. Now, here are some highlights from Q3, when the average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage was mostly on the decline, but moved up mid-September a bit. During that time, 49% of real estate agents we surveyed said it was a buyer's market, meaning buyers had the advantage

because homes weren't selling and supply was sufficient. 30% saw it balanced, and only 21% saw sellers with the advantage. As for prices, 44% saw them on the decline, 35% stable, just 20% increasing. Again, all real estate is local, and market fundamentals are therefore different based on location. Still, that price trend is definitely lower. Now, 89% of our agents reporting having at least one seller who decided to cut their price last quarter, and that really shows how over-optimistic sellers still seem to be, despite all the uncertainty in the economy and a slowing housing market. Even more drastic, 40% of agents represented sellers who delisted their homes due to those rough market conditions.

So what will we see this quarter? Well, 48% of agents expect the market to improve, and 35% say it'll stay the same. Just 17% expect sales to decline. And, John, this is just a few pieces of the survey. You can see a whole lot more of it on CNBC.com. Now, what do you know about how the buyers are paying for this? Because we've been talking for a long time about how unaffordable it is. I mean, interest rates at 20%, I'm sorry, down payments at 20% would be out of reach for a lot of people.

Yeah, so they're using some creative financing, and that was one of the questions we asked. And interesting was that the bulk of the agents said that they're seeing mortgage rate buy downs, which we know the home builders are doing, but also sellers of existing homes do that as well. We're also seeing a lot more buyers look for adjustable rate mortgages. And we saw that in the mortgage demand as well. And believe it or not, they're borrowing money from friends and family. Now, family we know goes back a long way, but borrowing from friends, it's kind of a new one. I don't know if I'd do that.

Well, got to be a pretty close friend. Exactly. I imagine. Adjustable rate. Well, I guess if the president gets his way, it'll be adjusting down. Diane, thank you. Well, AI infrastructure driving a wave of mega deals to build and develop just last week. The biggest data center ever closed with names like BlackRock, NVIDIA,

and Microsoft, all in the mix, but is it too much too fast? We'll get into it ahead. Welcome back to overtime. The data center play, it's been red hot this year, as the need for infrastructure and energy grows with this AI boom. Take a look at the two ETS that focus on data centers and digital infrastructure, IFRA and DTCR. Both are up more than 20% in the past six months, with the latter up nearly 40%. Top holdings for the DTCR ETF include Digital Realty Trust, American Tower, and Equinix. And the IFRA houses names like Nextera, Sempra, and MDU resources.

We should note these ETS have around $500 million in assets under management. Well, let's stay on the Data Center trade. The next guest advised on last week's $40 billion acquisition, of data center company aligned, the largest ever in the sector. He says deal structures for data centers are evolving and getting more complex as demand continues to be sky high. So what does that mean for valuations in this market as some investors begin to question whether AI is in a bubble?

Joining me now is Alex Ramirez. He's Guggenheim Security's Senior Managing Director for TMT, that's Technology Media and Telecom, the firm's lead data center banker. Alex, I've got questions about this. because I don't understand this end of things at all. I'm trying to work with an apartment building metaphor, because data centers have tenants. Is it like luxury in New York City as like AI, you know,

in a data center with the hyperscalers as tenants? How do you judge what a great investment really is? Yeah. Well, why don't we just start with the fundamentals of the sector, right? I think that's a good place to be in kind of what's happening right now. And to your point on other real estate asset classes, vacancy rate. And so right now across North America, vacancy rates are sub 3%. But in tier 1 markets, and some of these tier 1 markets, it's sub 1%.

So when you say tier 1 markets, what makes a market tier 1 in data centers? Yeah, so just think about some of the top markets where there's been tons of demand. So it's kind of where cloud centers were initially built. So, you know, Dallas is one great example, and there's a few others like that. But you know what you've seen is the demand has expanded to newer markets. But look, and so thinking about the, just go on that point around the fundamentals and the strength of the sector, what we're seeing, too, is supply right now is constraint. And I'm sure you've heard a bit of this.

And what's happening, and it's going to get exacerbated over time. So by 2030, our estimation is that that imbalance of supply demand could be up to 10 gigawatts. Now, is supply for everything constrained or just for the AI? Because it's, you know, in office right now, you've got class. A that's still doing really well, but you've got some office that's not doing as well, depending on the market. Is something similar happening in data center? Well, it all kind of goes to power, right? And that's the source, and honestly, that's the gatekeeper of everything, right? And so when you think about the grid and what's happening there,

in certain places, the grid lead times are five to seven years away from now. That's been changing. It's a tectonic shift. And what really that boils down to is if you think about total data center consumption is a percent of total power. Historically, it's been two to three percent. We believe it's going to quadruple over the next, you know, five plus years to 10 to 12 percent. And so that's a lot of what's driving. And what you're seeing is actually the utilities themselves are getting pretty smart about it. So now they're starting to charge for, you know, deposits, requirements for turbines and other infrastructure. And what we've been helping and seeing a lot of two, and it's one of the reasons I spend so much time with my colleagues that run our power

and utilities teams is collaboration amongst the tech companies, the utilities, the data center developers, and developers are now starting to think outside the box, how else do we get more power? Whether it's behind the meter solutions or different forms of power, nuclear renewables, this is all going to become part of the solution. So I'm going to stick with the apartment building metaphor. If you were looking at building luxury apartments, I imagine you look at, okay, what are the employers in the area? How well are they doing? How likely is this building to have a strong supply of tenants able to pay over time? Is energy like that for data centers right now?

Yeah, look. Historically, you would think of strong GDP centers where a lot of these big data centers were built. But what we are seeing is it's expanding to new geographies, where there's so much need for this infrastructure that, you know, I'm sure you've seen this recent announcement where, you know, meta is building a, you know, $29 billion project in Louisiana. Yeah. Like, historically, you wouldn't have thought of that as a tier one market. But what's happening now is there's so much need for power across the board that it's going into newer markets.

How much do you look at things like hydro and sort of locally available, unique sources for power when you factor in the desirability of a data center project to finance it? Oh, absolutely. And so, like, right now what's a big focus for various participants in the industry is time to market, right? So getting power in 2026, that's not that easy anymore. And so, you know, those timelines are now going a little further out, 27, 28. And so, of course, you prefer clean power, right?

But, you know, all forms of power soon around later is kind of where the industry is right now. Who gets hurt the most if data center demand cools off a bit? There's this idea out there that, boy, the demand is going to go on for a sure, but there are all these projects in process. not every one of them has the same number of customers committed, right? And if demand pulls back, it seems like some people could get hurt, even if demand's still there. Yeah. No, it's a great question, John.

Look, I firmly believe we're at the early innings of a huge shift in AI infrastructure deployment. If you think about the gigawatts that are going to be deployed around the world for AI infrastructure in cloud, it's going to be about 65 gigawatts by 2027. That's about a 75% increase from where we are today. And if you think about, you know, it's hard to fathom what 65 gigawatts actually means. I know I think in gigawatts and most of the world doesn't, but that's the equivalent of the UK and the amount of power that that country consumes from a peak moment. Wow.

So these are big figures. And so, again, early stages. And look, one of the things that gives me a lot of comfort around data center investment and why it's such a resilient industry, if you think about it, a lot of the capacity is pre-leased, okay? So, and you're pre-leasing it to some of the best tenants you could pass back to your apartment company. Right. These aren't mom and pops that are mostly running this, right? Yeah, they're bankers in New York City, yeah. No, but so you've got, you know, the top tech companies signing very long-term contracts. Uh-huh. And that makes for a good business. We're going to have to

leave it there. But I definitely want to talk to you more about that. Alex Ramirez from Guggenheim. Thank you. Well, a gambling scandal shaking the NBA today. Coming up, we're going to hear from a basketball Hall of Famer on how aware players are the impact gambling is having on the game. I'll be right back. Welcome back to overtime. Today, the NBA found itself engulfed in a new sports betting scandal involving a current coach and an active player. A short time ago, our Alex Sherman caught up with NBA Hall of Famer Carmelo Anthony, got his take on the impact sports betting is having on players and the game. Alex Sherman joins me now, Alex. Yeah, John, I was talking to Carmelo Anthony. He is actually

our CNBC Sport videocast guest for next week, but I had to ask him, look, this is going to be the story of the day, the story of the week, the story of the month for you. Carmelo Anthony's an NBC sports basketball announcer. I'm sure he's going to be talking about this then. I said, look, what is your thoughts on all of this? Do you feel like sports betting affects the integrity of

the game? Take a listen to what he told me. You know, athletes they may say, hey, we don't care about paulets, but they care about it because it affects them. You know, mentally it affects them. And, you know, they don't want to have to come

to a game and be worrying about their own fans cheering them or born them because they didn't make the parley they're supposed to get 25 points but they got 22 23 points and what it does is it changes the narrative of the game there's so much that comes along with with that so yes it do needs to be some ramifications around it and i'm sure the powers that be are looking into that you i suppose this speaks well of carmel anthony there i think he meant prop bet rather than parley he was sort of confusing those two terms. What he's talking about are these individual bets that are put on players and that

was very much the target of what we found out today was happening with Damon Jones and Terry Rozier sort of bets on individual players where the players themselves can easily manipulate their own statistic for the benefit of particular betters. There's Carmelo Anthony saying

look people should potentially look at this and make some changes. But what kind of changes can you make really? I mean it's getting down to betting on every little thing. We're turning everything into a market. How many rebounds is Wemby going to get? You know, how many times is Steph going to hit a three? Like, what do you do? Yeah, great question. I think the leagues perhaps need to have discussions with the betting companies themselves to potentially limit certain bets. I mean, at the most drastic

level, you could eliminate all prop bets, all individual player bets. That is pretty drastic, but perhaps you can modify which bets are available for certain games and which ones aren't. You may be able to do it from a player to player level. Like, we don't accept bets where a player is playing less than a certain amount of minutes because that's really what happened in the Terry Rozier case, according to the indictment where he pulled himself out of the game early. That way he knew he wouldn't score a certain amount of points. They're going to have to get a little bit creative about this, I think.

But maybe the pendulum is swinging now to the point where the NBA has been very, very forward about being pro gambling. Sure. I see a lot of draft kings and whatnot commercial. Advertisement, exactly. Maybe they need to take a little bit of a step back here to say there are some limits. Alex Sherman, thank you. Thank you.

Well, now let's get you set up with tomorrow's trade today. Hardings continue in the morning with Procter & Gamble, General Dynamics, and Sanofi all set to report. On the economic front, we'll be getting the CPI report for September that was originally scheduled to be released on October 15th. It was pushed back because of this government shutdown. Economists are expecting a rise of 3.1% year over year. Now, let's take a look at a couple of stocks that have been moving in overtime. A little audible here. Ford, yeah, is up 5% now.

Remember, it was down at first when Phil LeBow came on and gave us that report, but the news overall seemed to be good. Also, let's see, what's the other one that we had? Can we put it up? Intel, that's right. Can't forget about that. Up 8%. Good for the government.

That'll do it for overtime. Fast money. starts now.