Closing Bell - OpenAI Continues Massive Spending; Breaking Down AppLovin 10/6/25

Episode Date: October 6, 2025

OpenAI inks a big deal with AMD before announcing key partnerships and news at its developers event. Our Mackenzie Sigalos brings the important takeaways while Big Technology’s Alex Kantrowitz on the promise—and peril—of tech’s big spending on AI. Drew Pettit (Citi) and Keith Lerner (Truist Wealth) weigh in on broader market trends. Needham’s Bernie McTernan explains AppLovin’s meteoric rise. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

And after it's packed with Open AI, much more on that deal and its impact coming up. And it helped boost all of tech today, one of the best sectors along with consumer discretionary. Consumer staples, one of the worst groups. Health care also pulling back after a strong week. Treasury yields continuing to rise as the government shutdown drags on. It is day six, and there doesn't seem to be much progress on negotiations. Well, that's a scorecard on Wall Street, but winter stay late. Welcome to closing down over time.

I'm John Ford. Morgan Brennan is off today, and we've got all time. just about everywhere you look, including Bitcoin, where, again, the question is, are we getting too frothly? Mike Santoli is going to take a look at some speculative areas of the market. Gold, on the other hand, hitting a record two. It's 42nd this year, near $4,000 an ounce. We're going to talk to Tim Seymour about the run for precious metals. And is App Loven a sign things have gotten too hot. The company's got a market cap in the neighborhood of Goldman-Saxon Caterpillar, even with last hour's big drop.

We're going to ask an analyst whether the love in with App Lovin can continue or if this drop is a harmonier of things to come. But let's start with this huge deal between OpenAI and AMD, which is sending AMD soaring in the neighborhood above 20%. Christina Poncello is looking at that side of the story. Christina. Yeah, 23% gain. It was actually its best day since 2016, the top performer in the S&P 500 by a wide margin

today. Like you said, after opening, I just agreed to buy six gigawatts worth of AMD chips resulting in potentially, or potential tens of billions and new revenue for AMD. But the fact that Open AI will use the chips for inference computing was really seen as a vote of confidence in AMD's AI capabilities and added to that boost you saw today. The ripple effects were immediate. Samina, IMD's data center infrastructure manufacturer, that closed up about 23, almost 23%, Taiwan Semi who makes AMD's chips rose about three and a half percent, a software connectivity firm Astera Labs, jump 10, high-speed connectivity firm, CredoTech, close 1.5%. I should say the list just continues. But, Nvidia and Broadcom's muted reactionally tells you everything. This isn't a zero-sum game. Open-Eyes hedging across every possible supplier with a multi-pronged silicon strategy. They've got a $100 billion deal with Nvidia, a $10 billion order with Broadcom for custom chips, tens of buildings with AMD, and they're even testing Google's TPU chips. Invidia, though, still dominates model training, controls the software ecosystem with CUDA

and holds over 80% of the AI chip market. So I guess you could see on your screen, 1% drop on this news? The market is saying, Nvidia's moat still remains intact for now. John? Yeah, and as you mentioned, Broad Impact Super Micro, up 5% today on that news, and Dull up three and a half as well. Christina thanks. For the OpenAI perspective here, let's get to McKenzie Sagalos in San Francisco at their company, OpenAIs Developer Day event.

Mack, this deal is a little unusual because it gives OpenAI the chance to invest in AMD just a couple weeks after Nvidia inked a deal that could end up with it investing in OpenAI's infrastructure buildout, right? That's exactly right, John. This is the opposite of what we saw with Ambidia. There it was Nvidia investing in OpenAI, but in this deal, Open AI is the one taking what could amount to a 10% equity stake in AMD. And it is part of this broader shift toward performance-based equity as a new way to structure these mega-chip deals where ownership and infrastructure are increasingly tied together. Now, the deal also highlights a growing circularity in how AI is being financed.

NVIDIA gives capital to OpenAI. Open AI uses that cash to buy NVIDIA chips. And it's the same with AMD in a sense, only this time OpenAI is getting equity virtually for free and could eventually cash it out to then pay for the very chips at AMD supplies. It is a closed loop of capital, compute, and equity with OpenAI at the center orchestrating the flow. And it's also about building a moat, not just against startup rivals like Anthropic, but against the hyperscalers. Google has Gemini, Meta has Lama. Open AI is trying to own more of the stack, in part, by getting into the business of building its own chips and data centers.

John? Mac, in a way, this is less circular, though, isn't it? Because a couple weeks ago, after that Invidia OpenAI announced, and some people were saying, oh, well, this is just Nvidia giving money to Open AI that Open AI is going to use to go around and buy Nvidia chips. But now, OpenAI is committing to including AMD chips in its build-out. So it's not going just back to Invidia. It's actually going to Open AI, and now Open AI has this incentive, it seems, from this structure to see AMD succeed, no? Well, this is additive to the deal that they announced with NVIDIA.

You broke that news on our air that they would do this 10 gigawatt buildout with NVIDIA. Separately, the 6 gigawatt buildout would be with AMD chips, and that's the point here. It needs to build out this robust ecosystem to power the kind of apps that it can't unveil now. Rockman, the OpenAI president, said on our air that they have updates to chat TVT, they have new products in the pipeline that they simply don't have enough compute to bring online. And that's the real ambition here. We always knew that there wasn't going to be this exclusive relationship with NVIDIA. Sarah Fryer, the CFO, making it clear that they wanted to hedge their bets, in part to give them leverage when they go to negotiate with other chipmakers. Right, yeah, I'm just saying it's not circular.

If it's branching out, right, and going to AMD as well, it could be that OpenAI is acting as this sort of arbiter or driver within the ecosystem. Yes, but they are the single point of failure for some of these deals, and that's what's concerning. The fact that they are, you know, committing to spend $300 billion with Oracle. They've got this relationship with Nvidia to the tune of $100 billion. And the concern is that if they are the linchpin of this new AI ecosystem, which is part of why they're trying to monetize, and that's what Deb Day is about. It's about finding ways to make money on apps. They are creating an app store.

It's actually their third attempt at doing this, but bringing developers, the products from these developers in-house, trying to take a cut of that. We've already started to see that with integrations, with soon-to-be Shopify, Etsy, they get affiliate fees, and that's the name of the game. Altman said last week, yes, people may, open AI is catching some flack for Sora and the kind of content that it's producing, but he said this is a key part of our monetization strategy. Right. The demand's got to stay and grow, and I guess everybody wants to see that, at least everybody in this ecosystem. Mackenzie, thank you. Let's stick with this story.

Check out the pop in shares of HubSpot, Salesforce, Figma, Coursera, all mentioned on stage at Open AI's Dev Day as partners. So what's all that mean for investors when one private company has so much sway over public stocks? Joining me now is Alex Cantruitt's, big technology founder, contributor. Alex, very seldom is so much of the demand in a global innovation push focused through one company in OpenAI. Right. There's definitely a concentration risk here with Open AI and also a risk because so much of the stock market, so many of the companies that you just named, are betting not on today's technology, but on tomorrow's technology. The technology that Open AI keeps promising will get better and better and will deliver innovations. We'll

can't even think of today. And I think there is a real risk, given that that is the single point of failure, if it's unable to deliver those amazing results that Sam Altman seems to promise every other day that there could be a cascading effect here where lots of companies could end up getting hurt. There certainly is that risk, and we've talked about it here on overtime, similar to the internet when we went through that trough of disillusionment where Amazon stock was trading way down, and we had all that dark fiber from the telcos that Google ended up picking up. But I guess on the flip side of that, there's the idea that all the time when there's

a huge shift, there's a risk about how long it takes for the benefit to get delivered. How does an investor, you think, calculate how much exposure they have to that trough of disillusionment opening up at any given moment? Right. So this is what makes this moment so interesting and unique and tough to play as an investor. You already see, unlike maybe some of the early days. in the dot-com area, you already see results from open AI. So you're really just doing a valuation game here

because the question is, how much is the market pricing in what's coming next, as I mentioned? I think this is the problem that I see in the market today. The market is priced as if, if you continue to scale data centers, you're going to get technology, AI technology, that's not just incrementally better, but exponentially better than what you have today. I mean, you look at what Sam Altman is writing in his blog,

saying if we just had X amount of compute, we might be able to cure cancer. And that would give me pause as an investor, because ultimately that ideology is not really synced up with what we see in AI research today. If you speak with most AI researchers today, they would say that making the large language models that underlie the GPT models and the chat GPT application, making them bigger, isn't making them that much better. So if you're an investor, you just have to play with these ideas. if I'm seeing something real today, but the valuations based off the expectations are probably

out of whack. I love a good debate, though, so I'm going to continue to take the other side. Right now, we're seeing a technology environment driven in part by the cloud where, unlike in previous era, say the dot-com era, you've got these mega-cap tech companies that are actually like utilities for compute and by extension for AI. And if this gamble works and AI does deliver, at least most of what's... promised, a lot of the benefit could accrue to these larger players, including not just NVIDIA, but Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Oracle, et cetera, and perhaps on down to opening

AI itself. Oh, look, I'm totally with you. If we end up seeing most of what's promised, we're going to have an unbelievable future because a lot has been promised. But I was speaking with Thomas Curry and the CEO of Google Cloud earlier today, and I asked him about these investments. And I think he said something really important to me. He said, if you're generating wealth, then you're going to be in good shape.

But if you're just moving money around, then we know how that ends. I think ultimately what this comes down to, and you're right to highlight it, is the bottom line. If these companies are able to generate a return on investment for businesses, which to date has been somewhat elusive, if they're able to run their chatbots profitably, which to date has been elusive, then they're going to make a whole heap of money, and we're going to see a lot of this payoff. And this is, again, it goes to the problem. It's an if, and there are a lot of ifs right now. And so nobody who uses this technology says it's a zero, but a lot of us are asking, you know, what is the right number?

And I think that's a very appropriate question to be asking. Yeah, and that's why investors invest. Alex Cantruitz, thank you. That's on the future. Well, we're going to have much more on the future of AI tomorrow when Dell chairman, CEO, and founder Michael Dell joins me in a first on CNBC interview on the back of their analyst day. You can see that right here on overtime. And consolation brands, meanwhile, their earnings are at. out. Brandon Gomez has the numbers. Brandon. Hey, John. Yeah, the street was expecting a softer

quarter, but in fact, we got a beat on the top and bottom line. EPS coming in ahead of expectations, 363 a share ahead of the 338 that was expected. Revenues also coming in as a beat. 2.48 billion versus what was expected. You know, in the release, they go through as well. Their Q2 beer revenue, also a beat, obviously, a large part of the business there at Constellation brands. Now, the company did cut guidance back in September, so perhaps some of the pullback already priced into shares, although as you see, shares now recovering. The company does say operating margins for beer did decrease largely because of unfavorable impact from increased cost of goods, things like cost absorption, lower volumes, aluminum tariffs, which we've obviously

been hitting. We won't get any executive commentary until tomorrow morning on the earnings call, but we'll be sure to wrap headlines then as well. John? All right. That stock up at the moment about one and a half percent. Thank you, Brandon. Well, all-time highs, big tech deals, IPOs. This market is starting to remind a lot of people of the dot-com boom. Up next, we'll tell you the latest big name that's drawing comparisons to 1999. And we'll ask a panel how worried we should be. We back in two. It feels exactly like 1999. I don't know whether we'll actually replay it exactly, but I think all the ingredients are in place. And certainly from a trading standpoint, you have to position yourself like it's October 99. I don't see why

you would do anything but that. And remember, the NASDAQ doubled between the first week of October 99 and March of 2000. So if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's probably not chicken, right. That was Tudor Investment Corporation founder and CIO Paul Tudor Jones this morning on Squawk Box, saying today's market feels similar to just before the dot-com bubble burst, encouraging investors to position like it's 1999. Is he right? Well, joining us now is City Research Director of U.S. Equity Strategy, Drew Pettit, and Truest Wealth Chief Investment Officer Keith Lerner.

Keith, it's easier to say position yourself like it's October 1999 than it is, I think, to position yourself like it. even knowing what we know now, short of getting out of the market and then getting back in it sometime later, market timing, which is unwise. How would you position yourself like it's October 1999? Yeah, well, great to be with you. You know, the way we're thinking about things, John, is we've been overweight tech and communications most of this year. We're still overweight those areas. And maybe there are some similarities to the late 90s, but there's also some differences and some quantifiable differences. The first thing is that the technology sector as a whole,

It is trading at a risk valuation around 30 times, but that compares to about 50 times back in the late 90s. Heading into the peak of March of 2000, the market was up, as kind of mentioned, on a year-over-year basis, over 100%. On a year-over-year basis right now, the technology sector is up about 28%. And the other thing that's somewhat different in our view, and at least in our work, is that the earnings momentum today is a lot stronger than what we saw back then. So we put that all together. Yes, that's risk. but is it the same period as the 90s? Maybe the infrastructure bill and all the spending

that we've been talking about is moving that way. But from a quantitative, fundamental, and technical view, which is not there yet, and we still think this full market has longer to go. Drew, let me try this with you. Even if it's not exactly the same, if perhaps we are in a sort of a bubble, how would you learn from October of 99

and position yourself right now? Per your beta. That's what we're saying to clients right now. So, yes, the NASDAQ to Keith's point has really good earnings momentum. And we like that story. We believe in that secular story. And our team doing work on AI is just raising its infrastructure investment estimates. So we believe that story.

But to your point, what do I do? Pair my beta with some cyclical beta. We're not chasing low beta, low volatility stocks right now in defensives. Instead, we'd rather add some small caps here, some. cyclicals where we might have inflections where the embedded earning expectations are really low, what a lot of people might not remember the next growth area out of the market after the tech bubble popped was, well, financials and cyclicals. And guess what we're pairing a tech overweight with? Financials right now in financials and small cap. Keith, what do you think of that

approach? Yeah, we actually did upgrade our review of small caps back in August. Now, they've been cheap and under love for some time. The difference more recently is earnings are moving up. And there is certainly concentration risk. And if you have a little bit of money that moves out of these large cap names, a little bit of outflow and inflows into small caps can go a long way. So I like the idea of at least hedging some of your risk with small caps. And also, if you think more globally, we're more neutral international.

But look today, I mean, Japan's making more than a 40-year high. The ephi or the developed international markets are breaking out to a new high, emerging markets are working. And so as much as we're focused on the U.S. and the strength here, we all actually seeing global participation. So we would have exposure beyond, you know, just tech. But within a portfolio, we still have a bias towards tech and growth because we still think this is an AI dominant bull market. And we think that trend ultimately continues, even if there's some hiccups along the way. Speaking of AI dominance, Drew, what do you think of this latest news today out of AMD and Open AI?

There have been talk about circular spending, but to me, this looks like a branch off of it. It's not, you know, Open AI to Invidia, NVIDIA to Open AI. This is going to AMD, no? Yeah, this is, we've been seeing this in tech. This is why we like semiconductors in tech, right? When you get in these cyclical investment periods, and I know we're talking about AI as a secular story, but the ground floor is what we have to focus on right now, and that's building the infrastructure, and semis are part of that.

And we're happy that's broadening, and we're happy to see that within semis, part of our bull case there. The other thing, too, just coming back to Keith's point, AI is a global story. We forget about that as we talk about some of the big names and private companies in the U.S. But AI at a reasonable price, XUS, is one of our favorite baskets right now. And that has surprisingly outperformed all the U.S. AI names off of the April lows. All right. Drew, Keith, thanks to you both. Well, coming out much more on the market gains and possible signs of froth. But as we head to break, let's look at one area not participating in this rally.

Restaurants. We highlighted this group last week. Now another leg lower for names like Papa Johns and Shake Shack. Bank of America downgrading those stocks saying the divergent trends among restaurant segments will persist. And the largest competitors in each segment will be insulated. Over time, we'll be right back. Welcome back to Overtime Bitcoin today, hitting a record high above $125,000 of 2% at the moment. That's its first record high in nearly two months, up 10% so far in October, coinciding with the government shutdown.

And a lot of the crypto-related names are gaining, as you can see here, Galaxy Digital, Riot, Mara, and a couple of the smaller names. BITFarms, and Hive Digital. So, are the gains in crypto a sign of froth or just optimism in the market? Or maybe it's a little of both. Let's bring in senior market company here to Mike Santoli. He's taking a look at how risk appetite might be rising. Mike. For sure, John.

You know, for most of the time since the climactic market low in April, just about six months ago, you were able to argue, hey, look, professional investors have not really rebuilt their equity exposures. They remain kind of behind the market in terms of playing it to the fullest. Well, that might be less valid at this point. This is from Bank of America. It's information from their prime brokerage business, which serves hedge funds. It shows gross hedge fund exposure.

That would be the blue line there. That means long positions plus short positions is pretty much at a new high. Whereas net leverage, that would be longs, minus shorts, is essentially matching what we saw around the election. the aftermath of the election last year. So also pretty fully invested in pretty aggressively so. It doesn't mean that this rings some kind of a bell, but it shows that it's sort of more the case now that the fast money and professionals are more involved

and therefore are not out there just waiting to pounce on every little wiggle lower. Now you mention those crypto names and some of these other sub-themes within technology, the more speculative side where you don't really have a whole lot in the way of financials and fundamentals. Here's drone makers. That's a basket of just these companies that are involved in drones. Quantum computing, very, very much a distant what-if type technology people are betting on.

And then crypto-related public companies, not crypto coins themselves. This is from Goldman Sachs. They have these custom baskets. And note, this is a year-to-date, and they've all at least doubled in a market that on the S&P basis is up about 14, 15 percent year-to-date. So people are definitely finding things to play. So some of the market looks like a video game. Some of it looks very sober and normal and orderly. So it's a funny mix. But does it mean, Mike, as I look at that first chart, does it mean the market has a lot of weight on its risk leg?

So if Coburkai Karate Kid style, that leg gets swept, there's a bigger fall perhaps to come? Yeah, I do think that there is pent up energy in that direction. So the market does feel like it's kind of tightly coiled. There's a lot of ways to measure this. You know, in past weeks, I showed how the correlation among stocks is really low. So everything is in this delicate balance of kind of keeping it together, but there's a lot of upside volatility in individual names, a lot of downside volatility in others. And so, yeah, I do think that you can make that argument that essentially nobody's really, really ready for some kind of an air pocket here.

Now, the thing is, it doesn't mean that we are now at the maximum extreme of where that can get to. But I do think you want to be aware that it's no longer the case that we have this kind of cushion, this margin of safety, which is represented by underinvested pros out there. Well, can't say we weren't warned. Mike Santoli, thank you. See you in a bit. Well, it's time for a CNBC News update with Kate Rogers. Kate.

Hi, John. The House Oversight Committee canceled the deposition with former FBI Director James Comey that was scheduled for tomorrow as part of the committee's probe into Jeffrey Epstein. Comey stated in a letter to the committee that he had no relevant, quote, knowledge or information about Epstein or Galane Maxwell. The committee also canceled a deposition with former Attorney General Merrick Garland. A federal judge said today that she's likely to release Kilmar Obrigo Garcia if the federal government can't provide its plans to deport him by Wednesday. The government said Obrigo Garcia, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador by the administration, would be sent to Eswati. Eswatini. Even though Abrago Garcia said he'd be interested in being deported to Costa Rica,

which was promised him legal residency. And the National Weather Service confirmed today a tornado that tore through eastern North Dakota and killed three people in June was a rare EF5 tornado. Meteorologist said it was the nation's first EF5 in 12 years. It had wind speeds of 210 miles per hour and was more than a mile wide. John, back over to you. Terrifying. Kate, thanks. Well, lots of record today, gold, Bitcoin, the NASDAQ. Here's a look at some of the individual names hitting records. Newmont on the back of Gold's rise, North of Grumman, one of the several defense names hitting highs. Caterpillar also hitting a high, and it began trading way back in 1929. Well, nearly 100 years of trading, and Cat has a similar market cap to App Lovin, even with a big drop late in today's

session. App Lovin is still up 70% in three months, 167% in six. Is this decline a chance to jump on a hot stock. Well, we'll be right back. Welcome back to overtime. Markets closing mostly higher. The Dow losing just 63 points, the other two major averages and the Russell closing at record highs. AMD, the big stock story of the day, soaring almost 25% on its deal with Open AI. Figma Coursera HubSpot, some names jumping because they got mentioned at today's Open AI developer event. And the government shutdown dragging on and we continue to see money pile into crypto and metals. Bitcoin hitting a record above 125,000, gold two, just shy of 4,000. We got results from Constellation Brands earlier this hour,

beating on earnings and revenue, but saying its beer business sales fell 7% in the second quarter, and expecting those sales to continue to decline next year. The stock now up a healthy 3.6% here and over time. And take a look at shares of App Loven now. Plunging after Bloomberg reported the companies being probed by the SEC over data collection practices. This comes as the stock closed out the third quarter as the biggest gainer in the S&P 500, doubling in value. It's also among the top gainers in the NASDAQ so far this year. I met App Loven CEO Adam Faroogee three and a half years ago,

the 10-year anniversary of App Loven's product launch. That stock was trading it around 50 bucks a share at the time. He told me App Loven was born from frustration. We built some apps, and we couldn't get distribution. We couldn't get people to discover them. And that led us to wondering why there wasn't in 2011, a marketing platform built for the app developer to help them go promote themselves to consumers and get discovery on their products. Let's say you've got a company that just built the word game, something super innovative.

They want to bring to the market. Well, they have to go get discovery on it. They come into our platform and want to market themselves. They might build a video advertisement to showcase that cool new, user experience, and they put it live. And on the other side, we're integrated into, at this point, tens of thousands of mobile applications. App Lovin has grown tremendously since then. The stock up roughly 13x to close at $587 a share today, giving it a market cap around $200 billion. That puts it on par with companies like Goldman Sachs and Caterpillar.

So can its momentum pick back up? Joining me now is Bernie McTiernan from Needham. Bernie Apploven has also expanded far beyond apps now, into the web, going broader, and into AI as well, kind of competing to be the Nielsen of digital and AI, arguably. Are its prospects in line with this valuation? Well, it's a great question. I think that the big thing is that there's already expectations built into next year for e-commerce or as you call the open web.

We think consensus has about $1.6 billion. And so the last time there was a new shiny object or new platform in performance marketing, it was TikTok, right? And so TikTok right from a billion to $2 billion to $5 billion to $9 billion. So I think that's the kind of trajectory. You have to believe App Levin is going to do with e-commerce over the next couple of years. years here. And frankly, like, the self-service just launched five days ago, launched October 1st on a referral basis, and then they're going to go more widely at some

point next year. In a way, you're betting that this becomes something like a meta or a Google, right, for the web era. Nothing yet has entirely tied together the full digital ecosystem, one might argue. Yeah, well, I think an important thing to remember, too, is just how big mobile games has gotten. And we think mobile gaming is going to be a, a beneficiary of AI, games should be able to get better. That's going to drive more consumer wallet share, more consumer mind share. And then also this other thing with, you know, basically launched the birth of ax on 2.0, but the ability to use neural nets, making advertising that much better.

So to go back to the first question in terms of the valuation, I mean, mobile gaming stocks, whether you're talking about app loving, Roblox, Unity, I mean, these are some of the most expensive stocks in our coverage universe, but frankly, rightfully so, because they seem like they're going to be major beneficiaries. And we're at a time where we've never talked about terminal values with our clients more than we are now. And it seems like this is a secular winning part of the market. I remember a couple years back when App Loven wanted to tie up with Unity, which now seems comical since I think Unity's at around a $16 billion market cap compared to the 200 billion from App Loven. But what's your view on the lesson for investors to learn from

that on how this marketplace shifts under your feet. Yeah, it can move really fast. And that's why even you see Unity has had a tremendous year. And they're still early days in launching Vector, which is their Axon 2 type products. It's about half of their marketing platform right now. We think at some point soon they're going to launch it on the other half. But that's the thing is things can move quick. And so I think what happened, you know, as you looked at this disparity between market caps between Unity and Appleven, is that when Appleven went to acquire Unity or made the offer, they went with Iron Source instead. And so there was an integration period between Unity and Iron Source, while App just focused on rolling out Axon 2.0, and really

Unity missed a whole product cycle, which allowed Applevin to just explode and now be, you know, about $15 billion of gross advertising spend. And that's about, you know, almost half of the mobile gaming market we think right now. But obviously they're going through this massive tanning expansion going to e-commerce as well. Life comes out your fast. Bernie, thank you. Thanks for having. Well, President Trump speaking to reporters in the Oval Office right now,

our Emily Wilkins, has some headlines for us. Emily. Hey, John, two big things that have come out of the Oval Office so far, number one. Trump's saying that he is currently in negotiations with Democrats over those Affordable Care Act tax credits. Now, Trump did not provide a lot of details and what he has. is saying it's counter to what his own press secretary said just a few hours ago and saying there are no negotiations. So this potentially seems to be a very new development. We don't have a lot of details at the time. But if this is something that Trump wants to get done,

that does add a lot of momentum to Republicans who are part of bipartisan conversations to get these tax credits through and really could change the dynamic and direction of the shutdown providing for a possible off ramp. Second big thing that came up was actually an announcement saying that the White House has now greenlit a road through Alaska more than 200 miles that will help with the development of copper as well as other minerals. This is the Ampler Access Road and its trilogy metals has a huge stake in the road. This is something that they've been a part of, have commented on in the past. This road was initially greenlit by the Trump administration in his first term and reversed by the Biden administration and now it

seems to be back on with Trump. We also know that the House of Representatives actually voted last month to approve the access for this road. Of course, there are some environmental concerns, but at this point, it seems like Trump is hitting the go button on it and, of course, could have big impacts for metals and minerals. John? Interesting update. We'll have to see what Schumer and Jeffries have to say about shutdown negotiations.

Emily, thank you. Well, President Trump, meanwhile, blasting the home builders up next, we'll tell you why he's now going after that industry. And later, fast money's Tim Seymour gives us the trade on Delta, which is reporting earnings tomorrow and whether those results can help turn around the underperforming airline industry. Overtime, we'll be right back. Welcome back to overtime. Homebuilders getting hit today as mortgage rates creep higher. Meanwhile, President Trump is also attacking the industry. Diana Ollick explains why. Well, John, President Trump posted that the homebuilders, quote, have to start building homes. They're sitting on.

on two million empty lots, a record. He said, I'm asking Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to get big home builders going and by doing help restore the American dream. Now, FHFA director, Bill Pulte, who oversees Fannie and Freddie, posted that he would do just that. Pulte then told me he would start meeting

with home builders today. Now, when I asked specifically what FHFA could do, he said, we have a lot of tools as the main buyer of mortgages. As for the rest, the 15 public builders do hold roughly 2.2 million lots right now, but it's not a record, according to Zellman Associates. This chart shows the amount of homes being built relative to demand,

and it's currently still over 100%. That means builders are actually overbuilding. And this chart shows they're aggressively building speculative homes, that is, homes without a buyer. So that gets us to what could Fannie and Freddie really do? Well, they can't lower mortgage rates. So the next option would be to lower underwriting standards to approve more borrowers like they did back in 2006.

But that, in part, was what caused the worst foreclosure crisis since the Great Depression. Now, most builders have said what they really want is for the government to pressure states into easing regulations, which makes home building faster and cheaper. John? Diana, also on the supply side, do the builders have the workers and the lumber available at prices that buyers can afford? Well, lumber prices are going up, as you know, because of tariffs. And they do have a worker shortage for some. But others say that they have enough workers. It's just that everything is too expensive right now,

and that's make it harder to build affordable homes. All right. Diana Oleg, thank you. Well, a pair of high-profile international markets swinging in opposite directions today. Up next, fast money trader Tim Seymour on where he sees the biggest overseas opportunities right now. Plus, Mike Santoli will come back to look at what a nearly $11 billion regional bank deal could mean for bank valuations. That's coming up on overtime. Welcome back. Let's get into some moves overseas as we've got lots of news around the world. French stocks are lower and its bond yields higher, the Prime Minister resigning after less than a month on the job.

That makes 5 PMs leaving the job since the start of 2024. Maybe that's what sank the French market since PMs won't cease leaving. And Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party as a new leader. Stock surging on the election but dragging the yen and bonds lower. Well, joining us now is Fast Money Trader and CNBC contributor, Tim Seymour, Tim, what do you think? Great to be here. A lot going on around the world.

And if you talk first about the political circus in France, it's something that, yes, if you look at the EWQ, which is the ETF to trade France, if you want to just look at the country overall down today. But if you look at that market since Thanksgiving of last year, much like a lot of the European markets, it's actually outperformed the S&P. So I do think that there will be some concern from the ratings agencies. I do think French bond yields will maybe be under a little bit more pressure. But I think French equities, much like we're seeing across the continent, are buoyed by stronger banks, a backdrop for banks. I think industrial spending, I think fiscal spending in France, as we're hearing in Germany and probably what we can be talking about in Japan as well. Geopolitical shifts, a reason to think that gold and other metals might keep going even higher from here? I think it's geopolitics, it's central bank diversification that goes back 25 years.

I think it's allocation. I think there's an institutional investor base in gold now that there hasn't been before. And I think there's even a sense. Morgan Stanley, I saw in some of their allocation models, has, you know, the standard 60-40 model is now 60, 20, 20, with one of those 20s being gold. So there's no question that gold as a diversifier, as a portfolio stabilizer, is something that I think the trends that have placed gold where they have over the last not only six months, but really over the last 15 years are alive and well.

So I don't think you run too far from this trade. I don't think you should be looking to put on a 20% gold position at this point. I'm not suggesting that's what Morgan Stanley is saying either. The point is people are looking at allocations, institutions, pension funds are looking at gold allocations differently. There's a difference, clearly, between gold and metal and, say, Bitcoin in that, I mean, people expect, fans of Bitcoin expect it to double in, say, the next couple of years. But I don't know if gold fans necessarily expect it to double from nearly 4,000, huh? No question. I've been investing in gold.

I'm an emerging markets guy by background in really early 2000 is when we started to see some of those central banks begin to diversify, also just the resource-rich economies around the world. But it is a story that I think has been had all the stars align, especially when you consider just some concerns about everything from geopolitical instability. It's not just, it's everywhere. It's deficit spending. It's the richest countries in the world that could continue to issue bond after bond or fiat currency after fiat currency. Accountability is what a lot of investors want to see. I don't see why the investment focus on gold changes anytime soon. All right. Finally, Delta set to report earnings later this week. It's down just 3% for the year, but has been recovering the past six months up 56%. You like this? Are the airlines overall? Delta's certainly the best of them all. I love Delta. I'm long Delta. I think there's been cyclicality in this trade as there typically is with airlines.

But Delta is probably the most margin-friendly story. They're flying out of four main hubs. This is a company that I think has lowered their cost base, has increased their revenue base. I think it's certainly the institutional kind of follow-through. Airlines have underperformed also. And if you look at where the market has rallied really off the April lows, airlines have underperformed. And I think you have room. If the U.S. economy is showing some stability here, airlines are next to move.

Well, Tim, you love to trade and it shows. Thank you for running through those. It's great to be here, John, as always. Well, speaking of Loving to Trade, take out your phone. Scan this QR code on your screen and get your tickets to see Tim and the rest of the Fast Money traders when Fast Money live returns to the NASDAQ on December 11th. You do not want to miss that. Up next, Mike Santoli is going to look at the nearly $11 billion merger between Fifth Third and Comerica,

what it could mean for regional bank stock prices. And don't forget, you can catch a lot. us on the go by following the closing bell overtime podcast on your favorite podcast app. We'll be right back. dollars at the close, but it is soaring in overtime. Interior Secretary Bergam saying that the government's going to take a stake in the company. Reports saying that stake will be 10%. This is a Vancouver mining company with interest in two Alaska mineral projects. I suppose trying to capture some upside there with the moves in Alaska. Well, a flicker of good news in regional banks. A fresh deal in the space has traders perking up. But is this a turning point

or just another blip. Mike Santoli's back with a closer look. Mike? Yeah, certainly a net positive when you start to see deals. It's still a very fragmented market. There are the makings of a lot of these kind of consolidation efforts. But look at what Comerica looks like in terms of the pop in the stock just now relative to where it's been just a few years ago. It's not a take under, but it definitely is not going to match the highs from early 2022. And that's also the case for the broader regional banks ETF. That's the KR. So it doesn't mean that, you know, they're not getting full value. It just shows you that long-term holders are not necessarily in for some kind of a bonanza here.

It's also a similar story if you look at the valuation that Comerica is being taken out at by fifth third. So you see it's in the one and a half times book value range. But you see there, it was at a much bigger premium back in 2022. That was, of course, before the Silicon Valley Bank failure, which really did penalize the entire regional bank group. really, you know, lift for quite a while. And then you see all regional banks are trading at just a slight premium to book value. So to me, it tells you something about, you know, how to manage expectations about what even an aggressive consolidation phase might mean here. Yes, you might get sort of bidding wars. More likely it's going to be these kind of tie-ups

that are, you know, mergers and you're going to get some efficiencies out of it, but not necessarily a lot of these big scores. It seems the market's just reluctant to assign that much more value to these regional franchises. Mike, the KRE, the regional bank index, is right about where it was the mid-60s before the Silicon Valley Bank, but also there was this talk right after SVB that there was going to be

all this consolidation among the regionals. Did that happen? No, it really didn't. I mean, basically what you had happened was a lot of the really deeply distressed banks that had these compromised balance sheets, which too much interest rate exposure, they did get kind of absorbed

to a degree into larger institutions, but only a few of them. And for the most part, the rest, I think what's gone on is most of the bank managements have been waiting for the housing market to revive for a while. They were waiting for the Fed to raise interest rates, but then they raised them too much, and the shape of the yield curve wasn't in their favor. And then, you know, commercial lending seemed like it was a little bit of a risk. And private credit is stepping in there in front of them to do some of what they would expect to do.

So it seems like there was always something that was keeping them from fully realizing it and fully kind of taking a risk-on posture. So maybe that's changing right now with deregulation, but it certainly remains to be seen, but there has not been a big mop-up consolidation in the industry. Indeed. Well, for those who bought the KRE in the 40s or maybe even the mid-30s of the very low,

they still did quite well. Mike Santoli, thank you. Well, let's end the show where we started, tech and AI. Tomorrow do not miss a first on CNBC interview with Dell's chairman, CEO, and founder, Michael Dell. That's going to be right here on Overtime. We'll get his take on the recent AI boom. The role Dell is playing, what he sees ahead. That stock's had a nice pop of 26% so far this year. That does it for overtime. Fast money starts now.