Power Lunch - All three major stock averages rally into weekend 11/21/25

Episode Date: November 21, 2025

The Dow, Nasdaq and S&P 500 surged after the Thursday sell-off. Yields dipped on renewed hopes for a Fed rate cut in December.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Look at that bull snort. Going out strong on a week, week. Welcome to Power Lunch, everybody. I am Brian. Kelly is back in two weeks. And despite some gains today, stocks overall headed for their worst week in months. Yes, mostly green on the screen, but a lot of the recently red-hot AI-related names, they're getting sold again.

Also sliding right now some crypto and crypto-related stocks at one point, Bitcoin. hovering just above the 80,000 mark. Tom Lee yesterday telling us crypto price is down after like a software bug at a crypto exchange triggered margin calls. We've got a guest all fired up the challenge that thesis. Jan Vennick says that could be a bunch of BS. And he knows why he thinks there has been some big time selling. Plus a big time sports league for women and why some investors are all in.

We have got a lot to do. Welcome everybody to Power Lunch. Happy Friday, stocks are actually soaring right now. In fact, the small caps, the SML, is up three and a half percent. One of the biggest gains of the year. But those gains on the screen, that green bull, doesn't mean the coast is clear, especially for Bitcoin and crypto. Because if you missed it yesterday, it was a fascinating interview with Tom Lee,

where he made some comments about maybe why Bitcoin and crypto are going down so much recently. Listen. On a specific exchange, a stable coin's price varied from other exchanges. It actually, stable coins should stay at a dollar. It dropped to 65 cents. But that only happened within the exchange quotes, within this exchange because of liquidity. This error is actually essentially a bug, you know, a code error. Now, basically, Tom was saying that that software issue can trigger automatic selling, what he called ADL or auto-deleveraging,

and that could be a cause of what has been happening the last couple of weeks. Now, those comments, as you might imagine, getting a lot of attention. Some people agreed. Some people strongly disagreed. Your first guest today firmly in the latter camp on that one. Let's welcome in Vanek's EO, Jan Vanek.

Jan, good to see you. Are you, and I'm sure you like and respect Tom Lee very much, but are you discounting that software bug thesis? Well, I approach Bitcoin in the following sense is, should Bitcoin be in your portfolio, number one? And how do you- What's the answer to that? For sure. Okay. But, you know, at least now, for sure.

But we've been saying that since 2017, number one. And then what are the drivers to think about, you know, whether it should be added or decreased in your portfolio? So there's two things. There's sort of mainstream global liquidity reasons to buy Bitcoin, just like you think about gold. But then there's on-chain reality. Things that you have to know by looking at kind of the crypto ecosystem. And if you ever did a Bitcoin 101, everyone knows that every four years, there's this thing called the happening cycle, right, where Bitcoin miners get half the amount of Bitcoin for

basically the same work. The same work. Thank you for making the simple phrase, right? And so we know that's happening. And every four years for the last decade, Bitcoin has had a big negative year. And guess what? 2026, it's scheduled to have a big negative year. So now what investors have been doing is pre-positioning for this bearish move.

And Thanksgiving is such a funny time because literally Thanksgiving of 2017 is when Bitcoin came to a lot of people's attention. And so this is a funny time to think about it. But we have probably peaked in October and have a year of a bear market. You exed out or tweeted out that you thought that you were itching to come on, by the way. Hopefully you're not actually itching. You know what I mean? Go see somebody about that. But that you wanted to come on because of that. So what you're suggesting, what you're saying, not suggesting, you're saying it, is that this idea that because next year is likely going to be a tougher year for Bitcoin, some of the selling that we're seeing is just people getting ahead of that? Yes. Look, this has happened. It's a four-year cycle. Now, every cycle is different. What's obvious to everybody is that Bitcoin has gone up less this cycle, and so there's many people think it'll go down less in the correction. But that's just sort of one of the fundamentals. Now, there's something else going on within the Bitcoin community that kind of non-crypto people need to know about. And that is, ultimately, Vanek has been around before Bitcoin. We will walk away from Bitcoin if we think that these

is fundamentally broken. We don't right now. But you always have to look at the underlying technology. And the crypto, sorry, the Bitcoin community has been asking itself about, is there enough encryption in Bitcoin because quantum computing is coming? And so, and then secondly, is there enough privacy in Bitcoin? And so a lot of Bitcoin OGs or Maxis have been looking at Zcash. What's that?

Zcash is a token, it's sort of related to Bitcoin with a lot more privacy. Because, you know, the kind of garbage that we got about Bitcoin four years ago is it's like used to, for all bad, illicit behavior. But now everyone kind of realizes when you move money around on the Bitcoin blockchain, you can see it. You can see it move from one wallet to another. And a lot of people are looking for more privacy. So is, so, by the way, Jim Kramer kind of alluded to this yesterday morning on Squawk on the street where he talked about quantum computing and crypto. So going back to that, is there a, is there a, is there a, thesis then, or a school of thought, that quantum computing, super duper computing is going to

eliminate Bitcoin in some way? Because it renders it less safe? Right. So Bitcoin relies on encryption, but everything relies on encryption. It's like war games at the end of the movie where they're trying to find the code to launch some missiles. Take that to the nth degree. And if quantum computing can do that like that, are you suggesting that eliminates that safety of the ledger? I'm just saying that's a risk. It's our job at Vanek, right, to explain to people why do you allocate to Bitcoin, right? Going back, there's this big global liquidity reasons. Again, think of gold. That's the one reason an investment committee would look at it, but they have to be informed by the realities of what's going on. It's a technology. I'm just

saying it's a risk. And I think it's really the four-year cycle that's getting priced in right now. And as with everything in investing, you don't want to chase bull markets like some people do. We at Van Exce, do dollar cost averaging into bare markets? So this is, let me just go a little broader because some people at home might be watching going, man, I'm interested, but I'm not sure of all the language. And to be folks, I'm not sure I am either. Okay, I want to be very clear. This is complicated stuff. Gold is not complicated. Gold, you dig out of the ground, right? I can own it. I can turn in jewelry. I can buy an ETF if I want. It's heavy. It's pretty. I can store it. It's not a complicated story. I know you've

got Bitcoin ETF. Hodel. Is there, hold on for your life, is there an element of the Bitcoin story that because we're having to have these conversations alone, people stay away from it? Because they don't understand it, right? It's like Warren Buffett talked about the internet stocks 20 years ago. Absolutely. Right. And what's happening in the wealth community, Brian, is a lot of people are saying, I don't know how to allocate to Bitcoin. We actually do that for clients. So we have model portfolios. All I'm trying to explain right now today

is that there's two components in our analysis. Again, one, macro global liquidity. Is there a lot of money around in the world? If so, then people will like a hedge to that like Bitcoin. And then number two, what's actually happening to the technology? Because it has to work. The Bitcoin network has to work. And we're just trying to simplify...

Well, this kind of supply chases, but this stuff might chase people. off if they feel like they don't understand it, or like, you know what, I'm not going to own something that every four years goes down 50%. Look, every asset has unique things about it. If you're going to invest in NVIDIA, you better understand something about the fundamentals of that company. And we just try to do that as best we can and simplify it as best we can at Vanek.

Well, sit tight because you mentioned NVIDIA. I want to ask you about Oracle in a second. We actually have some breaking news now. Sit tight on on NVIDIA. Christina Parts Nevelis joining us with this news alert. Yeah, there are reports coming from Bloomberg that people close to the president, as well as President Trump, we're discussing possibly giving the green light to NVIDIA to sell H-200 chips to China. Recall, and this is where it gets a little confusing, that the NVIDIA originally had H-20 chips for China.

These are China-specific chips. This latest story is saying that Trump is considering, NVIDIA selling even more advanced chips that have more memory, but are slightly older from 2023. And video has just responded with a statement saying, quote, the regulatory landscape does not allow us to offer a competitive data center GPU in China, leaving that massive market to a rapidly growing foreign competitors. Recall that Jensen Wong in the past has said that this market is worth about $50 billion. And last, or this past quarter, the earnings report was very recently.

We learned that they only sold about $50 million worth of the H20 chips. These are the chips that did have the green light that were geared specifically for China. So now this report is talking about an even more advanced chip that is not specific for China. It's called the H200. It was made in 2023, so it is slightly older. If I were to just speak on behalf of sources and stuff, the goal for Nvidia is not to sell older chips. They want to get their Blackwell iterations into China. So this is almost like an olive branch from President Trump saying, hey, I'll let you sell an older but more advanced.

Tipped to China. We'll see if that actually happens, though. You ever go to the grocery store, Christina, and, like, there's bread, and the bread expires tomorrow, and it's 50% off because tomorrow it becomes stale. This feels like that. The alternate headline would be White House considers letting NVIDIA dump old inventory on China. Is that fair? That is very fair. That is very fair. This is what I do. This is why, this is why I'm me. Christina Parsons-Evels with the breaking news on the H-200. We get to the Blackwell chip. That's going to be the news.

Christina, thank you very much. Appreciate that. Let's go back because Jan Vanek, the SMH-Etf, I don't know if you've heard about this ETF, semiconductors. Oh, it's Vanek. It's actually owned by you guys. You put it together. What's your take?

I was being a little tongue-in-cheek there because I know Christina rolls with it on the NVIDIA news. Two-year-old chips? Is that news? No. I think it's not news. And I think Jensen Wong is trying to sell. chips into China. I don't think China wants them, right? So I think there's, it's been this tension.

He's been very clear on his earnings calls that their projected earnings do not include China in those numbers. And I think that's a wise. But we underwrite Nvidia, we do not add potential China demand in there. And I think most of that optionality is out of the stock. And I don't think the stock's going to react. Yeah, and the SMH headed for its worst week since April, but you've got a kind of my, and I wish Christina was here so she could play off this a little bit more. Maybe she's still there. But these, chips because I know two years in like the real world is not a long time, but for semiconductors, it might as well be the Model T. The compute cycle. He is dropping compute costs 90% a year.

So he's joked that he would be happy to give away. That's what I said. Other customers chips and he would still. Christina is still there. Christina, and I know you roll with the snark, but like two years, it's like a dog. Seven years is one year. Two years in the semiconductor, particularly the GPU cycle for NVIDIA, I got to imagine, is a technological, fundamental difference of eons? Yeah, and then especially when you have Jensen, the CEO, saying that they're coming out with an annual cadence at least for their chips. But to the conference, you were just speaking about China, 100% spot on. China doesn't want these older chips in their country. They want companies to use domestic local chip providers. There's three issues that NVIDIA still has to

overcome. There's a Melanox antitrust case. So this is being going to melanox was acquired by Nvidia back in 2020, but China for some reason now is decided to go after Nvidia for it. The second issue is concerns about backdoor options on chips, meaning that they can be open somehow through software or anything like that. And then the third issue is more of an environmental issue in terms of energy use on some of these chips. Perhaps this is called posturing from China, but these are three issues that Nvidia has to deal with directly with China with Maybe a few weeks ago, recall President Trump

was speaking to reporters on his aircraft and he even said this is between Jensen and China. They have to deal with it. So perhaps this is, like you said,

the president's saying, hey, we're allowing them to do this, but really it's not going to move the needle that much because China needs to say yes first. And then number two, they got to say yes to more advanced ships

which you know there's going to be a lot of backlash. You ever see the great movie Silence of the Lambs? There's a scene where they're trying to make a deal with Hannibal Lecter and they say,

we're going to send you to Plum Island, and you get a view of the turns, birds. And he's like, oh, Plum Island biological weapons thing. And I wonder if China's sitting back going, you're going to offer us two-year-old NVIDIA chips to your point. That's not what they want. They don't want to go to Plum Island? No, of course. Everybody wants the latest and greatest, but then you have the argument that from Corweave or

or NVIDIA on their call is that these older chips are still valuable. They're still able to rent them out. They're still able to sell a lot of them because there's such. demand across the board. So maybe that's one argument for still being able to sell the H-200s into China. But it's not a strong enough argument, given how many more advanced chips there are. Final take, Jan Vannick, Mr. Semiconductor? I don't think the story is NVIDIA in China. The story of the week is a rotation amongst the MAG-7 or the MAG-8, with Google's Gemini coming out with a great new model and putting some heat and pressure on

open AI. And we've seen that. Meta hasn't had a great year. So it's this leapfrogging cycle, I don't want to give too much away because Alphabet may or may not be our stock of the week at the end of the show. I'm winking or something in my eye. But everybody said that AI was going to kill Google Search. Apparently Google Search has killed that meme. Like that's not true. Google's the hottest stock in the Mag 7 because Gemini is rock and ever. What did people get wrong about Alphabet?

This white hot competition in the AI world right now to get, because it's sticky and it's a scale business. So you just want as much business right now, market share in that world is cheap. And that's why there's this, and there's going to be a leapfrogging in this technology. Like I said, may or may not be our stock of the week. We still have time to change it in 35 or 45 minutes. So Jan Vanek, great stuff. Thanks for all the, Christina Parts and Eveless, always the best coming on with the breaking news. Thank you very much.

All right, by the way, bond markets, treasury yields slipping today after New York Federal Reserve President, John Williams, renewed investor hopes that the Fed would again cut in December, Rick Santelli with the bond report, Rick, it appears that John Williams may have saved Christmas. Well, I'm not sure about that. It certainly seems to me like there's a lot of other moving parts here, but it definitely moved the probabilities on the ease, and the probabilities have gone from basically 30% up into the close to 70, and it's backed off, but right under 70%. But I think the real story is how the interest rate complex is shadowboxing the equity side and mostly when it goes higher.

Now, if you look at a 12 hour of S&P and two-year yields, you can see what I mean. When the equity markets seem to go down, treasuries follow it, but not closely. But boy, when it goes the other way, it's right on it. And you can really see that on the week-to-date chart. Now, if we look at a one month of tens and do keep in mind, twos are like near unchanged on day right now hovering right around that 353 where they closed yesterday. They're down about eight basis points on the week, but tens, they would have a close under 407. It would be breaking out of the November closing range. That's the low, but it's hovering a little higher now

following stocks. And finally, the dollar index, nobody's talking about this enough. It's virtually at a six-month high close, should it close where it's trading now, and the Japanese are talking about potentially intervening in the FX market, pay close attention to that. Brian, back to you. Nobody can accuse you and not talking about it. You've brought up every day this week. You brought up Japan in the right way and you've been spot on. Rick Centelli, thank you very much. All right after the break, consumer sentiment down to near record lows. But what does that mean for retailers with the holidays, I'm told right around the corner? Seems like kind of an important time for retailers. How are they doing? We'll talk about it coming up.

We are just one week away from one of the biggest shopping days of the year, but Target stock is not ringing up the wind. Despite stabilizing traffic and a cleaner inventory picture, shares of consistently disappointed investor, lagging peers and questions kind of swirling around Target's recovery. It's bringing Melissa Repcoe here to talk more about it. I'm not, I don't want to pick necessarily on Target, but if you're going to take a national big. chain and look at the stock price decline, the market is telling the story for it. I know you've written about it. What's fundamentally the issue with Target? When you look at Target, a lot of it boils down to the fundamentals. If you talk to shoppers and you talk to investors who go to the

stores, they see stores are not in as good of shape. They're sloppier than they used to be. Things are out of stock. Checkout lines are long. A lot of those things that cause shoppers to go elsewhere. Well, I mean, that's leadership. I mean, each store has a general manager. There's general managers to oversee the general managers. Anytime there's kind of a breakdown in the process, it comes down to leadership. I know that the CEO, Brian Cornell, is swapping out, right? What do we know about the new CEO? So I actually went to Minneapolis, and I met with him recently. An incoming CEO who steps in, Michael Fidelke, he is the former CFO, current CIO, and he's laid out three priorities. One is strengthening their style and design. Second one is

cleaning up their stores and their customer experience. And the third is adding technology, AI, of course, but other things as well to speed the business along make it more efficient. Yeah, what role is AI going to play in Target or other retailers? What are they going to do with it? This week, Target announced that it's launching a new feature with OpenAIs chat GPT, where customers can engage with its app and search through products, ultimately getting personalized recommendations, may come in handy for people looking for gifts this season.

But that's really what everyone is looking towards Walmart also is working. working with chat, GBT, and they're trying to kind of lay the groundwork. It's still very early days. I think this holiday season, it's more experimental. But, again, it's a bit of an arms race because they know that investors want to hear they're moving in this space, and they also want to be where the customers are going, and they're shopping differently. But if you look at the difference between Walmart and Target, I know they would disagree,

people in Bentonville and Minneapolis cover your ears, but they're, they probably sell 95% of the same stuff, right, bounty paper towels, whatever it might be. Man, the stocks have gone in really different directions. What is Walmart doing right? You know, Walmart in a lot of ways is replicating the Target playbook. What is different about the companies is that Target was known for a lot of private label stuff, things that were kind of the dupes in some cases or its version of styles for less. So having apparel, having toys, having a lot of different things that you could only find a target,

Walmart has done that too. They've launched a lot more fashion-forward brands. They're expanding them to their own stores. their own brands that are more trend forward, but trends for less. And it works. Like they've got the dog food. I think it's called Old Sand. That's a Walmart brand.

Exactly. And they're doing more of that. They launched a new food brand. And a lot of those. Not the dog food brand. They're not related. Okay. Just making sure.

You don't know. And they're more chef-inspired things. Frozen empanadas, things that are more, you know, TikTok-friendly. People might talk about, like, wings, for example. They have frozen wings that are part of this new brand. And they get people talking. They get people more excited. and frankly, their labels look a lot like what might be in Target.

We're going to leave it there, but I think the headline of this segment should have been frozen empanata discussion powering Walmart. You never know. Hey. Hey, if old Sam, just don't combine the two. If it works, it works. Melissa Repcoe, great stuff. Thank you very much.

Thank you. All right. The call of Blue Owl, guess what? There's a stock that's up today, but it's at a really rough month. We'll talk about why you should be more focused on something. called private credit will make sense of it. Promise. Next. Alternative asset management, private equity, venture capital, etc. Those stocks, the ones that trade publicly, they've been hit hard over the last couple of months. Names we don't talk about

a lot, but probably should. Blackstone, KKR, Ares. They're down double digits going back to late August, and look at shares of a firm called Blue Owl. It's down more than 25% in the past two months. And despite the rather, shall we say, unique name, Blue Owl is a massive finance firm. It's also been the one that's been hit hardest on concerns about what they call private credit and credit quality. Your next guest believes there are a number of significant risks currently facing that market. And she should know it's part of what she does for a living and has for over 20 years. We're joined now by Maria Boisney, founder and CEO of MB Global Partner, somebody I've known for more than two decades.

great. Finally, after 20 years, I got you on TV. I'm trying, trying, Brian. Well, thank you for coming on. So in a layman's term, what's been going on in the private credit market? Interesting that you ask. Private credit has really been an expanding asset class since the financial crisis with very low interest rates at the time, negative in most of the world. Free money. Free money. Institutions were looking for yield. managers smartly responded and created a whole massive

asset class that has us here talking about it made a lot of people really rich too by the way and talking about it on a Friday afternoon absolutely and hopefully we'll make more people rich and it refers to non-asset non-bank lending all the different vehicles

that address various dislocations in the market and provide a whole different market of liquidity for companies. However, all that lending that has grown over the years, naturally, they've been positives, that it's expanded access to many more businesses, including middle market and lower middle market that historically have been under bank by banks. It expanded access, but it's created a whole list of risks. So what, well, what something has happened,

If Blue Owl, a company we never talked about a month ago, down 25%. That's a huge company. What's happened that's causing this rattling of the market? What's been going on is we've been levering and levering and levering, right? So the private credit space has grown from virtually non-existent to between one and a half to $1.8 trillion now, right? So naturally, you have the good assets that got funded and maybe in a lot. not so good assets that got funded. This market provides little liquidity, typically,

although now you have more and more public vehicles, but the overwhelming majority is privately traded. As a result, you don't have a lot of transparency in pricing, and when there are credit events that everybody reads about, and you talk about... If I'm talking about it's already happened, probably. You talk about it ahead of time, always. Don't you, nice, thank you.

But what people read about it, and naturally start questioning some of these businesses, have they taken on too much leverage? And that is being reflected in current. When I hear those words, though, I think to myself, there's got to be opportunity somewhere because sometimes when things get too hot, they get dumped, and that's kind of where you find the value, right?

In that sort of mix, is there a lot of opportunity that we're not looking at right now in the right place? I think absolutely. So I think the issue has been that a lot of leverage went on at kind of the senior level. But what historically senior has been a smaller part of the capital structure has now grown and grown to overtake the capital structure, right? When assets were, say, levered three or four times their cash flow, now they're levered six times, seven times, et cetera. That sounds dangerous. That is dangerous and you have to avoid those assets.

But the big opportunity for all of us is to help recapitalize those assets. Those assets need more capital. So you could potentially provide interesting, flexible capital solutions to those companies that help them deliver and readjust their capital structure to what's actually happening in the underlying business. And they've gotten ahead of themselves putting on a bit too much leverage. We'll leave it there, but I think I'll say it so you don't have to. the short term, it sounds like they got a little bit greedy and some of that stuff isn't paying off. But you know what I love about the segment, Maria? You made me smarter. Thank you. Love watching you. Thank you.

I feel like I learned something. And that's a good day. Any day you can learn something. The long overdue September jobs report showing softness in the labor market. But are we getting another read of a more current type. Yes, we are. And that's going to be with the CEO of ASGN, who's got a unique view on the economy, both the public and government. government sector, and it's next. Stick around. All right, let's get now some more unique insight into a real critical part of the American economy through both the private and governmental sector lenses. ASGN is embedding itself deeper into the digital transformation of Fortune 1,000 companies.

It's also transitioning to a new parent company called Everforth. With us now is the CEO Ted Hanson. Ted, good to have you on set here. You're based outside of Washington, D.C. You've got kind of unique view on how the economy is doing. What's the ASGN, Ted Hansen view of where we are right now? So at first, Brian, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here today and talk about a range of things. Our view of what's going on right now, it's been a very interesting year for our customers.

We work with over 70% of the Fortune 500. They've been dealing with various things as it relates to tariffs and concerns about the economy, trying to manage expenses and all the rest of it, while still wrestling with how do I adopt AI? And so, you know, at this point, the tariff is not totally water under the bridge, but I think our clients understand what that is. And now the technology here forogenic AI is available. And customers are wrestling with how do I bring these technologies into my organization and really get to a return on investment. Okay, so between, let's, there's three things as I see them. We've got tariffs that are out there. You've

You've got AI, which everyone's kind of, to your point, wrestling with. And then you've also got the government shut down. Government's a huge part of your business as well. So what are other CEOs saying about how they're doing with three ones now over, but I don't need to tell you, Ted, the government shutdown could happen again in a few months. The government shutdown could happen again. Is there a long-term implication from that? Look, I think this administration, and hopefully together with the rest of the politicians,

are going to move from, we weren't shut down now in a continuing resolution through the end of January to a new budget for the fiscal year. With that comes a double-digit increase in appropriation from the Big Beautiful Bill, which is really pointed at advanced technologies in the Defense Department, Intel, and national security areas. In our government business, the government part of our business, over 70% of our work for the government is in those areas serving cybersecurity, AI data, and other advanced technologies. So there's a real possibility here that in the first half of the year that we get past this to a new budget, a much more productive market plates and the government go. What if we don't? Well, if we don't, we're going to kind of struggle through some more continuing resolutions. And that doesn't mean everything stops.

It just means the government can't pursue fully all the things, all the initiatives that they wanted to do related to the appropriation and the new business. You've got a new product called AI factory, and it's basically designed to help companies get from A to Z and do what they need to do. Is that going to kill jobs, or is that going to help jobs, or is that just going to shift jobs? Everybody's trying to figure it out right now, Ted. What's AI going to do to my job? Not me. Well, maybe me, but who knows?

Right. But you understand my point. Right. Our view is AI is going to enhance productivity and rise up the knowledge. worker to do higher value things. So what customers are struggling with right now is the complexity of their own organization. For decades, they've been putting in big systems oriented by department, siloed, data spread all over the place. And now they have AI opportunities, but trying to get to that based on the technical debt that exists in their organization is a struggle. And so what

we're helping clients do is simplify that. So the AI factory is about how. having ready-made assets, IP, other accelerators to simplify these things for customers, help govern the data and other important things in their organization so they can more readily and rapidly implement AI opportunities. Is it too many layers of management or just making management do the right things and make the right decisions? Well, look, I don't know if it's as much as it is management as it is the technical debt that I mentioned.

And so our enterprise customers are going to have to begin to make investment. to deal with the technical debt before they pull down the promise of AI, energetic AI. When is ASGN becoming officially Everforth? Yeah, we're excited. We announced yesterday that we're going to become Everforth.

And Everforth is about leaning forward as a unified business and solving our customers' most critical opportunities by bringing technology together where there's a business problem. Today, we go to market at seven different businesses inside the public company,

serving different target markets. This is about coming together a $4 billion business serving all of our enterprise customers with all the solutions we bring the bears. Ever fourth. ASGN for now. Ted Hansen, thank you very much. Appreciate that.

All right, let's get now to Bertha Coombs for a CNBC News Update. Hi, Brian. Russian President Vladimir Putin says the U.S.-backed 28-point peace plan for Ukraine could form the foundation for a deal. He also said the contents have not been discussed with the U.S. yet in any substantive way.

President Trump is pressuring Ukraine to accept the plan by Thanksgiving. Three U.S. officials tell NBC News it calls on Ukraine to give up territory and its ambitions to join NATO. Lawyers for former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro are asking the country's Supreme Court to allow him to serve his sentence under house arrest. They say he has health problems that would make it unsafe for him to be in prison. Bolsonaro was sentenced in September to talk. 27 years for plotting a coup.

And English Premier League teams agreed today to introduce spending caps next season. The club's spending will be restricted to 85% of their soccer revenue and net profit or loss on player sales. Teams will also get an allowance of an extra 30%, but once that runs out, they begin to face penalties. The league says new rules will make the league more competitive. Brian, you need an accounting degree to cover sports these days. You really do with the NIL money in college football, and this with soccer or sorry, the other football, it's amazing. Bertha Coops, thank you very much. Speaking of money in sports, guess what?

Another sport, one that is spiking in value is the subject of our next conversation. That's a hint. Spiking. Alex Sherman is up next with that story. Well, NFL and NBA franchise prices keep rocketing higher. Another sport is quietly catching the eye of some savvy investors. So what is it? Well, let's answer the tease that we had before the break.

Here's a clip from our game plan conference in September. Other than football and basketball, name one sport that you feel at the collegiate level will be the next breakout sport for revenue generation. Volleyball. I'd say volleyball and softball. We're the two on my list. I'd say volleyball, too. Yes, women's volleyball.

It is booming. Record ratings, a new Pro League. Investors are taking notice. They're putting capital, aka money, into one of the fastest growing sports in the country. Joining us now with more on the volleyball rally is the man that was on stage, and it felt a little like Jeopardy or like,

for $400, which sport, but... They did not answer in the form of a question. They did. They did not say, what is volleyball? But this was volleyball? There's a pro league or some big names in the word. Believe it or not, Brian, there are three different pro leagues now that have all popped up in recent years for women's volleyball.

Well, they need to have one. So, well, maybe that's where we're headed eventually. The one I focused on in my newsletter, which came out yesterday, that you can sign up for, CNBC.com, backslash, sport newsletter is... League one, cheap plug. League one volleyball. So this started last year, and its new season is coming out next year. They're already attracting some big-name investors to their team.

The McNair family owns a team now. Alexis O'Hanian is going to own the L.A. team. David Blitzer, who's part of the larger conglomerate that owns the Sixers and other teams, already is a part of an ownership group for a team. Lindsey Vaughn, Kevin Durand. These are investors in the league itself. I'm just making up names. Oh, they're on a wall behind you.

So there was an interesting story where the league started last year as an owned and operated league. So the league came out and said, we own all the teams. Now we're going to find bidders for the individual teams. They started with six. They're already going to add two that started in 2027. One in L.A., like I mentioned, Alexis O'Hanian leading up that group. One in Minnesota. They still haven't announced through the ownership group of the Minnesota team's going to be in.

So why is everyone interested in this? Well, it's exciting. It's a great sport. They turn to the collegiate level. And the collegiate volleyball has been a ratings winner and an attendance winner for several years now. And investors are seeing volleyball as maybe the next version of the WNBA, a sport that blew up in college that's now seeping into the pro levels. So, okay, so I got a text from my friend here says, Wisconsin Women's Volleyball program, legit. You know what's cool about volleyball?

People are tall. I mean, when I say tall, I'm 6'4. I would have been the shortest person on the women's volleyball team at the University of Wisconsin. These are all-star, superstar athletes. If you go to a game, the environment tends to be electric, similar to women's basketball to at the collegiate level. A lot of similarities there, but this is a lot cheaper to get into. So if you're an investor and you want to invest in sports, right, now it is. Exactly.

So that's why the money is starting to flow into volleyball where they think maybe this could be, as you heard in that clip, the next big breakout sport. Okay, I got to pivot to another story. It's not about volleyball. It's not about sports, but you're the media guy, too, sports and media. Warner Brothers Discovery, the bids are due now. David Zazlov, the guy that runs Warner Brothers says he wants a, quote, three in it. I assume he wants a $30 number on the bid.

Yeah, he said that private. Well, I want a lot. I want a pony and a unicorn and a Ferrari. None of that's going to happen. Maybe the pony. Where are we now with Warner Brothers? So the bids are in. There were three bids.

one from Netflix, one from our parent company for six more weeks, Comcast, and then one from Paramount. Now, Paramount is the only bid that is for the entire company of Warner Brothers Discovery. Explain what you're talking about. Netflix and Comcast are interested in just Warner Brothers Studio, the film production element, the movies. And HBO Max, the streaming service plus HBO. The rest of the company, which is all the cable networks, CNN, TBS, DNT, and the digital assets, Bleacher report, and others. That they are not interested in.

Only Paramount wants to buy those two. So all of those assets, if Warner Brothers Discovery decides to sell. There's not three bidders. There's one bidder. Well, there's one bidder for the whole company. I want, I'm selling you a two-story house. Yes. I want the first floor.

But here's the deal. I don't want the second floor. Let's say you own that house and you already said, I'm going to split this house into two floors. The chain saw. The first floor and the second floor. And they will both trade publicly as public equities. in a year. That's what's happened with Warner Brothers Discovery. So

if they sell one piece of it to Comcast or Netflix, the other piece already has a name. It's going to be called Discovery Global. Not Versen. Similar story, but not Versan. Discovery Global will have all those cable networks in it, the digital networks, and that will trade as a publicly traded company

in the middle of next year. So is it possible? Nothing happens. There's no sale. There's no sale. And then like our parent company, come January 1st, there's going to be a split. There will be two different companies. So slightly different than our company, which is a spin-off. Comcast and NBC Universal will stay, versus it will be spun off.

This will be two brand new companies, one called Warner Brothers. I have an idea. I know you got to go. I've got a great idea for your next newsletter. Bear with me here. It's a little complicated. You take Warner Brothers, you split it up. You peel out a company called America Online, and then you have a company called Time.

America Online and Time eventually merge and then buy a company called Time Warner. Then you got the... Wait, did this already happen? The great irony here. This is the result of that deal. This is the 25 years ago. David Ellison is watching this broadcast right now. David Ellison wasn't alive 25 years ago.

AT&T bought Time Warner. It was a disaster. AOL bought Time Warner. It was a disaster. Warner Media and Discovery came together. That has not been a success in the public with trade in markets. But this time, this time it will work when Paramount buys Warner Brothers Discovery. Do I sense?

I mean, just a touch of cynicism. Look. Like a drizzle of snide. I'm here to be proven wrong, as always. Well, we're going to wait and see one of those bids do? The bids are in and an announced winner and announced direction around Christmas. Fantastic. I feel like I kind of set you up.

First round bids are in. There will be another round of final round. There you go. Alex Sherman, appreciate it. Thank you very much. Quick check down on the markets. Folks, heck of a rebound here. We've got to show you there.

Look at that. All the markets are up and pay attention to the very bottom. The Russell 2000, the small cap stocks. The Russell's up 3.2%. And that, my friends, one of the biggest gains of the year. Heck, it may be the biggest gain of the year. I'll spend the commercial break looking through the data. And after the break, we got our stock of the week.

Stick around. All right. So here's where we stand in the stock market. Unbelievable reversal from the weakness the last couple of days. Yesterday, the story was a reversal from top to bottom. Today, it's a pop. The Dow is up more than 1%. The NASDAQ up 1.5%. But the Russell, small cap stocks up more than 3%. Unfortunately, crypto not participating in that turn. Bitcoin and ether, they're both down. If I took the opposite side or the up side, I would say this. Bitcoin is basically at 80,000 earlier today. 84-146. It's more than $4,000, effectively off its low. Still down. It's still been a rough

couple of weeks. In fact, off about $40,000 from its highs of mid-October. All right, your stock of the week, we kind of teased it earlier. This is Alphabet. Why is it our stock of the week? Well, number one, it's the only Mag 7 name that is headed for a winning week. But overall, Alphabet up 9% this week and kind of killing the idea that AI will kill Google. All right. Let's talk more about semiconductors. Christina Parts and Eblis, strong finish to the show. Thank you. Thank you. In regards to Google, the reason you're seeing strength is twofold.

One, it's the strength of the TPUs, their own individual chips in their Gemini 3 model, really showing that they can do this on their own without possibly the help of NVIDIA. And the second maybe is more inside baseball, the fact that there was an internal leak from OpenAI, talking about the fact that Google is a real threat to Open AI and the fact that Google has more access to a lot of infrastructure and chips, et cetera. But overall, it's a nice reversal that we're seeing in Google. You want it to top chips, though. InVIDIA, we talked about it earlier in the show. The fact that President Trump, and I can confirm that is true, was considering sending more advanced chips to China,

allowing Nvidia to send more advanced chips to China, and that's helping the sector as well. There you go. Christina, I know we'll see more every than 3 o'clock hour. I'll see everybody at 4 p.m. closing bell. It starts right now.