Power Lunch - Anticipation Situation, Names In The Game 3/18/24

Episode Date: March 18, 2024

Wall Street is waiting to hear from 2 important figures this week: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. Both will speak, but which one has greater market-moving potential? We’ll debate.Plus, March Madness kicks off this week, and the game has changed dramatically for college athletes. Now players can make money, and that’s cleared the way for one video game giant to cash in and spread the wealth, too. We’ll discuss. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to Power Launch, everybody, alongside Courtney Reagan. I'm Tyler Matheson. Glad you could join us. The markets this week waiting to hear from two big names. One, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Wong and two, Fed Chair Jay Powell, which one has greater market moving potential. Plus, March Madness officially kicking off this week, and the game has changed dramatically. Now players are allowed to make money, which cleared the way for EA sports to bring back an old favorite and pay players for their names and likenesses. We will get to that. But first, let's go to check on the market. Stocks bouncing back strongly today after consecutive down weeks, two straight losing weeks, in fact, hadn't happened since October. You can see the NASDAQ is leading the way higher by about a percent.

The S&P 500, not too far behind, and Dow Jones Industrial average up but just 3 tenths of a percent. AI optimism boosting tech stocks and not just Nvidia, which we've already mentioned. Google and Apple may be working together. Those reports both helping those two. stocks as well. And now to the two big events that markets will watch this week. First up, Jensen Wong, NVIDIA's CEO, delivering the keynote at the company's GTC conference. That is today, 4 p.m. Eastern. And everyone wants to know what he's going to say about demand for AI chips and what they've got in the pipeline. Coming up on Wednesday, Fed Chair Jay Powell will hear from him, 2.30 Eastern time,

following the Fed decision on interest rates. What will he say about the timing of rate cuts and the tone and tenor of the economy right now. And which of these has the greater potential to move the markets? For that, let's bring in Mike Santoli. What do you say, Mike? I mean, I suppose this is one of those low suspense moments for the Fed. No one thinks they're going to do much, but what they say could be important. Maybe there's a little more suspense in what Jensen Wong might say. You know, I think there's suspense in some of the details of what Jensen Wong might say, but I'm actually going to go with Powell on this, mostly because we're pretty sure Jensen Wong is going to reaffirm the huge vision for the future and NVIDIA's role in it, in AI, in the next stages of it,

and multiple years worth of demand. The other piece of it is NVIDIA stock does its own thing even in the absence of fresh news. So if the stock, for some reason, were to go down off of what Wong says tonight or today, it could just be that it was a sell-in-the-news event and the market needed to correct a little bit. In other words, what he says is for the long-term, not the short term. When it comes to Powell, I think there's a lot of room for interpretation. How tolerant is he going to sound about this little uptick in inflation? How might he view the recent rise in longer term treasury yields? Is the economy really good enough shape to withstand all of those things? Are they going to take away one projected rate cut or something like that? So I do think that

as the real economy and people try to sort through what the rest of this year might be, I think Powell might have a lot more to say, even though we don't think they're going to do anything at the Fed. Is there a case, if I accept your premise there, that Powell may be the more important speaker this week, and I don't want to dispute that, is there a case that may be taking root a little bit, that there might be no interest rate cuts this year, that rate cuts may go off the table if there continued to be these little wobbles in the inflation numbers? I do think you have heard some folks say that. that basically things are not tracking in a direction that would necessitate records.

I do think, though, that the Fed itself will be very slow to get to that point. Just because their broad framework says they're very restrictive with rates above 5%, even if inflation stays where it is, they may have something more to say about what the ultimate neutral rate is. Maybe it's higher than they thought before. That would indicate less room to cut. But I do think that they'll probably move in increments and probably also hope to lucky in the next couple of months on the inflation data so that maybe it looks like a summertime

cut is going to be more time. All right, Mike Santoli, thanks very much. For more on the big week for the markets and what matters the most for your money. Let's bring in Richard Bernstein, CEO and CIO of Richard Bernstein Advisors LLC. Rich, good to have you. I assume you just heard my question to Mike and his answer to it. What do you think there? Is there a case?

Maybe it's a low probability case that the Fed might not cut interest rates this year and just let things sit where they are? Oh, well, Tyler, good afternoon. First, I would say, I think the probability is much higher than people think or even higher than the Fed things, that they will not lower rates this year. You know, the economy is healthy. The monthly inflation numbers, the CPI troughed like last June or July, if you look at that. They've actually been accelerating since then.

Financial conditions are easy. They're not easing. they're easy. We see that in things like credit spreads. So one would say that the Fed should ease in a situation where the economy is suffering where there is too much tightness in the financial markets, that liquidity is drawing up, that lending is drawing up. None of the above is happening. So rather, if you look at things like copper, you'll look at things like lumber, you'll find that it looks like the economy is actually getting stronger. So I would argue the Fed's not cutting this year. Okay, so that I was, you answered my question. You said, number one, that the,

the likelihood that they don't cut is much higher than people are acknowledging at this point. But there you just seem to say that your base case now is that the Fed won't cut rates this year, my right? Well, I think for me personally, I think that's, I think as the year progresses, and if they're not lowering rates, I think it'll be more difficult to lower rates in front of the election. I know the Fed is not a political entity, but they won't. want to, they don't want to be viewed as a political entity either. So I think given the, um, uh, the tenacity of this election, shall we say, that we, we have to be a little careful about what happens as we lead into the election and, uh, the credibility of the central bank,

uh, might be at stake in, in that case. So, so I think it gets harder. So, um, you know, I would argue that if they're going to lower rates and they don't do it soon, it's probably not happening this year. This is all very fascinating. And, and I, I, I, tend to sort of be more in your camp, Richard, I feel like with every economic data point that comes out. And so if we use your base case as our scenario, how would you suggest investing in the markets when we've got the tenure above 4.3 right now? What would you do? What would you advise your clients in an election year in a time where rates are still quite elevated? Yeah. So, Courtney, we've been trying to invest in the parts of the market.

And our portfolios are very heavily weighted in the parts of the market that are causing rates to go up, right? So I mentioned like copper prices are going up, lumber prices are going up. We're very much in, and even oil has started to go up as well. So we are overweight energy, we're overweight industrials, we are overweight material stocks, we're overweight small caps, or overweight emerging markets. My argument would be that if the global economy is stronger than people think, you want to invest in stocks, they're going to benefit from that unanticipated strength. What about the Magnificent Seven, as we spend so much time today talking about invidia well i i would say what's unanticipated about the magnificent seven

um it's i think it's going to be pretty hard to find something that people are not anticipating for the magnificent seven um and i think that's you know pretty well known but but i think the magnificent seven and there's clearly a speculative side to the magnificent seven we could argue how much we could argue are they in a bubble you know where the but there's clearly a speculative side to what's going on right are there really only seven growth stories in the entire global equity market. Of course not. There's many more, but the fact that we have a name for seven of them shows how speculative the environment has gotten. And so I think that if the Fed can't provide more liquidity, which I think is what people

are banking on, that argues that speculation is more likely to subside than to grow. People, I think, want the Fed to ease as quickly as possible because Wall Street, we're liquidity junkies. We can't get enough liquidity. And so we'd love to have the Fed ease. I just think with credit spreads and everything else I mentioned before, as positive as they are, why would the Fed be rushing to ease? I don't understand that. So you mentioned speculation, and that brings to mind Bitcoin. How do you characterize what's been going on there? I view it as it has all the classic signs of a financial bubble. Every single one of them is in cryptocurrencies. You know, the even even the notion of scarcity, which people talk a lot with Bitcoin, that's been talked about

in every financial bubble, there's a scarcity. And what happens is you just have more and more other things come about, which we would call other cryptocurrencies. You know, and you're seeing that when people can't trade Bitcoin, they go trade other cryptocurrencies. I think it's about as bubble-ish as you can get. I think that is a divining rod for the Fed, if you get the pun here, the dividing rod for the Fed in terms of how much liquidity there is. And the fact that Bitcoin is, you know, 65 to 70,000 is telling you there is too much speculative liquidity in the economy and why the Fed would want to ease when there's that much speculative liquidity is beyond me. All right, Rich, clearly stated. Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. As always, good to see you,

and the Rangers are doing well. I see that jersey back there. Go Rangers. Rangers are great. They beat up the Islanders yesterday. It was great. Good stuff. Thanks, Rich. See you. And sticking with NVIDIA, all eyes on its developer conference dubbed the woodstock of AI that's kicking off in San Jose, California. It stock up slightly as investors await the debut of its new B100 GPU. The company is expected to release information on pricing, performance, and customer demand. And this all comes, of course, as we're hearing about a potential AI tie up between Google and Apple. So for more and all of this, we're going to turn to Daniel Newman, CEO Futurium Group, who is at the GTC Conference on our own Steve Kovac, who joins us on this. set. Daniel, let me start with you. Obviously, we've been going to our own Christina

Partsonabas all day long with her expectations. I know we're going to hear from Jensen Wong later in the afternoon, but what is it that you want to hear about this specific chip or anything else NVIDIA, frankly, going forward. This is the IT stock. Yeah, there's a lot of people out there right now that are kind of thinking, speculating, has NVIDIA topped off or is there more room to run? And if you're an investor, you want to hear, do they have the technological moat? Do they have the software lock-in with the developers with what they're going to build for Kuta and for hybrid architectures that are going to be able to keep investors and keep the market churning with GPUs based on Nvidia. We know the B-100's coming. We know it's more powerful. It's going to compete

with AMD's new MI series that had a lot of excitement. But really, they have 99% of this GPU market and all the demand is going their way. Can they keep it? Do investors and do the users and developers walk away from this conference and say, this technology has it. It is where it needs to be, and the competition is going to stay locked out. I think that's what we want to see from this conference this week. Daniel, earlier in February on Power Lunch, you said that you believed that Nvidia had reached some level of a trade peak. Obviously, we've seen a little bit of a pullback, but where are your expectations of where this stock can go? Or does a lot of it hinge on what we're going to hear about this new chip, this new B-100? Yeah, so my concerns tend to be.

about the competition that's coming in. It's coming in for multiple places. It comes from AMD. Of course, Intel wants to have a play here, but it's also coming from the cloud providers, its own partners that are building these ASICs that are offering training and inference capabilities, in some cases with less power or at a lower cost. And as these start to enter the market, does Nvidia still have the ability to grow market share and also maintain these incredible margins? And so without having the absolute superiority in technology, I start to see some of these new entrance coming into the market and potentially putting risk on that margin and risk on that growth rate. And as we hit four quarters of this incredible growth rate, at some point, those

numbers are going to be mid-double digits, not triple-digit growth, and will investors start to worry at that point? So, Steve, I was going to ask sort of a similar question there. How deep or wide is Nvidia's moat in these kinds of chips? And are they vulnerable, as Daniel seemed to indicate, to potential competition. It's also quite wide, though, because also what we're expecting InVD to talk about today is the software side of things. They have that kind of locked up, too. So that, in essence, is the most, like, AMD doesn't necessarily have their same software

tools to play around with its AI chips. Until we have really very few details on what it's doing here. It announced the chip. It says it's going to come this year. That's about all we know. But so right now it still is just Invidia. We see the big tech giants kind of messing around and making their own chips. but there's no one else.

I mean, there's really no one else doing it. So the moat is huge right now. Let's switch a little bit to this possible news of a tie-up between or collaboration between Google and Apple, on the one hand, involving its Google's AI offering. And on the other hand, I feel like I'm going back to the 1980s, you've got Microsoft and its partner in AI, which is OpenAI or Chat, GPT, and whatever. What do you see happening there? And what's the potential for Google?

Right. And what's the use case for Apple? There's a lot. And I'll just start here. Apple, I asked them. They're not saying anything. They're waiting to announce when they're ready to announce, likely in June. That said, I can see it going two ways on the spectrum.

One way, this is very simple and just an add-on to the search agreement. These two companies already have. Google pays up to $19 billion a year to Apple to be the default search engine on its devices. We know that. That's been established. It's been working out in the DOJ case against Google. Great. Maybe this is just an add-on to that, adding what Google calls search generative experience.

That's AI search. Maybe it's just that. Or it's totally the other end of the spectrum. And all this AI natural language stuff that Apple wants to eventually put in the iPhone, it's all powered by Google. If that happens, it's a bad sign for Apple. What have they been doing all these years while their competitors have been taking advantage of this consumer-driven? front-facing AI. And then for Google, it's great news either way for Google. For one, they're going

to get access. If this does work out the way it's been reported, they're going to have access to two billion Apple devices. Over one billion of those are iPhones. That's where all the money is being spent. That is where Google depends heavily on those users today just for just search activity. That's why they pay Apple so much. And it's also validation of their technology. If it is that other end of the spectrum and Apple was relying more heavily on these Gemini models, that's validation for Google that, hey, we got something good here. Apple took a look at our thing. They took a look at Open AIs thing.

They took a look at other startups, and they liked ours the best. That is really good validation, especially so many blunders from since last year. They've been slow out of the gate. Exactly. Not even, well, slow, but also just bad out of the gate. Fumbling out of the gate. So over a year ago, they showed Bard, which is now called Gemini. It messed up.

Last year, they kind of got caught in their Gemini demo, fudging the demo video a little bit. And then just a few weeks ago, the woke images that everyone is complaining about, and they had to pull that generative image tools. So a lot going on here, but the idea that Apple would look at that and say, hey, we want that. Maybe they're seeing something that we haven't seen yet. Daniel, before we let you go, you know, it seems like other companies we're taking the opportunity to try to mention Nvidia in any chance they got in their earnings call. I know Oracle sort of alluded to some kind of tie up.

There's a number of layers that are involved in AI, of course, and then Nvidia on its own. What are you expecting to hear? What have we heard? Do we have any more details on some of these sort of teased out partnerships from this GTC event today? Well, there's going to be a lot of focus on these vertical solutions. So we're going to see healthcare partnerships. We're going to see partnerships in retail and financial services. I'm looking at the software space, companies like ServiceNow that have made big commitments to partnering with Invidia to continue to build on this momentum to talk about how they're going to build hybrid environments using Nvidia's hardware architectures and to deliver AI to the future.

And this is just one of many. But I like the Oracle Salesforce Service Now. These are the next plays and layer of abstraction of where customers are going to get value and we're going to see monetized. AI coming from, you know, the vendors and software providers in the space. Our gentlemen, thank you very much, Daniel Newman, Steve Kovac. I appreciate it. Thanks. Coming up, caught in an AI lie, the SEC accusing two advisors of exploiting the hype around

AI to lure in customers under false pretenses. We will get the key details. Plus, getting back in the game, EA Sports, relaunching its popular NCAA football game for the first time in a decade in what could be the highest spending. NIL program to date. We'll discuss all of that ahead on Power Lunch when we return in two. Welcome back to Power Lunch. AI is going to be everywhere eventually, but not quite yet. Amon Javvers has the story now of two investment firms who got a little ahead of themselves and ended up in trouble with the SEC. Amen, Inspector Amon, what do you got?

Hey there, Courtney. There's a lot of hype out there about AI, but today the SEC is saying that two investment advisory firms took the hype too far, making it. false claims about AI driving their investment processes, and the SEC says there's a term for that, AI washing. The commission prepared a video about their announcement today, featuring Chairman Gary Gensler. Public company execs, they might think that they will enhance their stock price by talking about their use of AI. Well, here at the SEC, we want to make sure that these folks are telling the truth. Now, the two firms are Toronto-based Delphia and San Francisco-based global

predictions. According to the SEC, Delphia allegedly claimed it puts collective data to work to make our artificial intelligence smarter so it can predict which companies and trends are about to make it big. But that wasn't true. And the SEC said global predictions falsely claimed to be the first regulated AI financial advisor and that its platform delivered expert AI driven forecasts. But that wasn't true either. So guys, the SEC said the two firms agreed to settle the commission's charges, and pay a total of $400,000 in civil penalties. The lesson here, I guess, is that making false claims about artificial intelligence isn't, well, all that intelligent.

That's so good. I mean, AI washing, it's like the new greenwashing, and I feel like so few people really understand all the intricacies because we don't really know the limits they're in, right? I mean, it could be limitless that maybe this is an easy false claim to make, but be warned, right? Yeah, look, I mean, it's just like any of those other buzzwords that you see out there in the market, when people start applying them all over the place, just, you know, buyer beware. Take a look at what you're actually buying into and whether there's any substance behind some of these claims that people are making.

All right, Aiman, thank you very much. Amon Chavours reporting. Still ahead. Some tax facts. We're less than a month away from the April 15th deadline to file. I'm visiting my tax guy tonight. We've got some tips to help lower your tax bill and save more of your hard-earned money. Stick with us.

Welcome back, everybody. Oil prices rising again today, up 5% in the past week. Pippa Stevens is at the Sierra Week Conference in Houston for us. Hi, Pippa. Hey, Charlie. Well, it's a really fitting time to be here at Sarah Week by S&P Global because oil prices are at their highest level since November. And they're really now in this sweet spot range between the $80 and $85 level on WTI, where companies are still making a whole lot of money, but not too much money to draw the ire of Washington. And they're also not high enough yet to kill demand. So this latest leg is thanks to Ukraine stepping up its attacks on Russian infrastructure, which did lead Morgan Stanley to raise its Q3 Brent target to $90 today.

That's on the supply side. Then on the demand side, we heard from Exxon CEO Darren Woods, who earlier said that demand is very, very healthy at a record despite some challenges on the global macroeconomic front. So in other words, saying that we are not at this oil peak demand that people have been talking about for a very long time. And that speaks to one of the key themes here at the conference, which is this multi-dimensional energy transition. For a long time, oil and gas companies were sort of left out of the conversation. But now they are saying, hey, you need us. We have the balance sheet. We have the R&D.

We have the spending and the know-how to meaningfully participate in things like hydrogen and carbon capture. We've also heard from a number of executives that they are very supportive of the Inflation Reduction Act and working to build out their low-carbon solutions. still a small portion of their overall spending compared to what they're putting into the fossil fuel divisions, but nevertheless, they are touting their accomplishments there and the fact that you can't just go from system A, which is fossil fuels to system B, which is renewables overnight.

Good stuff. Enjoy your time down there. Bring us back something good from Houston. Let's get over to Julia Borson. She's got a CNBC news update. Hi, Julia. Hi, Courtney. Well, a majority of Supreme Court justices appeared skeptical today of arguments the Biden administration violated the First Amendment. Republican attorneys general Louisiana and Missouri, along with five social media users, filed a lawsuit accusing the administration of coercing platforms to remove

misinformation on topics such as the COVID-19 vaccine and the presidential election. Some of the justices questioned whether plaintiffs could prove they were directly harmed. The CDC issued a health alert this afternoon to warn about the spread of measles across the U.S. So far, health officials have tallied about 60 cases this year in 17 states that's more than all of 2023. The CDC is urging parents and anyone traveling internationally to ensure they're vaccinated. And Paul Manafort may be on the political circuit again soon. The Washington Post reports former President Trump is eyeing his former campaign chairman for a new role in his 2024 campaign. Trump pardoned Manafort in 2020 for bank and tax fraud convictions. Courtney, back over to you. Thank you very much,

Well, coming up, game on, the rise of name image likeness rights has been a boon for college sports. And now when video game giant is looking to cash in and spread the wealth, too. We'll discuss when Power Lunch returns. Welcome back, everybody. A little over 10 years ago, EA Sports stopped making its NCAA football game amid lawsuits over the use of player likenesses and names. Now, in light of the new name, image, and likeness rules, the game, video game, returning with what may be the largest scale, highest spending, program yet. Here to discuss the deal in the rapidly changing landscape of college sports is Cam Weber, president of EA sports. Cam, welcome. Good to have

you with us. A wonderful start to this game. I've been seeing I think Chris Fowler talk about it on websites. 134 teams opted in, 10,000 players opted in. What do those teams get and what do those players get for, quote, opting in and letting you use their name image or likeness? Yeah, so I mean this is a broad range design of a deal so we we obviously we have deals with all the individual teams across the country of as you mentioned 134 FBS schools across 10 FBS conferences and then you know 85 player rosters across 134 schools we get those rosters from the schools and then created a you know a design of a program that would

allow all of those players every one of them the opportunity if they so choose to to opt in, get paid to be in the game, and they would get $600 plus $70 copy of the game sent to them as well. And in return, we will put them in the game and have them, you know, as themselves on that team represented by their number and do our best to do a likeness for them as well. Is $600 what everybody gets regardless, or do some players who are high-profile players like the quarterback at Texas, the quarterback at Southern Cal who's going pro. Do they get more? Well, we had to do a multi-tiered design. So to be inclusive, we went broad across those 11,000 players.

Yes. So that would include all of those players. And we've had over 10,000 opt-in in just the first week after we announced it, which is incredible. But we also are doing what we're calling ambassador deals. So we have over 100 athletes that we are signing these ambassador deals. and they will have individual set deals based on the relative value and the social media reach each of those players has. So yes, there will be different deals for some of the biggest athletes in college football.

On top of that, we're signing some other college athletics stars as well, even from women's sports and volleyball and basketball, and allowing them to be ambassadors to promote the return of college sports to kind of AAA gaming. And that's exactly what I was just going to ask, because I understand women's sports are part of this too. So it's not just men's college football. Do you have Caitlin Clark on the platform? I don't have anyone to announce today,

but we do have a list of players and athletes that are signing up. And we'll have more to share in the month of May when we roll out more on the game. How do you keep up with the transfer portal movements that are affecting college athletics, whether it's men, women, basketball, football, whatever, baseball, whatever, baseball, where players are moving. And I would think that a player's value could either be enhanced by a move or decreased by a move.

In other words, if you've got a star at a Big Five conference, a team like Washington or Oregon or Alabama, that player might be worth more there than if they were to transfer to Cincinnati or Louisville or some maybe lesser team. Yeah, so I mean all of this is complex, which is why we had to build systems and building our games so that we can dynamically adjust and change rosters. And even like, you know, the incoming class of freshmen, a lot of them haven't decided yet or have not arrived at their schools and been part of those rosters yet. So we're going to have to be constantly dynamically changing these rosters. The program itself will have to continuously evolve over time. So we're going to launch the game this year, update those rosters and those player pools over time. And as we move to update the game the following year,

we're going to have to take a look how it all performed, look at the relative value of players, and we'll have to design the next step of the program as we go forward. But we're going to learn a lot. This is kind of unprecedented what we're doing right now. How do you respond as part of this ecosystem of players and payments and so forth? And the fact that colleges technically are not allowed to pay athletes, I guess some kind of organization is able to do that.

But I want to get your reaction to what Nick Saban said in front of Congress last week. Nick Saban, Gino Oriama, other high-profile coaches in different sports, have been very critical of the direction college sports is taking by saying, for among other things. All they care about now is getting paid. Yeah, it's an interesting one. I'm a former college quarterback myself, and I'm a bit of a purist, and I do love what the sport teaches individuals. And my son also plays high school football.

and that element of hard work and loyalty and kind of building character through lessons. And I think that's all really important. But I also believe that, you know, these players, especially in big time college sports, are becoming huge stars. And so I think it's finding the right balance, finding opportunities for players to share in some of the opportunities that might arise from what they're doing. But, you know, also we need to figure out how do we teach some of those other values. And I'm not sure of jumping from team to team every single year does that. I'm not sure how we do that other than I think it's just a challenge for leadership. I think it's coaches finding a way to connect with this next generation of player to get the right messages across.

And then what about another challenge if you see players at some schools unionize, like what we're seeing happening at Dartmouth right now? How would you deal with that? Yeah, that's, I mean, I'm glad I'm not leading a college football program myself right now to deal with that. I mean, those are challenges. I think we'll just have to see how the space evolves. And, you know, when it comes to what we're doing, once again, we're trying to just create an opportunity and make the most authentic game possible for our players

and give individual players the opportunity to opt in or opt out based on their own individual choice. And I think from our standpoint, if we stick to that, I think we're in good shape. Cam Weber, EA sports president, thank you for being here with us. This is fascinating. I love college football.

I'm also a purist. the transfer portal and the NIL and all kind of. It's a big change. It's a big, big change. I'm not sure I love it. But anyways, go bucks. Well, we're just four weeks away from Tax Day. We'll tell you what you need to know to take advantage ahead of this year's deadline.

We'll be right back. Welcome back. Can you hear the clock ticking for exactly four weeks from the April 15th deadline for Americans to file their 2023 income tax returns? Senior personal finance correspondent. Sharon Frient is here with us now for what you need to know. Can you make it be less painful? Oh, it's your favorite time of year, isn't it? No, it's not.

If you're like many Americans, you probably have yet to file your taxes. But if you're a do-it-yourselfer, the IRS has a new way to file for free. This year, the IRS began rolling out direct file. It's a free filing program that can be accessed right on the website, and the pilot program is an online tax preparation service that does not use a third party. Now, direct file is available to taxpayers in 12 states, including California. Texas, New York, and Florida. It's a simple option for taxpayers who's earned income from an employer and who also get a W-2 form. You also need to claim it with standard deduction and have

lived in the state for the full 23 tax year, 2023 tax year. Another key perk, though, is there's no income tax on using direct file. Now, IRS-free file is another option to get access to several online tax preparers that the agency partners with at no cost. But it caps out at seven $79,000 in adjusted gross income. Still, you can still file for free at any income level using the fillable forms that are available on the IRS website. If you're looking for more ways to save on your taxes, well, if you did a home improvement project that saves energy, you may qualify for a tax credit worth 30% of the project's cost up to $3,200. Now, if you want to avoid an audit, make sure any tax breaks that you take are reasonable.

account for all of your income, including 1099s, and avoid round numbers. Those are all red flags that may trigger the IRS to do an audit. And if you think you owe, well, it pays to pay up by April 15th, before late filing and late payment penalties and interest kick in. This year, you'll have to add an extra 8% annual interest that's compounded daily on the overdue tax that you owe. 8% is high. 8% is.

And compounded daily. Yikes. So are there ways I can still cut my 2023 tax at this late hour? At this late hour, you're going to look for all the tax credits that you qualify for because they're going to lower your tax bill dollar for dollar. And then you're going to look at some ways that you can take deduction if you qualify. If you have a high deductible health plan, you can make a contribution to a health savings account and have that contribution still be deductible for the 2020.

I can do that today if I qualify. You can do that today all the way to April 15th. And then also, if you have an IRA, if you're eligible to contribute to an IRA, you can also take that tax deduction all the way to April 15th and make that contribution until April 15th having an account for the 2023 tax year. Just because I'm always thinking about this, always, always, which is better, Roth IRA or conventional IRA, general? Well, I mean, if you want to take a tax deduction, if you qualify for a, yes, but the Roth IRA,

that tax free, I love things that are tax free when you take it out and free when you pull the money out. free when you pull them out. What I like to see is whatever number it says is my balance, I want that to be all my money. Right. You don't want to pay anybody because that's not a real balance then. And I think people don't realize that a lot of your IRA money, your 401k money, if it's in a traditional account, is not your money. It's really. You can do Roth 401k as well. Yes, you can do a Roth 401k also. Yep, Roth means yours. Gerent. Thank you. Like that. That's simple. All right, coming up, we're going to check the charts on some names on an upswing to start

24 and another heading in the wrong direction. And as we celebrate Women's Heritage Month, we share the stories of some of our newly named CNBC changemakers. Here is Etasha Cave, 12 co-founder and chief science officer. I think what others can learn from my journey as a female leader is really resilience and perseverance. Many steps along the way I've experienced challenges and roadblocks and having the ability to move past them to celebrate the small win. and take the challenges as they come has been a key part of getting me to this point. Welcome back to Power Launch, everybody. Time now for some technical support.

Our chart is today is Jay Woods. He's the chief global strategist at Freedom Capital Markets. First up, let's talk about Cloud Fair, cybersecurity name, up more than 50% over the past six months. Does it have more room to run, Jay? What are the charts showing? I think it. Not only has more room to run, but it's a good setup technically. Let's take a look at it what it's done.

It had a nice gap here after its last. earnings. Stock was actually up 19%. Wow. It faded, and we call this flagging, after reports that were disappointing from Palo Alto Networks, Z-Scala within the group. But what is it doing? It's setting up perfectly from a risk-reward point of view, which is what we care about. It's holding this tope line. You said tope last time I was here. I like these colors. The nice Easter lavender, the to-top. It's very nice. The rising 50-day moving average. This is positive. It's actually rallying a little bit today. and the story is great.

It's trending higher. It has a lot to reverse. So what I think it's going to do is get back on that upward momentum over the next two months into its next earning cycle. And you're going to see it rally towards this 115 area, which, where's my line here? 115, which is where it peaked out before it reversed. And the stock is set up to look pretty good from a risk-reward setup. If it does fail this 50-day moving average, look at the old resistance now support at the 80s. level and put a stop in there.

So risk reward, it's set up, and that's how we like these things. Hope means hope. All right, let's move to Micron, the semiconductor stock set to report its results on Wednesday. How can investors trade this before it announces results? I'm not sure your device is working, but we just talk us through it. So we're going to adjust to it. Here we go.

This is John Madden-esque is what we're going to go. This is Micron over a weekly basis. This goes back five years, and you can see it has a line of resistance right here, where we have failed to go above. Right. At a little peak above it, there, it's around $95. Boom!

But yes, what did it do? It's the ceiling. It failed, that's fine. We want to see a close above it. But what I love is this setup. We've seen this setup where? In the S&P 500, in NVIDIA, in Microsoft, and meta. And it's a nice rounded bottom.

If it can break out, and guess what? We have earnings on Wednesday afternoon. You have room to run. And with a setup like this, the longer to the base, the higher to the space, we can see a run 40, 50% higher here. So look for a target between 135 and 150 on a breakout. So you play the earnings, but you wait to them. You don't gamble before the earnings. You wait until after the earnings. Let's move on to Nike now shares down double digits from a year ago. The company is expected to report third quarter results Thursday. Your take.

Oh, look at that. That's a limp noodle there, boy. Yeah, this is trending lower. We've had some interesting pops in Nike. Let's look at gaps. I like to see gaps in the charts. We get a gap up there on a nice earnings. And what did it do after the gap? It trended higher. Guess what happened here? Gap. Gap. Bad earnings. And what's it done ever since? It's trended lower.

So earnings are on Thursday. Let's be careful. But let's know what we want to do if it gaps one way or another. Now, it's trending under the 200-day moving average. Bad things happen under the 200-day moving average. I wouldn't jump into this. But if it does gap lower,

let's see if this area around 92 and a half holds. If not, we'll probably test where we were back in October. Those could be good entry points. Because over the long term, I believe in Nike. Do you believe in Nike? I do believe in Nike. I do too. I do too. So I think it would be a good long-term opportunity to jump into the stock. And then what if it gaps? If it gaps and it clears the 200-day moving average, I would actually chase the name. Because what have we seen on gaps higher? It trends higher to the next three months during that earnings cycle.

So look for Nike to play it either way, but you have to be postured after the earnings. You know, if you play before the earnings, you're just kind of gambling. I like to have the risk-reward setups in my favor. And, you know, given it. the gaps, we may get setups that are in our favor after Thursday's earnings. All right, Jay, thanks. Thank you. Good to have you here. Jay Woods.

Court. Well, so many stories to get to, but so a little time left, this always happens. We're going to power through as many of the headlines as we can in closing time. It's coming up next. We have just about three minutes left in the show and several more stories that you need to know, so let's get right to it. Amazon striking a deal with one of the biggest social media stars, Mr. Beast, will host his first traditional TV series, a reality competition show featuring a thousand contestant

competing for a $5 million prize. Tyler, I have to admit, I don't know who Mr. Beast is. I do not know Mr. Beast. I'm sure my son knows Mr. Beast. It just shows that when you build a following on social media, whether it's YouTube or Instagram or the questionable TikTok, you can really build a business. You really can build a business and turn it into a traditional media platform here, I suppose. All right, let's move on. An analysis by the New York Fed highlights the worst-paying college majors.

You know what they are? Top three, worst paying five years after graduation. Here's the worst. Liberal arts. You make $38,000 in there. Number two is performing arts average, again, is about $38,000. And theology, $38,000. We need more theologians, Courtney.

We do. We do. I was also surprised that the miscellaneous biological science was only $40,000, as was nutrition sciences. And, of course, we know elementary and early childhood education. Anthropology majors, they don't make that much. Teachers are so important. I think every parent learned that during the pandemic, even though...

Fine arts, you only make 40,000. But you know the difference between a manet and a monae, I guess. Which is, you know, powerful stuff. I'm not sure I do, unfortunately. Well, Sports Illustrated, getting a lifeline. The owner of the brands is it's chosen to a new company to publish the magazine. The deal between authentic brands and minute media runs for 10 years. Could be expanded until 30 years, at which point the magazine would be 100 years old.

Authentic brands owns a whole bunch of different stuff, including a bunch of retail brands, but also licenses the names for things like Sports Illustrated. And maybe Joe DeMaggio, I can't remember. But a lot of them, one of the co-owners of Authentic Manornex is Shaquille O'Neal, by the way. Yeah. I am betting the under on whether Sports Illustrated will be around as a magazine at 30 years. I don't think so. I don't think so.

All right, inflation busting Costco staple. It is going to stick around for now. The outgoing CFO. He's been there forever and ever. Richard Galante says the membership club's $1.50. hot dog and soda combo is probably saved for a while. There it is. Onions and relish right there. It remained the same price since Galante took over his post in 1985. Congratulations to Mr. Galani, who I believe is stepping down, getting ready to retire after 40 years and countless hot dogs,

he's due. Yeah, so many. And then good luck to him in his next endeavor. I'm sure the hot dogs are going to stick around for a long time. Well, I think we're out of time for our last story. But look at the Dow, it's moving higher for tenths of a percent, but it still counts as gain. Nasdaq, again, leading the way. As we are getting ready to turn over the reins, thank you for watching Power Lunch. And closing bell starts right time.