Power Lunch - Dow gains in choppy trading day 4/14/25

Episode Date: April 14, 2025

Stocks experienced another choppy session on Monday as a rally in tech names following a surprise U.S. tariff exemption from President Trump faded. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Markets and your money are higher to start the week, at least for now. The tariff on again, off again, maybe exempt again, sending stock sliding around again. But we do have one market stat that may blow your mind and it's something you're only going to hear on this program. Hi, everybody. I am Brian Sullivan. Kelly is on Squawk Fox. Check that out all week. You saw Will from the 1 o'clock Eastern Time show.

And yes, the markets are up right now across the board. Yeah, we are off our highs. In fact, briefly we turn negative, but we've come back, we are still in the green, and by the way, in the middle of one of the best five-day trading periods ever. Earlier today, the Dow up 550 and the NASDAQ 100 back over 19,000 points. Apple's certainly a big part of that. Apple popping again today after a huge move on Friday. Apple, up nearly three and a half percent, combined that with a four percent move that it had on Friday, still down in the last couple of months. But like the markets, a big recent run. We're going to get more on all that in just a minute. But let us kick off

this big hour with one of the world's biggest companies making a big time commitment. And that is NVIDIA. InVIDIA finally unveiling exactly where and when it's going to be investing hundreds of millions of dollars in American manufacturing. Dare we say, it's a feel-good story. But it's also an important one for maybe the most important stock in the world. Let's talk about it to kickoff power lunch with Christina Partsnevelas, joining us from the NASDAQ. And yes, this does appear, Christina, to be not only big news, but a little bit of good news. Yeah.

Oh, no, no doubt. And the president is celebrating that. But as the White House's semiconductor tariff investigation gets underway and they determine what they're going to charge chip companies, Nvidia announced plans today to establish over one million square feet of manufacturing space in the United States. There's that feel-good story. The tech giant is going to produce Blackwell chips in Arizona and build AI supercomputers in Texas through partnerships with Foxcon and Wistron. With these facilities, it's expected to be operational within about 12 to 15 months.

And this move is really part of NVIDIA's previously announced $500 billion AI infrastructure investment over four years. Though when first revealed, it was last month, if I recall, the details were limited. It's still not entirely clear, Brian, how much AI manufacturing will actually relocate to American soil, given that the semiconductor supply chain remains predominantly centered in Asia and is incredibly complex, which was in that Nvidia blog post today. The Trump administration, though, views this development as validation of its tariff strategy. President Trump shared the news on truth social and stated, also from the Oval Office this morning, the higher the tariff, the faster they come. Pretty much referring to manufacturers,

establishing domestic operations are promising to do so. TSM is making similar commitments with its pledge of an additional $100 billion investment, while Apple is committed $500 billion over the next four years. These actions may establish a new precedent for how technology companies respond to current trade pressures. Lobby the president to get exempted. The winners will likely be semiconductor companies or hardware firms that can rapidly shift production to U.S. soil while securing favorable exemptions through their promised domestic investment. Vince, Brian.

Okay, not to bring politics into this or leave it out because that's what I'd prefer to do, to be honest, Christina, but I've got to imagine these kinds of capital commitments are not made in a matter of weeks. These must be multi-month or multi-quarter or multi-year type plans. I wonder if they're bigger than any president. I don't know. Yeah, and it's interesting how all of these promises are over a four-year term, right? To your point, Foxconn and Wish-Ton are already established manufacturing hubs.

It's just a question as to whether how advanced they can produce to really be at the level that Nvidia needs. For TSMC, TSM has said the Taiwanese minister did say in Taiwan that the plant here in the United States is not going to be the most advanced. So you have to keep in mind, too, that companies like Nvidia or AMD may not be able to even produce on American soil if the technology isn't as advanced as they need, especially when they're putting out chips on an annual cadence. And these fabs can take anywhere between three and five years to build. They have to get exemptions. They have to get licenses. They need to find the talent, which I don't think we preface enough. TSM Arizona is a great example.

I was there two years ago interviewing the president of TSM, Arizona. And the topic of the interview was the fact that they had to fly in so many workers from Taiwan. His argument was that Americans were not skilled enough to work with advanced equipment makers like ASML. So they had to fly in people. So is that going to be the case for all of these other problems? Well, very quickly, how much of this is also maybe just let's not have everything in Taiwan for obvious reasons. Right. And a lot of manufacturers have already been shipping, shipping, switching their production and manufacturing to Mexico. Cisco is a great example too. They've been doing that for several

years. So this is an opportunity to get the ball rolling, but we need to be realistic about the timeline. Yeah, it's amazing. Mexico, the huge manufacturer, the Machia Dora days, the next. 1980s, then it went to China. Now a lot of it's coming back. We like, though, right here in the United States, some good news to kick off the show. Christina P. Thank you very much. Thank you. Now, let's get to the technology trade as a whole, which has been wild since terrorists first hit. And that is not TV hyperbole. Look at these moves, okay? The market, as you know, crashed when the tariffs first hit. At one point, the major index is down 20 or more percent for their highs, a technical bear market. And before the markets turned to

little bit lower today, we were up a few percent across the board, which means from the lows of last Monday to the highs of earlier today, the NASDAQ 100 surged over 14 percent. That's in just five days. That is the fastest market jump in five years and one of the quickest market jumps ever. So in plain English, your money had one of the fastest falls in history and then one of the quickest moves higher in history? What, if anything, does this all tell us? Joining us now, James Chukuk. He is Chief Investment Officer, Clockwise Capital, and Gene Munster managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management. Gene, I know you've been a little more bullish later on in the year, and I know that we're still lower than we were a few weeks ago, but my

God, man, to go down 20% in like seven trading days and back up 14% in five days is truly historic. There's two conversations going on. There's one of what the market is telling us and what ultimately they're predicting is going to happen here in the near term, that big drop and then the rip back. And then there's a whole other set of conversations within industry around tech and specifically about the hypers, what they're seeing about their CAPEX. And when I look at that pull down and that rip back, I actually think that we should have more

of a rip back than what we've seen. Just in the past week, we've heard from Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and that we've heard from Google, Amazon, three of the four mega cap, all of them have said effectively that in two weeks, they're going to reiterate those lofty CAPEX expectations. That is the pressure point for AI traders. And so, Brian, when I think about this, I think about that pullback. I look at the noise of the market, how it's trading day to day, and I'm most encouraged by the fundamentals of at least the companies that are powering the AI trade. Yeah, this is, I think, James, the most vexing thing for a lot of, and I've talked to so many investors and traders the last couple of weeks,

is that we traded basically for two years on the capital spending AI dreams that Gene just mentioned. We start talking about tariffs, and all of a sudden, all those dreams seem to go out the window. Stocks fell 40%, not my opinion. And yet no capital spending plan so far that I've seen has been cut or cut meaningfully. Yeah, that's right. And I think when we look at the broader markets here, you know, last time we were on your show, we said that we could potentially hit 4,800 in the S&P, and that's close to where we got last week, at least after hours. But that being said, I think that the developments coming out of this weekend,

despite the mixed messaging, are incrementally positive. You know, we have been slightly reducing our hedges last week on the sell-off late last week and becoming incrementally positive, because I think despite the mixed messaging, if you look at the overarching intent of what's happening, and that is to protect American industry. And they're not going to let the leaders in technology and innovation fall by the wayside with these tariffs. So I think the intent is there. I think you can become incriminately bullish. But that being said, you've got a caveat still see a lot of risks out there,

but more so tail risks at this point rather than ones that are front and center. Yeah, as Evercore ISIs, as Julian Emanuel pointed out, 80% of companies are below their, five-year P.E. moving average. And when that happens, that tends to mark historical bottoms. It's exactly what happened. We'll see if it's the market bottom, Gene. We don't know. Maybe you do. We could keep going down. But how hard is it right now to be any kind of a technology investor? Because here's the thing. You've got the president and Scott Besson, whatever, coming out and saying one thing. And then on ABC yesterday morning, Howard Lutnik says, no, it's just a couple month exemption. it feels like there are, as we talked about last week, kind of warring factions inside the White House,

each saying their own thing. That's like an impossible situation, I think. Well, again, it comes back to, you know, what degree do you believe in how transformative AI is going to be? And that may seem like a fallback position, but it's the reality here. And historically, that these bull markets have been burst by recessions. And what you just described elevates that risk on a lot of different levels. levels. And so from our perspective, we continue to believe that this spending is going to surprise people over the next few years. So to answer your question is, what's it like to be a tech investor? I think that continue to focus on the fundamentals. I would say this, just specific to what's

happened with Apple here today, is the stock's up 3, 4 percent on some great news. And it's still down 8 percent from where it was back in the tariffs. And this is a tech investor. Think about what, what are we, what can we learn from this move? I think at first blush, it should have been up much more than that. And I think what we're, as a tech investor, we're looking past, the market's looking past the headlines, is looking more to the narrative that you're talking about. How and will something get reversed in Apple?

I feel confident that Apple, this goodness that has happened, that they're going to continue to be in the good graces of the Trump administration when it comes to terrorists. But there is, of course, the question about that recession piece. And so that's where we're at. I think we've learned, James, that Apple lobbyists are earning their money. I think in all serious, I think that's one critical aspect to the stories that somebody got

to the White House. It was like, this is one of the great American products. It may not be made here, but as they say on their boxes, designed here, and it's sold here and largely bought here. Four percent move, though, James, on Friday. Then Friday after the market closes, you get this announcement about exemptions. Was there chatter going around or just luck? Yeah, I mean, we actually grossed up our position, well, we doubled our position last week on that chatter, just given the fact that what we talked about before, about the intent, the intent of the Trump administration.

You know, they tend to throw everything at the wall, see what sticks, and then peel things back, and that's kind of the assumption that we're operating under. But that being said, you know, on Gene's point about revenue and growth, surprising to the upside, we agree on that. But what I'd say is what valuation does the market apply to that growth, to that outperformance? I think that's the question. You know, our price targets, despite the growth expectations we have, have been paired back. You know, we would trim a lot earlier than we would if we had more clarity. But all things said, you know, still think 50, 50, maybe 55, 45, 45 to the upside. But overall, I think you need to just continue to stay balanced.

and be nimble. I think that's the only way to operate in this market. Yeah, and it's so, you turn out your notifications for tweets. Yeah, and by nimble, you mean don't sleep because this is not a sleeping market because and we're going to let you both go, but whatever happens was, say, furniture or appliances or clothes may be very different than what happens to big tech. And we know big tech is the driver of the market. It's a very, very interesting time. James Chuck McClockwise, Gene Munster, Deepwater. guys, thank you very much.

Thank you. All right, folks, so the complete opposite of technology is probably gold. And we have to look again at what has been one of the hottest trades of the year, up over 20% this year. Gold, as you could see or here is down slightly today, down about half a percent. But Goldman Sachs is more bullish for the rest of the full year. Goldman raising its year in gold forecast to $3,700 per ounce, up $500 an ounce, from their previous forecast, which we're now at or above, Goldman says recession and inflation fears are going to send nervous investors into gold.

So all of you gold bugs, maybe a little more good news today. All right, well, this show, always golden. And coming up, another important forecast and maybe lessen on energy. That's next. All right. Welcome back. And there are green on the screen right now, the Dow, the SV, and the NASDAQ, all higher by about a half to three quarters of one. percent, which makes this one of the biggest five-day gains for the macro markets in history.

Now, on the tariff back and forth, you had one of the biggest and fastest losses ever, and now you have one of the biggest and fastest gains of all time. All happening in a matter of weeks, it has been absolutely head spinning. But with the S&P 500, now 5% over the past year down this year, but up over the past 12 months. really the only question now is where do we go from here? Richard Bernstein is CEO and CIO of Richard Bernstein advisors and Marian Bartels as chief investment strategist at sanctuary wealth. Kind of hard to believe, Richard, that if you do it 12 month, the S&P is still higher, a little more if you factor in dividends. Where do we go from here? So, Brian, I think that,

as you point out, that's the key question. And I would defy anybody. to make a reliable forecast in this environment. You know, in your previous segment, you pointed out how rapidly policy is changing that on day one, it says one thing, day two, it says the exact opposite, day three. We go back to what we said on day one. I honestly don't know how anybody could make a reliable forecast.

And I think that's the whole issue for the markets right now is the appropriate risk premium to place on that uncertainty. Yeah, I guess, Marianne, the only other question that might matter, is if you are in the camp, and you can explain if you are or not, but if our viewers or listeners believe, like a lot of economists say, that this will induce a recession, the consumer's been slowing down anyway. This may be another layer on. Are stocks trading right now at recessionary levels? Brian, I don't believe stocks are trading at recessionary levels. I think you would have to trade down

more towards 4,400 on the S&P to really price. a recession and a corporate profits recession. I do think, however, that markets are pricing in an economic slowdown and a slowdown in corporate profits. I think that's very reasonable. And I do think we might have a really good low at 4835. We got classic capitulation in terms of volume, the VIX spiking, the percentage of stocks below their 200-day moving average, the number of new lows to suggest that that's the low. But I wouldn't expect a V recovery. I think this is going to be more of a traditional bob and weave and a base building and that we're going to have to go back down and test those lows. So I think what Rich is saying is going to result in a lot of volatility

within the markets. Well, Marianne, I go back to you, it has been volatile. I mean, that was kind of the point. I mean, in fact, it was arguably one of the most, if not the most volatile couple weeks we've ever seen or at least doggone close to it. These kinds of moves I don't think can continue, can they? This viciousness? I think the viciousness will slow down, but when you test a low, it can be very violent. But the capitulation and volume is not as bad. The vix doesn't go up as high.

But I would brace for continued volatility and moves that we're not traditionally used to. because every day we seem to get a new news item, and we don't know which item can really move these markets. That's it, Richard. We just talked about it in the previous segment. We get one comment that this is off or that's out and this is exempted, and then the futures are up 5%. And then somebody else goes on and sort of says that the opposite

or sort of quote, I'm doing air quotes, clarifies it, how hard is it to be a strategist, right? It's hard to be an investor. How hard is it to be a strategist when we don't, don't actually know what the estimates are going to be that could drive price targets, because we have no idea where the economy is going to go. So, Brian, I think that in an environment where there's, to use the word of the day, mounting uncertainty, you know, that's not an original term by any means these days, but there's mounting uncertainty. And I think there's two things that one has to take away from that mounting uncertainty. Number one is that that hinders this whole reindustrialization theme, right? Remember, capital spending is,

capital intensive. You want a cheap cost of capital, which means higher multiples and lower interest rates. And what are we seeing? We're seeing lower multiples and higher interest rates. And so I think that hinders the whole process. The certainty is more than just a fun thing to talk about. It actually hinders the whole process, the uncertainty. The second thing is, is that what that means is from an investment point of view is that certainty itself is a scarcity in the equity market. And it's always been a good idea to invest for scarcity. sometimes growth is scarce, sometimes value scarce. Right now it's certainty.

That to us at RBA means that we're putting a price on dividends, certain cash flows, near-term cash flows. The days of lofty long-term growth projections are basically out the window because who can forecast a week or two weeks or a month, let alone three to five years. So what does that mean, Richard, then? Is it like soda companies, cigarettes? What are we talking about? It's a much more boring world than people are used to, Brian.

You're absolutely right. I mean, it is dividends. It's the reinvestment of dividends. It's consumer staples. It's health care. Its utilities, maybe, depending on interest rates. But it's, you know, we've been in for the past two, three, four, five years, a period where the bigger the growth story, the better.

And people got more and more excited about that. I think we're coming to an end of that cycle. Well, as you probably heard, everybody piled into like the same seven or eight stocks for a couple of years. We just talked about it. We'll leave it there in the previous block. Richard and Marianne, really appreciate your views. Thank you very much. By the way, as we're talking, the S&B is now back up 1%.

Wow. All right. Up next. The FTC is taking on META, the parent company of Facebook. But who will the White House sidewhip? All right, welcome back to federal government's big antitrust trial against MetaBee. begins today. Met of course the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. The government claiming the company chose to buy Instagram and WhatsApp in order to prevent them from becoming

larger competitors. And it comes as meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has tried to improve relationships with the White House and one president Donald Trump. Amen Javvers at the court for day one of what is expected to be a several week trial. Amen. Hey Brian, that's right. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is on the stand right now. I had a chance to say hello to him very briefly on his way in, but he didn't respond to any questions. The FTC's lawyers are walking him through the early years of Facebook now,

and the stakes of this are very high. Meta could be forced to spin off Instagram and WhatsApp, but the company complains that this is a case that, quote, defies reality. This is also gonna be a high profile test, as you say, of the Trump administration's position on antitrust, is the populist Trump FTC, going to take a big swing at big tech,

or will the art of the deal President Trump intervene on behalf of his new friend Mark Zuckerberg, who's striking MAGA makeover in recent months, has really gratified this White House. And that has a lot of people in this courthouse today keeping one eye on Trump's social media posts. The behind the scenes lobbying campaign has been pretty intense. We know that meta-CEO Mark Zuckerberg

has visited President Trump several times in the White House, and semaphore today is reporting that FTC Chairman Andrew Andrew Ferguson met with President Trump last week to, quote, stiffen his spine against Mehta's attempts to get the case thrown out. So far this morning, FTC lawyers have been making their case that Mehta should never have been allowed to buy Instagram for a billion dollars back in 2012 or WhatsApp for $19 billion back in 2014.

The FTC revealed this internal message from Zuckerberg in 2012, which they say shows that he bought Instagram because he saw it as a third. threat. Zuckerberg wrote in that message, Instagram was growing so much faster than us that we had to buy them for one billion. That's not exactly killing it. But Mehta's attorney argued in court this morning that the FTC's case is nothing more than a grab bag of theories that are at war with the facts and the law. Now they're expecting Zuckerberg may have to testify for as many as seven hours here, so that could mean he has to come back tomorrow to finish up, Brian. We'll bring you all the latest as we have it from here.

But I will say this. I mean, first off, buying a company to prevent them from competing with you is normal across all industries. And by the way, the Instagram and WhatsApp founders did not have to sell. Like they chose to sell and get rich and go build mansions on Lake Tahoe or wherever. Right. Yeah, very interesting. The opening gambit from the FTC's attorney here talking to Zuckerberg on the stand was talking

to him about the very early days and whether or not he would have sold to Yahoo in those days. which was contemplating buying Facebook. And the FTC lawyer said, well, that was a bad idea. That was a good idea not to sell, right? Because you ended up growing bigger. And the competitor that everyone thought Facebook couldn't compete with in those days was MySpace. And ultimately, Facebook pushed MySpace out with better products, more innovation and the like. And that ended up being a huge success.

The implication there, sort of the thought bomb he's dropping there, is the idea is that Instagram never had the chance to push Facebook out of the way, because Facebook bought it and kept it internally and kept it from competing. Amy Javvers, appreciate it. Amen, good luck. Thank you. You bet. It could be a few weeks there. All right, on deck.

A huge and controversial question. Is American exceptionalism coming to an end? Former Fed Chair and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen not mincing words when it comes to Trump's tariff plan. Listen. I don't understand the rationale for the tariffs. Things have been just chaotic. The reciprocal tariffs put on and paused.

President Trump is taking his sledgehammer. Not only that he's pounding our allies with this, but he's pounding the U.S. economy with this sledgehammer. The escalation with China could have very significant global implications. We'll talk more about that and the U.S. dollar. Next. All right. Welcome back to Power Lone. I'm having a great Monday wherever you are.

Stock market is up. We're going to talk about the greenback in the American economy. The last few days, it's not just been stocks and bonds that have been moving. The U.S. dollar also sliding. And earlier today on CNBC,

former Fed Chair and Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, expressing, shall we say, concern about the U.S. dollar losing its king status in global trade. Both the dollar declined and U.S. Treasury yields rose. And what that suggests is that investors are beginning to shun dollar-based assets and that

calling into question the safety of what is the bedrock of the global financial system, namely U.S. Treasuries. Now, despite that warning, your next guest says that tariff-based recession risks and sustained inflation fears may be a little bit exaggerated. Bill Lee is chief economist at the Milken Institute. And at this point, Bill, maybe we call it the Milken Island because I kind of feel like economists are tripping over themselves to have the most dire scenario. And you're kind of come out and saying, hey, hold up. I think we're going to hold up from an economic perspective.

Explain. Brian, no car carrying economist is going to save tariff. are good and i won't say that they're good either um but i think the source of uncertain is not so much the tariffs uh pushing the u.s into a recession because the u.s is a relatively closed economy um imports represent about 14 percent of GDP exports about 11 percent of GDP so it's really a small lever with which to push the economy into a recession and remember your your econ one-on-one when you lower imports you boost GDP all right you have fewer leakages so the uncertainty and the the drag is really coming from i think a broader perspective uh one where people are really

that President Trump is using up so much of his political capital, the rest of his policy package, which is smaller government, lower income taxes, fuel regulations, that may not get passed. And that was the heart of why the dollar jumped to the highest level ever right after he was elected at the beginning of his, of January. And right now, that slippage, I think, represents more that nagging feeling among investors. We may not get that entire package passed. That's, I think, the source of the uncertainty. of the uncertainty. Yeah, and we keep saying that. I feel like I'm on an island a little bit as well, saying we've got to wait for Congress because Congress is going to have a lot to say about this.

In fact, they may have the ultimate say, but that's a different issue. I think, and I'll take the other side, Bill, I'm going through a major home project right now. Just leave it there. And I will say that we don't know what anything is going to cost. Now I'm in a position where I can kind of, you know, I'm a little more dialed in on the news than probably a lot of people. And I've got some financial flexibility. But it's still a weird time. And I, and do you have, have the fear that a lot of people out there in America are just going to say, you know what, I'm not going to buy this or I'm not going to do that because I don't know what things are going to cost. Brian, I'm right with you. I'm also planning to last year expand my home a bit,

and I put that off. And I think that's optimal. I mean, you taught in every course you take in business school when this high level of uncertainty, what do you do? You hold back. You hold back a little bit on your spending. You don't cut all your spending. And that's really key. And then look for opportunities. And I think that's exactly what President Trump is telling the U.S. economy to do. With the semiconductor pause and today's announcement that Nvidia is building, you know, huge plants here in the United States to further the AI tech revolution and innovations, that is, I think, exactly what the markets are supposed to do. President Trump said we're going to restructure global supply lines. We're going to try to restruct the U.S. economy. That doesn't

come with little costs. That comes with a lot of costs. And I think we're seeing that cost now. and trying to do it quickly is really his mandate because the minute we hit midterm elections, his political capital is going to be completely dissipated. So I think he's in a rush to get things done. And I think part of that rush results in this kind of confusing messaging about how it is that tariffs are supposed to work. Tariffs are like a drug, as he says. It's like a cumminton when you have atrial fibrillation.

That's rat poison, right? I mean, people get rat poison, but that's part of a policy package. And you just don't take rat poison for atrial fibrillation. You've got to change or die and do a host of other things. We have to get the rest of that package pass. Lower taxes, fewer regulations, and smaller government to free up resources for the private sector. And what if the president, and I don't know if you will or not, but what if the president, you know, China says, okay, we'll do this. EU says, okay, we'll do that.

Canada, we'll do this, whatever it is, that gives the president what he views is a win, something he can celebrate, whether it's true or not. I don't know. And he says, okay, never mind on the tariffs or just keep 10%, which we know is going to be about 1%. 2% cost increases? Is it really irrelevant, particularly compared to the last, you know, four years or so? What if that happens? Is the market rip higher or is the damage already been done, Bill? I don't think that that will happen because tariffs is such an integral policy instrument for President Trump. He said that for decades, way before he became president. So we know it's going to be part of life in America. And that's part of the package that he's put in place to try to switch production from

outside the state into the United States. And remember, tariffs have some attributes. and I hate to say this as an economist, right? But they give you revenues and subsidies cost you revenues, right? So the Biden package of giving subsidies in the Chips Act to particular companies, that's the government picking winners. Here, it's the market picking winners because you're saying, I'm going to give you higher prices, now sort it out among yourselves who it is that can benefit and where you want to locate.

So in that sense, I think the market has more of a role under the tariff policy mix than it would under, say, a Biden-esque kind of pick the winner approach. Yeah, we shall see a little bit of a different take than a lot of people have out there. Maybe it's Southern California, Bill. And by the way, I know the earthquake just kind of hit San Diego. I don't know if you guys felt that hopefully everybody's all right. And I look forward to seeing my... I'm in Henderson, Nevada.

Oh, you are. There you go. Well, 24th consecutive milken conference for me coming up here in a few weeks. Look forward to seeing you out there. Bill Lee, thank you very much. Thanks a lot. All right, take care. All right, let's get now over to Julia Borsden for a CNBC News Update.

Julia. Harvard officials rejected the Trump administration's proposal for sweeping changes, then makes Harvard the first elite university to take a stand against the administration, which has said it is reviewing $9 billion in contracts. In a letter, two attorneys representing the school wrote the university is, quote, note, prepared to agree to demands that go beyond the lawful authority of this or any administration. They also added Harvard will continue to combat anti-Semitism. Ukrainian officials say 35 people died in a missile attack Sunday in the heart of the northern

city of Sumi. President Volodemir Zelensky demanded a tough international response over the attack and urged President Trump to visit his country as the U.S. pushes Russia to accept a ceasefire. In a preliminary 5.2 magnitude earthquake shook Julian, California today and was felt across San Diego County and as far as Los Angeles. No injuries or damages have been reported. Brian, we did feel a little bit of shaking up here in Universal City. You just heard me ask Bill. I thought he was in L.A. And I know it was San Diego, but I know how these things work having grown up.

Julie, you did feel something? Just a little bit of shaking. Yeah, it centered really in San Diego, 5-2, not small. Hope everybody is all right. And glad you are and the whole team, Julie Borsdon. Thank you very much. All right, on deck. The move that OPEC just made that could impact what you pay at the gas pump.

All right, welcome back to Power Lunch. Stocks are higher across the board. And OPEC today cutting its full-year oil demand growth forecast for this year and next year, the group taking down the forecast by about 150,000 barrels per day. Now, that is less than 1% of total global daily demand, but it still does predict slightly slower growth. But is this a sign that OPEC and others are a little more concerned about the pop and electric cars and global economic growth generally? Another big story around oil, it's $61 a barrel.

Will American oil producers slow down any new projects that they are considering? Let's talk about all of that. Kevin Book of Clearview Energy Partners joining us now. It does great work on exactly this type of thing. I think that is the worry, Kevin. We're all enjoying the lower gasoline prices right now. But will 61, 58, whatever the number ends up being a barrel, will that hurt future growth in the oil field because the president has said, you know, it's drill baby drill.

Brian, great to be here. It certainly can. So the Dallas Fed's April 4th survey said, $61 a barrel, break even for new wells in the Permian. Okay, what if I put a 25% tariff on steel on top of that? Say we're 10% steel, 80% imported those both assumptions. Now we're looking at another, you know, another buck or so. And what does that mean? Well, it means it's just that much harder to get those new wells drilled. And what do we know about the last price collapse? 10 to 29 weeks, sort of you go back last three or four collapses in range between when the price drops and then the drilling starts to sustainably slow down. But then on the way back up, this most recent time, we saw rig counts about one-third as responsive to rising prices,

trough to peak, as we did in the previous recovery. Still make most companies, I can't speak for most companies, their break-even points around high 30s, maybe 40s. But to your point, that lost profit margin that comes to the form of lower gas prices, which again, we all like, it's kind of this weird dichotomy, that's going to hurt some people, I would imagine. I wonder if U.S. oil production has maxed out in the near term. Well, there's the geological question, there's the economic question, and then there's the investor capital discipline question. And I think all of those things deserve of some discussion. Geology, I think there's still room to grow. You hear that from executives

in the shelf batch, but some are starting to throw red flags on the sort of the prime real estate getting used up. An expectation, by the way, and I'm sure, Brian, you know this, going back 15 years, people said, well, yeah, eventually we're going to drill all the Great A zones. But then economically, the questions of demand headwinds and how quickly that can still drilling rigs, or for that matter, chill production. Did you, Kevin, did you see my interview from Ciro Week with Scott Sheffield, the former head of Pioneer? I didn't see your interview, but he is, of course, the person I was thinking of. Yeah, and that's why I jumped in.

And no worries you didn't. I mean, Scott kind of just, you know, hey, he's a retired CEO now. He could say what he wants. And he said, yeah, we're probably going to run out of the best acreage, tier one acreage in about five years, to your point. I mean, and, you know, when he said that, I know it's kind of a wonky thing, but if you understand what he's saying, it's a big, I think BFD would be the problem.

proper term for that? Bringing forward demand, I think. That's it. That's what I meant. That's exactly what I meant. Yes, of course. It's a big deal. Of course. It is a big deal. So the rocks matter. Now, I think we should we should all be humble when we look at the way that we've improved our productivity. The drilling productivity report that the EIA has been putting out since, since I guess, former administrator Adam Sminsky instituted it a while back, has shown just how much we've been able to get out of those rocks with more horsepower, more efficiency, much more labor

efficiency for what it's worth as well. So getting better costs, better returns, and more oil, we don't want to necessarily assume that the past is prelude. Well done, bringing forward demand. Kevin Book, a master of language and energy analysis. Kevin, thank you very much. Thanks for having me, Brian. You're very welcome. All right. Coming up, folks, you won opportunity, and who doesn't, don't worry. We got some stock picks to help you hedge against all this wild market volatility. All right, welcome back. Time for today's three. stock lunch and we asked your investor, Victoria Green,

for three stocks. That's the name. You may want to look at as ports in the market storm, Victoria Green is founding partner G-squared private wealth and a CNBC contributor. Let's talk gas. Your neck of the woods. Not really. You're in Houston. Corpus Christi, Schenier.

Love this stock. So think about this. On the broad MacUview, first off, great well-round company, cash cow, everything great about it. But broad macro view, What do we have, if you're in a trade argument with the United States and you need to now import something, what is the easiest thing for you to make a deal to import? Gas. Gas, yeah. So if you're all of a sudden trying to get through, like, you're Vietnam, you're South Korea, you're Japan, you're our ally, you really don't want these big reciprocal tariffs.

You are trying to do a trade deal. Other than maybe airplanes from Boeing, it's going to be energy. And I see them as the biggest primary beneficiary of this whole tariff, will they won't day, and everything. Because I do see some deals getting done. Beyond that, they've got Corpus Christi 3 up and running. Those trains are going great. They got their first gas out. They are long-term contracts, fixed rate contracts, and they continue to grow production.

Just absolutely love this stock. I've been to their facility and a heck of a team. All right, next up, Novo Nordus, Danish company, trades here based in New Jersey for U.S. Huge winner on weight loss drugs initially, but it's slimmed down. In fact, it's lost investors, 45% lately. It has. So we're now. So I like this stock a lot.

I think they're getting caught up in the panic on European pharmaceuticals, that, oh, we've got these secondary tariffs coming out, we're going to have more pressure. But they're not. They produced all of that stuff in North Carolina. They just announced. And their U.S. headquarters is in New Jersey. I pass them every day. So they're not going to be importing.

So I look at this, that they're a little bit safer from tariffs, even if they are Danish. And we aren't a little bit of a kerfuffle over Greenland with the Danes. But they're a great company. They're getting their leader in diabetes beyond GLP1. And now they're seeing all of these new things GLP1 potentially can do. You're looking maybe at Alzheimer's. You're looking at other things that potentially comorbidities or other things that are solvable down the road. Plus we had like Pfizer dropped out today on GLP1.

I know. That was a weird thing. I know. It didn't get any headlines because of the tariffs. Folks, you don't know what we're talking about Pfizer basically out of the blue canceling one of its weight loss drug candidates really kind of out of the blue. Exactly. And I believe these are still going to sell well. I know Wigovi was a little bit of a slower rollout in the United States than they had anticipated.

but we see that continuing to ramp up. You're getting all the compounders off the market. There's no more shortage. And I look at this. And it's really a U.S. company with New Jersey and North Carolina. They reinvest another $4 billion in ramp up production here. I see the growth is very, very intact. Okay, Well Tower, not a name we talk about a lot.

It's basically a real estate investment trust that does health care infrastructure. It's had a nice run. You think there's more to come. Yeah, this is my defensive play here. So we've got a little bit of bottom picking with Nova. We've got a growth stock with Chenier, and this is my defense play here. senior living. So number one, you have this silver tsunami happening as the baby boomer generation continues to age. The number of caregivers that can actually give care are continuing to decline.

So we're seeing huge growth and opportunity, even for this real estate stock. We think they're going to grow net operating income 15, 20 percent. They did $6 billion in acquisitions last year. They've got what we consider like a fortress balance sheet. They've got almost $9 billion in liquidity to continue to acquire, as well as they're very, very good. Not only they're increasing occupancy, they're also increasing rent rates. And as some of those COVID discounts come off, rent rates are coming up. They had like a 310 basis point margin improvement last year. So they're growing rent and their controlling costs. And we see this, though, as an expanding sector. We want to be in senior living and they are by far in away the best senior living stock. Senior living, European pharmaceuticals,

natural gas. American European pharmaceuticals. Thank you. Not a lot. Not a lot of others, if no one could have done that. Victoria Green, thank you very much. Appreciate that. Folks, markets are up 1%, but it's the last hour. Anything can happen. We want to check out any three-stock lunch. You do that and check us out at U.S. Markets Edition 6 a.m. time in Singapore. Closing bell starts right now.