Power Lunch - Dow jumps 500 points, S&P 500 rises for second day as stocks try to rebound from rout 3/17/25

Episode Date: March 17, 2025

Stocks are building on their comeback from a four-week rout on Wall Street, exacerbated by President Trump’s tariff policy rollout and falling consumer confidence. We’ll cover all of the angles for you. 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 Lunch, everybody, alongside Kelly Evans. I'm Aman Javers in today. Stocks higher for the second straight day, but given the wild moves we've seen recently are wealthy investors looking for other places to put their money. And could one major group be cutting back on spending due to fears about the political climate? Plus, Nvidia's big event, which stocks other than Nvidia could be the ones to benefit? Hey there, Kelly. Amen, welcome and thank you.

We're moving to session highs at this hour. a nice break from the last couple of weeks. We did get the retail sales figures a miss overall, but the ex-auto's in line with expectations. The Dow's up 1% right now about 400 points. And as we watch the consumer, one area of continued weakness has been the airlines. Delta American United all down 20% so far month to date.

Could be their worst month in three years. Intel is rising once again today. That stocks up 30% in a week, so here's some green, and it's on track for its best four-day stretch since 1987. on continued optimism about the new CEO and major changes he could make. Also, Berkshire Hathaway hitting an all-time high today. Where's Warren Buffett spending his giant cash pile, increasing his stake in five different Japanese trading companies, and that name up about 1.4%.

Now, it's been a wild few weeks from the markets as equity struggle from this month-long slump, spurred by tariff rollouts and economic uncertainty. Despite Friday's rally, we still saw the Dow's worst week in two years, and now investors have the Fed coming up on Wednesday. So how should investors put their money to work? Well, that's a good question. Joining us live from Miami Beach at the Future Proof Conference is Brian Lake, the chief transformation officer at Goldman Sachs Asset Management.

Brian, great to have you here today. What are your thoughts on the market? Yeah, no, that's exactly the question that we're getting here. We're talking to hundreds of financial advisors that are asking that exact question. How can we incorporate the tools that firms like Goldman Sachs' assets, asset management offer and help their clients get better outcomes. One of the major topics has been incorporating private assets into their portfolios, whether that's private credit, private equity, infrastructure, or real estate.

These are the different types of tools that can help smooth out that ride when markets do get a little bit volatile. We're going to talk about that in just a second, actually. But I mean, when you talk about the markets being volatile, imagine you still have people in stocks. Do you make any big moves at a time like this? No, I think, you know, one of the things that we always talk to investors about is you need to expect that these moments will come. And so how you've built your portfolio coming into these moments is really the important part. And so if you've got a game plan, the deal is to stick with the game plan. There may be some opportunities that the market presents us to rebalance a portfolio one way or the other.

But at this point in time, we think just staying invested and keeping your eyes on the long-term outcomes is really where people should be focused. Brian, you deal with some of the highest net worth people out there. And I'm wondering how the rich are dealing with this stock market downturn in a different way from maybe the rest of us. I mean, they have a little bit of a higher tolerance for stock market pain. Are they looking for other assets to get into? Are they looking for other things to do with their money right now? Well, one of the things that we're spending a lot of time talking with the kind of ultra high net worth community on is direct indexing. And the tools where you can kind of rebalance in moments like this.

and generate some losses within the portfolio while still giving you exposure to stocks, that can actually help you benefit from this. And so some of those losses that you can embed into the portfolio, potentially offsetting some gains later on. We also are doing things in the active ETF space. We've launched some buffer ETFs, which are also designed to help investors kind of get invested and stay invested.

The idea is they can protect the downside when markets do get volatile like this, but still offer upside when hopefully markets do recover. Are people willing to do indexing when the market's going down? I mean, indexing seems like a great idea when the market's going up. But if it's going down and you're marrying your portfolio to it, doesn't that make people feel just a little queasy? Yeah, no. And I think that's why we've seen so much growth in active ETFs, actually, where you can take active strategies where you've got portfolio managers that are actively identifying opportunities that the market presents it and then delivering the outcome that investors are looking for.

So, for example, we've got an active small-cap ETF, ticker GSC. And you're exactly right. The portfolio manager is sitting there looking at these small-cap stocks and seeing what are the opportunities that I should identify. I mean, a lot of this market volatility, I think, is driven by potentially some regime change around AI, where, you know, DeepSeek came out and the market's rethinking how they want to price some of the MAG-7 that have been driving our returns for so long. And so what we're seeing is a broadening out of the market. and an active manager looking through those opportunities and identifying where they can potentially provide alpha or, of course, provide some protection to the downside is absolutely what we see in

these markets right now. Well, Brian, stay with us because we want to look at another area that investors, especially wealthy investors, are increasingly looking at, and that's private assets. Sharon Epperson here with a look at the push to make those assets available in retirement plans. Yeah, Aiman, you know, that push is coming from regulatory. as well as asset managers and plan administrators, the acting chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission said just moments ago that they want to facilitate

making private investments available to more retail investors. Although right now, private market investments currently account for less than 1% of assets in 401K and other defined contribution plans. 87% of the companies in America with revenues over $100 million are private. So how do we give 128 million Americans in the defined? contribution system, exposure to those asset classes. Ed Murphy expects private market assets to be added to 401K plans through target

date funds, managed accounts and collective investment trusts rather than standalone investments. But before that happens, several challenges must be addressed, including high fees, lack of transparency, and liquidity risk. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink says his company is working to address those concerns. So our job is to be providing a much better. transparency and analytics to get that done. If we achieve that, and then I think we're going to have a credible opportunity to add these type of instruments to retirement products.

More than half of the $11.6 trillion that BlackRock manages are for retirement. And for more retirement investment strategy, sign up for my free Money 101 Newsletter series by scanning the QR code right there or go to cnbc.com slash money 101. Sharon, I guess my question here is a lot of the reason for keeping regular investors out of private investments. It's just been the risk, right? And you don't want retirees to be exposed to something that they might not understand what they're getting into. How do you calibrate that as you're talking about getting these private investments into people's 401 case? I think the idea is to get it into something like a Target Date Fund where it would be in the

more aggressive part of the portfolio for 30 years or so out from retirement. This is not something that they're advocating that someone who's close to retirement adds to their portfolio as a standalone investment. But I do think what you're saying is right that a lot of plan sponsors are saying, listen, we're supposed to be the fiduciaries here. We want to make sure that people are educated about what this is, that they understand the fees, that they understand the risks and the volatility and the illiquidity that'll be in here. You've got to know what you're buying. Exactly. That's what Brian was just talking about right off the top saying you're going to get people. I like to know what my money is doing every day. I don't think I could deal with

the stress. Maybe I would need that. I only find out once a quarter and by that time, you know, It's too late. It's over. Yeah. Everything's fine or not. I mean, the thing that I'm thinking about is the biggest institutions in the world have been using alternatives as a huge part of their portfolio for decades. Endowments, sovereign wealth funds have been using alternatives because they understand the benefits that it brings to their portfolios. And so for retirees that are investing into their 401ks, what our firm and other asset managers are working on is making sure that those tools that such, that the sophisticated,

institutional investors have identified as a great opportunity are available to everybody. And so when you can get those benefits into the portfolio, we definitely know that the overall outcome of the portfolio can be improved. We're one of the leading OCIO providers, outsourced CIO, which means we work with some of the biggest investors in the world with our solutions business, our multi-asset business. And we've been incorporating public and private capabilities and portfolios for decades. And it's all about what we're talking about here, better outcomes for investors. These alternatives can smooth out your returns. They can add to returns. They can give you diversification. And these are great benefits that we'd love to see available in 401ks. But to that point,

Brian, do you think there is to borrow the phrase critics use volatility laundering going on here? In other words, you know, you smooth it out because you don't need to know day in and day out what's happening. So there's a lot less visibility for investors. Well, I think it's always important for investors to know what they, own. But, you know, our thinking is always that if you're looking at the markets on a day-to-day basis, that's, there's a lot of noise in there. And we really think investors need to take a step back and think about what they're trying to achieve with that money. And it couldn't be more clear in a 401k. You're trying to retire with this money. You're trying to retire with dignity with this money.

And so it's meant to be, in most cases, long-term money. This is not intradate trading money. And so the benefits that you get with private assets over time can accumulate and, you know, can help drive those outcomes. I think if you're looking at the markets on a day-to-day basis in something like a 401k, you're just getting too much noise there. You really need to focus on the long-term and what you're trying to ultimately accomplish. Sharon, just so people understand what we're talking about here. What are some examples of the types of private assets that we're talking about here, that people who are in a 401k now might be exposed to if this happens? We're talking about private credit. We're talking about potentially real estate, potentially

private equity as well. But there's a range of these alternative assets. asset classes that are being considered. It's just a matter of what we've been talking about, whether or not you're going to be able to see what is in there. Is it so illiquid that you're not going to be able to know? And will that have planned sponsors as well as investors shy away because they just don't know what they're investing in? So the idea is to get the little guy into some of these asset classes that the big guys

have been into forever. Absolutely. Fascinating conversation. Thank you. Brian Lake, Goldman Sachs asset management. Of course, our own Sharon Epperson. Thank you for being here. And after the break, Pockets of Woffice.

weakness. You'll see what we did there when we come back. Cracks still showing in the consumer, and some areas of the industry are weaker than others. We'll dive deeper. That's coming up next. Whenever I talk to young people, I encourage them to pursue their passions to make a difference in the world now. I think that's the path to no regrets and to the greatest fulfillment, because it gives you a chance to really dive in and see the solvability. of the challenges you're addressing. And welcome back to Power Lunch. Retail sales for February up slightly,

but consumers still spent at a slower than expected pace, and that weakness in the consumer is also starting to show up in corporate earnings. One of our next guests says she's seeing a surprising drag on the economy, what she calls intense fear among immigrants. She says President Trump's immigration crackdown is leading millions of people to stay home

and spend less money. So let's bring in our panel to discuss it Brian Gildenberg is managing director of retail cities, and Maria Salinas is president and CEO of the L.A. Area Chamber of Commerce. And Maria, you and I talked on the phone earlier today. You described this intense fear, and you said something to me that was surprising. You said that people in this community are staying home from work, their kids are staying home from school, they're even staying home from medical appointments, and all of that is impacting the economy in L.A. Explain what you're seeing.

Absolutely. This is something that I hear quite frequently, and it's only grown just over the past couple of weeks. We've seen more and more of these policies highlighted, you know, whether it's members that are medical providers that are seeing an increase in cancellations of medical appointments in underserved communities or schools that are just seeing a lower rate than attendance. And certainly with many industries, I've talked to several restaurant owners who are seeing just a real tightening in their labor, but as well as in terms of the attendance. So this is something that's very real in Los Angeles, something that I've been part of many conversations in trying to understand what can we do to overcome those initial fears that exist right now. We know that that's an impact on our regional economy, but I don't think Los Angeles is alone. While we have a lot of immigrants in industries like construction and agriculture, we're not the only state that has that type of workforce. Brian, let me ask you the same question.

Are you seeing this trend? And what does it mean for retail if we're seeing, you know, a huge proportion of immigrants in this country, just staying home from work, staying home from retail shopping for fear of roundup? I think you can see in the broader macro economy, which is more where I tend to hang out. I think there are some of the themes that we've discussed here that are being reflected. One, restaurants sales are not just down in this community. They're down across the board. And that was one of the real eye-popping results that came out of the February results. You know, restaurant sales were down 1.4% from previous months.

So I think there's a sentiment concern in general that people are. where people are pulling back. I think in general, uncertainty across the board is an economic issue for consumers, and it's impacting how and where they choose to spend, it's an impact for businesses. And I think the uncertainty is particularly acute for businesses and for people and families that have strong connections either to Mexico or Canada, because the conversation on tariffs, as disquieting is an issue of an American consumer. These are, if you're in Mexico or Canada right now, the potential disruption to the economy is there as enormous. So I think there's a bunch of the issues we're talking about here that you could extrapolate to a slightly larger plan.

Maria, how would you describe the retail landscape more broadly? Are there other reasons why things look like they have really slowed down lately? Or do you think that's more just sentiment and anecdote? Well, I think that some of the comments that were just made about the uncertainty is definitely something that plays in with people think about, you know, extra cash that's in their pockets and the uncertainty of. of, you know, there's still great concern about inflation and the high cost of items. I think that definitely weighs in on things. I think the fear factor in immigrant communities,

you know, in Los Angeles, it's a very diverse immigrant communities, and I speak to a number of coalitions and community organizations that serve those communities, and definitely they're seeing that fear in terms of staying home. So if they're not making their doctors a point, why would we expect them to go out into the mall or into other spaces where they may be spending money? And Maria, you told me earlier today you think this is going to impact the ability of Los Angeles to rebuild from those devastating fires

because a lot of the labor force that would be doing that rebuilding in the construction industry might be part of this trend of staying home from work and being afraid of roundups. And that's an additional concern. Again, the L.A. Chamber has mobilized fully in terms of what does recovery and rebuilding look like. And as part of those conversations with a multitude of stakeholders, that is a recurring theme, is that tightening of that labor market, not only for the, you know, services of the day-to-day in the consumer markets here, but as well as with rebuilding, bringing those construction jobs, the cleanup efforts that need to happen. That is certainly a top of mind priority within Los Angeles and something that we are very much keenly aware of. That is we need to address it and need to also highlight that as well.

And Brian, I'm wondering if, you know, you talked about the general uncertainty out there. Can you tease out how much this immigration issue is playing into the softness in retail? I mean, on a percentage basis, or is it just too early to say? I think it's probably the more interesting people, piece is, I mean, looking at this as one, yes, I think there are certainly pockets of the country where this is a very big issue. There are issues that I think Maria is talking about that are that are not endemic to the immigrant community. I mean, if you numerator did some research, 64% of all Americans are concerned about tariffs being inflationary. And the Harris Bowl recently

suggested 72% of every country is worried about the direction the tariffs are taking us. So I think there are some, there are definitely some themes I believe are amplified in that community, but I think are consistent with the rest of the economy. And that's another way to look at where we are here. But certainly, anything that gets in the way of some of the major urban hubs fueling growth, and I think the other one, that labor force participation rate chart you put up before, if things like child care are unavailable or become too expensive because the labor force for that shrinks, that has a dramatic impact on labor force participation, not just from the immigrant community, but from anybody that's relying on that community to enable work.

So I think the secondary effects of this could be much, could be pretty significant. Yeah, a lot of people with a lot of things on their minds these days. Great conversation. Thank you, Brian Gildenberg of Retail Cities and Maria Salinas of the L.A. Area Chamber of Commerce. Meantime, lumber prices have moved to two-year highs, largely from the impact of tariffs. It could be a problem for the housing sector. But one company is trying to solve the lumber shortage. That's today's clean start.

We'll have more right on. after this. And welcome back to Power Lunch right now. All the major averages are higher and just off the session highs. Nice little bounce going on here. The NASDAQ had been lower most of the morning, now up more than a half a percent. Now let's get a check on bonds as they react to this morning's retail sales data. And don't forget, a two-day Fed meeting starts tomorrow. Rick Santelli standing by in Chicago. Hey, Rick. Yeah, Amin, you hit all the highlights. And it's very fascinating because with the Fed meeting starting tomorrow and of course culminating Wednesday most likely in a non-rate decision, but the press conference is always enlightening, we see that

short maturities, the two-year and three-year notes, and now even the five joining the crowd, have had higher yields or session, whereas the longer-dated treasuries have not. So if you look at a two-day of two-year, you need to really acknowledge a couple things. First of all, it's higher yield than yesterday's high yield, which happened to been Friday. But when you add in a tenure, you can see the difference. That reflects some of the curve flattening that has been going on. And the reason is clear. The Fed most likely doesn't have the room to be easing rates. And when you look at today's data, the long end reflected some of the weakness you pointed out in retail sales. There was some brightness in that report, especially the core retail sales, negating last month's

down 1%. and the positive 1% will be inputted in other data points like GDP. And finally, the dollar index. Dollar index has been on a real downward trail. Right now, it is on pace for another fresh, low close going back to October. Kelly, back to you. Wow, Rick, thank you very much, Rick Sinateli. Big Tech's biggest event of the year.

Meantime, well, that's a pretty big statement, but maybe it is. The GTC conference for NVIDIA, it could be even more important to this. history chart, as well as a few other names in the broader ecosystem. We'll have details on that next. Welcome back to Power Lunch. I'm Bertha Coombs with your CNBC News Update. A federal judge has set a 5 p.m. Eastern hearing today over the Trump administration's use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport hundreds of migrants who are allegedly part of a Venezuelan gang. The move came as a judge temporarily barred the deportations. The White House says, said this afternoon that all planes had already taken off before the order was entered by the court.

The Department of Veterans Affairs announced today it will no longer provide treatment for gender dysphoria. The announcement comes in an effort to align with President Trump's order declaring there are two sexes. But the VA says it will continue to offer hormone therapy to veterans already receiving such care. And a judge ordered the release of Prince Harry. visa documents following a months-long battle. A conservative think tank has called for the disclosure and accused the British Royal of concealing past drug views that should have disqualified him from receiving the visa.

Duke of Sussex has lived in the U.S. with his wife, Megan Markle, since 2020. Kelly, back over to you. All right, Bertha, thank you very much. shares of VNVIDIA are lowered. Today as they kick off their annual GPU technology. conference. All eyes will be on CEO Jensen Wong's keynote address tomorrow, where he's expected to make new announcements on AI chips. Later on Thursday, the company will host its first ever quantum day, with CEOs of notable players in the space taking stage alongside Wang.

NVIDIA has scrambled to retain its AI crown ever since the deep seek sparked a sell off in AI stocks back in January. It's 22% below its all-time high amid intensifying competition, so will it do enough to entice skeptics? Let's ask our next guest. He's got a neutral on the stock. as senior software analyst at DA Davidson. Gil, we made a Freudian slip that I, we said it's GPU event, but it's GTC. And I was curious today, I thought, what does GTC stand for?

And it stands for a GPU tech conference or something. Point being, this is a super, super wonky thing to have so many people purportedly excited about. Is it overhyped? Not at all. It's the main AI event of the year. Let's not forget to give of Nvidia credit for a lot of the advancements we have in AI

are because they a long time ago realized the potential for their graphics chips to provide the ability to do these transformer calculations that make all of this AI possible, first in the labs at Google and then at the labs of Open AI. And over the last few years, Nvidia has done a lot to promote the whole ecosystem. That's what this event is about, inviting everybody

that's anybody in AI to talk about what they can accomplish together using Nvidia's products. Right. So I've read a few notes. I mean, you tell me yours, but Blackwell Ultra, right? That's one of the things. What are the keywords that a non-expert like myself needs to hear to know if the stock is going to rally or, you know, possible problems that could cause it to sell off? So in terms of the products, there's Blackwell Ultra that's coming out this year and then Rubin that's probably coming out next year. And what we're going to be listening for from Jensen Wong is multiples. How much faster is Blackwell Ultra than Blackwell?

How much faster? How many terraflops per second can Rubin do faster than Blackwell Ultra? That's going to tell us a lot about if Nvidia can continue to maintain its product leadership over the ASIC chip providers, like Broadcom, like Marvell, increasingly like Huawei. Gil, what about this idea that kind of shocked markets a couple weeks ago when Deep Seek came out and it was done on a much smaller platform and implied that you need many fewer chips to do high-level AI? Is that idea kind of faded now? Or is Nvidia just powering past that

with more powerful chips that people are going to need to buy no matter what, if they're buying chips, they're going to buy these high-end ones? That idea really shouldn't fade because what's happening with these AI models is they're getting so much smaller, so much faster that we're not far away from a day where we'll be able to do inference calculation on our device, on a phone, on a PC, not at a data center. And so this is very important for thinking about how long of a runway Nvidia has is when do models get small enough that we don't do inference at a data center. And since pre-training or what we used to refer to as training is something that's starting to hit a wall as well, we're not sure how many data centers we're actually going to need two, three, five years from now.

And that's the concern that overhangs NVIDIA. So is the implication there that there's some sort of NVIDIA cliff out there that we don't know where it is, but at some point demand is really going to fall off? That's exactly why the stock has lagged so much over the last nine months, is that we don't know that. And in fact, we think this may even be peak year. 2025 may end up being the peak year. If we don't have a handoff from Nvidia's current largest customers like Microsoft and Amazon that have said their chip buying is going to plateau this year to other customers like

Corweave or SoftBank, then this may end up being peak year for Nvidia chips. So that tone of caution, Gil, is interesting. because there are others who say, you know, this technology is really just starting to go mainstream. And I take your point about using it on the phone someday, but the best models out there are still the ones that seem to be most chip intensive, right? Like, GROC is, GROC 3 is amazing? It's, and is that not with 200,000? You tell me what the number is of these GPUs. So if I, as the end user, value having the best experience, the fastest, the most up-to-date, you know, I like its tone.

It's just very useful. So does that tell you, though, that they still need to continue this massive investment in Nvidia GPUs? Well, the vast majority of AI searches we're going to do are going to be, what's the best humidifier for this room? How do I entertain my five-year-old at a restaurant? Those within two or three years, you'll be able to do on your phone and get terrific performance.

Within, again, that time frame, two, three, five years, the only calculation, you're not. that we're going to need the biggest frontier models for are the really tough calculations, protein folding, drug development, things like that that will, by the way, end up on a quantum computer within five or ten years anyway. Well, that's the other question is what does quantum do to this? Because if quantum comes in and accelerates the growth of all this, you can imagine that all of that processing power gets even into smaller and smaller devices. And are you using less chips in a quantum world by an order of magnitude?

That's quite possible. So in that world of five, ten years from now, we're probably using our phone for most AI questions, and we're using quantum computers for the really tough questions, at which points data centers just go back to being storage devices as opposed to where we do all of our AI compute. So then, Gil, last question for you, have we already hit a top in Invidia? Are we past the peak? I think there's a couple of possible outcomes here. One is, that this can continue for a year or two or maybe more, and Nvidia can continue to grow into next year, in which case there's upside to the stock. If you put 30 times next year's earnings, you get closer to $160.

The downside is if this is the peak year, and next year is the rollover year, then if they do $3 of earnings, then we're talking about a $60 price target. So that's the range of outcomes in Nvidia. It's really critical for us know whether 2026 will be a growth year as consensus expect. Yikes, all right. That's a good lead in. We went with the whole house humidifier, by the way.

So that's good memory. I'm very impressed. Gil, thanks. See you next time. Giluria. And news out of this week's event will likely move Nvidia shares, of course. But what other companies in the Nvidia ecosystems should investors be watching? Christina Parts Nevelos joins us now from San Francisco. Hey there, K Parts. Hi, I'm in San Francisco, but I'm heading to San Jose to the event. And they're calling it the Super Bowl for techies. And like you said, it should really create ripple effects across the AI landscape with two newer themes this year. I know that Gil talked about the Blackwell, Ultra Rubin, but there's also comments about a new networking as well as optical technology that could be a big mover.

And it may sound technical. It may sound super complicated, but it could negatively impact traditional transceiver makers like momentum and coherent. NVIDIA's new chip packaging approach might also impact the plug-able optics market where Marvell plays. And so that's why you've seen investors take someone of a more bearish bet on Marvell, like coherent, just this year, year-to-day, you can see all of these shares down much more than the broader chip market. And then on the networking side, watch for Spectrum X portfolio updates potentially could be bad news. There's some mixed commentary on this for Arista networks, since their switches compete directly with NVIDIA's versions. Keep an eye out. Also on Fabernet shares, they could emerge as a supplier within this space. Both are trading higher today, but there's also some market buzz suggesting super microcomputer.

They're a server assembler. They'll be putting together NVIDIA's new rack systems. So that could be a positive catalyst. And then lastly, Nvidia may use a higher quality memory for its next generation Rubin architecture, HBM 3, or 4, I should say, which would impact micron shares. Micron earnings are out on Thursday after the bell. But the smart money just really isn't watching Nvidia's stock move. It's tracking how Jensen's announcements could, or lack of announcements, could reshape the entire tech ecosystem and just one to our keynote. And you notice I didn't even mention quantum in that whole thing, too. Yeah, we talked about Quantum a little bit in the last segment.

Christina, thanks so much. And speaking of the Smart Money, they're going to be watching Jim Kramer's exclusive interview with NVIDIA's CEO Jensen Wong this week. You can see a preview on Squawk on the street at 10 a.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, followed by the full interview Wednesday night on Mad Money at 6 p.m. We'll be right back. Welcome back. Stocks are near session highs today, but we're seeing a big move to the downside for Discover Financial, ticker DFS, down about 9%. This comes amid word that there could be a delay to, and Capital One, by the way, shares are on the move as well.

Capital One just announced the acquisition of Discover more than a year ago. The $35 billion deal was expected to close this spring, but there are reports in the market today throwing that merger into question. CNBC hasn't confirmed them yet, but Capital One is down 5% on this as well, Eam. You know, what's interesting about this is this particular deal being reviewed by the Federal Reserve. But there's this question now about M&A and the Trump era more broadly, right? A lot of deals pending. There hasn't been a whole lot of M&A this year. And a lot of people have been surprised by the fact that the Trump administration has been a lot tougher on M&A than they thought.

Right. Was it a green light or not? And was it just, you know, a yellow or red light in the arena of big tech where we saw this big fight? You were involved in that over whether they had resources to fight Amazon this year or not. Or would it extend to elsewhere? Yeah. And I think there's just, I think people need to take a look at this administration and understand that this is a populist administration. They're not necessarily going to give a blank check to big businesses.

They don't necessarily see corporate elites, quote, unquote, as their allies politically. And they're worried about merger consolidation hurting jobs and wages. And that's their big thing. It's what does it mean for communities and people out there in states like Ohio where the president has been so popular. So this year is a little bit different than people have thought. It is, and it's put a chill on a lot of the activity lately. Discovered down 8% is mentioned. Capital One down 4%. And we'll see if we get more word into the close. Meantime, demand for lumber growing exponentially as global real estate development expands.

But harvesting forests comes at a huge carbon cost to the planet. So what if we could do a better job of recycling timber? Diana Ollick has the details in her continuing series on climate startups. Hey there, Diana. Hey, Amina. year, 36 million trees fall due to decay, disease, natural disasters, or clearing for new development. The vast majority of those trees are either burned, sent to a landfill, or ground up for mulch, both of which cause carbon emission and waste energy. Now, new technology is being

used to find, transport, and recycle that wood and make it useful once again. At a small R&D facility just outside Baltimore, Researchers at Cambium Carbon are working on new ways to recycle old wood. The Baltimore-based startup builds itself as the platform where timber meets tech. We make it really easy to source wood that would have otherwise been wasted, and we build technology for the wood industry so that we can save material, create new local jobs, and address climate change in scale. Here we're scanning a piece of wood of carbon smart wood,

and you're able to really quickly identify what the species is, when it was milled, what the grade of it is, what the quality of the materials. This is all reclaimed. Cambium's technology helps find, recycle, and then deliver the wood across the U.S. and to parts of Canada. They work with local tree care services, trucking companies, and sawmills, and on a larger scale, with companies like Amazon, CBRE, Gensler, and Rumen Board. We help truckers coordinate loads so they can actually,

move this material. And then we help sawmills source that material, track that material when they're actually using it within their sawmill, and then ultimately sell that material as well. While there are small local wood recyclers, no one else, according to Christensen, is facilitating the national supply chain on such a large scale. Both the supply and demand, he says, is endless. And so for us, as a venture capitalist, is looking to invest in businesses that kind of can go to the moon and become billion dollar businesses, this meets all of the criteria. In addition to Mac Venture Capital, Cambium is backed by Volo Earth Ventures, NEA, revolution's rise of the rest seed fund, dangerous ventures, and Ulu ventures.

Total funding so far, $28.5 million. Now, the scale of this is absolutely massive. Christensen said that if we were able to salvage all of the material in the U.S., we could source about half of our total wood demand. He also said that Canadian tariffs will impact his business since in the Northeast, especially. They're moving wood to sawmills that may be across the border. That is in both directions. Amen.

So, Diana, I guess the question is why is so much wood being wasted in the first place? I know. It seems like a no-brainer, but it's because it falls in different sizes, different types of wood. Some of it is a full tree. Some of it's pieces of a tree. And then there's just no supply chain direct technology that gets it to where it needs to go. And that's what Cam Bam is all about. Diana, thanks.

And meantime, the Dow hitting a new session high. We're up almost 500 points. We have this mystery chart coming up of a stock that's down 30% in the past month, but is it due for a bounce? Let's find out in three-stock lunch next. Welcome back, Markets in a better mood this afternoon. Let's see about our trader for three-stock lunch. CNBC Pro is out today with the list of the most oversold stocks. Could they be due for a trader's bounce or maybe an investor's bounce?

I don't know. We've asked them to select a few names from that list. That list, let's welcome in Brian Vendig. He's president at MJP Wealth Advisors. Brian, it's great to have you here today. Welcome. The first one is actually the mystery stock we had just teased Delta down more than 20% this month, really bad for the airlines lately. Are you buying it here? Yeah, we think Delta got caught up pretty hard in this growth scare. And there's a lot of tailwinds. And I've got to use that line for an airline stock. When we think about the company fundamentally, it issued a pretty robust revenue guidance for 2025. That would be better than the prior year. Price to earnings multiple on a forward PE perspective of about seven, which is really attractive. Plus, I think the consumer is not dead as we saw from the retail sales numbers this morning. And consumers are looking for an experience.

It dealt with those great from an air travel as well as mobile experience. And lastly, you factor in any changes in oil prices. going down in the future, that's also going to help the margin for the stock. It might be a little bit harder to find oversold stocks today with the market up 510 now. But look at Lulu Lemon. It's higher today, but down about 10% in the past month. You said you also like this one, Brian. Yeah, I mean, it goes back to my comment about that retail sales number that we saw because we saw growth and a good presence in the online numbers in the retail sales.

And with the consumer still spending, Lulu's, really leaning in on that online presence. And we saw in some analysts notes this morning that having a wider breadth and more exposure to some social media channels has really helped to support sales. And I think the outlook for Lulu. Plus, you know, they had a really tough year last year. And I think those compares might look a little bit better as we go through 2025. So you like Delta. You like Lulu. Another one on the list is Accenture. Are you buying that one as well? Well, no, I think Accenture is one, you got to take a little bit of a step back. I mean, the stock's been pretty much flat for the last three years.

And also, a lot of people have recently invested in the stock, hoping that IT spending is going to result in more consulting revenue, where Accenture obviously plays really well regarding integration in software and services around some of their larger consulting contracts. But at the end of the day, there's a lot of macro noise, as we all know, and that can really cause companies to take a closer look at their IT spending and budgets, depending on how these economic policies play out. So I think in the short term, this is one to hold and just be a little bit more cautious on until we get a clearer picture of some of those policy decisions. So let's take a step back and look at the broader market. We're seeing this nice market melt

up right now, a 512, 1.2 plus percent on the Dow. That's encouraging. You talked about all the economic policies. We're seeing a little bit of a bounce back Friday. And today, Where do you think we go from here? Well, I still think in the short term, it's easy for me to say over the next 30 days. We're probably going to be in some sort of range because we need to hear a little bit more on what's going to be constructed in Congress around fiscal policy, but also we need to know, really, what does reciprocal tariffs mean on April 2nd? Now, if policies don't go to extremes, I really still think earnings is going to be that

catalyst for the market. And I think as you look at where value stocks and gross stocks are right now, probably a little nibbling makes sense as you think about things from a longer term perspective, Amon. Yeah, Brian, I think you're right. I mean, the question is April 2nd. When will the White House take the lid off of those tariffs? How much will they preview or are they going to surprise the market entirely on April 2nd with a brand new set of tariffs that they haven't sort of prepared the market for in the days ahead of that? So one big question I have is how earlier are we going to see what the final decision is? Brian Vendig, thank you so much for your time today and a couple of stocks to buy. And remember, you can recap every three-stock lunch. Anytime you want, scan the QR code on your screen.

There it is, lower right-hand side. Scan it right now. It's about to go away or head over to cnbc.com for more. We'll be right back. Let's get a quick look at stocks in your session highs. Dows up 500 points right now. And the NASDAQ has joined the party. It was notably in the red just an hour or so ago.

keep an eye on shares of Nvidia. Their GTC event, the keynote is tomorrow. It's not necessarily the market barometer, but it's still a tell you can see well off session lows aim in it down a little less than 1%. Yeah, and as we watch this bounce back from all the tariff headlines that we saw over the past couple of weeks. I mentioned it with Brian. One of my big questions here is, you know, is the White House going to telegraph what they're going to do or are they going to surprise us? The Fed for all the analysis that we do, what's the Fed going to do? They've gotten really good at preparing the market for stuff. The dot plots. We're going to get them on Wednesday. Fed speakers. dot plots, all that stuff.

The White House not as sophisticated with that in terms of the market. Are we going to see an effort by the White House to kind of prepare everybody for what they're going to do on that April 2nd date? That's the style they want to pursue, even. I don't think it is. No, I don't either. Amen, thanks for being here. Really appreciate it.

Yeah, this has been great. Indoor work. Get to work inside. It's fascinating. Thanks for watching, Power Lunch, everybody. Closing bell starts right now.