Power Lunch - Dow tumbles 1,000 points, Nasdaq drops 4% as market rout worsens 3/10/25

Episode Date: March 10, 2025

A three-week market sell-off is intensifying today, with investors worried that tariff uncertainty could tip the economy into a recession. The tech-heavy Nasdaq is seeing the biggest selling of the major averages, falling 4.8% for its biggest decline since September 2022.We’ll cover all of the angles for you and your money today. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

That's right. We do have a market sell-off on this Monday and welcome to Power Lunch, everybody. I am Brian Sullivan in Houston at the big C-NBC Energy Conference. And I'm Kelly Evans at CNBC headquarters. And we are looking, like Brian said, at another big market sell-off. 800 points for the Dow and fact right now. We're pretty much at session lows. The S&P is down two and three quarters of a percent. The NASDAQ down four and a quarter for its worst day since 2022. Dow's negative on the year. The NASDAQ's down nine percent. And Tesla is one of the biggest losers today. All of these kind of growthy, high. high-flying momentum stocks. This time, it's down nearly 14% this afternoon. It's wiped out its post-election rally and then some. It's down 10% since the election. And from its $488 high, the stock has lost more than half its value. That high was on December 18th. It's lost about $800 billion in market cap. Meta is another big decliner. Remember that 20-day win streak? All the gains over that streak are gone. The stock is lower now than it was on Jan 17th when that winning stretch began. And Apple's also getting hit hard today. You heard, Dear, are talking about that a moment ago.

On pace for its worst day in two and a half years with a nearly 6% decline, Apple delayed its Siri AI upgrade, which was supposed to be a big driver of phone sales and utilization, and Bitcoin is below 80,000 once again, managing to hold on to some of its post-election bounce, at least for now, Brian. All right, well, thank you very much. Kelly. Listen, earlier today, Energy Secretary Christopher Wright making some headlines here at the Sierra Week conference after he slammed the Biden administration's climate policies said that renewable energy cannot replace fully natural gas.

Let's talk about that, tariffs and a lot more we have. The U.S. Energy Secretary Christopher Wright here with us in a CNBC exclusive Secretary of Wright. Thank you very much for joining us. A lot on the energy-specific side to discuss, but a lot of people are blaming tariffs for part or all of this stock sell-off. Where do we stand with energy tariffs from Canada and Mexico right now? Oh, I think we're in active negotiations right now. Think of Trump's last term. He engaged on tariff dialogue really with his eye on how to make things better for Americans. Think of his words here. We want free and fair trade, reciprocal tariffs, and we want to stop the importation of fentanyl.

That's just been an absolute human crisis. So he's a businessman who wants what's best for the American people. Right now we're in the middle of what's going on, the scrum. I think the end result's going to be quite positive. Well, I'm sure you have a lot of Canadian friends, right? Friends in Mexico as well, as a lot of them from both countries walking around. They all want to come up to me, and I'm sure to you, and say, we're not the problem. Four and a half million barrels a day of imported Canadian crude oil are helping not hurting. And they all wonder what's going on. Is there any window or insight into why this has all happened?

Look, it's a huge concern about the trafficking of drugs. And I think we've got to work together. All three nations have to work diligently to reduce. the flow of drugs. This is thousands, tens of thousands, maybe 100,000 needless loss of American lives. It's probably in Canada and Mexico as well. So that's a huge issue and I think it gets underplayed sometime. And the other is just to get free flow of goods both ways. There's a 250% tariff on American dairy farmers to sell into Canada. Like, that hurts Americans. So let's focus on what hopefully the end goal is, which is free and fair trade, reciprocal tariffs.

Is it possible, then there are no tariffs? That's probably possible. I think we could get to no tariffs or very low tariffs, but it's got to be reciprocal. It's got to be the countries working together to better the outcome for American citizens. If I look back at Trump 1, 2016 to 2020, I see we added about 3 million barrels of oil production a day when the average price was, I think, in the mid-50. So we added production at a time when oil prices were not sky high. Yes. But that wasn't 13 million barrels of oil a day like we are now, Chris.

Is it possible to add more barrels at 66 bucks a barrel like we are right now? Absolutely. Look, the easiest production to grow in the United States is natural gas and natural gas liquids. I think you're still seeing growth there at a pretty good clip. We can grow crude arrow barrels as well. Key thing with President Trump is to lower the cost, for American producers, lower the uncertainty for American producers so that it's a better climate to invest. That lowers their cost of production. The break-even for American producers

is going to be pushed down. Of course, they just start the end. Folks, if you're hearing in the background, there's like somebody on a microphone right behind. Of course it started right during this interview, so apologies for that. That said, do you feel like there's a, the tariffs and the city, I hate to harp on it, they're not helping that. You're a CEO. How do we get more confidence? I don't think tariffs help with that. Yeah, well, particularly uncertainty around tariffs. But this is, you know, we're 50 days into the administration.

The accomplishments in the first 50 days have been tremendous. Four actions already on LNG exports. We're getting rid of nonsense across the board, but we're in the middle of negotiations for where things are going to go with tariffs. So that feels frightening and gripping right now, but this time will pass. Deals will be made. We'll get certainty and we'll have a positive economic environment for Americans going forward.

You've talked about climate, and I know you just did a big talk with leaders in Africa. Yes. And you talked about something that a lot of our viewers really understand, which is how much, while we have this beautiful energy situation

in the United States, a lot of people cut firewood. Their children suffer all these household diseases because they're breathing in all this noxious garbage because they've got to produce wood fire to whatever. How do we get the rest of the world?

and I primarily mean Europe. On board with the idea that the rest of the world just wants a little bit of what we have, which is the lights and the heat works. And we've actually brought down carbon emissions in the United States by increased use of gas. How do we get Europe, they still seem like they're not on board with that thinking? Yeah, they've gone a long way down a road that I think was destined to lead to where they got, which is high energy prices, exporting of the... their industries outside, Germany, this industrial powerhouse, the United Kingdom, the birthplace

of the American of the Industrial Revolution. But I think you're seeing uncertainty in Europe. You're seeing citizens upset. You're seeing political upheaval. Making energy expensive and unreliable is a surefire way to lead to political uncertainty. I hope we see a turn in Europe. I believe we will see a turn in Europe. But I can certainly say we've seen a turn in the United States. Just a return to common sense. Well, we're connected, though. I think the U.S. and Europe, because you know my producer here harry and i we've been stand we've stood on lNG ships in rotterdam saying this is american cargo that's coming from caucasue pass in louisiana to bruns butel germany here's what people don't realize russian gas exports not pipeline gas that's

the north stream's blown up but lng exports are at record highs europe right now is buying record amounts of natural gas from Vladimir Putin. Doesn't sound true, but it is. How do we stop that? Because I think, and I hope, that President Trump, like he said this weekend, wants to slow down Vladimir Putin's energy sales to the world, not accelerate them. Absolutely. There actually are still pipeline gas imports from Russia into Europe to the southern pipeline still remains. So yeah, I think Europe saw that huge mistake to bet so much. of their energy future on a very uncertain supplier that's become a significant adversary.

I think the answer to a lot of this is make sure your energy suppliers are your allies and they're strong and they're reliable. So the rapid ramp up of USLNG exports into Europe have taken about half of the gas that was displaced from Russia, from the United States. Norway's ramped up and some other sources as well. But that's what the United States is all about.

We're gonna grow our energy production, grow our LNG exports, grow our trade, grow our connection with Europe. I think this is a stable, secure supply, not only economically good for the U.S. and Europe, but it's good for world peace. It's good for stability. That's a lot of this administration. Grow American energy exports to our allies. That's critical.

And we talked about, you know, the way they say, well, if you want to starve Russia of money for war, you cut off their energy exports. People have said, you know, Russia is a gas station with nuclear. bombs. So what do we do about that? How do we approach as the energy secretary, how do you approach Russia, Russia sanctions? They're under sanction now, but they're still selling nine, they're still selling a lot of oil around the world because they're using these sort of unregistered ships and they do all this stuff. What's the proper level of sanctions on Russia and Iran and maybe a little bit on Venezuela that would not destroy Europe?

but would also benefit the United States of America. Yeah, of course, that ultimate call is up to the president. I'm highly confident in his leadership. Of course, I'm in dialogue with him about the tradeoffs here. But you mentioned Iran as well. The president last go around put tight sanctions on Iran and forced those sanctions, drove down Iranian oil exports to very insignificant amount. It starved that regime's ability to fund terrorist organization and foment trouble.

The Biden administration did not remove those sanctions. They just stopped enforcing them. That you flooded Iran with cash and we've seen what's happened. With the Hussis, with Hezbollah, with Hamas. You don't want your allies wealthy and able to evade sanctions and make trouble with it. So President Trump is a strong and bold leader and he will make the decisions. The screws are being turned on Iran again. Venezuela.

This is leverage he can apply to drive towards. peace and towards better outcomes for the United States. Yeah, we just saw the cancellation, or pending cancellation of export supplies from Venezuela. Chevron's probably not super happy about that. We're going to see where that goes. So do you think the U.S. then, Mr. Secretary, can make up for if we really hit Iran and Russia, okay? Because to your point, Iran's foreign currency reserves crashed, and now they've come back as their sales of oil have gone back up around the world. If we really push them and punish them with sanctions, does the U.S. or other allies have the ability to make up that gap in production? We know the Saudis can do it. You think they will do it?

Iran's a member of OPEC. Absolutely. With President Trump's leadership, America's back in business, people trust the United States, people want to ally with the United States. You've seen OPEC bringing oil back on market right now. If there's any price signal at all that the world needs more, oil, U.S. producers can grow their production as well. But as you said, not just United States producer, but our allies producers. Absolutely, the United States can put pressure on all three of those countries, Venezuela, Iran, and Russia, and keep oil prices under control. That's something we couldn't have done years ago, but it's absolutely something we can do today. Exclusive interview with the Secretary of Energy, Christopher Wright. Secretary Wright's a real pleasure

to see you in Houston at the conference and appreciate you sitting down with us here at CNBC. Thank you very much. Thank you, Brian. Common sense and pro-energy is back in style. There's a lot of energy back at this energy conference. I can assure you of that. Kelly, we'll see you in about 15 minutes. Gentlemen, thank you both. Really appreciate it. After the break, we've seen big swings in both directions over the past weekend markets. Remember Friday's attempted rally? The volatility gauge the VIX hitting its highest level since December earlier.

And a guest who has gone from one of CNBC's most bullish to one of its most bearish will join us after the break. Welcome back as stocks sink to new session lows down almost 850 points on the Dow right now and more than 4% on the NASAC. Although that's actually slightly off the session low, investors are fearing a possible recession due to tariffs after President Trump's remarks that a period of transition for the U.S. economy might be necessary. One of our next guest says, while there could still be some upside ahead, there is twice as much a downside. Joining us as Bell Curve Trading's chief market strategist Bill Strasulo and G-square Private Wealth's Victoria Green. She's also a CNBC contributor. Welcome to you both. Bill, you say you've gone from one of the most bullish to one of the most bearish guests we have on. And so right now is that your feeling? Watch out for the downside.

Oh, absolutely, Kelly. Look, you know, for months I talked about the S&P going to 6,000, NASDAQ 100 going to 22,000, 225, the Dow going to 45,000. That seemed like a pipe dream in early 2024, mid-2024. I talked about this on CNBC on April 10th, almost a year ago. Now we've hit those targets. And so the key factor here is that the major long-term trend driving this rally, the rally off the March 2020 lows and the height of the pandemic, when it became clear that we were going to get historic monetary and fiscal stimulus, that rally is tapped out. You know, people come on these shows all the time and say they're long-term investors. You want to stop an interview in its tracks?

Ask them, what's the long term? Is it three years, five years, ten years? It's going back to 1929? 99 out of 100 people have no idea what to say. The long-term trend driving this move started in early 2020, in the height of the pandemic, when it became clear we were going to see historic monetary fiscal stimulus. That is basically tapped out across the indices. I sent you the charts, the bar charts, the volume overpriced charts.

And so that's the key factor that really got us to turn bearish. The second thing that, you know, we didn't anticipate until the last several months is the Trump administration, every policy they have, whether it's tariffs, mass deportations, extension of the 2017 tax cuts, they all either hurt the economy, stoke inflation, or both. So you have the major long-term trend topping out, five-year trend topping out, and you have a catastrophically incompetent administration in the White House. And the bottom line of all this is that we've only started this. We'll be lucky if we get out of this top-to-bottom, only down 20 percent. I think eventually across the indices, Dow S&P, NASDAQ 100 will end up being down 25% before it's all done.

Before I bring Victoria in to see if she agrees, disagrees, what have you, Bill, if I'm truly a long-term investor, if I have 20 years, do I care? You care, Kelly. I mean, our clients, we advise some of the biggest hedge funds, mutual fund complexes, banks, pension funds all over the world. So for our clients, it's enormous and very important to be able to avoid this. And I think even for the average person watching the show, I think we had great years in 2023, 24. It's not anything very esoteric.

Take some money off the table. You'll be able to deploy that capital at much better levels later in the year. But right now, Trump is taking us not only into a trade war, but into a full-blown recession. And I think the mistake people are making is that we've been spoiled with these V bottoms. We go down 10 to 12 percent and they'll write back up. This is not going to be like that. We are going to be in for a much deeper drawdown. And I think something that's going to last a significant amount of time.

Now, again, that's ahead of where, you know, most of the sort of the economists you talk to, even the bearish ones are kind of in the camp. But, okay, we only grow one and a half percent. I haven't seen any recession calls yet. But to your point, it's the market's job to try to discount that ahead of time. Victoria, jump in here. I'm not quite that bearish. I think what's been done can also be undone very quickly.

And so markets have been repricing in a very very, friendly, business-friendly Trump administration into, no, this is a Trump administration trying to fix, you know, very long-term problems that may take some undoing. And any time that you have all of this commentary about, oh, the economy might be rolling over, that we have all these dislocations or a little bit of turbulence, you know, all of that means they are expecting things to get worse before it gets better. So I fully, fully agree, this could be worse before it gets better. But it's happening so fast, it's washing out so fast.

Historically, when it's this hard and fast on the down, it does snap back in a V-shape recovery. I do disagree a little bit on that. A little bit in Yardini's camp, he was talking about, hey, this is going down so fast. It likely could come back up. But right now there is absolutely downside risk because everything is bad news. And that is trickling through. We're seeing it in consumer sentiment. We're seeing it in Atlanta GDP now.

We're seeing it in earnings revisions are moving lower. And to me, that's the most concerning thing. What is this due to profit growth? And we really do see earnings revised low. lower and no longer hitting profit growth, then that becomes a little bit more concerning to me that, hey, this is serious, this isn't just a sentiment sell-off, this isn't actually, truly companies will be making less profits next year or less profits in the back half of the year than they are making now.

For now, that remains intact and yet to be seen the effect on earnings, but we are having to rapidly repriced like this market is that tariffs are here to stay, and this administration may be sucking back public spending, which the federal government is about 23% of GDP is federal government spending. But again, the House and Senate aren't really cutting that much from the budget. And so we have to go around and say, what's actually going to be implemented? Where do tariffs land? For me right now, it is a little bit of a harsh knee jerk. And there's not everything's broken. If you're paying defense, if you have your dividend stocks, you're looking around the market beyond the magnitude 7 meltdown, it isn't horrible. It feels horrible

because you've got stocks like Tesla that let us up that are absolutely cratering right now. But the broader market, while it's down, is not necessarily this complete washout. And, Victoria, we'll get a few of your picks later on. But, Bill, before you have to go, we had some guests last hour say they're nibbling. One might be nibbling at NVIDIA says it's down to a 20 times multiple. The Google's trading at 16 times earnings. Others are looking at the Mag 7 and kind of broadly seeing a case to be made for putting them on the shopping list. Is there anything like that that you would be doing now?

No, I wouldn't. Again, the point that everybody's missing is the major trend off the March 2020 lows is done. It's over. And typically what happens after these long-term trends finish, you mean revert to fair value. What's fair value on the S&P 500 off the March 2020 lows? It's $4,000 to $4,000. What is fair value in the NASDAQ 100 off the March 2020 lows? It's $15,000.

And the Dow, it's $34,000, $33,000 in there. Even from these levels, Kelly, you could easily. see another 20% downside. So this is just really beginning. To go out there and start trying to catch a falling knife, that has all the risk-reward characteristics of somebody who wanders out into a minefield to pick up a quarter, a little bit to gain, an awful lot to lose. Don't underestimate how much more we could have on the downside. And again, look at what's happened, the personal consumption, consumer confidence. It's fallen through the floor. Nobody in this economy he's going to spend a dollar unless they absolutely have to.

Bill, here's my only, I take your point and appreciate the very clear warning. Let's say that I had a friend who got out of the market a couple years ago because they thought at that point it might be going significantly lower and then it only went higher and higher and higher. You know, there's a lot of people out there who have said, you know, I've tried that before and I'm never sure when is exactly going to be the time and exactly how it's going to play out, you know? Let me, in terms of answering your question, what do you do right now? I'll take, I'll do the same thing.

I'm doing the same thing with my own money that Warren Buffett's doing. The end of 2024, $334.3.3.2 billion in cash and cash equivalence. A record for Berkshire. All right. So if you ask me what to do right now, you can put your money in the front of the U.S. yield curve, make over 4%, beat inflation, and just stay out of this chaos. Let it play itself out. And there'll be plenty of times, Kelly, to get back in the market later in the year of much better levels.

But you have the luxury right now of being able to get over 4% without any risk and then watch this whole thing play out. Because we're in the early stages of this right now. There's no reason to jump in and try to be a hero here. It's called T-Bill and Chill. Exactly. I remember Karen and I talking about this a couple years ago, and here we are again. I really appreciate both you joining us, Bill Strasula, Victoria Green, as I mentioned Victoria, we'll see you for three-stock lunch.

Up next, top CEOs are visiting President Trump and what is A for it? They're supposed to be talking tariffs, AI, chips, and more. But tech stocks are taking a licking today. The NASDAQ down 4%. Tesla, Strategy, and App Leaven are leading the declines. Kathy Woods, Art K is down 8%, 30% off its highs. Its biggest holdings are Tesla, Roku, and K. Coinbase. We'll have more at the White House Tech Summit next.

Welcome back to Power Lunch on a rough day for tech stocks. The NASDA down about 4% for its worst day in almost three years. It's down 10% this year and tech CEOs are at the White House for a meeting with President Trump. For more on what both sides are hoping to get out of this meeting, let's bring in Eamon Jabbers at the White House and Sima Modi at the New York Stock Exchange. Amen, let's start with you. Yeah, look, I mean, the White House says that this is an open-ended meeting. So no particular agenda on the table from their perspective. We know the CEOs of HP, Dell, Intel, Qualcomm are all expected here. We got some arrival video a short time ago of some of those executives coming into the building.

What we don't know is whether we'll see any of this on camera, Kelly. We're told this is closed press as of right now, but it's always a game time decision with President Trump, whether he wants to open these meetings up or not. So it could be that cameras get called in. This meeting was supposed to start about a half an hour ago, but we're told it's running a little bit behind. So at this point, TBD, whether we'll see anything on camera and TBD, whether we'll get any results from the meeting to read out to you after the fact, Kelly. All right. In the meantime, Sima, what do you think the tech world thinks or hopes or is looking to get out of this? Well, Kelly, from the conversations we've had with industry leaders and others who are involved in the organizing of this meeting, tariffs are going to be top of mind, especially given the recent sell-off we've seen in.

the market that have been tied to the uncertainty around tariffs. The leaders that Aymond just highlighted who have attended this meeting all have something to lose if tariffs continue to escalate. The PC manufacturers like HP, we saw HP CEO, Enrique Lores, joined the meeting today at the White House, including Michael Dell, the founder of Dell. Both companies have exposure to China, Kelly, but recently have been making efforts to diversify into Mexico. So now with tariffs on the table for Mexico, that complicates their supply chain. strategy. I was told by one CEO that they're looking for reassurances from President Trump and other government officials as to where they could be safer if tariffs continue to escalate, as in which countries are going to be more insulated than others in the coming months,

because that plays a role, right, in the types of countries they're going to be investing in. Now, beyond the PC manufacturers, this co-CEOES of Intel, also attending this meeting at the White House, it comes just days after Taiwan Semiconductor made that massive pledge to invest buildings. of dollars here in the U.S. And that has raised questions about Intel's ability to continue its efforts to build a foundry here in the U.S. It delayed that plant in Ohio. And there are new questions about how this administration, Kelly, is going to revamp

the CHIPS Act, after President Trump called it a, quote, waste of money. It has been a source of frustration. The CHIPS Act, yes, strategically important to the U.S., but the implementation, no real product coming out of it, billions of dollars going to Intel, the company announcing layoffs last year, people want to see how this act can be changed. Yeah, absolutely. Seema, thanks. And Eamon, let us know if you hear any reaction from the White House. This market sell-up. The Dow was down 900 points a second ago. Yeah, you know, I've been talking to folks inside the building about that, and they're not ready

to comment on it just yet. You saw the president yesterday, Kelly, come out and say on Fox News that he's not watching the stock market, that he's trying to build a strong America with these tariffs, and that means focusing on working class people and rebuilding American jobs in the heartland to this White House. They're not as focused on using the stock market as a mark to market metric of their success as they were in the first term. We'll see how much pain they're willing to endure here before changing course. But so far the signals are this president's willing to accept some stock market pain in order to achieve his goals. Exactly. Yeah, they say they're not watching it, but we'll see how much. But they're watching it. For how much, right, exactly, for how much longer.

Amen, thanks. Seema, appreciate it as well, Simum Modi and Aymond Javers. Brian? Yeah, well, he may not be known for his stock market calls, but he is one of the world's most famous. We'll call him bankers and economists. That is Peter Orzag. He is the chairman and CEO of Lazard. We're going to ask him a very direct question after the break. Why are you here at America's biggest energy conference? We'll get the answer to that and more when Power Lunch returns right after this. All right, welcome back to Power Lunch.

I'm Brian Sullivan at the Zero Week conference in Houston, Texas. Normally we interview oil and gas and energy executives, and we are. by the way, today and tomorrow, but we're also very pleased now to be joined by one of the most famous economists and CEOs in America, if not the world. That is La Jard Chair and CEO Peter Orzag, also OMB director under President Obama, recently co-authoring an opinion piece in the Council on Foreign Relations, Foreign Relations Magazine, about energy addition. Peter, thank you.

We're going to get to all that in just a second. Listen to your finance guy too. Markets are getting destroyed. Can I just get your take on what's happening with the stock market? before we dive into energy stuff. Yeah, I think this is pretty simple, which is the underlying fundamentals of the economy are really strong. There is unfortunately a huge amount of uncertainty right now that is affecting boardrooms

and investors. And I think people could understand tension with China. It's Canada, Mexico, and Europe that is confusing. So the good news is this is a choice. If those issues were resolved in the near term, the underlying fundamentals are really strong. I think we'll get back to a much more auspicious. is market and economy. If this level of uncertainty persists, it's really damaging the confidence and therefore to business investment, M&A, etc. I know you're not a market maker in Palantir or any

of those app-loven or any of those stocks, but I'm sure you and your team watch them. How much of the sell-off do you think is related to tariffs and uncertainty? I think a lot of it. And again, it's specific about what, you know, tariffs in areas that people hadn't anticipated on off. So a big part of its uncertainty, but there's also a part, look, a 25% tariff on Canada and Mexico would have significant economic effects inside the United States. So it's partly the uncertainty and it's partly, wait, are we really doing that? Well, we interviewed the Secretary of Energy earlier, and he said, listen, this is all part of a negotiating tact and kind of echoing your point, Peter, which is this can be turned off as easily as it was turned on. Do you find some

some hope in that that once there is a solution. This is the hope here, or this is why this is actually quite promising if it's resolved in the near term, which is, again, it would be much more challenging if this were reflecting some big imbalance in the economy or some fundamental challenge for U.S. productivity. That's not the case. Instead, this has been created over the past couple months. It could be uncreated, and then we could be back to the races.

If the tariffs are ultimately levied, We get a 25% tariff on Canadian energy coming into the United States or 15%, whatever the number is. Will that have a deleterious effect on the American economy? At those levels, I think there is a deleterious effect, but that's being exacerbated right now by uncertainty about whether or not it's even, is that what's going to happen? So there's one thing we don't know what to plan for. And then the second thing is, once you know what to plan for, yes, tariffs at that kind of level, that would not be good for U.S. economic performance. Well, I appreciate you veering off because my first question was going to be a very simple one, which is, why is Peter Orszag here? This is an energy conference, Peter. You're the CEO of Lazard. So, first of all, we have a huge presence here in Houston. M&A in energy is a big deal. We have a stellar team. That's point one.

Point two is energy is foundational and fundamental to economic growth. All the things we were just talking about, the economy, inflation. Those are driven by energy, let alone the future of AI. And then third, we have long been a thought leader in this field. We've published the levelized cost of energy studies that have gotten a lot of attention. And as you mentioned, I just co-authored a piece with Dan Yergan in foreign affairs, continuing that tradition of trying to provide thought leadership on energy because it's such an important sector. Yeah, I mean, this, your colleague, board member Ray McGuire a couple of years ago, gave me this amazing piece on critical minerals and materials.

You talk about this LCOE, this levelized cost of energy. We're TV, we've got like two minutes. So in a brief way that most of our audience that are not CEOs, your energy executives could understand, what do we get wrong, not we, the media, but what does the investment community often get wrong about energy when we're looking at all in costs? Well, this is what the heart of this article was,

which is that there was, I'll call it, the myth of the immaculate transition, that would be really easy and costless to move to renewable energy. The cost of renewable energy, energy have come down a lot, but we are still relying a lot on fossil fuels and that actually transitioning. So so far it's been an energy addition, not transition, actually getting rid of fossil fuels, while it may be necessary to protect the planet, it's going to be very expensive

and it's going to take a lot of time. You know, we're talking about these critical or some would call them rare earthers. That term has been used incorrectly, critical minerals, materials, metals in Ukraine right now. I've got some interesting news for you, as I'm sure you know. The United States used to be the world's leading producer of lithium. There's a mine in western North Carolina. We used to do all this stuff. Can Lizard be a part of the financing to help make that happen again? Yeah, but a lot of it also, this is the other big thing about the transition. A lot of the necessary electrification requires many of these minerals, and that requires a lot of local mining. So a good example here in the United States, Thacker Pass and Nevada. Huge lithium project, it's the subject of a lot of

local political debate. Same thing in Serbia. Massive new lithium project there, subject of tons of local political debate. How do we solve that though? People say, well, look, we have this stuff here, but yet you can't get the permits. It's not environmental. We don't want to mine. It goes against climate. So guess what? We don't do it here, but then they do it in Congo or Ukraine or wherever where there's not as many controls or rules. I think the fact of the matter is if we want cleaner energy, we're going to have to streamline a lot of the permitting and the regulatory environment, not only on the critical and rare earth, but also on new generating facilities, et cetera. That's all going to have to be part of the package. And that's the point. That is the

discussion that needs to happen, as opposed to this is going to be free and easy. Well, we're going to wrap it up there, Peter, but I think the discussion is happening. I know the last four years was kind of a different discussion about it's all transition. It's going to be free or whatever it might be. Now it may be swung too far at the other side. the answer with everything is probably somewhere in the middle. We shall find out. Peter Orszag, chair and CEO of Lazard. Thank you for your time.

Good to be with you. Really do appreciate that. Thank you. Kelly, back to you. Great interview. Great discussion. Thank you both. Really appreciate it.

Let's get to Bertha Coombs for the CNBC News update. Bertha? Kelly, Secretary of State, Marco Rubio is in Saudi Arabia right now, ahead of talks with Ukraine tomorrow on ending the war with Russia. Rubio said he's optimistic about the talks, but cautioned there are more detail. that need to be worked out, particularly on the mineral rights deal between Washington and Kiev. It's the first meeting between the two countries since President Trump and Ukrainian

President Zelensky's charged Oval Office appearance. The Los Angeles District Attorney withdrew a recommendation today to reduce the life without parole sentences of Lyle and Eric Menendez. He said he can't support the motion from his predecessor because the brothers lied about why they killed their parents in 1989. They were also seeking clemency from California governor Gavin Newsom. And Elon Musk confirmed in a post that a massive cyber attack has caused outages on the platform today on Twitter. He wrote that the attack was done with a lot of resources and suggested a coordinated group or country is involved. thousands of people on X have reported issues accessing the site today.

I still call it Twitter, formerly known as Twitter. It's X. I didn't have that issue, but chat GPT was slow for me, and I was wondering if that was for any, maybe a lot of people using it. I don't know. Bertha, thanks very much for now. We appreciate it. Bertha Coombs, as we head to break, Goldman is on pace for its worst day in a couple of years.

Down almost 6% as financials in general have gotten hit on economic concerns. We're also seeing big declines in some of the retail names. more on that next. Welcome back and take a look at your screens there as the markets continue to sell off throughout the hour. Session lows were down just nearly 950 points just a moment ago. So again, that's about a 2% drop for the Dow. And actually, that's one of the better performers as the S&P sells off about 3%. The NASDAQ drops 4.3% just in one session. So again, that's its biggest one-day drop since at least 2022 right now. And it's just been a steady move lower throughout the morning and into the afternoon afternoon hours.

Let's talk a little bit about strategy now. What should you do on a day like this? We welcome back CNBC contributor Victoria Green. Here to walk us through some trades of Victoria. Well, three stock lunch, but we're not even in good enough mood to call it that. Let's start with Meadow, which already erased that 20-day win streak. The stock is lower now than it was before that streak began. It's below 600.

Is this a chance to pick it up here? It is. To me, this is a screaming buy. I love Meadow. They're one of the only companies. that is actually implementing AI to drive higher revenues. And we saw that through their ad pricing growth, 14% last quarter, meaning they're able to charge more to advertisers because their targeted ads are being

much more effective and selling more goods. And so I look at this company and saying they are utilizing AI to drive higher revenues. Let's say they come in a little light on CAPEX. That could be a good thing where suddenly they have higher earnings than expected. So for me, it's a pickup. There's a ton of good supports here. Still in an up trend. I think this stock could pop back up.

Obviously, you're fighting horrible sentiment. horrible sentiment against the Mac 7 specifically. But if you look at what did meta do wrong, absolutely nothing. And the revenue should be a little bit more insulated than some of the other Mag 7 companies because they're such a diversified between WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook. They have all these different platforms and all the different parts of the world. I look at this and say, I would buy it, absolutely. So you are nibbling on some of these areas that have kind of been whipsawed central areas of the market. What about Coinbase? Now, that got dragged down. Yeah, I was just going to say, Bitcoin's below 80K, but Coinbase is down like 15% today on this move.

It's now down 26% year to date, missed the cut to be added to the S&P. What do you think? I know. It was a bad day for them today. To me, it's still not a buy here. I'd honestly just sell it because it's so highly correlated with Bitcoin and Bitcoin's in a free fall right now. I think you could honestly see a retest to the 60s of Bitcoin. The R square between Coinbase and Bitcoin is like above 0.9. I look at this and just say, I think it's a bad time to be this type of risk. Unfortunately for them, I think they may be retesting their one-year lows around 150, especially if crypto continues to roll over. Also, I'm not sure about their moat. As more and more companies push in, crypto gets more regulated. So much is happening on the derivatives and futures markets

that I'm not sure exactly how their revenue growth is going to play out over the next two to five years, because we may actually see other companies start to pick up trading as crypto is more widely adopted across different platforms. So for me, I know it hurts today. I hate selling on a down day. But this is one of those just because it's low, doesn't mean it can't go lower. All right. So let me ask you about William Sonoma because retail has been another area. I mean, William Sonoma initially popped on its inclusion to the S&P. But of course, on a day like this, it's turned negative.

That said, it's hardly one of the worst offenders in the retail space. So I'm curious what you would do with that one. I mean, there's stocks like Abercrombie. Maybe that's a fashion story. I mean, there's lots of different names. And honestly, William Sonoma's only down 2% right now. I like William Sonoma. It's a buy from me going into earnings next week because I think that,

They've seen the worst of the restoration, not restoration hardware, I'm sorry. West Elm brand, right? The big ticket items, I think the worst is behind them on that. Their sales is better. We expect really brisk holiday sales. And you look at it, they're driven a lot by pottery barn now. You look at their revenue segments as Pottery Barn and Pottery Barn kids, and I think that's so much more defensible, expecting robust holiday sales, expecting a decent outlook.

I'm not sure the big tickets are going to pick up quite as much as we wanted to see. But I look at the stock. It's coming off a tough run. I know it's not quite as cheap as it was, you know, key three last year. But if you're getting exposure to retail, I don't hate this stock. I mean, it's hard to look around and say what won't go down on a day like today. I think there's something like maybe two Dow stocks that are up or something ridiculous. So, yeah, it's a washout day.

But for me, William Sonoma, reporting next week, could certainly see a little bit of upside if they have some good guidance. All right. Victoria, for now, thanks. Appreciate it today. All your thoughts, Victoria Green. Remember, you can always recap three stock lunch on using our QR. code on the website or head over to CMC.com for more. As we head to break, with the Dow down 952 points, now Reddit is also having its worst day ever. It's down almost 16% despite its big run-up last year. NASDAQ down 4%. We'll have more right after this. Welcome back. Dow is now down more

than 1,000 points. This is Session Lowe's. It's about a 2.4% drop. The NASDAQ is down 4.5%, so that's where some of the most intense selling pressure is. We're also seeing some of the Some sell-offs in the consumer and retail space, especially after CNBC's NRF monitor this morning, showed another soft spending patch in February following on January. And that's adding to these broader slowdown concerns. Courtney Reagan has more for us. Court? Hi, Kelly.

So consumer discretionary stocks, it makes sense for all the reasons you said. Under pressure again today, we're worrying about consumers' ability to spend as, of course, other costs rise. Now, last week, many retailers did report the results, including Best Buy and Target. Those were some of the names most notably that expressed concern, the executives, about consumers, willingness to spend on more discretionary items as costs rise on newly tariff goods, and that would particularly impact both Target and Best Buy because of their sourcing. Now, more retailers will likely have sort of a similar chorus this week when they report.

Couple that with numerous surveys indicating consumers are worried about rising prices due to tariffs, and then you're getting this retail stocks stumble. So specialty names are among the worst today. Victoria's Secret, Abercrombie, Down Big. Foot Locker, RH, Gap. Now, you might remember that Gap reported a really strong. wrong quarter last week. That sense, shares rising, but that's now a distant memory. You can see shares down two and a half percent, which is not bad in comparison to others, a footlocker down

9 percent, down more than 13 percent, but still it's notable because the fundamentals at least appeared intact for gap. It doesn't matter, though, those shares in general just selling off with the rest of the group. Wedbush did, however, say that it thought that the selloff is overdone, at least an RH, also calling that out for shares of Chewy as well. Kelly, back over to All right, Courtney, thank you very much. Again, some big declines there. As we track the sell off more broadly, the Dow is down 1,000 and 56 points. NASDAQ, 4.5%.

We'll be right back. Before we go, it's been a brutal hour here for the markets, which are now down more than 1,000 points on the Dow, and about 4.5% more than that for the NASDAQ. Brian will have a lot more coverage from CIR Week tomorrow, and we look forward to that. I appreciate this patient and some great interviews this hour. Closing bell starts right now.