Power Lunch - Energy prices and supply in focus 1/16/26

Episode Date: January 16, 2026

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum joins to discuss the Trump Administration's push for an emergency electricity auction. Semiconductors continue to have strong 2026.And how much longer will Jamie Dimon stay on as JPMorgan Chase's CEO?   Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Another big week for smaller stocks as that group rises again. Welcome to Power Lunch, everybody. Happy Friday. I am Bryant alongside Kelly, the administration, making a power move with a new plan to grow electricity for data centers and try to keep your costs down. But can both really be done at the same time? Interior Secretary Doug Bergam is back with us. He'll talk about that and more. And the race for the next Fed chair is wide open after the president says he'd like to keep NEC director, Kevin.

Hassett in his current role. Hacet, of course, is widely seen as the frontrunner to succeed Jerome Powell, at least until this morning. We'll talk more about that. Plus, can anything stop the semis? The chips are rallying again 400 on the SMHETF. That's another new record high. We'll discuss all of it with Jan Vannack, the CEO of Vanek funds, when he joins us later this hour. All right, happy Friday, everybody. We've got much more on the continued market shift that's sort of defined your investing year. We'll get to that, but let's start with the big story of the day. It's one that impacts you and your home electricity bill, and it's the fight for more power and the battle over affordability. Okay, this is a complex story. We're going to give you the

executive summary. Tens of millions of people along the East Coast stretching into Ohio are likely to face electricity shortages in the next few years. It's because enough power for millions of people was shut down over the last couple of years. Then you layer on top of that, increased demand for data centers, and kind of a toxic brew of higher demand, lower availability of power. Enter the White House. They want the region's grid operator known as PJM to hold a big emergency auction that would essentially help fund the construction of many new power plants.

The questions are, will PJM actually go along with this recommendation? And if so, how quickly can we build power plants and battery backups and at what price? Interior Secretary Doug Berger may have the answer to those and more questions. And joins us now, Mr. Secretary, but a busy week for you. Thank you for coming back on twice in a week. It's our honor. Appreciate you being here. We have a statement from PJM.

It's kind of a word salad. It doesn't really say much. Have you talked to them? Have they agreed that they would hold this auction? Well, first of all, Brian, I want to say again, this is a thanks to President Trump's leadership on the topic of affordability. We're even having this conversation because today we did announce at the White House 13 state governors spanning that area that covers the PGM market area you described. 13 governors, eight Democrats, five Republicans signed together a statement of principles being delivered to the PGM Board of Governors saying here's a set of principles we would like you to follow to achieve both. of these goals. And number one, affordability for the 65 million people that live in that grid area.

And number two, make sure they have the power to run the manufacturing, the AI factories that are being built, and the cities and the communities that are growing in that region. So we can do both. Other parts of the country are doing both. This is an area, as you said, PGM in December, unprecedented, had a failed auction in December. Furk has asked them for a response. That response coming soon. This is 13 state leaders who feel they've been cut out of the process saying, here are the principles led by the White House, led by President Trump's concern about affordability. Again, so unprecedented problem, unprecedented leadership by President Trump.

Yeah, but again, PJM is going to kind of do what it wants. I mean, it can listen to these recommendations or not. Again, they sent us a statement. And the first line is PGM is reviewing the principles set forth by the White House and governors. Then it has a bunch of stuff about we're going to take a look at it. So do you think PJM will hold the auction? I think PGM will hold the auction. I think their options at this point are quite limited because we heard this morning from governors, states may decide, hey, we are going to pull out.

I mean, Texas runs its own grid. They're not participating. This could be a collapse of PJM if they're not willing to put in together, shed the bureaucratic principles that led us to this spot. This was driven by the ideology of the previous administration under the Biden administration, the climate extremists, as you said in your lead in, shutting down baseload power, 17 gigawatts of power shut down under the Biden administrations of baseload power and then replacing it with very expensive taxpayer subset of. intermittent forms of electricity. And you've got less reliability at higher prices. So consumers lose, businesses lose. This is a, we, President Trump inherited a giant mess in terms of our electrical grid. He's been turning it around. This is an area of the country that's had some of the highest price increases in the country. We have other places in the country that didn't go

wholeheartedly into the climate extremism agenda. And that's why you see places in this country, including my home state of North Dakota, electricity places are one-third of what they are in North Dakota as they are in New England. So ideology drives politics, politics drives policies, and the policies were bad for reliability, bad for America, certainly bad for consumers on affordability in the states that went all in to the green new scam thinking versus common sense policy driven by physics and driven by economics. President Trump's bringing us back to that. It's Kelly here. I hope you don't mind if I jump in, Secretary. It's good to see you again.

And, you know, I'm talking with Brian before the show because I understand that bills are going up and we've talked on this program about whether to just write households checks. I don't know who funds that big tech or you name it. It wouldn't actually be that expensive to give people $100 or even $1,000 a year. But that's not going to solve the issue of blackouts, right? It's one thing if I can, you know, do a little bit more to pay those escalating bills. But if I'm not going to have power, which is one of the risks here, that's a big problem. So from that point of view, I ask, do we need the wind farms? Do we just need whatever power source can quickly come online here? Because no one wants power outages. Well, it's a, yeah, no one wants power outages, but the intermittent sources of wind and solar are part of the problem on the reliability.

That combined with shutting down the baseload. But when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining, that's often not the time when we are at risk. When the sun goes down, there's zero solar right now in the system in PJM. And wind, as we know, even you're reporting, I'm sure, on companies in Europe that are in this business that are saying we missed our quarterly earnings because it wasn't as windy as we thought it was going to be. And so these are not reliable sources of power in the face of increasing power demand from consumers, from businesses, and from the reindustrialization of the U.S., whether it's advanced manufacturing or manufacturing of intelligence itself. in an AI factory. So it's been part of the problem, the overrotation to the renewables and the shutting down of the baseload was creating the higher prices.

When we have these shortages, in the areas that adopted the most intermittent, the most, quote, renewable, which is not really renewable because it's what it's made of, but the most renewable, whether it's the UK, whether it's Germany, or whether it's New England states, or whether it's California. These are the places today that they adopted the most. They've got the highest prices for electricity, and they've got the lowest reliability, the highest risk for blackout. So it's part of the problem. It's not the solution. Yeah, can you explain in sort of plain English as you do, Mr. Secretary?

How do we get here? I understand, let's say, the last couple of years, a lot of these power plants were taken offline because they were old. So just looking past four years ago, how do we get to a point where so much of our energy grid on the East Coast, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, going to Chicago, is 75, 85 years old. It's dilapidated. It's maxed out. Here in New Jersey now, we're buying power from Pennsylvania because we're not making enough. How did we get to this point?

Because without electricity, literally and figuratively, nothing works. Well, we got to this in part because there was a, I'll call it the climate extremists. Those folks lived in one party in our country, the Democrat Party. People got elected on this thing. We're going to campaign on shutting down baseload. Vote for me. I'm shutting down baseload. Vote for me.

I'm for this transition. You know, the big scam was there isn't, you can't transition from baseload to something that is subsidized and intermittent and end up with more power. We were actually, we were moving to less power as opposed to more power. We're in an era not of energy transition, but energy addition. We have more demand that's coming. And I think the second thing is the markets didn't respond to it. People, they created rules bureaucratically at the level like PGM where they said,

if you want to build, quote, you're going to build this renewable, highly subsidized intermittent stuff, you know, we'll give you a firm contract for 15 years. But if you want to build a gas plant, we'll only price it for one year. No one can raise the capital to build something where you've got one year of price continuity. And so it was the rules, the bureaucratic rules, were designed. and organized to shut down fossil fuels and hydrocarbons and go for the stuff that was intermittent, unreliable, weather dependent, and highly subsidized. And so we brought it on ourselves. And the map was already laid out. We just had to look at Germany in the UK where they've deindustrialized.

They're producing less electricity. The prices are three times as high. And that's happening in parts of America. And one of those parts is the parts that are served by PGM. So, Taking out the politics side of it, which I know is hard, but let's just try to do that. We go back to the model. Companies are going to build stuff, climate, whatever. Companies are going to build stuff if it makes the money, I think. If they can, if they're able to build something, they will. Is the model then with grid operators like a PGM?

Is that an outdated model that needs to change? Well, there's certainly questions about how we do the governance of these, you know, regional grid organizations, because some of parts of our country have said do not have this problem. Some of parts of our country have got lower prices and higher reliability, and other places do. So politics did drive the policies, and policies are driving the unreliability, and they drove the prices up. Again, President Trump understands this is why he created the National Energy Dominance Council. Dominance is about abundance.

We're focused on abundance. How do we get more power? How do we build great things in America? How do we build more power plants in America? And how do we do that to keep the prices down for Americans? The statement of principles this morning that were put forward made sure that none of the extra power that's being built is going to be inappropriately put on the backs of the consumers. It's going to make sure that prices stay where they are. And if you've got hyperscalers and others that are coming in, this allows them.

They can build off the grid. They can build off the grid. co-locate with an intelligence manufacturing data center next door, they don't have to build transmission. It's co-located. They can ship their final product around the world and around the country in a fiber optic cable. We have to allow them to come on and bring power. And we've got cases like was shared by Indiana today. They've got a case there where, you know, one of the hypersalers, Amazon is building a tremendous amount of power, but they're building more power than they need for the data center. They're actually contributing. In North Dakota, we built a data center

that would help lower the consumer prices for the people in that region. So with the right policies, we can do both in this country. It's being done in parts of our country today, but we need to be sure to make it done because if you're talking about from Virginia to Pennsylvania and 65 million people, we've got to get the policies that match up to that important part of our country. President Trump cares about that affordability. That's why he tasked us to lead the way with this effort, and that's how we got 13 governors from these different.

states all signing on to the same statement of principles. This kind of leadership was not happening in the last administration, President Trump taking a direct role in making sure that we can do both of these things. We've got to win the A arms race and we've got to keep prices down for consumers. Interior Secretary, Doug Bergam, Mr. Secretary, I appreciate you coming back on the program on short notice. Thank you very much. Thank you, Brian. Thank you, Kelly. All right. So, folks, we didn't reach out to PJM. We're going to show you their comments, what they said. They said they are reviewing the principles set forth by the White House and governors. The board decision resulting from a multi-month stakeholder process on integrating large-loaded

additions will be released later today. We look forward to that. The board is deliberated on this issue since the end of that stakeholder process. We will work with our stakeholders to assess how the White House directive aligns with the board's decision. Kelly, I would add one thing that about a year and a half ago, PJM, to their credit, had a report, although it came out on a Friday night, like a dump, you know, like sort of put out bad news late on a Friday because people are at the movies or whatever. that said that the West East Coast would likely have power shortages within seven years.

Yeah, this is why we're talking. It's one thing for there to be bills escalating. It's another thing if there's no power altogether. If this emergency PJM auction were to happen, still a big if, who could be the beneficiaries? Let's ask our next guest, Julian DeMolen Smith, who covers power and utilities at Jeffries. Julian, welcome to you. Hey, thank you both very much. Appreciate the opportunity.

Yeah. So talk us through, especially. struggling to wrap my head around this. I mean, how we've reached an emergency, I guess, in terms of trying to make sure we're going to have enough capacity to keep my lights out. I live in this area every day, is that right? So talk us through this in the companies you think that could benefit. Yeah. So let's just set the stage here. Really, this is about pricing and economics, right? Leave the politics to the side. You needed to pay. We weren't paying enough earlier. And really, we needed to see prices rise. We got to the point here where pricing was inadequate. We weren't

building the gas plants, even though we're sitting right on top. of the Marcellus and Utica gas formations. And the reality is this has gone on hiatus. And that's how we built up to this. And the data centers was the cherry on top. So realistically, that's how we got here. The reality is now we're doing emergency actions, which in many ways, is very much expected.

If I can just jump in here, Julian, for a second, how urgent is the situation? If you were in the White House, how would you be describing it? This is absolutely urgent, right? From a certain perspective, what's going to change if you don't act? We were sitting here with stakeholder meetings and bureaucratic responses for a while. this is frankly a great action in terms of just get kind of the chase. Look, is this ideal from a market perspective? No, absolutely not.

But from a serve perspective, look, we needed to act collectively. Obviously, Davis says want to come. You don't want to disadvantage the region collectively. And so this is a logical action. In many ways, it was choreographed together to make this happen. And frankly, look, the question now is you're doing an emergency auction once. How many more times are you going to see this happen? This is going to be an ongoing fashion until you step in and create a more ongoing

sustainable structure to address this market. I know we're so short on time. We showed names like Fluance, NRG, Williams companies who thinks would benefit. Why is, for the layperson, why is Constellation down 11% on this news? Why is Vistra down? Yeah, look, these are incumbents, right? You're talking about like pouring in new supply into the market, right? At the end of the day, look, the reality is if you're an incumbent, you didn't want new

price, your new supply coming to the market, you're going to be down because you thought we were going to be short for a while longer. And that's the reality if I'm sitting there as incumbent. Now, who's going to benefit? I'm sitting there as NRG with a major partnership with GV. If I'm GV and I'm looking at this point of the cycle, you thought GV performed well last year? Look at what's going to happen with the orders they're about to get in the coming year on the back of this.

If you think this cycle on the power side is over, take a look at this auction. This is the largest procurement of U.S. power in its history we're looking at. This is the time to get involved in building the pits and shovels, the construction companies, all the way to the equipment side of the equation. Right, GV, NRG. And by the way, a newcomer to this conversation, Williams, WMB, gas company once upon a time, hybrid power developer now, their analyst in a few weeks is really going to show people how far we've come on this conversation. So stay tuned on that one in particular in coming weeks.

Look, nobody could have broken this down like you just did. In that amount of time as well, Julian, and for that, we are greatly, greatly appreciative. Julian Dumlin Smith, joining us from Jeffries. Thank you. All right. So if we just kind of talked about it, and I want to show you something, Kelly. because, you know what, we know that Secretary Bergam's got his views and climate, whatever. By the way, can you imagine the inversion we had five years ago

went from phasing out fossil fuels to basically phasing out wind power? But everybody at the time warned about what would happen as we tried to make that transition. Well, everybody now says they warned about it five years ago. It's amazing. It's a lot of that in the media. But I want to take a look at whatever you think about renewables, the battery makers, they're soaring today. and it's not just today.

Remember all the way back to September 18th on this very show, we interviewed the CEO of EOS Energy. EOS, New Jersey Company, makes utility scale battery backups right here in the great state of New Jersey and also Pittsburgh. If you liked what you heard

and bought EOS, congratulations, it is doubled since that interview. It went from just under nine to just about 17 and a half, so not quite a double, but a very close to being. a double on EOS. You got Bloom Energy up as well today. Fluence, who I know that Julian was going to talk about. You kind of touched on that as well. Is there anything more to say about their position?

Well, not just make the power. Put it somewhere. You're going to produce it. I see. We produce more power than we need at certain hours. The problem is matching up demand and supply to where, and then what do you do if you have too much power? You store it. Absolutely. It's nice to be able to do that, have a little excess in reserve. You've got a big enough storage. You got up the batteries that would support that. Well, Blume Energy, too. Those stocks have just done this and printed money. All right. After the break, President Trump signaling that Kevin Hassett may stay in his role as the top economic advisor for the White House. What does that mean then for the race for the next Fed chair? Is it, and then there will be three? We'll talk about it next.

The odds for the next Fed chair shifted sharply today after some notable comments from the president. I see Kevin's in the audience, and I just want to thank you. You were fantastic on television today. I actually want to keep you where you are if you want to know the truth. Kevin Hassett is so good. I'm saying, wait a minute. If I move them, these Fed guys, certainly the one we have now, they don't talk much. I would lose you.

It's a serious concern to me. After that, according to Kalshi, Hassett's odds to replace Powell have dropped precipitously. He's all the way down in second place now at 17%. Warsh is the frontrunner at 60%. Waller 13 readers on the board at 9. What does it all mean for the market? Let's put that question to our guest who's here on set with us, the CEO of Vanek funds Jan Vanek. We were debating last hour, did the bond market react to this or not?

I mean, the 10 years of 421, is that because of this or stronger eco-data? So how are you processing it all? I mean, I do think, obviously, the Fed Chair selection makes a big difference to the markets. Scott Besson gave a talk or did communications in Q4 that I think the market is really missing. And he wrote an article called Gain a Function Fed that basically said the Fed went nuts during COVID and it's stimulated for way too long. And he's given a very strong academic case. He quotes articles from MIT and the San Francisco Fed, like not his home base. And he's laid the intellectual groundwork for a much less interventionist Fed.

So we're having a paradigm shift kind of regardless. Is that why yields are rising? or is that, what should the impact of that be if it comes to pass? Well, I think the administration would give itself an A for its performance last year on the fiscal and monetary front because the 10-year came from a peak of 4-8 down to 4-1-4-2. So I think they're very happy. In fact, in that interview, he thought interest rates were normal, which means they're not going to go nuts and try to cut the short term.

Because I think they realize that they're graded on the 10-year or the 30-year. And that's where Japan's interest rates are really rising, and the U.K. is not looking great either. So the country's in trouble. It's the longer end. How much, we talked about it a little bit yesterday with Howard Lutnik, Commerce Secretary. A lot of cabinet members on this week. Indeed. Rocking and rolling. This dollar debasement trade that's been going on, the U.S. dollar's weakening, but also the yen is weakening.

The euro has been strengthening. How much is this factoring into your thinking about how and where to invest? Yeah, I don't feel strongly about the dollar this year. First of all, we don't really make currency calls. That's pretty hard. No, but you have an ETF around semiconductors. Those companies are based in Asia largely. Yeah. There's a huge amount of currency indirect exposure. No, so what I was going to say is the U.S. economic growth looks like it's going to be really good this year, right? 2%, 3%, maybe 4%. Lutnik said five yesterday. Yeah, I know. The administration is talking five and six. You know, anyway, that's a sort of side conversation. Is that a no? Is that a 4.1 from the Bulgarian judge?

Like, you're not, you're not, you're not all in with the 5%, Yon? So the Atlanta Fed does this, you know, GDP now cast. And suddenly it went up to like 5 plus percent for the fourth quarter. But a lot of that was net exports. So I'm like, I don't really know what that. That's something we appeared down in nowhere. So listen, so what I'm saying is if economic growth is good, that's not going to be super weak for the dollar. So I think, you know, I don't see a cell.

something strong magnetic pull for the dollar this year. But we love gold for like many, many years. And that's sort of the context in a little bit of every time the U.S. does something crazy, that, you know, the rest of the world's like, I just want more gold. Do you get itchy at all from a trading point of view when you watch? You know when you feel like a genius? You go, it's nice, but is it also a sign that that when we know that there are hedge fund participants in that trade across all the medals, do you ever harvest gains?

Or is it the kind of thing where you just say, this is now? going to basically be the new floor for prices and you don't worry about it. No, we literally do that. We have model portfolios that we manage for financial advisors and clients, and we have been selling gold over the last six months, basically, because it's such a big holding for us. And listen, it could go sideways for a year. But I just think in the context of where India and China is such a large part of the world,

they are not dollar-based economies. And what else? I think it's gold. I think gold is the currency. It's like 100 years ago. Your rare earth ETF as well is four. lying this year? I mean, again, maybe that's not a great sign, but it's just a sign that the world is kind of fragmenting. Yeah, I think that's, so I called nuclear nosebleed levels, you know, three or four

months ago. I think rare earths are kind of at nosebleed levels now. So. Yeah, doubling. As you can see on the chart. They have come well down off their highs, though. Some of these rare earth, some of the more speculative rare earth companies, yeah. We did a segment in October, and they're down like 70% since that. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Well, well, they're pre-revecuitable. They don't make any money. They may never, we're rooting for every company to win, but they may never make any money. Well, we want to have processing of rare earths in the U.S. And the good news for that is it only takes a year, two, maybe three at the outside to build a processing plant.

It's way harder to get a mine up and running where you're talking many years for permitting than actually just doing the processing. So that's the good news. It's not like nuclear where you have to wait five years. Well, listen, you can't get enough gold, but we can't get enough Jan Vanek. So can we ask you to hang out through the commercial break to the next block? So I want to ask you more about semiconductors, maybe more about gold, and then about your annual tie, because I do wonder if something's missing every year he designs a tie. Okay.

Can you hang out until next hang out through the next break? Love to. Thank you. Fantastic. All right, we're going to get the on in a second. Let's get quickly to the bond market, benchmark 10-year yield, moving a little bit higher this week. Close of 4.2% or higher.

It has not occurred, has not occurred. Since September 3rd. Did you know that, Kelly? We haven't had a 4.2% 10-year yield since September 3rd. It feels longer than that. To me, it feels existential. So Rick's going to calm me down. I would not had a day over September 4th.

If you asked me, the two-year yield also moving up today. It's approaching 3.6%. Indeed. We're going to talk semis in just a moment. The SMH hitting another record high. Jan Vanek will be back to discuss his outlook for that space right after the break. All right, let's do a quick Friday RBI. And for this random but interesting stat, we're going to highlight one of the hottest stocks, frankly, we've ever seen.

It's Sandisk. You know the company. It's a memory and storage maker. It's been public now for less than a year, at least in this iteration, who's spun off of Western Digital. And just this year, Sandisk is up about 70%. That's in 12 trading days. And in the last six months, Sandisk has printed investors' money. It's up about 800% in that time.

Storage, memory, they're seen as key to the AI story. You need, after all, some place to keep and store all that data. Sandus, former parent Western Digital, also soaring, which blows us right back nicely into our guest, Jan Vanek, the CEO of his own company, which of course runs the Vanek Semiconductor ETF, which we kind of loosely referenced. I mean, it's not just sand is. They're just one. Like, what do you, you said you thought rare earths were a little bit too hot. Do you worry about the semiconductors? I mean, look, what I love about the fourth quarter to me, it gave us some real big buying opportunities. And it's really for the

weaker sisters, the Open AI family. Look at Oracle stock price. Look at core weave. Look at some of the Bitcoin miners. They correct it hard. Wait, let me back up for a second. The Open AI family, Yes. You think this is, that basket includes the likes of Oracle and am I getting that right? Yeah, yeah. And you think that that's where the market was rotating away from with the rise of Gemini and the TPUs and everything. You've got two categories. You've got really well-funded people like Meta or, you know, Google or something like that, right? They can do a lot of the CAPEX out of cash flow. And then you have companies that started to borrow money. And like the Bitcoin miners are the extreme edge of needing to finance anything of the upgrade of their data facility. to something that's reliable and for AI.

So what does that tell you? I'm just saying those stocks really corrected a lot and became, if you believe in the AI trend, they became a great buying opportunity. So you would lean in on that. Yes, that's what we called for in our quarterly outlook. Huh, interesting.

What could trip that up? So everyone is worried about the overbuild of data centers or maybe the shortage of electricity, and we keep saying the demand, the underlying tech demand, for tokens for AI processing is insatiable. We've got two years of visibility, we think, into this demand trend. So we love it when the market gets concerned about something.

They'll get concerned about the efficiencies of LLMs or power usage or the ability to have – they'll have concerns. But TSM came out a couple of days ago with their earnings. These huge companies, like a $2 trillion market cap company, right? Putting up 35 percent gains, yeah. Yes. And their margins are expanding. So their margins, they just make stuff, but their margins have gone from a level of about 50% to 60%.

So they're becoming higher quality. And they're growing. They're huge. They're growing at 30% a year. It's amazing. So this semi-index, having done what it's done, you think there's a lot more to go than it sounds like. I think, look at Nvidia stock. It looks like it's dead in the water.

It's not. I mean, the stock is dead in the water, right? But it's growing, just like TSMC, like TSMC and Nvidia are, or, or, you know, joined at the hips. So there's no way that one is growing without the other. It's getting cheaper, Kelly. Forward earnings, it's as cheap as it really has traded in the last five years. So very happy to own it. It's crazy. Quickly, I want to, can we just zoom in on the tie? Yon is famous for every year he makes a tie that sort of symbolizes the theme. The theme of the year. Correct. And you've had a lot of stuff. It's been great. You've been doing this for, for how long?

Like 15 years. 15 years. So this year is a little more complicated. You've got Alexander Hamilton, Yep, FDR. YFDR? He saved the banking system. Got stable coins. Right. And the 250th, that's Roman numerals. CCL, the 250th anniversary of, yeah, the signing of Declaration of Independence this year.

What's the general macro theme on the Van Eck tie? Is this available for retail purchase? This is a history theme tie. It is very historical. I hate to lean into that, but that's really what it is. And is this available for retail purchase? It is on the Vanek-a-Carro website, but we give it to clients. Is it actually available for purchase on that?

It is because people like them. It's on eBay, too. And what was the first, do you remember what the first one is you ever did? Alexander Hamilton and the $10 bill. Remember, he created our financial system, and they were going to kick him off the currency under Obama administration. And killed in a ill-fated. First off, who duels he did, ill-fated, right down the road here, by the way, in Wehawk in New Jersey's where Aaron Burr...

My question, speaking of that, is whether stable coins kind of took the excitement out of the Bitcoin story a little bit. We've talked a lot about this over the years. What's your outlook for crypto right now? Enthusiastic. A lot of crypto got trash last year. The average token was down 57%. Ethereum and Salon didn't hit all-time highs, only Bitcoin did. But Bitcoin was down on the year, so it really broke its four-year-having cycle.

So a lot of things going on, but I think they're just in a, I think Bitcoin in particular is in a bare market. We haven't sold any. In fact, we buy kind of on dips right now. But it could be a while for, you know, it's sort of the time for Bitcoin to be in a consolidation market. Yeah, it's still at 95. So, you know, it's not that bad. And the use of Ethereum is going up. It's just they're losing pricing power. So a lot of people are using it. We'll see. All right. Jan Venneck, thank you very much. You appreciate your time. All your thoughts today. And before we go, another sign that losing can be gaining. Novo Nordisk shares are popping right now because of encouraging data around its weight loss pill for Wee Govi. The shares are up nearly 9% today and up 20% so far this month, which if the month ended now would be its best month since 2002.

And as you can see in the meantime, Eli Lilly's shares have gone the other direction dipping about 2%. Jamie Diamond making his 20th anniversary mark as CEO of J.P. Morgan this month. And he signaled he could stay for at least another five years. A close look at his tenure as CEO and what his leadership means for the bank. That's next. Welcome back. The future of Jamie Diamond as J.P. Morgan Chase's CEO is getting a lot of buzz on Wall Street. Yesterday during an event at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce,

Carlisle co-chairman, David Rubinstein, asked Diamond how long he plans to remain in the top job. Take a listen. The question you get asked every day, five times a day, is how much longer do you want to do this? And the answer is five more years? Yeah, at least. About five more years? I love what I do. It's up the board how long I do it.

It was all that I have the energy and the spit in the eye and the fire in the gut. Yeah, I want to do it. Let's talk about that statement about his future and what's been going on with the banks this week. Mike Mayo is managing director and senior banking analyst at Wells Fargo. Was he kidding or being facetious or is this a genuine statement? Well, my view is Jamie Diamond would like to stay another five years. and if so, I think that would be good for J.P. Morgan's shareholders. I consider Jamie Diamond the $50 billion man.

And that's because if he were to leave, I think the shares would decline maybe 5%. And you're talking about a market cap. I think J.P. Morgan has a chance to be the first $1 trillion market cap bank. Where are they now? Over $900 billion. Are they really? Wow. Yeah, so you're close to, you know, striking distance. He's had a legendary run, which you use that word.

Very few people get that while they're still at it. Is Warren Buffett-ask, Elon Musk, ask, and what he's meant to that bank and what he's done with that. These aren't presidential terms. He doesn't have to leave. He can say as long as he wants, right? This is who Jamie Diamond is. Okay, this is identity. I mean, he is a generational CEO.

And if you look at the results, J.P. Borgon has had best-in-class growth, efficiency, returns, and especially stock price performance. What do they do better than other people? Like, what's the Jamie Diamond, JP Morgan special sauce? Because Goldman Sachs is also hitting new highs constantly. So is it those two and kind of everybody? City Group's doing well. What do they do better, though? Well, Citigroup is my number one pick.

They're worst in class. And under Jane Frazier, they're going back to becoming a more normal company. And you can make a lot of money on a stock price. That's my number one pick. But the two best in class firms are JPMorgan and Goldman Sach. Do you know what they do better? It's the feedback loop. They're always talking about what they don't do best.

And a lot of other companies talk about how we're doing great, we're doing great. We're in the middle of earning season, by the way, this week. And all these banks that are subpar performers go, look at us. We're doing so well. Whereas, you know, Goldman Sachs says, hey, we want to do better in Asia. J.P. Morgan will say, you know, in some sort of trading in some country somewhere, they're number three. They want to be number one. They are always, they're never satisfied.

I love that. And that's what J.P. Morgan does. Jamie Diamond's on top of it. And I didn't like the answer Jamie Diamond gave me when I said, why are you spending $9 billion more this year? And he said, trust me. And I'm like, well, trust but verify. But he has earned a degree of trust because if there's an issue with J.P. Morgan,

don't you have the feeling that Jamie Diamond will be on top of that in a nanosecond? So they're more intense. And being in the office, I mean, that's part of that intensity. And they've gained share in all their major lines of business. So this is a best in class global banks. It's right now the best bank that I've ever covered in my 35 years. What? Name another bank that's done better than J.P. Morgan.

I can't name a bank. It's you're the analyst. It's Mike Mayo. So what's going on this week? I mean, if you just, you know, these declines, we saw coincident with a lot of the president's announcements throughout their earnings season. Is it worth even wasting any oxygen on why they're down 5% this week? Or is there something meaningful in there?

Well, at first you had the proposal for a credit card rate cap, all right? So I think that's fading as the weekend here a little bit. We'll see what President Trump has to say next week about that. So that hasn't gone away. You have an expectation that earnings would continually be revised higher. I actually lowered my numbers on JPMorgan because they are spending more, and so I'm being conservative. Just because of their best bank I've ever covered, you know, as of now,

doesn't mean that'll be the case in one, three or five years. So I'm never satisfied based on a past track record. But having said that, we are in, like, the earlier stages still of a multi-year earnings growth, multi-year deregulation, generation. Even if Powell doesn't leave, even if the Fed Chair, if Fed Board doesn't change, even if we don't get what was hoped on that front, and maybe we will. When it comes to bank regulation, I think almost everybody agrees. There's been too much bureaucracy, too much red tape,

too much uncertainty about the rules around the capital banks have to hold. Everybody agrees on those parts. And that creates more confidence about when you're making your plans. And let banks think about being banks and serving their customers as opposed to. Let banks be banks. No, that was the famous. Let Trump be, anyway. I take your point.

As opposed to regulatory box checking, let banks think about serving their customers. All right. Mike, thanks for joining us today. Really appreciate it. Sure. Mike Mayo with Wells Fargo Securities. All right, let's get now with Pippa Stevens with a CNBC, News Update. Pippa. Hey, Brian. President Trump thanked the Iranian government this afternoon

and said he greatly respected Tehran for not following through on executions on some 800 political prisoners. It came after the president suggested earlier in the week the U.S. might strike Iran if its government carried out mass executions in response to widespread anti-government protests. Human rights groups have reported thousands killed during the recent unrest. A deportation flight carrying Venezuelan migrants arrived today in Venezuela for the first time since the U.S. captured President Nicholas Maduro roughly two weeks ago. Officials said the flight was bringing around 200 people from Arizona. And striking nurses in New York City say they resumed contract talks with another major hospital system after negotiations

with New York Presbyterian officials ended last night with very little progress. The union says it will meet with counterparts at three Mount Sinai hospitals today, which is the fifth day since 15,000 nurses walked off the job. They're calling for better pay. Staff. raffing ratios and stronger protections against workplace violence. Kelly? All right, Pippa, thank you, Pippa Stevens. Coming up, a winter without snow, not here, but how one of the most iconic ski destinations in the world is feeling the chill from that. It's after this. This is a live feed of Vail Mountain in Colorado.

As you can see, some snow is falling as skiers are hitting the slopes, but it's been a tough ski season, to say the least. And an investor update, Vail says visits are down 20% this season and mention that in the Rocky Snowfall is down nearly 60% below the 30-year average. Our next guest is the biggest bull on the street. Patrick Skolls is the lodging and leisure analyst at Truis. It's great to see you. Thank you, Kelly. I thought you'd be on a ski slope or something to join us.

I wish. Doing your channel checks sounds kind of fun if you're a skier. It's not like, I mean, there's snow in Japan. There's snow here in Vermont. It's just not in Colorado. So what are the company's options at this point? Well, it's been a tough season, and it's probably going to continue to be a tough season. The good news for Vail, though, two things.

One, more so than ever before, they've pre-sold their epic pass, basically locked in a fair amount of their revenues ahead of the season. And number two, if we compare and contrast, the last time they had a mediocre at best season about 10 years ago, they've geographically diversified since then. They got a lot in New England now. They have more up in, excuse me, over in Europe. And as you mentioned, you know, the snow is good over there. The shares are up 6%. But they've fallen by half in five years. Wow.

They're down 50% in five. What's wrong? More people are snowing. They sell out. I ski. I see the hour long lift lines and the stock keeps going down. They've had some operational issues in the last couple of years. What's changed, though, in the last nine months?

they've brought back their superstar CEO, the guy who really introduced the Epic Pass, turn the industry around. And that's really the hope here, that you can bring in your former hero, make it better. Rob Katz. That's right, Rob. And is that why you're optimistic on the stock? That's one of the reasons. The other is it trades at nine times EBITDA.

I think the underlying assets are at least 12 to 13. But it's going to take a creative and aggressive guy like Rob. from a private equity background to figure out a way to monetize this company. Maybe there's some asset sales or some asset light opportunities, but that's for him to get paid and to figure out. So we buy the stock? I would say is it rates in my buy ratings. I would say it's in the middle, middle of my rankings.

I like it. It's not my most love. The one I like the most is called Choice Hotels. recently upgraded that. I definitely wouldn't sell it here. I don't see a lot of downside, but I think this season is going to be tough from here on out, to be honest with you. Look, it's a tough business, right? No one can forecast the weather. So you'd think, if anything, okay, a bad snow season gives you an excuse to buy a stock on the cheap, unless we're going to face this time and again. Yeah. I mean, it's far going back to your question. It definitely is a

great value stock. I just don't know if there's an immediate catalyst here. You're probably going to have to wait a little bit longer to get upside. Are you making a consumer call? Because skiing is incredibly expensive and it's gotten more so. Choice Hotels is a more mid to low level hotel chain. So is that a call on the economy? Well, it's a call on easier comps coming up. To quote the late great Bob Weir, their consumer segment, which is the economy,

really went to hell in a bucket last year. And we see really easy comps coming up for them. sentiment was horrible on this stock by the end of the year. It's a great business model. It's just had some challenges with their sector as far as the economy, consumer. But we do see it getting better as the year progresses. Our call was basically, hey, it's going to get some better investor love on it. It's really cheap.

I was going to say green shoots. You want those in this stock, but not on the ski one. I'm careful to use the word green shoots because there's been a lot of promises on green shoots. And false starts. But I will, you know, I'll go out here in public television and say, I do see some green shoots in my research for choice hotels. Patrick, thank you. Thank you. Appreciate you coming in.

Patrick's goals. More power lunch after this. Hey, I'll see you on the 4 o'clock today, but thanks for watching Power Lunch. It has been a big week, and we will not see you Monday. We'll see you back here on Tuesday and a big week for Davos and earnings coming up as well. That's right. Closing that starts right now.