Power Lunch - Is the market moving on from Iran War too soon? 4/23/26

Episode Date: April 23, 2026

Intel reports after the bell. Kate Rooney sits down with OpenAI Chief Revenue Officer Denise Dresser.  And is X-Energy a bellwether for future nuclear company IPOs? Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Stocks turning negative in the past hour on a report that one of the key Iranian negotiators has resigned from peace talks. Welcome to Power Ledge alongside Steve Leasman. I'm Kelly Evans. Brian is off today. Markets digesting this latest headline out of the Middle East as concerns about the future of negotiations are now in some question. Two voices weigh in today. Joe Tannius as chief investment strategist at Northern Trust Asset Management and Timmer-Urbano-Witz is chief investment strategist at Innovator from Goldman Sachs Asset Management. Plus, Open AI rolling out a new version of Chat GPT, the latest move in a high-stakes race to turn cutting-edge AI into durable revenue and deeper enterprise adoption coming up. An exclusive interview with Denise Dresser, its new chief revenue officer and Intel reporting quarterly results after the bell shares are up more than 200% in the last year. Now comes the test. Can earnings and guidance justify this run?

We begin with breaking news out of the Middle East that's dragging down the market. correspondent. Amon Javers has the details. Amen. Yeah, Steve, that's right. What we're looking at here is a report from an Israeli publication N12 News. And they are saying that the Speaker of the Iranian Parliament, Muhammad Galibath, has resigned from the negotiating team. We can't independently corroborate that. But this is the report that's getting a lot of attention on the street right now. They're saying he has resigned from that negotiating team and that there is now chaos in the Iranian leadership. that is a power struggle to determine who is actually in charge. Now, Galabov was one of the figures who was leading those negotiations in Pakistan, so him stepping down does change the complexion of whoever it is who's going to be dealing with the U.S. side. We don't know who's going to take his place.

N12 News is reporting now that this is coming under pressure from the IRGC, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is seen as a much more hawkish faction inside the Iranian government. So maybe that explains the move that we're seeing in markets here, guys, as you look at that downturn sharply, and you see now bouncing back up as people kind of digest what are the implications for this move. It also matches a post that we saw earlier today from President Trump

who said Iran is having a very hard time figuring out who their leader is. They just don't know. So the president's suggesting that he was aware maybe about four hours ago or so, that there was some kind of turmoil in the Iranian top ranks this morning. We also saw a post from the Iranian Foreign Minister a very short time ago, saying that Iranians are all united more than ever before. So the foreign minister seeming to project an image of calm here, maybe a counterweight to some of the narrative that there's chaos at the top in Iran. What's going on here? We don't exactly know. Let's be

There seems to be something happening in Tehran, maybe a changing of the guard here, so to speak, in terms of the leadership. What that means for the negotiations and what that means for global markets, I don't think we can say for sure as we stand here right now. No comment just yet from the White House, but we'll monitor that. We do expect to see the president in front of cameras in about an hour's time, so maybe he will give us an update as to what is known here in Washington about what we'll. whatever it is that's happening in Tehran, guys. Amen, I'm sorry to put you on the spot,

but help me understand what we thought was going on so that we can put into context what this might mean. Did we think there were negotiations happening, and this is a negative for those negotiations we thought were happening? Because I didn't think negotiations were really happening, and so the resignation of this person doesn't make me more or less optimistic or pessimistic

about the existence of negotiations that weren't happening. Right. Well, it could be that there are two factions inside Tehran, one that wants to continue negotiations, the other that wants to back away. I think the market reaction is driven largely by the idea that N12 News is reporting that this is being driven by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and they are seen anyway as more hard line. Now, you never know. Sometimes generals can surprise you, and they're the biggest pacifists in the room because

they've spent their lifetime fighting, and they know what that means. So we'll see. But I think the initial sort of knee-jerk reaction from the markets here is that this is somebody who was a quote-unquote moderate being replaced. The people doing the replacing are quote-unquote hardliners, and therefore that is bearish for negotiations and bearish for the market. I don't know that you can conclude all that. That seems to be where the markets have jumped to, though. Yeah. And also, Kelly, if you see that, thank you so much, Amon.

You see oil prices spiking as well by three bucks in response to this. Right, which the stocks had taken in stride earlier on, a little bit less so right now. The major averages are pulling back after the S&P and NASDAQ hit intraday highs earlier today. Let's bring in our panel. Joe Tannius has mentioned is chief investment strategist at Northern Trust. Tim Rabanowitz, chief investment strategist at Innovator from Goldman Sachs, asset management, welcome to both of you. Joe, you know, we can make a lot of the fact that the ceasefire or the negotiations are, to some extent, I don't want to use the language falling apart.

We don't know if it's that severe. At the same time, we're half a percent off the highs that we hit a couple of hours ago. So we know the oil prices remaining high, but it doesn't seem to be an obstacle, kind of in a much larger sense for the stock market. I love that exchange between Steve and Aeman. Like, there's just so much that we simply don't know. What we do know here is you had a very fragile ceasefire in place and fragile really being the operative work. Now, as a result of these headlines, you've introduced an element of uncertainty or even more uncertainty than we had.

And what do we know at the end of the day? Uncertainty breeds volatility. I think that's exactly what's playing out in the market. It is a knee-jerk reaction. But at the end of the day, there are many fundamental drivers behind the equity markets and various asset classes and how they're performing, not to mention earnings, underlying economic activity, the outlook for monetary policy from the Fed and around the world. There's just so much that we can talk about.

And markets right now are just trying to process it all. Yeah, they're trying to process it all. What's your advice, Tim, kind of? What do you do with sort of all of these unknowns, and yet the real clear fact is that none of this amounts to anything that it seems is going to derail the economy? Look at earnings, which have been pretty strong. It's not derailing the stock market. Yeah, Kelly, well, I think you need to prepare for these spurts of volatility in the short run. We've been dealing with this ideology and this Iranian regime for half a century now to think that we're going to get this solved without more U.S. military intervention. We don't want to go that route.

And so when we're looking at this from an investment perspective, I think we need to be very cautious on Europe in particular. They're much more exposed to this war escalating. We think it, you know, really easily could push them into recession. Whereas when we look at the U.S., on the other hand, we see the economy that was very strong heading into this conflict and really can help us push through. And obviously, you don't have the same exposure to higher energy prices with the independence there. So more bullish on the U.S., overweight the U.S. We want to be very, very cautious on Europe. I mean, if you look in the U.S., again, the PMI prints that we saw recently, retail sales all show us that we're in a good spot. Yeah, Steve.

You're in the innovation space. So you're not thinking about today's oil price or today's interest rate. Tell us how you focus what you're working on and the extent to which you even want some of these daily indicators. Well, Steve, most of the advisors that we are working with are really focused on the long term for their clients. But these clients have different goals and some are more short-term in nature. So a lot of the innovation that we've seen in the asset management space has been in things like buffered ETFs, which are going to allow you to have a set level of downside protection while still maintaining some level of upside exposure. You know, so strategies right now, we've seen a lot of advisors gravitating to things like IAPR, 15% buffer on international markets over the course of a year, still maintaining upside exposure 14, 15%.

And so that really helps narrow the range of outcomes for them. And so for the advisor, they like that because it really takes a lot of these unknowns that we can't know right now off of the table and help them focus on, you know, the long-term plan. Joe, what about you when it comes to the ups and downs of the daily vall, especially, I mean, I watch, for example, the 10-year every day and the two-year every day. And as an investor, maybe I shouldn't. I mean, I think you don't want to lose sight of the forest through the trees. There's a lot of noise. There's a lot of things going on right now that. are causing interest rates, even the tenure, for example, to move up while the equity markets

are actually going down. Well, just look, by the way, look at that. It's spiked up with oil prices and spiked down with oil prices. And that's exactly what the fixed income market's doing. It's exactly what the fixed income market's doing. And it's doing the opposite of what I think most traditional investors are looking for high quality fixed income to provide in their portfolio. It's understanding these dynamics. But at the end of the day, I mean, I'll piggyback on some of the comments that Tim just made here. If you look at the underlying fundamental of the U.S. economy, the best way that we would describe it is resilient. And you think about what's happening with oil.

You think about LNG and the byproducts of LNG. This is going to disproportionately affect different economies and different regions around the world. And I think as investors, we just need to allocate accordingly. Tim, I got a question for you. Are you more and more dealing? I have to think money is aging. And when you talk, the baby boom generation,

they have all the net assets in this country. So when you talked about a buffer ETF, which provides downside protection, I would think that would be a great product for older Americans, asking for a friend. Absolutely, Steve. That's what we see. You know, oftentimes you hear these industry called boomer candy because it's a great way. If you're in retirement, you're nearing retirement, you don't have the ability to stomach these shorter term drawdowns of 10, 20 percent.

But at the same time, you don't want to switch your portfolio. all to an asset class that doesn't have the upside or growth potential. Not when all these boomers are going to live forever. Exactly. Right? Exactly. So to be able to get some growth in your portfolio with a buffer, maintain that exposure, it's a really big deal.

And especially when we look at the catalyst for the sell-off right now, Steve, you think about this, oil prices going higher, you just looked at Bonneal's. They're following suit. And so those traditional hedges that rely on interest rates having to come down, they don't always work in those scenarios. And so that's why we think these strategies, you're seeing so many advisors, to them right now. Joe, let's explore the other side of this. And Kelly, I want you to weigh in, too,

if you don't mind. I think we talked about the resilience, but Tim's talking about recession in Europe. It used to be we thought that those waves lapped up on our shores. Are we a little too sanguine about the effects of this war? And I say that from a couple of standpoint. One is that this fertilizer issue is something it doesn't hit now. It hits down the road. Higher gas prices. Well, we had a month of it. And the earnings we're talking about today are earnings from a quarter where only two of the three months might have been affected by higher gas prices. I am talking to some people that says, let's say the market is undervaluing or under discounting what's to come. I think we need to acknowledge that the world today is quite different than what it looked like

before this war. That's just the reality. I don't know if and when oil prices are going to come back down to the 60s. I don't know if and when LNG prices and their byproducts and those prices are going to come back down to where they were before. I think we just have to acknowledge that and recognize that. However, however, we also have to acknowledge that the United States today is a net exporter of energy, whereas maybe if we were talking about this 10, 20 years ago, very, very different story. So there are segments and pockets of the U.S. economy in the U.S. market that are going to benefit from this. While at the same time, of course, higher energy prices is going to be a tax on consumption, and it's going to put even more

pressure on the lower part of that K that we've been talking about for quite some. And yet the small caps have been outperforming. So a final comment on that, Tim, before we go. Leading the way up 12% at least, you know, coming into today's session and surprising a lot of people. Well, Kelly, you know we've been bullish on this area for a long time now. And what I think is so interesting, if you look at the performance this year, on days when the S&P 500 is up, you have small caps that are outperforming by about 30 basis points on those days. When they're down, the S&P 500 is down, you only are seeing about 10 basis points of underperformance. This is an area small caps are all about growth. And so when we do have a

situation where this war does get resolved, we think the runway for small caps is very long. And the fact that you're not seeing crazy volatility on these down days gives us the ability to try to build a position as this war goes on. All right, the trillionaire stocks and the small caps. That's been the pair trade in recent weeks at least. Guys, thanks. Appreciate it for now. Tim Urbanoitz and Joe Tannius. We also want to check those bond yields that Rick, Steve mentioned a moment ago. The U.S. 10-year hitting 4.34% earlier today. As next week's Fed meeting draws closer, we're well off that level right now, a couple basis points below.

Meantime, more signs of economic fallout in Europe from the Iran War. Business activity in the euro area shrank for the first time since late 2024. And that was due to a steep drop in the services sector. But with price pressure still high, the German tenure is trading above 3%. A big interview after the break, Kate Rooney, sitting down with Open A. Chief Revenue Officer, stay with us. That's going to be very interesting. OpenAI releasing an upgraded version of its flagship chat GPT model with enhanced performance in areas like data analysis, agented coding, and scientific research without sacrificing accuracy and speed,

according to the company. Joining us for more now is our own Kate Rooney with Denise Addressor, who is OpenAI's Chief Revenue Officer. Welcome to you both. Kate, kick us off. Kelly, thank you so much, Denise. It's great to see you in person. to see you. Great to be here. Thanks for being here. We appreciate your time. We should also mention you were very recently the CEO of Slack. Yes. And this is your first time speaking publicly, your first broadcast interview since joining OpenAI. We're very grateful to have you here. Kelly mentioned the new model. GBT 5.5. It's easy to get lost in all of these updates. Can you tell us why this actually matters and how, if at all, does it move the needle for

enterprises with Open AI? Yeah. I mean, the 5-5 is really the most intelligent and intuitive model that we've ever released. And so what it allows us to do is essentially deliver a new level of intelligence that is for agentic professional workers. So it can anticipate the shape of what you're asking, not just the words that you're asking, but the shape of what you're asking, it's really strong in long, reasoning, multi-step tasks, and actually taking that action. And so when I think about it, for me personally, when I use it, the difference is the following. Every day I do something in Codex, which is just say, summarize my day. Now when I use it in 5-5, what happens is the model understands, I'm not actually looking for just a summary recap of everything I've done in the day. What I'm

actually trying to do is get work done, finish the day, make decisions, know what I need to prioritize for tomorrow. And that's that feeling of the intuitiveness of really understanding what the model, what you're asking and what the model can do. And we should say your focus at Open Eye is so deep in enterprises. You really are in charge of getting enterprises on board. which you guys have said is going to be 50% of the business. How close are you to actually parity with the consumer side of the business? Yeah, I mean, I think by year end, we've said that we'll be at 50% of the business. So there you have it.

And I do think when you think about what enterprises benefit from this, we've started with coding. And Codex is having a moment. We're up to 4 million weekly active users now. That was the first example of seeing the power of the capability of really bringing agentic work into an end-to-end software development lifecycle. But now you can think about taking that parity. and using that across every single function and line of business. And that is what I hear from enterprises,

is that they want to be able to think about how do I take advantage of the intelligence that exist in my enterprise. I want to be able to build agents across every single human. I want it to be in one intelligence layer. And I want every single human to be assisted by AI in the right way. What do you hear when you talk to a software company is we've seen this massive sell off in some of the software companies themselves? Is it awkward to go to a meeting and talk to a software company and say,

we're actually the reason why your stock might be down 50% this year, but we promise we're not going to take over your business. What do those conversations look like? So the conversations are really about the customer. And what we hear from our joint customers is that every single company wants to be able to take advantage of all the systems that they have. And AI allows them to actually unlock the intelligence that sits across all of those solutions, whether it's Salesforce, whether it's Slack, workday, data bricks, snowflake. The data is there. And so there's actually even more value to bring out of those systems. and bring that collective knowledge that you can work across all those functions in an agentic capability.

What about cybersecurity? We've talked so much about mythos. Has some of the buzz around mythos at all affected your credibility with enterprises when they look at cybersecurity and maybe think, well, maybe we should be moving to Anthropic because they have this model that's apparently so powerful. Yeah, I mean, first of all, you should think of 5-5 in comparison to 4-4, not mythos. But for us, we have had a preparedness framework for years. It's always been part and parcel to how we think about our models. It is about democratizing access, being iterative about the evolution of that, and really supporting defenders to help us do that. It's just part and parcel of what we've always done in the model. Will you guys come out with a similar model to Mythos?

And if so, would you gate keep it in the same way? What do you make of Anthropics decision to do that? You know, I can't say what we would do in the future. I can tell you right now we feel very prepared based on the preparedness framework that we've had in place for years. And we take that very seriously. And as these models become incredibly powerful, it's really important to make sure that we follow that. And what about the trial? I mean, we've talked so much about Elon Musk, his presence, really, with Open AI. They just bought Cursor, too. Have you thought at all about the impact on Cursor being a part of SpaceX and XAI? And what that actually might mean if there's another player in the enterprise business that does have some beef with Open AI? Well, listen, we're focused on what we're doing right now. We think this is an incredible breakthrough. As you know, I mean, this is really about unlocking intelligence in an entirely new way. We are focused on doing that.

It's a very dynamic world. We are just very focused on our customers and our research and deployment. And Denise, we do have a question from the studio. Yeah, Denise, Steve Leasman here. I've got a question about expansion, which is getting a couple dorks to use chat GPT seems like the easy part. But who is going to hold my hand as a company owner who's going to secure my data, prepare my data to be used internally as open AI, teach my people how to use it. What will happen to the cost of expansion beyond where you're going and getting people who already know what they're doing how to use it, but getting ordinary companies to use it? Yeah, I think this is such a great question, and this is so much of the area that we're focused on, particularly in the enterprise, not just the research and the capability, but making sure that every single enterprise is equipped to be able to do that.

We leverage a couple of things. First, our forward deployed engineers that are really, if they were not doing this, they would be building, the product. They're incredibly talented. They're so knowledgeable about the model. And we bring that research, that capability to our customers so that they can learn. And then certainly through our ecosystem of our partners, our frontier alliance partners, we equip them to have the knowledge to also be able to educate customers. But really what we're focused on is bringing that knowledge in a way that our customers can be self-sufficient. They can understand how to use the technology. And once they get started, we often see that that flywheel of adoption really does accelerate. Denise, I'm curious, this is, you know, more a question, I guess, for those involved

in the technology behind Chad GPT. How do you make it less obsequious? Do you know what I mean? When you say, like, tell me about my day and it goes, well, you know, and this comes up in a much more impactful way when it's, you know, kind of telling people how to commit horrible crimes. But even on small matters, you know, a lot of us want answers from the model that actually are better answers, you know, like, it's like, I can handle it. You can tell me, like, don't eat that thing before dinner. How do you just tell it? Yeah. Yeah, you know, you just tell it. I do that all the time. I actually do certain things like give me a contrarian view or think about it from this angle. And the model, of course, gets to know you, but also you can guide it depending upon

what you're looking to do. Understood. Do you have any final comment on kind of the whole, we're having a big debate about this earlier this week. Companies like OpenAI are staying private for so long. And, you know, we'd love to see the public be able to invest in them earlier on. Why, I know in your case is a complicated corporate structure and story, and so it's a little bit different than the likes of Anthropic, but it'd be great to see an IPO sooner than later. Yeah, right now, I mean, we're so excited about today with 5-5. 5-5 is just the beginning of what I think is going to be just this incredible unlock in human potential in the professional world especially. We're really focused on doing that. The teams are

working so hard to make sure we deliver the best technology. We innovate on behalf of our customers and make them successful and deliver on our mission, which is to bring AI to every human being for good in the world. And we're very focused on that. All right. Kate, a final one to close us off here? I would love Denise to know about Microsoft and Amazon. You have these two major partners. Yes. How do you work with both? I mean, we've seen some memos that looks like in the beginning of Microsoft maybe hindered growth at some point. How are you balancing these two massive partnerships and just how do you think about it in terms of enterprise growth and needing to work with both of those behemates. Yeah, I mean, I think about the both. First of all, Microsoft is an incredible partner and has

been with us from the very beginning, and we really value that relationship. And then, of course, we have our partnership with Amazon that we're very excited about. And I think partnerships and ecosystems are really important to a healthy environment for our customers and making sure that we are innovating and delivering for what they need. Terrific. Denise, great to see you. We're really grateful for your time. Thank you so much. And Kelly, Steve, back over to you. All right, open AI's Denise Dressor. Kelly, I, um, thank you very much. I program my AI to say, open every answer with you idiot.

That's how mine begins. But see, we shouldn't have to program it to say that. But should I try it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Say, you idiot. Yeah, how did you not know this? I don't know if I can handle that negativity. No, I like that.

It's a puts me in my place. Coming up, the first advanced nuclear company to go public, speaking of IPOs, to the first advanced nuclear company to go public via the IPO route will begin trading tomorrow. Could there be more to? come. Pippa Stevens. We'll talk about that after the break. A buzzy startup is expected to price its shares to go public after the market's closed. It's called X Energy. You think it'd have something to do with Elon Musk, but it doesn't. Or maybe it doesn't, as far as we know. It'll be the first advanced nuclear company pursuing the

traditional IPO path. Rivals in the space like Aklo and New Scale went public via a SPAC, remember. For more on the company and the IPO, PIPA Stevens is here with us to go through it, PIPA in more detail. this is a really big moment for the nuclear energy industry because X-energy is the first sizable advanced nuclear company to pursue the public markets through the traditional IPL route, and so if it's successful, it could be the first of many. So a bit about that public offering, they're looking to raise as much as $814 million. They've priced between $16 and $19 per share, and that would give it a total valuation of about $7.5 billion. I did speak to several sources involved in this offering, who said it's been many times over.

oversubscribed and that we could see it end up pricing later today, much above that $16 to $19 range. Now, in terms of what the company has raised so far, it has already raised more than $1.4 billion to date, including a $700 million round just last November. They have a list of heavyweight backers, including Amazon, Jane Street, Ken Griffin from Citadel, Ares Management, Ark Invest, the list goes on. They also have a customer backlog of about 11 gigawatts. That's from names like Amazon, Dow, and Energy Northwest, as well as Centrica in the UK. Now, a bit about the company itself. So their reactor is about an 80 megawatt reactor.

The reactor type is what's called a high-temperature gas cooled, so that can be used for industrial applications. And then it's also focused on licensing their technology. So it's a little bit different from some of their competitors. They are not looking to own and operate, not looking to own and operate the power plants, I should say. And so they have more of a capital light model, and that is one of the things guys

that investors seem to think is attractive about the company. Can you compare, so we've talked a lot about some of these small-scale modular nuclear reactors? This is not that. This is that. Okay. But a lot of this technology remains unproven, or are we starting?

So just give me some like the larger context here. So the larger context is that all these buzzy new SMRs with their new technology is actually old technology. A lot of the states back to the 40s, the 50s, the 60s. And so it's not new. It's been improved upon is what people in the industry would say. But the main thing here is that so these are small. And so what they're saying is that it's cheaper to construct.

It's a cheaper upfront cost. It's modular. Has any of them been constructed yet? So they have not been tested recently at scale. We did have one of these high temperature gas-cooled reactors in Colorado. It ended operations in 1989 because it had a number of issues. Importantly, China is utilizing this technology now, but they have also had a few issues.

So it looks like it. Well, okay, so if you're buying into the IPO, you're buying in on bringing online a small modular reactor that we haven't brought online in the U.S. in a long... In decades. So this would be an effort to see if this technology is really going to work. Yes. And what's important, though, about this technology is that it also has that industrial application. So there are a lot of portions of the economy that are hard to decarbonize.

Think about refining chemical manufacturing. So the company already has applied for a construction. construction permit with Dow, and so they will be built alongside Dow to then help Dow utilize their steam in their industrial processes to decarbonize applications. That cannot be done. Where's it going to be? So this one is in Texas. They have only one or they have many?

So they have multiple projects in the works, but what they've applied for is the construction permit from the NRC for Texas only so far. Okay, how much is 80 megawatts? 80 megawatts is not a lot when you think about some of these gigawatts. If you think about some of these data centers, you think about a commercial scare reactor, that's one gigawatt. So this is a lot smaller, but they want to bundle them together to make 320 megawatts with four of them together. What is the earliest possible date that they could produce a single megawatt?

They say early 2030s. So I'm going to buy a... 2030s, that's correct. Okay, now let me get the proposition right here. I'm going to buy a stock now that won't produce a single thing until sometime in the early 2030s. I have asked that very question. I'm sure you did. That's why I'm asking you.

Yeah, so there actually are. What I've heard is that there's a lot of interest in some of the long. only funds, the blue chip investors for this. And one thing they point to is that heavy weight of backers so far. They have a lot of PhDs on their roster. They have a lot more employees than their competitors like Oaklo and New Scale. So it is a belief in these backers and all of the PhDs there. Are all the megawatts sold already? So when they have, so what they're doing is they're partnering. So they're not operating and owning the power plan. They are building with a partner. So for Dow, yes, for Amazon, yes. And then that technology. I'm sure this all

makes sense to somebody, but it doesn't make sense to. there's already companies trading publicly on the same premise. Right. They're not. That's correct. And also, they're not profitable. But from all the bankers I've spoken with, they say that that theme, that this is not until the 2030 is well understood in the market.

Everyone knows that. No, I get they know that. I just don't. Yeah. Okay. I'm sure there's a great. Seems like I'm not putting my old capital. My aging money.

My old money. Into. Okay. Pippa, that was a great report. Thank you so much. The stock is having its best. This stock is having its best month since Muhammad Ali. knocked out George former, speaking of old money in the rumble in the jungle.

Was that like 72? I don't know what year that was. Take a guess. And we'll reveal it after the break and we'll get the year right. I just read a whole story about that. Welcome back, one of the hottest names on Wall Street, reporting earnings after the bell. Intel, that was your mystery chart. It's climb more than 50% this month, headed for its best month performance since not 1972, is I guess but 1974 when they had the rumbled in the jungle. Christina. Parsine Avales, joins us now of Christina.

expect a blowout quarter? It's funny because you started the pitch and the anchor intro saying that it was one of the hottest stocks in just three years ago. Nobody was talking about Intel. It was often disregarded. In regards to this upcoming earnings report, what we are seeing is a stock that is trading on stories, not necessarily fundamentals. And I see that because you've had Yilan must say that the tariffab that's not even built

yet is going to be using Intel. Invidia is going to be working with Intel taking a 5% sake, but we don't know the full details, President Trump tweeting out or social media post, and then the stock jumped 11% just on the fact that he likes Intel. So those are narratives that are moving the stock higher. Retail loves this name, but in regards to the fundamentals, three major issues. One, CPUs, the central processing units. Intel warned that they had a supply crunch last quarter. So will that be mitigated just within one quarter? The second point is PC sales, which are a big part of the business. Memory prices have been climbing. In turn, the PC price climbs.

So there's a concern about demand destruction. And then the third point is the manufacturing side, which will be the bread and butter for Intel, really building these chips for other players, building the advanced packaging. And so we're still waiting to hear about any new customers for these manufacturing processes. Christina, also we have a continuing trend here of semiconductors and software going their separate ways again. What's going on? Yeah, so today is an excellent example where you're seeing the IGB break that eight-day wind streak. We've seen that banner on our screen all day.

The problem is the narrative for two, both the groups. AI, when people spend on AI, it goes towards the picks and shovels. And that means the semiconductor group benefits. And so far, based off of all the earnings that we've seen thus far, TSMC, ASML, LAM research, equipment maker just yesterday, Texas instruments saying that they're seeing a recovery, they're getting the cash. People are spending on their goods.

Their guidances are higher. And so they're seeing that, you know, that cash is going to keep flowing into at least the next quarter. On the software front, the narrative is a little bit different. There's still that big concern that AI is going to disrupt their business. Service now, an excellent example, subscription revenue, you know, failed to impress. The Middle East is having a bigger impact. IBM, similar story. They didn't say the Middle East in the earnings report, but John Ford spoke to the CEO, and they did talk about that as well.

So you really start to see this divergence often when chips do well. The money has to come from somewhere and is coming from software. And if you're listening on the radio, there's a chart up right now that shows from January that the semis up 40% software down 20%. That is a huge gap. I don't forget that chart up again, guys, but that was really the story in a nutshell right there, which you know all about that, Kelly, right? Well, and Christina, everyone's been reporting on it. What's amazing is that it keeps going. And today's another.

Divergence, absolutely, a couple months ago. Does it haven't ended anybody know? Well, Kelly, to your point, I think it was just what a few quarters ago where everybody was scared that the spending would slow down. And I think the semiconductor complex is the first glimpse into that spending continuing. Yes, we're all waiting for the hyperscalers to report next Wednesday and maybe KAPX will stay the same. Maybe it'll go up. Maybe it'll decrease. But the chip guys, the picks and shovels are telling you that spending is continuing.

and so that those fears are essentially receding. And so that's why the chip complex has climbed higher. All right, Christina, thanks. For now, we appreciate it. Christina Parts in Evelist. Just for now. For now, we'll see you soon. Angelica Peoples is here with the CNBC News Update.

Hi, Angelica. Hey, Kelly. The European Union today approved a $106 billion loan package to Ukraine. The EU also approved a new round of sanctions against Russia. Both measures had been blocked by Hungary and Slovakia since January, when a key oil pipeline to the two countries was damaged in the war. The pipeline has now reopened. Police in Florida arresting a suspect who allegedly plotted to go to New Orleans to commit a mass shooting at a music festival.

Authorities say the suspect is a former North Carolina police officer who was taken into custody at a Florida panhandle hotel, where they recovered a handgun in about 200 rounds of ammunition. While police did not mention the specific festival, hundreds of thousands are expected to attend jazz fest in New Orleans, which begins today. And JetBlue is being sued in a proposed class action that claims the carrier uses customers' personal data to set ticket prices. According to the complaint, JetBlue allegedly conceals its use of trackers to set prices dynamically. JetBlue did not comment on the lawsuit, but tells Reuters it does not use personal data or AI to set ticket prices. Steve, back over to you. Thanks very much. Can the consumer help us make sense of this market?

Our market navigator guests think so. We'll ask him why after the break. Turning now to our market navigator segment, it's hard to predict what markets will do, but our next guest says we can predict consumer behavior. So he's looking at a couple of big names, including one he says is the most mispriced company of any of the big tech companies. Joining us now is Eric Clark, the CEO at AcuVest, and the portfolio manager of the logo ETF. Eric, it's good to have you. So let's start with what consumer behavior you think we can predict here.

Welcome. Hey, nice to see you again. I mean, I think trading down looking for value is a key consumer behavior when inflation's sticky for longer. So that's clearly an area. And we want what we want and we're willing to pay for it when we're really passionate about the services. So that obviously brings up a couple of names that I think are pretty attractive. Let's hear about them. Well, I think Amazon, right? The Amazon, since the IPO in 97, is annualized at 31%. Pretty impressive company. At all the other time periods still annualized pretty strong. But the last five years, it's only annualized at 9%. So it's been a bit of a laggard versus the others. And so somebody might say,

well, what's happened with the company? And the reality is all the operating metrics have been terrific. They have been in a massive CAP-X cycle, two of them for the last five years, and the market loves growth, but they hate it when you're investing for growth. They just want the monetization part. So now you get a chance to own Amazon while they are building the largest AI infrastructure kind of CAP-X, and they're going to monetize that. If you saw Amazon shareholder letter, they really spelled it out. So we think there's a massive kind of mean reversion opportunity in Amazon. And we think they'll be the first company to report a trillion in revenues by the end of 2028. And we think the stock can double over five years. Any others that come to mind?

Well, we love Netflix, too. I mean, it's nice to get the Warner Brothers deal behind them. You know, this is a company also that annualized 31 or so or 32 percent since the, since the IPO in 2002, all the revenues have grown, earnings per share have grown, margins have crept up, free cash flow has been great. But the interesting thing about Netflix that's upcoming, if we think the content costs kind of get capped around $20 billion, then there's this inflection of free cash flow. And they just announced this accelerated buyback, this $25 billion buyback. So bigger picture, we also think Netflix has the brand, has the business, has the global opportunities to scale to also join the trillion dollar market cap club. And we think

that one has, you know, is a double over five years, too. So we like it. Up nicely over the past two months. Maybe the beginning of that change you mentioned. Eric, thanks so much. Eric Clark from AcuVest. Appreciate it. Steve, over to you. Yeah, Kelly, coming up some exclusive data from our All-America Economic Survey on how Americans feel about the cost of the war with Iran. We'll break it out right after this break. Welcome back. The CNBC All-America Economic Survey for the first quarter finding some pretty strong opposition to the Iran war among the American public. And it's costing the president some support. We asked

Americans, a thousand Americans across the nature, voters, do you feel less or more safe with what's happening right now and 48% feeling less safe, 30% more safe? 9% no real impact or 12% put these together and maybe there's some possible additional opposition. The 21%

who say had no real impact, you have no opinion, suggest there could be some additional support or opposition depending upon the final outcome. The public finds the conflict could worth it for only a single purpose, and that is disrupting Iran's nuclear weapons capability, 53, 44. All of the rest of these are majority not worth it when it comes to weakening Iran's military,

killing Iranian leaders, the U.S. financial cost as well as the gas price increase. All of those are majority saying the war is not worth it for that reason. And you can see here a change in approval rating from Q4 to Q1 among some key constituencies of President Trump. The war took over higher gas prices and already high inflation eroding the President's approval nationwide and key constituencies the God of the elect. Take a look. Non-Maga GOP, that's about 40% of the Republican Party. Their approval rating fell out.

Still majority approved, but it fell by 19 points. Men 18 to 49, GOP held districts down 11 points. This is the change of Q4 to Q1. Latinos, a big part of the 24 constituency for the president, white non-college, and there's all adults falling five points. But these are bigger declines in these. Now, we also look at the overall change relative to Iran. See, in each one of these situations, except for Latinos, by the way, overall support is greater

than the support for the war in the round of the approval of the president's handling of it, going all the way over here, Man 18 to 49, all showing that higher support there, Kelly. So it's an interesting development here, the way that higher gas prices, the existing inflation out there, kind of sour views on the economy are affecting the views of Americans, both about the economy and about the president. We have this split where consumer confidence is terrible, and yet a data point like this morning, jobless claims, kind of the high frequency one that tells you if kind of something bad is coming in the economy and it's still holding up fine. I think I made a comment on squawk boxes when it because I do get up every morning to report the jobless claims. And I'm not sure that's worth it anymore.

I love doing it. I love talking about it. They're only quiet. It's 210 forever, 214, 2014. 2.8. $2.7. No pop. But yet we had.

I mean, I'm looking at a headline on my feed here. Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs and push for efficiency. We're seeing these things they don't show up. To the extent they don't show up, Kelly, what that tells me for the moment is people might be leaving one job, but finding another pretty quickly and trying to understand the job market in this world of zero labor force growth, it's another world. No, and maybe these aren't the kind of people who are going to go file a jobless claim right away,

but there is a lot of turnout there. I think I'm supposed to say now, I can't talk to Kelly anymore because more power wants you after this short break. Before we go, today a prediction market's scandal is heating up. Is it even a scandal, Steve? Let's come back to that. This involves tampered weather data. France's national forecaster has filed a police complaint after detecting suspicious temperature spikes at Paris's Charles de Gaul airport. Here's an example from April 15th.

Officials say readings jumped several degrees. You can see the spike there. just minutes, raising concerns that someone may have interfered with the sensor. The anomalies lined up with well-timed bets on Polly Market, where users wagered on what the highest temperature would be in Paris. One trader reportedly turned $30 into nearly $14,000 by betting Paris would peak at 21 degrees Celsius, a payout that had a less than 1% implied probability. I'm stunned. That someone would do this? Well, I guess that you can make these bets. Why would you make these, I mean, I could understand how

somebody who is an energy company would want to lay off or hedge their bets on. Why should the public just be able to do? Because it's fun, they say, and, you know, why not? But now that it's invited all sorts of this, again, I guess the illegal activity would be someone tampering with the

heating systems. I don't think there's any illegal activity. This is what I'd love to know. If you place a bet that you know, the Power Lunch Studio is going to be at... And then you go rigging. And then you go warm it up. Is that against the law? I guess not.

I guess not. I thought maybe somebody was like seeding clouds to make it rain. You could seed clouds, but you could also just, you know, put on a heating. When you said weather prediction scandal, I thought.

That's what I'm saying. Yeah. Okay. More to come, unless they rain this all in. Steve, thanks for being here. See tomorrow. Appreciate it today.

Thanks for watching. Power Lunch.