Power Lunch - Major averages are mixed as investors look ahead to Micron earnings after the bell 6/24/26

Episode Date: June 24, 2026

Stocks remain little changed following the chip sell-off at the beginning of the week as Wall Street awaits Micron’s Q3 earnings report expected out after the markets close. Brian Sullivan is joined by Landsberg Bennett Private Wealth CIO, Michael Landsberg, to preview Micron’s anticipated results and lay out his strategy for how he plans to trade the stock if there’s a potential pullback. Meanwhile, Operation HOPE’s John Hope Bryant joins the show in-person to react to President Trump’s last-minute decision to cancel plans to sign the bipartisan housing bill into law. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Stocks are steady as oil earlier today crashes back below. 70 bucks a barrel. Welcome to Power Lunch, everybody. I am Brian. Kelly is on our way to Chicago where we will be tomorrow. We can't wait. All right, the major averages bouncing earlier, but now losing a little bit of steam. But maybe the big test, it comes tonight with micron earnings investors on edge. The options market implying a big move in that stock. So what is your next move? We're going to find out with a great show lineup today and lots of

real world investing advice just for you. Plus, President Trump canceling the signing of a bipartisan housing bill financial literacy expert John Hope Bryant is here on set to help you make sense of it and talk about lessons from his new book on capitalism. All right, there is a ton to do today, but let's start with the trillion dollar company that was initially funded by money made from potato farming. That is Idaho-based micro. Their earnings out tonight. The stock fell over 10% yesterday, but that is a drop in the DRAM bucket from the 700% gain in the past year. Investors tonight, they're going to be looking at a lot of things, including any sign of a clear path on AI-related demand.

Christina Parts de Nvelas live from Qualcomm's Investor Day in New York. We'll get more on that San Diego-based company in a moment. But, KP, what are the keys tonight on Micron? Well, you talked about Micron's stock movement just even the last year, up 260% the options market, 10% swing, the biggest in a decade. Everybody knows about this memory trade, and memory is very crowded right now. Even just last month, Micron CEO said that, again, demand is outpacing supply, and that's going to be another issue for the next year or so. So it's a very bullish tone heading into earnings. Two major things that we want to see. First is just

an increase in CAPX numbers, right? If you need to keep building out facilities in order to provide these chips to customers so that the revenue dollars can keep flowing. We're looking anywhere north of $25 billion for the year, $50 billion for next year. The second major point is more of these, they're calling them SCA's strategic customer agreements. Just think of them as long-term customer agreements, anywhere between three and five years. And the Bulls are saying, this is the reason why this memory cycle is different. It's not commoditized because we have visibility into the long term, because customers are willing to sign on some at prefixed pricing schedules anywhere between three and five years. The problem, Brian, though, is that

Micron tends to not really react post-earnings just over the last six past earning cycles. You only saw the stock move up once. So any dip guaranteed will be bought, but there's a little bit of hesitation just right out of the earnings print. So I got to imagine why you're at Qualcomm's investor day is, well, there's a lot of reasons. But when I look at the stock, I see a 25% gain over the past year. That's very prosaic, particularly when it comes to the semiconductor companies. I'm sure that will be a focus, kind of how does Qualcomm catch up in the market? But also, what are the other things that investors are really focused on there at the Qualcomm Investor Day? The reason why Qualcomm isn't, you know, following trend is that it's considered

a smartphone chip company, and that's 57% of their revenues. Today, it's really going to be about diversity and really pivoting towards a data center strategy. They tease this at They said they have the Dragonfly product line that would encompass CPUs, custom chips, as well as AI accelerators. That's three different categories. And we're hoping to get announcements on who those customers are, as well, even just this morning at around 8 a.m. Eastern Time, they announced another acquisition of a company called Modular.

Financial details weren't included, but modular is the software element to allow these chips to talk to each other and essentially is an answer to Nvidia's Kuda ecosystem. and why so many people are hooked on Nvidia processors because of that software moat. So today we should get more examples as to how they're going to be offering the data center revenue or data center chips, how that revenue is going to come in in 2027, 2028, and who their customers are. I think that is a big deal. And I'll have more at 3.30 p.m. Eastern time with the CEO himself, Christiano Amman, who's going to be joining me right here with this crowd behind us.

All right, look forward to that. Christina Partsen, Elvis. Big interview coming up in about 90 minutes. Thank you. So with Micron's recent volatile price swings and high expectations heading into the print, how should you be trading this one? Well, your next guest has been a shareholder since last April, and he might add to that position if we see another post-earnings pullback. Let's bring in Michael Landsberg. He is Landsberg Bennett, Private Wealth Management, CIO. Michael, you bought the stock back in April of last year. You're up 1,150 percent in just over a year. That's a lot.

lot of money. Why not sell into that, take some of those profits? Well, Brian, we do rebalance from time to time, so I don't want to make it sound like we've written it up the whole and never taking any money out the table. But as you can imagine, we bring in new clients. So obviously, we're always looking to be able to establish new positions. And Micron's been a great name in that space because it gives you, this year alone has been four or five times. We've seen a 20% tradeoff. Just this month, earlier in the month, it was 1089. A week later, it was 850. Went to 12, 13. It was 1,000. It went to 12, 13. It week ago, and it's probably around $1,000.

So it's a name that you really have to like longer term. I don't think we have to go out very long. I think we're going to see $120 a share in 27. It trades in eight times earnings, eight and a half times earnings, next year's earnings. So I think you want to buy on dips and you'll get dips. I'm going to say something I don't think I've ever said in 30 years, which is a stock that's up 700% in 12 months. Is it possible?

Micron is undervalued. And I say that, Michael, not because I'm making the value judgment, but when I see earnings per share estimates rise by 985%, and the stock move less than the EPS revisions, it makes you wonder. I would agree. I mean, we kind of see people going out to 2030 and 2035 to give you a valuation on SpaceX. But the irony with that is you don't have to go very far for Micron and get these big earnings numbers. So I definitely think it's undervalued from that standpoint. And that's kind of the focus you have to do. Don't get too excited about the today's story.

If we get a pullback, you want to be able to buy it. No different than you and I talked a couple months ago about South Korea. And it moved a lot, but the story is still very much the same there. You can buy these on a momentum. Yeah, I mean, in South Korea fell 10% yesterday. And listen, I'm not minimizing a 10% drop, but I also know the index rose 240% in a year. Micron fell 13% yesterday. but on top of the 700% gain over the year,

I'm assuming guys like you would expect that, hey, I'm going to own Micron, and by owning Micron, I'm going to have to stomach 10% moves sometimes to the downside. Absolutely. I think you're going to stomach that. We've seen that already this month a couple times. So I think you're going to definitely have to see that. But at the same point, I think this has changed a bit. It used to be more of a commoditized situation. but I think AI demand for these chips has changed the game.

And now, as Christina noted, you have an issue with just getting enough supply. They're only giving their best customers like 50 to 75% of the orders. And we see that for a while. Tim Cook just said recently, we're going to see iPhone price increases because of the memory shortage. I think that's a big issue. And if it can continue, you see these stocks continue to do well because now the AI demand is going to be a lot more than just, let's say, the other demand that made it a commodity before. Yeah, okay. Other tech buys you have include Data Dog and Snowflake. Now, those are very different companies. And both are down recently because they've been caught up in the sell-off

of software. You're obviously not that worried. Otherwise, you wouldn't have bought these companies. Why buy Datadog? Why buy Snowflake? I think part of the issue is when you're looking at these names that have done well over a long period of time is where are the entry points. I mean, that's really, again, software by and large has gotten hurt a bit. I think in some instances, rightfully so. But in these names, I think I look at them and say, you know, the growth is going to be there. The earnings are going to be there. They've traded off a bit more recently.

It gives us an opportunity to step in. And again, I don't want to pay, you know, 52-week high, all-time highs for names. I would like to see a good story where I can own it for two, three, four years, but look for the right entry points to be able to get in there with something that's a necessity that isn't going to be basically taken out kind of by AI, where some of the software name definitely have some AI vulnerability that we want to keep an eye out for. Yeah, I mean, listen, you also recently, I think either bought or added to Nvidia, a few months ago was the hottest stock in the world. It's still done very well, up 33% in the

year. But over the past couple of months, it has not been hot. Why do you remain confident in Nvidia? I mean, Nvidia doesn't trade it a big multiple, Brian, but obviously at the end of the day, Nvidia drives the world in terms of AI. Their chips are the best. Everything kind of goes through there, and it has this ability as well as Micron has to give you some opportunities to buy it. In the last 12 months, you've seen three or four, 15 to 20 percent corrections in Nvidia that have given you a chance to either add the positions or for the three people on the planet that don't currently own it. You can establish a position now where you're not paying the 52-week high for a name.

We like the trend continues to be higher, but we don't want to pay all-time highs and get caught up in the exuberance that can kind of survive or deal with money. Micron's crazy exuberance, or for six months or a year, it was Nvidia's exuberance. We want to be able to take a step back and buy them when they're less exuberant. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of weird to think that a 13% gain in three months is not great, but compared to a lot of the other AI-related aims, it's not great. But still, you like it, Michael Landsberg, CIO at Landsberg Bennett, private wealth management. Michael, have a great day.

Thank you very much. I pleasure. All right. All right, folks, we are just getting started and coming up. Oil prices earlier today crashing back below 70 bucks a barrel. Is that the all clear to buy more stocks? We'll get Sarah Malick's market take on that and more. But first, Jay Peters will join us with his latest moves,

some of which may or may not be on energy. All right, now to more on oil and energy, because earlier today, crude oil crumbled back below 70 bucks a barrel. And as we wrote and talked about here last week and in Power Insider, oil exports from the Arabian Gulf and out through Hormuz are happening faster than many expected. And now J.P. Morgan and its team are jumping on that theme. Soil analysts cutting their price targets for this year and next. J.P. Morgan now sees Brent Crude averaging just $65 next year.

And given that Brent Crude tends to trade a few bucks higher than our oil here, a $64 overseas target could mean that oil here could be in the high $50 range. And that means, of course, much lower gasoline prices for you. Take a look at futures contracts in WTI. You got six handles nearly across the board. The October contract at 69-41. So here are the four key things right now I am watching in oil markets. First, remember, there is a non-zero percent chance the Middle East conflict may re-escalate. Yes, an interim peace deal was signed and we hope for peace, but there is nothing concrete or official yet.

Second, the big question mark weighing on the energy market, how fast can, could they load ships with oil? Well, as we wrote last week, that is faster than many people expected, and we were right. The third thing to watch, how fast global inventories can be refilled. Remember, our SPR is at its lowest levels. First fill back in 1983, and last but not least, while all the attention has been rightfully, by the way, on Iran and Hormuz and whatever, you got to also keep your eye on developments in Venezuela and Guyana. Those markets expected to produce even more oil than they do now. So what about the oil stocks?

Well, they have fallen with the price of oil. In fact, in the last month, the group as a whole down about 10%. But Wall Street remains overall pretty bullish. We calculated the percent upside scene on four big oil stocks from their current price to their average analyst price target. There they are. And as you can see, Conoco Phillips, BP, Occidental, and Chevron all show more than 24% or even 32% upside. So, either either analysts have got to start cutting their price targets, which by the way, Canon does happen, or investors may be leaving a lot of upside on that table. Well, your next guest is buying another energy stock that Wall Street is bullish on. It is up 40% in the past year. and Southside analysts, they're looking for another 16% upside. Let's bring in Jay Peters, managing director and portfolio manager at New Edge,

and Jay will leave that dangling out as kind of a tease, the name of that company in just one minute. But first off, those four names, Conoco, Occidental BP, and Chevron, do you own any of those four? So we do not. Okay. We are overweight the energy sector in all of our portfolios. I think you correctly point out that there is certainly a potential for up oil prices to reverse higher. And I think fundamentally, these are stocks that trade a kind of low double-digit PEs, double-digit-free cash flow yields, and the earnings are certainly accelerating. Well, you make it kind of a bullish case. Why don't you own them, Jay?

Well, we do have an overweight, and we've done really well. And I think, you know, we're just part of prudent portfolio management is manage the position sizing. Okay. Well, the company that you do own, the one that we sort of teased, talent energy, not a name that gets much attention, very kind of quiet company. What about talent do you like? So this is a name we've had on our radar for a while. They are an independent power producer in the utility space. One of the relatively smaller producers, about 15 gigawatts of total generating capacity. But, Brian, this is one of the producers that's probably the most leverage to the data center power consumption thesis.

Talon really supplies almost all their generation goes to the PJM grid, which is not only the largest grid in the country, but is the home to the most data centers in the country. It's also the grid that's under the tightest capacity right now. It's the grid from which we get our power right here, this beautiful studio. This is PJM, sort of distributed power. Absolutely. And so Talon, half of their generation is nuclear, half is efficient natural gas. I think the regulatory picture has been a bit of a headwind over the last couple of quarters, but maybe we're starting to see some clarity there.

I thought the FERC announcement last week was a step in the right direction. That was aimed at clearing out the interconnection key. speeding up connection of these power generators to the grid. I think it was important that they kind of articulated the rate payer protection message, which is if you are going to bring power to the grid, you also have to pay for the grid updates as well, so it doesn't necessarily drive up utility bills for consumers. And at the end of the day, Brian, this is a company trading at sort of 17 times P.E. multiple great profitability, 25% free cash flow margins.

One of the more levered IPPs historically, but they've done a great job kind of be IPP independent power producer. Exactly. And they've done a great job re-optimizing their balance sheet. Well, you also left out something critically important. The CEO, Mac McFarland, is a Virginia Tech Hokie. I just had to point that out. Hokey Nation. All right.

Let's move on from one T to another. That is TXN, Texas Instruments. Again, we've been talking about semiconductors for about a year. Texas Instruments used to be this giant company. We never talk about them anymore. Why not? That's right. Until right now, of course.

Of course. And it's not as exciting as much. I can't say that. But this is a company that is a pioneer of the semiconductor industry really dominates the market for analog chips and processors. These are the everyday chips that you find in a wide range of electronic devices. The long term, they are levered to the secular growth of digitization. But what we're seeing is this power consumption thesis from data centers is also manifesting itself in power generating chips. And that's where Texas Instruments has a real strong market dominance. And their chips are specifically designed to,

for high voltage workloads. I think you're seeing with the next generation of Nvidia GPUs, you're going to see more emphasis on these power regulation chips that can deliver power efficiently with higher throughput. So in our view, Texas Instruments, you know, a higher quality semiconductor company, and maybe not the most exciting name. Well, it's up 75% this year.

So somebody is, you've figured it out, other people seem to be figuring out, sort of sometimes where these companies fit in the scheme. Yes, I think so. And, you know, Brian, the last thing I can say is this is a company that is also an IDM or integrated device device manufacturers. So not only do they design chips, but they manufacture chips. That provides a little bit of pricing power and stability from some of the supply chain pressures we've seen. All right.

Totally outside chips, AI power, whatever, Morgan Stanley, why'd you buy it? Yeah, so we've owned a lot of the large banks over the years. I have not been in Morgan Stanley up until recently. You know, in our view, this is one that's really levered to this capital markets environment we're seeing IPO issuance, obviously, on praise for a record. year. Morgan Stanley, not only do they have a strong investment banking presence, but they are really robust in asset management and wealth management. I think that combination has really created pretty compelling a business that's allowed them to really outperform some of their peers here in recent years. And, you know, Morgan Stanley, also not cheap, 2.8 times book value, but I think

what you're getting is a premium business, premium profitability, great capital efficiency, and just, you know, a decent 2.10% dividend yield. So a name that's kind of outside the AO ecosystem that also offers some good fundamentals. All right, TLN, TXN, MS, JP. Jay Peters, really appreciate your time. Thank you very much. All right, coming up, is it time to own what your next guest calls the whole stack of the AI trade?

Don't worry. We'll explain what that means. Next. We know we talk a lot about data centers and the electricity used to power them, but your next guest right now is focused more on some of the physical parts of AI. and he's eyeballing three under the radar companies in that space. Joining us, Zeno Mercer, head of robotics and AI research at VETify. I love this segment.

These are companies Zina that we don't talk about a lot, if ever. Let's talk about the first one, Oster. It's the smallest, $2.5 billion. Who is Oster? Why do you like them? Yeah, so at the end of the day, we're starting to see artificial intelligence start to spread out beyond the data centers. We've been covering the robotic space for over a decade plus now.

And in the past, it was stuck with limited geography, limited end markets, and a lot of limited capabilities. And right now, we're starting to see advancements across the stack with better language models. And one of these elements that's very important is the ability to see an act at high-speed, low energy costs. And so Alster is a company that came out of a SPAC in 2021. It's had emergencies then.

And now it's starting to get a lot of tangible and real partnerships. It's had 13 quarters of straight product growth. And again, we really see. the stack of physical AI is things that help enable this technology, things that help make and move, so actuation. But with Alster, you're getting advanced lighter. In fact, most recently, they're first to market in the world with color native lightar. So it's a simpler package, it's rugged. They just got a partnership with AIM intelligence machines, which does things like heavy machinery, Volvo, autonomous systems. They've got a lot of different stakes and partnerships in the ground.

So it is, I would say, in the grand scheme of things in the robotic space, one of the smaller But again, the robotic space overall is a lot smaller than the overall, let's call it mega cap and data center space overall, despite what you might think or the public might believe. So there's a lot of new addressable markets coming into the fray across traditional robotics, drones, humanoid, autonomous vehicles. And so at the end of day, you've got an enabling technology that's across many different types of markets. And so, and these markets are expanding, as I said, beyond the factory floor where they had been pre-examining, previously limited to. So again, I'll stir, yeah. Let me jump in. Sorry about that, Z. I don't want to get, we don't have time for Fanook. I'm going to say that's your third, but I want to hit CRETO technologies because Corning kind of gets all the attention and sort of the

cables and sort of the fiber optic guts, if you will, stocks up 140% over the last year. But CRETO has quietly also been hot. Where do they land in the cabling space? Yeah, so they actually have, you know, really strong market show already. of the AEC Active Electronic Cable market share. And what really drew interest to us over the past year is they've made a number of acquisitions. So as you see, there's been a lot of interest in memory. You've been hearing more about photonics names, but they've got a mix of in-house R&D and external acquisitions they've made, such as dusty photonics most recently.

Back in 2025, they acquired this company called HyperLum, which does micro lead, chip-to-chip optical. And at the end of the day, the companies that are really going to drive and derive a lot of value in the world of the ones that are pushing the boundaries of physics, whether it's moving data, moving machines, moving anything. And Cretto has all of that in their wheelhouse. They're going to continue to innovate. And again, they've kind of been overlooked across and against a lot of these other names out there. And I would say a lot of the year-the-day performance was just the market having previously underappreciated them. I mean, this was more of a repricing and acknowledgement. You saw all the rest of memory and photonics

climbing while Credo is climbing off, which caught our attention, and it's why we added it to our Think Artificial Intelligence Index the previous quarter due to that disparity. Well, I like it. Fannock was the name we didn't have time to get to, Oster and Credo, which I call Credo, but however you pronounce it, we showed the graphic, it is correct. Zeno, really appreciate your time. Thank you very much. Good stuff. Thank you. All right. Is there going to be enough R-O-I on AI? That is one of the key things that Newveen's Sarah Malick is watching, and she'll join us with that and more. Next.

Let's get up to McKenzie Seagalos in San Francisco because we've got a news alert on Alphabet. What's going on, Mac? So, Brian, we've got Alphabet shares erasing gains on the day, now half a percentage point lower. On a Bloomberg report that two more high-profile Google AI researchers are planning to leave for Anthropic, that now brings the total tally up to four people leaving in the last week, three of them to Anthropic, one to Open AI. Now, these two AI staffers are Jonas Adler and Alexander Pritzel, both were viewed internally as key contributors to Gemini. You had Adler working on Google's AI coding effort while Pritzel was involved in training AI systems. This comes within days of John Jumper, a Nobel laureate working at DeepMind, announcing that he's headed to Anthropic, Noam Shazir, a Gemini co-lead, one of the original authors of the Transformer paper, leaving for Open AI.

And of course, Brian set this against a broader backdrop of Google finally starting to regain credibility in AI after a very rocky start to this generative AI cycle. But these exits really raising questions about whether it can keep its top researchers as Open AI and Anthropic dangle the prospect of this pre-IPO equity. Brian? Yeah. They're dangling money. And no more from Google. You can call it pre-IPO equity. I call it cash from the heavens. Mackenzie Sigalos, thank you very much.

There's going to be a lot of people are going to get really, really rich. All right. All right, meantime here in the market stocks today, kind of around the flat line. A lot of the eyes are on micron earnings after the bell tonight. But let's talk more about the AI trade,

the memory cycle and more. You've also got crude oil, by the way, right around 70. In fact, it was below 70 a barrel earlier today because you got traffic in this trade-oharm moves like literally just trying to get out as fast as they possibly can with a bunch of oil. All these things may be helping fuel a broader recovery.

Case in point, discretionaries and industrials leading to market today. It's bringing in Sarah Malick, CIO, at Newveen. Sarah, good to see you again. We've got AI. Good to see you. We've got oil down. We've got hopefully peace around Iran. Hopefully peace around Iran.

What do you have your eye on the most right now? It's the broad market rotation. Tech stocks are no longer the only game in town. Now, part of that is because since March, we saw the NASDAQ rally about 30%. But there's three factors that are driving tech stocks to be weaker and the market to broaden. First of all, was the sell-off in Korea earlier this week where questions were raised around AI ROI. We will see more information on that with Micron later today. Second is the pause in the Middle East conflict, which is helping to potentially alleviate

inflation as a threat of hormone stays open. and that's better for non-tech stocks. And finally, earnings growth and manufacturing data has been stronger. And all of that bodes well for the 4-93, which, so we think going forward, the S&P 493 will start to perform a lot better and catch up to the rally that we've seen in tech stocks. Well, we've been waiting on that for a while, Sarah. I mean, that's been the point. I was like, it's got to broaden out.

It's got to broaden out. It has a little bit. But overall, we're still waiting. That's true. A couple things have changed just recently. First of all, we expect inflation to ease a little. little bit now that oil prices are declining. Higher oil prices were a lot of pressure on industrials and materials companies, less pressure on tech stocks, hence tech stocks outperforming.

And then secondarily, we've seen a pickup in manufacturing data. Labor markets remain strong. All of that is good for the American economy. And those are some of those companies that are more cyclically geared to the economy, which is, again, non-tech stocks. But I will say one thing, earnings is what leads stocks higher. And we expect earnings growth this year to be about 20% overall broadly. Again, all of that is good for the broader S&P 500 to continue to rally, maybe not as strongly as it did in the second quarter, but continue to rally and not need multiple expansion. And I assume that East Group, EGP, a company I've never ever talked to, I don't think I've ever mentioned East Group. You think it's sort of an indirect beneficiary of all this,

or maybe a direct beneficiary? Well, these AI derivative plays are very interesting because you get the benefit of AI derivatives, data centers being built in attractive areas of the United States. But on top of that, they also provide income to the investors and they are beneficiaries of the shift to renewable energy and more of our supply coming closer to home. So these are companies like NYSource, Entergy, and East Group, companies where you can participate somewhat in the AI trade, but not with so much beta, and also get some of the other benefits I mentioned, like dividend and income for your portfolios. Yeah, NYSource and Energy. They're companies that literally produce the power,

to produce the data centers, to produce the data that comes out of the data centers. East Group, a real estate investment trust that kinds of houses them. Sarah Malick, always appreciate you coming on. Thank you very much. Good to see you. All right. Time now for today's bond report. Treasury yields, they're a bit lower.

Oil, as we just noted, falling back to levels not seen since before the Iran war easing, as Sarah just said. Some inflation concerns. Rick Santelli, joining us now from where we will be tomorrow. or hopefully actually technically tonight. Santelli in Chicago, Rick. Yeah, I'll tell you what, it's been an interesting ride. And maybe the best place to start is February when the conflict began, of course, on the 28th.

If you look at two-year and ten-year on the same chart, you'll see to the left that little spike down. That's the beginning of the conflict. And when it began, a 10-year was at 394, a two-year was at 3-37. And you can see 17% higher yields and twos a little less than 4% in tens. And that's important. Why? Because if you look at the 210 spread versus Fed Fund futures December, they are on top of each other on this year-to-day graph, which tells me that what we are looking at is the Treasury complex saying we're not going to expect any easing from the Federal Reserve. But in terms of a real tightening, well, since the $2.000.

two-year is leading the curve flatter, and the two-year is associated with the Fed, that makes sense. But if you look at a year-to-date of 10 specifically versus oil, it really is tracking. So the 10-year is more prone to be looking at oil, the distance getting bigger on the right side. It's not tracking as tight. But ultimately, oil dropping doesn't necessarily mean inflation is going to be the same as it was before the war, but it might be. so we need to pay attention to how 10 years continue to perform once we get a little further past the Iran-US conflict. Brian, back to you.

Can't wait to talk to you more in person about bonds, about everything in the markets, options. Who knows, Rick Santelli, we will see you tomorrow in your hometown. Folks, tomorrow, Kelly and I will be live, a two-hour special show live in Chicago. There is just part of your guest lineup. We are live at the CBO, Cannot. cannot wait Chicago. We're coming. You ready? All right. Let's get over now to Contessa Brewer with a CNBC News update. Brian, hello. Germany has scrapped plans now to build its biggest warships since World War II. The more than $17 billion project is on the shelf in favor of ships

with a simpler but proven design. Germany's building up its military to confront mounting threats from Moscow and a desire from President Trump to reduce the U.S. military footprint in Europe. The chief architect of the Cuban security state has died. Ramiro Valdez, one of the last surviving revolutionaries who took power with Fidel Castro in 1959, was the Communist Island's chief security official responsible for both foreign and domestic threats. His death at age 94 comes amid an American pressure campaign on Cuba that has cut off oil supplies and blocked allies from delivering aid. And the International Olympic Committee today, pledged to pay more than $100 million to athletes through 2028. The committee is creating a fund

with $10,000 grants. Athletes can apply for them after competing. The move comes after growing calls in recent years to pay Olympic athletes. They spent a lot of time, training, and take time off to come and compete. So there you have it, Brian. The athletes getting paid, maybe finally. Contessa, thank you very much. All right, coming up, the bipartisan housing bill that almost became a law earlier today, but it was canceled. We'll talk about that and lessons from his latest book with John Hope Bryant. Next. All right, there could, maybe, be soon relief for potential homebuyers if President Trump will sign off on it.

Okay, here's what happened. Last night, Congress passed the largest housing affordability bill in decades, designed to lower costs for homebuyers and increased supply. The bipartisan bill expected to be signed by President Trump this afternoon. but the signing was canceled until Congress passes the Save America Act. In other words, we're not getting this bill unless we get the other bill. Let's get some reaction on that and more with our friend John Hope Bryant, founder, chair, and CEO of Operation Hope.

Also the founder and CEO Bryant Group Ventures, a for-profit venture aims to expand affordable housing and financial literacy. We got you on to talk about your latest book. We'll get to that in a second. The timing just kind of bizarrely worked out. You're a housing guy. The housing bill is stalled. What's your take?

I think the most inspiring part about this is the word, the phrase bipartisan. It's a Washington that I sort of loved. And I get to see it again. You just said past tense. Loved. Well, no. My middle name is Hope. So my hope is that this, and I believe it will come back.

It will be signed. And I want to commend the House and the Senate and the president and both. houses, I mean, both parties for finding some common ground. I think this is what most of the country lost. So you're, you're, let's take the hope in Hope Bryant, you're hopeful that this will get signed. It's a radical movement of common sense. The number one way you build wealth in America's home ownership. And the only emotional part of the major economy that we have is, is housing. It's a very important part of the economy. It's emotional. It's where people live, where you raise your children, is where you mark the side of the door seal as your kids. It gets larger. You remember every address for a house you own.

You remember the address, 1-5502 South Fraley County, California. My mother, the house my mother bought for me. So I think this is really important, and you've got to bring the cost down, first of all, with supply. You need greater supply. You need greater efficiency in the way in which we get there. These are things we can control. We can't control interest rates, inflation, which is driving up the lack of affordability in other areas. is people need some relief.

This is one way to do it. As you know, I owned a housing company. It's part of one of the portfolio companies that I own in Brian Group, Inchers. We had 700 homes. We gave people a path from rent to own, financial literacy, reinvested in minority in small businesses

in the community. It was win-win. Who owns it and how they treat people and communities matter? A couple things. Number one, by the way, the house my parents first bought was on 183rd Street in Torrance.

Oh, yes. Free bedroom, bath, kind of near an oil refinery. We won't bring that up, but it was a high-end oil refinery. By the way, the House today is worth like $800,000. They paid $61,000 for in 19793. It's still the three-bedroom one bath. Okay, that side. My middle name is not cynicism, but it could be because sometimes when Congress passes a bill designed to do something, oftentimes it does not work. Are you convinced this housing affordability bill that you believe will get passed will also increase housing affordability?

Not in and of itself. It's a signal. I mean, no different than when you go public, it's a narrative. It's storytelling. Wall Street is increasingly going on sentiment. The country, this is not a country, it's an idea. So energy matters. I think that what I'm doing with CIM group, where they're raising a billion dollars from banks to do affordable housing in communities, that's real. That's tangible, and we're going to put that money in whether Congress passes this or not. I think this is a signal, though, that the country's political leaders are for affordable housing. The people need to hear that, the average person needs to hear that, to feel confidence about buying a house. It's the messaging. It's the wind is at your back, not at your face.

And by the way, there's going to be some incremental things in here that could help you. Okay. Your latest book is out a couple months ago, capitalism for all. I don't quote Germany a lot economically because they've done a lot to hurt their economy. But the one thing that they do well, I think, in my opinion, and you write about this in the book, is guaranteed paid apprenticeships. And what this means is if you're not familiar with it, in Germany, if you go to college, you'll do like six months in college and then six months working, actually doing the job, let's say whatever, BMW, wherever you might go. Then you go back to college and you go back to BMW. I don't know we used to do this. I don't know why we don't do it more

because then you don't have to go through this crazy job search process and you also learn how to do the job. You'd also do two things at one time. And by the way, we shouldn't end Department of Education. We should give it a new mission of upskilling everybody in AI, in my opinion. Like Walmart said, we're not going to fire anybody. We're going to train you in artificial intelligence.

So if you do those, if you do apprenticeships and internships and upskill and financial literacy and AI. You're preparing the workforce for the future, for a future, and giving people hope along the way. And I think we should give tax. We go one step further, I say in the book, let's give tax breaks for apprenticeship investment, for investing in apprenticeships,

investing in internships. Let's give tax breaks for that. While people are in university, or maybe even in high school. No, in high school. Why not in high school, right? I'd go so far as middle school. Well, we take all these garbage classes.

No offense, you know, I love my university. But like some of the classes I took were just like oceanography. I mean, I had to take it. It was nice. I like oceans. I like geography. So it seemed like a nice fit. But it has no relevance to my life whatsoever.

People are taking classes that don't make any sense. Basketweed. But you got to pay for them. But you got to pay for them. They're expensive. Yeah, we've got to connect education with aspiration. You got to plug the socket back in the wall where people connect what we're doing where we're going.

And by the way, I want to commend you, man. I don't want to get ahead of myself here, but... Let's say, if you're going to commend me, we've got all the time of the world. You wrote a great piece on AI that sort of aligns here, where you said that if AI is not advancing the broader economy and deepening it and broadening it, then it's, you know, what's the point of it? It's failed. And I think a lot of my tech friends who say, well, this is the end of jobs,

with all due respect, to have a blind spot called people and don't get it. They're genius in one area, but don't get it in the other area. It's 70% of this economy. It's consumer spending. So we don't want a circular firing squad. Yeah. We want an economy that is... I think it's what...

Thank you, by the way, for the company. I think my short, broad take was basically if you crush the economy, if you lay off tens of millions of people because of AI, there's no reason for AI to exist. And we could say, I get it. We have Elon Musk and trillioners now. But this is capitalism for all. If everybody doesn't rise up, then the system implying It's basic math.

But look, there's going to be job decreases because you're going to have inefficiencies, and this is proper, inefficiencies in the system that AI will tighten up through technology. Yeah, a lot of horseshoe people lost their jobs when the car came out. Yes. But more people were employed by cars. There you go. So on the back end of this, there's going to be more jobs than on the front end, which is fantastic. But Henry Ford realized when the automobile was replacing the horseshoe to pay your workers a living wage

so they could buy the automobile that they were making. Well, that was expanding and creating the middle class. The GI Bill wasn't charity. The GI Bill, which was an apprenticeship, by the way, money for apprenticeship, money for a down payment for a home, money to go to college. That wasn't a giveaway. That really exploded and expanded the middle class post-World War II,

and for 40 years, that drove the economy. You know how my parents got that house in Torrance? Please tell me, GI Bill. My dad got out of the Navy in 1970, 1969, 1969. Well, there you go. And went to college at night. Coincidentally from Cal State Dominguez Hills. That is actually hood adjacent.

Cal State Dominguez Hills. I know exactly where it is. I knew you were an honorary black man. That is actually right next to Compton in Carson. Look, we have got to get back to an economy that works for everybody. This is about capitalism cannot just have only a profit motive. You've got to expand the economy that then creates and protects your profit motive. Yeah. And so short-termism is really the death nail of this economy.

To capitalism, we don't get it right. Well, everybody should read the book. Inclusive economics and the future-proofing of America. Capitalism for, oh, why am I holding it up if we got a full-screen graphic? There you go. John Hope Bryant. There it is, John's real pleasure. Thank you very much. Good seeing you. Coming up, the trending ticker, it is the newest meme stock. Take a guess. We're next. Time to reveal the trending ticker of the day. Believe it or not, it's Wendy's. Wendy's, the fast food chain, the stock soaring. Why? Because Reddit had mentions of Wendy's. The stock was actually halted earlier today for volatility. Wendy's stock, the Wendy's company,

is up 27.4%. And in fact, over the past 24 hours, Wendy's was the second most mentioned stock across Reddit trading platforms. You don't think that these platforms have, power, Wendy's would like a word. More power lunch after this short break. All right. One more reminder, big show coming up for you tomorrow. Kelly and I, we are headed to Chicago where we'll be broadcasting live from the CBO. All-Star lineup. We've got Federal Reserve Chair, Austin Goulsby, at least Chicago Chair, John Rogers, Craig Donogh, the CEO of the CBO, Michael O'Grady of Northern Trust. I don't think he's done a TV interview in over five years. It's coming on with us. Bill Nygren, we have got maybe even

some surprises thrown in there as well. We're going to bring our attention. Sebo in Chicago, one of the most important cities and most important exchanges, by the way, in the world for the financial markets. Super psyched to get back to Chicago. Thanks for watching everybody. We'll see they are live tomorrow. Closing bell starts right now.