Power Lunch - Nasdaq falls on concerns over AI trade 12/17/25

Episode Date: December 17, 2025

Oracle stock slides. Hut 8 CEO joins the show to discuss energy and data center demand. And a look at some small cap picks with a portfolio manager.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Cracks in the AI story and the biggest IPO of the year. Welcome to Power Lunch, everybody. I am Brian with Kelly. We'll have that. Plus, is regime change coming in Venezuela? Trump's latest move, raising a lot of eyebrows and the price of oil. And a rare conversation with one of the most powerful executives in the global economy, Bernard Arnaul, the CEO of LVMH, and the architect of the world's largest luxury empire.

be speaking shortly with our Sarah Eisen. Plus small caps, big gains. The Russell 2000 is trying for its eight months straight of gains. One portfolio manager has three names that should be on your radar. All right, we have got a lot to do over this hour, as you can tell, but let's begin with what you see on your screen. It is a big story that may be highlighting some possible cracks in the AI and data center spending thesis. Also a story that could have big impacts on your money. Here's the setup. Oracle's stock, as you can see, is down again today, off 5%. And with that move, Oracle has now lost 36% of its value just since October 1st.

Oracle lower on a report that a huge data center project in Michigan may now be in limbo. It has to do with concerns around debt and financing and another big company you might have heard about recently called Blue Owl. But now Blue Owl and Oracle are kind of pointing fingers at each other and shareholders caught right in the middle, and since its peak this year, Oracle has lost stunning $420 billion in value. That is the same or more than the entire value of Bank of America, Costco, or AMD. The story, a little bit complicated, but it's a big one, so let's uncomplicate it, make sense of it. Bring in Sima Modi, who's been following it.

Seema, welcome. What's going on? All right. Oracle, among other hyperscalers, are amidst this ambitious push, right, to build out a number of data centers across the U.S. For Oracle, it's this $18 billion project in New Mexico, a $15 billion project in Abilene, Texas. And then this $10 billion project in Michigan, the first two were backed by Blue Owl, the second one, the third one, as FD reported this morning, Blue Owl is backing out of that deal. I spoke to a source familiar who said that Blue Owl decided upon its

due diligence that there were unfavorable economic terms tied to this specific data center in Michigan. They also highlighted the politics, the local politics could potentially result in some construction delays of this Michigan data center. Oracle comes out and defends this deal. They said that they're working with a competitive group of options, that they have selected the best equity partner. It may not be blue owl. There's another player involved. And that final negotiations are in place. The schedule is according to plan. So they're telling the market, Brian and Kelly, that there is no delay to this Michigan data center. And yet the stock continues to fall, which I think is significant. I think it's important to highlight that Oracle is a latecomer when

it comes to this whole bet on cloud computing, unlike the other hypers like Amazon and Microsoft that had an edge. So their strategy has really been to go big and to spend a significant amount of capital, increasingly leaning on the debt market to fund this big experiment. Any sense of a delay is seen as a concern, Brian, because that's revenue that then would potentially be deferred. I know Blue House kind of an oddly named company, but they're actually massive financing company on Wall Street. are they effectively saying that they're worried or is the article suggesting that Blue Owl is worried about Oracle's debt and financing? Because as you've reported, the insurance on Oracle's debt, better known as credit default swaps, remember that term from 2008 kids, that those have been rising, indicating more risk. So Blue Owl did not comment on this story. However, a source that I did speak to said that Blue Owl looked at this deal, the $10 billion deal at this Michigan Data Center,

and said that the terms of this deal were unfavorable and the debt and the repayment of debt that those terms did not seem as appetizing as some of the other ones that they've worked on with Oracle. Now, to your point, this specific deal and the mechanics of it follow some recent concerns around the companies push into cloud computing, how much more it will need to rely on the debt market. According to a credit investor I spoke to last week, Brian, the expectation, based on what the company revealed in their 10Q, which was a substantial increase in data center leases, is that this company will need to go to the debt market in early 2026.

The expectation prior to this was like maybe mid-20206, but the need is here because of these data center expansion plans that continue to remain quite aggressive. The only other part of the story I wonder about is Blue Owl itself. You talked about them, Brian. And they're a huge player, especially in the space, huge private credit players. Well, they had some issues a few months back, if I recall, about they were going to try to merge two funds or what have you. Investors would have faced maybe up to 20% losses.

So I don't know if that's related to where the capital would be coming from to back this project. Sure. But I wonder if it has something to do with them wanting to be extra careful right now for their own reasons, you know, in conjunction with whatever questions might be swirling around Oracle. Of course. I think what this really tells us is that investors are becoming much more careful and thoughtful about the mechanics of these deals, the type of debt terms they sign up for because the market is becoming increasingly concerned around the return on investment, not just for Oracle, but all the hyperscalers that are putting so much money into building this AI ecosystem. And yes, it's very much reflected. And what other company are we talking about CDS? It's really Oracle right now at the highs since 2009. And then Corrieve is another one where we're watching credit default swaps rise. We spoke about this yesterday, Kelly, that the fact that if Oracle was to go back to the debt market, it could be a jumbo bond sale, but the other option is to work with a consortium of banks to get a term loan.

In that scenario, as I've been told, we would likely see banks use CDS as a hedge, and that then reiterates the whole idea of swaps going higher. It could push up the, in other words, the market would interpret it as a sign that they're getting more risky, but it could just be the nature of the loan instead of the offering. Exactly. Yeah, one to watch. Seam a great story. Thank you.

Appreciate it. So let's stay exactly on that type of data center story because there's also another big piece of news happening today. That is setting one stock in the other direction up. That is energy infrastructure company Hut 8. It's announcing a deal to build a large data center for Anthropic in Louisiana. It is signing a 15-year $7 billion lease deal with Fluid Stack and Google who will backstop the deal. J.V. Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs will finance the deal that is sending shares of Hut 8 up nearly. 11% today joining us now in an exclusive interview. Asher Gnutt, he is the CEO of Hutt 8. Asher,

good to chat with you again. Obviously, you just heard the Oracle story. It doesn't appear that you and your team are having similar concerns or issues. How did this deal, yours, come about? Good to see you again, Brian. Nice to meet you, Kelly. And excited this time, not just talking about the power markets like we did when we were at EEI, but talking about this really important used to HUDAIDS. For us, when we were looking at customers to work with and to scale with, credit counterparty was extremely important. And we believe that Google is one of the most credible counterparties from investment grade credit in the world. They have an operating business that splits out cash flow that can fund their investments into the AI. They have a hardware

business in their TPUs. They have a car business in Waymo's. They own YouTube. So as a large consortium as a player, we believe that having Google as the end financial backstop of the 15-year commitment gives us confidence in this data center build and deploying this capital and building for the suite of customers, which include FluidSex as a tenant, Anthropic as an end user, and Google as a financial backstop. Asher, do I read here correctly that you were or are crypto miners? So we build an energy infrastructure platform. So today we build infrastructure that supports various compute, that includes Bitcoin compute, and that also includes

AI compute. And so instead of converting, we actually spent out another public company called American Bitcoin, and we continue to run data centers for both times of compute. Because I'm just curious at the same time we're talking about the incredible demand for AI compute. Is the demand for crypto compute slowing it or becoming less interesting at all? No, we think it's a different type of demand. The sites that Bitcoin data centers are willing to go to are sites that you can curtail more often sites in more bespoke areas. And so we continue to see demand that's captive for us from American Bitcoin. And that allows us to underwrite new megawatts that otherwise we may not be able to underwrite. An example of that is we have a one gigawatt project in Corpus Christi called

Lon Hill. That site, if we had just invested into it for AI data centers, we might say, you know what, maybe a customer doesn't want to come here. But we invested into it because we knew that our Bitcoin compute was willing to go there. And today we're starting to have customer conversation on that side as well. Yeah, and you're making this deal of fluid stack, which is backed by Google. How important right now, Asher, you just heard the Oracle story. How important is choosing the right partner? These are multi-billion dollar multi-year deals. You have to make sure you have the right partner. It's critical. When we underwrite the development of these infrastructure assets, we think about who are the ones that we're embedding on that will

be able to continue to pay those financial obligations during the term of that contract. And bringing on JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs as partners and being able to finance up to 85% of the data center at SOFA plus 225, that's extremely accretive and extremely competitive financing on project global financing at a really high LTC percentage. And so JPMorgan and Goldman have shown that this credit, the counterparty is really competitive and they're willing to use their balance she's to back us as well. Which kind of goes at what we were saying earlier about whatever's going on with Blue Owl and how they perceive Oracle. But are you finding that the markets, whether it's the companies that you name, the private credit industry, whatever it is, where is the liquidity

most plentifully available and cheapest? For the highest credit counterparties, right, Google has continued to rise in their business. They're one of the highest cash flow companies in the world today. they have a strong AI business and they have a variety of other suites of products and services that they offer to consumers. And so when we went to the market to talk about this deal and look at financing, we had plenty of demand. And again, banks willing to put their own balance sheet capital on because of the investment grade counterparty and the backstop that they provided to this transaction. You know, Asher, you and I talked about this in Miami. Is there any sign of any cracks showing that you can see? Because the amount of power and

compute demand that has been requested through regulators in just, say, the state of Texas, is like two times the entire state's current power output. I mean, I can't imagine all that gets built because I don't know where the natural gas will come from, but do you see any sign of any of this slowing down? There are a lot of developers out there that are just trying to lock in sites and resell them. That's driving a lot of this initial demand. They may not have the execution to actually follow through. And then when you're building campuses, it's really important because you have a lot of gross stage companies today. But as you mentioned, these contracts are long-term duration contracts. We actually took time and said no to deals that we didn't

underwrite the credit fully from not only a debt perspective, but from an equity perspective as well to protect our shareholders. And the next is execution of these projects. Can you deliver them on time on budget. And we brought in a consortium of partners in delivering on the actual labor in the building of the data center itself and also all the long lead time equipment into this facility as well. Quickly, Asher, before we go, I'm just curious if you find the political climate to be helpful or a possible hindrance to further build out efforts here. Because on the one hand, I think the House is trying to advance a bill to clear the way for easier permitting. On the other hand, we've seen senators already writing letters who want more

information about whether this is making people's electricity bills go higher? I was actually with a utility executive a couple weeks ago, and they said every additional gigawatt of capacity demand that comes onto their grid from data centers, they calculate to actually reduce household energy prices by 10%. Wow, really? And so this concept of- They're paying more for the power. That's right.

They're paying more, and you're advertising the actual transmission and delivery charges across more consumers. And so you actually bring that price down. And so I think that's a common misconception. I think the U.S.'s kind of stance today is we need to build more power generation and we need to support this industry. And at least for us in the great state of Louisiana, we've been welcome with open arms and we're really excited to invest into the state.

Well, the stock's up nearly 11% today. Astroganut, Hutt 8. Really appreciate you coming on Power Lunch. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. It was fascinating. After the break, the semi-slide. Broadcom is leaving the chips lower again.

And on pace for its worst week since April, we'll have more on the AI fears that are rattling the chips next. If you're wondering why the NASDAQ's under pressure and why the indices broadly are as well, take a look at the semis, which are getting pretty slammed right now. The likes of Nvidia down almost 4%, Broadcom down almost 5. Investors, well, they appear to be growing more worried about this talk of the AI bubble. And all of this comes ahead of Micron's earnings after the bell tonight. For more, let's bring in Christina Partsenevolus. Why the extra pronounced decline here today, Christina, what are you hearing?

There are there so many different angles to look at that. First, of course, the Blue Owl conversation that you had about Oracle and the data center infrastructure over there. That is weighing on neocloud names like Corrieve and Nebius continuing their fall today. But specifically around chips, you had OpenAI in talks to partner with Amazon. So Amazon would spend roughly $10 billion in OpenAI. OpenAI would use Amazon's chips, AWS training chips. This sounds like a great partnership, but it's being perceived.

possibly as negative for competitors like NVIDIA AMD. But I want to remind our audience that OpenAI is not a monogamous type of company. They have chip relationships with not only Nvidia, AMD, now AWS, possibly Google TPUs. And don't forget, Open AI is making custom chips with Broadcom. That's five different companies. So as, you know, you've seen before in previous CEOs

say that there's, you know, chip neutrality. Everybody's going to use everybody. this doesn't necessarily mean that it's a zero-sum game and that it's going to hurt NVIDIA. Nonetheless, you're seeing shares down. Another Kelly point to why NVIDIA is lower is that there was a GPU maker in China, MetaX, that went public in Shanghai. It was oversubscribed. The stock surge, about 700%, which really shows that there's not only policy support for local alternatives, but there are people and companies that want local alternatives to AMD and NVIDIA.

And then in the China conversation, Reuters reporting, too, that Chinese researchers have moved ahead with this EUV machine, which is extremely complicated. It's a very expensive machine that uses light to build chips. They're saying that they're in the testing phase,

and so that's why you're seeing shares of ASML lower right now as well. So there's a lot of different stories, but it really stems around the concerns around the AI buildout. Is this chip pie bigger, getting bigger, Or is it staying the same in competition as just wrapping up, which would hurt the likes of, you know, the NVIDIA and AMD.

And then, of course, you got Micron tonight after the hour. Their numbers are tonight. Well, by the way, you know who's hosting fast money 5 p.m. Eastern time tonight? And I will be with you, yes. You. It's two thumbs and is anchoring at five. So that's, we'll talk about that when it comes out. But I'm going to go back to this idea.

You referenced this relationship. I'm thinking we were going to harp on that, my choice of words. We could pitch a show to Versa called The Real Semic. conductors of Silicon Valley or something like this and then broadcoms dating in video will fit we and then they break up with what we'll figure it out um is the pie big enough for everybody what are people saying behind the scenes for two or opening eyes just keeping its options open what are people saying the bulls or any executive that you hear speak will say the pie just keeps getting bigger we're just at the early innings we've heard

that from jensen Wong the CEO of in video we've heard that from Hawk 10, the CEO of Broadcom, you know, AMD's CEO. But it's really a question of whether that proves to be true. It keeps growing. You have cell site research that I continuously read is very, very bullish towards chips. And yet the market is always reactive on every single headline of, you know, oh, Blue Owl may not build these data centers for Oracle. Oh, there's competition for Invidor.

Oh, Google's TPUs are doing much better. So it's like we're ready to turn on a dime anytime these headlines come. out, and yet the CEOs are saying demand is still there. You have all these sell side guys that go to Asia and do their channel checks and they say things are doing well, so it's really a matter of who do you believe? I guess she'll tell us.

Well, no, I'm just here to share the news and let our audience make the decision on their own. Well, we look forward to you sharing the news of Micron's earnings and what they say about guidance because Guy Adombe is going to say that the guidance better be good, but that's a preview of Fast Money 5 p.m. We'll see you there. Christina, thank you. Thanks. Is old Jolly St. Nick about to get small this holiday season?

Why the money may be flowing to a different group of stocks this year. This is me. Welcome back. It's time for a power check, as we call it. And we're going to do small caps today, which have been quietly outperforming the broader markets for most of the year. Take a look at the major averages over the past month. The Russell 2000s are still up nearly 7.5.000s are still up nearly 7.5. percent, outpacing the Dow and the S&P and the NASDAQ by about four points. Let's welcome in Dan Verruhe's senior partner and chief investment officer at Palisade Capital Management.

And you're going to focus, Dan, on a few small caps you think we'll do nicely next year. So first of all, welcome. Thank you. The first name, very familiar name to a lot of people that don't really think about the stock, Warby Parker. It's up 65% in the past month. Did you bring some? I did. I see.

Are those that right in front of you? No, those are not Warby Parker's, but these are. Okay. And they are really terrific. It's a great. They're not the AI glasses, are they? Because we had that announcement that Google is going to partner with them. I don't know if that's part of the catalyst here.

That's definitely a catalyst. But this is a very fragmented industry going into your local optometric. And they have a great direct-to-consumer model. Their stores are terrific, very high service, and it really is great value as well. The stock was a lot lower when we first bought it. It's had a little bit of a lift on the, on the Google News and the partnering on the, on some of those things. Yeah, but the growth is really starting to accelerate now.

And again, I think now we really have to focus on profitability here. And, you know, this company's going to have some great growth trajectory going forward. I feel like you should put the glasses back on. They were pretty cool. I mean, that's not the Dan Varroo. Look, that's a whole new Varroo. So let's talk about Replagin. And again, I don't think biotex get nearly the attention they deserve because these are

companies that are trying to solve these horrible diseases. Got CNBC Cures launching, thank goodness. But we need way more coverage of this. Replagin and name, we haven't talked about in years. We talked about it the last time I was on with you. The stock has begun to work a lot better. This is a company that serves the biotech industry. So the problem with biotech is it's a very binary outcome.

Well, they go bankrupt or they generally get a drug-approved. get bought by somebody else. There's an enormous unmet need in a lot of different therapeutic categories. And, uh, you know, a lot of the products that Replagin makes go into the bioproduction and, uh, it's really well positioned as we go forward. And then renaissance. Yes. Kind of reminds you of Versaunt. Yeah. Which is our new parent company, of course. Renas, but this is a bank. It's a bank. I was going to say speaking of small caps, but is this is this a new old bank with a new name? Because I don't know this name. No, it's been around for quite a while. But, you know, there are they? Who are they? They're in the southeast. There, you know,

there's been a lot of M&A activity by other banks in the region that they serve. And one of the things that we think is interesting is that there could be disruptions among, with some of the other, some of the clients in that region. And that could be some real opportunity for Renaissance. They've also improved operations significantly. This is a very, very good management team. It has one of the best upsides that we had. Last time I was on with you, we talked about Columbia banking system in California, which we continue to like. It's had a move since then, but Renaissance has a very nice upside from the current level. And again, that's the theme for small caps right now. The profitable component of the Russell 2000 trades at 15 times.

By contrast, the S&P trades at 23 times and the MAG 7 trade above 30 times earnings. So now in a rising where you have interest rates going down, we should see a lot of the benefits of fiscal and monetary stimulus early into the new year. That makes the case for small caps. And as I always say... Really? Because we've been waiting for the broadening out. We've been waiting for Godot, waiting for Guffman. The waiting is the hardest part.

Is it finally here? It's definitely happening right now. To give you an idea over the summer, the top 100 stocks were about 80% of the return to the Russell 2000. That's down to the 50s now. And it's going to continue to go lower because valuation does matter. When you're in the basement, it's tough to break your leg when you fall out of the window. But, you know, valuations are much more compelling.

We're starting to see M&A of a lot of the companies in our portfolio because of that. And I just think that's going to continue. And the setup couldn't be better for small, mid-cap stocks in the new year. Great sign for the economy, too. Small-cap outlook is so bright, you've got to wear shades. I've got to wear my shades. I just perfectly done. Oh, chef's kiss.

I can retire. Dan Varroo, Palisades Capital Manza, thank you very much. Let's get a quick look, by the way, speaking of extremely large cap stocks, Tesla. Tesla was up earlier today. It's now down about 4.6%. It's a race all of yesterday's gains, but yesterday it did close at a record high. By the way, Kelly, remember when Tim Walls, then the governor of Minnesota, bashed Tesla.

March 18th, I think it was, said he enjoys watching it going down. It's not a political thing. Did he bottom ticket? He literally bottom ticked it. That was literally the day Tesla bottomed. It's more than doubled since then. It's crazy. Not politics, just facts.

All right on deck, what Trump's new salvo against Nicholas Maduro really means for energy, oil, and more with Philema Kroff. Are we close to seeing an Iraq-style regime change in Venezuela? We might be. President Trump ordering what he called. calls a, quote, total and complete blockade of sanctioned oil tankers moving in and out of Venezuela. The key word there is sanctioned. So while this does not include all ships, it is enough that the plan is to cut off Venezuelan sales of oil to specific countries and also

cut off Venezuelan strongman Nicholas Maduro's money. This escalation comes a week after. The U.S. seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, and the White House has deployed thousands of troops and nearly a dozen ships to the waters north of Venezuela. This news is giving a slight lift to oil prices, but let's be clear, they've still tanked more than 20% this year. They're on pace for their biggest annual loss in about seven years. So how does all of this ultimately, though, play out? Halema Croft is MD and head of global commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets. Halima, the keyword here is sanction, right?

This is not all oil coming Venezuela. It's not from Venezuela. It's not a complete blockade of all of Maduro. oil. So how much do we think it is and what kind of damage might it do? Well, it's certainly not the 250,000 barrels a day that Chevron exports from Venezuela. So we're talking about the remainder. Are we talking about 5 to 600,000 barrels, potentially? But the key thing is, Brian, we have seized one tanker. What type of forces are we going to deploy to go after the rest of these sanctioned cargo? So I think that is going to

to be the question, how serious is President Trump about backing words with action with his latest threats against the Maduro regime? What does it mean for China, which I understand was the recipient of these barrels, Halima? Well, the question for China is, do they really need these Venezuelan barrels at the moment? I mean, China has become the shelter of last resort for everybody's sanctioned barrels. The Russians put their sanctioned barrels into the Chinese teapot refiners. Iranian barrels are showing up in the Chinese teapot refiners. So how big a hit to China is this move? Again, it's one tanker so far.

It's going to be a big question is, is President Trump very serious about really trying to shut down the sanctioned Venezuela oil trade? You're doing 103 million barrels of oil a day produced around the world roughly. We're talking about maybe 5 to 700,000 barrels of oil a day from this, which would effectively be one ship. So on that basis, it's not very much, but it's a lot of money. for Nicholas Maduro, I've got to imagine. So what is the thinking about what kind of damage? Could this actually force Maduro to voluntarily leave his own country and go into exile somewhere? I imagine he wants to be safe wherever he may end up. He wants to be free from prosecution. He does not want to end up like the situation we saw with Chilean leader of Pinochet, who basically

was arrested in London. And so the question is, where can Nicholas Maduro go? Some were saying maybe he would go to Qatar. The Qatar has been very involved in negotiations trying to have an off-ramp to this situation. The question is, does Maduro leave voluntarily? If he does not, are we going in to get him? You mentioned Iraq. I don't think President Trump wants to put significant U.S. boots on the ground in Venezuela. So the question is, if he doesn't leave, are we going to do some type of airstrikes? Are we going to send in a team to capture him and arrest him? Is it like a Midlodin-style situation for Maduro. So we don't know how this ends. And then the question is, if we do get a new regime, how stable is that government? Does the Venezuelan military try to block

the rise of a U.S. friendly regime? Unclear what the end game's going to look like. What do you think the end game does look like? Because I guess the thesis, the easy thesis would be Maduro leaves the country, a new, more friendly, perhaps even democratic regime comes in, quality of life for millions of Venezuelans improves. Investment is made in these oil fields, companies like Chevron, ultimately and maybe others, benefit. And we add a couple million more barrels of oil a day from Venezuela back to the global market, reducing the need to get oil from countries like, say, Iran. Well, Brian, that is a wonderful scenario.

I know. It's like a bedtime story. That would be the optimistic outcome that everyone would be hoping for in the White House and many in Venezuela. will I'll be hoping for. The reality is the Venezuelan military has tried to make it essentially coup-proof. So even if Maduro goes, they have redundancy. So the question is, are they willing to give up their power? The Venezuelan military essentially operates Pedavasa, the national all company, as a piggy bank for its operations. It runs the narco-trafficking rings in the country. So the question is, could somebody like Nobel Prize winner Machado coming back from Norway be able

to displace the military, which you have to do a deal with the military. I think that's a big question. And if there is a chaotic situation on the ground, what resources is the United States going to deploy to try to stabilize it? I was talking to oil company executives on the sidelines of the National Petroleum Council in D.C., and they said it would cost about $10 billion a year in investment to try to turn around the Venezuela oil sector. And that's, again, just one sector. And they would need a stable security environment. There are about 6 million arms in circulation in Venezuela. So somebody is going to have to resource the transition in Venezuela if we want it to be

stable and secure. Nobody lays it out as clearly and concisely. Helim McRough, as you do. Certainly, it is a place to watch and something's going to give. Halima Croft, thank you. Thank you. And let's get over to Sima Modi now for the CNBC News Update. Sima?

Kelly and Brian, FCC Chair Brendan Carr, telling senators today his agency is not formally independent, and shortly after the word disappeared from the FCC's website in a section describing its mission, the change came after Chair Brendan Carr faced questioning from Democrats on the Senate Commerce Committee about whether he believes President Trump is his boss or whether it's appropriate for the president to pressure him to go after media companies. Jake and Romy Reiner commented today on the killing of their parents, Rob and Michelle, calling their loss horrific and devastating and asking for respect and privacy moving forward. They issued this statement shortly after their brother appeared in a L.A. courthouse as he faces two counts of first-degree murder.

And the Senate voted today to advance billionaire Jared Isaacman's nomination to become the next NASA administrator. A final vote is expected to happen sometime today. Isaacman says he will push to land U.S. astronauts on the moon before China. Brian? Sima Modi, I feel like we just saw you. I think you did. We really did. Siamam Modi, thank you very much. We're going to take a short break right after this.

You're watching Powerhouse. All right, welcome back. We've talked a lot about the stock market. We need to talk more about the bond market. We're going to do that right now because Rick Centelli, joining us now with the bond report from Chicago. Rick, are we still focused on Japan? Absolutely still focused on Japan.

We continue to see their interest rates higher, and we look forward to their central bank raising rates. And my guess is that they will. And if you look towards the UK, most likely the UK is going to lower rates. We have a lot of central bank meetings coming up in the next several days. Now, if you look at the since the Fed, December 10, for twos and tens, there's some features here you really need to pay attention to.

First of all, tens, tens have been a little higher in yield since the drop on the 10th, and they still have touched the range where the twos pretty much have drifted, and right now they're on the low yield of the session. All maturities right now are virtually unchanged outside of the 30-year bond. And if you look at the range for that tenure on the right side of the chart, the last three days this week, it's been tight 414 to 418. Now, let's look overseas to the Boons. Boons had to yield close today of 286, Sully.

That's a nine-month high. And if you look at the distance between the Boon and the 10, it's the closest it's been in two and a half years. Now, under 130 basis points. And finally, if we look at the dollar index also since Fed Day on December 10th, It's basically been drifting lower. Today we had a small pop, and I mean a small pop, but we want to continue to monitor

if it closes above or below that 99 level for the week, technically significant and continues to push further away from that psychological area of 100. Kelly, back to you. I'm watching it. It's feeling heavy. Rick, thank you very much, Rick Santelli. Fed Governor Chris Waller is scheduled to have an interview

with the president today. It could be happening now. He vowed to stress the Fed's. independence in his conversations with the White House. I spent 20 years of my life working on central bank independence and why it was important. There's no doubt. I've got a long paper trail of this. Those who were in the room voted said they'd love to see him take the nod. But Kalshi, that's looking a little bit different with the odds.

Still has HACET in the lead. Waller is ascendant, but not up there yet. He's about a 19% chance, I think, as Brian and I squint at the screen. Well, I think that's what that's fair. is better. It's hard to read a little bit, I think. But Kevin Hassett at 53. If that's effectively percent. Yeah, yeah. Warsh, 24 percent, Waller, 19 percent. So there you go. There you go. All right, I don't see Evans or Sullivan on there at all. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be back with more on it's going to be great. Stick around.

All right, there's your markets today that as that composite losing a lot of Steam, folks, quietly, nothing I do is quiet, but quietly, the NASDAQ is down one and a half percent right now. The Russell 2000 down nine-tenths. Kelly, the selling has certainly accelerated the last few, I don't know, minutes or maybe a little over an hour. Which makes the IPO today even more of a standout because the largest since Rivian four years ago is Medline. PE-backed name, not a ton of excitement around it, but the biggest one in years went public last hour officially opened. shares got a nice pop after the first try. I can't remember for 34, 35. Anyway, you can see we're up about 30% from that open and it priced at 29 last night. Leslie Picker can give us those details. Hi, Leslie. Hey, Kelly. Yeah, you're right. It's especially impressive in a down tape when the market is in the red today. To your point, it's the largest IPO since Rivian, the largest global IPO of 2025, the largest healthcare IPO on record, and the largest sponsor IPO on. record, meaning that it was taken, it was purchased by a consortium of private equity firms back in

2021, and they have now taken this company private. Notable that the PE firms didn't sell into the IPO. It was all primary stock that was being issued by the company that will ultimately be used to pay down about $17 billion worth of debt. Not all those proceeds will go toward the debt. The company raised $6 billion in this IPO, but that will be used to pay down some of the debt load that this company has. It's a 58-year-old company that has grown top line each of those years at a compounded annual growth rate of about 18%. So it's kind of that stickiness. It's that staying power. And they operate in a segment that is seen as reaching kind of the growing demographic of elderly people, people needing health care. And so all of that attracted investors into the

book for this IPO guys. Up 33 and a half percent, Leslie Picker. Thank you. All right, folks, let's give you now some exclusive access to something you may not get anywhere else as we are at the Yale CEO summit in New York where Sarah sitting down with the richest person in Europe and one of the richest people in the world.

Businesses, I think the future is very positive. Obviously, you have always difficult times. You have crisis. You have geopolitical crisis, you have economic crisis, and we went through many of them during the last 40 years. But at the end, I am proud that the group has built continuously, has grown continuously, because we are showing something in the world for which the interest of people is constantly growing. You know, we are part of history of the country where we have some brands. I think with Tiffany in the U.S., we are part of the U.S. history. And in France, we have some brands that were created around more than 500 years ago.

And we are part of France history. And very often, when I travel to the world, I feel myself. like a kind of ambassador, not only a businessman, but I represent countries. And I am asked a lot of questions about how is this done in France, how this watch is done by Louis Vuitton in Switzerland, for instance, where we have one of the most incredible producer of watches in Geneva.

And to give you an example of the difference and the mix in our activity between high technology and history, we just bought in Geneva, in La Fabrique de Teng, which is a subsidiary producing some of the most beautiful watches in the world machine dating to the 18th century. because this machine were the only one able to create the type of finish on these watches and the movement that we wanted to find. And we are at the same time using the latest AI in this factory for supply chain for packets.

and for a lot of things that today does not need really the same type of craftsmanship. But I am confident to the future prospects of our activities because the more the technology is growing, the more efficient it appears, and it develops, the more many companies, including LVMH are using it, the more people look at the details, at the quality, and at a lot of aspect of the product that only the hand of a person, man or a woman, can do. And so I could give you more details, but maybe I don't want to be too long. No, that's okay. I was actually going to ask about AI next, and clearly you talk about how it can work with human craftsmanship. How do you think about the transformation of the way we shop and what we want in our AI future? But the AI is growing, I think,

is really a form of modern revolution, and I think we are only at the beginning. But it's like in the past, when you have revolution, technical revolution, they change a lot of things, but the history is still there. And a lot of our products will not be touched in their fabrication by AI. There is a big difference in the world between consumer products that you sell in supermarket and that are very necessary and the products of high quality, which is our domain. And the demand for them can go in parallel. And what we observe today is since the crisis lasts big.

Europe's richest man, Bernard, our note, they're addressing as Sarah asked him, the AI landscape and kind of just the general environment right now. Very well-dressed man, by the way. Always the best. Well, he runs and owns and controls what, LVMH, Louis Vuitton-M-A and a C. I believe that's one of the answer. So if you want champagne, that's the man to see. especially this time of year. To watch the rest of that conversation with the CEO,

please head to CNBC.com, and we'll be right back. It's almost Christmas, so Kelly and I have to tell you about the Burl-Lives trade. That's silver and gold. And it keeps going higher. And it just keeps going higher. Look at silver. It's at 66. 64 an ounce.

Just keeps going up every day. 67 earlier. I mean, up 115% this year. Gold, same thing. It's up 65% year-to-date. Palladium, too, copper. Rick mentioned this, a little bit of the weaker dollar effect here, but in each one of these, you can also make a demand case or an economic case, but they are all rising rapidly.

I'm going to buy everybody I know a catalytic converter for Christmas. I can't afford it, actually. See me on Power Lunch, or Power Lunch. Fast money, whatever. Fast money tonight. Just get it the lawful way. That's it. Yeah.

We'll see you later, Brian. Thanks for watching. Power Lunch. Thank you.