Power Lunch - Nasdaq leads a rally for stocks 11/24/25

Episode Date: November 24, 2025

Who are the winners and losers of the AI race? Needham's Laura Martin joins to give her thoughts. Oppenheimer's Ari Wald joins with some picks that the technicals show are poised for a breakout. And CNBC's Eamon Javers brings the latest on peace talks in the war in Ukraine and U.S.-China relations.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Stocks are hotter than a Thanksgiving dinner. Welcome to Power Lunch, everybody. I am Brian Sullivan and good news. Kelly will be back next week. Green across the screen, big tech, the big winner, the entire AI trade popping today, even some of the more beaten up stocks in the last couple of weeks, the Palantiers, the oracles, and even yes, the NVIDias are higher. A different story lately for Alphabet.

It's kind of driving a knife in the heart of the idea that AI will crush Google as Alphabet just keeps on winning. We'll talk about it more, find out why, and maybe how much more money might be left in Alphabet's tank with Needham's Laura Martin. Plus, another bullish bump may be coming from Beijing, President Trump and China's President Xi Jinping speaking and agreeing to meet next year in person and even more. Exclusive content just for you to start your week with the five NASDAQ stock. with the most upside scene by analysts. Robin Hood's CIO, Stephanie Gill, will join us for that conversation and more all ahead. A lot to do.

Happy Monday, everybody. But we begin with a big new announcement from a major AI player, and that is Anthropic. We've also got some news out of Amazon as well. These are the kind of headlines that can and often do move stocks. So let's hit them both. McKenzie Seagallos is out in San Francisco,

starting with some breaking news on Anthropic. Hey, Brian. So Anthropic is launching its most powerful model yet. It's called Opus 4.5, and it is the new flagship of the Claude family built for advanced coding, agentic workflows, and enterprise tasks like financial modeling. The update includes new Excel and Chrome tools, and a feature called Infinite Chat that prevents memory cutoffs in long conversations. And it comes as Anthropic commits more than $80 billion to compute over the next decade, including a new spend commitment with Microsoft Azure and its own. own custom-made data centers across the United States.

But in terms of this model race, some would argue that Anthropics' chief rival is now Google. Gemini 3. It hit the top of the benchmarks last week. Salesforce's Mark Benioff said he would never go back to chat, GBT, after using Gemini 3. So we're really seeing this rivalry heat up, Brian. Yeah, it really is. It's pretty amazing to watch all the investment that's going on into this as well. Let's pivot now.

Anthropic is obviously private. Amazon is not. I mean, the numbers just keep coming out. Amazon talking about 50 billion investing in AI, but I never know, McKenzie, and maybe you do. Are these new numbers, or do we hear the same headlines about the same numbers kind of over and over again? So in the case of this Amazon announcement this morning, it's additive to existing commitment. So we knew that they had that $11 billion data center created exclusively for Anthropic in northern Indiana. And then another $38 billion with Open AI.

But now today what they are talking about is planning to invest. up to $50 billion to build out AI and supercomputing capacity exclusively for its U.S. government cloud customers. Now, that project is met to break ground in 26. It's going to add nearly 1.3 gigawatts of capacity through its new AWS data centers built for classified workflows, and as you know, that's roughly enough to power a million homes here. And one other thing I'll say about this, as part of the expansion, federal agencies are

going to get access to Amazon's full suite of AI tools. including Anthropics Codd models. So Amazon with Anthropic, Amazon, everybody with everybody. Am I overstating this? Because I feel I try to explain the story in like a Saturday night, we have a dinner party. People ask me what's going on.

I try to explain it and I realize everything I say sounds ridiculous because I can't, I'm not sure I understand it. I think we're all trying to wrap our heads around this new circular economy that very much has open AI at the center of it and then these nodes that expand out to NVIDIA and all of the cloud players.

But in the case of Amazon, like, they are really trying to build out an AI strategy, both on the basis of being a compute partner to the likes of Anthropic, Open AI, now the U.S. government, but also in the context of wanting to invest in Anthropic as its big AI play, they have $8 billion invested into that company. So that's really their larger bet here when it comes to an LLM AI strategy. Well, Kenji Sigalo, South North San Francisco Bureau, breaking news on a national. Anthropic, more news on Amazon, the AI trade alive and well. And speaking of AI, there's been a point of debate going around investors the last couple of months as to whether AI search

will sort of kill Google search. In other words, why Google something, if you can just throw it into chat GPT or Anthropic or someone else, and get a better or more relevant answer. That school of thought scared some people around investing in Google's parent company Alphabet. Well, it couldn't have been more wrong. At least not yet. Google's new Gemini enhanced AI search booming. Gemini is the number two in its category in the Apple App Store. An Alphabet stock is now up 11% just in one week and is the top Mag 7 performer in the past three months. In fact, there's an RBI for you. Alphabet has more than doubled the return of the next best mag seven stock Apple. Let's talk about it all now with Laura Martin,

senior internet and media analysts need them. Not only perfect for this segment because you cover the world of internet and media, but also you've been all with this story. You've been talking about it. You've been right. What did others get wrong about the alphabet search story? So I think one of the things that people get wrong is Google's execution has really been best in class. I mean, they saw the minute OpenAI launched Chat GPT, like,

one of the original founders of Google when it was called Google came back and sat in a room and said, guys, we can't be behind. And so now Gemini 3 is proof to a lot of people that they have now caught up and are leading, even that's why Anthropic was forced to announce its new model today. I want to make an economic point, sort of building on the question you asked McKinsey, which is Anthropic announced today economically that Microsoft, would invest $5 billion in it and Anthropic would commit to

$30 billion of compute capacity at Microsoft Azure's cloud business and Navidia would invest $10 billion today in Claude, so Anthropic and they would commit, meaning Claude, would commit to buy $50 billion Navidia chips over time.

So part of what's happening here is a little bit of the Silicon Valley. We're going to create an interlocking ecosystem like a Coretsu in Japan. where everyone's success sort of pulls up and down the entire AI ecosystem together. I haven't heard that term in about 30 years. They used to call it a zibatsu as well. I used to work for a Japanese company and this sort of vertical integration.

So do you, Laura, worry that a lot of that is sort of this idea of circular money? Or is that okay because it happens to consumer products all the time, by the way. Somebody's got to pay somebody to take their product. I think the issue, Brian, what this big, the best question is, are people overspending on AI, right? Is it overhyped? The answer is whether you win. You can do Apple, which is just saying we're not going to invest in AI because we think all of AI is a bubble. You can do meta, which is investing a lot.

And if it loses, it was a bad investment. You can do Google or alphabet. And if it invests, technology is going to be driven by Gen AI for the next 15 years. So if you don't have a play or you don't have a winning play, you aren't a tech company. And all of these companies think they're tech first. So I think you have to spend the money and try to win because it's a binary outcome. You either win or lose. But if you don't play, you're losing.

I will use Claude Anthropics thing. I'll use Chat, GPT, Open AI's thing as well for some searches, for some information. I don't fully trust it yet, but that's probably my own trust in emotional issues. Who are they taking market share from? If it's not Alphabet, people are searching for stuff there. They're eliminating the search somewhere else. Are they not? Or is it maybe they're just doubling the amount of searches they're doing?

So what Alphabet tells us is that answers, which is their product that sort of replaces search, generates more engagement, longer engagement, and 10% more searches. So people go down these rabbit holes, they ask a question, answers, gives them an answer, and they're like, oh, that's interesting, let me go. And then they do more searches, and they spend 20% more time on Google search, which allows them to serve more ads than if the person had just done a search and then gone out to a link and left the Google ecosystem because it went out to a link. So from a Google point of view, the other point I really need to make about Alphabet is they own

everything. They own the chips. They own best in class control. consumer data. They own the cloud. They own, they're totally vertically integrated. And they are a threat to the NVIDIA open AI ecosystem because Google Alphabet does everything itself out away from those, that big ecosystem we were talking about with Anthropics. Well, that's a great point. And they also have owned the stock market lately. The stock's up 53% in the past 90 days. Apple's up 21%. That's the double I referred to. So let me ask you this. Can both win? Can the

Google side win and the open AI Microsoft side win? Or is one going to win? Yes, because no, because Brian, what people are forgetting is you can win because you're best. But like Amazon is the only one telling us they are not capacity constrained. Why? Because their core competence is logistics. And they figured out this power was going to be the critical path two years ago, and they doubled their power capacity. So the reason they're not capacity constraint, because they saw power because their core strength is putting up warehouses for the commerce business. So you can win by being more competent at execution in the physical world, even if your product isn't as good, because first mover matters. So yes, we're going to have

winners and losers, and I think two or three win, and we have five or six right now, and there will be losers. Who wins? Who those two or three? In my opinion, Alphabet wins because it's got the best people, human capital, sitting behind AI. I also think Amazon wins just because they're best in class at allocating capital to physical building structures and timelines and execution, which has nothing to do with tech. But they're really good at that. And right now, all the gatekeeper pieces of power and invidia chips and they've got, Amazon has answers for all of those. Open AI doesn't. Microsoft doesn't. Lama meta doesn't. So I think those are the two obvious winners today. And I think Apple has the worst strategy. We're just ignoring open AI, tried to treat it

like a feature. I think that doesn't win. So what does that mean for Apple? Stocks done well. It's of 21% in the past three months. Yep. So look, there are people who believe AI is a bubble and the best place to hide is Apple because they're just generating 90 billion of cash flow and buying in your shares. They're just returning capital to shareholders. So if you believe AI is a bubble, Apple's the place for you because you have infinite liquidity and they just are acting like AI isn't a thing. Open AI is a disruptive force. They want to disrupt. They want to take over what meta does, what search does for what Amazon does with e-commerce. They want to disrupt every trillion dollar business that came before with the internet disruption that were caused by the

mobile or internet disruption, AI wants to replace that, or generative, like open AI, wants to replace that. The problem is it's really capital intensive, and they have to borrow all the money or get it from the equity markets, whereas Meta and Google and Amazon can fund their build, can fund the next technological innovation through cash flow. You just kind of, I mean, I hope nobody at Apple's watching this. I'm kidding, because I know they are, but you just kind of described Apple like utility, right? Buying back their own stock, using cash flow to change the balance sheet, but not growing on the AI side. That's an interesting take.

And we see, Brian, in the numbers of the growth rates, Apple's growth rate is three, four, five percent. People are ecstatic because it might grow six percent this quarter. What we're seeing with these Gen AI infrastructure investors, they're accelerating their revenue growth, meta did 26 percent revenue growth in the most recent quarter, and they're lowering their costs. their cost per revenue dollar are falling because they're using technology to replace people. It's amazing. I don't know. And we got to let you go, Laura Martin. And I was a dork as a kid. I used to watch these cartoons. You remember the cartoon He-Man?

Where he would go, I have the power. And then the sword would thing, and he would get all strong. I feel like that's Amazon and some of these others. They have the power. So they run the show. Literally, Laura Martin, need them. Great stuff. As always, Laura, thank you. All right. Coming up, the five NASDAQ 100 stocks with the most upside seen by analysts, more exclusive content just for you. But before that, more on the big breaking news of President Trump will be going to China next year. The market likes it. We'll get more details on that. And Ukraine next. All right, two big developing geopolitical stories to hit right now. First, Ukraine and Russia appear

to be inching closer to a peace plan that would end Russia's war. on Ukraine. The U.S. has obviously discussed a peace deal. We've talked about that. And now the European Union also working on details that could hopefully end the war if Ukraine would agree to them. Also happening now in just the last hour or so, President Trump says he will go to Beijing to meet with China's president Xi Jinping. Trump says the high stakes meeting will happen in April. They also had a phone call. The market likes this news. Let's talk about it more with Amen Jabbers. All right,

Amon, first off, let's talk about China. What did we learn from either this phone call and this meeting, planned meeting, between Trump and Xi in Beijing? Yeah, Brian, look, both of these stories that you're talking about are interrelated in that there's sort of discussions going on about Ukraine, both with the Ukrainians,

also with the Russians, and then also with the Chinese now. We got a statement from President Trump on Truth Social, earlier this afternoon. Here's what he said. He said that he is, in fact, got a great relationship with Xi Jinping, and he said our relationship is extremely strong. The call was a follow-up to our highly successful meeting in South Korea three weeks ago. Since then, there has been significant progress on both sides in keeping our agreements current and accurate. And to that

end, he said, now we can set our sights on the big picture. President Xi invited me to visit Beijing in April, which I accepted, and I reciprocated where he will be my guest, for a state visit in the US later in the year. So the president's saying that he's going to Beijing. Xi Jinping is coming to the United States. He thinks it's important that both sides communicate often. And that's where we stand right now. It's interesting, Brian, to read the sort of the readout

simultaneously between what the US says about the call and what the Chinese government says about the call. Earlier in the day, we got a readout from the Chinese side brought to us by our Yunus Yun in Beijing. And in the Chinese readout, read out, they say that that call also discussed Ukraine and also discussed Taiwan and the Taiwan issues. So we don't know exactly what was discussed on both of those topics, but we know at least according to the Chinese side that they were brought up. Because there were headlines that

I saw where Xi Jinping was making comments. I don't know where he was making these comments, whether it was in China or sort of to the U.S., that Taiwan is a part basically of China and the long-term plan. I mean, this is the whole sticking. point. China believes Taiwan is part of it. Taiwan, and we would believe it's stone separate nation. I don't know how you fix that, Amon. Yeah, I'll give you the exact language from the Chinese readout that you bring it up, Brian. The Chinese say President Xi outlined China's principled position on the Taiwan question. He underscored that Taiwan's return to China is an integral part of the post-war international order. China and the U.S. fought shoulder to shoulder against

fascism and militarism. Given what is going on, it is even more important for us to jointly safeguard the victory of World War II. So Xi Jinping linking the allied nature of combat between the United States and China in World War II to this very present day issue of what's going to happen with Taiwan. That's a fascinating argument from the Chinese side. All right, so let's switch and pivot to the latest and the ongoing negotiations, sort of between Russia and Ukraine with the U.S. making its own reported peace plan with Russia, Ukraine not happy necessarily about that, and now the European Union coming in with its own suggestions at this

time, Amon, where do we stand? And what do we know about Ukraine? It's a sovereign nation. It's going to do what it thinks is best for it and not sort of be bossed around by anybody else. Well, sure, but incentives matter, right? And if the United States is providing the weaponry and the Europeans are providing the money, that's a lot of Ukraine's fighting capacity there. So Ukraine has to be very sensitive to what the U.S. and Europeans want and if they're savvy, try to play one off against the other or leverage the disagreements between the two. And what we're expecting this afternoon is Marco Rubio to come back to the White House to brief the president on discussions they had in Geneva over the weekend. We got this

joint statement late yesterday from the U.S. and the Ukrainian side sort of describing the conversations over the weekend saying that they were productive, there was momentum, et cetera, but not saying that there was a deal or an agreement of any kind, you know, falling fairly. short of that. And we've got some positive noise from the Russians this morning saying that they think there's a framework here that might end in peace. But it feels like there's a long time between now and when this plan will ultimately come together. You've already seen the president imposed this Thanksgiving deadline for the Ukrainians to agree to this U.S. proposed peace plan. And then some U.S. officials sort of walking that back and saying, well, maybe it's not

exactly Thanksgiving deadline. And maybe it's not the exact 28 points. Maybe it could be 26 points. some other number of points. So there does seem to be some wiggle room here and some moving parts before we get to anything that looks like a final deal. Yeah, I would add at least they are talking. That is the first step. Amen, Javis. In diplomacy, they say talking is better than shooting, Brian. Well said. Amen, thank you. All right. In the meantime, an eye-opening new report on oil. Now, oil is slightly high right now, about a percent 63 and change. But listen to this. In a new note, J.P. Morgan's oil analysts are forecasting a big drop. in oil prices even from these levels. In fact, J.P. Morgan says that Brent crude could fall into the

$40 range by the end of the year. That's why they put with a four handle. That means a four to start the price, 48, 49, whatever. And that is Brent crude, which of course trades overseas and at a slight premium to our oil. So Brent prices in the 40s could mean low $40 or even high $30 prices for Texas oil at the end of next year, and then J.P. Morgan analysts say it could get even worse in 2027 with Brent crude in the $30 range. To be clear, this is a fairly extreme outlier view. Of course, it's likely that if prices keep falling, U.S. and global oil producers or scale back output to protect prices still. Somebody to consider, as oil is already much lower on the year. Oh, and by the way, if oil prices were to fall into the $40 or $50 range, you've got

$2 oil, $2 gas rather, in certain parts of the United States. Fill up on that. All right, coming up, we've got a big power check for you in this day of lots of green tape across the screen. Harry Wald, Oppenheimer laying out some names that he says, charts say you may want to buy. All right, as the graphic says, it is power check time. And certainly your money is powering up today. The AI trade is over theme. Well, that theme is over. At least for today, the NASDAQ is up more than 2%. But let's get you some ideas and opportunity that maybe you've already hopefully begun your holiday shortened week. Oppenheimer's head of technical analysis. Ari Wall with us now. Eric, good to see again. Thanks for joining us.

All right. So we got to talk about. of stock we mentioned at the top of the show, and that is Apple. It's up 21% in the last three months, but the last couple of weeks, kind of flat. What are the charts saying about Apple? The key line you just said there, it's flat. Consider this, Brian, NASDAQ 100, down about 8% through this pullback. Apple flat, it was down marginally 1 to 2%. It's a 9% weighting in the NASDAQ 100. If we think about the offsetting relative buying that had to take place, given that's the market and ETF-wide selling, that's interesting to us. That's a sign that would suggest that as market conditions stabilize, investors are going to want to continue to bid that

stock higher. It recently had a very big breakout above its February 2025 high. It's consolidating there. And I think that breakout continues to the upside. And of course, the top-down thematics behind it there. I think large-cap growth continues to lead the charge to the upside. And apples and hundreds of ETFs those get bought probably moves the stock. Next one, not the case, much smaller. Not a name we talk about a lot, but it's been red hot. That is Rockwell Automation, okay. The tickers are okay, which is appropriate because the stock has been rocking this year. Apologies. It's a dad joke, but I'm a dad. It's got a 50% so far this year. You think the charts are showing more upside on Rockwell Automation? We think there's

still some long-term runway and upside in this chart. At Oppenheimer, we talk about these themes. our thematic strategy talks about. And one of them is the industrial renaissance and robotics and automation. And Rockwell, automation fits that theme. It's outperform rated by our fundamental analysts. And the charts tell a very similar story here. Here's a stock that's just starting to break above its year 2021 peak. There's relative rotation there as we think about some underperformance over that five-year period. And then again, as the market sells off, here's a stock that upheld its 50-day average, its breakout point. And once again, I think as market conditions stabilize and firm, that multi-year, five-year breakout continues to the upside. And maybe the most

underreported market story the last couple of months has been this quiet, don't tell anybody, breakout by biotech. Gilead Sciences is part of that. We showed off some of these names, by the way, in San Francisco a few weeks ago. And there are some technical signs in Gilead that you really like. What are they? There is. Well, you started right there. I mean, in September, we've been talking about this broadening list of biotech stocks that have been moving higher in our momentum ranks. A lot of mid-small-cap stocks you never heard of.

I think I was talking about Ascendus Farmer the last time I was on here. Probably if there's one large-cap name that is worth mentioning, it's Gilead scientists. Because if you were to take a step back, here's a stock that is just starting to get above its peak level from 2015, a decade ago. Wow. 10 years ago. So it's 10 years of wasted money. if you've owned it for 10 years, you're just back to where you were. That's starting to break to the upside, and some of those measured breakout objectives

would point to about $180. I think there's some continued gains in the stock price of Gilead. After a 10-year wait. Now, I mean, if you traded it, you made some money, but if you invested in it for 10 years, you haven't made anything. In fact, you've lost a lot of money because the opportunity costs the money you lost. When you think about the underperformance through that, there's some rotation potential here. You've had to trade it in a range, and I think that continues.

Typically, when you get these breakouts, you'll see price accelerate. You are. I have to say it's the best power check of the week. Oh, good. Erie Wall. It's kind of also the only, but you're great. Erie Wald of Oppenheimer. Really appreciate that. Thank you very much.

Right up next. Does today's pop give the all clear for stocks to keep running to the end of the year? We'll get to that and more with Robin Hood's chief investment officer Stephanie Guild coming up right after this. All right, time for more exclusive content just for all of you. And don't tell anybody here on Power Lunch. With the recent rattling in the markets, we thought it would be a good time to look at some stocks that Wall Street loves right now. How do we do that? We do that by comparing the current price of a stock to the average price target of analysts, as reported by our friends over at FACCET.

For these stocks, the larger the gap, the more upside seen by analysts. Full disclosure, analysts get it wrong all the time. They're human beings. They make mistakes. They can also cut their price targets. And if a stop keeps falling, they often will. Happens all the time. So take these five stocks with a giant grain of sea salt.

But here are the NASDAQ 100 members with the largest gap between the current price and the price target. Number one, Axon Enterprises, 58% difference between the current price and its target. It's company formerly known as Taser. Fourth, Trade Desk, 59% gap between its current $39 target and $62 or $39 price range. and $60 price target. Third in the list, the 63% hole between where cable company Charter Communications currently trades and where analysts say this stock should be, we've got an average target of $332 and change on charter.

Next up, software company at Lassian, with a 67% gap in the price, this after a 43% drop in the past year. But the NASDAQ 100 stock, with the most upside seen by analysts, It's not even close. It's strategy, micro-strategy. It's down 35% this month. And with that drop, the Bitcoin holding company keeps widening the Wall Street price target gap. Analyst on strategy have an average target of $526 with BTIG and benchmark even higher than that.

At $630 and $705 each. It's hard to understand those targets unless strategy has a huge turn and quick. the price target is cut. So to recap, analysts, get it wrong often, but right now, those five names are the names in the NASDAQ 100 with the most potential upside, at least at current target prices, more exclusive content for you right here on Power Lunch. So let's stay on the markets in your money because none of those five stocks that we just mentioned make the list of the most actively traded on Robin Hood. So what does? Joining us now is Stephanie Gill, C-I-O-O-of. Robin Hood, great to have you on set.

None of those stocks made your list. No. Not even strategy. No. Although Bitcoin has been a net buy over the last couple of days, I would say. Your clients love crypto. They love Bitcoin. I mean, they love stocks.

They love to, you know, it's not just Bitcoin. But, yeah, on the list, I mean, our customers tend to, like, hold particular positions and then trade around those positions. But I definitely think last week spook them a little bit. And you are seeing that buying, but it's not as strong as it's been. So what does that mean, hold positions and then trade around the positions? Meaning that they hold core positions, the things that you and I know, right, Tesla, NVIDIA, Apple, they're all, you know, they're in our Robin Hood Investor Index, which actually is used to track what our customers are doing.

And then when we look at the trading activity, we'll see when they go up a lot, they'll trim them. When they go down a lot, they'll add to them. But the behavior has been a little bit different. over the last week, where we've seen some trimming of things that are still down, but they're trimming them. And then I think we've seen some tax loss harvesting in our customer base. So my list was five stocks. You, of course, had you had to one of us.

You brought in six, which we have on the wall. It's a nice round number two because it fits with the graphic. Yeah. Got Apple at six, Palantir, Tesla, best day, by the way, since June of Tesla, Netflix, Amazon, and Nvidia. Are these all close, Stephanie? or is it like NVIDIA's way out in terms of client interest? NVIDIA and Tesla are around the same,

but I would say on different sides. So actually, NVIDIA has been on the buy side, and Tesla's actually been on the sell side. Well, these are not just buys. No. Oh. This is like a critical piece of information.

Thank you. I'm glad you told me. I have a shelf of shallow. You don't eat that. But actually, Tesla, Pallentier, Apple, they've been places where we've seen net trimming. and then NVIDIA, Amazon, Netflix, have been places where our customers have been net buying.

Okay, so I want to make that very clear. We can show that graphic again because this is a big deal. Tesla, Palantir, Apple, while they're in the top list, it doesn't mean the list of buys. It means that they're just actively traded and they're traded out more than they're traded in. They have for the last week, I would say. And the Apple makes sense to me because it has not been suffering the same fate

as a couple of the other names. So that goes along with what we tend to see. But with, you know, and Invidia and Amazon, those are places, obviously, that it makes sense to me, too, because they've been adding to it, even though they've been a common. Is this common? Is that like a common top six? Because those are obviously names that we, you know, we may have mentioned them once or twice on this network. Yeah, they are pretty common. You do tend to see some of the names that are also like Open Door and Iron. Like, they tend to also get it mixed in there, yes. But not the sign. I ran a big AI data center company. But not this time. It's been more of the bigger cap name. What has been the most been the most surprising thing from your own data and list that you have seen, Stephanie? It's kind of like, huh, I would have never thought that.

I think that our customer base is actually relatively savvy. And what they'd been doing is in times like in April, right, when we had the big sell-off. You had customers going through and, you know, using broad-based indices as a place to add. then they switched to doing that in a single stock basis. But in this recent pullback, you've kind of seen a little bit of a mix. I actually think they're a little bit gun-shy in terms of wanting to step their toes into, but not going full force into it. So they're not getting bolder.

They're not getting as bold as they were in April, where they were pretty confident that this was going to be a run-up. We did see... Well, they were, by the way, they were right. No, I mean, and they had been right. I mean, if they hodeled, right, held fast. and bought and had to rock it and all the memes, they made money. Yeah, but I think they, and you have seen, I actually, you've seen a little bit today

a broad-based index buying, but I also saw it on the sell side, so it made me think there was just a little bit of like tax loss harvesting going on because it's year-end. Yeah, it is the year-end holiday week, but really important and unique data, Stephanie Guild of Robin Hood. Welcome back anytime. Love having you on set. Thank you. Thank you. All right, we're also following the move in U.S. bond yields, the yield on the benchmark Treasury. far into its lowest level in nearly one month. So not low, but low-ish. Not below 4%.

It's at 4.04%. Remember expectations for a Fed rate cut at the December 10th meeting. They've kind of been muted, really basically cut in half. I know a lot of you out there, your homebuyers, you don't care about bond yields, you care about mortgage rates.

Mortgage rates might tick down a little bit in the next couple of days, the next couple weeks, but not a whole lot. All right, after the break, more on this health care name that we are showing you, that we are, there it is, it's your mystery chart. If you're on the radio, it's a blue line that goes down. We'll talk more about this stock getting crushed on some poor news from one of its drug trials. That's next. All right, the mystery chart before the break was Novo, Norris.

That stock taking a hit today. It's down nearly 6% at a four-year low. Novo Nordis Alzheimer's drug trial missing the mark, failing to slow the progression of the disease. It had called the trial a lottery ticket, but that has not stopped investors from cashing out in a big way for more on Novo and pharmaceutical spring in Guggenheim's biotech analyst, Seamus Fernandez. Seamus, your take on the Novo results? Yeah, so I guess it's not to support. rising to the overall market. What happened here? This was a high-risk reward clinical study for Novo Nordisk. It was well communicated by the company that way. But that being said,

the company has had a lot of challenges this year, largely from competition from Eli Lilly, but it also faces pretty challenging year in 2026 and potentially 2027 and beyond in that context. So, you know, tough year for Novo, you know, from the beginning of this year, whether it be from a pipeline perspective, the board-related shake-ups, or now this failed incremental clinical study. That being said, this is a drug for the, you know, they have drugs for the treatment of obesity, not necessarily for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease. This was actually trying to extend GLP-1s into that market, which, you know, certainly was a challenge. challenging opportunity, but something that the company viewed as, you know, worth studying. We didn't think this trial was going to be successful, never published as such, and aren't too surprised by the outcome.

Yeah, in fact, let's stay on the GOP1, the weight loss drug category, the semi-glutides, because you mentioned Eli Lilly. I mean, that stock has been red hot. It's on track for its best month in 25 years. it now has a trillion dollar valuation. Compare the drugs, right? Nova Nordus has we govy, the semi-glutide, the GLU-P-1 drug. Lily's got their own.

Is there a clear winner? As we-Govie, does it have a future, or is it now just Lily's market to lose? I think there's no question about it. LeGovie has a future. You know, Novo-Nortis is planning to launch a pill next year, again, using this peptide technology. But we really do think that Lilly is in a better position than Novo because they have Manjaro, Zepbound, as kind of the two leading franchise products in the overall, you know, story opportunity. When we look forward to the launches of some of their pipeline assets that continue to build into expectations at this point,

Eli Lilly is positioned with the next-to-market pill, a drug called Orphaglipron, which has, we think, massive potential opportunity in this market because it's very easy to take. It's easier to take than the Wigovie pill potentially. And, you know, it could be a $30 to $50 billion product in terms of peak sales. Wagovi versus Moundjaro, are they, is one better? I mean, do consumers view them as kind of the same product that just they don't really care? Or is there a fundamental difference between the two, like an Advil Tylenol? They both might kind of do the same thing, but they are fundamentally different. And people, let's be clear, I mean, people have their preference about a lot of medication. Yeah. Yeah, there are some, you know, sort of slight differences.

When you actually talk to physicians and thought leaders in the space, they'll tell you across the board their patients seem to do better on Manjaro. It only takes about, you know, two steps. So a five milligram dose of Manjaro rather than going all the way up to the highest dose of Manjaro actually performs just as well as Wigo. Do we think Lilly stock is going to split? I mean, that's a separate question for, I think, Dave Ricks, you've had on the call quite a number of times. But I do think that, you know, the performance of the stock, seeing a drug company at a trillion-dollar market cap is a real breakthrough for health care investors, for sure. Stocks at $1,063 had the pleasure of speaking with David out at their headquarters, Indianapolis. A lot of happy faces in that parking lot.

Shamis Fernandez of Guggenheim. Really appreciate it. Seamus, thank you very much. Thanks so much, Brian. All you're very welcome. Now, it's coming to Bertha Coombs for a C&BC news update. Brian, Senator Mark Kelly, responding this afternoon to the Pentagon saying that it is reviewing serious allegations of misconduct against him. The Arizona Democrat and retired Navy captain said, if the development was meant to intimidate him, quote, it won't work.

And that he has given too much to the country to be silenced. The probe comes after he participated in a video urging. service members to refuse unlawful orders, along with five other Democratic lawmakers. The U.S. an Israeli-backed organization, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, says that it is winding down operations. The organization faced criticism over the deaths of hundreds of people trying to reach its hubs. The GHF started supplying aid in Gaza about three months after Israel imposed a blockade on all goods entering the enclave. And NASA announcing today that it is revising its Starliner spacecraft with Boeing from six operational flights to four.

The change comms after the Starliner program has faced delays, technical issues, and cost overruns. And after last years, botched test flight that left two astronauts stuck in space for nine months. I thought those astronauts are probably just going to stay close to home for the holidays, right? No travel. Yeah, don't even fly. Just stay home, have the turkey dinner. By the way, Mark Kelly, who you reference also an astronaut. So there you go. Bertha Coombs, thank you very much. All right, coming up, we've talked certainly a lot the last couple of months about this idea of circular financing around AI. But what about circular fashion? Diana Olik has the details of the company trying to change the fashion recycling business. Welcome back. Fast fashion is a major environmental offender, at least until now, because fully recycling old clothes to make new threads has been more of a challenge,

except with this new company entering the game. Diana Ola Kassmore in her continuing series on climate-related startups. Diana. Well, Brian, the fashion industry accounts for anywhere from 4 to 10% of global greenhouse gas, yet less than 1% of clothing is recycled into new garments. And that's because most fabrics today are blends and need to be broken down into their original fibers to be remade.

That's exactly what one startup is doing. Virginia-based Cirque is trying to turn fashion into a circular economy, with a new technology that separates poly-cotton material into its original components and regenerates them into new virgin-quired. new virgin quality materials. In the past, attempts to do that have destroyed one fiber or the other. It's a chemical process. It's very much like unbaking a cake where we break down the polyester

to its building blocks, separate it from the cotton, and put them back into the very beginning of the supply chain to be remade into new clothes. Polyester and cotton make up about 77% of the global textile market. Cirque's hydrothermal technology can recycle each fiber as well as any blend ratio of the two, known as polycotton blends. We work with material that can't be thrifted, can't be repaired or resold. It's really heading to the landfill or incineration. CERT gets the old clothing from various sources, either purchased or donated. After breaking down the fibers, it then sells them back into the clothing supply chain,

that is, yarn spinners, dye houses, and fabric manufacturers. Allbirds, Zara, and H&M use CERC recycled textiles in some of their products. There is a small price premium, but it's still very attractive to environmentally minded brands like Patagonia. To go after a really important feedstock like cotton polyblins or in the example of Barreot-plus derelict fishing nets that we turned into products like this is always at the top of the heap for our decision-making. In addition to Patagonia, Cirque is backed by Temasek, Taranis, Marubeni, Inditex, and Breakthrough Energy Ventures. venture capital funding to date, $100 million. CERC is headquartered in Danville, Virginia, which used to be home to the largest textile mill in the country.

It's now scaling globally with its first industrial-sized textile-to-textile recycling plant in, of all places, as you fashionista Brian would know, in France, fashion capital of the world. I also know Danville because VIR racetrack is there. Diana, thank you. We'll be right back after this. All right. for watching Power Lunch. The markets are rocketing higher, but let's see what happens

in the last hour of trading. That and closing bell. Start right now.