Power Lunch - Power Lunch: 12/29/25

Episode Date: December 29, 2025

CNBC’s Kelly Evans and Brian Sullivan take you through the heart of the business day bringing you the latest developments and instant analysis on the stocks and stories driving the day’s agenda. ���Power Lunch” delves into the economy, markets, politics, real estate, media, technology and more. The show sits at the intersection of power and money. “Power Lunch” gives viewers a full plate of CNBC’s award-winning business news coverage, plus a healthy dose of personality from the show’s anchors and the network’s top-notch roster of reporters and digital journalists.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The last week of the year, starting a little week. Investors hoping Santa Claus shows up with some buyers soon because many super cap tech stocks are lower. Welcome to Power Lunch, everybody. I am Brian Sullivan. Kelly is off all week. And though today is not great, let's do give thanks. Because markets overall, just off-record highs, but with no Fed speakers and a light date a week, we go out with new highs this year.

The last Stephanie Guild of Robin Hood in moments, shares of Planet Labs rocketing to the moon since we spoke with them back in October. And now the CEO is back with why that stock has been red hot. Will Marshall is here. And we'll also ask him, are we really going to see data centers in space and maybe sooner than you think? And what are the investing words of the year? Here's a hint, it is not total. Investipedias Caleb Silver is here to hit that end. some of an early look of your top trends for next year. Welcome, everybody. Hope you had a great

weekend. There is a lot to do on this Monday. So let's get going and kick it off with investors taking a little bit of cash off that table today. But before you get the holiday blues from the red that you're seeing on your screen, consider this. We are now in the fourth year of the Bull Run. The big rally began in October of 2022. Stock market doesn't follow a calendar year, remember? And since October of 2022, the S&P 500 has nearly doubled. More good news? History suggests this run may not be done. According to Carson Group's Ryan Dietrich, when a bull market runs into its fourth year,

it tends to keep going up. In fact, Dietrich found that in the fourth year of a bull run, the S&P 500 rises an average of 14.6%. That means, of course, some years have done worse than that. but some have also done better than that. And only once did the market see a downturn in the fourth year of a bull rally. It's great data, but it's also in the past. You probably care about what happens now and next year.

Let's talk about that and more with your lead-off guest, Stephanie Gild, chief investment officer of Robin Hood. Probably one reason, by the way, Stephanie, that you and your team have seen inflow surge, your stock, by the way, one of the hottest in all the land. as well. What do you and your team see for 2026? Yeah, we have definitely seen high participation and you've

seen net buying really, especially since the summer. That being said, net buying has trailed off a bit from our customer base from that sort of peak October 29th period, but it's still there. For next year, we are

looking at still another stronglier, as you just described, but we've don't think it's going to be at the S&P level as strong as it's been. So we're not predicting double-digit returns for next year. Our base case is around a 7,500 on the S&P 500 this time next year. And that's, you know, around eight and a half, you know, call it 8.7 percent to be specific. You know, it depends on a lot of things that are going to happen, potentially happen in the economy. And we do have some risks out there. You know, there is a potential government shutdown, especially on the way.

and, you know, what happens with rates and the labor market will also be important. So we do have some potential probability ranges around that, but our base case is solidly strong. That's about, Stephanie, about historical returns. I mean, the S&P 500 test, the double. About every nine, eight, nine years, the median returns about 8%.

But you're not calling for a downturn. You're still fairly optimistic. Eight percent is better than 0%. Yeah, it's just not the double digits we've seen in the last few years. But I think it's just because we expect a, you know, this is starting to be a little bit what a lot of people think, but, you know, that broadening. When we came up with our base case, we looked at, like, what earnings expectations

growth is for each of the individual sectors. And we saw, you know, the tech sector is expected to grow at 27%. It's an average going back to 2011 is 12%. So we sort of started saying, like, you know, there's a lot already built into the tech sector expectations. And we think that there's probably more beats coming in other sectors. And that's why we think at the S&P level, like we still see a good year, but it may be more supported by other sectors besides just tech this year. Yeah. And I kind of read between the lines, maybe incorrectly on what you said at the top of your answer, which is you sort of see what

other people are talking about. I presume, and if I'm wrong, tell me, Stephanie, and I know you will. Are you talking about the potential for some froth around the AI trade? Yeah, I mean, obviously we've started to see the froth come off already, you know, since the beginning of November. But I think there's just going to be more scrutiny on it. You know, there's a lot of talk about some of the new LLM models that are going to be coming out named after fruits and vegetables. But I, you know, I really think that's going to start to be a commodity. And it will start to be like, where is the rubber meeting the road? And where is it actually improving efficiencies, cutting costs and creating actual revenue? You're talking about, what is it, Google's nanobanana? I think is the, am I right on that? That's their Gemini, like, like, engine. There's avocado, there's mango. Open AI, I think, has avocado, and then there's mango, I think, for meta.

Why did fruits get associated with large language models? I have no, maybe they're complicated and sweet. I don't know. Complicated and sweet. You just describe me, Stephanie. Let's talk about global demand. Let's get out of the United States. All right, because we made a lot of money here, to your point.

But if you bet on markets outside of America, you've probably made even more money this year. In fact, the MSCI All Country World Index X, the United States, so stripping out America, has beaten us by the widest margin since 2009 financial crisis, obviously. Do you see Europe and Asia outperforming us? again next year? Yeah, I mean, I think it was an easy move higher for Europe, especially, like about half of the returns that you had from investing in Europe, for example, came from just the appreciation of the euro relative to the dollar since the start of the year.

And I think a lot of that is done. So I actually, we're probably the most bullish, and we've been having a lot of debate about Japan, for example, because there are kind of two different things happening from a policy perspective there. But where we are still bullish, and it's been, you know, the froth has come off a little bit recently is just in the China tech play. We think there's still a lot of room to run there. Valuations are pretty inexpensive. They have a lot of those open source models that will probably start to be attractive for companies who not can't necessarily afford some of the other ones that are out there that aren't open source. So I think there's a lot of

opportunity, I think still to be had in Asia, particularly in the Chinese tech play. Chinese tech play, a name that we're watching. Not happening today, but not a lot's working. Still low volume. It's the last week of the year, you and I and about four other people, the only one's working. Stephanie Gild, Robin Hood, have a great day. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right. You know who else is working? Rick Santelli. Let's get now to the rates and your money because the Federal Reserve, of course, cutting rates three times this year. That might be good news for borrowers, but as we look to next year, What will the bond market do?

Because as I'm sure Rick will tell us right now, because he is also, as we said, working in the bond report, Rick, the Fed can cut rates. But the bond market's going to do what the bond market wants to do and thinks is the right thing to do based on the economy, borrowing costs, and more. Absolutely. And the bond market's paying a whole lot more attention to the inflation scenario. Not that it is running hotter, but that it is not near the tariff. of 2%. There's a lot of moving parts here, but ultimately the end user did get 75 basis points of lower rates from the Fed. However, if you're looking at the cottage industries associated with housing, that really is the dynamic that Brian's referring to that longer

maturities most closely associated with an average 30-year fixed mortgage just aren't coming down much. Now, if you look at twos and tens over the last couple of sessions back to Friday, you can see that the two-year is leading the way with rates lower. Right now, it's below Friday's low yields where the tenure is slightly higher. And if we keep that perspective on a month-to-date basis, it really jumps out at you. The two-year right now is down seven basis points for the month. And if you look at a 10-year, it is up three basis points for the month, which explains the 10 basis points of steepening that we had,

but we really have flatlined on all the spreads going into year-end. And finally, on the foreign exchange side, we all know it's not a good year for the dollar index. Part of that is its value was a bit out of whack, given how much the U.S. spent on COVID in 2020 through 2020. But if you look at just this year to date, the euro dollar is the clear winner. It is up 13% versus the dollar index, whereas the year to date yen is nearly unchanged. And that is something to pay close attention to, especially, considering the segment we just had showing how much other stocks, stocks outside the U.S. have outperformed.

Remember, there is a foreign exchange aspect to really get apples to apples. Brian, back to you. 100%. The dollar to basement trade also in focus. Rick Santelli, thank you very much. Folks, we are just getting started. And after the break, we're going to show you the best of the best, some of the hottest stocks in the S&P 500 this year.

Do you think you know? Well, you might. But some of these stocks, they might surprise you as well. It's next. All right, welcome back to Power Lunch. Just now get you some data. You probably will not see anywhere else. Or if you do, you've got to work hard.

Let us do the work for you. This is the list of the top stocks in the S&P 500 this year. Of course, you probably know the top stocks are pretty much all memory and AI-related companies. You got Western Digital. If you own that, congrats. It's more than quadrupled this year. Micron, Seagate Technology. They're both up more than three times. Also worth of mention, Sandisk, which was spun out of Western Digital in February and added to the S&P 500 at the end of November, is actually topping the list since it began trading. It's soared. It's not a year-to-date winner because it was added late,

but we just wanted to throw that in. There are, though, a few more that have been red hot. The aforementioned Robin Hood. We just talked about it with Stephanie Gild. Stocks up 212% this year. Warner Brothers Discovery, popping on the Netflix deal and, of course, just optimism around the media. That stock up 172%.

And look at that. Newmont Mining, the sixth best stock in the S&P 500 this year, up 167%. So names, you're not. probably guessed and maybe some names you probably didn't. And by the way, tomorrow, just because it's Tuesday and nobody likes Tuesday, we're going to get nasty. We're going to show you the worst stocks this year in the S&P 500 because fair play. All right, let's stay on the happy theme, though, and go over to Christina Partsenevelas on the chip trade and whether or not artificial intelligence

is having a material impact on the prices that a lot of these chip companies can charge. And I'm assuming I'm not sure, Christina, they have unlimited pricing power, but I got to imagine they have a lot of pricing power. Yeah, and they have a lot. And I'll start with the contract manufacturer of many of these chip companies, and that would be TSM. The latest news, and this is coming from the Economic Daily Out of Asia, they're saying that as of January 1st, TSM will increase its prices on the more advanced chip manufacturing processes over the next four years. Why can they do that? there's so much demand from the likes of not only Apple to make advanced chips in Qualcomm, but AMD, Nvidia, etc. So everybody is trying to get capacity at TSMC. So to answer your

question, Brian, yes, AI is driving a lot of that demand and allowing a company like TSMC to gain that pricing control and increase their prices. And it's not just at the advanced manufacturing process. There's also the memory chip makers, too. We constantly hear about Micron saying that they're sold out all into 2026. And why is that happening? AI needs stronger and stronger a memory. And so what memory chip makers like Micron are doing, they're reallocating their supply to the more advanced stuff with higher margins, bigger demand, more expensive, they make more money at the loss of all of the lower end memory requirements. So that would hurt, you know, the smartphone makers, the PC makers, because everything's being shifted to the higher

margin stuff. Yeah, I mean, I got to imagine all we talk about, all you talk about so much, not all you talk about, but a lot of what you talk about, Christina, is how much demand there is, that they're oversubscribed, you know, five times or even ten times. People want to buy more than these companies have to sell. So I'm assuming, and you can editorialize here, they could raise prices probably even more. Well, but then eventually there would be demand destruction. And I know if Wed Bush is one that has constantly talked about this, that we could start to see in. mid-2026, demand start to taper off because prices have gone up immensely.

And I'm talking first on the consumer level. So those makers that like HP, PQ or Dell that focuses on the PC side, when they keep increasing prices, you have you and I who maybe have to refresh because of Windows 10, but, you know, you and I that are going to say, oh, it's getting too expensive or the gamers out there that are, you know, are having to pay more and more. That's on the consumer front. Now, on the tech side, for a lot of these other companies, when Nvidia raises the price on their GPUs, AMD raises the price on their GPUs, that means these hyperscalers are going to have to raise even or take even more free cash flow towards these KAPX data center buildouts. And so then that ROI that we constantly talk about and you're questioning now towards the end of 2025 is going to be even bigger.

It's going to be a bigger red flag, I should say, because you're going to need more money to pay for these chips because the chip makers are, you know, charging higher. prices, to your point. Well, you referenced Wed Bush. I presume you might mean our friend Dan Ives, he of the mango colored jacket. I'll be hosting Fast Money at the NASDAQ, or I hope you come TSM see us later in the day. See what I did there? Dan Ives will be a guest on Fast Money tonight, Christina. I'll be joining. I think it's at the Boys Club with me, so I'll be there. Yeah. I just cut her mic, didn't they? It wasn't. Was that me? Was I just losing my hearing, or did that actually happen?

Christina, if you're there, just send up a flare, let us know that you're all right. Christina Parts on Eveless, thank you. All right, coming up, the best stock in the Dow. It is not tech, not really. The stock's having its best run in nearly a year.

Simomodi will break down that mystery chart. Next. It is time now for another big reveal here on Power Lunch. And that mystery chart that we just showed you has made investors a lot of money this year. That stock up 60% on pace for its best year since 2017. And it's not a pure AI play, though it is related. Let's get that name and explain exactly what's going on with Sima Modi. I assume you're going to tell us who this is.

Caterpillar. Caterpillar. And as you point out, Brian, the narrative has dramatically changed this year, right? It went from being this slow-growing construction company that had exposure to China to now one that is playing a vital role in the build-out of AI. As you know, the hyperscalers are increasingly facing this challenge, which is power scarcity. So the two hottest products that Caterpillar is seeing demand for, backup generators saw 33% increase in the third quarter sales year over year. And then there's gas turbines, these 50 feet wide containers. equipment that span, you know, a lot of room. And basically the thinking here is if you're Microsoft

and you're standing up a data center, it can take, what, five years to establish a power line with a local utility. Instead, you bring on... If you're lucky. If you're lucky, so then you bring on a gas turbine to your data center's site and therefore you're able to increase the access to electricity. Caterpillar itself is also doing a lot to increase capacity now for these two big products. So in a way, they were in the right place at the right time. And that's helped Caterpillar's story change here to one that is now really leaning into artificial intelligence. You have a new CEO who just joined earlier this year who's trying to capitalize on this opportunity. He spoke about it at the company's Investor Day talking about how data center demand is expected to triple

in the next 10 years. This is not a company that talked about data centers a year ago. No, they talked about moving Earth around. And correct me if I'm wrong, what I understand about Caterpillar, and kind of this goes to BKR. Baker Hughes, we could show that chart as well, even though it's a different segment, is these companies are similar. And what they've done is Baker Hughes, which was part of GE, learned how to convert an aircraft engine, a GE jet engine into something that pushes natural gas through a pipeline. Caterpillar, I think, has kind of done the same thing, right? Where they took existing technology and figured out a way to repurpose it for some of these natural gas and engine applications, correct? Exactly. And even Joe Creed,

the new CEO, talked about this, how over time there's going to be an increasing need for natural gas. Well, guess what? They have the equipment to transport it as well. So there's different ways they're playing into this whole AI ecosystem. What do you like to do over the holiday season? A lot of people like to read romantic novels, crime, mystery. What's your genre usually? I like to host every show on this network. That's normally what I do.

But yes. In addition to a point. When I read, I read car and driver, road in track, automobile, racer. You can probably establish a theme and various energy publications. That tracks. Here's what I like to do. I like to pour over earnings transcripts. I knew that about you.

So here's what. You put your feet up. You get a cup of coffee. and you look through earnings, S-1s, it's the best. It is the best way to get prepared for 2026. Well, here's what we found. Hawk Tan at Broadcom, the CEO of that company, talked about how you're seeing this increasing need to build out data infrastructure ahead of deploying the accelerators, meaning when you're

building these data centers across the U.S., they're addressing the power issue first before they're bringing on the networking equipment, the accelerators, the GPUs, right? So that's also creating an opportunity for Caterpillar, the speed of deployment. It's hitting them before the semiconductors and the other companies that are down the line. That's one thing I love about the AI story. I think there's some holes in the AI story. I've been pretty clear about that on Twitter and on the show. But one thing that is clear is that you've got these companies like a caterpillar,

you know, middle of Illinois, and their workers, their employees, their investors are kind of, I would imagine, feeling good. Like they're riding this new technology. You think of all just tractors and big trucks and we're going to move stuff around. But they're right there. We can't have this huge technological development without those types of companies. And you don't have to comment on this. But I wish some politicians that were very vocal about data centers, make your case.

Fine. But just remembers a lot of companies, a lot of employees, the middle and, you know, these rural areas that may benefit from this. Sure. It's a good, it's a feel-good story for Caterpillar. Listen, the stock is up 50 percent. But the same time, all this demand that they're seeing for their backup generators and energy and transportation business is contingent on these capital expenditure, the CAPX plans of all these major hypers. So at the end of January and early February, we're going to hear from META, we're going to hear from Microsoft and all the other companies that will once again reiterate those targets. We'll see if they reiterate.

And those numbers will probably give us some indication about what demand will look like for 2026 and beyond the order book, right? Thank you. When I'm tucking in on New Year's Eve to a nice romance novel with a Fabio dressed as a pirate on the cover, you're going to be reading that earnings. And I just, if there's anything in there, you bring us that. That's what I do. Because I'm going to stick with the pirate and Fabio and, like, the flowing hair. You do that. You know exactly what I'm talking about, too.

You see, that laugh was a knowing laugh. You need a balance, actually. You do. Sima Modi, always bringing the balance. Thank you. All right. Coming up, you're going to hear more from a company that we spoke with. on October 28th, and that stock, here's a hint, has rocketed 50% since just then.

All right. Welcome back. Your guest right now is literally a rocket scientist. He helped guide NASA's satellite missions. Now he's bringing that expertise to the private sector, co-founding Planet Labs, leader in satellite data and analytics. If you remember, we spoke with Planet's president, Ashley Johnson, at the end of October. I think it was October 28th. And since then, that stock has soared.

It's up 50% in just two months. Let's find out why and also what may be coming soon to the skies near you. Will Marshall is the co-founder and CEO of Planet Labs, Planet Now, and just joins us. Will, great to have you on. Congrats on the success. Your

employees, your investors, done well. What do you think is material behind this big push the last couple of months on your stock, aside from our wonderful interview with Ashley, of course. Well, I mean, look, as Ashley would have explained, planet images, the whole world every day, monitoring changes that help people make smarter decisions. It's got a huge range of applications, security, civil government, commercial applications. And we just wrapped up our Q3 earnings. Our company did very well.

Growth accelerated, over 30% growth. We raised guidance for the year. We have over $700 million in backlog, so we got plenty of predictability in the future. Look, the business is humming. We announced a number of new deals. And we also did lots of space stuff as well. We launched another 38 satellites.

We announced our owl project, which I know Ashley mentioned, and we're uniquely positioned for the AI revolution. And so it's an exciting time. Is it because the government can't do what you do or because the demand for what you do is on top of what the government does? Because I always think about satellite imagery as kind of a government thing. Yeah, absolutely. And it always was for many decades. But commercial space has taken off. We've got lower cost launches from the likes of SpaceX.

And planet has pioneered putting large numbers of low-classes. satellites in space, enabling us to image the whole world every day as an unprecedented capability that even the governments don't have. It's very complementary to their few, very exquisite satellites that cost billions of dollars that have higher resolution. But ours cover a much broader area, opening up whole new applications, including agriculture, finance, insurance, disaster response with civil governments. And even in the security sector, because we image the whole world every day, we can find new changes. Like, we're working with the DOD on tracking across all of China and South China Sea for illicit activities and new threats. And we're working with

the Brazilian government on tracking deforestation across the whole Brazilian Amazon. And that is just the applications of widening up because of AI on top of our unique daily scan data. When I was in the San Francisco Bureau, I think the day Ashley was there, I looked out the window and there was a giant blimp going by. It's a true story. And I was like, and it was unmarked. It was massive. It was like, I should say the Hindenberg, but that's a bad reference. But what it turns out is one of the Google founders' pet projects. And what I love about the Google people is that they're not afraid to take big chances. You've recently partnered with Google Project Suncatcher.

It's a good question. Elon Musk has been talking and tweeting about it. Are data centers in space will going to be a real thing? Is that a real thing that we may see in our lifetimes? Absolutely. And we're doing a real project on it. So, yeah, as it happens, when launch costs come down a certain amount and those satellite costs come down a certain amount, eventually it's cheaper to put compute centers in space. And that time is just a few years away. So we're Google and Planet are partnering to put a first couple of demo satellites in space to test their TPUs in orbit and figure out how to do the cooling. In principle, you get free power, free cooling in space. The only challenge is it costs a lot to build the satellites and launch them. As those costs come down, eventually it's cheaper. The demand for data centers is just skyrocketing, as you know, from all the big companies.

And there's lots of real estate in orbit. So it's eventually going to be cheaper and more ecologically friendly because then we don't have to take up all the land and the resources. I'm embarrassed that I'm going to ask this question because it's going to show you how ignorant I am. I'm a TV news anchor, so I pretend to know. everything, but I don't. Rare moment of honesty there.

How do we get the computing power? So we built the data center in space, floating out there. To your point, we got all these solar flares, radiation, all this energy. It's the sun, for Pete's sakes, right? How do we manage the compute from there? I understand how we get satellite data. My father worked on satellites in the early 70s at TRW. Is there enough bandwidth that we're able to do that safely, that massive amount of compute

in space? Or is that like the dumbest question you've ever been asked? No, no. It's absolutely possible to put the compute up there. There's so much space. What we're going to do is put them in a polar orbit, where these satellites always face the sun. It's called a dawn-dust orbit. So the satellite always faces the sun, so it gets huge more power, like six times the energy of any particular solar panel in space there compared with on the Earth. much more energy. And then we can radiate that free to space as well. And then what we do, we will do is we'll send up the commands to do the compute in space and then send back the answers. A lot of compute these days is just training all the AI models. Well, now we can,

we'll be able to do that in the space. It's a delivery. It's a, effectively you ask and then you get the delivery down because in my mind, I'm just thinking about how much you launch, what, 36 superdub satellites, two pelicans. They're all named after birds. Very smart. And I'm just thinking about the amount of information that we're now getting from space, layering this on top of it, it is possible. It's totally possible. So just to give you a sense, our little satellites that cost under a million dollars, get more than a gigabit a second data rates back down to the earth and our slightly bigger ones, the 10 gigabits a second down to the earth. So we get huge database. It's only a couple of milliseconds delay. So it's a tiny delay. It's not as far away as you think. It's only 500 kilometers up. So the light travel time is very short. It's actually very exciting. You can imagine us moving towards sort of planetary intelligence. As we get all of these satellites imaging all of the Earth, we have our eyes, if you like, in space. And you want to put the brains right next to the eyes, all the compute. So you can, you

can process all of that and understand the Earth as it's changing and get people real-time answers to all their questions about the changing planet. You know, I'm excited by LLMs, but basically, chat GPT and the like are answering questions about the text of the Internet because they've been trained on the text of the Internet. Imagine the power of being able to answer questions about the whole Earth in real time. That is where we're going with AI and computing space. It's unbelievable. I think we're going to have to get Neil deGras.

Tyson on for the next time we interview, Will, because he can sort of add on these gains from like a theoretical physicist perspective. Or maybe we just have Carl Sagan. Whatever. Will Marshall, co-founder, Planet Labs, stocks put a rocket ship. Really cool interview. Well, thank you. Great spake, Jude. All right. Now, to a different type of meeting. That is a high-stakes meeting happening right now between President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the second world leader in the last 24 hours to meet with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Amon Javr is joining us now with more on Washington, and more on this meeting. Amen.

Yeah, Brian, that's right. The president and the prime minister meeting at Mar-a-Lago. So far, we've seen the arrival, and we also, the press was allowed briefly in to the bilat that's a lunch with the top aides and staffers for each man, as they discuss, Gaza, and also what to do about the Iranian nuclear program. Now, the big question going into this, Brian, was whether or not Netanyahu would ask President Trump to participate in military strikes on Iran designed to hold back that Iranian nuclear program. The president may have tipped his hand a little bit on that and an answer in that arrival ceremony just a short time ago. Here's what he said.

Now I hear that Iran is trying to build up again, and if they are, we're going to have to knock them down. We'll knock them down. We'll knock the hell out of them. but hopefully that's not happening. So you heard the president there, Brian. He said, you know, we'll knock them down, we'll knock the hell out of them. But he also responded sort of conditionally, right? He said, if that's happening, I hope it's not happening. So the president signaling a willingness there, I think, to take additional military action,

but contingent upon some intelligence that shows that that is, in fact, what's going on in Iran. So the president signaling, you know, talking tough there, but maybe leaving himself an out is how I'd read that comment and we'll wait more for more information as the two leaders wrap up that bilateral. We do think there's a possibility of maybe a joint photo op or joint press opportunity at the end of this in a couple of hours time, Brian. So we might have some more details later on today. Yeah, outside of that quickly, Eamon, how much attention is the Venezuela situation getting in the D.C. circles? It's getting a lot. And we saw the president in this same opportunity with the press,

seeming to confirm a U.S. strike on a port facility in Venezuela, the president said there was a bit of an explosion. He said, we've now hit the boats and we've now hit the processing facility on land where they load the boat. So the president seeming to acknowledge that, but also wanting to sort of maintain

a little bit of strategic distance from that as to whether or not that actually was a U.S. military strike or not. Amon-J. Javis in D.C. Aman, thank you very much. Appreciate it. You bet. All right, coming up, the top investing trends from this year and also what may be ready to rock next year. That is next.

All right, welcome back. It is that time of year when we look back at what has been hot or not. And Investopedia knows all this because they've been making a list. they've even, I'm told, been checking it twice. And some key trends that hit their nice or naughty list this year? Well, tariffs, of course. The AI trade, you might have heard about that. And the rising price of things like gold and silver. Unsurprisingly, those are among the list of terms most searched on Investopedia.

But others on the most search list, I'm told, include affordability, private markets. And this is random but interesting. Bad Bunny's net worth. Bad Bunny is a singer. So what insights do these words and phrases offer about the state of the investor? And what might we be watching next year? It's bringing Caleb Silver. He is editor-in-chief at Investopedia and captain of the basketball team

with which we won the New York Urban Professionals Championship 25 years ago. Yeah, you were Mitch Robinson before there was Mitch Robinson. I just ran up down the court and didn't know what to do, but you just, yeah. You were a bored machine. I could throw some elbows. Caleb, great to see you on back. What is this bad bunny's net worth? Why is, can we, what is that?

Yeah, Bonito had a very good year, and people were very fascinating. What is his net worth? His net worth is about $90 million and growing as of the last check, but he had such a big year. He had the number one album in the world, of course, top the charts. Got the Super Bowl. Got the Super Bowl coming up, was on SNL. He was in the Happy Gilmore, you know, redo. So he had a big year.

People were fascinated with that. People are always fascinated with net worth. of celebrities and celebrity influencers, and this was his year. But you're in Vestopedia, right? So your audience are people that are probably crossing over with the CNBC audience a lot, they're invested in markets, they're interested in markets. AI trade, I thought would have been number one. Yeah, well, it was in the top 10, but in terms of what popped the most,

it was actually the word affordability, which has become a political football. But people were searching that word because things kept feeling less and less affordable when you think about housing, when you think about the rise of health care, and the way that people felt, especially consumers felt about the economy this year, as bad as they felt in years. Meanwhile, the economy is actually doing okay. We feel a lot worse than what's actually maybe happening, except for some people who are not having that great of a year.

So we got your, look at this beautiful graphic that our team made. They do beautiful work here. Affordability, number one, I get that. It's been a political football as well. Tariffs, I get that. What's interesting also besides bad bunny is parlay, which kind of, I think, goes to this idea that sports betting or gaming gambling is merging with our worlds. Yeah, they are smashing together.

And I think that's going to be a huge theme in 2026 and beyond, right? The convergence of polymarkets or calci, probability markets, along with day trading, along with crypto trading, along with options trading, along with what's coming, which is the tokenization of assets that are going to trade 24-6 on some exchanges. We are headed for a very interesting and wild time in the capital markets. And I think this set the stage. You've been doing this obviously a long time, and I'm sure that in your big brain, you look at these terms and you can get sort of come up with some kind of thesis about what it might symbolize how people are thinking. When I look at those top 10, there is a part of it that I look at, and I'm thinking there's definitely some optimism here.

Is the optimism becoming a little too optimistic? I don't know. Well, you see a balance here is what I see. And we are visitors are 18 to 80 there. individual, self-directed investors who like to be educated and make decisions, but you can see them kind of all over the place. They're worried about their personal finances. That's affordability in tariffs, obviously. Gold is that hedge feeling. A lot of older investors probably thinking about should I continue to buy. I've done very well in the last couple of years owning gold. But then you have things like private markets, which is not something we were thinking about really broadly as investors until the president and the executive order came down saying, we're going to open up

define contribution plans to private markets in crypto in 401K plans coming up in 2026. That's going to be a big theme next year as well. So all of a sudden, investors wanted to know what are these private markets and how could they impact my retirement portfolio? Well, you mentioned crypto stablecoin is the fifth most search for term. And we just been saying it all year. And I'm assuming a lot of people are like, they don't want to admit it, but they're like, what the hell is a stable coin?

So they're going to investopedia to figure it out. Yeah. And we actually had a pretty big act. the Stable Coin Act of 2025, which introduces this into our banking system, into our treasury. That is going to be something that investors need to get used to. The fact that there are now digital assets, there are a regular part of our economic mainstream through our U.S. Treasury system. And we know this is going to be an increasing trend going into 2026 and beyond. So look at 2026.

We've got the graphic up there. And if you're on the radio, folks, one of the trends in 2026 says prediction markets versus the stock market. Do you mean, is that because instead of, say, buying NVIDIA, you can now go into a Kalshi and be like, is NVIDIA going to go up or down or something like that? Absolutely. And you can do that with just about anything on the prediction markets, but think about that, plus the tokenization of actual stocks, when those start trading and you have prediction markets on tokenized assets plus individual stocks, what happens to the underlying prices?

What happens when we have 24-6 trading, and all of these assets right now are trading around in the world. Some are tokenized. Some are real. What does that do to pricing? I think we're in for a big year of discovery in 2026. Yeah, if I go on to Kalshi and I have it up here before you came on, I was looking at it. One of the top, I guess you say bets or guesses you can make is the closing price of the S&P 500 this year, and you're not owning the index. You're just betting on a range effectively, right? You're saying, here's what I think is going to happen. Right. Well, exactly. So that could impact markets potentially, but also it takes investors some that maybe never got into investing coming in through the sports betting market and the probability

markets, maybe that brings them into the stock market long term and that's a good thing. But when you think about all these different things that people like to bet on and the celebration of that, Brian, on social media, it takes people's eyes off the prize in terms of long-term investing. That could be dating. By the way, 44% chance or effectively on Kalshi that the Oklahoma City Thunder win the NBA title, apropos of nothing just bringing it back to basketball. Yeah, why not?

And there's plenty you can bet on besides that in terms of the tip off if you want. Yeah. You can bet on just about everything. And that, I think, is going to have a real big impact on the capital markets in general. It's fascinating stuff. Love the trends. Investopedia. Caleb Silver, safe travels.

Thank you, much. I know you're flying tomorrow. All right. Coming up, one San Francisco startup putting a new twist on Happy Hour. And it's why there could be extra suds in your beer. Okay, here's a question, and don't at me. Just bear with us. There's an answer.

Would you drink water that you already showered or bathed in or maybe water that you washed your clothes in? Apparently, some people would, and they do, if it comes in the form of beer, because there's a new company that is betting on that to grow its business. Diana, Oleg is here. Diana, please explain, because I'm just thinking dirty bathwater, I don't want to drink it. And that's, I'm sorry, I just don't want to do it.

Well, then listen up, Brian. Look, about two years ago, we brought you the story of a wastewater recycling startup. At the time, the CEO said, we need to overhaul our flush and forget society. Well, now he's taking it to the next level. What if you could make a shower beer out of actual shower water? Well, that's what we did. And it's delicious. It might sound like a gimmick, but that's kind of the point.

California-based epic clean tech started as a water recycling company using proprietary technology to clean and reuse water in office and apartment buildings. So why now beer? A lot of it was psychology is getting people comfortable with the concept of recycled water. And we found that if you tell people that the water is clean, maybe they trust you, maybe they don't. but you take those exact same molecules of recycled water, put them into a beautiful beer can, all of a sudden people love it.

For the beer, Epic Systems collect water just from showers and laundries and then run it through several treatment steps, including reverse osmosis and disinfection. The resulting clean water is then taken to Devil's Canyon Brewing Company where they make beer. But again, it's not just about the beer. Buildings use about 15% of all the fresh water. water on this planet. We need to do things differently. And that means we need to tell the story

differently. We need to engage people differently. Jordan Lander, who owns an events company, was an original investor in Epic when it was just about buildings. Now he serves the beer at his events. So I was a little bit skeptical. I'm not a believer in gimmicks, but I was wrong. It blew up like crazy. It has blown and given a lot of spotlight onto Epic Clean Tech. In addition to three family offices, Epic Clean Tech is backed by Jay Ventures, Jay Impact, and Echo River Capital. Total funding, $25 million. Now, it takes about 10 gallons of water to make one gallon of beer, so using recycled water has a huge impact on that supply. Epic's IPA is also made with drought-resistant and energy-efficient hops, grain, and yeast, emphasizing that environmental impact from grain to glass. Now, before we finish up, just a quick update on one of our other clean startups, a company called Mill, which is a kitchen composter.

It just announced it is launching a commercial version of its food recycling system, the first commercial customer, Amazon Whole Foods, supported by an investment from Amazon's Climate Pledge Fund. Back to you. Very cool story, and it involves beer. Diane Oleg, thank you very much. Folks, thank you for watching Power Lunch. I'll be hosting Fast Money tonight and all week. Tune in. Closing bell. It starts right now.