Power Lunch - Power Lunch 9/17/26

Episode Date: September 17, 2026

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.

Stocks rising as the market seems to like yesterday's Fed rate hike. Welcome to Power Lunch. I'm Brian with Kelly Oil dropping again. And speaking of oil is Venezuela, the new Texas. Doug Lawler runs the world's largest privately held oil and gas company. And he is here to talk about that and more. Super Micro Intel Hewlett-Packard Enterprise are among the market's top performers as lower yields reignite the AI and infrastructure trade. But the big question for investors, is this a durable, like a real reset in rates or just a pause? after a volatile run higher. And Palantir CEO Alex Carp making a bold call on AI safety will bring you his latest comments

and what they could mean for the next phase of the AI buildout. But let's begin with the market. Stocks are bouncing back, like Brian said, after the Fed's first hike in three years, oil and treasury yields cooling a bit, although the president is calling for a quick reversal. Writing on truth, social, lower the interest rates for the United States of America and fast.

The Fed's own projections still pencil in another rate hike this year, refinative shows traders seeing a 54% chance of an October hike and 90% for December for more on rates, inflation and the markets. Let's bring in Torson Sloc, the cheap economist at Apollo global management. Torsten, welcome to you. Pretty good verdict so far to what was more hawkish. I think it's fair to say in the 12-0 decision and also then we're definitely letting the market run with the idea that more rate hikes are on the way. Absolutely, Kelly. I think this is really important. The market is clearly voting today and saying this was a good decision. Long rates have come down very substantial today.

And of course, equities like the hike. This is really completely against the textbook. The textbook would have said that when the Fed is hiking, stocks should be worried and rates should be going higher. But the fact that this is showing instead the opposite is because the market is saying that Walsh is delivering what the market wants and delivering what the economy needs. And if that's the case, what should, what will? What's next?

Yeah, the key issue. of course, as usual, is inflation. Unemployment is still very low at 4.1%. The labor market is still relatively strong. We're still not seeing labor displacement be particularly substantive. Instead, we're seeing significant growth in the number of new businesses because of AI. So the net result of that is still a labor market that's relatively strong. And the outlook for inflation still is that we will see sticky inflation according to the consensus and in our forecast, at least in the next six to nine months. So that's why it makes sense that markets are pricing, the rates will be higher for longer because we still have a sticky inflation environment with inflation roughly at three and a half

and still too far away from the Fed's 2% target. Next Fed meeting is October 28th, if you're circling at home, by the way, and you probably are, Torsten. I want to just veer off just a little bit because you pointed out a couple hours ago that on X, or somebody posted a chart, where you're talking about hyperscalor credit default swaps against the banks, and that we're seeing the Hypers, credit default swaps go up and risk. Banks are staying flat. Does that imply that you're worried about what's happening in debt levels for the big tech companies, or is it just something to note but not necessarily worry about right now?

I'm not worried about that, but there is something very important going on, namely that. There is, of course, more discussion around the IG market. For a long, long time, the IG market was dominated by financials. And over the last 12 months, the IG market is now also dominated by hyperscal. They have grown so much because they are also investment grade. So now we have an investment great market that is, of course, the US government is investment grade and we also have financials, meaning banks, but suddenly a new player has arrived in the IG market and that is of course hyperscalers.

So the discussion of course is now you begin to think about relative value. How are hyperscalers trading relative to banks? What is the situation in terms of crowding out dollars that would normally have gone into US treasuries that now instead is going into hyperscalers? This has opened up this gap that we're seeing in that chart that namely shows that CDS has begun to widen a bit, probably because of a concentration issue among primary dealers. But you're right, Brian, this discussion, in my view, is not a big issue. It's not really a relevant issue for the topic of the day.

But it is something that's happening in the background where we need to think about the credit risks that are inherent in this case in the investment-grade credit market. I would only say, I guess, in response to that, Torsten, what happens now with things like gold, Bitcoin? Well, the last thing, of course, that is left now is that if the Fed is truly now, of course, embarking on a campaign of trying to really get inflation down to 2%, and maybe a bit faster than it otherwise would have, that should at least be putting some downward pressure on gold and a Bitcoin and other assets, because this should mean that inflation is going to come down faster than at least if we did not have the Fed hiking. But, of course,

there are other issues going into gold. Sanctions also play an important role in gold prices. Chinese demand for gold has also been strong. The demand in India for gold has also been strong. So overall, it's not only inflation that's driving the gold price, but from purely a Fed perspective, the Fed hiking should, at least in theory, put some downward pressure on gold. Well, Torsten sit tight.

I know you're talking about IG investment grade because I want to go now to our friend on said. We're going to call the OG in the bond market. You see what I did there, Rick Santelli? I think this is one of your few visits to CNBC's headquarters in your 30-year-plus. illustrious career. It's great to have you on. Yeah, a handful of...

Are we going to actually get you a little choked up? Like, is this... Can we get... I've been practicing my emotional control. So I think I've been rather successful thus far. Today, you have it. But it's been wonderful to have you here. What is Rick Santelli right now? We got the Fed in the rearview mirror. I got the next one coming up October 28th. We just talked about banks and hyperscalers. What is Rick Santelli right now most focused on? the bond market. What I've been focused on my entire career, which

my club in terms of debt and deficits has grown substantially in the last couple years, it's just amazing to me. How many people now are talking about $40 trillion? Where were they when it was $25, $25, $28, $30, $35, $38, where were they? Okay, we could have done

something about it. At this point in time, when I look at the way the globe set up, we're in the Mideast, EU, other than Spain, kind of, eh, Japan going to raise rates? What's that? a 31-year high, by the way. I know. 31-year high.

Everyone's like, what's wrong with America? I'm like, bro, have you looked around the world? This is a global debt issue. Exactly. And the two-decade club, we see so many economies that are close to 20 years haven't seen these rates, whether you look at France, whether you look at what's going on with regard to the EU, you look at boond yields moving higher. This is all big.

So listen, Torsten is a legend in the bond market. everybody likes him. He's a great guest. The guy really understands what's going on. But I'm not so convinced that today's activity is going to be representative of what we're going to see in the future. Stocks like it today. Are they going to like it next week, the week after that? Because I continue to think that the war could make crude oil a bit nasty. It's going to make traders a bit nervous.

And I'm not convinced that the tenure is going to spend an awful lot of time under 5 percent, considering debt, deficits, and issuance. It's not going away. and the AI community almost could care less about interest rates. They want the money. They're looking at the big prize down the road. Yeah, we were just talking to the former Treasury Secretary about that. I didn't hear it.

You know, I mean, everybody says, yeah, we got to do something. We got to do something about Social Security. And the problem is they talk about it. These congressmen talk like, okay, we're going to do. Who can do something? They can do something. The people don't want, who in the public wants any of their benefits to be trimmed at all? Once again, I've said this a thousand times.

Once the government gives a dollar to any constituent, trying to get it back is nearly impossible. Oh, it's a crisis dollar. It's temporary. Uh-huh. Look at all the hassles we had with the card to do. What happened during COVID and some of the medical probabilities of the extra money we put in how hard it was to pull back? And in an election year. How many?

What Jack Liu said was the next president, Social Security is going to start, the existing funds are going to start to exhausted under the next president's watch. And so anyone running for Senate right now or running for president is this, they will probably have to deal with this. And how many people are talking about it in primaries? Zero. Basically zero. You know what they're talking about?

Getting rid of police. Let's debate this. You know what? There are so many. The other direction, for instance, with health care and saying Medicare for all. Again, that's your point. Can I give a little good news? We got Torson Slok still here.

Here's the good news for people, definitely your age, hopefully my age. hopefully my age, I don't know, is that the demographic shift is massive. There's about 75, 80 million baby boomers that are retiring or already retired. There's about 43, 45 million little old Gen Xers like myself. We're kind of stuck in the middle of me. We built the internet, developed everything, and built a modern economy. But other than that, and there's about 80 million millennials behind us. So I'm encouraged Torsten Slok by the demographic shift that is coming.

In other words, fewer paying for more now. but more paying for fewer like myself down the road. Should I take some comfort in that that we're not maybe totally doomed, but the next 10 years are going to be sketchy? Well, and the key issue exactly as Rick is saying, is that about 75 million people receive social security. That's a lot of voters. So as Kelly is saying, if you take anything away from 75 million people,

politicians, of course, are struggling at how to deal with this problem, that about 60, 65% of all government spending is exactly entitlement. So in other words, there's not much left, which is discretionary spending. So from a government finance perspective, Rick is absolutely right, the government debt problem. It may be resolved, and I was mainly talking about a verdict on what Walsh was doing yesterday, but the underlying challenges on the fiscal front are unfortunately not going away, and the demographics, as you're saying, Brian, is not helpful at all.

And towards it even worse, if interest rates do move a bit higher, the bill that we get for our credit card debt as a country continues to go up and it's going to continue to crowd out all the spending you're talking about. And I don't know that that's going to reverse anytime soon. And when it comes to Social Security, the problem is that not only can't we get people that are running to talk about it, but until we get term limits, nobody's going to do anything about it. In my opinion, that's the only way that will get anything done because we're going to have to elect people that don't care if they're going to get reelected. because there's a term limit, and they're going to do the job they're supposed to. The problem is Congress is going to never vote themselves out of a job. I don't even know if term limits would help.

Oh, they would help. Who in the public really wants a change to be made, right? Like, that's the ultimate thing. But isn't that what Ms. Carter said, that a true leader is somebody who takes people where they need to go, but not necessarily where they want to go? And that is exactly the situation we're in today. Except they're not leading. They're just following the voting trend.

So do, you know what I mean? which so that's a different issue. You know what? This is one of my last times on TV. Let's give a little honesty here, okay? Most of the big issues like immigration, okay, Social Security. You know why they never get solved? Because they're hot-button issues that bring in money

so they can keep running and running and running. Once you cure it, just like if you cure cancer, you're going to kill a multi-billion-dollar research in the street. Well, I would say this. Nobody wants the ad that says, and he voted to cut your Social Security benefits. And it's like black and white and there's ominous music. And it's like you're the, you know, Satan's little command of boy. Yeah, grandma wheelchair.

We've seen this movie before. Torsten Slok of Apollo. We're now, we appreciate you coming on, Torston. You got a final message. By the way, for our friend Rick Santelli here. Oh, absolutely, Rick. Thank you for your service. You've been helping us in the financial service industry for decades.

And it's so much appreciated. You've been enlightening us very significantly. Well, thank you. And you know what? You're going to continue to do that. And we all appreciate you as well, sir. We'll take the mantle of the baton from your. him. I guarantee you, Rick, Torsten Sloc, is the only former IMF economist who's going to give you some love right now.

By the way, but not the only one giving you love. I know you guys did something on the exchange. Jeffrey Gunlack chiming in saying, Godspeed Rick Santelli. Congratulations on a great career. I know that, Kelly, you pointed out that what? The current Treasury Secretary had a nice thing to say about Mr. Santell. There's the draft. Not the draft. There's the letter right now. He said you're one of a kind. Sometimes you read those and you go, well, what kind is that exactly? It's so true, though, Rick. I mean, and people don't appreciate it because everyone talks about, like, how we debate these issues. They don't understand how prepared you have.

When this man has, how many papers do you have for an 830 data release? I'm going, okay, that's the biggest up or down moves. This man is so great. Give me these papers. Give me these papers. People need to understand how much work goes into. This is stacks every single day. Stacks.

this stacks and stacks and stacks of work that goes into, this is like one of, look how many there are, then there's this one. Initial jobless claim, continued claims, housing starts, permits. Kelly, I got to, I got to, listen, hold on. We got to, I got to chime in on this one, Rick. Kelly, I got some advice for you, same advice that I had to take my decaf. We just appreciate all the prep, all the work that you do. It's been so awesome, Rick, to really benefit from all of your I'm telling you, the rainforests are going to be so much better off when I retire. You should see how many reams of paper I go through. Remember an email was supposed to save all the paper?

They're like, oh, just email. I'll never use. I know we'll never use paper again. Now we're using more paper than ever because everybody's printing everything out. Scott Bessett, Treasury Secretary, writes, I hope retirement brings some well-earned relaxation. I don't think it's going to, is it, because you're going to be Rick Santelli forever. I'm not a relaxing character. No, you're not.

I'm trying to be nice. Please still text me your bond auction grades. You got to keep on. Oh, my God. Did somebody tell you? We're just going to get a random text from Rick. It's going to be C-minus. C-minus. I'm like, is that what is that our performance? All right, Rick, thank you very much. We'll see you later. All right on deck. The CEO of the world's largest privately held oil and gas company on why they may be ready to make a big jump into Venezuela. That's next. All right, welcome or welcome back. Oklahoma-based continental resources is heading south.

Not to Texas, but to South America. Twice. The company just signing a memorandum of understanding to develop some oil fields in Venezuela. It is a continuation of the announcements that we covered from Venezuela recently. Now, Continental is also working to build out oil and gas fields in Argentina. CLR is the world's largest privately held oil and gas developer and CEO Doug Loller joins us now. Doug, it's a pleasure to have you on. Welcome. Is Venezuela, it's an MOU memorandum of understanding. So help us understand. happening or you just sort of exploring options and possibilities right now?

Well, hey, Brian. Hi, Kelly. Great to see you guys again. I believe there is real possibilities and distinct opportunities in Venezuela today. I think that the movement by the country, by Venezuelan government, as well as the support from the U.S. government, is going to result in real actionable opportunities to mobilize a significant amount of resources that have been off the market for some time. So what would it take then? And I was down there with the Secretary of Energy and we were in the room and there's a lot of smiles, but there were also a lot of questions. Like, how exactly does this work? What is it going to take for you and your team to make the capital commitment? Yes. Well, so we have entered into a memorandum of understanding, as you

described. This MOU is non-binding, but it is a leading, uh, uh, uh, leading, uh, uh, entry into contract negotiation, Brian, for us to develop, to explore and develop a greenfield opportunity in the heavy oil belt just north of the Orinoco River in the country. We know that there's been a lot of progress made in the past several months with the hydrocarbon law that have created some more favorable terms, more competitive terms for external outside investment that has attracted continental and attracted many other companies to look at the country for potential new development. We definitely are aware that there are very distinct risks and there are some challenges, but we are encouraged by the environment that Venezuelan government is supporting

and with the support of the U.S. government believe that there's an opportunity here for us to make a material difference to the energy security and stability in the Western Hemisphere. Doug, it's Kelly here just real quick. What's fascinating right now is that I don't want to be blasé about oil. You know, anything that we can do would be great. But boy, do we need help with diesel right now. And just as an expert, I mean, what do we do? We can't bring on a new refinery. Maybe there's an export ban. I don't know what that does. I'm not smart enough to figure that out. But this, this is a pressing issue. And do we just kind of hope this situation improves in the next couple weeks? Well, it's definitely is an issue, Kelly. Your respond on right.

unfortunately it's not something that's going to resolve in the next few weeks. It will take some time. The opportunity that we have in Venezuela is to mobilize some additional resources, to provide some additional supply to the global markets that will help mitigate to a certain extent some of the issues we're seeing today. We know that increased production from Venezuela will contribute to the global supply and have a material impact. As you're aware, what we've seen there with the,

total production output from the country of Venezuela has declined significantly in the past several years. It'll be quite meaningful to the U.S. consumer. I think it'll be meaningful to the entire Western hemisphere as we see the strength of and revitalization of Venezuela's oil sector. And Secretary Wright and Chevron CEO, Mike Worth, were both pretty bullish on how quickly they might be able to ramp up because the assets in Venezuela are there. They just were kind of mistreated, a lot of bad treatment by China. and Russia interests. We don't have to go into the geopolitics or the sort of looting of the country unless you want to, Doug, you're free to do that. But how bullish or confident are you that if

this happens, that you can scale up relatively quickly? Well, there's a couple of things to consider there, Brian. You have the brownfield and opportunities that are being expanded in and around the brownfield areas. Chevron is doing an excellent job down there. They have, for a hundred years or so, as you know, with Mike Worth and the Chevron team. And as they look to expand, they're developing within their existing fields and then bolting on. What we're actually doing is going into a greenfield area that doesn't have any production at all. The area of the concession that we are looking to sign a firm contract here in the next several weeks will actually be a total greenfield. It'll require a significant amount of expiration work, seismic, technical data.

But we do know the resources there. We have a high confidence in that from test stratigraphic wells that have been drilled in the last 20, 30, 40 years and even some cases longer ago than that. So we know the resources there. Accompanying our interest there, there will be a significant amount of infrastructure. In this particular case, there's not deteriorated infrastructure that's been abandoned over time. There's just, frankly, not any. So our forecast and how quickly we can mobilize production is going to be impacted by how quickly we can ascertain and understand the reservoir, the fluid and rock properties, how we can mobilize that oil as quickly as possible, but then also build the infrastructure out to get it to the markets. And so there's a significant amount of work to be done. And we're talking a lot about the opportunities in Venezuela. But what about kind of neighboring Argentina? Is that an area as well where you guys could put significant capital? Maybe we start talking about, you know, oil fuel.

flow or some fracking and other things that can be done from down there. Would that be a significant possibility? It absolutely is. We are very excited about the opportunities that exist in South America. We believe that the continent as a whole has a tremendous production potential that just has not been fully tapped into. We know that Venezuela, Argentina, Guyana, Suriname, many discoveries, explorations both onshore, exploration activities onshore and offshore are showing and demonstrating that there are significant resources available to be mobilized. With Argentina in particular, we've been very, very excited about our investments down there. We entered the country last year, have made some significant investments. Most recently announced a joint venture operating agreement with Mercuria, the Phoenix Global Resources,

that's operating in the Vacamorta. And we see the production capacity there to be significant. And we believe South America is going to play a very strong and significant role to the Western Hemisphere and the global energy picture in the decades to come. I'm going to hear, Doug, from a lot of my friends the other direction up north, my Canadian friends who will text and they'll worry. Say, well, why is the U.S. poking around Venezuela? That type of oil is going to compete with their oil.

Canadian oil. can you reassure our friends in Canada, and they are our friends, that this is not going to be competition for them. There's plenty of demand for this type of oil, to Kelly's point about diesel fuel for both to win. Absolutely, Brian. I think we're about energy addition. We're about providing more resources to the Western Hemisphere and to the entire globe. So I don't see it as limiting. I don't see it as subtraction. I don't see it as substitution. We need to be focused on mobilizing these resources from all of these different areas in the northern and North America and South America. And we have a great opportunity before us. And we're working very hard and we'll be working very quickly to mobilize additional production from both Venezuela and Argentina.

Doug Lawler is a CEO of Continental Resources. Oklahoma City-based, by the way, name on the Thunder Arena as well. So maybe we'll see in Oklahoma City someday, Doug. Appreciate you and your team. Thank you. Go Thunder. Here we go. Thank you.

We're going to get a Go Thunder. Coming up, should AI labs be nationalized, or will they end up that way? Palantir CEO Alex Carp weighing in on that earlier, and Sima Modi will join us to break it down. AI safety and regulation are in full focus right now. After that post from Dario Amadee the other day, the always outspoken Palantir CEO Alex Carp weighing in earlier today on CNBC. And we have Sima Modi here on set to bring that to us. Sima, what were his thoughts? Okay.

So context here, Kelly and Brian. Palantir CEO Alex Carp has been on this quest, right, over the last two months to push the entire industry towards open-source models. It comes after that partnership with Nvidia's Neumatron model back in late June. And since then, that business has done very well. And coinciding with that, he's been become much more critical of their frontier lab, saying the cost of tokens way too high. There is the risk of IP theft.

Today with CNBC, he took that fight a bit further, saying this whole conversation around security, one company can handle this security risk, they need to nationalize their companies. Wow. Is what he said. First, you migrate all the IP to your business, and then because you need uncapped, you need capped liability, both vis-a-vis the business and vis-a-vis the dangers, you've got to migrate the business to the government.

It has to be nationalized. So it's actually happening. This is reported as regulation, non-regulation movement. That's actually not what this movement is. It's like the view that I believe they have is these businesses have to be nationalized. because if you don't nationalize them, every single one of my clients is going to sue. So his message is that AI needs some type of reasonable guideline. That sort of pits him, guys, in the middle of these two emerging camps, right?

All right, welcome or welcome back. Oklahoma-based Continental Resources is heading south. Not to Texas, but to South America. Twice. The company just signing a memorandum of understanding to develop some oil fields in Venezuela. It is a continuation of the announcements that we covered from Venezuela recently. Now, Continental is also working to build out oil and gas fields in Argentina. CLR is the world's largest privately held oil and gas developer and CEO Doug Lawler joins us now.

Doug, it's a pleasure to have you on. Welcome. Is Venezuela, it's an MOU memorandum of understanding. So help us understand. Is Venezuela happening or are you just sort of exploring options and possibilities right now? Well, hey, Brian. Hi, Kelly. Great to see you guys again. I believe there is real possibilities and distinct opportunities in Venezuela today.

I think that the movement by the country, by Venezuelan government, as well as the support from the U.S. government, is going to result in real actionable opportunities to mobilize a significant amount of resources that have been off the market for some time. So what would it take then? And I was down there with the Secretary of Energy and we were in the room and there's a lot of smiles. but there were also a lot of questions. Like, how exactly does this work? What is it going to take for you and your team to make the capital commitment? Yes. Well, so we have entered into a memorandum of understanding, as you described.

This MOU is non-binding, but it is a leading entry into contract negotiation, Brian, for us to develop, to explore and develop a greenfield opportunity. opportunity in the heavy oil belt just north of the Orinoco River in the country. We know that there's been a lot of progress made in the past several months with the hydrocarbon law that have created some more favorable terms, more competitive terms for external outside investment that has attracted continental and attracted many other companies to look at the country for potential new development. We definitely are aware that there are very distinct risks, and there are some challenges. But we are encouraged by the environment

that Venezuelan government is supporting, and with the support of the U.S. government, believe that there's an opportunity here for us to make a material difference to the energy security and stability in the Western Hemisphere. Doug, it's Kelly here just real quick. What's fascinating right now is that I don't want to be blasé about oil. Anything that we can do would be great, but boy, do we need help with diesel right now. And just as an expert, I mean, what do we do? We can't bring on a refinery. Maybe there's an export ban. I don't know what that does. I'm not smart enough to figure that out, but this is a pressing issue. And do we just kind of hope this situation improves in the next couple weeks? Well, it definitely is an issue, Kelly. Your respond on right, unfortunately, it's not

something that's going to resolve in the next few weeks. It will take some time. The opportunity that we have in Venezuela is to mobilize some additional resources, to provide some additional supply to the global markets that will help mitigate to a certain extent some of the issues we're seeing today. We know that increased production from Venezuela will contribute to the global supply and have a material impact, as you're aware, what we've seen there with the total production output from the country of Venezuela has declined significantly in the past several years. And it'll be quite meaningful to the U.S. consumer. I think it'll be meaningful to the entire Western Hemisphere as we see the strength

and revitalization of Venezuela's oil sector. And Secretary Wright and Chevron CEO, Mike Worth, were both pretty bullish on how quickly they might be able to ramp up because the assets in Venezuela are there. They just were kind of mistreated. A lot of bad treatment by China and Russia interests. We don't have to go into the geopolitics or the sort of looting of the country. Unless you want to, Doug, you're free to do that.

But how bullish or confident are you that if this happens, that you can scale up relatively quickly? Well, there's a couple things to consider there, Brian. You have the brownfield and opportunities that are being expanded in and around the brownfield areas. Chevron is doing an excellent job down there. They have for 100 years or so, as you know, with Mike Worth and the Chevron team. And as they look to expand, they're developing within their existing fields and then bolting on. What we're actually doing is going into a greenfield area that doesn't have any production at all.

The area of the concession that we are looking to sign a firm contract here in the next several weeks will actually be a total green field. It will require a significant amount of expiration work, seismic, technical data. But we do know the resources there. We have a high confidence in that from test stratigraphic wells that have been drilled in the last 20, 30, 40 years. and even some cases longer ago than that. So we know the resources there. Accompanying our interest there, there will be a significant amount of infrastructure. In this particular case, there's not deteriorated infrastructure that's been abandoned over time.

There's just, frankly, not any. So our forecast and how quickly we can mobilize production is going to be impacted by how quickly we can ascertain and understand the reservoir, the fluid and rock properties, how we can mobilize that oil as quickly as possible. then also build the infrastructure out to get it to the markets. And so there's a significant amount of work to be done. And we're talking a lot about the opportunities in Venezuela, but what about kind of neighboring Argentina? Is that an area as well where you guys could put significant capital? Maybe we start talking about, you know, oil flow or some fracking and other things that can be done from down there. Would that be a significant possibility?

It absolutely is. We are very excited about the opportunities that exist in South America. believe that the continent as a whole has a tremendous production potential that just has not been fully tapped into. We know that Venezuela, Argentina, Guyana, Suriname, many discoveries, expirations, both onshore, expiration activities onshore and offshore are showing and demonstrating that there are significant resources available to be mobilized. With Argentina in particular, we've been very, very excited about our investments down there. We entered the country last year, have made some significant investments. Most recently announced a joint venture operating agreement with Mercuria,

the Phoenix Global Resources, that's operating in the Vacamorta. And we see the production capacity there to be significant. And we believe South America is going to play a very strong and significant role to the Western Hemisphere and the global energy picture in the decades to come. I'm going to hear, Doug, from a lot of my friends the other direction up north, my Canadian friends who will text, and they'll worry. Say, well, why is the U.S. poking around Venezuela?

That type of oil is going to compete with their oil, Canadian oil. Can you reassure our friends in Canada, and they are our friends, that this is not going to be competition for them. There's plenty of demand for this type of oil, to Kelly's point about diesel fuel for both to win. Absolutely, Brian. I think we're about energy addition. We're about providing more resources to the Western Hemisphere

into the entire globe. So I don't see it as limiting. I don't see it as subtraction. I don't see it as substitution. We need to be focused on mobilizing these resources from all of these different areas in the northern and North America and South America. And we have a great opportunity before us. And we're working very hard and we'll be working very quickly to mobilize additional

production from both Venezuela and Argentina. Doug Lawler is a CEO of Continental Resources. Oklahoma City Base, by the way, name on the thunder. arena as well. So maybe we'll see in Oklahoma City someday, Doug. Appreciate you and your team. Thank Go Thunder. There we go. Thank you. Good to see you. We're going to get a go thunder. Coming up, should AI labs be nationalized or will they end up that way? Palantir CEO Alex Carp weighing in on that earlier and Sima Modi will join us to break it down. AI safety and regulation are in full focus right now. After that post from Dario Amadee the other day, the always outspoken Palantir CEO Alex

Karp weighing in earlier today on CNBC. And we, of Sima Modi here on set to bring that to us. Sima, what were his thoughts? Okay, some context here, Kelly and Brian. Palantir CEO, Alex Karp, has been on this quest, right? Over the last two months to push the entire industry towards open-service models, it comes after that partnership with NVIDIA's Nebatron model back in late June. And since then, that business has done very well.

And coinciding with that, he's been become much more critical of their frontier lab, saying the cost of tokens way too high. There is the risk of IP theft. Today with CNBC, he took that fight a bit further, saying this whole conversation around security, no one company can handle this security risk. They need to nationalize their companies. Wow. Here's what he said.

First, you migrate all the IP to your business, and then because you need uncapped, you need capped liability, both vis-a-vis the business and vis-vis the dangers, you've got to migrate the business to the government. It has to be nationalized. So it's actually happening. This is reported as regulation, non-regulation movement. That's actually not what this movement is. It's like the view that I believe they have is these businesses have to be nationalized because if you don't nationalize them, every single one of my clients is going to sue.

So his message is that AI needs some type of reasonable guideline. That sort of pits him guys in the middle of these two emerging camps, right? President Trump and Vidi-S CEO, Jensen Wong, saying no regulation, the Frontier Lab saying, please regulate us. He's saying we need some type of regulation or look at the government getting a stake because, again, the liability risk will be way too large. As to how this is translating in the stock market, I would just point to cybersecurity once again, as this conversation evolves around the idea of AI governance becoming a bigger priority,

CrowdStrike, but even beyond CrowdStrike, Kelly. Look at JFrog, Atlassian, just this week, all hitting new highs because the expectation is that bigger security budgets to regulate them. It's fascinating. Every one of my clients, he said, is coming after them and we'll sue you. And with the trials already going on with places like the New York Times over theft of their content. Is this kind of, you know, I'll bring it back to energy. Is this kind of like energy where you had the Oak Ridge, you had nuclear labs,

kind of the, you know, the Department of Energy runs a lot of the labs here for this type of development, right? Because you just don't want to put certain things in the private sector because the incentives may be wrong. Is he kind of suggesting that? Maybe it is some type of regulatory body. Like a model, yeah. Overseas them. But I think the question is, would the industry be open to that? When this technology is moving at break speed?

And will that, will that insulate them from a, you? additional liability exposure. And put the U.S. at some type of risk too. Right. Seema, thanks. Seva Modi. Never boring. Never. Coming up, don't worry. This bull market isn't over yet, says our next guest. But we are at a different stage of the cycle. Oppenheimer's head of technical analysis has more on what to do about that right now. That's next. Welcome back. Take a quick look at the NASDAG up 1.6% today. So a broad-based rally, really, after yesterday's declines when the Fed raised rates.

Our next guest is reading the technical charts and he's here to tell us, what's going on right now. Ari Wald is the head of technical analysis at Oppenheimer. It's good to see you again. He's well. I mean, you could take the very short view from yesterday at 2.30 p.m. Or you can zoom out a little bit because we did tease that you're talking about the cycle kind of evolving here. Right. I think from yesterday to o'clock, the resilience of the tape is something. It would make you think that a lot of this was priced in 90% expectations of a rate hike. You got it. But really taking a step back. NASDAQ's been down since it peaked in June and still hasn't recovered to that point there. So there has been some softness to the tape in recent months.

I wonder if this is a sell the rumor by the news type event, as we are now seeing some resilience with interest rates, 10-year Treasury yield, one of its most overbought conditions in recent years. Overbought? Overbought? Over for the 10-year rate there, hitting 5% there on interest rates there. Yet equities holding in there, down about 3% on the S&P 500. So what's the evolution that you see taking place? Well, if you look back historically, these Fed tightening cycles, they're not bullish. I don't want to paint it in that picture. They do typically cause some near-term volatility, but they're not bull market killers either here. And that's what we're keen on is the fact that through this move

in interest rates, which would generally be viewed as a bearish signal for markets, there's been resilience to the tape. There's not, hasn't been a lot of technical damage. And so for all those reasons, I think a lot of bad news has been priced in, we're set up for the Q4 rally. Well, the NASDAQ composite, as Kelly hit on top of the show, 1.55% gain. And with that move right now, here's an RBI, the NASDAQ is higher for the month. It's been a pretty lousy month for stocks. But with this move today, the NASDAQ is up 0.05, so 5-100s of a percent. I'm not making too much of it. But does it go to kind of the underlying, I don't say strength, but capacity to hold here from a technical perspective or no? That would be our read.

Here's the NASDAQ, very tech-heavy index, high growth. It's not crashing the one of 5% yield. Let me put it a different way. And you think it would have been. And so I think, again, when you're reacting in that manner to what would typically be a headwin for the NASDAQ there, I think if there's any signs of long rates pausing here, if 5% can prove to be the ceiling here, I think that could be your catalyst or at least help be a support and a tailwind for higher equity. prices led by the NASDAQ. What else looks good to you and your team technically? Well, I think this is the worst month of year for stocks.

We're approaching the best period of the year for stocks. We want to be optimistic. It is. It is. We never want to be optimistic just based on calendar year alone. But when the setup is there, when you're seeing this resilience in the market, and I would say there's still some sufficiently broad breadth, I'd think leadership is pro-cyclical, you look at what's leading the strength in the NASDAQ, you look at that

software industry that I think has really been a standout here, specifically the cybersecurity names. That's the new momentum trade. As semis have paused, now you're seeing just remarkable strength in cybersecurity, crowd strike, obviously cloud flare as well, and even beyond that, there's some other parts of software that are that are shaping up nicely and screen well for us. Ari, it's been great to have you here today. Thank you. Thanks so much. Ari Wald of Oppenheimer. All right, let's get over now to McKinsey Seagallos with a CNBC news update. Hey there, Brian. President Trump withdrew his nominee today to serve as the next director for immigration and customs enforcement. The move comes just three months after the president announced he was tapping former Oklahoma State Trooper Lance Schroier for the job.

Nassroyer has been serving as a senior advisor to Homeland Security Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen. ICE has not had a confirmed director since 2017. President Trump said today the U.S. is making progress toward establishing an Army base in Poland. He said the development was thanks to Polish President Carol Novrotsky and that a location could be announced soon. Poland has been pushing for more NATO troops and resources since Russia's invasion of Ukraine. And North Carolina defensive coordinator, Steve Belichick, has resigned. He is the son of head coach Bill Belichick. UNC released a statement today

following a probe into the program's culture and climate, saying that he would step down at the end of October when his medical leave comes to an end. The team's general manager, Michael Lombardi, resigned earlier this month. UNC says the investigation is now considered resolved. Kelly, I'm going to send it back to you. McKenzie, thank you very much. It's rare to get only one rate hike.

That's why our next guest is pricing and more, and he's got picks that he says will benefit from raising rates. Market Navigator is next. All right, time now for your Market Navigator segment, and today's guest has some money-making ideas for stocks to own if the Federal Reserve keeps raising interest rates. In other words, not just one and done. Skylar Wynand is Chief Investment Officer at Regan Capital,

and he joins us now. Help me understand your first pick, Northrop Grumman, because we've basically got a war slash conflict, whatever you want to call it around Iran. We're using missiles, using drones, using planes. You would think this would be a stock that would benefit. It's not. You clearly see that as an opportunity.

Right. If you looked at this chart starting on March 1st, March 2nd, when the conflict started, you would not expect this to be a defense company. It's down 30% since then. So we really like this as a value play year over year. It's flattish. It's sector defense and aeronautics. are up roughly 30%. The S&P's up 20. You have this huge order backlog with the U.S. government

and the U.S. government's running low on munitions. So we can see this be a really great value play for the next five to six years. We're talking 10 to 15 percent compounder no matter what. Yeah, the next pick is McKesson. And this is not the Spice Company. That's McCormick. McKesson, not a household name, but I guarantee you they're probably in every household watching or listening right now, Skyler, because they control what? One thing. third of all drug distribution in the United States? Yeah, one third. Add to that, it's drug mixture and what they're distributing. We're talking insulin shots. We're talking GLP ones. They made 15 billion in revenue last quarter on GLP one distribution and chemotherapy. So very diversified

stream of income that's impervious to inflation and what's going on in the economy, but can benefit hugely from demographics in people getting older. You know, by the way, shout out to my garbage bin. I doubt they're listening right now, but if they are, I love them all because they take the stuff away and they're great. You know what else? They're taking away money. I think that Republic Services, they may be picking up the trash, but based on their

balance sheet, they're also picking up the cash because this is a cash cow because we're all spending a lot of money on waste management and waste removal. That's right. And nobody quits. garbage man, 94% attrition rate. These guys are racking it up. And guess what? They pass through fuel prices and they have 5% yearly incremental kickers on their rates that they're charging customers. So we're talking 100% inflation proof, absolute cash cow in a leader in their industry. Yeah. And I'm just going to say this, leave a tip when you can around Christmas time for the people at hallway your waste.

It will pay off in spades. Trust me, should I say that on live TV? Northrop Grumman McKesson Republic Services, Skylar Wynand. He is Chief of the Office of Regan Capital, Skylar. Great stuff. Good to have you on. Thank you. Thank you.

Now, if only we could pay off the critters to stay out of the trash. That's it. That would be great. Coming up, the sector may be most hurt by rising borrowing costs, and it's not real estate. We will reveal where it is and where to find some opportunity next. Welcome back. We mentioned the NASDAQ up. Today, the chips are a big part of that, one of today's biggest rebounding sectors.

Until up 9%, arm 7, Marvell, call it 4, AMD, up about 6% of the SMH broadly, up 2% or so. And that, again, is helping to boost the performance of equities after a down session behind the rate hikes. Yeah, good day for big tech and many of the semiconductors. Well, apparently higher interest rates equal lower stock prices, at least for some big banks. Goldman Sachs and Bank of America shares both down about 5 to 7%. this week. Morgan Stanley, slightly less so, but down this week. The question now is, should you buy some of these stocks, which have had decent runs this year and over the last 12 months on these dips? Joining us now, Erica Nigerian, large cap bank analyst at UBS.S. Erica.

So we got our first interest rate increase in years. Some of the stocks you cover didn't respond terribly, but not great. Where is the opportunity right now? So I think the opportunity is in the G-Sibs, exactly the, you know, stocks that you put up on the screen. So why the G-subs? So the biggest fear of the market would have been, we got a rate hike, but we wouldn't get a path in terms of what was going to happen next. We got a pretty clear path, right?

And so that takes off the table pretty significant bond market turbulence. And if anything was going to ruin the capital markets party, it was going to be. be that. And so with activity levels intact, and by the way, we did get pretty decent updates for most of the Money Center banks in terms of investment banking activity and trading activity in the third quarter, despite the base continuing to go up. So, you know, I don't really worry as much about deposit cost creep or getting deposit costs wrong as I do with regionals. And so I do think the opportunity here is in the money centers. Well, who is going to do it best? within the money centers.

I really like Morgan Stanley here. And so why I like Morgan Stanley is there more than just capital markets activity. Clearly, they are one of the best investment banks in the world. But what is so impressive to me is to pull through when you do get the IPO activity or you get the monetization. So did you know that the workplace administrator for 10 out of the nine largest unicorns in the United States? Also, they are the workplace provider for 70% of the top.

private companies by market cap. So what does that mean? You get something like the SpaceX IPO. It follows through in terms of net new asset flows in the wealth management business, which is, by the way, a 30% pre-tax margin business. So I think that, you know, in an environment like this, you know, I would stick to quality and I would stick to the company that can continue to generate, you know, pretty high returns and pretty high growth in this a little bit more uncertain environment. Yeah, people, Erica, got a little rattled with Bank of America's update earlier this week. And then Goldman and others were able to provide some. So we don't know if it's company specific or if it's a little bit of an environment that needs a reset right now.

But if the banks didn't trade well, I mean, this has been one of the strongest parts of the market recently. So it just did make people sit up and take notice. Oh, for sure. And I honestly think that, you know, the Bank of America update, which came first, was a little bit more company specific. because at the end of the day, JPMorgan came out with essentially up year over year and in both investment banking and trading mid to high teens. You know, city groups at single digits, both in trading and, you know, investment banking. Goldman and Morgan don't give numeric numbers, but, you know, industry data would suggest that they tend to be outperformers in a market like this,

you know, adjusting for the base somewhat. So I do think Bank of America is a little bit of an outlier. Erica, Nigerian of UBS, Erica, pleasure to have you on. I'm sure your time is in great demand following that rare rate hike. Erica, thank you very much. Thank you. All right, we're going to take a short break. The markets are higher today. Oil, a little bit lower.

Power lunch returns right after this very short point. A lot of interesting individual movers today. Let's take a look at them, starting with Generac. That stock leading the S&P, it's soaring nearly 20% after announcing a $2.4 billion data the supply agreement with Amazon. Yesterday, Amazon also received warrants to buy up to 1.7 million shares of Generac. Incredible story there, the way they've kind of transformed. Brookfield, Wisconsin.

If you're in Milwaukee and you're driving to Madison, you go about 20 miles outside of Milwaukee. You look to the right. There's their headquarters. I don't think it's going to do anything to bring down the price. No, I just want to throw it. Every day, people. They can be 5 to 10 grand for a... Go to the Brought Stop and Mars Cheese Castle.

No. Perjurna is also among the top performers. It's still riding the high of pop. positive results from its cancer vaccine trials that were announced back on August 19th. This stock is now up more than 400% this year, although way off the highs from the COVID era. Now, on the other side of that, you got some of the homebuilder. Why do I get the negatives? The homebuilder's ticking lower this week, hurt by, I guess, rising rates, although mortgage rates probably going to stay the same because the Fed raised rates, but guess what?

They tick down a little. Yeah, they might have actually ticked down. And you know, we learned yesterday with Patrick Harker was that basically the FOMC doesn't actually set interest rates. That was one of the more fascinating nuggets that he dropped while we were talking. In the commercial break, folks, I don't want to go like two in the weed. Just scroll forward. We're going to talk. Patrick was saying how it's sort of there's almost like an electoral college inside the Fed that actually sets the rates. And the FOMC actually votes for that.

So remember when we cover the 2 PM decision to raise the federal funds rate, the actual rates that anybody pays have nothing to do with Fed funds. He said it's mostly a signal. After the meeting, the Fed board and only the board, I think that's five people, sits down and actually decides the administered rates, things like interest on reserves, other parts of the rate corridor, the things we would actually pay. Just kind of a quirky little fact of the way that this system is. I know. I'm embarrassed to admit. I didn't know this.

But any day you can learn something is a good day. And hopefully this is some knowledge we're going to drop here. I was looking at the month-to-date performers. Kelly, month-to-date, Dell up 29 percent. Intel, 23 and a half percent. Meta up 18 percent. This month, you have another one, too. Right.

You can add HPE in there as well. All of these companies still that are providing infrastructure to AI. incredibly strong meta coming out with that consumer product as well. Crypto is bouncing back today as well. I just wanted to quickly mention crypto gold. Keep an eye on the dollar complex too. There's HPE. Look at that. That's today. It's up nearly 9%. Best Buy also up 19% this month. You go flat panel television. I know weird way that might also be because people need component. Look at all the building going on for people to run their agents. It is a boon for Best Buy.

Let's end on the high note. I like that. Folks, thank you for watching. Power Lunge.