Power Lunch - S&P 500 jumps to another record as it closes out winning week on strong earnings, trade deal optimism 7/25/25

Episode Date: July 25, 2025

The S&P 500 rose on Friday, as it closes out a winning week following solid earnings results and the latest trade developments. We’ll tell you all you need to know. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ending the week on a high. Welcome to Power Lunch alongside Kelly. I'm Brian. Call at the Lucky 13. The market's record highs again. And if the S&P 500 closes at a record today, it would be the 13th record high close the year. Taylor Swift would be proud. Nice reference.

On deck is a big week for your money. We have tech earnings from Meta, Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon. That will be in focus on Wednesday. The Federal Reserve announces its interest rate move on Wednesday as well. and the president continues to push Fed Chair Powell for a rate cut. Friday is also the trade deadline as well as the jobs report, so plenty coming up and plenty for investors to digest. Here to tackle all these topics, let's bring in our panel.

Jeff Kilberg is with us. He's the president and CEO of KKM Financial and a CNBC contributor. Steve Kovac and Mackenzie Segalos are covering the tech trades as well. Welcome aboard everyone. We really appreciate it. Jeff, kick us off. What do you think is going to be the most significant? I think Apple is going to be really important for sentiment.

We've seen the Mag 7. Kind of a bifurcated week, Kelly. We saw Tesla really disappoint in earnings. Then we saw Google really deliver. So I think that Mag 7 theme, which really has been the backbone of this V-shaped recovery since the liberation lows, I think we're going to see Apple. We really need something out of Apple from the AI front. But I think we're going to focus on that.

The Fed, I think we know what the Fed is going to do. They're going to be prudent more. But I'm looking for Apple to really be that bellwether of earnings next. season as we continue to heat up with new all-time highs. All right. So on that note, Steve, what would you say about Apple? And what would you add? Yeah, on the AI front, look, Apple made it clear last month that WWDC, they're kind of taking the year off to fix their AI problems.

However, there's this discussion now about acquisitions and whether or not they need to buy a company like perplexity or do they need to go out there and match Mark Zuckerberg dollar for dollar and acquire all this big talent. I think that is the best AI hint will possibly get out there. I will also say, just adding on what Jeff was saying, is that there's a lot of optimism baked into this report. I've been reading the analysts leading up to next week's earnings, and there's a lot of thought now that they could look deceptively better than they actually are,

just because there's a lot of front-loading of buying iPhones ahead of the tariffs. We do know there's going to be that $900 million charge because of tariffs, and then the question becomes, what does that look like through the rest of the year? I said this on your show just a few minutes ago, Kelly. This is happening the day before that August 1st deadline. So I don't even know if Apple knows what to expect. But 900 million, 900 million. Which Apple can afford?

Oh, it's like a couple hours of revenue. Exactly. That's a lot of money to us. If it was 900 billion, we'd be having a very different discussion about Apple. We're all doomed. McKenzie, I think we've got all the time zones except for the beleaguered mountain time zone covered here. McKenzie Seagalos out west. We got Amazon, we got meta.

What's kind of the theme from those companies and more? Well, with Amazon, it's in the middle of that Mag 7 pack, up of a 5.5% this year, which is just ahead of Alphabet and Apple. But it's still very much underperforming the NASDAQ and S&P. So what we're looking at, what investors want to see is that they're reigniting their AWS growth, because Cloud is still one of Amazon's core businesses. and revenue growth missed estimates last quarter. It slowed down from Q4. So going into next week's results,

analysts want to see AWS at least hit that 17% growth target. And most firms do see a clear path to acceleration in the second half of the year, driven by Gen AI workloads and easing GPU constraints. But that's really key that the street starts to see Amazon hit that inflection point. All right. So should we, Jeff, then, talk kind of more broadly. broadly about some of the macro events that await us as well. The jobs report, the estimates are all over the place. The Fed's supposed to make its move on Wednesday before, I guess, knowing what

is going to happen on that front. Well, I think the CMEE Fed Watch tool is illuminating, Kelly, that we are going to see the Fed potentially cut rates, 65% chance in September. They're going to sit on their hands next week, talk about prudence, still looking for trade deal, tariff or inflation from trade tariffs to materialize. We still are waiting for some of these trade tariff deals to land. So I think when you talk about the MAG 7, the overall picture, the MAG 7 continues to lead us up. Is it a little bit vulnerable for a pullback? Absolutely when you see the representation. But again, if I look at Apple, and I know Steve brought up a great point, Tim Cook's leadership, people are questioning his leadership.

I think he's actually being very measured, very calculated. He's not a hyperscaler. He doesn't need to spend all of their $150 billion in cash. They could buy perplexity for, I don't know, $14, $15 billion and be a small acquisition for them when they're biggest ever. But nonetheless, we have seen Apple be the laggard in the Mag 7 next to Tesla. I'm not counting Tesla here. It's the top detractor in the S&P 500 year date. But going back the last five years, it's the third largest contributor to the S&P 500.

So let's not forget how much Apple has been important. It was the first $3 trillion market cap company ever. I know in Vida is a trillion dollars more, and I'm using the word trillion, very liberally here. But nonetheless, I think Apple sets the tone. Tim Cook has an opportunity to prove his leadership, to prove the ability that that, that they can acquire something or build something because we all want Siri to be better. No doubt about it. If you're an Android user, we'll leave you to the side.

But I am in the ecosystem. I have no intention of leaving the Apple ecosystem. And I need Siri to be better. But if it's not, I'm just going to use perplexia or Super Grock or some other app out there. So it's not a death sentence if they don't deliver, but investors really want to see Apple deliver and they need to. I think the first person to use the word zillion on the air will have some because Trillion is now just become. Yeah. Yeah, so that's old school.

So do you think there's a chance, Steve, that Tim Cook and company would make a deal? I know you've talked about it before. Not even, what did somebody say in the other day to signal intention? Oh, sure. That we're serious about AI, serious enough to do something we never do, ever, just buy somebody. They, that would be very interesting if they did that. They rarely do it. They never did that.

Never bought anybody. And to just point, $15 billion acquisition would be 5X, their biggest acquisitions. before that, which was beat. So potentially, maybe, I think, but like they've already, again, they had their chance to say that at WWDC. I think they're going to keep things very close to the best and promise it's going to come, it's going to come, it's going to come, and not really talk about. Now, they have talked publicly at EQ, the services boss in that testimony with the DOJ case against Google. He did talk openly about, hey, we are looking at perplexity as a partner, not an acquisition, but as a partner as potentially to play into this Apple intelligence

ecosystem as well. So that's also there too. McKenzie, what would you add? And what else will you be watching? Proof of profitability and AI is also very key to Amazon this quarter. It is hitting unprecedented levels of spending. You've got Bank of America projecting total CAPEX will top $103 billion this year, far outpacing the other hyperscalers. And much of that is weighted toward WAS. I mean, sitting its estimate was $74 billion is going into cloud infrastructure alone. That was a 37% jump from last year. And why this matters is because those investments support Amazon's gen AI expansion, everything from those in-house training chips to

NVIDIA hardware. AWS is also rolling out thousands of capacity units to handle more AI workloads. They're tightening their ties with Anthropic. So the overall, sentiment among analysts is that short-term margin pressure is expected as that infrastructure comes online, but ultimately they see it as temporary and very key to driving long-term profitability and expansion for the company. Can I give a big shout out to our friend Jeff Kilberg? Because Jeff Kilberg, when the market was tanking back in April on all the terror fears, Jeff, you say long and strong.

You came on this network. You basically said, you got to buy into the weakness. You made the right call because if people listen to you, they made a lot of money. Congrats on that. But what have you done for us lately? Are you now a little worried that the market came back as the fastest recovery in the history of the stock market? Is there any nerve now on the other side that we've come back too far too fast? Or no? Well, thank you, Sully, for the hat tip. Much appreciated. Yes, I was a lonely bowl back in April. But to your point, exactly, why did I become so bullish? Because of that acute reaction,

it was more of the fact that the VIX, the VIX surged over 60. And that was really an opportunity to buy stocks lower. Now with the VIX almost under 15 today, there is an interest sniff of potential complacency. So I think when you see the VIX go under 14, which it seems like in this market meltup, to your point, this historic V-shaped recovery, yes, you can say we oversold in April and we're overbought here, but it doesn't seem like we're going to have any headwind short term. But if the VIX goes under 14, I think that's the time to start taking profits. That's the time to start buying downside protection. Absolutely. All right, good stuff. Actional advice. Watching the VIX.

14 to be like, Kelly, have you ever seen a VIX under 14? I don't. What do we get down to in really complacent markets? Do we have like 13? Do we get to 11? 12 or 11, but if you think about where we've come from, that's the most important thing for VIX traders. Where do we come from? This is the most historic collapse in volatility ever, silly. We saw it above 60.

So this duration, I know everything is accelerating the velocity of every move is so much faster in 2025. But this is historic collapse. So yes, we're only at 14. But in comparison, yeah, we've been under 11 before, which is crazy. All right, not there yet. We forgot about Microsoft. Steve, what do we say about Microsoft? How's the Zoom selling?

Just going bananas. Yeah, that brown color is really, uh, the most valuable company in the world. Microsoft and Nvidia every day go back and forth. They keep trading. We got talking, we talked about CAPEX a little early with Alphabet raising their CAPEX. This is the end. This report marks the end of Microsoft's fiscal year. So we're going to finally get at least some.

some color what the next fiscal year looks like. Microsoft said it's going to grow from the 80 billion fiscal year 2025. What does that look like in 26? It's going to grow at a slower rate than it did in 25. We'll see what 26 looks like. At least maybe for the first quarter, they'll give us a solid number on that what to expect. So we can compare and contrast this a little bit better. Microsoft has gotten boring in a good way.

Yeah. It just quietly... That's Satya Nadella's Microsoft, boring in a good way. See if they can keep that going. If they had a VIX, I think it would be a... 11. Thank you all. Appreciate it. Jeff Kilberg, Steve Kovac, and our own McKenzie Sigalos.

All right, we have got a long way to go. And still on the menu here on a Friday power lunch. Is it a genius move? Stable coins, getting the government stamp of approval, at least for now. Plus, take it to the bank. We're going to speak with the CEO Valley National Bank about their earnings and what they're seeing around

America in demand for loans. Yeah, and on the ball. President taking aim now at College Sports. I'll tell you how and why. All in Tower Lunch Return. All right, welcome back. Let's talk crypto, so-called stable coins, becoming the first cryptocurrency to get the

official stamp of approval from the government. If you remember, Jan Vanek, CEO Vanek, Associates joining us recently to talk about the potential impact on the payment space. This will put cost pressure on the payments system because it is cheaper and allows all these competitors to come into the market, whether it's a crack-in, whether it's a Robin Hood, whether it's an X, you know, there are going to be a lot of super apps. Now, Yon's point there was that stable coins could pave the way for new payment technology and apps. The question many have is could stable coins and all those companies disrupt

older companies like MasterCards and visas or even a PayPal? Joining us, I was Dan Dolov. He is senior fintech analyst at Missouho. I don't know. Listen, I get it. It's all the rage. My bet is MasterCard. NAMX and Visa, they have thousands of really smart people working on this problem. What do you think? I think the graveyards are full of people who are shorting MasterCard and Visa on all these thesis. True.

And they've been proven wrong. And I'm telling you they're going to be proven wrong again and again and again. So I disagree with the disruption thesis on those names. Saturday Night Live, if you haven't seen it, did a really funny sketch on Bitcoin. It was like three people talking around a table through when they were like, and two, like, it and the one, and it was just, but the funny point was, was that how complicated Bitcoin still really is. And people were saying things like blockchain ledgers, like it's a normal thing to say. I think Michael Novagraths would argue that we're in like, not even the first inning,

we're in like the first batter of the first inning of where this goes. So where do you see it going? On Bitcoin or on stable? On the whole crypto ecosystem of one day it becoming, You know, Kelly Gosomen says to her husband, Eric, you know, I just went to Wegmans and, you know, use stable coins to purchase my groceries through a phone app. So two things I have to say, like stable coins are disruptive, just not to the payments industry. They're disruptive to certain pockets in payments, right? They're disruptive to remittances. So if you're in the business of remitting money and, you know, taking a lot of fees for that, that's going to be disruptive. And B2B cross-b border.

But nothing that touches consumer. Anything international. But those are not being serviced by the networks right now. But can they, I'm begging you. I'm begging them, okay? This is where I'd get on board the train, as if they thought it would disrupt. We always talk about the 3% fees that we, you know, get charged interchange fees. Is that an area that this could really disrupt?

Because I hear that case being made by a lot of the kind of crypto bulls about stable coins. Correct. But if you think about it, credit is they're offering a real service and you're getting points. So you kind of have to like get the consumer to want to pay with stable coins. The consumer is indifferent. And when it comes to debit... But is yield to stable coins like points are to credit cards? Correct.

But the yield is only as good as rates are. So if you believe that, you know, we're going to get rate cuts, right? Which is kind of what we're thinking. Then monetizing the business of stable coin is going to be very difficult. What about the people who argue it's just a scale play? In other words, they take a toll. They're toll collectors. And as the stable coin industry grows, they will just continue to kind of grow,

revenues and profits that way. But it's not, and that's the interesting thing. Like, that's the stories there, and that's why circle, we have an underperformance circle. That's why the stock ripped. But if you look at, like, the USDA market cap, it literally hasn't moved since April. So there's a massive bifurcation between the story and the reality. What's the market, about $100 billion, something like that? $65 billion.

$65.000. Because tether's the biggest, no? So, tether is much bigger. But it's private. But it's a great business right now because rates are high. But as soon as rates come down, there's going to be no big. But look at that. I mean, well, that's that's a coin market cap. Coinbase, which is an exchange, effectively, is bigger than the ICE, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange.

Coinbase is now larger. Coinbase in some ways is the largest exchange in the United States. Yeah, and Coinbase actually. And like 95% of people that watch this show probably couldn't tell you exactly what they do. I can't. But. One would hope. I hope so. You're the guest. That's why I'm here. Thank you.

But actually what's interesting about this is Coinbase gets the better share of revenue of USDC versus Circle. Do they? So they get 100% of everything that's on their platform and 50% of everything that's on Circles platform. Wow. So they have a sweetheart deal. Do you think that persists? Yeah, they have like a clause that for every deal to be renegotiated, they need to give their, consent. Wow. So Coinbase actually has the upper hand on Circle. It's the better name when it comes

to stable coins than Circle. Let's go back for a minute. So kind of we're talking about Circle. We're talking about how big it's USDC stable coin can get. And a lot of the enthusiasm around stable coins also does seem to come down to everyone kind of launching their own, you know, a Shopify, names like that. Would those involve Circle on some level, you think? Or are they, should we consider if we start to get all these kinds of announcements? Should we consider them rivals to what Circle is offering? It's a great question. So some are, so the FISAV stable coin does use, but they're using two different

stable coins. They're using Circle and another one. Some are completely proprietary, like the PayPal one. The way we view this is there's going to be a lot of stable coins, and they're going to be interchangeable. And the only reason for that is because it's just a dollar. So you can swap USDC with Tether or Tether with USC at some point. It's just a dollar for a dollar.

Are you even going to know that's happening? So I think the ultimate consumer experience, like Brian said, is I go into Wegmans. I'm trying to think of a situation where the payment isn't as immediate. Because right now, kind of Apple Pay at Wegmans works fine. But there's probably situations and maybe it's paying a handyman or something like that where the stable coin becomes a more immediate way of transacting. But is it even that I'm going to know it's happening on a stable coin or am I just going to know, this guy handed me his phone, I hit send with my wallet, it went to his wallet, it was done instantaneously. It might have happened via stable coins, but that I'm just going to know, this guy handed me his phone. I hit send with my wallet. It went to his wallet. It was done instantaneously. It might have happened via stable coins, but that I don't necessarily have any experience of what's going on there.

Exactly. So it's going to be in the background. It's going to be on the B-to-B realm. But again, in the U.S., there's no business case because payments are already instant. In some cases. But people talk about checking all the time. You know, it still takes, you have to settle overnight. You have to wait a day or two for it to clear.

I mean, is that where this could take more share? It could in like ACH, which takes two or three days. But again, like today, I can just pay it. So a handyman, you can pay with Zell or you can pay with Venmo. Or cash. You can actually just go to the bank, take out cash. and then hand that person cash. And I've been using, I know,

takes a lot of stup. Insert old man joke here, okay? I'm going to go yell at a cloud when I get outside. But everywhere I go now is a 3% fee. Yes. Right? So I'm just going to give them 3% because I don't want to go to the bank. I have a secret for you.

What's the secret? Payments. At the end, there's always going to be someone who's going to charge you a fee, regardless of whether it's a stable coin or a visa master. Or the bank charging you to take your own money out of a bank machine. The consumer and the small merchants are always going to get the short end of the stick. And that's what payments is all about. What a lovely place to end it.

My life. Dan, thanks. Appreciate it. It's good to see you today. Dan Dollive. This mystery name you know is hired today, but on pace for its worst week since February of 2020. That's right, the pandemic cliff. If you want to guess it, tweet me at Kelly CNBC.

We'll reveal it and our stocks of the week when Power Lunch returns. Welcome back to. to power lunch with stocks climbing to more record highs today. What about bond yields? We actually see about 440 or lower really is the level for the 10 year as we're gearing up for next week's critical Federal Reserve meeting. Mark, it's also digesting the president's latest comments, pressing Chair Powell to cut rates once again. Rick Santelli is here with more in the bond report. Hi, Rick. You know, it's been a real interesting past few days here, especially if you're watching the long end and the yield curve. Today, for example,

If you look at twos on the week, they're up several basis points. Look at tens on the week, they're down several base points. Now, that's not a lot, but how that's occurring could be significant. Look at twos and tens intraday on one chart. You see how the orange line is leading? Yes, the 10-year and long end in general really took the lead in pushing rates a bit lower today and flattening the curve. And the yield curve, there's some secrets here.

Let's look at the 2s-10s curve for the month of July. Notice how it was steepening and then right around the 15th and 16th that changed. What occurred on the 15th and 16th? CPI and PPI. Once they were behind us, the yield curve stopped steepening long end rates, stop leading rates higher. And that is significant to pay attention to. And foreign exchange land, well, euro is the new king.

Whether it's the euro yen or the dollar yen or the euro versus dollar. Now, let's look at the Euro yen versus dollar yen on one chart. This chart goes back one year because the Euro yen is at a one year high. You can see the dollar yen is nowhere near that, the dollar underperforming. And the reason the euro is doing so well against the yen, and this is significant, it's because leading up to the election, there was a big nervous issue regarding fiscal prudence and austerity measures to try to control their debt and some of the stimulus they put on in the past.

Well, even though the election's over, that's a dynamic that's still in place. And finally, here's the Euro versus dollar. You could see the Euro's hovering awfully close to a four-year high. Brian, Kelly, back to you. All right, Rick, Sinteli, Rick, thank you, and have a great weekend. All right. Now we're going to quickly, Kelly and I are going to hit our stocks of the week, names that have kind of popped out to us for one reason or another.

Kelly, my stock is going to be SENTine. That doesn't get a lot of attention. United Health is bringing a lot more attention. Sentine up a little bit. right now, but it's on pace for its worst month ever. It had a quarterly loss, but kind of like others in the health insurance and health care space, withdrawn full year earnings guidance. Stock has been absolutely crushed. It's not just United Health. A lot of negative attention on these types of companies. Real problems with its Medicaid and Obamacare businesses this morning

on the call. They said they think they're actually going to be able to adjust pricing next year to be more profitable, basically on the marketplace. And that's, why all of a sudden we went from the shares being down to up, enough to maybe push healthcare higher on the week, but they're going to have a much longer road to fix what's wrong with a lot of these businesses. Speaking of which, what is going on with Chipotle? That's my pick this week. Yesterday was its worst day since October 2017,

after it missed on revenue and cut its same store sales growth for the year. Traffic fell nearly 5%, Brian, in the second quarter, and the shares are rebounding, call it 1% today. it's high. It was basically around the time last year that Brian Nichol left for Starbucks. Yeah, he placed value in his CEO, right? Yeah. And maybe just that good. You do wonder, are people going to Kava instead? I think there's a lot of competition in this space, in a good way for the customer. You know, I just don't know why all of a sudden it's been so much harder for them to get people in there, into the locations and spending. Price, maybe. I actually asked the millennial this morning. He knows who he is. And he said it used to be kind of a treat.

Now it's kind of like just like office food. Regular food. So that was what the term he used was office food. Like you or I tried to order Chipotle, by the way, for the entire team here today. And my credit card kept getting whacked for fraud. Yep. So I ended up not ordering Chipotle. That's what Chipotle should say.

They should not us. The banks are blocked. That was a credit card issue, not a Chipotle issue. Yeah. But it kind of goes to our Dandola of conversation. Exactly. All right. Meantime, folks from Main Street to Wall Street on the edge of their seat.

Wondering if the Fed are actually going to cut rates next week? Well, the odds are approximately 0%. But Valley Bank CEO Ira Robbins will talk more about what the Fed may do later on in the year and we'll kind of demand he is seeing from loans. I don't think we'll get the tacos. But with Ira, you never know. Take around. Welcome back to Power Lunch.

There's been a steady flow of news within the banking sector, including Cinevis and Pinnacle, announcing an all-stock $8.6 billion merger. Those are two regional banks. You can see the street, not a, well, not a big fan of the merger as both companies are down about 12% today. Now, we've also had a surge when we were just talking about this in digital assets in the wake of the Genius Act, which was signed into law last week. Goldman and B&Y Mellon agreeing to a partnership to tokenize the $7 trillion money market industry, for instance, and we're less than a week away from an FOMC meeting that has gotten increasingly important as the president dials up his rhetoric on the Fed Chair. Here for an exclusive sit-down with us is Valley National Bank, CEO Iowa Robbins. You guys just beat top and bottom line in earnings yesterday.

You got about $63 billion or so in assets. It's great to see you. Welcome, first of all. It's wonderful for to be here. I kind of want to talk to you about stable coins, although maybe I'm just dumping way too far ahead of ourselves. We can go there if you like. I think it's... What are your thoughts?

It's interesting, right? So you mentioned about the Cinova's Pinnacle deal. And I think it's interesting sort of maybe why it's down. So you think about an M-O-E, which is a very challenging integration for two really, really performing banks. When you think about the environment today, right, the government's relaxing regulations when it comes to certain things,

you're seeing stable coin come in, opportunities for AI as well. You know, there's a lot of opportunities for banks today. And when you think about choices that you make, and maybe there's a decision, then MOE is important or is stable coin? Oh, I see what you're saying. So you think the market doesn't like the fact

that these two kind of like for likes are merging instead of announcing, hey, we're rolling out a new stable coin. I think it becomes a distraction. And I do believe that those are two wonderful CEOs, and I think the bank would do really, really well. That said, I think we make choices and everything that we do. And if I'm running an organization today,

I'm really excited about the opportunities that come from AI and Stablecoin and the impact that it can have on regional banks. Like what? What's it going to do for Valley National? I think AI specifically, I think, is going to be fundamentally changed the entire banking space as it does the consumer behavior delivery channels. AI, I think when we look at it, we have... What is a delivery channel?

So how do I connect with you, right? and what is the behavior? Are you prompting a behavior to me or am I prompting a behavior to you? So if you look at a standard bank today, around 98 to 99% of calls are inbound calls to us complaining about something. There was a fraud on your account,

your credit card didn't work. Yeah. How amazing would it be? Two of them. Like, tell me about it. And we were able to proactively reach out to you with a switch that just said did this year transaction right away

on an instantaneous basis. To be much more proactive, and this is one credit card, but I think these are the activities and behaviors. I think we can get to a world where it's 50-50, 50% outbound calls, 50% inbound calls. Dramatic change in what a customer experience looks like across an organization. Are you guys investing in AI kind of systems or technology that, I mean, are you putting dollars to work on this?

We're putting dollars in people's to work. I think, you know, we have an ability to integrate it in with the technology partners we deal with, which I think technology partner selection, I think becomes very critical. You focus on... Are they names we would know and recognize, or are these... Salesforce is an amazing one, right? And I think they've done a very good job. And I think those are partners that we want to partner with as well. But there's a lot of other ones, Tarfina and some other designs

to maybe that you wouldn't have heard of. There are much better partners when we think about AI capabilities and what they really means to us. So I think there's an unbelievable amount of opportunity in the banking space and just in the corporate America in general. And when you go through, as I mentioned before, an M&A deal, once again, is this where you want to spend your time or are there really organic opportunities that maybe make some sense?

How is loan demand right now? Unbelievable. Really? Unbelievable high? Yeah, we sat there. I remember last time I was here and we were talking about tariffs and the concern and everything was going to go downhill. We had unbelievable pipeline, 700 million of CNI growth just this last quarter, near 20% on an annualized basis. Our pipeline right now is...

So you're seeing 20% commercial and industrial loan growth right now? Our pipeline's 30% higher today. For what? What are? I assume loans are 7 to 10% roughly? And in a world where private credit. So just that's what you, that's the rates. For us, it's around 678, 680 is where the new volume was for the quarter.

But there is absolute demand. And I think, once again, it gets skewed. We're concerned about some of the Amazon's, the Walmarts, the large companies, and what do they fear about tariffs and what are they seeing? For the entrepreneur, there is absolutely growth that we're seeing. And there's demand. Can you give any examples? I think general working capital lines of credit, right?

And I think they're looking at putting capital investments into their business, and they believe there's opportunities that are going to come out of it, but tremendous, tremendous. So you think, in other words, these new technologies like AI, like crypto maybe, are causing businesses of all kinds to come to you, even at a 7% borrowing rate, and take out new loans to invest in those businesses, to get that technology in and unlock what they must believe are going to be pretty strong future returns? I would wholeheartedly believe that to be true.

And I think when we're looking at large companies, you have much longer time cycles as to how you have to make, capital decisions. Some of the smaller companies, you can make them a bit more quickly. And those are the ones that we lend to, and those are the ones that we're seeing borrowing. No further question.

Well, maybe 7% is the new 4%. In terms of people have just gotten used to borrowing costs, and they're adjusting their behavior. And by the way, 7% was not even historically that high if you go back more than five or 10 years. Ira, great to have you on. One of our favorite guests,

because you tell it like it is. Thank you. Thank you. I really appreciate being here. Thank you so much. It's counter narrative, too. Meantime, we do have a news alert right now on Intel. Christina Parks and Evelos, what's going on? Brian, not even 24 hours after their earnings release.

Intel now announcing plans to set up its networking and communications business as a standalone company. As spokesperson confirms, they have begun the process of identifying strategic investors, quote, like Altera, we will remain an anchor investor enabling us to benefit from future upside as we position the business for future growth. Keep in mind in April, Intel said it was selling a 51strile. on stake in its Altera programmable chip business. So today's news about the networking and comms business

is really the second major move by CEO Liputan to revive the struggling American chip maker. Shares were actually lower starting the day. They did drop when the news hit. You can see just on your screen, but they were lower post earnings down about 7%. So now down almost nine and a half, guys. Wow.

Yeah, Intel just can't get out of its own way. Well, it's trying to. So this would be another example. For example, cutting costs left and rights. Yes, they're trying. You know, we're talking about Christina, one of the great American companies still is, but this was Intel inside. Everybody knew Intel. Intel was in some weird way, Nvidia 15 years ago. And just everybody has to have their moment to shine. So I guess that moment is now for Nvidia. Intel is trying. I'm not trying to defend it or anything, but clearly the CEO is trying to cut costs, I should say, everywhere he can and raise as much money as possible to get this company. moving forward into the future so that it's still relevant and still used by many.

They missed mobile. Many people say they missed mobile. They missed AI. Maybe they missed crypto. We'll see maybe this is the right move. Take the pain now, you know? Yeah. Christina Parts and Evans.

Thank you very much. All right. Let's get a CMEC news update right now with Kate Rogers. Hi, Brian. The Kremlin said today President Vladimir Putin would not meet with his Ukrainian counterpart before the last stages of signing a peace deal. The development comes as a snub to Voldemir Zelensky, who has insisted the two should directly speak soon. President Trump insisted today a meeting between the two will happen, and he threatened once again to impose sanctions on Russia if a peace deal does not materialize.

The Justice Department's second day of interviews with Jeffrey Epstein's associate, Jelaine Maxwell, came to an end shortly afternoon in Florida. Maxwell's lawyer said the purpose of the meeting is to give her a chance to tell her story because she did not. not testify at her sex trafficking trial. He also said she was not offered a pardon or clemency. And Major League Soccer today suspended its biggest star for one game. Leo Messi and Feller Inter-Miamy player Jordi Alba both skipped the MLS All-Star game despite being voted onto the team. Messi says he was resting from his packed schedule, but the MLS says skipping the game is only allowed with prior approval. Brian, back over to you. All right, Kay Rogers, thank you very much. All right, speaking of sports, President Trump now claims he is saving college sports with this new executive order.

What exactly did he do? And what do former players say? We'll talk about it coming up. All right, some news in college sports. This one out of the White House around paying players in both revenue and non-revenue sports. The issue is complicated. So let's try to make sense of it and bringing Brandon Copeland. He played in the NFL for 10 years.

He's the founder of Copeland Media. He's a member of our Financial Wellness Advisory Board. graduated from the Wharton School, University of Business, so knows business, money, and sports. And Brandon, as our viewers probably know, I'm a Virginia Tech Hokie. I'm a proud hokey. I love the school.

I am terrified that the current state of the NIL situation, name image and like this money, is going to basically make a Super League of like 20 teams and everybody else is screwed. What does this executive order do? And where are we right now in the big money college sports? Yeah, Brian, I think ultimately, but the president is seeing is he's seeing that the route we're on in college athletics is just unsustainable. He's seeing a lot of money flow into it fast and he actually calls out in the executive order that it looks like it's a race to the bottom.

And so he issues this executive order and makes a bunch of statements. And it's very important to keep in mind that none of it is actual rules or bills or policy. However, what a lot of folks in college athletics are wondering, is does the president hold or withhold federal funding from schools who don't listen to the statements that he's making in this executive order and take action of banning third party NIL payments that are not brand sponsorships, which frankly has been a rule in the NCAA since 2021. So again, there are a lot of statements within here. Ultimately, he's looking to try to create a sustainable future for college athletics, but the only true sustainable future for college athletics is to treat it similar to pro athletics. allow the college athletes to organize in their own players association, and

then to agree and negotiate the terms of their participation. That's the only way you'll have enforceable rules in the future. Yeah, I'm going to utter, I guess, words that we're not supposed to say on TV, Brandon, so cover your years. I don't understand the executive order. I just don't,

I'm trying to understand it, college sports. I'm also apparent of a Division I athlete, by the way, so I'm sort of was in the world. It feels like the Wild West, in college sports, particularly on the revenue generators, football and basketball, football in particular, your world. Is there any clarity right now, Brandon? Is this sustainable? Because it doesn't feel sustainable. Yeah, this is absolutely not sustainable. And you're exactly right. The executive order doesn't really do anything to help create a substantial set of rules for college athletics.

and the president doesn't actually have that type of power. Ultimately, there's a lot of leaders actually in college athletics who've reached out and said, hey, so whose rules do we follow? Do we follow our state laws now? Do we follow the executive order? Do we follow the House settlement terms? Do we follow the NCAA bylaws? Or whose rules do we follow the College Sports Commission?

And so, again, until the leaders on both sides, the schools, the NCAA, the conferences, sit down across from the table with the players. through their own players association, which we built Athletes.org to do just that. And over 4,800 athletes believe that's the answer. And they negotiate those terms. They set those rules. Then that will be the only way

you'll have a sustainable solution that can actually be enforced. Until you do that, then all of these things were the powers that we try to enforce rules. They become antitrust violations and end up in court. Can I, can I have one, you don't have the answers if you don't want to, Brandon, but I have a lot of friends that are athletes

and ex-athletes from not that long ago, by the way, like yourself, right? Coming from the Gilman School in Baltimore, I would say go dons, but that's your competitor. So anyway, I won't say that. He's smiling. He knows what I mean. Is it frustrating as an ex-player? Like, you were recruited. You went to the University of Pennsylvania because it was a great academic school and whatever.

But if somebody came to you and said, hey, Brandon, here's $3 million. Come play for us at Ohio State. And then next year, you go for $2 million somewhere else. Is that frustrating as a former player to see where you? are you generally happy for the players and their families because they're getting rich when they're like 19 years old? Maybe they should because they've generated a lot of wealth for the colleges and the NCAA. Yeah, I think what people have to realize, the second most popular sport in our country is

college football. It's not the NBA or the MLB generates billions of dollars in revenue of every single year to the tune of over 13 billion. And finally, athletes are being cut into that pie. right now they're trying to be classified through name, image, and likeness, which is a marketing deal, but if you call it what it is,

which is pay for play, you're going to a school to play tight-in, play quarterback, and pay athletes based off of that, then you can set real rules that can be enforced, but again, the athletes have to be at the table to agree to those rules. If not, then you're limiting their earning potential, and again, you're violating antitrust,

which the NCAA has lost every single antitrust ruling this century. That's not a good record. That's a no, it's not. That's like the former Rice football record when they lost like for you know, Brandon Copeland, really good to get your inside. Big money story, not going away anytime soon. Brandon, thank you.

Have a great day. Thank you. And it does feel like chaos out there in college sports. Still to come, a mid-year check on our Power City Index. The current leader seeing big gains despite a rocky economic backdrop. That's your hint. And it's next. Crypto Watch is sponsored by Crypto.com.

Crypto.com is America's premier crypto platform. All right, time now for a mid-year update on which city is doing the best in the stock market this year. How do we know this? Well, we know this because we have our exclusive Power City Index. It's a collection of 38 different city and metro area stocks. I picked out the 11 or 12, mostly biggest market cap companies in each area around America. It's all equal-weighted. We do it for fun, but you can see how your area is doing.

And as you might have gotten Kelly's rocky hint, Denver, the Denver Power City Index, top performer so far in America this year. It's up 28% on average. All stocks, equal weighted. It's led by Ashanti, Anglo Gold Ashanti, Palantir. They're based in Boulder, Newmont Mining, and a company called Woodward. They're an aerospace company up 54%. So I know that recently, Carl, Kentania, we did the City of Success. for Denver and Boulder?

Well, so far it's paying off because the city's success in the stock market is Denver, Boulder. We can update as the year goes on. Shout out to my sister who lives there. Always trying to say, come back to New Jersey. Now she'll have one more reason not to. Come back to New Jersey.

Said nobody ever. We're here. Is she going to move from Denver? She's going to be the one person that moved from Denver to New Jersey? She'll get a great deal on the U-Haul. If she does. Still ahead, where's the beef?

Why meat prices are still driving to historic highs and more detail. and some policy changes. All right. Well, before we go, let you go into your weekend. First, it was egg prices soaring. Now it's beef, as we've talked about now for weeks. Beef prices keep going up.

Cattle herd sizes at their lowest. They have been in almost 75 years. And this week, President Trump said the U.S. is going to sell, quote, so much beef to Australia following relaxed import restrictions. I hope so, Kelly, but I'll say this. I think there's more cows than people in Australia. So I don't know if they need our beef.

They're a major beef exporter. We should be closing our borders to beef exports to drive down the price domestically. That would be the populist response, right? Ring them in is what you're saying? That's right. By the way, the oil services ETF is actually having its best week since November. A few countertrent things. It's been a strong week for health care, believe it or not.

And for the OIH. That's our friend Jan Van Nex, ETF. Which he said he did. He was like, don't remind me. He was knocking his own ETF last. But some of these names, you've got Liberty at, 20% since Monday. Baker Hughes up 15%.

TransOcean up 13%. So is this, would SLB be in this category, Bri, or is that? Sure, yeah, of course. I saw 100%. We obviously spoke with that CEO just recently. Olivier Le Push. Olivier, strong trends here, despite some headwinds from the kind of crude oil price,

which is failing to impress. Are we going to just ignore the fact that you're going to be gone for three months? Or if we just say, congratulations. Like, cut off this OIH talk and just say that Kelly, Evans and Eric, who's a friend and you're going to be going on maternity leave. Yes, yes. And I want to wish you just all the best.

Thank you. Have a safe, happy, and healthy. I'm extremely nervous. Because you haven't been through this before? I'd rather be here talking about the oil services, ETAF, than having to think about going through all that. You're going to be fine. We're here for you.

If you need anything, you let us know. Thank you. I'll pop right over with... You got us pizza today, which was great. I tried to get us Chipotle to do the story, but my credit. Credit cargo. Anyway, congratulations to you guys. And you're going to be doing a lot of heavy lifting. It's easy. You're going to be doing the real work.

I can't wait. God's work. All right. Thanks for watching everybody. Closing bell starts right now.