Power Lunch - S&P 500 struggles for a second day as Trump says no extensions will be granted to Aug. 1 trade deadline 7/8/25

Episode Date: July 8, 2025

The S&P 500 was trading little changed after President Trump offered no exceptions to his August 1 tariff start date. We’ll speak to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick about that and much more. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

All right, welcome to power launch alongside Kelly Evans. I'm Dominic Chu. President Trump's cabinet meeting just ending moments ago. Terrorists were obviously a very key topic of conversation. So joining us now is Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik, who just came from that meeting. Secretary, Mr. Secretary, thank you so much for taking the time to join us. We saw a lot of the conversation that happened within that room. But we want to hear for the record from.

you, the Commerce Secretary, about just where you think we are with regard to trade negotiations as a whole as we approached that previously stated July 9th deadline for tariff deals. So you saw 14 letters went out yesterday. You should expect another anywhere from 15 to 20 letters to go out over the next two days, really setting down tariff lines for the key driving countries and then we'll set out a general letter to the balance sort of setting out where they're going to be. The president is setting these tariff lines. The president is driving this agenda. This is his agenda. He knows how he wants to play it and that's what's happening. So we'll be setting those tariff rates and then they go into effect on August 1st.

Secretary, Mr. Secretary, the president may be driving the entire negotiation and conversation, but that doesn't mean that folks like you and Treasury Secretary Scott Besson aren't out there trying to execute the plans along with U.S. Trade Representative Jameson Greer. What do you get as a sense for how these negotiations are going with these multiple parties? Do we feel as though there's going to be a more long, drawn-out, contentious conversation, or do we feel like we're in the seventh, eighth or even ninth inning with many of these major counterparties? Oh, we're definitely in the eighth or ninth inning with these counterparties. So what's happened is many of these countries have made us offers to finally open their markets.

You know, they just, they go slowly, they go with it, and then finally they come to the table at the very end, and they start to open their market. And the key is the president wants to balance our trade deficit with the fact that these countries are finally, finally opening their market. And if you have something like Vietnam where they say, okay, we'll really open, open our markets, then the president decides, okay, this is the rate we'll do. really going to open your market to our farmers, to our fishermen, to our machines, to our tools, to all of these things going into their country, then, okay, if you're going to give our people that opportunity, I'm willing to cut that rate, which he did with, obviously,

he did it with the UK, he's done it with Vietnam. My guess is he will do it with a few other countries. But basically, if they don't really open their market, and they come with these half-baked or a little bit here and a little bit there, the president's saying, look, we've got these huge trade deficits, it's time for you to pay the tariff to trade with the United States of America, unless you're really going to open, that's how it's going to be. It's Kelly, Mr. Secretary, and I snapped to attention when I heard the president saying 50% tariffs on copper, 200% potentially on pharmaceuticals. As we understand it, those, so the Commerce Department looks through all those sectors,

right, and then make your recommendation. How close to final would you say the recommendations in those two sectors are at this point for 50 and potentially 200%. So copper is finished. We've done with our study. We've handed the study over the president. The president knows that he has the ability, since we've studied the market of copper

to set the market tariff for copper. He announced it today at the cabinet meeting that he intends to go to 50%, which will be similar to steel and aluminum, which are both 50%, so copper will be 50%. And the idea is to bring copper home, bring copper production home, bring the ability to make copper, which is key to the industrial sector, back home to America.

We need that kind of production in America. It's important. So that'll be out today. You'll see the president will truth about it this afternoon. We'll sign a proclamation as that goes through the ordinary legal process within a day or two days. That will come out. But then copper will be set, likely to be put into place the end of July, maybe August 1st.

So that's copper. with pharmaceuticals and semiconductors. Those studies are being completed at the end of the month. And so the president will then set his policies then, and I'm going to let him wait to decide how he's going to do it. He said if you don't build in America, they're going to be a high rate. But he may consider that if you're building in America,

to give you the time to build, I think he mentioned that in the cabinet meeting, give you time to build, say a year, year and a half, possibly even two years of building, and then the tariff will be much higher. But those details will come at the end of the month, and the president will set them. Thank you. Thank you for the clarity on all of those fronts. Obviously, our audience is closely tuned into what's going to happen there.

Also on the case of China, I remember when you talked to Brian Sullivan a little while ago, you said, look, like, that's squarely your kind of purview, your remit, figuring out that trade relationship. I'm left a little bit confused as to whether we have reached a trade deal or not. I think the president made some remarks in that direction in the past couple weeks, but it was unclear what ended up happening. So with rare earths as well, there still seems to be a little bit of confusion

on whether those rare earth magnets are coming in in kind of decent amounts and everything there. Can you just bring us up to speed? What is the trade situation? And is that an open or closed negotiation at this point? Okay, so we are settled with a 30% increased tariff. And then during President Trump's first term,

he had a 25% tariff. So on much of China, they're paying 55% and on the balance they're paying 30%. And that's where we've settled things for the time being. Now they've agreed to approve our licenses on rare earth magnets and to their credit they've been doing it swiftly and expeditiously. We decided we were satisfied with the movement that they were making and so we took down our countermeasures. You know we started shipping ethane and and software products to them

and airplane parts and things like that. that we're sort of balancing our relationship between the two of us. We're in a pretty good place now. I think we're going to meet in early August and we're going to start kicking off a bigger trade conversation between the two largest economies in the world,

China and the United States of America. So that's going to be kicked off in early August with myself, Secretary Besson and Ambassador Greer. We'll all be going together. We'll be meeting our counterparts from China and we'll have a bigger start the process of a bigger conversation.

I think that's going to take some time, but at least we're beginning the process of having a bigger conversation. There's also, Mr. Secretary, more of a conversation now built around the European Union. Our own Sylvia Amaro out in Europe was speaking to some of the top diplomats out there. And she had made at least reference to this idea that they are saying progress is being made, that there's still a ways to go, but that there might actually be carve-outs or certain concessions there as you work towards an overarching trade deal with the European Union. Can you take us through how you feel those negotiations are going right now? It is a massively significant trade relationship.

We're talking not just about beverage alcohol and airplane and auto parts, but also many different goods that go between our countries and the block over there across the Atlantic. So Europe is our biggest trading partner, and we have a $235 billion dollar trade deficit, meaning they sell us more than we sell them. And that's because they block us on cars and they block us. They don't pay for pharmaceuticals.

All those topics, we need to settle. And it wasn't going anywhere for a while. The president then put out a truth that said, look, if you're not going anywhere, you can pay us 50%. Their leaders called President Trump and said, no, no, no, no, no, we'll get down to breast tax and do it. And then they started making us real offers. The European Union, to their credit,

has now made significant real offers. meaning we're going to take down our barriers, we're going to open our markets to American farmers, ranchers, fishermen, really open their markets and let Americans finally, American entrepreneurial spirit, finally get to sell to Europe. The president's got those deals on his desk, and he's thinking about how he wants to play them,

and this is very tricky because they have a huge trade deficit, so they've got to pay, but they're really going to bat, trying to say, look, we want to open our markets to you, to you. We want to create a more balanced and fair relationship. Please, Mr. President, think about it. And that's what's on his desk right now. And that's really, really tricky, but he's thinking about it. Lastly, we've had a couple of people point out as we put these tariff levels back on, should the markets be reacting the way they were on April 2nd? And maybe there'll be a delayed

reaction or maybe it's, you know what I'm saying? Can you kind of wear a little bit of both of your hats here, both as a market maker and also as somebody working on optimal policy, theoretically, do you expect any more weakness as we churned through the effect of what these higher tariffs now will be? And it's odd that we had a huge panic a couple months ago. And now we seem to be taking this in stride. Well, I think the market should be taking in stride because remember there was all that fear that if you set tariffs, there'll be inflation, which there obviously is not inflation. There'd be this would happen. And obviously none of those things happen.

You have the whole world paying 10% now, and China paying 30% additional, and what's happened to the world. Stock market reaching new highs, America taking in more than $30 billion a month in revenues. So the world's gotten comfortable with the fact that Donald Trump knows what he's doing, and he's out to make a better deal for America than these horrible trade deals of the past. So that's where we are. I think what you'll see is these countries, and open their markets to President Trump and say, will you make us a better deal if we open our market?

The president's going to go country by country, decide, even when he sets the letter. You've seen in the letter, he said, if you change the way you treat America, we'll listen and we'll think about it. I think what you're going to see is rates will be a little lower than they were on April 2nd because these countries are opening their markets,

and then some countries will come forward with such good deals that they'll literally change their rate, but that's what we're doing. doing every day. We're talking about the offers. We had piles of offers in his office on Monday. Piles of offers saying, what do you think of this offer? What do you think of that offer? What do you think of this offer? And the president's deciding what the rate is because he's called it dead right up until now. And I think he's got the, he's got the bull by the horns. And America's going to be so much better off. Hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars

better off per year. So if you wanted to bet on anything, you'd bet on President Trump and you'd bet on America. And we'll see if the market, it continues to agree with that. you know, as we get closer to August 1 and beyond. Secretary Luck, thanks for making the time and joining us after that meeting today. We appreciate it. My pleasure. Good to see. All right.

Well, the president was making a wide array of comments on other things on tariffs in that cabinet meeting as well. So let's bring in our Megan Casella in our Washington Bureau to outline some of the broad strokes and even details in what happened during that big cabinet meeting televised for the entire country and world, Megan. A whole lot of news in there. It was well over an hour, close to two hours that the president was in there with his cabinet and talking primarily, I would say, about trade or at least making a lot of news on it.

So a big day for trade news, not only are those country-specific tariffs now postponed to the end of the month, but of course the sectoral tariffs that Secretary Lutnik just spoke about moving forward clearly at least on copper and pharmaceuticals. The president said in that meeting that a flurry of deals will be coming in the next 24 hours. But he said, I want to be clear, a letter means a deal. He spoke about how you can't meet with all 200 countries. So they're sending these letters out, Secretary Lutnik saying 15 to 20 more in addition to the 14 cent yesterday coming today where they'll lay out the rate that countries will have to pay unless they lower their tariffs between now and August 1st. President Trump also being very firm today on the August 1st deadline saying he will not be moving that again.

That's the deadline for the country-specific tariffs to kick in. First it was April 9th, then it was July 9th. Now it's August 1st and he says he will not move it. than that. He also spoke specifically about the European Union saying they've been the toughest to deal with. They're so tough on our companies. He named Apple and Google. So he says he's about two days out from sending the EU a letter. Then on China, he says he's had a great relationship with them recently that China's been very honest on the trade deal. And you just heard Lutnik announced that trip to China kicking off new dialogue in early August alongside Secretary's

Besson and the trade representative Greer. So more to watch on that front. Just one final. one, guys, is the president did sort of reiterate the threat we heard earlier this week about an extra 10% tariff for BRICS countries. He was asked about that and he said, yes, that will be coming pretty soon. So nothing set in stone there. We'd have to see an executive order, but he says he's serious about it. Guys. All right, Megan Kisela there with the latest on the president's cabinet meeting. Thank you very much for that. We've got lots more to come here on the show. First is Amazon in its prime. Get it. We're going to speak to an analyst who is super bullish, plus Nvidia's $4 trillion watch and breaking down the sports empires and what they're worth.

We'll be right back after this. All right. Welcome back to Power Lunch. Turning back to the markets now, which are mixed as investors react to those fresh headlines coming from the White House on tariffs in spite of the uncertainty. A pair of well-known Wall Street strategists are striking more of a bullish tone. Bank of America's Savita Suburmanian raising her year on S&P 500 target price to this. 6,300 from a prior 5,600. And then Goldman's David Koston, raising his target to 6,600 from a prior 6,100. Our next guest is also in that more bullish camp. She's calling for the S&P 500 to end the

year at a whopping 7,000. Marianne Bartels as chief investment strategist at Sanctuary Wealth, a woman who has been assigning target prices to the S&P 500 for a number of years now. So Marianne, Thanks for being with us. Can you please take us through what exactly in your models and assumptions is driving a 7,000 price target for the S&P 500 by the end of the year? Well, really what's driving this is not new. It's really the technology of AI that we've been talking about, blockchain, robotics, crypto, Web 3. This is the greatest technology innovation of our lifetime. It's like the internet on steroids. And we think, This is going to drive corporate profits.

Now, we're going into second quarter earnings. Expectations are pretty low, so we think expectations can come in much higher. We think corporate earnings are going to be stronger than what the market is actually looking for, and that can actually boost stock prices. We're well aware that the valuations are high, but if our analysis on earnings is correct, maybe the market is not as expensive as people anticipate. In addition to that, we've seen interest rates come down. We think the trend in interest rates will continue to come down.

We think the Fed will eventually be able to lower interest rates. And that could also boost the markets. And the other thing is that the sentiment of the market is still very bearish. As you can see, people are still raising their numbers. There's still some skepticism. So that also makes us bullish on the equity market. Marianne, is when you refer to the idea that, growth is out there and that technology advancements, AI will drive corporate profitability.

Is it going to drive corporate profitability across, say, the entire S&P 500, midcaps and Russell 2000, or is it going to drive profitability for, say, 10 or 15 tech media and telecom companies that will then make up the entire move? Well, when I look at the secular trends, the secular trend is really biased towards mega cap. There might be select companies in the mid to small cap, but they're not in a big bull market at this time. So we believe it's going to stay in the mega caps. But you're seeing some broadening out. The banks are trading very well. That also makes us very bullish. You need a good, healthy, stable financial system. You recently saw the stress test come in favorably,

and many of the large banks raise their dividends. And you're seeing industrials do extraordinarily well this year. Again, the infrastructure play of all of this AI. So it's broader than people actually realize, but I do believe it's going to stay mega cap. Marian, can you give us any more kind of, we had Barry Bannister last hour. He was bearish. He just thinks inflation's going to surprise to the upside and kind of constrain the Fed here. That's not really being priced in right now. Other guests made similar comments. How would you address those concerns? And also the concerns, another issue raised was that earnings estimates for Q4 are like twice what they are for the more upcoming quarter. So are

estimates too high? Could inflation constrain the Fed on the rate cut front? What about those worries? So I think the Fed has already told you. They're not going to move until they actually see no impact from the tariffs. They're already anticipating you'll get a modest impact of an uptick around 3% in the core PCE. We don't think that derails the equity market, but certainly pauses the Fed. In terms of earnings, we think the profitability and productivity and from all of this new technology is really not priced into the market. So we think maybe the earnings numbers are a little bit off. We think earnings can come in much more powerful than the market is anticipating. At least that's the bet that we're making. All right. And Marianne, before we let

you go, you're in a position now where you can actually look at some of the individual industry groups and even companies that you think are the best ideas. What do you think they are for the second half of the year going into 2026? So let's talk about Southern Copper. because now we have some good tariff news that's really driving copper. Copper's been trading very well, but it looks like it's trying to break out today on that news. And so the metals are in a bull market. So if you're already in gold and you're looking for other exposure, we do like Southern Copper. I did mention we like the financials.

In there, we like Robin Hood. This is the new generation of financial services. And they were one of the first ones to really go to zero commissions and really trying to create a community of investors from the younger generations. Those would be some of the two names that I would highlight today. All right, Marianne Bartels of Sanctuary Wealth. Thank you very much. We'll see you soon.

Thank you. And we'll take a quick break. We're on $4 trillion watch for Nvidia, believe it or not, after the rally it's had. In order to surpass that and break Apple's previous closing record, Nvidia has to hit or close it $160.47. And we are closing. friends, about a dollar away. We'll also dive into the outlook for the tech space in the back half with Mark Mahaney.

We're back right after this. Welcome back. Amazon shares are down as they kick off Prime Day today. It'll run four days this year instead of two. The event is expected to drive record sales, as you'd hope it would if it doubles the time period. Of almost $10 billion, more than the comparable period last year, according to Adobe, so maybe the comparable period. I don't know if it's apples to apples. It includes all retailers like Walmart and Target who are running promotions of there.

seeing the small businesses I follow, too, saying their prime day sales events. I mean, it's a big venue for these guys. It is. And in fact, they can they can like piggyback on Amazon to drive engagement in sales. Our next guest says among shoppers, Amazon remains the undisputed king with 95% of respondents in his recent survey, naming it their go-to shopping website. Walmart is so for 57%, so that's a distant second. And that's among the reasons why Amazon is his top pick for the second half. Mark Mahaney is here. He's head of internet research at Evercore ISI. So it's the retail business. It's not about the cloud today, Mark. Not today. It's about the retail business. It's about prime. I think this is the 11th annual prime day and it's a four-day extravaganza,

as you mentioned. Kelly, there's some good savings, at least that I've seen. You can get $50 off that aura ring and $100 off that Weber grill so you can know how you feel when you're grilling. There's a lot of savings there. I know how I feel when I'm grilling. The temperature is definitely up for both me and the grill during those periods. So look, the retail business is important for Amazon. It's a necessary condition. I think for the stock to really outperform, though, it will be the cloud business.

You need to see acceleration in that in the back half the year. I think we're going to see that. If we're wrong on that, when stock's not going to outperform from here. The retail business also needs to show this continued expansion and margins. And, you know, I know we've sort of waxed off and on, and now we're off about tariff risk, but it's still there.

And, you know, Amazon neat. And Amazon's kind of the canary and the coal mine shoot. They may be the whole coal mine. I mean, they're going to give us a read into, and we're going to be tracking pricing for prices on products on Amazon. And, you know, not these four days. But as we go through the back half the year, and, you know, there is risk here. So I expect that to show up in Amazon's commentary about the back half. Do you make much, Mark, this report from the first four hours from Momentum Commerce said that sales were down for, sales were on 14 percent from last year? I mean, is it, is it a, is it a, is it? a data point that tells you enthusiasm is waning, does it matter if that's correct or is it just too early? Well, I don't know how good the data point is. I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt. You know, for now, I think we'll get a lot of data points in the next four days. I think since you're spreading it over four days, I would think that the overall sales is going to be up, you know, solidly high single digits, low double digits, year over year,

probably a little bit faster. Maybe it's more like 20% versus the kind of 10% growth that Amazon's retail sales is growing. So, yeah, it sounds like it may. be off to a slow start. There are four days, however, here, and it's Amazon, and you're going to get a lot of promotions on there. I'd expect this to do relatively well for the company. Quickly on tariffs, we just ask this question to the Commerce Secretary, but don't you find it a bit odd that even as we're going back to all these tariff levels from Liberation Day, I guess in some way, shape, or form, the market's kind of not reacting, and we're not seeing anything

like the concern that we were back then. Is it just going to be delayed? Is it because the nature of these tariffs is going to be very different this time? What do you make of that? I just think there's been a lot of uncertainty since Liberation Day. And yes, I think the panic has come out of the market. I don't think we have settled tariff policies yet. So, you know, we could still see a spike in prices across a broad number of items that are sold on mass retailers like Walmart, Home Depot, and Amazon. And all of these companies now are very sophisticated with their supply chains. And my guess is that they're going to be able to hedge some of those costs. I think smaller retailers are going to have a much harder time hedging some of those costs that they go up. You know, look, 10, 20, 30 percent.

Those are big increases. Retail is a thin margin business. So if you're going to increase your cost of inputs, that's going to be passed along. And those companies can only eat so much of that. Consumers are going to have to eat some of this. So at all, we're still, we're still in a wait and C mode. But, you know, this is more risk than we had a year ago. There's more, there's more price risk here than we had a year ago. But as you say, Amazon, you know, kind of doing quite well in this survey, have an outperform, a 280 price target. I also thought it was interesting that a record high number of respondents

reported using ride sharing in the past year, one of your reasons for being bullish on Uber. And as prices have gone up in its post-VC era, it's surprising, but look at the stock. It's at all-time highs. You know, it's had a, it's up 60%. I think it's one of the two best-performing stocks that I cover year-to-date now.

It also helps that it started off with this massive Robotaxy Roadkill overhang at the beginning of the year, which successful launches a Waymo on Uber in Austin and now in Atlanta have really kind of helped address. But Uber in order to go materially higher, and I think it can. I think it's still cheap relative to its growth rate. I know it's up 50, 60 percent,

but this is still one of my top three picks. And that's because, you know, you go 25 times free cash flow. I think this company can grow its free cash flow at that level or higher. So I think it's a very reasonable, multiple. That still gets you to 115, 120. I think there's still a lot of upside to the stock. I like it.

as it nears triple digits. Mark, thanks. Appreciate bringing those results to us. Good to have you on today. Thanks, Kelly. Mark Mahaney. All right, let's get over now to Bertha Coombs for a CNBC news update. Good afternoon, Bertha.

Good afternoon, Dom. President Trump says he will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tonight to discuss Gaza. The two men met for several hours yesterday while Israel continued indirect negotiations with Hamas aimed at securing a U.S. brokered Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal. Nathan Yahoo went up. on to meet with Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson today. The lawyers for Sean Diddy Combs are proposing the music mogul be sentenced on September 22nd. In a letter, the judge said prosecutors do not object, but he still needs to approve the timing.

Combs has been in a Brooklyn jail since his arrest last September. Jurors found him guilty on prostitution charges last week, but cleared him of more serious sex trafficking and racketeers. charges. And the National Hockey League and the NHL Players Association have breached a deal today to secure their collective bargaining agreement through 2030. It includes an 84-game regular season with less exhibition play, shorter maximum contract lengths, and a playoff salary cap for the first time. The changes won't take effect until the 2026-2020 season. So, Dom, presumably, this will close the loophole where they use a long-term injured reserve list to bring on an expensive player during the playoffs.

All part of the negotiation process, Bertha Coombs. Thank you very much for the headlines there. Still ahead on the show, are investors getting too cocky? Our next guest thinks markets have been oddly complacent and recommends not chasing these bullish moves we're going to explore next in the market navigator. Keep it right here. All right, welcome back to Power Lunch. Markets have been faring pretty well in the face of a lot of uncertainty these days,

but that does not mean you should get too comfortable with the environment. Our next guest says he's taking a much more active approach to right-sizing the risks in his portfolio, no matter what those risks are or where they come from. Now, he says he sees some attractive opportunities, not just here in the U.S., but especially overseas. Joining us now is Matt Rowe, the managing director of Solutions at Mann Group, the world's biggest publicly traded hedge fund. Matt, thank you very much for joining us here. Let's talk about right-sizing risks in a portfolio.

If you work for a group like man, you have to be risk-aware. Why do you think now is a good time to think about what your risks are and how to minimize or right-size them? Yeah, well, thanks. Based on where we've come from the dip after the original Liberation Day, we've had a significant move higher in equities. We've seen credit spreads, tighten, and all forms of risk have really rebounded. in a very dramatic fashion. The NASDAQ is up over 30%. The S&P is up over 25% from that dip.

So when I look at things like the performance in the recent history and relative value across the globe, you can look at a high level at places like Europe or lower PE ratios, lower CAPE with a higher dividend rate. So if you've enjoyed the benefit of this rapid rebound with a concentrated US exposure, particularly in momentum and some of the large-cap tax,

I think it's a good form of discipline to look to trim some of those profits, take down your risk profile a little, and diversify away from what is still a highly charged situation here in the U.S. All right. So if you rebalance, how exactly does one do that? We know sophisticated investors like yourselves and hedge fund traders and investors do it a different way. But as we talk about smaller retail investors and maybe small investment advisors, is it through ETFs? And what specific geographies or types of products would you use?

Yeah, I think you can use many different types of products. And when we're referencing indices, obviously those indices are built of a bunch of single names. So depending on where you want your exposure, whether it be sector-based, factor-based, you can just look to get exposure in different geographies, right? So if you want to look to, say, play the consumer area, you could look, to investing in European or non-US European as a diversifying agent. I think the diversification theme is going to be one that we look back on at the end of the year.

And those that don't do it, I think, are going to wish that they did. Because we are still living in a very highly charged situation right now. The tariff situation, while we keep pushing out the date where we're going to see the V2 or the final date that we get to, in the future. In the meantime, tariff rates for the United States, for consumers, for businesses are still relatively high, more than three times what they were prior to the beginning of April. So the status quo is one with a lot of economic friction. And I think people are kind of pushing that to the side and hoping that's not the case.

All right. Matt Rowe at Mann Group. Thank you very much. We'll see you again soon, sir. Thank you very much. All right, Kelly, I'll send things back over to you. All right. Coming up, the biggest names, reshaping the business of sports rights. Now, we will reveal CNBC's exclusive list of 2025's most valuable sports empires when Power Lunch returned.

All right, welcome back to Power Lunch. CNBC is out today with our list of the most valuable sports empires of 2025. Now, these are the biggest names reshaping the business of sports with a combined value of $225 billion. Taking the top spot in this inaugural first ever year is Cronky Sports and Energy. entertainment worth $21.2 billion. Then there's Jerry Jones's Cowboys Empire, which takes the second spot valued at more than $15 billion. The Harris Blitzer Sports and Entertainment Group comes in third place at $14.6 billion. And then Fenway Sports Group and Madison Square Garden Sports round out the top five. So that's kind of how we define empire. So joining us now as the man

behind that list, CNBC Sports senior reporter Michael Ozanian, You've been doing valuations for sports teams for a long time now. More than I should probably admit and everything else. But you know this stuff. So how exactly do you assign a value to a portfolio? It's got to be some of the parts, but how do you get to it? Yeah, it's actually, Don, the interesting thing, and what we've seen when these sports empires have sold minority interests,

like Stephen Ross, like Ted Leonez's monumental, and most recently Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, which Rogers Communications just bought a majority stake and after owning a minority stake is that the value of the empire is worth considerably more than the sum of the parts. And that's why this is a growing trend. Mark Walter, for instance, who owns the Dodgers

and has investments in F1 and professional women's ice hockey is just striking a deal to become the controlling owner of the L.A. Lakers, which is going to be another big sports empire. You get tremendous synergies. you know, the same reasons that you guys always talk about in business with other companies, you get scale, you get economies of scale, you don't have to increase your cost as much as

you're building your asset portfolio. So think of it as a way where the sports team is sort of like the head of the octopus and all these other investments, whether it's a business like legends that the Cowboys owns, which is venue hospitality, or a regional sports network like Leonsas owns or the Yankee's own. Those are sort of the other tentacles. that you could improve and generate more revenue. Quick question. How have the ownership rules changed over the years? I think there used to be rules about whether it was in the same cities

or the teams obviously in the same league. I mean, is there anything you can do now that you couldn't do in the past? And do you expect more of this empire building? Yeah, several years ago, to your point about owning different teams in different cities. So the last sort of holdout was the NFL where you couldn't own a team in another sport in which you owned an NFL team.

Those rules have gone away. So that makes empire building easier. That said, among these empires are all these different strategies. So you mentioned Stan Cronky on top. He owns a globally diverse empire through multiple sports. So he owns the English soccer team Arsenal. He owns the Rams in L.A. But this is all regional.

But this is also a growing trend because now it seems like all of these sports teams are now taking either outright majority stakes, if not the whole thing, or just minority stakes in English Premier League teams or other soccer teams around the world and maybe other sports franchises. But it's such a select group of people. How do you get into that group? Yeah, well, that's what they're offering. One stop shopping for, like you said, a minority stake. So Woody Johnson, the owner of the New York Jets, recently became the controlling owner of Crystal Palace. He can then offer that platform to minority investors. All right. This is, I mean, and I could go on for ages about this.

I got so many questions. Michael, thank you very much for sports empires and everything else. And by the way, for the complete list of sports empires, just head over to CNBC.com slash sport, all right? And be sure to check out game plan. That's our event on September 16th. Josh Harris and Ted Leonces will be talking about their own empires. Just head over to CNBC Events.com slash game plan for more on that big live event,

September 16th in Los Angeles. And coming out, coming out, coming up, we'll head out to Vienna, Austria, where energy leaders are convening for OPEX International Seminar. And as you guessed, Brian Sullivan is there. He'll tell us what he's already hearing on the ground. That's next. Welcome back to Power Lunch. Global energy ministers and executives are gathering in Vienna for OPEC's big seminar where the future of production will be front and center. Brian Sullivan is live covering it all for us. Brian, it's great to see you already. there was the cabinet meeting the president had

just a couple of hours ago where he talked, he said there's $1.99 gasoline out there and he or what was I said, you know, we want energy abundance, we want energy dominance and we want more of that.

And I just thought that was so interesting to hear him keep reiterating this thing about lower oil prices. So I don't know how, you know, the gathering there is going to play into all of that. I think it's going to play huge into all that. By the way,

and greetings from a hotel conference room in Vienna, Austria. The next two days, the big OPEC, Secretariat seminar. It's not really a meeting. It's not really a conference, kind of something in between. You've got energy ministers for most, hopefully all of the OPEC and OPEC plus members, but you've also got energy CEOs, BP, Shell, Bittoil and more. They're all going to be here in Vienna as well. And I think let's go through the storylines very quickly, Kelly, and then we'll talk about it.

I think being back in Vienna is itself a storyline. This is OPEC's headquarters. It's kind of a neutral site. Why Vienna? Why not? Austria. Again, first time in two years, we'll see who shows up. That goes to the Iran issue. Iran, the rotating president of OPEC this year. Obviously, the Iran-Israel conflict front and center, will Iran as president of OPEC even show up at this meeting? They were supposed to, we shall see. So goes Russia, Russia, one of the key allies for the OPEC plus coalition, not a direct member of OPEC,

but a huge part of that sort of plus allied system. Are they going to show up here in Vienna, Austria? One reason maybe we haven't been here in a couple of years is because, obviously, the Ukraine war is going on. You mentioned the U.S. Obviously, Donald Trump talking about it today, record production, drill baby drill. I put a question mark on the end of it, Kelly, because actually rig counts are going down in the United States, not up. Does that indicate maybe lower production ahead? And here's the great, I would call it a black swan, but we're talking about it. So it's more of a gray swan. Is Xi Jinping of China going to to be gone. Some of his generals have reportedly gone missing. A lot of chatter out there that

Xi Jinping, president for life in China, may be replaced. And if so, is he replaced? Again, big if, if a more pro-growth China option, if so, that could color OPEC's thinking, we're here, got a lot of energy ministers, a lot of CEOs. We're going to try to talk to all of them. the great movie Forest Gump came out 30 years ago, a couple days ago. Kelly, I think it's fair to say that OPEC meetings are like a box of Viennese chocolates because you really never know what you're going to get. It's the ones with a little Mozart picture on them. In the little music note.

Yes, the liquor in the middle, apparently, I'm told. So obviously, if anything happened on the Chinese leadership front, that would clearly overshadow what else is going on at OPEC, Brian. But how is the Iranian leadership you think going to affect? the dynamics of this meeting. And what is the market expecting in terms of, you know, hikes or cuts or anything like that? Well, obviously, they raised production a couple of days ago, and oil is it still at 62 bucks. So the $45, $50 oil pieces hasn't really occurred yet. Some people say it's because OPEC's always, you know, not cheating, but what they say is a quota is not actually what's

being produced. Kazakhstan and some others have been overproducing. I think the biggest question about Iran. And I hope they're here. They're the president and the former Iranian energy minister Benjamin Zangana always made some time for CNBC. We would communicate, you know, you can use oil as kind of a almost a global lever for geopolitics. I think the biggest question is, do they come? Are they here? Are they in person? Does that then show some OPEC leadership for the rotating presidency? If they don't show up, I think it's also a story. You got to tune in tomorrow and Thursday for our full coverage both days from a cold and rainy Vienna, Austria. You wrapped on the nose from halfway across the world, Brian.

That is pro-level stuff right there. That's why I get paid the medium bucks, Kelly. We're all good. Enjoy the wiener-schnitzel. The wiener-snitzel would be good, yes. Yeah, there you go. Brian, thank you. It's a point of schnitzel in Vienna.

Wiener-Snitzel is German. It's veal in Vienna. use pork. Thank you. There we go. And we'll see you tomorrow. I'll have a whole lot more coming up. All right, tasty. How close is InVita hitting that $4 trillion market cap? We're going to lay out the numbers coming up next. Keep it right here. All right, welcome back. Before we go, we are keeping a close on Nvidia, as you're seeing right there. The stock, in order for it hit to four, $4 trillion, I said, in market cap, the price would have to trade as high as $163 and call it 93-94 cents. The previous record closing high was Apple, which hit a record market cap of

$3.915 trillion in change. Invitya would have to trade at roughly $160 and 47 cents to hit that level. So those are the two levels of what we're watching right now. Thank you, because this was confusing. So I'm going to overly round number this out just to follow along. So if Nvidia hits, call it 160, we're basically at a new all-time high in market cap. Okay. If it goes to 164, than were at four trillion for the first time ever for a publicly traded company in the U.S. You can say maybe that, you know, at the heyday Aramco was worth something in the private markets. I just feel like that doesn't count, you know. I don't think it does either.

Apple and measly 3.1, by the way, after its kind of slide here in recent weeks. I like seeing the intersecond liquidity and what it does. So anyway, 4 trillion watch. Thanks for watching Power Lunch.