Power Lunch - Stocks boosted by strong earnings and U.S. economic data 7/17/25

Episode Date: July 17, 2025

Stocks rose on Thursday, buoyed by fresh economic data reports along with a slew of corporate earnings releases. 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.

Happy Thursday, everybody, if stocks and your money making more record highs today, welcome to the show. She's Kelly, I'm Brian, stock surging across the board. Invidia, Microsoft and many more all up again as the investing world tells the bears to go back to bed. And 2025 is proving to be a breakout year for global stocks. With strong fundamentals and better valuations abroad, international equities are delivering double-digit returns compared to their U.S. counterparts will bring you more on that playbook and strategy. All right, we have got a lot more to do across the hour, but we're going to begin with this. And this is a big deal in the world of cars. EV maker Lucid rocking today.

It is up 38% right now on a massive investment by Uber. Uber will invest $300 million into Lucid with the goal of launching more than 20,000 driverless taxis over the next six years. Companies plan to launch the robotaxies in a major U.S. city next year. It's all comes as driverless taxi service. Waymo also continues to expand. So what does this deal say about Uber? Lucid, EVs, and more. Mark Fields, former president and CEO Ford Motor Company, also CBC contributor.

Joining us now, Mark, your take on this deal. Well, it's obviously it's a much bigger deal for Lucid than it is for Uber. And Brian, what you're seeing with Uber is they're spreading their bets, right? They've announced this partnership today where, you know, Lucid's going to provide the cars, Uber's going to provide the right-hailing network and neuro the self-driving technology. But they also have, they've invested in their approach, as you know, is they invest in third-party AB firms rather than develop the technology themselves, which they tried a number of years ago. But they already have partnerships with Waymo. They have partnerships with VW with their new

bus. They have a partnership with Baidu for growth in Asia and the Middle East. The difference here, Brian, is they're forking over money to make investments in Uber and Nuro. So they must see something here that's important for them. But you also have got to believe there's a little bit of matchmaking going on here, right? Because, you know, Lucid is majority owned by the Saudi Arabia PIF Fund. And they also have about a $5 billion stake in Uber. So it's an important deal for Uber. They're spreading their bets, but they're also investing.

And for Lucid, it obviously is a very big deal, given that they only sold about $10,000. vehicles last year. I love what you said. I mean, PAF, the big Saudi investment fund, maybe sort of promoting its own investments by sort of, I'm sure they had a hand in nudging this. But here's my take, though. And Lucid, the gravity, beautiful car starts, I think, at $95,000. My first take, Mark, was, aren't we supposed to get smaller and cheaper? This is a pretty expensive driverless taxi. Well, Brian, you're exactly right. Here's the thing. Nobody's talking about what's the business case around this. How is how much they're going to charge to make money on Kelly or I rolling around on the back of a $100,000 EV? Exactly. Well, it's not only just $100,000. That's for the car

itself, the gravity itself. Then you have to add the technology, the compute power, the LIDAR sensors, et cetera. So you're exactly right. The question is, you know, with $20 rides, how many do you need to make money on this? And so, you know, I think the risks here are obviously the high cost per unit. Secondly, is the ability for neuro to scale. I mean, they've done about a million miles in deliveries. This is passenger transport, which is a different kettle of fish. You got competition, whether it's Waymo or some of the other ones that are coming out, and then the regulatory hurdles. But yeah, nobody's really talking about how you actually make money here. Well, we are. That's the point of this segment. I mean, how do you do that? I can see it

a $25,000 car, like you said, you just drive this driverless car. Anytime you're not charging it, that car's on the road, picking up passengers, making money. Listen, Lucid's, they're high end. These are luxury automobiles. I like the deal, the idea of it, it just seems like an expensive car to be doing this with, but maybe there's a, maybe there's a market for that, TV news anchors and global kings. Yeah, there is a market for it, but it's a market for it. But it's, it's limited. But I think to your point, Brian, and your question, I think the other ways they're probably trying to figure out how they're going to make money is through advertising in the vehicle. You know, that could be lucrative for them. Now, could it be to, you know, overcome the high,

you know, cost per unit that these vehicles are going to have and the revenue they're going to generate for, you know, the ride share? I think they're going to think, you know, obviously advertising in the vehicles and maybe some other ways to kind of make this business case work for them. So I'm curious, Mark, what you think this would mean for Tesla for Waymo? Well, I think what you're seeing here right now, Kelly, is it's a bit of a breakout moment for AVs. I mean, when you look at Waymo, you know, you've seen what they've announced over 250 million rides, things of that nature. They're pretty ubiquitous in cities like San Francisco. So, you know, I think consumers are starting to get use to, you know, autonomous EVs running around the cities.

And, you know, you're seeing all the competition now starting to kind of ratchet up efforts like, you know, Tesla, you know, they're started in Austin. They're expanding. You got Waymo, who's announced more expansions. You have this deal here. Who knows what's going to happen with a company called Zooks, which is owned by Amazon. So I do think you're hitting a bit of a pivotal moment here, a breakout moment for, for EVs. And again, the question is, ultimately, what's the business case? Who owns these vehicles?

And, you know, how are you going to make a return on them? Right, exactly. And, you know, I do think it marks, like you said, kind of a breakout moment for the industry. And it's just, you know, they're in a couple of cities. They're kind of expanding quickly. But do you think all of this amounts to a real competitive threat for Tesla or a real problem for Uber? Or are there going to be rooms for all of that for Uber? But meaning is there share for all of them to take in such early days of where this all seems to be heading?

Yeah, well, that's obviously that's the million dollar question, right? You've got to think about, you know, what is the overall addressable market for autonomous vehicles? And, you know, if you step back, you say, listen, in dense city urban areas, yeah, probably makes a lot of sense. And there's, you know, good addressable market. Outside and suburban and rural areas, maybe not so much. I think for Tesla, what this means is, you know, they've said they're going to ramp up pretty quickly. I think this puts more pressure on them to do that. Clearly, Waymo is in the lead, and I think they're going to try and extend their lead, given the amount of miles that they've run.

But Tesla's advantage is, you know, they've logged all these miles from all their customers using Teslas over the last five years. And I think that's going to be a big advantage for them to accelerate. And finally, in Uber's case, you know, it's kind of interesting, you know, Lucid's bringing the car, neuro's bringing the brain, and Uber's bringing, well, maybe the surge pricing to help them, you know, justify this investment. All right, let's, Mark, change topics in autos. You also had kind of a big deal from Volvo. The company's saying it's going to make more of its popular XC60, smallest SUV right here in America

in South Carolina. and the CEO earlier today on CNBC Europe saying that tariffs are part of that reason. What we are doing right now is, first of all, we want to fill our factory we have in South Carolina. I mean, it should be the strategic asset it was intended to be. So we have to utilize it more. Second, of course, now with the tariffs, is very natural to bring in a big selling volume. and we're bringing in the XC60 SUV. I think, Mark, the XC60 is their best-selling car.

This seems like a pretty big deal. Yeah, it is a big deal. Listen, VALO is in a very interesting situation, Brian. You know, they import about 97% of the vehicles that they sell here in the U.S. And between the tariffs and the loss of the EV tax credits, it's really just decimated their ability to sell, you know, is largely imported lineup profitably. So they basically said,

listen, we're going to take some of our most popular SUVs, the XC60, and then a little later on the XC90, and put them in that plant in Charleston because that plant, you know, Hocken mentioned that it was a strategic asset. And, you know, when I was running Ford, anytime somebody came to me and said,

this is a strategic investment, it meant lose a lot of money for a long period of time. Right. And that plant's running at 13% capacity. So it's literally burning money. So this solves two problems for them. It helps fill up that plant to a certain degree. It makes the vehicles more profitable. And, you know, this is exhibit number one with the Trump administration tariffs actually doing the intended purpose, which is to bring manufacturing of imported cars into the U.S. But I'm glad you made that point, Mark, about the economics

of it, because what's going to happen here? U.S. production is more expensive. They've got kind of this deadfield they're working with, which is fine. But in other words, to make this car the same price, or I guess even cheaper for the U.S. buyer, they have to do what? Cut prices, lose margin on it, lose money on it, you know? I'm just trying to figure out how this is all going to work. Yeah, well, they are going to save some money on logistics costs because, you know, shipping a vehicle across from Europe or China, you know, adds to the overall landed cost of the vehicle. I think the most important thing that they're going to have to do in this plan is get scales so they can bring the peace costs down. So at the same time, they're going to have to

bring their costs down through scaling. They might have to take a little bit of a haircut on pricing to be competitive versus the facing competition. You remember this plan is non-union, so they won't have to face some of the higher costs that you see in some of the unionized plants and some of the domestic automakers. So they're going to have to do a number of things. There's number of puts and takes here. But I think, you know, the bottom line is they've done the business calculation and the business case on this. And they said it's much, you know, it's just pretty evident that they need to bring these vehicles over to the U.S. to sell them at any relative decent margin. Mark Fields, great to get your take on a second best day ever. Not the best day ever

for Lucid stock. Our great team here. If the stock is up 43% or more, it's the best day ever for lucid, doggone close. Mark Fields, glad to have you on. Thank you very much. Thanks, Brian. All right. Folks, we're just getting started. Here's with on the menu for the rest of the hour. First is Trump testing the market when it comes to Jay Powell. Plus, how long can Netflix keep its content crown? And finally, holy cow, cattle prices keep going up. Where's the beef? Well, we know how expensive it is, and we'll tell you coming up. Welcome back. Another pretty strong session for the markets here. Got the NASDAQ to another record intraday high at three quarters of 1%. Mega Cap tech is dominating the rally again. Invidia, Microsoft, Broadcom, Palantier, Oracle, all reaching new all-time highs.

But our next guest is cautioning to stay up in quality and don't think of tech monolithically. Case in point, the Mag 7, it's really the Mag 3 because only Nvidia, Nvidia, Meta, and Microsoft have rallied double digits this year. For more, let's bring in Lizanne Saunders. She's the chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab. You know, things are changing, Lizanne, when you start to see the new monikers to try to group, you know, group things together for the new. Nothing seems to be getting in front of this AI trade, though. Yeah, no, but I think there's more discernment in terms of what does well. And you're right, the monikers do change now. I've been hearing more of the MAG 3 earlier this year instead of the MAG 7, including us, we're calling it the lag 7 because they were the underperformers during the near

bare market that happened, at least in the case in the S&P. So, yeah, it does change. I think you're seeing more dispersion in general in the market, certainly within some of these prior, you know, darlings of cohorts like the Mag 7. But there is absolutely an AI angle to all of this, especially as it relates to CAPX. It's kind of this bifurcation. This was that we were talking a little bit about this last hour, but there are these overlay charts comparing, you know, their performance to the NASDAQ back in the dot-com era. Torsten SLOC earlier this week had a piece kind of warning that, you know,

the S&P 500's biggest companies could be at risk from the AI bubble, as he called it. Do you think this is a bubble or not? Well, I think we've got excess from a concentration standpoint, and I think that is a risk for a lot of particularly individual investors that may not have been adopting a balance sheet strategy. The one

big difference is that even though valuations are similarly stretched, the underlying fundamentals are much stronger. A lot of what powered the late 1990s, aside from some of the big dominant mega-cap names, were stocks of companies with no profits, no prospects for profits. It was sort of silly season with dot-com being attached to everything. I think when you look at the underlying fundamentals, leaving the valuation piece a bit aside, these are real companies with real profit streams and a pretty bright future.

You get to a valuation excess, which actually we got to in the early part of the year and part of reason why many of those stocks underperformed the S&P on the way down, those excesses need to be corrected. But I wouldn't do an apples to apples in terms of that.com era because the quality of the companies from a cash flow perspective from a balance sheet perspective are far superior. It's much also different, Lizanne, than 1999, because a lot of the companies that powered the market back then, and sadly, I remember it, were companies that were new. They weren't Nvidia. They weren't Apple, they weren't Microsoft. Those companies have been around for 20, 30, or 40 years. They were the CMGs, the ICGs, Commerce ones, ERAs. They came and went in a matter of years.

Many of them went away. Are there, though, any similarities between now and then? I think there's some sentiment froth. Again, the concentration problem, when you look at whether it's a top five names, the top ten names, as a share of the overall index, we don't. We don't We've actually exceeded that now. If you look at things like the Buffett model, which is total market capitalization of all stocks, not just the S&P, not just as a share of GDP, that has exceeded the highs that we saw in that 1999, 2000 period of time. Households exposure to equities as a share of their overall assets is higher than it was

back in that period. So there are some similarities, but you're right. It's the nature of what the companies are, their longevity, their success, their balance sheet, their cash flows. That's where I think that there is a notable difference. And there were players back in the late 90s that survived. We just had... Amazon was one of them, by the way. Amazon, you know, Microsoft has been around for a long time.

You rightly point that out. But that doesn't mean you don't get frothy excess. It requires a corrective phase, even if it's just a valuation correction to allow the earnings, to catch back up to rich valuations. All right. Lizanne, it's great to have you here today. Appreciate it. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Lizanne Saunders.

All right, coming up, strong data on the consumer, painting a pretty solid economic picture, but will that all make a difference for the Fed and your borrowing costs? All right, welcome back. Well, earlier today, we got another pretty good read on the economy, but it's kind of another day where the bond market is not really moving. The 10-year yield is at 4.46 percent. And as we noted yesterday, that's the same price that bond yields were at back in November.

So what's it going to take to get borrowing costs on the move again? Either way, Rick Santellie's in Chicago with the bond report. Rick. Yeah, you nailed it. Not only it was 445, an important area historically. That's where we were before PPI yesterday. Think about all the things that have occurred since before 830 Eastern yesterday. And here we are basically around the same place.

But there is a lot going on. Let's start at the beginning. Retail sales a healthy rebound. Initial jobless claims. Three month low, mid-April at $221,000. All the data was pretty darn good. And if you look at Fed funds, what they're implying, a week ago they were saying a little over two quarter point cuts.

Now it's at 1.7. Now I understand 0.7 of a quarter point cut doesn't make a lot of sense. But it gives you an idea the market's looking for less. So to that effect, let's look at the charts. 2's 10s, 30s, all in one chart. What's similar there? 8.30 east, when all that decent data hit, that's why he made the high yield. To me, that makes perfect sense.

Stocks like a strong economy. Interest rates go up a bit during a strong economy. That's normal operating procedure. Then right after the data hit, yields moved a bit lower. There was another issue at play. It's called technicals. Whether it's a two-year, 10-year, or 30-year, they're all flirting with very, very important. very, very big psychological issues.

Just under 2% or under 4% in a 2 year, 4.5% in a 10 year, 5% in the 30 year. These are big. You see it on the July chart. That's July 1st of all maturities. You notice how similar they are? We're now wringing out a lot of the disparities between short and long maturities

because the Fed isn't necessarily in play as aggressively on the easing side, and the market totally understands that. And something else happens when the economy's doing better, labor market is doing decent, and we see interest rates moving up, the dollar index. You know, it was only about a week ago. Many investors were writing off the dollar index. Look at it now.

It's at a one month high close should it stay at this level. And once again, we're getting ever closer to 100, huge psychological, technical area. Brian, back to you. I'll take it, Rick. Thank you. Rick Santelli. Still to come, the ad rush. Streaming has always been about subscriber growth.

Until now, we'll explain next with Netflix earnings looming after the bell. Welcome back to Power Lunch. Lots of investors eagerly awaiting the Netflix report after the bill today. That's traumatic. You can see a lot of bullish sentiment around the stock heading into the print. We've had a number of Wall Street shops raise their price targets just in recent days. Netflix's not releasing subscriber numbers anymore with its reports. So investors got to look to other metrics to gauge their earnings growth.

Netflix stock has been on a tear lately, really this whole year. It's up more than 40% since Jan 1, well-outpacing media peers. Sean McNulty is creator and writer of the Wake Up Entertainment Business newsletter at The Anchler. And Sean, it's great to see you. Look, it's almost like there's nothing to talk about because they're just firing on old cylinders. So, you know, what am I missing? What could be around the corner? Or is it, to quote the analyst last hour, has Netflix just become TV now?

That's certainly true. You're talking about a service that's in probably about close to 90 million U.S. homes, which is pretty close to what the cable bundle was at for many years around its peak. So arguably, that is the new cable bundle. If you're going to say, what do most Americans have, it is Netflix. You're right. I'm glad you said it. You know, not like we're waiting on these big numbers.

No more subscriber numbers. They took the fun out of the earnings call a little bit there, Netflix. But the ad market is really the thing that my mind is most focused on. We'll see what they say about it. They still don't release an ad to your subscriber number. They've given us monthly user numbers and things like that. But they haven't really given a lot of detail. Will they give more now?

Doubtful, but Netflix likes us to surprise you every now and then too. Right. We don't want bad surprises. What form might those take? I think it's the real question is, and I would love to hear, and I hope it's asked, is we've heard a lot about Amazon flooding the market, right? They went essentially all ad tier about a year and a half ago. And there's been reports that came out about a month or two ago that they're essentially

doubling their ad inventory and the brakes. And we heard on the Hollywood Studio earnings calls the past couple of quarters that there's an unnamed competitor that was flooding the market with inventory and lowering the CPMs, the cost for the ad units. Netflix hasn't really commented on this. I wonder if it's hitting them. We haven't heard anything about the upfronts from them. It's been two months since they're a big upfront presentation.

I love an update on that. So we'll see what kind of color they give and that will honestly say it off. They say nothing or if they give some real detail as to what's going on here. Is Netflix competing with YouTube or does everybody just kind of have one or the other? Where does YouTube and YouTube TV fall into this whole thing? Sure. I mean, the YouTube TV, which is the bundle product, is really kind of a separate thing. There is advertising in that. But the YouTube product, I mean, I always, you know, comp the numbers, right?

And Netflix is still making more revenue per quarter by a healthy margin over YouTube. YouTube's ad revenue in the first quarter was a little under $9 billion. We'll see what they come with this quarter. Netflix is projecting $11 billion of revenue here for Q2. So from a revenue point of view, they're winning. But another question to ask would really be, are advertisers competing for advertising money with YouTube? Because that would be the real challenge there in the advertiser market. But if the advertisers don't see these two as similar products, we all see the advertisers that around YouTube, they are far different than what you're seeing on Netflix in terms of the market.

products you have. So I'd love to hear some more color on that. Ted Cervendos famously kind of downplays the YouTube competition a little bit in terms of how people spend their time. He said, you know, it's kind of passing time or spending time. So we'll see what he has to say about that. You know, it's not a complicated business. You produce or buy products that people want to consume. And if it's good enough, they continue to pay every month, right? Like the bear on Hulu, everybody talked about that. First two seasons, season three, completely different story. but people signed up for Hulu because they wanted to watch the bear. Then maybe they canceled.

It's called churn. It's the fancy term. Does Netflix have a churn problem or are they almost above churn at this point, Sean? Yeah, they don't give any exact detail into that. But of all the data we see from services like Anteta, they definitely rate on the bottom level of the churn problem that a lot of other services like Apple. We've seen Paramount Plus have some issues with that as well,

at least from third-party data. So again, it's the most stable thing. it is that cable thing. It's, you know, back when HBO dominated pay TV was always, you know, you had basic cable and HBO. Maybe you added on Showtime, maybe added on Stars, but you always got HBO first. Now it's kind of Netflix. And if you have Netflix first, maybe you add on Peacock, maybe you out on Amazon, whatever it might be.

So it's become that. So, yeah, Cher is less of an issue for them, at least on, you know, when we used to get the subscriber numbers, we had a little more insight into that. But that's certainly a very stable business that you just have it. And that's become the facto first mover. status. Again, that's a big thing with this business. We were talking about, you know, kind of it's them, it's YouTube. Maybe it's Disney, Sean. I don't know if you have a thought on that.

But kind of how would you see the landscape continuing to shake out? Because there's still a lot of streaming competitors, a lot of the smaller players, and where do you see this all going? Yeah, that seems to be that where we're shaking out on this. You know, Amazon releases very little info. If Netflix is giving us this much info, Amazon's giving us this much info about their business, but they've made the big plays for NBA NFL. They're here to stay. Netflix, Disney, now that they have Hulu in-house, there's biggers hinted.

There's more to come there. They've bought the app inside of Disney Plus. Is there more an international play for Hulu? We're going to see from a brand point of view that's going to happen. So Disney is the other one there, which leaves you kind of, you know, Peacock, Max or HBO Max, you know, it's kind of the two that people are eyeing together along with Paramount Plus. We'll see hopefully if the Skydance deal closes with Paramount. I would expect Paramount to eventually make some moves, whether that's, you know, it could be a JV fashion.

It could be a partnership, could be a larger scale thing. Having those three smaller players, it's hard to see how they continue to exist as they currently do. Can I did, Sean, and you can let this one just go right up? I mean, just like let it go right by you. What's going on with cable? I mean, that's it. We're having, okay, we're sitting here on this side of the camera, all right? And we're, so we have a personal and professional interest in this story.

We've talked a lot about all the streaming services. is there a value proposition for cable? And I'm not saying this as a current employee of a cable company, Comcast, so apparent. But when I look, I have them both. Okay, so I got all the streaming services in cable because I work for Comcast, so I get a deal. But when I look at the value proposition,

it's increasingly leaning back, at least ish toward cable because I'm adding everything up. It's hard to find stuff, and it's multi-hundreds of dollars a month. is there a cable value proposition hidden away somewhere in all this or no? Or is that living in the past? The numbers don't support that. I mean, we're losing, generally speaking, it's about a million a quarter of the bundle. It's going in this direction.

The question is, where does it kind of, I'll say bottom? Yeah, stop. Where's the bottom? Yeah, exactly. You're arguably about roughly 60, maybe 65 million homes. We'll see what the updates are this year and what the Q2 numbers come in at. You know, the bottom. Do we go to 40? Do we, so we're at my number, I'd say we're about 61, okay, but we can dither over satellite,

whatever. We're kind of right in the same spot. We're talking about millions of paying homes on cable. The question, I guess, everybody in this business saying, does that go to 50? Does it go to 40? And do we have, do you have cable and a Netflix? Do you have cable and a Hulu? I understand a lot of people can't do that. This is the CBC audience. It's a little bit different. But at some point, people start whacking stuff. They can't have everything. How does it shape out? out in five years. Right. So the question is really what's in the cable bundle and you're talking news and sports. Like entertainment as a whole has been, that's gone to streaming. You know, you arguably it's not a primetime TV, which is now filled with mostly, you know, three law and

orders, three FBI shows. So you're talking what's in there. So that's what you're talking about. So that's going to go down this way in terms of your entertainment customer. But what the interesting thing that Charter is doing, and they're now in this deal also to add Cox, that deals pending as well to get even bigger is they've, you know, made all these deals to include. all of the apps that, you know, the studios started. So, Max, Peacog, Disney Plus, they just added Hulu, ESPN will be in there as well. That comes free with your cable bundle subscription. We've yet to see if that's going to make a meaningful change in churn and in their losses.

But they're really just launching that this summer. So that's the thing to keep an eye on. I think that's your best indicator. If that can stop the problem, that is an indicator I think other people will follow. And maybe that's a way that that melts of the cable bundle. could plateau, as you say, is it 55 million? Is it 50? There will always be a consumer, probably an older consumer who will just want to have cable. And that's, you know, what is that number? That's going to be a, you know, 20-year proposition. So look, you know, radio is still

around. Things don't go away. They just decrease to a degree and they kind of flatten off. We're just waiting to see where that lands at. So there is a future. Just no one can tell you the size of it. And when it does, it's reliable money every month. It's what the entertainment business hasn't built on for 30, 40 years. So it's just a matter of no one knows that bottom. And That's what everybody's right about. There's a lot of local TV stations and owners and radio that are making a lot of money. Yeah. Still?

Local TV is one of the hottest markets out there for the hottest markets out there. So, yeah, there's still money in the banana sand, as they would say, in the rest of development, as I say. Favorite show. Is there really? Oh, my gosh. Jeffrey Tambor took my watch. I gave him my watch. He thought it was real.

I said, no, it's a fake. He goes, no, it's real. I said, here it is. And I gave it to him because it was a fake. It's a fake Rolex. thought it was real. He goes, that's no way that's, and I gave it to him. That sounds exactly right based on everything. Sean, just quickly for you, why, how is local news making a ton of money off of what? Good. I mean, there's still some loyalty there and there's still some value.

I think people just, again, find the value in that. Again, what's netted out here to the value to the consumer? Streaming hasn't really replicated that, especially in a local fashion. You get a lot of national news locally, but, you know, geo-targeting local news on what's going on in your area, it's a little bit harder to do, and it's not a lot of players area because the money isn't as good. We're in linear TV, that money is still good. You also have more hours of the day where you can also just program your morning, your noon, you're, getting more time back from a local affiliate point of view, which it's all about ad revenue. And that's benefiting that's still based on the bundle.

Transmission fees as well. So it's not like they're going direct to consumer. This is all still using the traditional model. Yeah. And over the air. I mean, I personally have an antenna. So I get my channels, you know, so and then younger people have come around this as well. So you get your free, you know, ABC. Antenna. Antenna. Yes. The good old digital antenna. I used to do that back in the city. I did the same thing. It was great. There you go. You get it. Yeah. That's how people all the time. PBS. I watched a lot of PBS back in the day. I'll see it the Nickelodeon, Kelly. That's fantastic. We can get them malted. Yes, exactly. Sean, thank you. Sean McNulty from the angler. All right, let's get now over to Courtney Reagan for the

CNBC News Update. Courtney, what's going on? Brian, the White House shared a letter from the president's doctor today, which said he underwent a checkup for swelling in his legs and a bruised hand. It said the checkup revealed chronic venous insufficiency, a condition common in individuals older than 70. The doctor said she did not find evidence of deep vein thrombosis or arterial disease and that the bruising on the president's hand is consistent with frequently handshaking and the use of aspirin. An Idaho judge lifted a sweeping gag order in the quadruple murder case of four University of Idaho college students. The killer, Brian Colberger, admitted to the brutal snabbing deaths earlier this month in a plea deal to avoid a potential death sentence. The gag order was put in place early in the case because the judge said publicity could harm his right to a fair trial.

And Kansas City Chief's wide receiver, Rushie Rice, has been sentenced to five years probation and 30 days in jail for his involvement in a high-speed crash that left multiple people injured last year. Rice, who pleaded guilty in the hit and run is also facing a possible NFL suspension. Brian, back over to you. All right, Courtney, thank you very much. All right, on deck, the record high price story that is. rarely told to anywhere else. Stick around. Crypto watch is sponsored by crypto.com.

Crypto.com is America's premier crypto platform. All right, welcome back. Here's a story that's going to hit you right in the wallet, and it follows up on a story that we've been talking about for a while now, and that is soaring beef prices. Now, at the core of it, of course, are the beloved actual cows. And the futures price for live cattle contracts just keep hitting new highs. The futures contract is now at $213 per 100 weight. That is a more than double

from just five years ago. And this is passing through to you. The CPI report showing a big spike in beef. And that could also have an impact on food and restaurant stocks. National chains like Texas Roadhouse, DART and Shake Shack. They've been exposed to beef prices. In fact, Shake Shack just got a stock downgrade today. Some of these stocks have actually outperforming. lately, but some others, like a Wendy's or McDonald's, they're actually down over the last three months. This is certainly Kelly, a story to watch, both in your shopping cart and in the market, because I want to make it clear, this is an all-time high for live cattle futures prices. Not all that's going to get passed on to the consumer, but a lot of it will be. This is a, this is a

meaty story. I know. It's so irresist to make all of these puns. But it's really surprising to me, that we're at all-time highs and not hearing more fallout from it. So I don't know if it's just a matter of timing. We have some data from the street. You know, beef prices are 20% of McDonald's cost basis for food. And yet they got initiated with the best ideas on the street today. So again, you mentioned Shake Shack. Maybe there are other places where there's fault. Maybe it's the restaurant business where, again, this is a margin hit. And a lot of those are mom and pop. Maybe we'll hear more about it in the days to come. But I don't know how we're at levels this high without hearing more about it.

Well, they just did. Yeah, that's right. I mean, we'll see what happened. But by the way, the consumer has been pretty resilient to all these price hikes. Of course. I mean, there's substitution effect. It's not like all the animal protein prices are going up at the same time. Back during the pandemic, when chicken was soaring, it was one thing.

He felt a little bit more. Here, I guess you substitute out, I guess. Whatever happened to fake meat? Remember that? That was so hot for like a couple days? Whatever happened all that? Maybe this is a moment beyond me. I think it was P.

Impossible. That's P-E-A. Yes. P-E-based. Protein. Some people found it a little bit too salty. Never too salty for me. Coming up, Wall Street has bounced back from the April tariff lows, but the real money has been in foreign markets this year. So where should you invest right now? We'll ask Tim Seymour next. Welcome back. The House has just moved up its schedule to vote on the three crypto bills. Emily Wilkins has the latest. Emily.

Hey, Kelly. Well, look, we've ever seen some very good signs for this crypto legislation. Number one, Vote being moved up an hour showing that they potentially have some momentum here to get all these three bills done. Also remember that Stablecoin bill, the Genius Act, since it already passed the Senate. Once it passes the House today, it goes to President Trump's desk. And we are hearing that there are plans for a White House ceremony tomorrow to sign that bill. Of course, a big win for crypto, even though it's a little bit more of a narrowly tailored bill than, say, the market structure, which is really broad, would impact all digital assets. And really, as we get started on the votes here, which I believe they might be about to do now, the key is to watch Democrats. All the drama that we've seen this past week, that was on procedural votes. Those are always party line.

Back to the matter is that a lot of these bills have bipartisan support, but how much bipartisan support is going to determine what the future for bills like market structure are going to be as they move to the Senate. So a lot of very interesting things we'll be watching here with the upcoming vote to see how much support there is on the Democratic side. and if there are any members who may be previously supported this legislation, but now feel like they can't, because of the Trump family's involvement with crypto and a potential conflict of interest there. Guys? Tangled web we weave. Emily Wilkins, thank you for unweaving it. Appreciate it. All right. Meantime, this year has been the year of investing globally.

While the American market here is done okay this year, we're up about 7% year to date. The real money has been made overseas, the best performing sort of, big-ish market in the world this year, our Greek friends, the Grech ETF, which mirrors the Greece stock market, is up 58% this year. Also doing well, markets in Germany, Brazil, South Korea, and Mexico. Heck, we wrote about the German opportunity a year and a half ago. Let's talk more about the world with Tim Seymour, CIO of Seymour Asset Management. Tim, what's your hot take on on how the whole world is like reinflated this year. Well, first of all, great to be here, Brian.

I think it's a combination of this has been a long-term underperformance trade. So I kind of believe in mean reversion. And I think the technicals tell you maybe we double bottomed August of 22. And then in Thanksgiving and 24, if you look at the charts on the relative underperformance of the MSDI world against the U.S. So, you know, as someone's been investing in international and emerging for 20, 35, 30 years. We've seen long cycles here, and I think we're early in an international cycle. But it's underpinned by fundamentals. And the fundamentals include, if you think there's deregulation here in this country, I think this is a global trend. I think rate of change

is always more important for markets. And I think this is where the relative dereg dynamic in Europe and even parts of Asia is more powerful on a relative basis than it is here. Valuation is always cheap. That's never the story. You mentioned Germany. I think, I think the fiscal and historic dynamic of spending money that they don't believe they're supposed to spend, the Germans have always been incredibly fiscally responsible. And I'm not saying what they're about to do is irresponsible. In fact, I think it's smart. Rearm Germany, rearm Europe, increased at least less reliance on energy stores,

building out a lot of infrastructure. This is what's going to happen. So deficit spending in Europe and even parts of Asia, China, I think it's, you know, It's not the consumption bill you want to see, but China, too, is changing. Yeah, and to your point, these markets have underperformed for years, and the U.S. was the place to be. So I guess the only question now is, is this like a one, I know you're big into one hit wonders, Tim. Is this a one-year wonder?

Or is this a multi-year cycle where some of these markets that we're showing on our beautiful wall here, they outperform us? Well, I know at times, Brian, you are too shy, and, you know, Kajigugu is probably the greatest example of a one-hit wonder, and I know our audience was waiting for that. But no, this isn't a trade, this is an investment. This is a case where I think if you look at some of the trends that have been most exciting about investing in the U.S., whether it's hyperscalers, whether it's AI, whether it's obviously semiconductors, Taiwan semis numbers today. I mean, and let me know clearly I'm a PM of an international ETF, I Devo, and Taiwan semis is one of the biggest positions in our book. So is Alibaba, which is one of the most exciting hyperscalers. And, and

And so I think some of the trends that have been investing international that have made U.S. exciting, I think some of those trends are alive and a well around the world. But again, I think you have global companies, world-class companies in a world where I think investors, especially internationally, have been overweight. I'm not here to tell you U.S. exceptionalism is over, but I think it's peaked. I really do. And I'm not here to get into political dynamics. I just think there's a case to be made for world-class blue-chip, bulletproof, back.

balance sheets growing their divs around the world. Get this man off the airway. U.S. exceptionalism is over? Come on, Tim. Come on. We're about 250. Again, USA. We, you know, wave the flag.

U.S. exceptionalism is great. But you can't tell me that you can't find AI and infrastructure and hyperscalor and semiconductor trends around the world. The Novo Nordist, which is really underperformed. But so is literally of late. So if you want trends and you want things that you can only get here, Guess what? It's a global economy, but I'm here to say that actually, as we've become more isolationists,

country by countries have become a lot more interesting. And that's the story. The story is that I think deregulation in other parts of the world is a big reason. That's why you want to own European banks, as much as you want to own U.S., and I think even more so. All right, Tim. Thank you. We knew when it was on the cover of all the magazines it was over. Tim Seymour, we appreciate it. Still ahead, some diamonds in the rough, some of the biggest jewelers on the planet speaking out on the growing disruption. of lab-grown gems. Stay with us. All right, I want to let you know about a big interview we got coming up tomorrow. Olivier Le Pucci is the CEO of SLB, formerly on Schlumbergé. He will join us exclusively to talk about the state of the energy market.

It's his first interview of the year, Kelly. Wow. They've got earnings tomorrow. They're wrapping up a big buyout of a company called Champion X. A great tell on the state of energy, oil, and gas. That is tomorrow right here. Looking forward to anything to the point you're making, it's like, do they benefit because We have higher volumes, but prices are, speaking of prices being down, diamonds may be a girl's best friend.

Did they still say that? But lab-grown diamonds really are. They're gaining serious ground fast. They're once considered a novelty, but they now account for nearly half of U.S. engagement ring sales, thanks to lower prices, environmental appeal, and a growing acceptance among younger consumers. CEO of De Beers didn't mince words about this. He just called them a con, said they lack the rarity and emotional value of natural stones, But Brian, the point being diamond prices are crashing, and it's going to affect all of these companies.

Yeah, I don't have a tip. For once in my life, I don't have a take on this. I don't know. I can see both sides, right? It's the emotional connection of like a real gem from the earth, but on the same time, it's also a symbol of love. I don't think it matters unless you're a diamond producer who has to worry about this, right? What she said. By the way, it's Kelly's birthday.

Happy birthday, Kelly. She wouldn't let us say it earlier. We made it two hours. Happy birthday, Kelly Evans. Thank you. Yours coming up. Closing bell starts right now.