Power Lunch - Stocks Bounce After Tame CPI Report 2/13/26

Episode Date: February 13, 2026

Interactive Brokers' Chief Strategist Steve Sosnick gives his take on the recent market action. Author of viral AI essay Matt Shumer joins the show. And CNBC's Julia Boorstin sits down with Netflix Chief Content Officer Bela Bajaria.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

AI shaking part of the market is fears about the impact on American jobs grow. Welcome to Power Lunch. Happy Friday with Kelly. I'm Brian. A provocative post on AI from a tech insider hitting some stocks and rattling some nerves. First, it was software. Now hitting other groups, even real estate. And the man behind that post is here today. Yes. And like Brian said, real estate getting crushed. Sending some of these names down 20% or more this week.

Morgan Stanley's head of commercial real estate is here with the names he's says you could and should be buying right now. And the queen of content, she decides what the world watches from global hits to billion dollar bets. Netflix's chief content officer Bella Bajaria is shaping the future of entertainment. And today she's speaking exclusively here on CNBC. That's coming up. And it's a lot more than just a squid game. Let's start with the markets and your money. The average is higher today. But unless we see an even bigger turn, we could. It's likely a slightly losing week for most of the big indexes. AI disruption fears running through different groups of stocks all week long. First, remember,

it was software. Then it was wealth management, trucking, real estate, and more. In fact, if you missed it earlier this week, shares of brokers like Raymond James, Schwab, LPL, down big on concern that some new AI programs will crush the need for tax planning. Real estate services also hit stocks like CBRE. Cushman and Wakefield, Jones Lang LaSalle, all hammered again on worry that AI will hit demand for their services and thus the money they bring in. Well, your first guest today calls this shift in AI minefield because instead of looking for winners, some investors, maybe you, are now just selling first and asking questions later. But a wise man did once say there's always a bull market somewhere. So let's talk about that.

Joining us now to discuss Steve Sazdick, he is chief strategist at Interest. active brokers, Steve, thank you. It was like, it was a weird week because I felt like every day Kelly and I were here or wherever we were and saying, well, this sector's getting crushed. And that sector's getting crushed because somebody wrote a new program in seven minutes on AI overreactions? Yes, yes, because if you don't really know what the ramification is going to be, it's a little weird to say, okay, I'm going to knock a fifth of the value off this company off, you know, off of something random because a company that made karaoke machines last week that's a penny stock now claims they've got an algorithm that can do logistics better than than established manufacturers.

So we'll just take 20% off of some of these stocks. That's crazy. By the way, if people don't know, that actually occurred? Yes. Company that makes karaoke machines claim they wrote a software program that basically did freight forwarding. Who knows? But that's where we are now. That kind of stuff can happen and wipe out billions in market cap because some of the Somebody on the internet's like, I just vibe-coded a new thing. It's like, it's like...

That's my internet voice. But it's like in the internet bubble days when you'd put dot com after your name and it was good for about 74% or something like that. But what you have here is people are very quick on the trigger in both directions. So, for example, you had the real estate brokers that went down, they got clobbered. On the other hand, you have Equinix, which is a reet, which is, you know, not all that exciting, up 10% yesterday for the flip side of. It's up like 25% this year. Wow. And think about the stocks that are up today, double digit.

You've talked about many of them on your show already, so I'm not going to rehash them. But so this is just everybody running from one side of the trade to the other, FOMO is huge and fear is a part of first, first letter in FOMO is fear. And so this is what's driving people. It's very turbulent under the surface of a relatively placid market, actually. Let me ask you something, Steve. Your firm, your daily experience, how much has it changed? Day to day, not that much.

I personally get a lot more calls when it's a down day than when it's an up day. When markets go up, they're supposed to. I mean, how much has AI changed it? How much has it changed your day-to-day life, your workflow? My day-to-day, because most of my day is spent writing and talking to people, it hasn't changed that much. AI, I will say, is fabulous as an editor. But what you just said most of your day is spent writing and talking to people. I mean, mine too.

How many other people are there like us? I mean, is it possible that this fear of massive job disruption, is it just that our little cornered? It doesn't look like it's coming? Where are the corners where we're sure this is going to happen? Well, for example, a lot of the code, we do a lot of coding at our firm. And one of the guys I work with who is a developer said, oh, yeah, you know, I just did this code. AI basically wrote 80% of it.

It didn't write it 100% correctly. I had to correct a lot of, I had to pull out the bugs and fix them. But it worked pretty well. Now, that's a good productivity. enhancer and maybe going forward, companies that do some coding don't need as many coders. But I think in a lot of knowledge where a lot of knowledge jobs, you still need the guy who knows how to debug the program. Right.

Even if he's going to have an army of coders. I think it could be one guy now has a fleet of, you know, agents working for them. A wedge, a pod, a murder. Parliament. A murder of coders. When you see stocks fall 10%, 15%, you guys do a lot of. I mean, interactive brokers, right? I've got to imagine there's kind of maybe a feeding frenzy in some ways among your clients

because if everything gets sold off, not every firm is going to be wiped out or hurt because of AI, that in these drops, there is opportunity? Or is that, am I just trying to be all happy on Friday the 13th? No, I think it's fair. I mean, this is what happens when it becomes sort of sell everything now indiscriminately, that's that there are opportunities just as it just as if everybody's buying everything indiscriminately they get overdone and there's probably shorting opportunities and so you could see from the list I see you have our list up and for example Microsoft has slipped to number five it was number one

by far with the absolute most buying that I'd seen in in quite some time because this is most active but you would say it's basically a list of where you're seeing the most buying or is that just Microsoft specifically but that was the buy the dip for example Microsoft's in a technical bear market It's down 22% from its high. Amazon's down 22% from its high. It's going to ask about Amazon. Well, I hate say they're not in a bear market.

I hate that term. But technically, 20% off their high is a bare market. Amazon and Microsoft are in bare markets. And it's funny because we did start to see people throw in the towel a little bit in Microsoft. They bought Amazon instead. So they go for this. We haven't seen them buying, let's say, CRM or App Lovin, which was a popular, you know, popular stock to buy. And actually, we did see people coming out of Nvidia in the last few days.

But everything that you're describing is still very 2025. Did you see anyone saying, C.H. Robinson, I got to get on that. Or, you know, legal, or whatever the names were this week in various different industries. Did you see people jumping into those names? Or were they instead just stepping back? The problem is I don't have full clarity into where. I can really only see our most active lists in real granularities. And so that's why it was interesting to me that I have not seen any of those names pop up.

Particularly, that's why I pick on App Lovin, not because it got whacked, but it's because this was such a popular name as it was going up. Yeah, absolutely. And now, of course, it's been going the other way lately. Steve, as always, thanks so much. Really appreciate it. Steve Sosnik. We have a market flash on what is the best performing stock in the S&P right now,

and that's Coinbase. Kate Rune has more. Hi, Kate. Hi, Kelly. So Coinbase shares have been up-up, excuse me, double digits today in the face of what we're largely disappointing earnings last night. So, Kelly, and Brian, I just got an email from Ehor-Juzanuski over at S3. some investors I've been talking to did suspect a short squeeze S3 focuses on this.

I just want to read this to you guys to sort of clarify here. He says Coinbase is most certainly not being squeezed. He says it's actually the opposite on the short size, said it's been a successful short. The mark to market profits up 43 percent year to date. He says the shorts are not being squeezed out of their positions. They are actually increasing short exposure into a very profitable trade. So I just wanted to bring you guys that. It just came on my inbox.

a little bit of clarity to what's going on with the stock. Also, some talk about opportunistic buying and views that Coinbase has actually bottomed after what's been a really tough year for the stock. In the quarter, I mentioned, though, Coinbase saw crypto trading volume really tumble, earning swung into a loss, which was also a surprise street. It was expecting 60 cents on the profit side. It does appear to be due to this unrealized loss from crypto prices that it was holding on its balance sheet and also a strategic investment in Circle.

Revenue for the quarter down 22 percent missing consensus, transaction revenue, dropping 45%. CEO Brian Armstrong on the analyst call did make the case that Coinbase is not going to be a pure play crypto exchange anymore. He really tried to frame it as the everything exchange. Those were his words. There were some positive street reactions on that

view and that long-term plan. Deutsche Bank still constructive on Coinbase's long-term everything exchange vision, which they say is progressing with the role out of equities. They're also doing prediction markets to all customers, including international. Bernstein says Coinbase, though, in the near term, fully exposed to crypto markets. They say there is nowhere to hide. It's going to be a while before some of these

new products actually help diversify revenue guys. I'm sorry. I know we're tied in time. I have to ask what you just said. So did Brian Armstrong basically, Kate, say we're not just going to be Coinbase anymore. We're going to be like Stock-based. They're going after Robin Hood. They're going to go right after Robin Hood. So it sounds like-Robin-Hodd's going after Coinbase. So, you know, Vlad Tentive this week was here in San Francisco telling us they want to be sort of the super app for trading. Brian Armstrong calls it. The Everything Exchange sort of taking a page out of the Jeff Bezos book. But their client base, there's a massive overlap.

So those two companies are really converging, and you're seeing the products look much more similar. But you're also seeing the lines blur between asset classes. People that got in to Bitcoin probably see it the same as equity. So it makes sense that it would move in this direction. All right. Kate Rooney, big headline there. Thank you very much. Quickly in the bond yield, a little bit of good news heading into the weekend.

If you want to buy a home, mortgage rates may come down because bond report will say, A 10-year yield is actually at their lowest level since December. The inflation report that came out today a little better than expected. Maybe inflation's starting to ease a little bit more. The 10-year yield, not under four, Kelly. But getting closer. 4.06, we're getting there. Much more quickly than I would have thought when we were at 420 on Wednesday.

That's a big headline from Coinbase. Yes, it is. They're going to get into other. It's like United Airlines. Like we're going to start making cars. Yeah, they all want to be the everything app. Good luck. We're just getting started here.

But coming up, is AI coming for your job? Our next guest says, yes, why he believes the window to get ahead of that is closing fast. Let's get to the story of the moment, the week, maybe the year, maybe the decade. Anyway, is AI going to take your white collar job? This was the centerpiece of a viral essay making the rounds all over this week. It has more than 80 million views on X. 80 million views. 36,000 people have repose.

posted it. This essay penned by an AI startup CEO and investor Matt Schumer is titled, Something Big is Happening. He starts by comparing the AI transformation to the early days of COVID, which a lot of analysts and investors have been doing with the stock action this week as well. He then goes on to say that he tells the AI, let me back up, Schumer then tells the AI what he wants built. So he's explaining to everybody what he's experiencing kind of in his workflow. He walks away from his computer for four hours. He comes back to completed work. In another eye-catching line for white-collar workers in particular, he says, nothing that can be done on a computer is safe in the medium turn.

And here with us now is the author of this much-discussed essay, Matt Schumer. He is the CEO of Other Side AI, which is making an AI personal assistant. First of all, welcome. I think people, we were just having the most fascinating conversation. Like, Matt, can I tell them some of your background? Do you mind if I share these details? Matt goes to Syracuse. You drop out to start a VR headset company to try to fix Alzheimer's.

Then you see AI coming on. You tell us, and you, you can, you. you're like, I have to jump in on this. Now you have one of the most viral ex post that has ever existed about it. So I just want people to understand where you're coming from. It's not like you've been trying to craft.

What was it that you experienced? You know, even as someone who recognized this early on that made you feel the need to kind of write what you did this week. Yeah, absolutely. I've been thinking about this since 2019. I got into the industry because I saw how quickly this is moving. Most other industries in tech,

they move at a rate of like 10 or 20% a year in terms of progress and how much better things get. But when I saw what was happening in AI, it was pretty clear that it was a rate of like 100 times a year at that point. And it was only getting better each year. How do you jump? It's one thing. We all sit and go, yeah, no, this is crazy, but we don't start a company.

So tell me about Other Side and what you're trying. Is this the same company that you've had now for four or five years? Yeah. Yeah. So Other Side is essentially an AI assistant company. We do quite a few things. Most of my focus today actually is on investing via my fund Schumer Capital. But essentially, I just believe the AI space is going to be huge.

Now, there are positive effects there. There are negative effects there. I think everybody needs to think about what it means themselves. And for me, it was getting involved in this way. Okay, a couple of people said, now that the critics are out because their essay has not been as successful as yours. And they say, well, he didn't give any concrete examples. You know, Matt, give us some number. It was very much like a visceral story of just sitting down and going, wow, look at what this can do.

So give us more color. Like, to what extent would you really say, hey, I saw something that is going to, you know, turn the world around? Yeah, so there's a bit of color I should provide here. The way that I think about AI and a lot of the people inside think about AI is that coding is the thing that it improves that the fastest and first. And there's a reason for that. The Big Labs working on AI know that if they can create something that can code really well, it allows them to improve and train their models faster and more effectively thereby allowing them to do everything else. Which was so fascinating from the start that they had already thought this through. But go ahead. So the way to think about it is wherever an AI model is today in terms of its capability for coding, that's where everything else is going to be about a year from now. It's about a year ahead.

So we see the future. Isn't it the case that coding is kind of very, not, I was going to say binary, but like it's a set of instructions. Something like replacing other workflows is a more creative task, is it not? It is, but I think there are a lot more parallels than people realize. Everybody likes to think their thing is special. And I thought my thing was special for a while. But it's pretty clear when you use this stuff and you look at the rate of progress that anything that can be done on a computer in the medium term will likely be doable by it.

That doesn't mean, and I want to be very clear about this, the article wasn't meant to scare people in this way. And if I had known how viral this was going to go, I would have thought about certain parts and rewritten some of the parts for sure. Replaying in your head. Oh, yeah. But basically, doesn't it mean that just because something can be done, doesn't mean that it's going to proliferate through society. You're exactly right. And here's why, and I think a little, you know, a little age helps with this in a way that when you look at history, jobs, I don't go to esoteric here, but jobs are more than just. making money and increasing productivity, they're a way to keep human beings involved in society. They're critical to, in some ways, keep society together.

My view is that if AI were to eliminate millions and millions of jobs, you will destroy the, not you, the economy will be destroyed. There will be no need for thus AI because human beings will then burn everything to the ground. Because if you don't have work, if you don't have meaning, and if you don't have income, People get upset. I know you're at the forefront of this.

Where do you see that middle ground between AI doing stuff we don't want to do? But also keeping humans gainfully employed so we don't burn everything to the ground. Yeah, I understand. It's probably the toughest question. One of the things I set out to do when I was writing this, and I actually originally wrote this for my parents, and then I was like, okay, maybe this will help some other people, which I try to answer some of these questions for myself.

And I still don't think I have. I think there are so many people in AI that want to think about this stuff, but there is no good clear answer because it's so nuanced for every single position. It means something different. It's going to happen on a different timeline. The thing that I see and that I want to say very, very clearly, is that the people in AI know this is happening. They know this is coming. But there's a tendency for people in AI and in tech in general to talk about things to each other in ways that are heavily jargon focused, very very written for the in group. Any industries like that totally.

Right. And what I saw was nobody was talking about this in a way that the average person who isn't in tech, who isn't aware of this jargon can understand. It's so important to talk about. And what I'd be correct. And one of your big takeaways, and I've heard this for many people, and I absolutely believe this as well, was if you're in the workforce, you need to use these tools. You need to start to understand what's coming. Like, is that the core message here? Yes. It's not like I can say to you, well, what's going to happen to the trucking space or what's going to happen to this? But your point is, be on the side of agitating for this technology so that you can, it's. at least use it to make your workflows more effective so that your workflows don't get displaced by someone else using this tool more effectively. Exactly. My goal was to just let people know there's a chance this is going to happen. And if that's the case, spend a little bit of time, spend an hour a week saying, okay, what are

a few things I can try using AI for? And just try, right? Just use it. Just experience it. Maybe it's not going to be perfect for what you wanted to do today. Maybe it won't be tomorrow, but it will be eventually. Because I think a lot of people are using the free versions, right? Yes.

And people say, well, the free version is 2024. That's a year and a half, the two years behind what AI is actually doing with guys like yourself. Yes. We're all on, you know, Gemini going, where should I eat time? I've had the same experience. When you're actually saying, build me a robot and it's, yeah, right? The best things are not 10% better. They're not 20% better, not 100% better.

They are like orders of magnitude better than what the free stuff is. And if you think that you're basing your experience off what the free stuff is or what you tried two years ago, you are woefully underaware of what is possible today. And this stuff is improving so quickly. I want to be your agent. You need a book deal like by the end of the week. I can, we're going to give you some people. Why do you need an agent?

AIs is agent. AI is like, why do I need a book? Did you make any money from the Twitter post? I have no idea. It's all happening. Matt Schumer. Corporates speak. We'll talk.

No, Matt, really, thank you for joining us today. Thank you for having me. It's been. Matt Schumer from Other Side A. We're going to stay on this after the break. Julia is in L.A., where also she lives, with a special guest on media and probably AI, Julia. That's right, Brian.

I'm here at the YouTube Theater for the NBA Tech Summit, and I'm going to be joined by Netflix's chief content officer, Bella Bajaria, in our conversation. And all day here today at this event, AI, streaming, and sports rights are in focus. We'll be back after the break. All right, we just talked about AI. So you've got to look at this clip. Kelly, look at this clip.

Brad Pitt fighting Tom Cruise on a roof. Two of the biggest stars in the world, duking it. out. My money's on Brad. I think this is amazing. You know, people are like, oh, I can tell it's not. You know, I'm like, to me, this is amazing. It is amazing. And it would be an amazing new movie, except it's not a movie. It's,

it's just a fake AI video and maybe also another punch in the gut to a media business that's already scared about a knock down, drag out brawl like that one over AI. Julia Borson is live in Los Angeles with a special guest who is the center of

all of this. Julia, Thanks so much, Brian. I'm joined out in an exclusive interview by Netflix's chief content officer, Bella Bajaria. Bella, thanks so much for joining us here today. Thank you. Happy to be here. So, Bella, when you see a clip like that, user-generated content, does it make you worried that it's now going to lower the bar and introduce more competition for Netflix? Or do you just think about how much money you're going to save? It's never going to be for us to win with all of our members around the world. I mean, the goal is always we want to entertain the world.

and we want to make the best film and TV that people love. And so it's never going to be about making something cheaper. It's always going to be about making something better. And I think as much as even the clip showed technology or, oh, here's an action sequence, that's not really what connects people to stories. So like when somebody a creator like Sunny Lee writes a very deeply personal show like beef, or when Catherine Bigelow can create something like House of Dynamics, which just came from such a deep place of what she was kind of seeing,

kind of, you know, in the world, that those are the things that connect with people, emotions, characters, storytelling. And that, I think, is something you can't replace. And so I think when people kind of just look at a clip and go, oh, look at that, that looks like a cool action sequence, that's not really actually what connects people. And so for me, it's always going to be focusing on the storytelling first. You have the storytelling first,

but now there are all these tools to produce the stories, much less expensively. How do you think about implementing these AI tools, especially when there are talks with the guilds coming up and there was a really devastating strike just a couple years ago? So our product team in Netflix, right, has worked with ML and AI for a long time. So that's not new. As far as tools for filmmakers, we want to make sure, so the filmmakers who, you know, want to embrace those tools and when they're trying to make a film or TV show and they think these tools will really help them. We want to be able to provide and support that for their vision. And that's really for me, it's like they're tools for creators when they want to sort of do

their, what they want to make their story out of. And some really want to do that and they want to use them. And we want to be able to support that. Many don't. And that's okay. Like, we don't tell them how to make their TV show or film. And so it's really like providing them with the tools if they want them. Another big topic that's top of mind here is, of course, Netflix's big acquisition of Warner Brothers. What does that mean for you as Netflix's content chief? Are you going to be pulling in all of that Warner Brothers IP into Netflix? We're really excited about bringing these two amazing entertainment brands and company together.

And I think what's exciting is if you look at, it's for us, it's a very vertical business, right? We have just very different divisions. We don't have duplication. We don't have a theatrical distribution team like they do. you know, Warner Brothers Television Studio, which produces shows and sells to third parties. We don't have that. And so I think the exciting thing is going to be for Netflix to continue to make film and TV around the world and that's going to be what I'm going to focus on to continue to do that,

but also have Warner Brothers run independently and have theatrical and HBO and the studio continue to do that. I think what's great about this is that I really think ultimately having this is going to be great for creators and consumers and shareholders and the industry because we've always continued to invest in filming TV. And this is just an opportunity now to continue and invest in their business, just like we've done our own. I have to make sure we have time to talk about sports because we are here at the NBA Tech Summit. You've made some big investments. You had two NFL games on Christmas Day, but you also have some events like Alex Honnold scaling a skyscraper. How do you

balance in your strategy investments in traditional sports rights versus the more event-driven strategy. Well, look, obviously we love sports. I'm a big sports fan and it's always amazing that you know, you know, it's like the greatest soap opera and you don't know what the ending is going to be. And for us, the strategy is, you know, probably different than other media companies. And it's not just in sports. It's really the live events for us are really like, what are those big, buzzy, unmissable moment? And, you know, and. And I think if you look at, you know, many different things we've done from, you know, Jake Paul and Mike Tyson, was seen by 125 million people. It's the largest streaming sporting event.

And NFL games, you know, again, with halftime, Beyonce Bull Snoop Dog, like really creating kind of a Christmas Day event. And we still have the largest streaming regular season NFL game. And also having Alex Honnold, skyscraper alive. was a big event. And sports, yes, just big, big event. And I think besides the amazing technical achievement of what happened

there, I think what was really fun to see was that show stayed in our global top 10 for two weeks. So that wasn't just people watching it live, like that was actually for two weeks later, people catching up and talking about it. But with WWE, you haven't gotten into more traditional rights. We are out of time, but I have

to ask you quickly, are you going to be interested in the NFL rights? Because in their negotiations, could restart as early as this year. You know what? We love the NFL, and we know that people love football. We love having the games on Christmas Day. And, you know, look, and I think what's great is we have, like, deep relationships with many of these leagues, including the NFL. Well, I will let you leave it there, and we will watch how all of those talks go. Bella Madaria, Chief Content Officer, Netflix.

Thank you so much for joining us. Guys, I'm going to send it back over to you. All right, Julia and Bella, thank you very much. Enjoy Los Angeles. All right. Speaking of the NBA, we at CNBC just rolled out. this year's official list of NBA team valuations, and the money is raining down like three-pointers

because three franchises are now worth at least $10 billion each. The Golden State Warriors, the New York Knicks, and the L.A. Lakers are all in the seven figures club. The L.A. Clippers and the Chicago Bulls also were the bundle, and they round out the top five. If you want to see the full list, of course you do. Scan the QR code on your screen on the bottom right right now. It's just dollar debasement.

No, it's impressive. They just keep going higher. Coming up, a real estate reality check. CBRE is rebounding, but still on track for its worst week since the pandemic hit. Our next guest says it's a buying opportunity. Welcome back and take a look at these two key names from the real estate services sector. Cushman and Wakefield and CBRE Group bouncing back today. But both stocks are still down this week as the AI scare has wiped out billions of market value from real estate services and commercial real estate names.

These are on pace for their worst weekly performance since March of 2020, and we know what happened then. Joining us now is Ron Camden. He's the head of U.S. Reets and Commercial Real Estate at Morgan Stanley. Is this really like COVID, Ron? I mean, we don't need offices anymore. There's going to be no employees, forget about it. I mean, or is there something more specific about these business models

that you think the market is correctly identifying could be somewhat under threat here? Yeah. First, thanks for having me. Appreciate to be here in person. I think there's two things that the markets are focused on in the commercial real estate services, space right now. One is what we call the end market risk. If you think about these companies, 25 to 40 percent of their tenants or office related. And as we've seen this week, there's a lot of

concern about business services, different sort of office users being disintermated. So there's a concern that if these tenants get wiped out, a lot of the services that, you know, CBRE and CWK are providing are going to be under pressure. Shouldn't they have already been hit to Kelly's point about COVID? You work in Midtown, right? For our audience that doesn't go into New York on a daily basis, on Mondays and Fridays, it's not quite a ghost town, but it's not far off. Work from home, still big deal. Not a lot of people in Midtown.

How is this different from the disruption we've already seen? Yeah, so what we've seen over the last three or four years is that office vacancy, which was creeping really high during COVID, start to inflect in a lot of markets. New York was the first, and New York is by far the best office market in the U.S. But you even seen those trends expand outside of New York, like San Francisco, for example, finally started to see a turn. So to some extent, people thought that, you know, the worst of the COVID was behind them for a lot of the markets. And as you got farther and farther away from COVID, other markets would catch up.

I think, you know, the AI disruption that happened this week sort of took the market by storm because all of a sudden everybody said, hey, if all these companies get disintermated, then the demand's going to get wiped out. I guess my confusion is why it was so sudden. Why did suddenly the market like wake up and be like, oh gosh, computers are going to eliminate all humans and therefore we don't need these buildings? There shouldn't have been anything that new in the thesis. I know there were some people posting software stuff online.

Was there sort of a trigger for all this? Or was it just the market kind of realizing they want to sell those stocks? I think if you follow the trend, it started with every sort of services that was providing advice that the market said could be disintermated by AI. Right? If you think about financial firms, wealth advisor firms, and then it came to the real estate market. We think it's a fascinating time that it came to the real estate market because what people don't appreciate is that these are very labor-intensive industries. I mean, CBRA has 140,000 employees.

Wow. Right? So when you think about when we were a 140. 140,000. So when we think about the space, there's a lot of potential opportunity, actually, with AI and being able to empower a lot of these employees to be more efficient. What does CBRE do? CBRE, essentially, they have three business lines. So number one is they provide advisory services. So whether you're buying a property, selling a property, want to transact, want to finance it, they can help. The two is, the second thing they do is they manage properties for it. They manage facilities. They manage assets. And the third is they manage it. projects. So if you're building a airport, bridge, so on and so forth, and they help you execute that. The beauty is that most of the companies in the S&P are in different business line, and their job is not to be a real estate company. So they could partner with a CBRE that will provide them sort of

evaluated added service to help those businesses. Could they hire our friend Matt, who was here a few moments ago, brilliant young guy in his 20s, clearly can sit down with this technology? Could he just say, guys, you don't need to hire CBRE. Look what I've done for you in-house. I mean, is that what the market's concern is? Yeah, so that was sort of the second concern, which is the disintermediation risk, which is, okay, can an AI-enabled tool, be able to replace the valuable advice that a CBRA or CWK is providing? We don't think that risk is pretty low right now.

Part of the reason being, if you think about the tenant base that the Rolodex of these companies, it's very highly value-added, complex, multi-jurisdictional services that they're offering. So it's very difficult for somebody to wake up one day and say, hey, I can help, you know, value your portfolio that you own in 10 different countries and 10 different jurisdictions and so forth. What stocks should we buy? I think CBRE is one of the best free cashful generating companies that I cover. What's interesting about this selloff is it happened at a time when a company had record earnings in 2025 and guiding for another 17% earnings growth this year. Wow. This is a business generating $1.7 billion of free cash flow.

a year, and this is a business that is highly under levered. So we think that's really the interesting opportunity here. Anything else in the space quickly? Cushman and Wakefield is sort of a peer in the space as well. We thought they had a pretty constructive investor day in December, where they told the market that our plan is to grow this earnings 15 to 20 percent for the next three years. And I think the market sort of completely missed that. We think that's an opportunity as well, potentially. Ron, thank you so much. We'll let you get back to your office in Midtown, Manhattan. Thanks for having you. Ron Camden with Morgan Stanley, head of REITs and commercial real estate.

And turning to the housing sector and the residential side, take a look at the latest international deal. TriPoint Homes is skyrocketing nearly 27 percent after the home builder, get this, announced it will be acquired by a Japanese company, Sumitomo Forestry, and an all-cash deal valued around $4.5 billion, premium, Brian, of nearly 30 percent. With the massive move today, the stock now on pace for its best day since March of 2020, 40 cents from its all-time high. Sumitomo forestry. Look, there were, this has seen the Sipfias review and possibly some further.

We have not seen an international M&A deal like this, I think, in quite some time. And an environment like this especially? Wow. Does that tell you how overvalued down? I'm just amazed it was a forestry division of a company buying a housing. Anyway, let's get to Steve Kovac, who's got a CNBC News update, Steve. Hey there, Brian. President Trump put pressure on his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, today to negotiate an end to the war with Russia.

He told reporters at the White House that Russia wants to make a deal and Zelensky should, quote, get moving so he doesn't miss an opportunity for peace. The U.S., Ukraine, and Russia just confirmed a third round of peace talks that would take place next week in Switzerland. Also, Virginia's Supreme Court is allowing a voter referendum on redistricting to move forward. The ruling is a big win for Democrats as they seek to pick up as many as four seats in this year's midterm elections with the proposed congressional map. Voters will decide in a special election on April 21st on whether that new map can go into effect. And former CNN anchor-turned freelance journalist Don Lemon entered a not-guilty plea this afternoon in federal court. He's facing civil rights charges for entering a Minnesota church last month with protesters who said to pastor their work for ICE enforcement. And Lemon's lawyer has called his arrest a violation of his right to free speech.

Kelly, set it back over to you. Steve, thank you very much. Coming up, a recipe for disaster. We've been talking about AI and jobs. Now a chef says AI is hurting her business. Her story is coming up next. Earlier this hour, we talked at length about the impact of AI on the overall workforce, including these fears of technology taking white-collar jobs. Well, you're about to meet a small business owner and chef who says AI is getting her recipes wrong and hurting her brand. Joanne Gallagher is president and founder of inspired taste, a website featuring easy recipes for home cooks. She also has developed a huge following on social media with more than a million followers on Instagram.

Joanne, it's great to have you here. Welcome. Yes, thanks for having me. So we can show this graphic, but among many other of your fine recipes, key lime pie might be one where people literally want to seek out your version, the inspired taste key lime pie, but they might be lazy like me. And they go to Gemini or they go to chat, Giti, or what have you, and they say, give me the inspired taste key lime pie. And Joanne, what happens next?

So right. So traditionally, if you were to do that in Google search, you would be provided a link to our recipe. But in these AI, AI platforms, AI mode, chat GPT, what you're getting is what we call a Frankenstein AI generated recipe. So this is not our recipe. This is what the AI platform is suggesting is our recipe. They've scraped the web.

They take bits and pieces from other recipes, smush it together, and then present it as hours in the output. So it's really misleading. Talk to us, I mean, to the extent that you feel comfortable for you and many, many other recipe bloggers who have made their living on Google search traffic over the past 10, 15, 20 years, you know, how good a living can that be? And how much do you worry now about the lack of income going forward? Yeah, I mean, we were growing. We've been growing for almost 16 years now. It's a full-time job. We have employees. We work with multiple contractors with large teams. So we are a, we are very much a thriving business. You know, a lot of our income did come from that organic Google search traffic. And yeah, these AI platforms, AI, mode in particular, chat chvety. They are, they're competing against us by taking without permission, by scraping our information, kind of putting it together and presenting it as something like ours

or almost as if it is ours, which, you know, it's not. Joanna, it hits home a little bit. literally my wife is actually writing a cookbook right now. She's a tremendous home chef. And so we talk about this at home. But what can you do about it, right? Because what you're talking about is theft. They're basically stealing the recipe. But yet they could probably say, well, we know there's 100 recipes for key lime pies.

And we got it over here and over there. Is there any remedy for you? Yeah. I mean, links. Links are a remedy as far as, you know, right now when you're in these, these chat bots, there's like a microscopic link. You need a magnifying glass to see it. It's at the bottom.

No user's going to click that. We call that a zero-click environment. Why not make, if someone's asking for inspired taste, key lime pie, why not provide a prominent link to inspired taste key lime pie? You don't need to make up a new one and mislead the user. How much would you say your traffic is down? It's hard to say. What I tell you is that we are seeing that we are being shown in search a heck of a lot more.

Our clicks are down. We are just not getting the organic clicks that we once did. AI overuse pushes down, AI mode. Google is pulling users into AI mode. AI mode is really zero click as far as we're concerned. Joanne, we have to go. But what are you going to do? I mean, if this, as we know with technology,

this is probably be rectified in five or 10 years with class action lawsuits or something at that point. You might not be able to wait that long, you and others. Is there any option now? Is it social media driven any way to make up for this and pivot the business model? Right.

I mean, AI is everywhere. It's even in, it's even going into social media. We're starting to see these Frankenstein results at the top of searching in social media. So, I mean, it's not. something we're going to have to battle no matter what. That's why we're pushing for links. It's why we're suggesting these Frankenstein recipes are not a good idea. A. I can't taste or test. There needs to be more of a balance. Well, I apologize. I use these bouts for recipes all

the time. Now I feel like I'm, you know, I'm the problem and I'm also a terrible good. Joanne, thank you very much for joining us. Well, we're here. Now I'm going to go straight to your website, I promise. I appreciate you detailing your story, Joanne Gallagher, as president and founder of inspired taste. We do want to mention we reached out to Google for comment. Of course, there's many chatbots we could talk about here, but in particular as it comes to theirs, they say AI overviews are often a helpful starting point to learn about a dish, but we see that people still want to go and read original recipes from creators. We're focused on making it easy for people to discover and visit useful sites that have a good user experience. All right, coming up, a billionaire

says there is a new AI trade emerging, and it's maybe not where you think a random, but interesting chart you will not want to miss. Apparently gas and oil and all the things you pull out of the ground or the hot new thing on Wall Street. So says one of America's richest energy investors, by the way. Your RBI today comes with John Arnold, natural gas trading billionaire and board member at Meadow who highlighted this trend in the market this year. This is a one-year chart of a big natural resources ETF, the IGE versus a big software ETF, the IGV, and fire up the engine because look at that outperformance the last few months. The IGE is soaring up 20% this year. The IGV is soft and getting software down 20%. You have a 40% swing in performance in favor of

natural resources over software. Now that is random but interesting. Per trade for the ages if you got that one right. More power lunch after this. Okay, get this guys. Waymo's Robotaxies. We've all talked about them. Surprisingly fine. I mean, People ride on them all the time. There's just one little catch right now. They're driverless, but they've got doors, of course. And the self-driving car company is now paying door-dash drivers to close doors that are left open by passengers. In a pilot program in Atlanta, gig workers are alerted when a Waymo was stuck with a door ajar,

and they're offered cash to shut it so the car can get moving again. One Reddit post shows a driver was paid more than $11 for the quick fix. Waymo valued at $126 billion, part of Alphabet, says future vehicles, will close their own doors until then even cutting edge AI still needs a human hand, Brian. Having been in these way, I mean, who's not closing car door? That's what I don't understand. Just close the door. Do you forget?

Maybe they just, they try and it bounces back open. Are you in a race? I don't know. It's just the experience of it being driverless throwing you off so much that you just don't do the normal things you would in a car. I'll post the video later about me in a car where it says to open the door. And it's like an airline where the day had to latch the seatbelt. Or it tells you how to do that. And there has, meanwhile, not to make this more serious, but on Tesla, there has been pressure to make sure that their doors can open.

We have a weird door, though. It's a non-usual. They do. And so I just, I am pro easy open doors. Easy open, easy close. I'd like to get into more, but the show's over. Thanks for watching, Power Lunch, everybody. Have a great long weekend. But first, closing bell.