Power Lunch - Stocks continue record rally 10/2/25

Episode Date: October 2, 2025

Stocks are continuing to rally, and one CIO joins the show to give his picks in the small-cap space. Tesla posted a surprise delivery increase. Wedbush's Dan Ives joins to break them down.  And OpenAI received a $500B valuation to make it the most valuable privately held company. It's all here on Power Lunch. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Big tech hitting another record. Hi, many federal workers staying furloughed and open AI on a clear quest for tech domination. Welcome to Power Lunch. I am Brian. Kelly is off. We've got opportunities for you. Your guest naming names, not named Apple or Nvidia or others. Plus, Dan Ives on while Tesla is still a lock and the surprising stock, he says, could get bought.

And more power picks for you. Stephanie Link is here. and she loves that mystery stock. Can you name it? Oh, an open AI's growing quest to control tech taking another turn as they make a play for 10% of the world's memory. Okay, we'll talk about it. Hi, everybody, we've got a lot to do, but let's kick things off by trying to make use of money in areas where you might not yet be looking. Because your first guest today says that small caps have largely been ignored or unloved for way too long. It's time to think big about the little ones. Dan Vru is here to kick things off. Chief Investment Officer and Senior Partner, Pallusade Capital Management.

Dan, great to have you on. You just gave me a stat before the show, which, you know, not a lot of things blow my mind, but this did. That all Russell 2000, every stock in that index combined is smaller than Nvidia. What do you make of that? You know, look, it's a distortion. It's an extreme. And this is not saying anything bad about NVIDIA.

It's an extraordinary company that's had extraordinary growth. But, you know, I think a whole host of companies are really, really high quality. They're just being ignored right now. We're really at the very first phase of what I think is a long-term, a long cycle of small-cap outperformance relative to large-cap. When we say a stat, by the way, it could be an RBI, random and interesting, that Nvidia is bigger than the entire Russell 2000, or Nvidia is bigger than the entire German stock market, whatever it is. And Invidia, no doubt, is an amazing company,

one of the greatest companies the world has ever seen. But it is, would you say it is possible that some of these AI-related names are a little stretched? They're priced as though the growth rates aren't going to slow down. And certainly people like Dan Ives are far more informed in terms of what that growth rate's going to be. But the way I think about it is the S&P 500, if you look at their CAP-X budget, a third is going into AI and AI-related investments. Now, maybe that just continues to go for a long time, but at some point there's going to want to be an expectation of a return off of those investments. Yeah, what money are these companies making off of AI? That's going to be the question.

If that question is unanswered for a short period of time, it's fine, I think. You invest for the long haul. But if that question is not answered, I just wonder what the market risk may be. Let's get into why you're here, and that is smaller caps and some individual names. Digital Bridge, okay? Now, despite the name, this is actually an asset management company. They exist on the digital, and they invest on the digital side. So what is it about digital bridge that makes you excited?

Well, my financial services analyst, Chris Mesa, has done great work on this company because it's a great readthrough into some of the key investments that are being made into the AI and AI infrastructure part of the economy. But you're not taking technology risk because you're also investing in some of the more infrastructure-related parts. We need power generation. They're a play on that. They have a lot of embedded gains that are yet to be realized because they do make technology investments. And they've been raising capital from institutions

and now individual investors. And there's talk that because of their expertise in identifying different areas of technology to invest in, that perhaps other asset managers might view them as a might view them as an attractive acquisition. Replagin is another name, Replegin. I'm not going to pretend I understand bioprocessing or everything they do.

There are people much smarter than me like you and your team that can understand it, but I do understand charts. And I know that Replagin has not had an easy run. It's down by about about half from its all-time peak about three years ago. It's kind of just been floating along. Why Replagin? Why now? So my partner, Dawn Brock, who covers health care.

I think she's nailed this perfectly. You know, you need a clearance event. You need something to happen to remove the uncertainties. And I think what's happened in the last couple of days vis-a-vis drug pricing, really it was that clearance event. You know, Replagent is no different than Danaher in many respects, which you and I have talked about as well. You know, they are part of the whole ecosystem of how you make drugs and a very important component of that. The stock's been plagued by simply uncertainty over the direction of drug pricing. Now at least you have better clarity.

And it's more and more important that we're going to need more drugs to come out. And they would play in that ecosystem of how new drugs are from. I've known you for going on, well, 30 years. You know, it's never too long, but it's just right, we'll call it. And as far as I know, you are not from Seattle. Is that correct? You were not a Seahawks or a Mariners fan. Nope.

But you are a fan of a big bank based in the Seattle area. I don't randomly mention it. I'm talking about Columbia banking system, which despite the sort of odd name is really the parent company of Columbia Savings Bank. We talked about banks a couple weeks ago on this show. What is the bull case for, again, another company like Replagin, which has not had the smoothest run the last few years?

I'd say that small-cap banks in general have not had the small-cap banks in general have not had the smoothest run. And again, you know, small-cap banks historically have traded at a premium to the large-cap banks from a valuation standpoint. They're now trading at a significant discount. Yet you have a lot of things going in their favor. You've got deregulation and a less of a regulatory burden over the banks. Interest rates are moving in their favor as well. And I think the prospect of merger and acquisition activity, Columbia just made an acquisition recently, that got approved in a pretty short period of time for banks. I just think that that's a change because of the administration's viewpoint that we need a sound and solid banking system. So we could

envision a lot of consolidation among the small to medium-sized banks. I love a digital bridge, Repulgin, Columbia banking system, new names, maybe money-making opportunities in a short and long term. Dan, Varroo, Palisades, Capital Management, Dan, a real pleasure. It's never too long of a time. Never too long. Never time. All right. The 10-year yield, a little bit lower today. Second day of the federal government's partial shutdown. So let's figure out what the bond market cares about and head to Chicago.

Rick Santelli, kind of following the news and the movement in bonds, Rick. Yes, Brian, and it is indeed day two. Yesterday, we did have a date of point because it wasn't related to the government in terms of its release. And that's important. If you look at a two-day chart of twos and tens, you can see the ADP move. The last real data point, it was about what many investors and the Fed seem to care about most, trying to measure the health of the labor market. And you see the drop there, and we've pretty much sustained that drop, meaning we haven't recouped it.

We're hovering at the lower end of the range. But two-year yields are actually a little bit higher. You see the difference in the lines there. Ten years a little bit lower, Brian called it. We're down a bit, so the curve's flattening. But I find that really interesting because yesterday it's steepen because weak labor implies potentially a more aggressive Fed easing. But today we see two-year yields are up a little bit and Fed Fund futures for the October

meeting went from 101% to 95%. Now granted, we're splitting hairs, it's fully priced in. But I find it interesting that we're losing a little of that intensity that we had on that week ADP jobs report. If you look at a tenure, today's very important because the lowest yield close we've had since the Fed eased on the 17th is 4.09. We could challenge that today. There you see the low yield close of the year was virtually 4% in early April, and that's

also very significant. It has technical significance. A close below that level will bring in more buying, pushing yields lower from a technical vantage point. And finally, the dollar index. So the curve's flattening, but the dollar's firming. Here's a two-day of the dollar. It doesn't look anything like the yield charts.

It continues to do a bit better. We made our low close of the year, as you see there, right around mid-September. And now it looks as though we're going to continue to move a bit higher. Anything above 99 would be considered a very important close technically. We're not quite there yet. Brian, back to you. All right, big move there in the dollar last today. See if it continues.

Rick Santelli. Thank you. All right. After the break, we're talking Tesla. Delivery estimates crushing, or deliveries crushing estimates. But what happens now that the federal EB tax credit is gone? Dan Ives loves Tesla. He's here to talk about that and more.

Next. All right, welcome back. Let's talk Tesla. It had a monster big beat in sales last quarter. The question now, though, is how much, if any of that was because of the end of the federal tax credit, Tesla stock's been ripping. It's up nearly 60% in just six months. And Dan Ives still loves it.

It's got a $600 target on the stock, which is at $442, and change. Dan is global head of tech research at Wed Bush Securities. And I got to say, we didn't even plan this, but our Tesla chart, let's bring it back up, perfectly matches. I mean, that's your yellow, orangish jacket. I think that's a bullish. We literally had no, this was not planned. look at that. I think that's a sign. Why do you love Tesla so much? Look, I mean, to me, look, the main thing is my view is on the autonomous and robotics side. I mean, I think this now,

when it comes to, it's going to be one of the best AI plays over the next few years. That's why we think it's going to be a $3 trillion mark cap. But if you look at the demand, the demands turn around. I mean, this is a bounce back quarter that shows, yeah, still more work to do. But this is now setting up for what I believe is going to be a historical 2006 because the AI revolution now comes Tesla. Well, it better because the lead of the show with Dan Varroo. You're Dan Ives, by the way, he's Dan Varroo,

was that every small cap stock in America combined is still smaller than Nvidia. The same is basically true with cars. Every major car company in the world combined can leave a couple out are the same size or smaller than Tesla. Does that worry you at all? Look, I mean, I was just in Detroit, and I think, you know, you're definitely seeing some turnaround GM and maybe, you know, even Ford.

Yeah, on big SUVs. But, yeah, exactly. By the way, gas guzzlers. But the reality is, is that Tesla is not an auto company. I mean, I don't mean Tesla is a car company. I think Tesla is truly a disruptive technology AI play when I think about, because the future is ultimately autonomous. I mean, when I think about autonomous and robotaxis and what. what's going to ultimately happen 30, 35 cities in the next year.

That is a trillion dollars alone from a valuation perspective in terms of a physical AI play. So that's why I think it's in Annapolis Orange is what Tesla's doing the rest of the auto sector. They're trying to play catch up. Connected dots, okay? I get the autonomous. I'm on the turnpike. I know where you live. You know where I live.

I'm on the turnpike all the time. It's like demolition derby at this point. Cars are just going off in the woods. Everybody's on their phone. Half the people are stoned. I have no idea what's going on. I wish everybody had an autonomous car. It's going to look in the camera and say that.

But we're a long, because then we'd all just kind of cruise along the same way. We're a long way from that, Dan. A long way. How do we get there? Well, first off, when you look at Tesla, I mean, today, let's call it 15% have full self-drought in terms of FSD, we think that's going to go to 50% of the next few years. So from a margin perspective, from a software perspective, that's going to be a game changer alone as that happens over the next few years.

But in terms of autonomous, I mean, it's our view, 80% of autonomous world is going to be Tesla in terms of globally. So when you look over the next few years, you're talking about, let's say, 2 million vehicles, we're talking about like eventually you'll begin a 4, 5, 6, 7 million vehicles. I could argue when that doesn't even include robotics in terms of optimist that together could be more than the value of the company today. So that's our view what's happening in this Tesla. story is that the AI revolution, especially now with must back to being a wartime CEO, I mean, I think front and center, that's what we think $600 is probably conservative. I don't know about the, I'm the car guy, and I can tell you what Tesla has done, and I've

driven, I've owned EVs, I've driven a lot of them, what they realized is weight is the enemy, keep the car light, and you can get more range, because if you do the, what is it, Ricardo Montoban said, the fine Corinthian leather, the way that we've been sold luxury now, cars are heavy, Weight is the enemy of range. I think that's why Tesla is winning against many of their companies. Does this also go to your very bullish view and possible M&A target of Lyft? I mean, we put out our M&A target. I mean, I believe Lyft in the next six to nine months is ultimately acquired as a top acquisition candidate because it's the view of autonomous.

It's a view whether it's a strategic, whether it's a financial buyer. Lyft is one. If you combine that with an autonomous play, I think that's the future. I mean, that speaks to really this convergence that we're seeing in tech, autos, and you can say energy and some other sectors. Where do they fit, though?

You got an Uber. Uber just seems to get all the attention. Sure. It also seems to get all the rides. I know it's not being tongue-in-cheek. Road in a Waymo, by the way, out in Los Angeles a couple times. That was pretty cool. It was a little weird at first, but then when you get used to it, you're like, oh, there's no driver.

I don't know if that's good or bad. bad. Remember, they're probably, somebody is probably always listening regardless. Where does Lyft fit in? I think, look, the issue with Lyft is that obviously when it came to food delivery, mobility, and also being only a domestic player, but you look at what they have from a ride share perspective in terms of that, you know, in terms of that network, if you combine that with ultimately autonomous technology, that I think is how maybe on the strategic side, PE is going to look at names like Lyft. And look, we just think this is going to be a tidal wave of M&A that happens in tech. Because with the AI revolution still, we think bomb in the second inning, you are going to continue to see this bull market play out. And that means strategic and financial buyers are going to be aggressive. I know you're bullish on Nvidia.

I know you're bullish on Tesla. I know you're bullish on AI. I think AI is amazing. I think it's going to do amazing. It already is. It will do even more amazing things down the road. But is it also possible that certain parts, the market are wildly overvalued because of it.

We got quantum computing stocks that are up 1,000 percent. Stocks nobody's ever heard of have doubled or tripled or up 5 or 600 percent in a year, Dan, because everybody's just throwing all their money at everything that has the word AI in it or the letters. And hoping. A lot of this, I think, Dan, is gambling, not investing. I don't know. Look, I mean, the reason we talk about our Ives AI 30, like the 30 names that we've used, the winners, Not everyone's a winner.

Just because they say AI 40 times in a conference call or they put it on PowerPoints, I think over the next six, nine months, that's what's going to separate the winners from the impostors. But that creates the opportunity, in my opinion, in terms of what's happening in tech, is that the numbers are going to speak for themselves,

the use case are going to speak for themselves. And you have names like Palantir, right? They were a teenager. Now, you know, obviously going to what I believe is $200, hours because they've shown it. But it's all purely in showing the execution that will separate him. By the way, next to Dan Ives,

Alex Karp may be the best interview. I mean, next to Dan Ives. I think Karp is in that Mount Rush more, you know, when you look at CEOs with Jensen, with Nadella, with the others, and, of course, always an epic interview. Always an epic interview. Great hair, by the way.

And Dan Ives, thank you. Great hair, by the way. By the way, you and I are both. I mean, you know, just look at this. Exactly. Flowing locks. It's just, you know, look, it's. like the Erie Canal locks.

Exactly. Dan Ives, thank you. All right. Coming up, some power picks are here. Stephanie. Link is here and she has got more under the radar names. It's like an opportunity Thursday here on Power Lunch. We're back right after this.

All right. Welcome, but welcome back. Happy Thursday. Earlier in the show, we gave you some stock picks in small caps. We didn't. Dan Varroo did. Now let's link it to something a little bit bigger. Your next guest is Chief Investment Strategist

at Hightower, her name, Stephanie Link, star of CNBC, one of our favorite people. Stephanie, thanks for joining us here on Power Lunch. Hey, Ryan. How are you? I'm doing great. And you got me thinking about Jennifer Garner, not because she's taking some company public, but because I can't watch TV for an hour without seeing Jennifer Garner and Samuel L. Jackson try to sell me a Capital One credit card. but there's so much more to that business than just the cards. Tell us why Capital One is also one of Stephanie Link's favorite stocks.

Yeah, and it's a fairly new position for me. I am bullish on the consumer because of the labor market wages, the fact that the consumer continues to spend. But the real reason I bought it is because they of the Discover Financial acquisition that they closed in July. And it's a game changer, Brian. It is one plus one equals three in my mind. because they bought a payments network company with size and scale.

And that's what you actually need. And so I think you're going to see a re-rating of the company over the coming years. And in the meantime, $2.6 billion in synergies are expected, double-digit earnings. And I think that they can do something close to $26 in earnings power. And, of course, they've got a lot of excess capital, 500 basis points more than they need in excess capital. So I think you're going to see buybacks and dividends and that sort of thing as well. Let's talk about the mystery chart because if you're in logistics, no doubt you've seen the XPO trucks on the road, built by a guy named Brad Jacobs, kind of an under the radar guy.

Everybody I talked who's like Brad Jacobs works eight days a week, 25 hours a day. He just works. That's what he does. He's now running QXO, which is a home products distributor. Is Brad Jacobs part of the reason that you like QXO? It's, yes, a big part of the reason. And also, he's putting a billion dollars of his own money into this company. He is an M&A master. He has done 500 deals in his career. He's been at United Waste, XPLU mentioned, United Rentals, made me a lot of money in all those names over the years. And I like the housing and the commercial and residential building products distribution business because it's an $800 billion total addressable market.

These guys have best in class margins, best in class EBITDA, trading in a four multiple point discount to its peers. Yeah, and he just gets into established businesses like logistics and trucking, does what he does and wins a huge market share. Your latest buy is Coinbase. Yes. Where do they fit into the Bitcoin, digitization, decentralized finance ecosystem? I'll tell you, I do not know, and I'm not the, expert on where the price of crypto Bitcoin is going. But I do like the exchanges because all I need is a buyer and a seller. So no matter what the price is. And so I think this is definitely a risk-on

way to play lower interest rates, growth. They have a very diverse product offering. They have 240 different types of cryptocurrencies, 100 million users. And they have three different ways of they getting revenues, transaction revenue, subscription revenues, and as well as blockchain technology. So it's kind of my, I want to say like a chicken way of playing Bitcoin or crypto, but I like the company and I think it goes much higher. It's massively lagged Robin Hood, by the way, massive. Yeah, well, a lot of stocks have lagged Robin Hood, which is just absolutely sore this year. By the way, you say chicken, there's nothing wrong with being foghorn leghorn was a chicken, and he was, you know, he tended to survive every episode. Boeing, on a more serious note, Boeing,

$218. It's been your top pick for a lot. a while. It remains your top pick. It's gone through a lot. Don't need to remind our viewers of that. What is the bull case now on Boeing? Yeah. So it's a duopoly in aviation, right, with Airbus. They have combined, both of the companies have 13,000 planes in their backlog, something like seven and a half to eight years worth of backlog. This has never been a demand problem, Brian. It was always a product safety problem, culture problem. And the CEO, Kelly, Ortberg has now been there a little over a year, and he's changing all of that. And he's making strides. And the fact that the FAA is willing to lift the restrictions on the company in terms of

output of the 737 max from 38 to 42 to now 47, I bet it gets over to 50. These are up per month. The fact that the FAA did that just tells you that the relations are getting fixed. And that's a big part of the story. When Kelly Orkberg was at Rockwell, Collins stock soared 107% in a five-year time. So I think he's doing all the right things. The reason we care about output is because the more you can output, the more you can deliver, the better the free cash flow. So I think you're going to go from negative $3 billion in free cash flow this year to something like $10 to $11 billion by 2028.

And that's what this stock trades on, free cash flow. Wow, very bullish for you there on Boeing as well, some new names, like the QXOs of the world that we don't talk about a lot, but probably should. Stephanie Link, always great to have you on the show. Come back anytime. Thanks. Thank you, Brian. All right, you're very welcome. All right, up next, of course, we're back to AI.

An Open AI's quest for total tech and energy domination continues with two big pieces of news you've got to hear and you will hear it, but only if you stay here. We're back after this. All right, welcome back OpenAI, wrapping up a massive $6.6 billion secondary share sale on the private markets. The sale will help compensate employees because now they can sell so of their internal stock. McKenzie Sagalos in San Francisco to help us understand exactly what's going on. Mack. So, Brian, the headline here is that Open AI employees do not want to cash out.

The company had cleared the way for eligible current and former staffers to sell more than $10 billion worth of shares. Instead, a significant portion of that allocation went unsold. And in terms of the buyers in the secondary sale, that list includes names like Thrive, SoftBank, and Dragonere. Gulf money is also in the mix with Abu Dhabi's MGX participating. And Brian, a source familiar with the tender, says that this under-subscription is being viewed internally as a sign of confidence, being seen that as a win more than anything,

you've got employees choosing to hold their equity, and then outside investors are still eager to buy-in an evaluation that is nearly doubled from $300 billion earlier this year. Does it say anything about the so-called talent wars for AI where they're literally just throwing $10,000 bills of people? That's a huge part of what we're looking at here. This is Open AI's second major tender offer in less than a year. They had a $1.5 billion deal with SoftBank back in November, giving staffers a liquidity exit if they wanted it with their shares. But this is part of a broader trend among top private companies like Stripe and Databricks using secondary sales to reward employees.

and keep talent without going public. And it comes as Open AI faces growing pressure to hold onto its best researchers with rivals like Meta, reportedly dangling those nine-figure pay packages to lure them away. And you've got the SORA, you've got automated movies, and there's like a new actress, but she's an AI actress that people are watching. It's a thing. People, Hollywood hates it. I get it.

What does this say, or where are we in the, the, the, the, the, image and movie generation part of this AI story. So SORATU was this consumer-facing app that launched this week on Tuesday. It's still gated, so people are on a long waitlist, but is incredibly impressive, the hyper-realistic video that's being generated by it, a ton of buzz around it, the number three most downloaded app on the app store, even though a lot of people are still waiting to get off the wait list. But what it says about Open AI's larger strategy is this.

Sam Altman yesterday specifically spoke to the fact that this, could be a key part of their monetization story. They also got into e-commerce and taking a cut from merchants earlier this week. The company is looking to make money because it is spending so much money. You and I talked last week about how it's committed to nearly a trillion dollars in infrastructure buildout, but also key here, Brian, is that video generation is a source of training data that they can feed back into the algorithm. That's the missing piece to get to AGI. So it's significant on both fronts. And yes, there's been a lot of talk about blowback and we can dig into that, but there are some pretty meaningful impacts of this rollout this week.

It is, and it's going to be a big fight, I think, in Hollywood, but that's south of where you are. So we'll just leave it there. Mackenzie Sagalos, thank you. All right. Let's stay on this OpenAI story, because this show has been, we think, appropriately skeptical of some of the company's energy goals. Open AI is announcing deals that require massive amounts.

some energy sources that simply aren't there and may not be for years or decades to come. And now it is not just a quest for power, it's a quest for memory. Open AI now wants to control about 10% of the world's supply of memory chips. The very real Christina Parts of Nevelis is here. With more on that, is that even possible?

Do we make enough that you could just take 10% of the market? So there's only three players that play into this market, especially for high bandwidth memory that is used in AI infrastructure, SK-Hinex, Samsung, and Micron. The story that you're alluding to today is that OpenAI has signed a letter of intent with SK-Hinex as well as Samsung. And so that's why you saw their respective stocks just blow up. A letter of intent, though, is, you know, the preliminary stages before a finalized deal. So it does not necessarily mean that this will follow through. That is the overarching theme with so many of these headlines.

Early stages, you know, none of it is concrete numbers. And over cash, not some of them with Invidia, yes, but that is the problem. So for this particular situation, Open AI is trying to take advantage of gathering as much high bandwidth memory as possible. Why? Because you can't operate these advanced AI models, large language models, without the memory. So it is a very smart move on their part that they're literally trying to control the entire stack. They get the GPUs. They're building the data centers. And now they're going after the memory as well. And so that is a positive reaction for some of the memory names.

Micron wasn't mentioned in there, but Micron could stand to benefit, or maybe they don't want to commit to a company like Open AI because they're already at max capacity, and they don't want to make promises to build if Open AI backs out, you know, a year from now. And so that's a big concern we have to keep in mind is that these companies can still back out because none of these are non-binding agreements. That's the point I think we've tried to make. I've tried to make about energy is that you can say what you want. Here's my metaphor or analogy. I can never remember which one it is. let's say we have a cruise line CEO that comes on the show, right, as we do. And the biggest cruise line in the world, I think is about 6,000 people plus or minus, right? So let's say you get a cruise CEO that comes on and says, Christina, we're going to build a 50,000 person cruise ship. And you're like, well, you mean 7,000 because the biggest is six. No, no, we're going to build a 50,000 person cruise ship.

Like, that's great. And you hope it happens. But some of these numbers that we're starting to hear are so big that you just wonder, is this possible? any time in the next few years or decades. Well, to your point about power and these big numbers, I'm assuming that with Georgia Power, for example, or Alabama, they need financial guarantees because you can't just give out power to all of these companies, which is why they're saying maybe you need to spend $100 billion now up front, maybe 80% of costs, to secure the 100 megawatts of power. So I wonder if that's playing a role as to why Open AI

and many of these other larger firms are seeking out such large, contracts from other players like NVIDIA, Oracle, they signed up a $300 billion deal. And all of this plays together. And I think to your point in what you bring up often on the show is that these stories are all intertwined with the same players. And the same players that drive much of the S&P 500, the same players that are contributing to our GDP, maybe just a few weeks ago. We saw that AI spending contributed more to our real economy than actual spending on

consumer goods, which is incredible. And AI spending does include data centers, construction. It's amazing. There's no doubt. So as Dan Varu said at the top of the show, 30% or around there, he was sort of off the cuff of capital spending in the entire S&P 500 is AI related. Nobody's doubting AI's greatness. And then it will change the world. It's going to do amazing things.

It already is. It's just the question of whether or not some of these companies or some of these numbers like you're saying, they're going to, oh, they want to control 10% of the world's memory markets. Well, I want to have more hair. It doesn't mean it's going. Doesn't mean it's going to happen. I mean, I could buy it, I guess. You could go to Turkey.

But to your point, you can throw out these numbers now, especially here in the United States, because you want to be seen in a positive light. You want to be seen, if you guys all saw the digit that Brian Sullivan just raised at me off screen. But what happened is that these companies are making big promises, especially on U.S. soil. Why? Because it's putting them in a positive light for President Trump. He's still going to be in power for the next three and a half years. There's a lot of tariffs and a lot of other export controls, etc.

that can come down the line are blockages of building data centers. So when you start putting out these big headlines, and this is that theme again, you know, I'm promising. Because it's a headline. By the way, you are number one. I just want to make that very clear that you are number one. He's doing this guy. And that's it. Number one, one lap to go.

And here's the thing, all these numbers, I just want our audience to understand that when Christina Portsenevolus or anybody else's network or John Ford, we're talking. to Jensen Wong and these amazing Sam Altman, McKenzie, all these amazing people talking to other amazing people. None of this is happening yet. It will. Some of it is. Well, think of the 40 plus billion dollars that Nvidia is bringing in an actual quarter or the fact that maybe chat GPT will hit 100 billion users by end year. Maybe, yes. Or what is it? Opening I expecting to triple sales to 12.7 billion dollars by the end of this year. So that is the argument that we are not in a bubble because most of the spending is backed by large hyperscalers that have the free cash flow, with the exception

of maybe Oracle that is seeking out a lot of debt. I mean nuclear power plants are under construction in America right now? Zero. I mean natural gas-fired power plants are new ones, not expansions. Zero. So all that we're talking about, we need all this power. You know how long it takes to build those things? I'm not being... I'm being... No, no. So here's the thing. I would tell all of my viewers and listeners out there, number one, I love you. You're number one. Number two, Don't go to law school because law school ruins your mind. My wife calls me worst case scenario, Sullivan, because...

No, what I'm saying is that the job is to sort of analyze negative outcomes. Nobody's saying there's going to be a negative outcome. I just want to put some of these numbers that you report so well, and we report so well in context. One point to that. Then I question the rally that you're seeing some of the chip names, because when you are building out said data centers, it could take even three years to get off the ground. So all of this run up in stocks, Intel, for example, with a potential AMD deal, which AMD is called pretty much speculation, is that justified when something like this is three to four years down the line to even start happening. So why are we running up the stocks now?

Will you have the patience to hold a lot of these names just over the next three or four years? Look at this poll that I put on X. It's early. So here's the poll I put on X. And by the way, on LinkedIn, go and vote. This is open for a day. LinkedIn's open for more. If any of these public or private AI stock even hints at cutting spending or earnings, the stock market will.

A, crash, B, fall. C, ignore it. D, none of the above. For some reason, 5% of you amazing people said none of the above. It's weird. About 78% said crash or fall. That's all I'm saying is that the market is speaking and saying, we're worried. Just take this excellent, number one, reporting with a grain of salt. If you are a retail investor or anybody investing right now, you have been proven correct when you buy the dips

and you stay on with this narrative of the AI theme, which is why I can agree with you or not. I'm a journalist regardless. They're proven right every time they keep buying into these names, which is why it's so hard for them to start selling to your point, questioning it. Why, if everybody else is buying and the stocks keep climbing, I need to make that money, so I'm going to stay in.

We should all go to Turkey. And get hair implants. Is that where they, that's where they do it? That's where they do it. On the cheap. Yeah, Korea for the plastic surgery and Turkey for the hair. I'm sure there are other countries for other body parts. If I'm off next week, I don't want anybody speculate about anything.

Okay. I'm off tomorrow, actually. I'm not going to Turkey. Well, we'll know, guys, because this part over here, that's what we'll change. Well, or maybe I'll just flip it over. Christina Parsonevillis. Put the parts in parts and Evansonevilus. Get out of Angelica Peebles for a CNBC News update.

Hey, Brian. President Trump has reportedly declared drug cartels operating in the Caribbean as unlawful combatants, and the U.S. is now in a, quote, armed conflict. That's according to the New York Times, which says that congressional committees were notified of the designation yesterday. Last month, the U.S. carried out three known deadly strikes against alleged drug smugglers. A federal judge today denied Elon Musk's request to move the Twitter lawsuit he's facing from D.C. to Texas. The SEC sued Musk over his late disclosures of his stake when Biden, the platform. Musk said he was too busy to defend himself in Washington. The judge said that while

she takes Musk's convenience seriously, he has considerable means and already spends at least 40% of his time outside Texas. The NFL plans to launch men's and women's pro flag football leagues in the next couple of years. Commissioner Roger Goodell made the announcement today at a sports conference in London. Flag football will also debut in the 2008 Olympics in L.A. Brian, back over to you. All right, Angelica, Peoples, thank you very much. All right, on deck, how you can make real money from the growing digitization, he said, of money. All right, time now for Market Navigator, according to a report in the technology research site, The Information, the Securities and Exchange Commission, is considering a move that would allow stocks to trade on the blockchain, similar to cryptocurrencies. For such a new idea, your next guest would pick one of the oldest names as tech as her trade around that idea.

idea. Joining us now is Jessica Inskip, director of investor research at stockbrokers.com. Jessica, great to have you on Market Navigator. So this is like new and potentially very fancy and whatever. Why is IBM one of the oldest names in the book, the right company to play on that trade? Yeah, well, they're constantly transforming and innovative. And in the heart of markets, it's all about access and the fundamental level. and tokenization is going to give us that access. IBM, even though it's the oldest company, went through some management changes, actually, back in 2020,

and we're seeing the fruits of that. We've been talking about Watson X lately, and there's been changes really fundamentally within IBM. But what I think is interesting, if we look at positioning overall across the market within IBM, the changes that we've seen that this new management has brought to fruition is not reflected within positions. that's dominated by value in dividend investor funds, which means there are opportunities for

repositioning further strengthening a bull case. But IBM, because of their old history, this is what really supports it, Brian. They're deeply embedded in enterprise information technology, architecture, governance framework, and really regulatory compliances, working in the banking industry my entire life. If you are looking to do something like tokenize assets, and securities. Think about the transformation from mutual funds to ETFs, zero commissions, now tokenization. There is a lot of regulation that occurs around that. And IBM is a key player with that because they already have those deep enterprise relationships. They have a consulting arm. So they're in the room when these decisions are even being made.

Used to be, you called up your broker, E.F. Hutton, you spent $100 to buy two shares. Then it pretty much got cheaper. Then it went online. Now it's basically free and it's whatever. Do you think that this tokenization, potential tokenization of stock trading, is it akin to that? Is it on that level of change when it comes to how we invest? Absolutely, I do. So, and I think this is related to crypto in a way, meaning cryptocurrency is something we're talking about quite a bit. But when I speak to brokerage firms, cryptocurrency, those separate legs that they have,

that is more of access from a global perspective. If you think about it, if you're a foreign investor and you are utilizing and accessing our U.S. markets, it's either to fund your account via crypto than it is to fund it via a U.S. bank account. There's some really efficiencies that are there, then bring on 24-7 trading or that 25 trading now that we're seeing. That is all about global access, but we need participation. We have broader participation as in interactive brokers has been doing 24-7 trading for quite some time, but there isn't a lot of volume there. So we needed a market for that now that Robin Hood has started that. Charles E-trade has as well. So that's more access. tokenization is another layer

to that. Even Vlad, hours ago, is at a forum in Singapore that said it's coming in like a freight chain. And it's going to be available absolutely for all of our global investors. It's an important component of that. Now he's just got a first name, Vlad. I assume we're talking about Tenev, who is the founder and CEO. of Robin Hood, not Vlad Guerrero or Vlad the Impaler. Jessica Innskamp loves IBM on the tokenization potentially of stocks. They've been hot, both IBM and Robin Hood. Jessica, thank you.

All right, coming up, how Warren Buffett just made another big deal and how one company got the cash if they need. Warren Buffett helping out Occidental Petroleum. Again, the reported deal is confirmed. Purcher Hathaway, buying Occidental's OxyChem unit for $9.7 billion. The market apparently does not like the price, which was slightly below what was earlier reported. Oxy shares down about 7% right now. Oxy CEO, Vicki Hollab, talked about what they plan to do with the money from the sale on Squawk Box earlier today.

This is the last step that we needed in our major transformation that we started 10 years ago, which was to become more U.S.-based. Back when I took this role in 2015, 50%, only 50% of our production was in the United States. Now, 83% of our production is in the United States in the high-quality areas, the Permian, the DJ, the Pouta River, and the Gulf of America. Even with this deal, Oxy's debt level still higher than many other oil and gas companies, but hollab added. This deal may finally lower debt enough to start buying or re-buying its own stock. We'll be right back after this. Thanks for watching. I'll see you Monday. Posing Bell is now.