Power Lunch - Stocks rally across the board 9/18/25

Episode Date: September 18, 2025

CNBC's Steve Kovach sits down with Microsoft president Brad Smith to talk data centers and AI. Joe Lavorgna, Counselor to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, discusses the economy and rates with Brian Sullivan.  And what should you make of investing in big tech right now? Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Your post-fed playbook, the deal rocking the semiconductor market and a little peek behind the curtain at some Microsoft AI ambitions. Welcome to Power Lunch, everybody. Happy Thursday. I'm Brian Kelly is off today. We've got an action-packed hour for you. Stocks rising in new highs after the Federal Reserve makes its first rate cut of the year. And signaling more doveish may be on the way. That's got investors plying money, buying stocks back into the tech trade. And speaking of, the deal.

DeJure, Intel shares soaring after NVIDIA agrees to invest in the company. We'll ask an NVIDIA investor for his take. Oh, and we have a power player in the house for you, literally. The CEO of Red Hot EOS Energy is here to talk energy, batteries, the AI race, and more. There's a lot ahead. We got a big hour ahead, but I believe we're going to be starting the show in America's great upper Midwest. It has to do with Microsoft because you are about to get a first look inside Microsoft's AI data center in Wisconsin.

It is just south of Milwaukee in the old Foxcon location. Steve Kovac in hard hat and orange vest is there. And I guess he's deroged the vest in hard hat. But he does have a special guest. Steve Kovac, take it away. Thanks, Brian. Yeah, I did get rid of the hard hat because I'm outside now. here with Brad Smith, president of Microsoft here, to talk about this new AI data center in Mount Pleasant.

Your hometown, by the way, this is a homecoming for you, right? It's good. Five years growing up here as a kid. All right. So this is great. So we're sitting here. This facility right now, I just got to take a tour through it. It's really cool to see where all this spending is going. This facility in particular, $3.3 billion facility. You just committed to build another one next door to where we are right now for $4 billion. Now, let's just talk about all this spending and where it's going. One thing that we noticed in the last earnings report from you guys was that you guided towards 20 billion in spending this quarter, kind of implying $100 billion in spending for your full fiscal year. Is that what we should expect to see you guys spending on data centers like this over the next nine or ten months?

Well, last year, our last fiscal year, we spent about $85, $86 billion, and it's clear the number is going up. It's going up by, I'd say, a significant margin. And so, yes, you can expect us to keep making these kinds of investments because this is. This is what the industry, this is what the world needs. Now this facility that we're here, I actually got to look at some of the server racks. They're going to be loaded up with thousands and thousands of these Nvidia GPUs. Got to see how those are going to be housed and cooled and things like that. Invidia is also in the news today for something very interesting.

You probably know you're a strong partner with Nvidia, you're a strong partner with Intel. What is your read on that situation this morning where with Nvidia investing billions into Intel? Do you see this as a political play for the Trump administration? administration or is there something else going on here? Well, I'm not in a position to know the answer to that. I do know that we benefit in this country every day. Invidia is at the forefront of technology. Microsoft is at the forefront of technology.

Intel has long been a pillar of technology. And I think anything that's good news for Intel is great news for the whole industry. So I think there's promise to come. That's terrific. It seems like Intel shareholders and now the American public are like in this little return they're getting as well. Let's talk about AI demand. So I've heard your CEO, Satyna, say so many times, we cannot build data centers like the one we're sitting in front of fast enough. The demand is just so enormous we're going to keep spending and spending and spending.

I want to dive into that, though, and talk a little bit about where the demand is coming from. The presumption is, you know, the vast majority of it is open AI or related to open AI. Is that a fair assessment? Or are we seeing what, how does that compare to what other AI models? models and your partners are doing as well on your Azure Cloud. Well, I would never for a moment understate the importance of Open AI. They are constantly in the pursuit of greatness at the frontier. But in fact, we're seeing diversification. And this building is a testament to that.

When this opens early next year, this will be the most powerful AI data center in the world. And there's a lot of things that go into that. It has the most advanced Nvidia GPUs. It has more GPUs. More GPUs under one roof than any building on planet Earth. More than 100,000, literally hundreds of thousands of GPUs, all knitted together into a singular infrastructure and architecture

in terms of networking, systems, storage, and the like. And then the real question is, well, why? That's sort of, I think, what you're asking. And it is both demand to train the world's most advanced AI models for an open AI, for Microsoft. where we're not at the frontier, but right now we're working every day, building stronger models through Microsoft AI, but it's not just training models, which will happen here.

It's making those models available for what's called inferencing, for all the applications that people are building, whether they're selling them to customers or they're building them in-house. We are seeing growing demand across the economy, growing AI adoption, not just in the United States, but around the world. We keep spending, but every dollar we spend is based on a very sophisticated calculation. We're spending to meet demand and to meet the demand we see growing. And you can adjust that spend as necessary if the demand falters?

You certainly can make adjustments. But when you make investments at $3 or $4 billion at a time, you have to be looking forward, you have to be sophisticated in your forecasting. I think one of the things the investment community has come to expect, and I'll call it the Satya Nadella, the Amy Hood era, is very sophisticated financial forecasting. And we're applying that same sophistication to AI and AI demand and AI spending that we've long applied to every other part of our business backed up by this technological innovation. It's a mistake for anyone to look at a data center and say, oh, anybody can put chips and, a rack together, no. If you want to build what we have built here,

this will be 10 times more powerful when it opens in early 26 than any existing supercomputer on planet Earth. And that's because of the sophistication of everything from the engineering design, the partnership with Nvidia, even things like liquid cooling so that you can run the infrastructure at this scale. I was on the phone with you earlier this week,

and you announced that massive investment in the United Kingdom. Your CEO, Soutineda, was there today and last night at that white tie dinner, excuse me, can you help us understand a little bit how these deals come through? Clearly, the White House was involved in some way. When the president comes to you, how does that work? Do they say, what can you give us for this trip? Do you offer, or does the offer go the other way? How do those discussions even start with a company like Microsoft when you're going to be,

be writing a massive check tied to a state visit with the president. Well, the first thing I would say is the obvious. Microsoft is a business. It's a company. It's not a country. It's not a government. So every investment we make needs to make good business sense. So just as we're seeing growing demand in the United States, we're seeing growing demand in the United Kingdom.

We have a very good, healthy dialogue, both with the White House and with the folks at number 10 Downing Street, Prime Minister Starber, in the UK. I give huge credit to both the White House and the prime minister's team for putting in place the fundamental framework that I think is fostering stability in the trade of relationship between the two countries, encouraging investment in each country and across the Atlantic. I give huge credit to the White House, the President Trump, and to Prime Minister Starmer for putting in place the kind of regulatory stability that will ensure we can invest in the UK. And the customers in the UK can trust as they always have our technology from Microsoft, from the United States, knowing that they have a reliable source of supply. That's the framework. And then when we talk about the specifics, because the framework's in place, because the demand is there, we can step forward and make the biggest investment we've ever made in the United Kingdom.

$30 billion. Yeah, $30 billion over the four years of the Trump presidency. Finally, let's go back to Open AI for just one second. Last week, you guys announced that you've reached an understanding and a framework deal with this renegotiation of your relationship with Open AI. Can you help fill in some of the gaps there that we don't really know some of the details? For example, what can we expect a revenue share agreement to look like between Open AI? What kind of a stake are you calculating your stake will be worth at the end of these negotiations?

Well, look, I know you call this power lunge. Yeah. But it's not, you know, spill the food out of my mouth. all over the table. But you can. No one's just like it's fine. We're excited about the framework that was announced last week. You know, it is the foundation for the next chapter in what I think is an extraordinary

business partnership between Open AI and Microsoft. And let's face it, neither of us would have gained the level of success without the other. And I think it's very exciting to now see what Open AI's transition will mean to a kind of for-profit enterprise. profit enterprise. Big benefit for the nonprofit with all of the right legal considerations in mind. More details to follow, but maybe we'll save that for lunch on another. Okay, we'll do a second power. They'll be dessert. How about that for this interview? All right, Brad Smith, President of Microsoft here in Wisconsin, hometown, boy coming back to build a $3 billion data center. Thank you so much for joining us. Brian, I'm going to send it back over

to you. Steve Kovac, Brad Smith, appreciate that. Just go down the road, by the way, to the brots stop. Good broths. Adam's family pinball games right up on 94. All right, let's run that cool, new sleek animation, can we? We ran it. Great. It's time for today's power play. Our new weekly segment highlighting all things energy,

and your next guest runs a company that should be on your radar. And by the way, it has been for many traders. EOS Energy, more than doubled in six months. It is the New Jersey-based company. They make batteries and other storage solutions. One of those is a plug and power all in one system. Oh, and by the way, most their product, made right here in America, Turtle Creek, Pennsylvania, hard on the edge of Pittsburgh PA.

Joe Master Angel is CEO of EOS Energy, and he joins us now. Joe, thanks for joining us. Thanks, Brian. You have a battery backup at that Microsoft site? Hey, I think following an AI story, that's going to be the big demand driver for storage as we look forward. Like, we need all in and all in energy strategy, and storage plays a role in helping meet the peaks of demand. You know what I mean? Like, that facility right there would be the perfect customer for. for EOS because that's what you do, right?

Exactly. So explain how the battery backups work. So what we do is we allow shifting supply to meet demand. So we could do anything from a two-hour discharge up to a 16-hour discharge. So it gives people the flexibility to ensure that they always have power when they need it. So when you think about one of these data centers, you can have fluctuations in power demand up to 50% depending on what they're doing. Our system allows you to meet those fluctuations while the rest of the grid continue. to deliver without disruption.

So let's assume during the day, everybody's on their devices, they're asking queries of chat jeep, whatever the hell they're doing, right? And then at night, the demand for power will go down. You're accumulating power during the evening. Right. So they can use more and supplement more peak times during the day. Yeah, what we're trying to do is make the grid more efficient. Use the assets more so that we can have more reliable power when we need it. the president, the current president, the old president, signed a deal, the inflation reduction

act, filled back better, basically, that had a bunch of incentives for, quote-unquote, new energy. I hate that term because the sun and wind. Me too. We're an energy company. By the way, the sun and wind have been around for a long time. Right. So there's that. The new president has removed a lot of those tax incentives.

How does that impact your business? For energy storage remained essentially unchanged for us. I think the other underlying fundamental for us is that, as you said, like 91% of the materials that go in our product come right from the USA. We build it all in the USA. We don't take it. We're not tariffed. And the 9% that we're not doing in the USA, we're working to get to 100%. We started this journey in the last Trump administration, and we've just kept working with all the local people to build up a supply chain.

But I'm told by many people and I'm in Wisconsin all the time. I love it was just in Pittsburgh. Right. You can't build anything in America. Not true. Not true. We still can build stuff. We still want to work.

We started off six years ago last week. We brought our first piece of equipment back from China to start manufacturing in Turtle Creek. It was two employees myself and a dumpster cleaning out an old building. Today we stand at 700 employees. Every employee in EOS has stock in the company. They come in every day wanting to prove to people. We could still invent, source, and build things in America for our future. Wow.

And you used to work at GEOS. By the way, I'm told in the audit department. We'll talk off camera about, you know, some of my colleagues when GE owned NBC. That's a different interview. What's your cost difference between China and the U.S. all in? Roughly. That's why we moved. That's why when I joined the company seven years ago, we moved the manufacturing back from China

because the landed cost was more competitive in the United States. We, you know, and doing that, like we got in a tourist and drove around what we would call the Rust Belt and found a bunch of suppliers that wanted to prove we could still build things in the U.S. Wisconsin, our equipment for the factory comes from Wisconsin, was built in Wisconsin. So this is a product like invented with American mines, using American materials, and built with American hands. We could still do things in this country. I do a lot with energy. I do a lot with oil and gas.

And so there's a lot, some people are like, well, you must hate this. I don't hate anything. Batteries are going to be a huge part of our resource and energy base for years and decades. to come, how much growth is there realistically on the battery side, managing energy flow, as you would say? I think there's going to be tremendous growth. So I spent half my career in the oil and gas industry. What we tried to do, like, I ran a turbo machinery business for eight years.

What we came about, as we said, we're an energy company. We want to build the reliability that you expect in energy. and we want that power to be there when you need it. So there's going to be growth here because what you're talking about is taking a gas turbine that's utilized probably 50, 60% of the time at its maximum efficiency. Our product allows you to run that gas turbine at a higher level efficiency. So yes. Because they take the power that may not be going to the data center, put it into your batteries.

Or to the grid. They put it into your batteries. Think about a parking lot on the highway when there's traffic. We take the electrons off the grid, park it for a little while, and put it back on when it frees up and there's demand for it. To keep the grid and balance. I love that. You have two sandwiches.

You only need one. You eat one. You put the other one in the fridge because you're going to have it later. That's basically what you're doing with power. Right. Yes. And like when you think about the company, we're spent a lot of time talking about the battery and the power demands of AI. There's energy for AI and then there's AI for energy.

So when you look at what we've done, very simple product, packaged safely, non-flammable, non-toxic, fully recyclable. And we surround that with software that's designed and built in America. and we hold the data here in the United States. So that critical security for the grid is provided by our solution. Joe Master Angel, EEOS Energy, the ticker EOSE. It's doubled in six months. And it makes me happy to hear that a lot of your employees are also going to benefit from that run.

Joe, appreciate that. Thanks, Brian. Thank you very much. And yes, you can build in America. All right, up next from one Joe to another, White House power player, Joe LaVornier will be here. We'll talk about the Fed's first rate cut of the year, stocks at record highs, maybe manufacturing in America.

Who knows? We're back right after this. All right, time now for a quick daily bond report. Despite Wednesday's fade, great cut, 10-year yields actually moving a little higher today, not down. Bond yields right around 4.1%. They briefly bowled below 4% earlier, but then pop back higher, which means if you were hoping that mortgage rates might keep going down, it's likely not going to happen, at least not today. Let's stay on bonds and stocks and markets because we've got new highs across the board for nearly all major averages on pace for new records.

The market seems to have adjusted to tariffs, but what happens if the Supreme Court rules that the tariffs are actually illegal? Would that hurt America's massive debt load? Let's talk about that and more. Joe LaVorneux is well-known to our audience as a markets guy, but now serves as counselor to Treasury Secretary Scott Besson. Joe, good to have you on the program.

Yesterday, you're very welcome. Yesterday, the Federal Reserve cut its overnight lending rate, But as we just showed our audience, bond yields are actually going higher today. Put your market man hat back on. What's going on? They're a little bit higher, Brian. But not much. Mortgage rates actually now are down to almost their lowest in about a year. They're still too high, but they're coming down. As inflation drifts slower, Brian, and as the Fed gets down to neutral, even the Fed's forecast do show the Fed eventually moving to neutral. That should help lower mortgage rates. Another thing that's helped a lot, of course, you highlighted about tariffs, the tariffs are raising a record amount of money. And as much as

people were worried and nervous about U.S. assets back in the spring, what's remarkable is if you look at estimated term premium across the G7, it's actually fallen in the U.S. It's lower than almost everywhere else. And that over time will also allow interest rates to come down because the U.S. thanks to President Trump's policies, is getting a more sustainable fiscal footing. Yeah, listen, obviously Stephen Myron's dissent, the half a percentage point cut suggestion, that got a lot of attention. Some people say his sort of dual role for now in the White House, and the Fed is not only unprecedented, but it's unfair. Your response? I mean, the thing is, last year at this time, the Fed cut 50 basis points. You look at the inflation

backdrop, very similar. Chair Powell's Supercorps, virtually no different today than it was a year ago. the trend is lower given the fact that there's more supply coming onto the economy because the one big beautiful bill and things like rents are moderating food and energy costs are down. But the Fed did cut 50 basis points. At the time, Brian, the three-month moving average on non-farm payrolls was $116,000. Right now it's $29,000. The economy that the Trump administration inherited was no way near as robust as people thought it was. The labor market was actually quite weak heading into January when the president took office. And yet the Fed only did 25 basis points. I can't speak for Stephen on this, but I understand why he would rationalize a much bigger

recalibration of rates. And by the way, the Fed even said itself it expects to cut rates further this year. You said the other day the Congressional Budget Office keeps getting some of their estimates wrong. The BLS administrator has been fired. Some people say the inflation date is garbage because it doesn't really reflect things like, you know, auto insurance and things that people actually pay. How much, Joe, should our audience trust government data right now? Look, the CPI don't think has the same problems that the payroll data have. Brian, in the last three years, if you exclude the brief period around the election last year, about 86% of the time, the payroll data have been revised down. They've been revised down by a record amount.

before I was lucky to take this role, working with the Treasury Secretary. There was a lot of consternation on Wall Street that they couldn't trust the payroll data because it was too volatile. It's moving in one direction. So there certainly needs to be a more wholesale approach of how the data are collected. Broadly speaking, as it relates to forecasts, though, I've argued for quite some time, and I think many are sympathetic to it. The CBO's estimate of potential GDP is much too low. They've got the economy growing under 2%, which makes no sense. It's not consistent with President Trump's first terms, a term. It's not consistent with the supply side initiatives that are in the bill that was passed in July.

We're seeing a CAPEX comeback. We've seen very strong strength in blue-collar wages, which means faster productivity. That's just not the stuff, Brian, of sub-2% GDP. In fact, right now looks like it's going to be two quarters in a row of 3% growth. So if you're in that kind of world, what's wrong, then? How do we fix it? So I think the thing is, well, we fix it. We have to slow the pace of spending, which the bill did, but importantly, we've got to have realistic assumptions on what the growth is likely to be, because that you could plan the future on. And when you're assuming such weak growth, you're going to get very poor fiscal outlook. Now, fortunately, the growth will be stronger than what CBO's got, and the tariffs are raising

a record amount of money, and the CBO actually may be right on this one. They think they could lower the deficits over a 10-year period by $4 trillion. So customs duties, the tariffs were collecting, that is very, very important. central to putting ourselves, Brian, on sound footing. And that's one of the reason why rates in the USF come down, where, as I said at the outset, they've gone up almost everywhere else in the world. Yeah, so, okay, we look at that then. We're trusting the data.

That's what I'm hearing from you, Joe, is that we want to trust the data, but there has to be ways to either fix it or is a better word, modernize it, Joe? Like, what's, you're a markets guy, and you're going to probably go back to the markets at some point down the road. What we don't want is for people to question every piece of economic data that comes out of the government. No, you're right. That's not good for anybody or the markets or anything. Brian, you're absolutely right. And E.J. Antonio's up for BLS had as basically said as much.

But again, the problem is that the integrity of the data was questioned well before the president removed the act, the commissioner at the time. The data needs, data can be volatile, but it can't move in the magnitude and the consistency in the case of the payroll data in which it was moving. And it could be response rates. It could be a lack of modernization or thinking outside the box and how to measure some of this data. So I think it does need a wholesale approach. It needs a fresh set of eyes. And I think that's what President Trump was getting at. We say, look, we've got to have data people can trust. And right now, I'd say the data hasn't been trusted, at least on the employment side for some time. Joe LaVorneum,

White House counsel to the Treasury Secretary, Joe. Always a pleasure to have you on CNBC. Thank you, Brian. No, thank you. All right, up next, no risk, no reward. Your next guest will lay out his best path to profits for the year end. All right, welcome back to Powell, and I'm Dominic Chu. Fed chair Jerome Powell was up front yesterday about the two-sided risks of weaker employment and firmer inflationary threats still remaining, saying that there is no risk-free path ahead,

but that does not mean that you can't manage your risk overall in your portfolio. So when it comes to money, where are the best opportunities in the market? Our next guest has some ideas. Today's market navigator is Brian Stutland, Chief Investment Officer at Equity Armour Investments. Now, Brian, the two-sided risks are that inflationary threat and a softening jobs market at the same time. One is at odds with the other with regard to lowering interest rates. What exactly can you do with your investments to make sure that you are best positioned for the risk and reward? Yeah, I mean, it looks like we're just in a world where we're going to have slightly higher inflation.

That's going to come. But hopefully we get bigger growth rates. right? And we get expansion in the economy. And for that, I want to be out of bonds. Bonds are not really providing the kind of value or the hedge in a portfolio or diversification. And so I'm looking at stocks. I'm looking at commodities. And that's kind of how I want to play it. I might use options to do so. But certainly, it's the stock market that's probably going to go higher. We've heard people say, don't fight the Fed. And it seems like that's the case, at least today and probably for the rest of the quarter. All right. So, Brian, where are the tailwinds going to be

the most profound? Which parts of the stock market are you looking at? Yeah, I mean, I think when we look in a lower interest rate environment, especially on the short end of it, it's really technology that's done it. I mean, you've had guests on here talking about AI and tech, and those are going to be the guys that lead it. The question is who? We have the base sort of the large language models in place. I think the next level are the guys like Oracle, Palantir, the ones that are sort of building the agents out, building productivity in corporate America. And just one quick follow of, how do you do it, with options or buying the stock outright? Yeah, I think names like Oracle or Palantara, I might look to buy a three to six-month dated call. I might finance that by selling a downside put because I think the downside is somewhat limited on some of these names, and that's how I kind of reduce my cost. But I'm going to use calls. The VIX is cheap. Volatility is kind of cheap. There's a lot of, you know, basically good feel in the market right now, and I use call options

to sort of express the upside in the market. All right, Brian Stutland, with a post-post-fed playbook there for technology. Thank you very much, Brian. I'll send things back over to you. All right. Dom and Brian, thank you. Coming up, some of the supersized stock trades that aren't getting a lot of attention anywhere else today, but

we will give them to you. Oh, by the way, Tom Lee, not the drummer, is here with all of it. That's next. All right, welcome back, everybody. There is a lot going on today, including the macro markets making new highs. It's quickly hit a few things that you might have missed today.

First, the small cap Russell 2000s on pace for a record close. It's notable because it's the third. last major index to hit a new record. We still got a close there. So the next hour and a half, whatever is going to be critical. Also rocking today, the big banks, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, American Express, not a bank, I get it. They're all at record highs. A few other under the radar stocks that are being bought and hitting new highs. Engine Maker Cummins, GE Aerospace, Corning, and industrial air firm Pentair. All those stocks at new record highs today, this is a very broad-based rally,

which is a great way to pivot to your next guest. Tom Leia Fund Stratt is with us. Tom, welcome. You can comment on all those moves or anything else if you'd like, but also I want you to comment on something that hedge fund billionaire David Tepper said on Squawk Box this morning. Listen. I don't think another ease matters, you know, as far as being too easy. It's going to be a little bit restrictive.

I don't know if they do too. Beyond that, it's going to be a little tricky. I think, because you've got to be careful not to make things too hot to have the other side of the mountain, which was really freaking ugly, you know, in 2000, in 2001, et cetera. All right, so let's bring in Tom Lee, not the drummer. Tom, what do you make? I mean, does the Fed, how much does the Fed really matter to the equity markets right now? The Fed still matters a lot because they are the most powerful institution in the world. And it matters because monetary policy relatively tight has kept the ISM below 50 for 31 months. And so corporate America has operated with a bit of caution keeping the car in low gear because they didn't know where inflation was going to be and they didn't know where monetary policy was. So I think when the Fed begins to ease, it's not just a move in interest rates, but it's a green light for corporations to get more confident.

And as you know, the ISM moving above 50 does not only revive economic activity, it probably also rejuvenates the labor market, which has been sluggish for what looks like more than 12 months. So does that mean if the Fed stays doveish or keeps cutting, that there's other newer legs to this pretty remarkable stock rally? Yes. And I might even say that I think that we could have growth recover without inflationary pressures. I think reflexively people the last few years think growth picking up means there's automatic inflation. That has not been the case for 25 years.

But I think if companies begin to expand, plus the fact that we know AI is driving productivity gains, and that's really a big tailwind for businesses. And then we know that there's initiatives around Wall Street boosting productivity because they're going to build on the blockchain. I think there's a path for growth to be stronger next year without a pickup and inflation. That's going to be very good for profits and for equities. Yeah, and listen, we've talked about many times, Tom, and I know you've talked about Scott and others as well. You've been long, you've been strong, you've been correct. But is there at some point, does this market take a breather?

It's getting, listen, as a 401K holder, I like it. But as an TV analyst who's been doing this for almost 30 years, I'm starting to worry about it a little bit. Yes, I mean, a pullback is going to be inevitable. But from a timing perspective, sentiment still remains staunchly negative. So, you know, I think that the gold standard is the AIAI net bulls, less bearers. That's been six consecutive weeks where it's negative. That's never really marked a mark atop. I mean, that has to flip positive and sustain for several weeks.

So I think if we're going to say between now and your end, Could the market pull back? I'd say it's possible, but to me, it's probably from higher levels. I think there was a lot of skepticism about even yesterday's FOMC. I had a lot of clients tell us they thought the stock market would sell off because 25 was priced in, but because almost everyone told me that, that was the consensus view. I think people were cautious into yesterday, and that's why we're seeing the groups that should rally big, like the small caps and the cryptos and the financials and even the Mag 7.

We might even get a record high for the Russell 2000, about, I don't know, 75, 80 minutes left to go. We'll see what happens. Tom Lee, we're going to let you go, but always appreciate you coming on, Tom. Thank you. Thank you. All right, you're welcome. Let's get out of Kate Rogers. We're a great CNBC News update.

Brian, President Trump praised ABC's decision to pull Jimmy Kimmel live off the air indefinitely, accusing the late-night host of saying a, quote, horrible thing about assassinated political activist Charlie Kirk. Well, Jimmy Kimmel was fired. because he had bad ratings more than anything else. And he said a horrible thing about a great gentleman known as Charlie Kirk. And Jimmy Kimmel is not a talented person. He had very bad ratings. And they should have fired him a long time ago.

So, you know, you can call that free speech or not. He was fired for lack of talent. Kimmel criticized the president and the MAGA movement in his monologue on Monday night. ABC announced it was indefinitely preempting the show Wednesday, just hours after broadcaster Nextar said it would pull the show off the air. Next Star has a multi-billion dollar deal to acquire Tegna pending before the FCC. FCC chair, Brendan Carr, who publicly warned ABC about Kimmel on Wednesday and then cheered the suspension, offered this explanation on CNBC today.

It was appearing to directly mislead the American public about a significant fact of probably one of those significant political events we've had in a long time. Kimmel has yet to comment. Meanwhile, just moments ago on Air Force One, President Trump said 97% of television networks are against him, and maybe their licenses should be taken away. Brian, back over to you. Dramatic stuff there. Kate Rogers, thank you very much.

All right, coming up in video making a big deal about Intel, literally, but does that mean you need to buy in? We'll talk about it. Next. Crypto Watch is sponsored by Crypto.com. Crypto.com is America's premier crypto platform. Well, it's 245 on the East Coast, and if you're just clawing out from under a rock, you've seen the big news today, Nvidia investing billions into Intel.

But why? Christina Parsonevilles knows. She joins us now. Our viewers are smart. They're not under a rock. But Intel, to your point, is up big because the most valuable AI company just wrote them a $5 billion check. Jensen Wong, the CEO, revealed, we, quote, kept it really quiet. This deal has actually been in the works since LipBooten became Intel CEO just six months ago.

So on today's press call that just ended about an hour ago, Jensen Wann explained this opens up, quote, brand new growth markets for Intel in AI infrastructure and consumer notebooks, PCs. The partnership has Intel building custom CPUs for Nvidia's data centers, as well as creating chips that combined Intel processors with Nvidia's graphics for PCs. That's $5 billion, which really just represents one. 1% of Nvidia's projected $500 billion in free cash flow for the next five years. Maybe I could say pocket change for Jensen Wong, but massive validation for Intel, which desperately needs an AI story.

The White House, too, wasn't evolved. InVIA CEO confirming on the press call that Trump was not involved with this deal. AMD, though, down about 4%, armed down, well, AMD's come back up. I should say down about 1%, armed down almost 4%. When I asked CEO Johnson Wong about arms, since they also make NVIDIA's CPUs, he said, quote, arm should not be down. You know, Midas touch didn't work. Arm is still down despite what Jensen said.

Intel finally has, though, the AI credibility it couldn't buy. Now they just have to execute. Brian? Well, guess what? Intel stock certainly executing today. Christina, thank you very much. All right, so let's stay with big technology. Obviously, the Nvidia Intel news, a big deal for both chip makers, for the companies to use these chips.

And oh, by the way, for investors in Intel at least today, Elsewhere in technology, though, meta, the parent company of Facebook, currently in day two of its MetaConnect event. Last night, Mark Zuckerberg, unveiling their new meta-rayband smart glasses. During his keynote speech, you can see that meta shares are up slightly about 1.5% with the market today. They have been on a tear this year of more than 30% joining us now to talk about it. ClockWise Capital Management, CIO, James Chalkmock, his firm's ETF, underweight, both Meta, and NVIDIA. James, good to have you on the program.

What's the issue with META? No, there's absolutely no issue with META. You know, we think it's attractively valued at about 27 times earnings or so. But at the same time, you have a growth curve that's growing nicely on the top line, but likely to be growing slightly slower on the bottom line on the years out.

So, you know, we still like it. We own the name. We think it should be in, almost all portfolios that are growth-oriented. But it's really a question of opportunity cost. Can we get higher returns over shorter timeframes elsewhere? Got it. Yeah.

And we're looking at these glasses that, you know, and I don't know, 10 plus years ago, we had Google Glass. By the way, made some ad-lib joke about killing a squirrel, riding my bike drunk, and John Oliver picked up on it. And kind of offended me because he said I couldn't ad-lib it, but I did. Anyway, are these going to drive any sales at all, James, or is this Google Glasses, too? No, I mean, I think the Raybans have been selling pretty well.

You know, I think that there's a lot of opportunity there, but most importantly, a lot of optionality as we look down the road. You know, the glasses were, I think, more of a Hail Mary attempt and really too early in the technology cycle to release those. But now, you know, I think Met is onto something here. and a lot of optionality, like I said. But the bigger point about meta and why we like it in the portfolio is, you know, we think ad tech, broadly speaking, is one of the few opportunities in the market

where you're actually starting to see revenue synergies from their AI-based investments, whereas most of the rest of the market is more cost-saving side. You know, we saw that last quarter with meta, and we think that the opportunities for that are increasing by the day. Yeah, and I don't know how it all works, but I'm assuming they must collect some data from this. Again, I'm guessing I don't want anyone to hold me to this. But if tech firms can figure out what you're looking at,

not just what you're looking, you know, like they obviously know what you're scrolling through on your phone, the websites you're going to, but if they actually know what you're staring at that can use that data, I'm not saying I like it, but it's going to provide a lot of ad money I got to imagine. I stared at the laced potato chips for $30,000. seconds, longingly.

Yeah, absolutely. I think the sky is the limit on that front. Obviously, they have to balance out the privacy concerns and considerations along with that. But I just keep coming back to one thing, optionality. And really, when we're investing within technology, what we're trying to lean into, you mentioned kind of we're underweight, Nvidia and meta. That's true. But really, what we're trying to balance out is out overweeding the companies with the most

optionality to them. These are grind higher stories. They should be in the portfolio. But convexity matters. And in a volatile market like this, you have to be able to maximize returns over shorter periods. Because, I mean, you could have one year price targets achieved in a matter of a week. And it's just the times that we live in. So what is undervalued then, James?

Like, what would be something that everybody's not already been buying? Yeah, I mean, we talked about this last time. I keep coming back to Bitcoin. I think crypto, Bitcoin specifically, continues to be the most underappreciated asset in the market and likely to be the best performing asset class in 2025 and thereafter. Two is, you know, there's, I don't think all semis are created equally.

You know, we're underweight NVIDIA, but we're dramatically overweight companies like Micron. You know, you think of higher convexity, higher return potential there as the multiple expands. And you don't have the China risk that you do with Individia. You know, there's smaller cap companies that we like that have, from an economic standpoint, the opportunities like Upstart KKR. So there's pockets of opportunities everywhere. I don't think you have to ride the whole big tech wave exclusively to participate and do it in a much more diverse.

Great interview. Some new ideas there. We appreciate it. James Shockmark, clockwise capital manager. James, thank you very much. All right. All right. Coming up, we're going to wrap it up with this.

That stock facing guns. government scrutiny alleging it's turning a blind eye to brokers and bots. The name and the story. Next. All right, before we go, here's one of the most read stories on CnBC.com right now. Live nation stock taking a hit. The Fed's suing its subsidiary Ticketmaster, alleging Ticketmaster is working with scalpers,

allowing them to buy up millions of tickets unlawfully. It is alleged to then later sell them to fans at huge markups. The FTC says this allows ticket. master to effectively triple dip on fees. I know a lot of you concert goers certainly have opinions about that. All right. There is a lot coming up left today on CNBC. In fact, at 4 p.m.

And overtime, do not miss FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson on closing bell overtime today. That'll be a big interview. Tomorrow here on Power Lunch, the other sport that NBA superstar Jimmy Butler is not only trying to master, but he is investing in. It's not basketball. We'll tell you what that is. Jimmy Butler, looking forward to him on the show. Folks, as always, thank you for watching Power Lunch.

I will see you on Fast Money Tonight. Closing bell starts right now.