Power Lunch - Stocks sink, meme stocks make comeback 10/22/25

Episode Date: October 22, 2025

Beyond Meat has volatile trading day in return of the meme trade. Google faces competition over its Search dominance. And how should you play these markets? 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.

Rough results from some key companies putting the record rally on pause, at least for now. Welcome to Power Lunch, everybody. Stocks are sinking as big tech and small caps fall more than one and a half percent. Netflix and Texas instruments, they're in focus on earnings, although Netflix blaming Brazil for its numbers. We'll get more on that in minutes. Ti has its own issues. We're going to dive into everything that is moving markets today, including oil, a rare update for crude lately. So is OPEC about ready to step in and maybe move some markets?

Plus, the NHL's latest big bet and why it could actually be good for a trading stock. We're going to connect the pucks between hockey, prediction markets, and trading. Only we could do that. Hi, everybody. We're going to get to all of that in moments, but it is the perfect day to have our beloved NASDAQ reporter, Christina Parts and Evelas, here on set with us. Because not only are we going to get to dive. into the Texas instruments and semiconductor news in moments. But we have to start with some really

bizarre trading in some smaller cap stocks. And yes, bizarre, not TV hyperbole. That's legitimately the right word for what I'm about to show you. Because if you look at just a couple of stocks right now, let's look at Beyond Meat and let's look at 1,800 flowers. They're on the move. Beyond Meat is now up 14%. 1,800 Flowers down about 12%. But those stock prices right there, they do not tell nearly the entire story. Earlier today, Beyond Meat stock was up 100%.

You heard that right. Beyond Meat doubled in the pre-market. Then they were down by about 10%. Now they're back up, about 14%. 1,800 flowers had not as much, but kind of a similar round trip. Beyond Meat is now up 400% in just one week. The stocks are lighting up the Wall Street Betts Forum once again with people posting screenshots of their trade. Look at that. So we got to talk, folks, about all of this, not just the trading, but really what's going on.

Christina Parts and Nelvelis here with us now. And Christina, listen, I understand there's a lot that we don't know. We don't know exactly what's going on. There's more buyers and there's more sellers. But to see a stock that doubles in the pre-market, a few hours later is lower and is now back up 15%. Oh, and by the way, has been halted a number of times. What do we know and what do we not know right now? The stock has been halted more than a dozen times. I would just check the NASDAQ list.

And the assumption is usually it's a swing anywhere for between 10 and 15%. This is a smaller stock, right? We said the market cap is smaller. You know, it's just trading it a few dollars. So what's that telling you? That's telling you the stock is not trading on fundamentals. It's trading on speculation. And I guess the biggest point is to how big of the float is being shorter right now

and whether this is a short squeeze. FACCET data said there's about 63% of the float shorted. So people betting that shares will fall. 63%. Yes, but we can let's not, I know that we've used that on our dot com. I'm not 100% sure on that number just yet. Well, it's going to change every hour with this kind of move. It's a large portion.

Let's just say a big, a massive number, 63%. A big chunk of people have bet that this share price would fall. This week, though, you had the retail crowd that was, you know, saying let's get beyond meat. If you check out Reddit, they had a post on there, really trying to drive up this name. But it's not just them adding to the volume today. There are some institutional traders that have gotten in. There's been big block trades. But the volume is incredible.

It's at 1.4 billion shares. This is over an hour ago. I was just in a meeting over an hour ago. That's 10 times the 30-day average for Beyond Meat. On what? They signed a deal with Walmart. There's no need. Yes, it's not.

So it is speculation to your point, and it definitely plays into the meme trading. It's not necessarily a bad thing. It's just people in the market looking to drive up a share price and make some out. And I want to be clear, and I think we have been, but we brought up 100 flowers as well. This is not a Beyond Meat story. So we're not picking on the company. No, no. They're probably, I guarantee you, Beyond Meat's head.

of investor relations, whoever that is, is probably about ready to rip their hair out, because stocks shouldn't double and then go down in a couple of hours. That's just, that is not healthy trading. It is not normal trading. I can say that as somebody who's been doing this for 30 years and was a former commodities trader. That is weird and bizarre. Has the NASDAQ come out and said anything about this at all?

Well, it's not, this is not their, no, why would they? The stocks move up and down. They did their due diligence by halting the shares more than 12 times today. You're saying it's not right. And I understand from your perspective. I say not right. I said it's weird. Weird.

But as an investor watching, it's an opportunity for them to make money. And they're going to say these swings are great. Every time a stock drops dramatically, that's an opportunity to buy. People have gotten their faces ripped off. But people have also made money. And this is the dynamics of the market in general. For every trade, there's a buyer and there's a seller. So for everybody buying, someone.

has sold. There are people who have made a fortune today on Beyond Meat, but I can guarantee you this. I'm going to look right at the camera. See, I'm looking at all of you out there or talking to them if they're on the radio, Christina, and saying this, there's a lot of people that have also gotten their faces completely melted off by a hundred, I don't want to say 100 percent decline, because that would imply the stock went to zero, but the stock went up 100 percent, and then a few hours later was lower. Yeah, and that's why we have, you know, these meme names and 1-800 flowers, go-pro, a donut for Krispy Cream, him and hers, or hymns, I should say, the list continues. They've even, you know, they remade that meme ETF that, you know.

And the ticker of that is actually meme. You told me that earlier today. Yeah, so they started back in 2021, shut down in 2023 of October, and now they've restarted again, I should say, 2023, and they restarted again early October. So what does that tell us about the market, right? So this meme ETF is coming back because perhaps there's froth in the market, or perhaps there's just people looking. They're trading.

They're trading. We're back to where we were a few years ago with some of these things. Nobody's saying there's anything. Right. And I've got to be careful wrong with it. But I'm going to say, as somebody who's done this, again, a long time, this is bizarre to have a stock. Beyond me, it's a small cap stock. But it's not a penny stock.

It's not one cent going to two cents. Because that, my math tells me, is also a double. Beyond Meets, a real company with a lot of sales. A deal with Walmart, 1,800 flowers. Jim McCann, the co-founder there. It's not a GameStop. We know this is not a company that should be trading necessarily like this, and should ain't got nothing to do with it, I guess is the right line.

But this is an interesting story that I guess the Wall Street bets, Reddit crowd, meme stock traders, maybe it's happening over in South Korea where people literally go to bars and now watch other people trade. This is a hell of a story. And it's not just retail. the institutional investors are following the retail crowd, which is why you saw big blocks of trades. That's what some people on their desks do, is they literally follow social media. And it's incredible how times have changed to when you first started to now and how these stock can just swing on a dime and be up 100% and actually turn negative.

Well, back when I started, listen, we used to write trades using a piece of coal with a whale oil candle. Yeah, I was going to make. I know. I was going to make. I know. And I was thinking of all these jokes in my head, but should we be? Yeah, Texas Instruments is another big move. So we initially asked you to come on to talk about Texas instruments, but why I called you at the top of the show, our beloved NASDAQ anchor. Yes. Because we, just so you know, viewers, we pivoted on Christina like an hour ago.

We're like, yo, talk about TI, but we got to start with this Beyond Meat story. So what's going on with TI, Texas Instruments? So the TI, Texas Instruments falls into a category of cyclical nature for chips because it's not as exposed to AI, and you're seeing that reflected in the stock. their recovery is much slower than anticipated. Their gross margins have come down. And the range that they gave for their guidance was quite wide. And when you see a wide range for a company that usually signals that maybe management is not as confident about when demand will return.

So you're seeing this just sell off of about 8% because of those two weaknesses, gross margins, guidance, and the fact that the company has warned that this recovery is going to be slower, specifically in auto, which we got a warning in September as well, as well as industrials. And so that, I guess, raises some alarms. What does this mean for other analog players like on analog devices? But Texas instruments may be a little bit separate and hurting more than the others, given their CAPEX. But, but, and I'm going to quote you back to you. As you have pointed out, and I think we have done as a network a very good job of this over the years, too,

all these companies that get lumped into being, quote, semiconductor companies, but they're all very different. They do a lot of different things. They're in different markets. Some of them are more AI focused now, which we know. The Nvidia is the world. You might have heard about them. They've been in the news a little bit lately.

T.I. is in a very different market than many of these. But very relevant. Yes, but I didn't say they were irrelevant. I know. I'm just for our audience. But did the story, can we read the TI story, Texas Instruments, as anything other than a TI story? Or is it a bigger industry story?

You can read it slightly as a bigger industry story, especially with auto and industrial and just, the slower recovery, but overall, TI has spent some time winding down some fabs. Two of them specifically, just in general, they're trying to lower their cost. They've been spending dramatically over the last little while. Their free cash flow should start to improve. So it may be worse for TI as a whole, but overall it does show some signs that the recovery within chips is a little bit slower when we're not talking about AI.

All the other categories. Yes, TXN down 8%. I'm glad we got to your lead story, but I'm also very glad we got to the Beyond Meat, Flowers, meme, donut. Yeah, we hit a bunch of names, that's for sure. We did a lot. We'll see tomorrow. What have you done first lately?

Christina Ports in Avelas, thank you very much. Appreciate that. All right, on deck, another pivot. Why steel, not today, but steel lately has been red hot. The rather incredible move in a fairly long-overlooked ETF. Plus, a rare update for oil, is OPEC about to make a big turn? It's a big question. We'll try to answer it next.

All right, welcome back. Let's talk energy. Oil, it's up a little bit today, but overall, it's been a week year. Now, falling oil is great for prices at the American gas pump. We are nearly below $2 a gallon in some areas of the United States. So if you're a driver, this is good news. But if you're an investor, not so much. The big XOP oil and gas ETF down 8% in a year,

underperforming the S&P 500 by about 20%. And as oil keeps going down, there is more focus on OPEC. OPEC, of course, has been adding barrels to the market. We have been reporting for months. But the group has also said very aggressively, very loudly in their OPEC way, that it can switch up its strategy at any time they can pause or even reverse the production increases. Francesco Martocha and his team do great work on exactly this. He is Citigroup's energy strategist for Europe, Middle East, in Africa, and joins us down.

Francesco, I know you're busy guy. Appreciate you joining us also pretty late where you are. So thank you very much. What do you make of the recent move last couple weeks and months that we have seen in oil? What's going on? Hi, thanks for hosting me. Look, it's evident that the much forecasted oil surplus is underway. So far this year, we've seen China snuffing up a lot.

of the ongoing surplus which has helped to support prices because we haven't seen OECD inventories building up aggressively and those tend to be more price formative. But now it's becoming more evident because the market fundamentals are getting loser and loser and we'll get even more over the next three to six months. In general, we expect prices to move around $60 per barrel on a brand basis. which they already hit. Now today they are bouncing on reports of unexpected U.S. India trade deal that could also involve partial containment of Russian oil imports from India,

but overall the fundamentals remain pretty loose. OPEC has been adding barrels to the market. Now, there's the quota number when we say we report they're adding X number of barrels. It doesn't mean that number of barrels is actually being added to the market. Some of it is a paper ad. You would agree with that, I think, Francesco, more of just a, a quota versus the actual physical barrel. But OPEC has also been very clear that they reserve the right, the flexibility to switch

up their strategy at any time. Do you think they will? This is a possibility. Clearly over the next couple of months, we continue to see OPEC adding around 140 KBD per month. But when you look at our balances, for instance, which already include the assumptions that Saudi Arabia will freeze production at 10.3 million barrels per day, and Russia will keep production at around 10.1, 10.2 million barrels per day.

The market is still long next year. Clearly, it's not as long as the IA. The IA is expecting 4 million barrels per day surplus over the first half of next year. We have half than that still long. Eventually, based on the colon OPEC, the group should cut around 2 million barrels per day in mid-first quarter next year before eventually allowing more ball rest to return by year-end. So to be clear that you think that OPEC may be cutting, not adding, and then address that,

but then also address the idea of the very short term and the longer term, because the CEO of X on mobile, OPEC, and others have come out and said, listen, oil prices right now can go down or whatever. But in a couple of years, we're going to have a great shortage of oil because of lack of investment. hundreds of billions of dollars not being invested. Do you agree with the longer-term bull story? The longer-term picture, clearly, you know, based on the preliminary estimate that we have done,

looks to be more supportive. We have published our balance through 2026, and, you know, before we get to longer-term outlook is going to be a rocky way, in our opinion. But eventually, you know, China could provide a bit of some, There could be a reaction function from lower shield production. There could be also a reaction function from your USPR intakes, even if small. But, you know, in general, we expect prices to, you know,

move still a bit lower from these levels before eventually moving up. Francesco Motocche and his team doing great work there at Citigroup, Francesco. We appreciate it. I know it's late there. Mille Grazie. Thank you. Sure. Bye. All right. Speaking of it,

energy, as the graphics shows, time for an RBI. And special thanks to billionaire and meta board member John Arnold for this interesting nugget. Arnold highlighted a very, shall we say, peculiar phenomenon when it comes to investing in energy and who is in the White House, because many of you might think that oil and gas stocks do better when a Republican is in office and wind and solar do better when a Democrat is in office. You'd be wrong on both, at least recently. Look at this. Under President Trump, the big oil and gas ETF, ticker XOP, seeing big declines during his first term. And so far into this one, it's also gone down. While at the same time, oil and gas stocks soared under President Biden. Conversely,

the clean energy ETF, ticker CLN, exactly the opposite. It's soared during Trump's first term, followed by a modest reversal under Biden. And so far has had nice gains again. 46% in this Trump White House. Now, this all might buck the conventional wisdom, but it really kind of makes sense when you think about it. When you have more of something that's a commodity, oil, solar power, whatever, prices tend to go down. When you make something more scarce in a commodity, prices will often go up.

Now, gasoline prices, which you love, they keep going down. But it's certainly been a lot harder to be an oil and gas investor lately and maybe an inverse way to think about politics, random and hopefully interesting. All right, coming up, does the entire future of Google and its stock hinge on just one thing? We'll talk about that. Next. Well, welcome back. Let's talk Google, because its parent company, Alphabet, has taken investors on a bit of a wild ride this week, at least for that company. Stock is lower on concern that Open AI's new browser called Atlas could threaten Google. dominance in search. That was earlier this week. But then Alphabet popped back up because it made a

big new AI deal with a different company. So let's talk more now about this topsy-turvy trading. McKenzie Sagalos is in San Francisco with more. Mack, what's going on? Okay, so Google shares tumbled on fears that opening eyes new AI browser could get users could cut their users out of search. And then it rebounded hours later on reports that it's in talks with Anthropic to sign a cloud deal where tens of billions of dollars. And it's really a snapshot of Google's new reality because it's future rides on AI. But on the consumer side, it's a threat. Atlas threatens the ad business by intercepting queries before they hit Google. But on the enterprise side, the anthropic deal is bullish for Google Cloud and its in-house TPU chips, which some say could rival NVIDIAs for inference.

Next Wednesday when they report, I'm going to be looking to see whether it's AI investments are growing the business or cannibalizing it. What is a TPU chip? It's basically their arrival to Nvidia's Blackwell, and Amazon has their own version, the Traneum 2, but it's to service those AI customers specifically. So they made a deal with Anthropics, so that sent kind of the stock back. But what are people saying behind the scenes? The real story is pretty simple, right? McKenzie, it's basically most of the world uses Google what they want to find information on the internet.

But there's a fear out there by some, not everybody, that instead of use, using Google, they're going to just chat GPT it, and that's going to become the new verb, right? We're not going to say I'm going to Google it. You're going to say I'm going to chat GPT it, right? Anthropic. Doesn't have quite the ring? We'll see if that becomes a verb. It doesn't quite roll off the tongue, but I will say this.

It's historically been very difficult to undercut Chrome. Microsoft tried to do that. They invested billions of dollars into Bing, and then they invested into OpenAI, saying that that could help Bing. that has never become a rival in the browser wars. He also had perplexity, which is the go-to-a-I browser. They just made Comet. They're free for all users, again, to try to compete with Chrome. That hasn't done much to take market share.

So there is a question about whether OpenAI may prove a more formidable rival with their 800 million weekly active users. But I will say this, Brian, that's surge on the infrastructure side. That has a lot to do with the fact that AWS has been taking it on the chin this week. So they had the outage on Monday. And you know what? Anthropic wasn't down and they worked down because they have a multi-cloud strategy tied to Google's cloud business. Yeah, that AWS outage even got some political attention.

I don't know if you saw McKenzie, but Senator Elizabeth Warren, arguably one of the most powerful people in America, said that this outage and all the websites down kind of shows that big tech needs to be broken up. Now, Amazon just had a settlement, $2.5 billion. I get it. But this is a big story, this Amazon Web Services, was it not? It was, and it really focused on their East Coast hub, which is one of their older buildouts, and so its legacy infrastructure. And also, all of these cloud players have never, it's unprecedented, the kind of gen AI workloads that are now running on cloud infrastructure that was built years ago, not for these kinds of clients. And so that's why all the hyperscalers are racing to up their CAPEX commitments and build out fresh infrastructure that can withstand all these increased compute commitments.

You got META announcing a new deal yesterday to that effect with their northern Louisiana data center. Speaking of META, there's a story on CNBC.com right now. Everybody should go check it out as long as they're not driving. Don't do it while you're driving. They're laying off 600 employees in the AI unit. I thought AI was only growing, not losing employees. Right. So this is by my math, their fifth restructure in the last eight months or so.

Mark Zuckerberg hasn't been happy with how their A. strategy has been going. That's part of why he spent so much money to bring Alexander Wang the scale AI CEO in-house to be his new AI chief. Also has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on individual comp packages for some of these new AI hires as part of those wider talent wars that we saw over the summer. But it hasn't been working yet. And so I think that they're looking at to find a structure where they can maximize all this talent that they've brought in-house. What I will say this, you know, part of the narrative here is a broader shake-up is meant to streamline operations, refocus under new leadership.

And then the cuts specifically, Brian, they're hitting teams in AI infrastructure and research. Yeah, fascinating stuff. There's a whole lot going on. The only thing I'm certain of is that AI will certainly give us news pretty much every single day. Mack, we appreciate you bringing it to us. Thank you. All right, still ahead. Has investing had you feeling a little tense lately?

Well, don't worry. We got you because your next guy says he's got a trading plan to make you feel more calm. That's next. All right, welcome and welcome back. The markets have hopefully made you a lot of money this year. But if you're owning or trading some of these higher risk, high reward type stocks, even making money can sometimes be stressful because many of you might be just kind of waiting for the bottom to fall out. But don't worry, your next guest has a plan to help keep things calm. Joining us now on set to discuss this thesis and some picks that will hopefully keep you calm. Chris Grosanti, chief market strategist at MAI Capital. Did I sell that properly? Are you here to

calm people down? I wish my family thought I was a calming influence. Yes, yes. I listen, and I know that it sounds silly or worse when, you know, your beloved TV host comes on and says, well, it's making money is stressful. Sure. Making money is not stressful, but my point I hope was some of these stocks, you're watching them all the time because you don't know what's going to happen. I do think this is a particularly stressful point in the market because I'm sure many of your viewers have made tons of money in, you know, just a few name. We hope. They probably have large gains in those names. They're feeling a little nervous because valuations are the second highest they've been in 100 years, as we keep talking about. But so what do you do with that? The market seems strong. You've got

momentum. You've got good reasons. You've got AI capital spending. You've got the one big, beautiful bill. You've got good earnings that have started already. But we still have these valuations. So what do you do? Well, you have a three-step plan. Now, in the great play in movie, Gary, Glenn Ross, ABC, always be closing. You're similar. You say always be invested. Right. So the first thing you don't do is get out. So the rule number one is stay invested. So valuation is a terrible timing mechanism. Yes, it's expensive, but it can literally say expensive for years. And I manage money through the internet boom. And we had five years of, oh my gosh, it's so expensive. And it did obviously end, but you would have lost a lot of money.

four really good years out of those five. Absolutely. The fifth one was more of the problem. Right, right, right. So rule number one is stay invested. But rule number two is even more important, which is you got to trim your winner. So all of the sudden, most of you are probably having outsized positions in the usual suspects, the ones we talk about all the time, the NVIDIAs.

And these are great companies. And I'm not saying get rid of them, but I am saying reduce them. Put them back to a more normal percentage of your port. and take that and shift it towards the areas that are less expensive. And two of my favorite areas would be health care and REITs. Okay. So I do have a little bit of a bone to pick with the first pick that you brought in, OK, United Health Group.

Right. Because here's my bone to pick. You have a guy that's going on trial for allegedly assassinating one of the group CEOs of this company. Sure. They wiped out all guidance. The CEOs changed. It sounds like you're convinced.

And the stock has come nicely back, but it sounds like you're convinced. but it sounds like you're convinced the worst may be out. My only worry about United Health is we could wake up to a headline and the stock tanks again. We don't know. Sure. Well, it'll be tanking from, you know, 50% below where it was a year ago. So the fall is not nearly as great. But more importantly, I love stocks where you've got the bad news list that you just came up with

because that's in the market. That's also, I think, in the stocks. So I think a company like that had proved itself over 20 years of increased earnings and their good management. So, you know, that's the kind of thing we'd love to buy at such valuations as we're seeing right. Stock two, apparently, dude, to paraphrase a very old commercial, dude, you're buying a Dell. What is it about Dell technologies? It's not a company that sells laptops anymore. This is an AI play.

This is a total AI play, and it's about the only reasonably priced AI play that we can find. So at 14 times next year's earnings, you've got Dell, which is the largest provider of servers into these massive data centers. And every time we see revised numbers for data centers, they ain't going down, they're going up. So, you know, and that all, some of that comes to Dell. And instead of spending, you know, 100 times for Oracle, you can spend 14 times for Dell. Okay. The next one, we talk a lot about Boeing. Right.

We don't talk nearly as much about their closest competitor that is Airbus. Right. Now Airbus trades, it's a French company. It's conglomerate. Trades in Paris, AIR, also has an ADR here, much less volume. Right. We know you like the company. How would you, what equity would you own? I would own the ADR.

Okay. It is much less volume, but it's still pretty liquid, especially for individual investors that are watching. And I like that. And look, Boeing's going to get their act together sooner or later. But there's another dynamic now, which is there are a lot of international countries and airlines that don't necessarily want to buy from the United States right now. And Airbus is willing, perfectly willing to, you know, take their orders. And that seems to be happening.

The ADR, we're showing the French shares, which are great. EADSY. ADSY. ADR's to have five letters. EADSY. And by the way, I feel like this is a market. And I know you've got Embraer and Bombardier kind of in there in the smaller regional debts. China's trying to come up. But there's probably room for both Airbus and Boeing to win.

Always has been historically. But Airbus is encountering these supply chain issues that I think. think are much more solvable than the larger structural issues that Boeing is faced with. So we're happy about that. Do you have a take? Being a guy, and let's go back to the macro market, you talked about running money in the late 90s. There's been a lot of comparisons. I think some of them are silly because a lot of the companies that existed then, I know

because I was at the NASDAQ, didn't have any sales, didn't have any earnings. But we started the show talking about these meme stocks, some of these rare earth companies that I've tried to scream at the top of my lungs. They could be great, but they have no sales. They have no earning. Some of them have no actual operating business at the moment. They have investors and dreams and hopes, but we don't know. Anything similar between now and 25 years ago? I think a lot. I mean, you know, they say history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. I mean, this is rhyming pretty closely. So you're starting to get that. You're getting the meme stocks.

You're also starting to get companies that are getting priced on 2030 or 2035 projections. Look at, look at Oracle, look at Crowdstrike. So these are things. things that we saw in 98 and 99, and it's spooky. This is really important what you're saying, and I won't use the word spooky, that's your word, because I want to just highlight to the viewers, and I'm not editorializing here, you can tell me if you agree or disagree. We've got Open AI going around the country saying, you get a car, and you get 10 gigawatts, and you get a car, and you get 5 gigawatts.

It's a joke, but not really. Those energy numbers are decades out. Right. I mean, that years minimum decades more likely, is the market pulling forward earnings that it anticipates for after 2030? Absolutely. That may never materialize. And we're only starting to see that in the last year or so. And that really worries me.

The other thing that worries me even more is the circular nature. So, Nvidia makes an investment in Open AI. Open AI uses that money to buy Nvidia chips. The same thing happens with Oracle. And the money moves in a big circle, but we're not really sure what the earnings are going to be. And that's the big problem. And that hasn't been a problem yet, and it may never be, but it's a good, good to be on the tape, just given that fair warning. Right.

To quote a Van Halen album cover. Chris Grasanti, thank you. Appreciate it. Good to see you, Brian. All right, good to see you as well. Well, let's do a quick hit on the bond market because, again, folks, the bond market and the stock market are separate, but they are related. Where that yield and the 10-year goes certainly could move stocks around. The bond market's a lot smarter than the stock market.

Just ask people who trade bonds. They'll tell you that for a living. Ten-year yield still under 4%. Could be some good news for home buyers. By the way, we are expecting to get CPI inflation data next week. But a dearth of data coming out of the government with the partial shutdown. And we are also still expecting a Federal Reserve meeting as well. All right.

Coming up, where the hockey puck is heading when it comes to online betting. and it might have to do with elections. I'm going to tie those together with Contessa Brewer. Next. All right, welcome back. A power shift is brewing in the sports betting world. And Wall Street is now watching the National Hockey League. It's because the NHL just became the first major U.S. Pro League

to strike licensing deals with prediction market platforms, Kalshi, and Polly Market. The question is, what does this mean for sports betting and the gaming stocks? Let's go a little deeper. Katessa Brewer covers the industry for us. Joining us down for the New York Stock Exchange. What's the story here, Contessa? Well, okay, so here's what we're looking at, Brian.

When you look at the NFL saying, nope, even before the season started, they warned about the potential for price distortion and manipulation. Major League baseball worries about the impact on the integrity of the sport. But here you've got the National Hockey League saying it's done a deep dive, that it feels confident about the integrity guardrails that are in place. And so it's made a first of its kind license. deal with these prediction markets. Now, nobody is talking about how much Cali and Pauley Market are paying. The NHL's business president, Keith Wachtell, told me that the league

sees this as a massive opportunity to reach an untapped market of fans and to grow engagement. Now, Kalshi CEO, Terek Monzer said today on Squabbox that he sees this as a kind of stamp of approval, a sign that prediction markets are here to stay. And certainly, Kalshi is seeing a boom. Dune Analytics reported that Polly Market and Cali she saw $2 billion in volume last week, which of course had pro football and baseball, playoffs and hockey's launch, and then there's college. There's just a lot for people to like. And in some of these states, Brian, as you know, California, Texas, Utah, there's no legal sports gambling. So if they can get onto a platform like Kalshi and make a trade on sports, it makes the game more exciting for everybody.

What does the gambling industry have to say about this? Furious. The American Gaming Association is not happy at all. They've just shot out a statement saying that they're disappointed in the NHL. That contrary to what the league is arguing, they say that it's not established that these are legal evidenced by the legal proceedings in multiple states, the views of well over half the nation's attorneys general and state regulators. Don't forget that tribal gaming is pushing back on this as well. They say it's deeply concerning. So, you know, there you have the pushback there. The AGA is filing amicus briefs on behalf of the tribes and the state regulators. And they say it's clear that legalized,

licensed gambling has a place. They have frameworks. They have know-your-customer sort of guardrails. And that these platforms are not following the same set of rules. Because what the viewers don't understand is that Contessa Brewer and Brian Sullivan had a few. Very fair and respectful disagreements about these gambling. Have we not in the past? We've talked about them for a couple years. Remember, we were on and talking about whether there should be election prediction markets. Should you be able to trade on the outcome of elections?

And my argument was that it's betting and that betting on elections is not legal in the United States. What Kalshi has said, what Polly Market argues and others, is that this is not gambling. It's a trade like the way you would say, is a hurricane going to hit the west coast of Florida, or is the Fed going to make a rate cut of half a percent? That is their argument that it is a financial market trade. But they're using it sort of as a circular argument that they're saying, look. Here's the thing. And that was a couple years ago.

It feels like the cats getting a little bit out of the bag. We got stories like this now. And it feels like everything is kind of weirdly getting mushed together. Is that a fair statement, contessa, where it's like, you got sports gaming over here, betting on like elections and outcomes over here. And even the CME, Chicago Mercantile Exchange, kind of getting involved. It's all kind of getting squishy. They are. They made a deal with Fandall.

They're going to be the partner of Fandall getting into these event contracts. The real question that the courts are going to decide is, is the outcome of a sporting event, an event, or is it a game of chance? And this is going to be like sports betting and that's left to the states, it's supposed to be up to the states to regulate sports gambling. And I think if you look at where this is in federal court right now, there's a hearing scheduled for November 19th in Nevada where Kalshi and Robin Hood are going to go in and they're going to make their. best case to a judge who has already said that crypto.com's sport trades are actually sports gambling. So I think this is going probably to end up in the Supreme Court. And the courts will decide when I ask the NHL about that today. They said, you know, if the courts decide against it, we'll pivot. But until then, we're treating this like the CFTC regulates it at the federal level

and that it's legal and available. And so we're going to get in. We just didn't see the reason for waiting. It's a heck of a story either way. And to your point, the puck is heading probably to the Supreme Court. By the way, well, and Draft Kings just finished the deal with Railbird. They're getting into the predictions market. They're not saying about sports prediction yet. But clearly there's money to be made here. And with Fandall getting into it with the CME, this is the wave of the future, depending on how the courts decide.

Well, I predict that we're smart for talking about it now. For sure. Contessa Brewer, thank you very much. All right, let's get back over to Christina Portsonel. She's got a C&BC news update. Let's start with North Carolina State House, just passing new congressional maps that could give Republicans an additional U.S. House seat.

North Carolina Senate already approved the measure, and the state's Democratic governor is unable to use his veto stamp on redistricting efforts under state law, meaning the map will just go into effect before the 2026 elections, barring any legal battles. The United Nations top legal body said, in an opinion today, Israel is required to facilitate U.N. aid efforts in the Gaza Strip.

Israel's foreign ministry rejected the international courts of justice's opinion, saying Israel is fully upholding its obligations under international law. An NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said today the league would not consider dropping Puerto Rican artist Bad Bunny as the Super Bowl halftime performer. The decision sparked some controversy because of the performer's previous criticism of the Trump administration. Goodell said today the league selected Bad Bunny because he is one of the most popular entertainers in the world.

That is true. Brian, back to you. All right, Christina, thank you very much. All right, here you go. That chart has been on a bumpy ride the last month. We're going to tell you who it is and why it's been bumpy. And it might actually be an AI winner. Talk about that coming up. All right, welcome back.

It is power check time. And we have got some interesting ideas for you right now because your power check guest has a great blend of stocks to talk about. He is Sam Shikiar. He is co-CEO Shikiar Asset Management. joining us on set. Sam, welcome. Good to see you again. Thank you for having me. All right. So you are a former commodities trader yourself, right? I love that because your first stock is kind of a new one. It's called Wheaton precious metals. It's actually a $60 billion

company based in Canada, really a gold, gold miner gold's having its best year since 1979. Is that pretty much the bull case behind Wheaton that gold's up? So we're not today, but you know, we're still bullish on gold and silver here. You have the Fed easing, central bank buying, a weaker dollar still. And these guys, they're a precious metals streamer, meaning they pay money today in order to receive the medals in the future at a 75 to 80% discount. They're doing 375,000 ounces of gold a year, 20 million ounces of silver, and they've got a clean balance sheet, no debt, a billion dollars in cash. We think the valuation is still below its historical averages, even despite the recent runoff. So people sell them, they're like the

T.J. Max, a gold. Like, it sounds like people sell them gold at a discount. For decades to come. Probably because then they get cash now and then it's Wheaton's problem to deal with it. Exactly. For decades to come and they don't have the mining risk. Wow. All right. Next name is much more well known. Okay. Uber. It's been a white hot stock. It's about 52% this year. The driverless car boom is coming. Some would say it's already here in places like San Francisco and L.A. and Phoenix, whatever. Is driverless cars a part of your Uber bull thesis or no? It is. It is. So our bull thesis, we've come up with the acronym F-A-S-T. Okay. So the F for free cash flow, they're doing 2.3 billion a quarter in free cash flow.

Margins are up to 16%, and they did 2 billion in buybacks over the last quarter alone. The A is for autonomous vehicles. Contrary to some, we actually think they're going to be a net beneficiary. They have 20 minority stakes in AV companies, including companies like Joby, Lyme, D.D. They just bought another one this morning called AVUride. They'll probably, I mean, my guess is Uber will make more money if the car doesn't have a driver. I hate to say that because I've met a lot of great Uber drivers at my time. But that's the reality.

And they control the point of access, which is really important. And the driverless car doesn't take a nap. It doesn't have to eat dinner. It doesn't have to get ill. Exactly. Exactly. Next for the S, we took the sum of the parts valuation. And we see the freight, mobility, and delivery.

If you put a 25% if you value all those at the market multiple, you have a 25% premium. And very quickly, your last name was our mystery chart, white fiber. Honestly, I'm not going to lie. Never heard of them. Data Center has a. Data centers have a power bottleneck. These guys, they have the power. White fiber has bought a one million square foot industrial building in North Carolina called NC1. And it has 100 megawatts of power from Duke Energy already. There's a bidding war going on from AI companies to lease this space.

Wow, because they've got access to electricity. They already have the power. So we've talked about forever. That's a bottleneck. I love it. Wheaton, Uber, White Fiber, Sam Shikiar, power check. We got it done. Good stuff. Thank you very much. All right. The big earnings, print of the day after the bell, Tesla. Talk about what to look for. Next. All right, before we go, we want to highlight another big earnings report,

and that is Tesla. It's out after the bell tonight. The expectation is for pretty strong numbers. As car buyers, though, raced in to get under the deadline for the EV tax credit ending at the end of September. So that's going to kind of throw the whole quarter. It's going to be hard to analyze.

Anyway, the focus will also be on the guidance to see if Tesla can keep prices and margins. Higher. Also, some focus on the robot that Tesla is building. The stock's been red hot. We'll see how those numbers come in, no doubt, closing bell, and overtime and fast money, we'll have a lot more on the Tesla story. Before we go, I want to show you Beyond Meat. If you missed the top of the show, Beyond Meat, meme stock was at $7.69 at $69 at one point today. It doubled in the pre-market. Then it fell down. It was actually lower. It was at $2.62 today. So Beyond Meat has had about a 200.

I'm doing easy math. 250% round trip today. That's just weird. Maybe closing bill, I'll have more on it. Who knows? Thanks for watching. We'll see you tomorrow.