Power Lunch - Strait of Hormuz in Focus 4/9/26

Episode Date: April 9, 2026

The Justice Department opens investigation into the NFL over anticompetitive business practices. Hamilton Lane Co-CEO Erik Hirsch joins to discuss private credit.  And should you buy stocks in this market upswing? Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to Power Lunch, along with Brian Sullivan. I'm Kelly Evans. And stocks are higher on hopes the ceasefire in the Middle East can be sustained. As Israel agrees to start direct talks with Lebanon, energy markets reacting, oil falling below $100, dows up almost $400 this hour. Plus, a spate of credit issues in recent months have intensified scrutiny on the multi-trillion dollar private credit market. Investors questioning the health of certain loan portfolios, firms getting hit with the wave of share redemption requests. We'll speak to one private credit manager, Brian, about. all of that. Yeah, we got all that coming up. But we are going to begin this hour with arguably

the most important map in the world right now, and that is a live look, marine traffic, straight of Hormuz. Because what happens in that straight, what happens on that map, all those red dots and arrows, they're all tankerships that exist in real life. And here's what we know at the hour. Roughly 230 tankers sit idle in the Persian Gulf right now. Now, two oil tankers did cross the straight since the ceasefire was announced yesterday, but both of those tankers, they're from Iran. So they're not at risk. Now, six bulk tankers transited since the ceasefire,

but they carry dry cargo, not oil. So what is the real status? Well, in a post today by Dr. Sultan al-Jabber, who runs the UAE's energy program. He is the CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. He wrote this, quote, this moment requires clarity, so let's be clear. The Strait of Hormuz is not open.

Access, being restricted, condition, and controlled. Iran has made clear through both its statements and its actions. The passage of the strait. Subject permission, conditions, and leverage. That is not freedom of navigation. That is coercion. So the UAE, the head of Abu Dhabi's national oil company, coming out pretty hot against Iran.

Here's how the energy market is trading right now. Crude oil, it is back above $100 a barrel here. Brent crude hovering right around 97. But again, keep an eye on which month those contracts exist for. May, June, July. Prices do come down. They're up today. The oil majors, they're all marginally down.

But Kelly, very clear that map of Strait of Horn moves. And what happens at the oil market kind of runs the equity show right now as well. Brian, yes, indeed. Let's bring in Matt Smith. He's director of commodity research at Kepler, the company, marine traffic. Matt, even in this hour, we're getting some headlines unconfirmed so far, potentially from Iran's hominy about the strait.

Stocks are still showing, again, no additional movement one way or the other. What can you tell us about the state of affairs in the strait at this moment? Hey, Kelly. Well, I think Brian just summed it up there. We have actually had confirmation of a third tanker that has passed through there that is going to India. It's carrying a small amount of fuel all that's come from the UAE. As Brian mentioned, the other two tankers there are from Iran.

And so grand scheme of things here, the straight of Hormuz remains closed, and we should expect it to see very little traffic going forward here unless we have some positive developments relating to Iran. So what changes that? So talk again about the ships that are going through. And just last hour, Bob McNally said, look, the U.S. at some point, if it was him or our Brookings guest said, if the U.S. gets fed up enough with the state of affairs,

then we could start blockading Iranian ships. Of course, as we all know, we do that at jacks up the price of oil again. So who's getting through? Well, nobody is just with the Iranian tankers, they're just letting their own tankers go through, right? And even then, the one that we saw was carrying very difficult crude. It was heading towards India here. But big picture, we have seen a lot of Iranian tankers still passing through over the last month or so. Really, the challenge becomes if the US wants to try and halt the energy flows or try and hurt Iran further here,

then it has to look at potentially Kagai Islands. We have to potentially consider energy infrastructure getting hit. But your point there, Kelly, is that, yeah, oil prices will rise because you will see retaliation from Iran there. We continue to focus on the Strait of Hormuz. The big concern remains the Red Sea because that's the ultimate escalation, right? If we do see Babon Mendeb, the Houthi's there, targeting some of the tankers from Saudi from that rerouted crude. So really, there is just not a good solution to this situation. But there is a ceasefire.

And that's the world is kind of waiting, Matt, for all those red dots and arrows, from your maps that we just showed to start moving. How many, and that has not happened yet, do you have a number, because I've heard anywhere from 10 million to 13 million barrels a day, how many barrels are currently short in the market right now? Well, you can consider it a few ways, right? So in terms of production being shut in 12 to 13 million barrels a day

in those Mideast Gulf countries, in terms of the crude getting out, you know, we typically saw 15 million barrels a day previously leaving, Now we're seeing about eight of those being shut in. So seven are making their way out. You know, about four of those are those Yanbu, Saudi barrels that have been redirected to the Red Sea. The other one and a half million barrels a day is Iran. Those flows are continuing as kind of normal.

And then the other piece is what is being redirected through for Jaro here. And so the market is short of that, but that is only crude that we're talking. We're not talking about the five million barrels a day plus of the LPGs and of the clean products that are not getting out. So this is a world that every single day is being starved of millions of barrels per day. We're getting to the end of the sixth week here. We're seeing those barrels being finally discharged at their destinations that loaded pre-war, whether it's Asia, in Europe, etc. Now comes the real pain over the next couple of weeks here when those refiners that produce products

that send out jet, export, jet, diesel, gasoline are not going to be able to because they don't have the feedstock to run through their refineries. Yeah, we're waiting for all those ships to start. moving. We know there's a ceasefire. We've heard about it, but nothing moving yet. We're going to find out. Matt Smith, really appreciate your work, your time. Thank you very much to you and your entire team. All right, so as we just talked about, hundreds of vessels, over 200, still stranded on both sides of the Strait of Hormuz. But despite the fragility of the situation, your next guest says insurance coverage should be available for those ships in the region

and actually rates maybe trending down. For more, let's welcome in Charlotte Van Bauer, risk leader of marine cargo and logistics at Marsh, one of the largest marine insurance brokerages in the world. Charlotte, good to have you on. I was speaking with probably one of your clients, to be honest with you this morning, and they were saying there's not been a lot of uptick or uptake

in requests or demand for insurance. What are you seeing on the shipping side around the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf region? Currently, what we're seeing when it comes to the insurance rating range for transits, that they remain stable between 2 and 10%. We expect them to, they're currently in a downward trajectory if the ceasefire holds. What we're also seeing is that underwriters will likely look for a clear and accessible mechanism to ensure safe passage can be provided to ship owners, combined, of course, with a sustainable

period of peace to be able to implement sustainable concessions in the cost of insurance. Is insurance available? If I wanted to make a ship go through the straight of four moves, if I want to go from Qatar out, could I get insurance on that ship today and at what cost? You can get insurance. The cost will depend on the vessel and the cargo. I'd love to, can you give us some examples? Like, is this a prohibitive thing towards going through? Are businesses likely to take on this cost and still see that it's worthwhile? Well, that all depends on the ship owner and the cargo, but end the business, of course, that they're in and the contracts that they have. There's a lot of different items that are at play with us to ensure that to have a proper discussion and a proper decision that all falls back on the ship owner in these cases.

We're seeing a lot of uncertainty still there. If we look at this and say, Charlotte, that it's still going to be more expensive now to get through than it was before the war broke out. How long do you expect that elevated state of affairs to be the case? That will vary on the situation as it will currently further evolve and also to ship owners. It's very difficult to put a timeline on that. Is there clarity, and I've spoken with numerous people, in your business the last couple of hours. Is there clarity on this concept from Iran of a toll in the straight?

They want $2 million paid in either Bitcoin or Chinese Yuan. Who knows? We're not even sure who's really asking for it. Do your clients, do you, does Marsh have an idea of what the framework of any of this might look like? Well, currently it's still quite up in the air. So there have been talks indeed. We have seen some notifications going around, but it's all in the hands of Iran.

And due to the fact that it's not very clear on the type of fees and also the explicit permission that they've put next to that, we currently are seeing still a lot of unclarity, unfortunately. And next to that, of course, they are facing heavy sanctions, not only from the EU, but also from the US. And indeed, that is shifting them to ask for crypto-scentral. settlements or yuan, but it's not easy to get those payments from the different countries and the companies that sit behind these ship owners. I'm glad you mentioned that, Charlotte, and talk a little bit more about the complexity that's involved there.

So what we're seeing there, of course, to make sure that these shipments or these payments can take place, so the shifting to yuan and crypto settlements, we're actually seeing quite a lot of a raise in concerns about the influence that is taking place there. And all in all, payments to get them done and get them signed off to be issued to a country that sits and has quite severe sanctions is always problematic. Yeah, that makes sense. And I'm sure for a lot of these, you know, who knows what this looks like in a week or two, but for right now, I can understand that they would need to come to you or to some sort of intermediary for help with that. Is that right? And are you guys the ones who help with that or are you just, they have to figure it out?

they have to figure it up. It seems like Charlotte, we're going to let you go. Charlotte Van Balal Marsh really appreciate it. It seems like there is still a lot to figure out. And people, and I can assure you people I've talked to in the industry and the shipping industry insurance, there's a lot of questions like Charlotte was saying that people have right now around how any of this might work. If indeed it's even workable, and I just want to add one quick thing, $2 million, which is what Iran is effectively asking for, okay, for, per ship or?

Well, that's the profit. margin of the ship. It's the average margin. The entire profit margin. Yeah. So there's no economic incentive anyway to do anything. Unless the price of the oil or the final goods goes up by double. Or they're going to have to low, if there is some sort of toll implemented, right? And the U.S. would probably have something to say about that. But if there is, it's going to have to come down in price because no shipowner is going to go. There's no reason to go through. Risk your lives. Risk your ship for no profit. It's not going to happen. Yeah. All right, by the way, just a quick reminder, sign up for my fourth company energy-related newsletter called Power Insider.

Be a weekly piece. I have a bunch of stuff in it. It's going to come out next Wednesday, April 15th. There is your QR code. Sign up today. And coming up, should you jump on this upswing in the stock market or tread lightly? We'll speak to a money manager from a firm with a north of half a $500, yeah, half a trillion dollars under management. We'll get their take on all of this next. Welcome back. As you can see, the major averages are moving higher for a second straight day now, as Israel agrees to start direct talks with Lebanon. Despite some market optimism, our next guest is not adding more to equities right now. Actually betting a little bit on bonds. Here to discuss is Jeff Blazek. He's co-CIO of multi-asset management at Newberger Berman. It's great to have you here. Thank you. And multi-asset means you're kind of supposed to dip around in all these different baskets, but you do see some opportunity, even after bond yields have already come down a fair amount, you know, You still see opportunity there?

They have. They have more to go. And by the way, with equities, the reason we're not adding is because we are already overweight equities. We think it's a positive backdrop. And as Iran fades from investor attention... It hasn't yet, Jeff. Not yet, but we're getting close.

We're getting so close. And destabilization of oil flowing through the strait will be very good for equities. But bond yields really on the front end screamed higher in response to this inflation fear. And we were really surprised in... the month of March, about 100 basis point change in terms of the Fed cut expectations in ECB. And that was extreme to us. We don't think the inflation impulse is going to cause the Fed or the ECB to be nearly as hawkish as the market is pricing. We're going to call Kelly Miss Sunshine and I'll be Mr. Rain, and I've been a little bit of a downer and I know the viewers like, gee, whiz, Sullivan, what's wrong with you?

Only because I've suggested, as we've reported, that maybe things aren't getting better, at least right now. Maybe they will tomorrow. We don't know. I hope they do. So what do you and your team do about the various scenarios? Because you just said, you know, they're going to get better. We hope they do. What if they don't? Like, how are you positioning relative to some pretty big global macro events that we don't know how we're going to shake out? First thing, we take it day to day. Every day is a different adventure. Correlations are high when there's panic. And then the last 36 hours have been quite favorable. But we view this as a range of outcomes. We think it's tightening more favorably. And we think it's important. that investors look through this. So on a medium-term basis, we expect growth will be resilient. Maybe we see GDP only up 2%, not 2.5%, but we still have AI infrastructure, M&A, IPOs, a lot of very good things along with fiscal stimulus that U.S. consumers will have as an offset to what we're

experiencing from the oil hit. That's what we're talking. You know, it is an offset. It's probably not the way they wanted those proceeds to be used. How important is what happens with the consumer right now? because this is a year where it's all about CAPEX and it's all about AI investment. And so if there's a softness on the consumer front, you know, it's never great. But is it, you know, is it a wound that could send us, you know, into something more like an economic downturn? Consumer is critical. And all the data shows resilience. And we think that the consumer sentiment is wavering.

And consumers are obviously fearful about this. But as long as the duration of the oil shock is not persisting. So, yeah, maybe oil goes to 120 for a week. on average, it's expected to be $75 if you look at the crude oil futures curve. The consumer will be just fine with that. Employment is stable, but the consumer is a key very. Because I think, and if I'm wrong, say it. Brian, you're wrong.

It's okay. I mean, you'll never come back on the show, but you can say that. I'm joking, everybody. I think the oil market's moving the bond market, right? As oil prices have gone up, bond yields have gone up. Maybe Fed expectations have changed. I don't know. And I think that's one reason you believe that bonds are mispriced.

U.S. Treasury debt? Yeah, I'll give you a data point. So two days ago, the inflation-protected bond market suggested that headline inflation is going to go up to 5.5% this year, which that's crazy to us. So now it's back down to 3.5, which is probably a little bit more appropriate. But those whipsaws show that this is not a market that's being rational. It's being driven by technicals, some levered players. When the dust settles, we think the 10-year probably has another 10 or 20 basis points lower to go. and we think the Fed later this year is going to be cutting.

So right now the market, thankfully, is no longer pricing in hikes in the U.S. but we think one to two cuts. And by the way, if the consumer waivers, if employment starts to falter, then the Fed will actually be cutting three or four times. And there is another scenario where you're a winner in bonds. Speaking of multi-asset, I mean, I don't know if you consider kind of gold and real assets and kind of all of these things, but where else? People ask about these kinds of hedges against a lot of what's going on in the global economy right now.

I'm glad you brought that up because our highest conviction tactical overweight is gold. We have been involved in gold now for about 18 to 24 months. We do have to manage it because of the volatility. And we were surprised, to be fair. You know, there was a period where gold pulled back to 4,100 a couple of weeks ago, back up to 4,800. It is a geopolitical hedge. It is very popular among central banks for reserves. So similar to bonds, multiple ways to win when it comes to gold.

And then in the previous hour on Kelly's show, The Exchange 1 p.m. Eastern, she talked to Tim Seymour. about Japan. Tim loves Japan. You love Japan. We do love Japan. Why Japan? Well, Japan has a lot of good things. First of all, reasonable valuations, a bit of a sleeping giant in terms of its corporate governance that has now been awoken. And what is happening is we're seeing more shareholder buybacks. We're seeing better governance, better board behavior, and better sector skew in terms of technology and a lot of other cutting-edge innovations in Japan. Japan is also benefiting from a strong export market, a much cheaper yen. So we think in a multi-year basis, Japan is a great overweight in an international equity portfolio.

Anything else come to mind, whether it's some of the emerging markets, China, that's going to be in focus in a couple of weeks, obviously. Emerging in general, China, even cheaper than Japan, quite tied to the AI trade in a favorable way. Really, it is a China and U.S. race in terms of AI. We like Korea as well. You have to be more tactical with that because, boy, that is a market that can whip around 10 to 15% on a daily basis. In the midst of all that, are you still basically expecting equities to have a nice year? Even in the face of, as you said, we could get more economic slowdown data points,

but you're looking at that as lowering rates and kind of keeping the whole rally going. We like equities. Your investors, we would suggest, should be about 2 to 3 percent overweight their equity allocation because earnings are on track to grow about 12 to 13 percent this year. Iran, once this settles down, hopefully soon, it's going to be a great environment. Hopefully soon is the key. I think that's the key takeaway is hopefully soon. Maybe tomorrow. We'll see. We all hope it.

Jeff Blazick, thank you very much. Newberger Berman. Thank you. Appreciate it. We've got a market flash on Intel, which just hit another 52-week high after rising 47% over the past seven trading days. That's its longest daily win streak in more than two years. Google expanding its partnership with Intel today, saying it'll use multiple generations of Intel processing units in its AI data centers, and that has the shares up another 2.5%. All right. So is the Iran war pushing an already stressed private credit market a little too far. Remember, private credits all we talked about before the war began. We'll talk about it again after this break. Are more cracks beginning to form in private credit?

That question is on many investors' minds, as several key names are bugging the market trend and taking a turn lower this afternoon. We're talking the likes of KKR. We're down 1%. It comes as the Wall Street Journal reports that Carlisle's flagship private credit fund is the latest to be hit with the wave of redemption requests. As fears about a potential private credit meltdown continue, let's bring in Eric Kirsch. He's the co-chief executive officer at Hamilton Lane. They've got a trillion dollars in assets under management. And would you say you're a private credit manager or advisor? What's the language? We are a private credit manager. So how much in total of private credit? And do you have private equity as well? Or is it just? We have lots of both, lots of all.

How much of both? We have, so you said, a trillion dollars that we're responsible for and it's spread across all of the private markets. So we have lots of everything. How much have you seen redemption request, how many private credit funds do you have, and how many sort of roughly total, on average redemption requests have you experienced? So we have one that's a tender offer fund, and we have seen some redemption requests, but no gating for us. So above the 5% or? Under the 5%. So you, okay, so I think when people see these headlines, the gates are down, no, the gates are always down. These are products designed, correct? Correct. That's the whole point of the products. I think it's important to step back and look at how big private credit is. Because right now,

we're mostly focusing on private credit BDCs, interval funds, exchange funds. It's well over a trillion dollar market. And if you look over the last 60 years, there's been almost 7,000 private credit funds created. That's a lot of diversity. And so I think, yeah, look at those like restaurants. Everyone's cooking a different thing. The problem is everyone was in software as a service. So they weren't.

So the 7,000 is spread across all kinds. So there's no question that there are some who really like to cook software deals. And there's other restaurants that weren't touching anything related to stuff. I was actually going to use that analogy. Let's go with the analogy. So, okay, because here's the, as you know, you're living this. So let's say there's a national restaurant chain. Yep.

And one of those locations, or maybe two, has some sort of e-coli issue. And it makes a national news. This chain caused e-coli. The whole chain suffers briefly because people get jumpy about it. But we would- So are people too jumpy about private credit because there have been some cracks used cars, auto parts, etc. Yep.

So in that scenario, we would never come on and say we have a food problem. And that's what we're doing here. We have a restaurant problem. Someone served bad food, but all food isn't bad. And I think that's the important part with credit. So for some managers, they were cooking up a lot of software exposure. But not true for everyone. So a lot of private credit is simply financing our economy.

It's financing aircraft leasing programs. It's financing dental care roll-up businesses. It's financing manufacturing construction. Those are all really different things that are impacted by different parts of the economy. And private credit runs a really wide spectrum of risk. So investors get to choose or should be choosing how much risk they want to take in their private credit bucket. What's your exposure in your fund, sector by sector? So for us, we're very diversified.

So we are a smorgasbord. So we're not cooking up one flavor or one cuisine. We're investing globally and we're investing across all industries. And for us, we tend to focus on lower risk as opposed to super high growthy, much higher risk situations. And so you can play in different parts of the cap table. Taking Blue Owl, for an example, one of their flagship funds. I mean, you can read it right there in the filings. It's 80% invested in technology and a lot of that is software.

And advertised as such. Right. And what about you? So what are your, how much is technology, how much is software, how much is? So if you put all of those things together, you're talking about something that's in the low single digits. So there's two different, so there you go. There's two good examples of very different restaurants cooking up very different cuisines. When retail investors encounter these products, I never have personally, so I don't know.

How are they pitched? Are they pitched as double-digit return vehicles with little downside, but the trade-off is that you can only take out your money, you know, episodically? So I don't know how other managers pitch. For us, we're telling people exactly where we're playing, where the risk spectrum, what we're taking, what that diversification looks like. And for us, we've been generating sort of high single-digit, low-double-digit performance. The redemption piece is available to investors with a very clear amount of liquidity available at each redemption period. And that is 5% of net asset value of the fund. And if requests come in over that, there's a gating element.

And that's really designed to protect because these are much longer, term ill-liquid assets, and so forcing them to be sold, not beneficial to anybody. Is this subprime 2007? I don't see it. I just simply don't see it. I mean, right now, if we look at the data, so let's take the software piece aside. There's going to be some pain in software. There's going to be some winners, some losers. I think we need to remember, there's a whole lot of equity between, that needs to kind of get evaporated before the credit gets hit. And so, and there's a lot of dry powder in the equity space that I think is going to continue to finance a number of these businesses for a while.

So there's going to be a lot of equity pain first in software before there's any kind of private credit pain. But once you move aside from that, you go back to the fundamentals of the economy. We're just not seeing any indication that there's a credit bubble, that there's a credit slowdown, that there's no rising default rates, there's no rising bankruptcy rates. None of that is in the data today. It reminds me more, again, of the banking analogy. It's not that this is shadow banking, but this is typical bank lending activity outside of the traditional financial system. And so, as we've seen before, banks experience losses. Customers sometimes get scared and run.

There's financial regulations in place for that. You mentioned the private equity piece, and that's why I was curious about your exposure there as well. Depending on how this plays out or not, I mean, there is still a reckoning happening because of higher interest rates. And, you know, some of these industries grew a lot during the era of low rates and are going through that reset. So I also wonder if there's going to be regulatory clamped down on some sensitive areas like health care and others where they might perceive that there's been bad practices. So I do wonder about the overall return structure for everyone. What are we going to see? We're going to see fees come down over time as the industry matures.

We're going to see transparency go up. We're going to see more regulation as the retail world gets more exposed to this. I think all those are not shocking. I think that's part of a healthy, maturing, growing asset class. Would you put your money or, I mean, it's a wrong way to ask you. I probably have a lot of my money in whatever you're about to ask. Because they're going to start potentially letting people do this in 401Ks. And that part, because look at the difference between.

what you're describing for your company and others in the space. You know, the stock market's not like that. To get in the S&P 500, it's kind of a vanilla, you know, thing. This is very different, and I don't know if that is, you know, the right thing for the retail public to put in retirement plans. Well, I think private, the private markets, if we step back again, has been a huge return driver for institutional investors for decades and decades and decades. So it's been fueling the retirement for some number of people who are beneficiaries of pensions.

And so I think what you have is, We've got a portion of our society that is very exposed to the private markets because they're getting their retirement benefits through an institutional investor. And then we have a really big portion of our society who's been completely left out of an important part of our economy. But during the best part of their run, they get in now and you've missed the era of super low rates and now there's been this. I would say we're in an era right now where I think this is a phenomenal time to be buying. I think the public markets are so jittery and often mispriced that I think you're seeing a lot of opportunity to put cash. capital to work right now. Private markets have outperformed over a long period of time. And there's a reason for that. There's some real benefits to the structures. All right. Eric Hirsch, Hamilton Lane,

co-chief executive officer coming up from Philly. We appreciate it, Eric. Good to see you both. Thank you very much. All right. Coming up, the Department of Justice investigation that is now starting to rip through the media world and what it might mean for the biggest ratings draw on TV. No, it's not us. We're close. But we'll talk about it right after this. All right, welcome back. Maybe the media and entertainment story of the day. The DOJ has opened an investigation into the NFL over whether the league has engaged in anti-competitive business practices with its media rights packages. A government official confirming the investigation to CNBC, that official saying the investigation is aimed at affordability for consumers and creating an even playing field for providers.

Joining us now, Sports Corps founder, Mark Gannis. he has been at the center of countless NFL deals. Mark, welcome. I think the frustration among people and what the DOJ is poking around at. It's good to see you again, by the way, is this idea that it takes nine or ten streaming services if you want to watch every game, and that gets expensive. What do you think? Well, first, close to 90% of NFL games.

are on free television. So we're talking about a subset of a subset that you may need to go to other streaming services to pick up. The NFL is, you know, they're an easy target because they're the biggest guy in the block. Right now, they're going to enter into renewed television negotiations. So there may be some broadcast partners who maybe have an interest in trying to cut them down a little bit

with a few comments from some politicians or from the Department of Justice. but the reality is almost 90% of NFL games are on for free. So let me... The reality is that if you're your home territory, go ahead. Okay, no, because I'm going to give you... I'm not embarrassed to admit this, Kelly. I'm a Chargers fan.

It's a lightning bolt. They got the best uniforms. It's been a tough run for 40 or 50 years. But I am a Chargers fan. Sure. For me to watch all the games, I do the YouTube, you know, Sunday ticket. There's a few games on Thursday night football,

so I got to have Amazon Prime. Monday night I've got to have linear or, whatever it may, ESPN streaming, should I be happy that I'm able to watch all the Charger games, or should I be annoyed that I have to have the services and pay for them to watch all the Charger games? Brian, you should be delighted that you can get to watch all the Chargers games while you live in the New York market.

And everybody in the New York market gets to watch all of the Jets and Giants games for free, no matter what outlet. they're on. So you have the great benefit of being able to choose exactly what you want, no matter where in the country you live. That's a really important thing for a person who's a charge of a fan. And I agree with you, the best uniforms in history. Is this, do you think, Mark, is this meant to just kind of assuage public concern and be a little bit more of a show than have anything meaningful to it? Or what should media companies expect as next steps? Kelly, you've got it exactly right.

Look, this is common practice, free publicity for some politicians and others when you bring up sports generally or the NFL in particular. You know, we know Brian is a huge auto racing fan, in addition to a Chargers fan. And, you know, now Brian F1 just went to Apple TV. Does that mean that, you know, politicians should step up and say, hey, what about the extra $140 you have to pay there? My point is, fans are moving to streaming. Streaming gives them greater options, and you get to pick and choose what you want to watch. Now, if you want to be frugal with it,

you get almost 90% of the NFL games for free. You don't have to pay a nickel, and you get 100% of the games in your home territory for free. For those people like Brian who want to have more choice and more options and live in other places, you've got that and you pay something more for that. So what is the DOJ looking at that? What is Senator Lee?

What do you think the goal then here is? Brian, I think the goal here is negotiating leverage, if you ask me, straight on. I think the NFL has announced that it is going to renegotiate their deals with the seven-year termination option that they negotiated in. They saw the numbers that the NBA just got for their new deals. and they feel that the NFL deals are underpriced. And so I think what you're seeing here is an effort to try and gain some leverage on the other side. Mark, we appreciate it. Thank you.

See if it goes. Anytime. Any way. The NFL, much echoing what we just heard there. In a statement, they said, the NFL's media distribution model is the most fan and broadcaster-friendly in the entire sports and entertainment industry, with over 87% of our games on free broadcast television, including 100% of games and the markets of the competing teams.

The NFL has for decades put our fans front and center and how we distribute our content. The 2025 season was our most viewed since 1989 and reflects the strength of the NFL distribution model and its wide availability to all fans. And now, let's get over to Pippa Stevens for the CNBC News Update. Pippa.

Hey, Kelly, the UK accused Russia earlier today of trying to cut undersea cables via a submarine operation. UK Defense Secretary John Healy said the UK deployed military vessels to deter malign Russian activity in the area. Russia's London embassy denied Healy's claims, the BBC reported, citing Russian state media. Undersea cables provide a majority of the UK's internet connection. Stubhub will settle FTC charges of deceptive ticket fees with a $10 million refund to customers. The FTC alleged that Subhub did not disclose the total price of tickets up front, including fees.

The FTC's Director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection said in a statement, today's settlement underscores the Commission's commitment to ensuring that consumers pay the price they are promised. And as the Masters kicks off today, top golfer Bryson DeCambeau is ditching the major golf brands in favor of a club of his own making. DeCambo 3D printed one of his irons, telling ESPN, innovation is a habit of mine, and I really find and take pride in that ability to learn. DeCambeau finished round one of the master's. at even par earlier today. Kelly, back to you. All right, thank you very much. Next on Market Navigator, the call on the stocks of two companies that you probably use every day. And our next guest says

they're too cheap to ignore. All right, Dom is off today. So we get to do a market navigator segment ourselves. Stocks continue to bounce back from the recent declines. But the question is, with names that are really hit, is it time to do a little bargain? Maybe a lot of bargain hunting. Your next guest has his eye on two names that are each more than 30% from their 52-week highs. Let's welcome in your market navigator guest. That is Tom Martin, Vice President, Senior Profile Manager at Global Alt Investments. All right, Tom, I'm a big spot, big music guy. I love Spotify.

The investors haven't recently, but you still do. What's the Bull case on Spot? Sure. Well, the Bull case, in addition to it being, you know, you're picking it up about 40, percent cheaper than before, is that you have a company that's going to be growing its revenues, you know, in a compound annual rate of in the 15 percent area and earnings growth that is re-accelerating from the teens to maybe the low 20s. So that's, you know, the financial basis for it. But the company really is an innovator. They continue to be able to tier their market and

to get into other markets. So it's not just music, it's podcasts and audio books and tiering within the audiobooks, which has been successful and potential other products. So the idea is to get the customers into the top of the funnel. And if you can do that, why having them use an ad-supported function, you get paid for the ads. They come in the top of the funnel. They maybe decide to upgrade. And so you're increasing your penetration. You can increase your revenues and your margins at the same time. The next talk is Uber, and this is interesting because there's a lot of fear around AVs, autonomous vehicles, i.e. self-driving cars, and what that may or may not do to Uber.

There are people worried about it. Maybe they've dumped the stock. You're the buyer of Uber stock on that dumping. How come? Well, we think that there's a lot of evidence. We've always thought that they would be a survivor in AVs and that they would end up being the partner of choice. But, you know, it's hard to prove that until that starts coming through. And the recent deals that have been announced have really shown that. There are more AV and potential AV providers than the ones that we know about, you know, Waymo and Tesla, et cetera. We ride over outside the United States. But there's another maybe 15 or more that are coming with the technology. And what that does is fragments that part of the business and it increases the need for them to be able to scale and

get revenues quickly. And the way they do that is with the company that has the worldwide footprint and the technology and the software and the data and the information. So they're going to partner and Spotify, or excuse me, Uber's going to get better and better deals. We shall see. I listen. It's an interesting story. I will say if you've taken a Waymo, which I have the autonomous car, you can link your Spotify the minute you get into the Waymo and play your own music in the car. Tom Martin of Global Alt Investments, Tom. Appreciate it. Thank you. Great. Thanks so much. Coming up, a deep dive into Bondland with Rick Santelli and Pimco's Jerome Schneider.

Treasury yields are on the move as that fragile Middle East ceasefire keeps markets somewhat on edge, but provides some reassurance. Rick Santelli is at the CBO with PIMCO's head of short-term portfolio management. Jerome Schneider. Hi, Jens. What a special day. We have Jerome Snyder from Pimco Managing Director, and we had PCE and GDP. So let's start at the beginning. Month over month, on the core, up four-tenth. You're over-year up three percent. The only way to describe it is pre-conflict.

We're on the warm side. What are your thoughts about that and all the data? We are on the warm side, and I think the key thing to take away is that energy prices are starting to filter through the confidence in the economy and ultimately the economy in terms of price pressures. Let's be clear, though. As investors, we shouldn't be reacting to the minute-to-minute data or even headlines at this point in time.

Especially headlines. Especially the headlines. and the overconfidence of the market of precision. False precision is pretty daunting to clients, and we should really think about the larger picture what's going on. Now, what does that mean? So when we look at opportunity sets in this time, we have to recognize that rates have moved higher,

neutral rates have moved higher, from where we were even six or eight weeks ago. But stop a minute. Neutral rate has, but the market rates have been really steady throughout most of this. Market rates are steady, but front-in rates specifically have moved 30 basis points higher since we had our last conversation several weeks ago.

Those are the expectations of federal, reserve rate cuts in face of the higher inflation and perhaps even some lack of growth as we move from a supply shock potential to potentially a growth shock over the next few quarters. Those are factors that put rates pretty fair today and quite attractive for investors to consider, especially considering the uncertainty. So just caution investors to not be buying in to the false precision and really be focusing on the fact that there's opportunity sets while creating optionality within portfolios. Look broadly. Have the ability to navigate the liquidity landscape and not necessarily be wed in a high conviction trade at this moment.

Now, and I agree. Flexibility is key, and looking past certain issues is key. But then again, when I look at oil futures markets and I think about all the betting exchanges and the probabilities everybody's talking about, to me, that really cuts through and maybe gives you the best minute-by-minute information. Do you disagree with that? Well, there's a great thing about being a trader today and a portfolio manager today is you have unlimited information at PIMCO. We've taken all that information amalgamated into various analytical approaches, trading approaches, and bring it to clients. And that key is how do you digest the information into portfolios?

And the best way to do that is how the flexibility within portfolios to navigate the landscape as not just a minute to minute, but the longer-term cyclical outlooks change. That's the key here. Don't necessarily look at that and it's meant to make. All right. Now, inflation, past, present, and future. How is all that going to affect the potential Fed? And how is the lack or aggressiveness to the Fed going to make a difference on 10-year rates of

Markages. Tomorrow we have CPI number. That's obviously going to be a big topic of discussion, but longer term, inflation expectations, how they navigate the economy, perhaps an indicator with the Michigan inflation tomorrow, but longer term, those have an effect on animal spirits, on risk-taking. That ultimately leads to how much risk is going to be taken in the market and the outlook for the economy. So the economy is going to be driven by resources, by expectations of investments, and ultimately growth. And if that growth starts to turn, what we're going to really see is that... Now, what do you think would make growth turn? I know the confidence, conflict is not a good thing. But there's animal spirits in the Big Beautiful Bill, and a lot of the data still looks like it's hanging in pretty well.

Fortunately, the Big Beautiful Bill created tax rebates, which offset a lot of these energy prices, at least in the near term. All right. Now, listen, real quickly, we have to get to this. You know who this guy is? He's portfolio manager of the year. Tell me about your accolades from Morningstar and what the firm PIMCO also received. PIMCO received the stewardship award for all of its portfolio management, and our short-term portfolio management team gave us the portfolio manager of the year. your fixed income. So we're very honored and humble. Congratulations. Are you still going to talk to me? Of course, Rick, any time you want to have us. Thank you. Brian, back to you. All right. Rick Santelli and Pimco's Jerome Shider from Chicago. I love it.

More power lunch. Right for this. Cool blast for the past. 14 years ago today, a blockbuster deal. Facebook, buying photo sharing company, Instagram for a billion dollars that works out to about $33 per Instagram user, despite its 30 million. in users, Instagram does not generate any revenue and more startlingly, perhaps, only has 13 employees. I think they have more than 13 now. But that is, that was that, that and YouTube were some of the most significant deals.

I think YouTube was the biggest, the best deal of all time, that this was probably second. Most of his hair looking pretty good back then, too. What's your Instagram handle? It's not, but the kind of, what's your Instagram handle? Real Kelly Evan. And it's pretty real. I'll see how fast money at five.