Power Lunch - Tame CPI lifts stocks 12/18/25

Episode Date: December 18, 2025

Chip and AI names surged after strong Micron earnings. A lighter-than-expected CPI print sends stocks up. And what should you think of the energy trade right now? Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Mike Ron rallies, inflation eases, and investors ask, is the risk trade back on? We're back on. Welcome to Power Lunch, everybody. She's Kelly. I'm Brian. Strong earnings from a key AI stock and a surprisingly cool inflation reading, putting the stock market back in rally mode. But questions abound. We've got them. And hopefully, Kelly, some answers as well. Hopefully, and a potential game change in the weight loss drug race. How Eli Lilly's new obesity pill could reshape long-term treatment and why investors are so excited about it. Plus, precious metals are on pace to do something they haven't done.

And get this, more than 40 years. We're going to break down the value proposition that remains here and what this historic move could mean for your money coming up. 40 years? Wow. I actually don't know what it is. Now I'm interested. Stay tuned.

That's a team. I'm ready. All right, we're going to get to that. But we begin today with big tech and AI. Microns blowout results easing some concerns around valuations and data set are spending. Still, you got household names like Nvidia, Broadcom, AMD. Yes, they are down double digits from their 52-week recent highs. Investors, the last couple weeks, kind of getting out of big tech, moving more into sectors like industrials, financials, health care, or just putting cash in the sock drawer. But in fact, AI poster child, NVIDIA, it's actually been flat over the past five months. In fact, I understand, Kelly, that NVIDIA has been flat since July 17th. Do you know what that is?

It's some very special date, I think. Yes, your birthday. That's right. Fantastic. So is now the time to buy NVIDIA after it really hasn't made anybody any money for about five months? Joining us now with that. And more is Stacey Rasgon, U.S. Semiconductor analyst, Bernstein, I don't know when your birthday is, Stacey.

There's a one in 365 chance that it also is July 17th. Either way, welcome. You're actually pretty close. What is it? I won't give out my birthday on my air. Ryan is the day after, so we want to know if we're all in the birthday fall here. She's July 17th, Becky Quick, the 18th, and I'm the 19. That's not an accident.

You're somewhere in there. Stacey, did Micron sound the all-clear back on the AI semiconductor train? I mean, look, so I won't comment on Micron as a stock. My colleague covers it. However, I mean, we've seen memory prices going up, you know, a gazillion percent every single day because supply is very tight. And we saw that in their results. And why is supply tight? Big reason of it is because AI demand is off the charts.

Like, you've got tons of demand for what's called high band with memory. This is the type of memory that gets bundled together with the GPs and accelerators. demand for that is still off the charts. They talked about that. I think they're booked out now all through 2026. They're starting to add some capacity on memory, but it takes time. And I mean, I think they seem to think that those constraints and really strong demand are going to continue at least for now, like clearly, clearly well into next year.

And I mean, this is, you know, I've said this before. I mean, a lot of investors have been getting concerned about the AI trade and how sustainable is AI demand and everything else. And as I said before, the only ones that really seem to be worried about it right now actually are the investors. The companies that are out there are doing the spending and deploying the stuff, at least at this point, have not really sounded any alarm on demand. The only thing we've been in hearings, nobody has enough compute.

And that does seem to be clear. And again, I think Micron's results, at least for now, still demonstrated that. And Oracle is not the AI trade. Oracle is a company with a different, perhaps less plentifully available for, cash flow that is investing for the future, like it or not, that's up to you as an investor to decide, but they are not emblematic of the AI trade, are they? No, I mean, look, so Oracle gets concerned, because of all the large hyperscalers, clearly, they are the most levered and they're raising debt to do this.

Most of the spending, though, at the large hyperscalers is still being funded out of free cash flow. They're not, you look at a Google or a Met or an Amazon or whatever. I mean, these are some of the largest, most profitable companies in the history of humanity. And they're not levered at all. Like, they're still funding this stuff. I'm pretty easily out of free cash. So, Oracle's maybe in a different category.

The other reason Oracle gets a lot of attention is they seem to be very close with OpenAI. And so there's questions that people have about OpenAI's whole model. But in general, what's going on over there is not emblematic of, I think, of how the rest of the industry, at least at this point. is funding this stuff. Stacey, we're going to talk more about open AI with Rebecca Patterson here in a few minutes. But I want to ask this as a semiconductor guy covering Nvidia, how tied, if at all, is Nvidia to Open AI? Because the fear is if OpenAI were to stumble or show some cracks or whatever it may be. What would that mean for Nvidia? Well, you know, it's not just Invidia, like invidia and Broadcom and AMD, like they've all got pretty sizable deals with

with Open AI. I would say that Nvidia and Broadcombeleys have plenty of sizable deals with others. AmD probably like at least the near to medium term trajectory is probably more dependent on the open AI ramp even than saying Nvidia or Broadcom. I think from an AI sentiment standpoint, clearly if something really went wrong with Open AI, it wouldn't matter how exposed you are or not. I mean, the whole AI trade would come crumbling down probably on that. But again, I don't think that's even what we're seeing. I don't think that's what we're seeing, though. No, we're not seeing it.

Nobody's saying we ever will see it. I'm not suggesting it's happening. But there was a Reuters report out today that companies maybe aren't seeing the benefit of AI. Open AI's private. We don't really know what's going on. Sam Alvin doesn't comb his hair sometimes. I don't know. Whatever it might be, how tied or levered are they to Open AI?

because we don't have the visibility on Open AI that we do to a public company. That's all I mean. Yeah. I mean, look, they're a customer in both maybe directly as well as through like some of the CSPs. But I mean, they've got tons and tons of other customers as well.

So, I mean, it's not like none of these guys are not dependent on Open AI, either from a revenue standpoint or from a sentiment standpoint. But I mean, there's plenty of other spending going on. Open AI is not the only game in town here. And you look at some of these things. You talked about like some of the,

the declines off of the 52-week highs for the NVIDias and the Broadcoms of the world. I mean, if the numbers are anywhere close to being right, I mean, NVIDIA now is trading out in the low 20s. Broadcoms probably gotten 30% cheaper than it was, even just like a week or two ago, just on sentiment, if nothing else. I know people are worried about, like,

sustainability of KAPEX spending and everything. But, I mean, look, people have been worried about that since this started because the numbers have gotten so big, so quickly, you just scratch your head. But only thing I can say is like at some point maybe, but it's clearly not now. Now is not the time to worry. It's not this year. It's not next year. And look, if OpenAI does, you know, execute on what they're talking about for their plans, their spending doesn't even start until like the end of 26 and the 27. So if that happens, it's probably not 2027 either

that you'd have to worry. I think we've got room to run still. And the valuations don't look really attractive. Numbers are probably still too low. Um, I, I'd still be owners of these stocks. We cover Inveni, we cover Broadcom. I like them both. All right. Stacey, thank you so much for weighing in today. We appreciate your time.

Yeah, you bet. Stacey Raskan. We've got some breaking news impacting the cannabis stocks. Brandon Gomez has the details. Brandon. Hey, Kelly, yeah, that's right. You just saw that last hour. President Trump was signing an executive order to reschedule cannabis from a schedule one to a Schedule 3 drug.

Now, that's taking the drug and aligning it from drugs like heroin and LSD to drugs like Thailand. with codeine or steroids that have more medical benefits in terms of that classification. That's the big move here. It's going to open up access to medical research for the drug, allow more investment to come into the drug. And then also for those companies that have been selling the drug as well, giving them opportunities to take off basic tax deductions that they were previously not able to do. Also in conjunction, Dr. Oz announcing a Medicare pilot program to give some seniors who qualify

access to the drug as well. These are really huge moves, a massive move for the industry. that's taking place, you know, in the last 50 years, this has been one that we've been sort of ramping up to to this point. Brandon Gomez, the stock's all on the move. Brandon, thank you. And confirming again what was rumored for some time now. After the break, the CPI fueled a stock surge and what has not been a great week for equities. S&P and down now both on pace for their first positive days this week. We'll get into the print with Rebecca Pamison.

What's her opinion? Can we trust the CPI data today? That's on the other side. this break. All right, happy Thursday, everybody, stocks, look at that. They are higher across the board. We had some cooler than expected inflation data, but there is growing skepticism over how reliable the CPI numbers may really be.

Steve Leesman joining us now with more on this story, which is going to. to get some attention, Steve, because, you know, questioning the data is like a thing. It is, but not for political reasons, for methodological reasons, Brian, to use a very large television word. Stocks, as you say, they're loving this much cool than inflation report. But the bond market and economists, they're pretty skeptical, with many saying changes to the data gathering process and some of the methodology may have distorted the numbers. RSM, Joe Buswellis says, dude, that was one flawed report. Oxford says, encouraging signs of disinflation, but something feels off.

And Pantheon says data collection issues means trends will only be clear in December. Economists have raised questions about the sharp drop in housing costs, as well as whether the survey limited to the second half of the month might have overweighted for holiday discounts. Morgan Stanley writing, the BLS might have carried forward prices in some categories, effectively assuming zero inflation. If these technical factors are the main source of weakness, we could see re-acceleration in December. CBC's contact with the BLS on these issues, we have not heard back yet. If it's accurate, it might suggest the inflation decline, not as much as indicated, but still maybe perhaps under control.

Take a look at the two-year yield actually rose, a sign the bond market wasn't buying this big change in inflation, and that the Fed would be easing sooner than expect it. You can see the two-year rallyed a lot up and down there on the left side of your screen and sold off modestly since the number was announced a little bit of a two-point rally this last couple hours. So Fed probability is also unchanged, the 24% probability. So the market not saying, hey, this means the Fed's going to cut in January, a little bit more probability of one in March, a little bit less in April than it was, and pretty sure that we'll have that second cut by June. Irony of all this, inflation is probably in housing, is probably declining, and it takes a while for those declines to show up in the CPI. But this looks to be too much, too fast to be credible.

So be excited about this, Brian, just not so much right now. Be excited also about the interview we have tomorrow morning with John Williams, the New York Fed President exclusively on CNBC at 830 a.m. Kelly? But I want to be clear. So this is not like, remember the late Jack Welch, those Chicago guys question of the jobs data. Then when we had Biden in office, we had some on the right say,

oh, these numbers are just made up, they're all fake. That's not what we're talking about here. You're saying this is a, I'm not sure I could say it, methodological? Yeah. I think I got that right. A trouble with how they put the numbers together, Brian. And basically, they didn't have all the data they normally get. They use some fill-ins, and the fill-ins they use are what bothers people. They didn't necessarily show inflation. They may have carried a zero over. Also, the idea that they only gathered prices in the second half of the month. You know, I have been saying that old data is better than no data. I'm not sure

that unclear or questionable data is better than no data, Brian. Fair enough. Good point. Steve Leesman. Methodological. Good word. Wordle's starting word. A little long. Yeah, Wardle's, what, five letters? That was the joke. That was the joke. With the skepticism surrounding the inflation data, what should you do with your money? Do you go all in on stocks? Do you proceed with some more caution? Let's ask Rebecca Patterson, independent director at Vanguard and the former chief investment strategist at Bridgewater. Great to see you, first of all. Good to see you.

Do you, I hate to put it quite this way, do you care about the vagaries of whether this report is reliable or not? Can you wait it out? Do you look to the market reaction for the tell? What do you do here? You listen to John Williams tomorrow on CNBC. I mean, that's going to be a hugely important interview. That's must watch TV because he is one of the top three people at the FOMC, his voice matters, and he's going to have a view on this inflation report.

I agree with what Steve Leesman just said. In this case, no data probably would have been better than badly created data. There wasn't a political issue here. It was just that they didn't have the right time period. They had to put fill-ins there. So the numbers we got, we don't have any idea what they mean. So where does that leave you, though, in the camp that inflation's coming down and that lower yields and Fed cuts is all going to kind of support the rally into next year?

Well, we'll probably get payback for this number in the next report. which will come out mid-January, so we're going to have a higher inflation number that month. I'm looking at all the other inflation data we get. We had the composite PMI, the business sentiment survey out earlier this week. It was showing when you take manufacturing services together, inflation is rising. Now, I do think we're on a disinflationary trend, i.e., the pace of inflation is moderating. The question for next year is the speed. You know, if we go from 2.8 to 2.6, it's very different than 2.8 to 2.2,

in terms of what it means for the Federal Reserve and how much more easing we can get next year? People have compared this time to the internet boom in the late 90s. From 96 to 2000, the internet was effectively created. Okay, the World Wide Web, Commerce, etc. Remember that thing, Cyber Monday? It was created like 1995

because you had a work computer or you'd have one at home. During that time, the Fed was raising interest rates because they worried about what productivity gains may ultimately do to inflation. If this is that time in a different way, should the Fed be cutting rates or should they be raising rates? Well, the Federal Reserve isn't going to try to guess how much productivity, growth lift,

and how disinflationary that'll be. Greenspan did. As they're setting, well, Greenspan was then, this is now. I think the consensus in the market is that next year is going to be a pretty good year from economic growth, right? We have fiscal tailwinds. We'll probably have some continuing monetary tailwind, deregulation coming through relative, and I want to emphasize that, more clarity around trade policy.

And we have a government that wants to do well in midterms, which means make sure the economy's doing okay. If we're in that world, it's hard for me to see the need for the Fed to cut much from here, right? If we have a robust economy that's growing above historical trend, even with some disinflation, the need to cut is. is just not screaming out at you. So you could have one or two modest rate cuts, but unless you get more softness in the labor market, it's not going to happen. And for the labor market,

I think what we want to be watching is small businesses next year. They have not hired this year. They have let workers go. If we get some more clarity around trade, if tariffs come down a little bit next year from current levels, which could happen if the reciprocal tariffs

are deemed illegal by the Supreme Court, they'll be replaced, but the overall tariff level will probably be slightly lower, and then maybe we have a little clarity till the midterm, at least. In that world, if you start to see a little bit of broadening in the economy

from the fiscal stimulus that comes through tax refunds, etc., do the small-cap companies start hiring again? We know that they are 46% of employment in the United States. So I don't have a strong view on that. I'm actually a little bit in the skeptical camp, but people I talk to who think we could have upside surprises in the market next year,

that would be one of the markers I'd watch. The NFIB Small Business Sentiment Survey and job hiring from small companies. If that starts to stabilize and move higher next year, I think that would be an incredibly bullish sign. The AI trade is fine? Which would you rather stick with the AI trade or jump in on the metals trade? We talk open to that because you wrote an op-ed about this a month ago. Brian and I were talking Jenga before I came on set this afternoon.

And I wrote an op-ed in the New York Times last month about how I see America as the Jenga economy today, in that we have a tower that's getting taller, but it's also getting more fragile for the moment. And what I mean by that is the lower-end consumer, the K-shaped economy, that's a piece of the tower taken out. The small businesses who got hit much harder by tariffs this year, that piece was taken out. A lot of young people finding jobs taken out. AI is a key building block in our Jenga economic tower. Is it the build? Is it the one, is it the piece?

You ever played Jenga, Kelly? Oh, yes. Is this the piece that if you pull it out, the tower comes down, the tower being the stock market and maybe the economy? And I'll tell you why it's not crazy. I'm asking about Open AI, the last guest, right? You have Bernie Sanders, arguably one of the most powerful people in the United States, calling for effectively a moratorium on building. building more data centers because of the profits go. Chandler, Arizona, voting five to nothing two days ago to say no to a data center because

of water concerns, pushback in Indiana by the general population because they're worried about the utility rates. And we're just pretending that there's no barrier to the data center spending story when we're seeing it all around us, including at the highest levels of the U.S. Senate. Yeah. And that's my TED talk. AI. It was a good one. Sharp to the point. Yes. So look, AI is the Jenga block next year because it's helping the economy in two main important ways. It's the CAPEX boom, right? $360 billion just from four companies this year. Probably I'm skewing that too low. And it's going to be even greater next year. So a huge amount of capital spending going in the economy. That's one support. The other one's wealth. It's what CNBC does every day. We're talking about $5 trillion of wealth creation in the last 12 months from the stock market, according to J.P. Morgan estimates.

So those equity gains allow for the higher income consumer, the people who own the most stocks, to keep spending and supporting the economy. I don't know if it's open AI. If something happens to AI sentiment and confidence and you see those stocks come down and you lose the CAPEX and or the consumer support, we're going to have an issue. I'm not saying it will. No, I know. We've got to go. I'm not picking, and I'm not picking on OpenAI. I'm just simply saying they're a private company. We don't know what's going on. They've got like a building in San Francisco.

The CFOs had a couple jobs before this one. Sam Allman's kind of going around, been like, okay, I'm going to give you 10 gigawatts, Kelly. Right? I'm just, we don't know what's happening in there. And I can tell you, I just came from a lunch with about 12 amazingly smart women in the finance industry, and that was a big topic. A lot of people are spending their waking hours trying to understand it and get ahead of it. Right. And will they have enough money to literally meet all of the obligations that they've spread around the industry? And enough energy and and and and.

Yeah. Rebecca, as always, great to see you. Nice to see you. I love the Jenga reference. What a good one. Thank you. Play it. Let's do it. 301. Right here. The old show long, see when it falls over. Rebecca Patterson, thanks. Let's get to the credit markets, which are looking better after the CPI push yields down. The 10-year treasury, the benchmark moving to about 410 after people digested that delayed inflation data that showed cooler prices. pressures. And look, no matter what you think about it, it did reinforce expectations for Fed

cuts next year. The odds of a January cut even rose to about 30%. All right, when the old names become a new thing, your market navigator guest has some familiar names that may have some upside left in them. Plus, a shocking new data point on electricity costs that almost nobody else is talking about. But we will. Next. Well, your next guest looking at a couple of different stocks, including one, he calls the poster child for the recent market pivot. Keith Buchanan is senior portfolio manager at Global Investments, and he joins us now. Keith, good to have you on Market Navigator. What is this symbolic stock of the recent market pivot?

Thanks, Gavin having me. Your last segment had it perfectly. Jingle game grows weary with investors after some time. We want to have exposure to our clients to names that have the opposite profile of doable cash flow, direct site earnings. Also, demand is somewhat stable. Duke Energy provides that for our clients. With their regulatory rate base in a growing demographic area and region of the country, we feel like a 37 dividend yield as well as 17 times earnings offers that good visibility for our client base in Duke Energy.

Yeah, we actually spoke to the CEO a couple weeks ago. It's kind of new as his first TV interview. You know, there's a lot of worries, Keith, about data centers raising utilities bills, or customers' bills, but they're actually getting paid more from the data center companies for their power. It would seem like Duke Energy might win because of data centers. Customers win. Duke Energy wins. Your clients win.

Absolutely. There's an overbuild of this data center infrastructure and AI infrastructure. Duke is in position to continue to provide for their clients as well and the customers as well being able to move that rate-based higher. We feel like the shareholders can benefit as well. Yeah, so Duke Energy, one of the plays. Also, IBM, we kind of reference this old-fashioned name. By the way, it's acting like a hot young stock.

IBM's been red-hot this year, Keith. Absolutely. And IBM is the same store, but a different flavor, if you will. with the enterprise customers really pushing efficiency, modernization, AI deployment, and it's not necessarily built particularly on speculative spin. There's some there. But the hybrid buildout of the cloud automation, and we feel like benefits shareholders in a way that they could continue to expand their valuations,

even if some of the Jenga box start to look wobbly, as your previous guests have mentioned, with the AI infrastructure buildout. Well, I do like your Jenga references. Keith. You have to join us on set, Winnah. if we do play that game. Keith Buchanan, Global Health Investments, Duke, IBM, Keith, thank you very much. All right, we are going to stay on the utility story, folks, because some new data came out last night. It showed another jump in electricity costs. The grid operator for more than 60

million people from Virginia to New Jersey all the way to Chicago. They put out their numbers for an auction twice a year. And wow, those numbers are eye-opening. Certain electric costs once again hitting the price cap. That price cap, now $333 per megawatt hour. What does that mean? Well, electricity delivery costs were under $30 a megawatt hour just a couple of years ago. The surge, boom, has been incredible. And it's because, in part, demand far outstripping supply. The grid operator, known as PJM, also warned that electricity supplies are less than their safety buffer zone. a 20% buffer. We're in that 20%, but it's narrowing. So costs are up along with supply concerns and maybe this latest auction, this latest report, Kelly, should be a wake-up call for the

entire Mid-Atlantic and East Coast region about how close we are to real problems with electric power. You've been warned. Amen to that. Brian, thanks. Up next. Trump media goes nuclear. A look at the latest deal in the Trump portfolio. right after this. All right some good news for those struggling with obesity and for people who just don't like needles. Eli Lilly says the pill form of its GLP1 weight control drug worked well in tests.

That could help bring people off the shot version of the drug and also take market share away from competitors like Novo-Nortis Wegovi. is helping one of those stocks. That is Lilit. Let's get more now on the story. The pharma and biotech reporter, Anika Kim Konstantino. Anika, what's the story here? Is this pill going to be ready soon? Right. So thanks for having me on today.

So basically the news today is that Lily has trial data showing that its obesity pill could be an effective maintenance treatment for people that want to preserve their weight loss but don't want to keep taking weekly injections like Wigovian Zep bound. So in this trial, they basically followed people that initially took these injections for around 72 weeks, and then they randomize them to either take a placebo or the pill after a year. And so what this data found is that people who switched to the pill pretty much maintain the majority of the weight that they initially lost on the injections. And so people that were in the Wagovi group only regained about two pounds of their weight

after a year, and people in the Zepbaum group only regained maybe around 11 pounds of that weight. And so this is great news for Lilly. It kind of points to the additional role that this pill could play in the broader weight loss drug market as a maintenance treatment. And that could further boost uptake for the drug once it gets approved. Cost comparison between the pill versus the injection? Right. So we don't know exactly how Novanortis or Eli Lilly will price these pills yet. You know, that's usually announced after an approval and these drugs are both not approved yet. But we do have some clues. Like when they struck a deal with President Donald Trump last month,

you know, Trump did say that the starting doses for these pills will be $150 per month, you know, for people that want to pay with cash on the direct-to-consumer website Trump RX, which is launching in January. January 2026, but we still don't know what some of these higher doses for the pills are going to cost. But, you know, that $150 range, that's already much less than what we're seeing with these. Is that the insurance cost or is that the cost cost? That's the cost cost for cash-paying patients who would pay for direct-it. That's, I mean, that's still a lot of money for a lot of people, but it's way lower than the thousand plus dollars that some non-insurance payers are paying for the injectable version, isn't it? Exactly. So some of these injections, or both of them,

costs around $1,000 per month before insurance. And right now, obesity coverage for these drugs is very spotty. But, you know, under this Trump deal that we saw last month, you know, part of that deal is going to expand coverage, Medicare coverage, for the very first time to obesity drugs. So that's going to be a notable change that we're going to see probably in early to mid-2020. All right, big deal. Potentially, you can see it in the stock, again, a juggernaut and now another plank perhaps for the bull story for those who had doubts.

Anika, thanks very much. Anika Kim Constantino. And it's not the only retail name that's been on fire. This mystery stock is headed for its 17th straight, positive year. And our next guest says it still has room to run. What could it be? Tweet us, whatever we call it. We're back after a break.

Welcome back. Welcome back, and it's time to it for today's power check. Let's hear what stocks our trader is buying, heading into the index. of the year. Adam Phillips is Director of Portfolio Strategy at EP Wealth Advisors. Adam, welcome to you. Let's start with our mystery chart we tease, which is TJX. Everyone knows it's been a juggernaut, but you see no reason to leave it behind. In fact, it's up 27% over the past six months, all-time high earlier this week. What is the P.E. on this these days? Yeah, absolutely. Look, it's climbing, and it's in the high 20s now. But Kelly, look,

that doesn't mean that the good times are over for this stock. I need to take a moment and credit my mom for originally putting this on my radar several years ago. We've had it in the portfolio for quite a long time. And really, this is all about bargain hunting. This is about shopping as a sport. And that's really what this company does. Well, most of their goods are discounted 20 to 60% from the retail prices. And that's really important right now, is it's driving a lot of foot traffic, even more than usual. As we know in this environment, a lot of consumers are very price conscious. They're looking for discounts. And this is a brick and mortar. And so because of those discounts, they're able to drive that traffic,

those deep discounts, not really seeing a lot of competition from online retail. And so this is one that just continues to outperform. I will just highlight in their most recent earnings report. They did increase their forecast for sales growth in the next year. And so they see no signs of this slowing down, and neither do we. All right. Well, stick with it then. And a hat tip to mom for the pick. Did she get you on the taxes, too, into it? No, I can't give her credit for that one. This is, you know, Intuit is a more recent call of ours. We just added it to the portfolios earlier this month.

And, you know, this one is really about, I think like everyone else, we're waiting and expecting the market to broaden out here in the months to come. We've already seen that start, but we don't necessarily think that the AI trade is over, but we're focusing away from those hypers, those original AI winners. We are a little bit light in our exposure there, and we know how fragile that trade has been. What we're focusing on in this next phase are these AI adopters, and who can actually see these benefits from incorporating AI technology into their business, and Intuit is certainly one that seems to be doing it right. I like that. In their QuickBooks, they've noted that their users are increasingly using their AI agents and seeing tangible benefits.

12% less time, entering figures, getting paid faster on TurboTax, being able to save time on tax returns. And most recently, outside of AI, they did just earlier this morning announce a partnership with Circle. And so starting to get into stable coin payments in their system. And so a lot of exciting stuff going on with TurboTax. Just quickly, I know we have to move on, but it's ironic that you liked into it because it's benefiting from AI, but you're underweight the AI type of names,

the MAG-7, so to speak, or the hyper-scalers. Quickly, why? Yeah, absolutely. Look, I think in a nutshell, if you look at the MAG-7 in general, they've seen a 200% return here over the last few years. They've also seen their operating margins increase by 10%, so by double digits. That is just an enormous amount. They certainly deserve the run that they've had. I think the question is, is that sustainable? We know how much they're spending. We know that competition is heating up. These companies, NVIDIA and Alphabet, in particular, are leapfrogging each other. So it could be just a more challenging environment for them in the months to come. Yeah. Appreciate your time, Adam. It's good to have you on. Different take

on the AI space, Adam Phillips. Different take. Very quickly, markets were up. We know that. But Target, we were just talking about two weeks ago, how bad it was doing up 12 sessions in a row, Kelly. So here's the question, the trillion, not maybe a trillion dollar question, does this mean it's a larger revival for the company, or is it not to use the dead can't bounce parlay, but something more like that? I guess time will tell. We'll find out if that comment was on target. That was a dad joke, but I'm off tomorrow, so I don't care. Thanks for watching, Power Lunch, everybody. Closing bell starts right now.