Power Lunch - Volatile Session for Stocks, Crude Oil 3/10/26

Episode Date: March 10, 2026

Stocks and crude oil prices seesaw on changing headlines related to the Iran War. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The stocks keep churning higher, building on yesterday's monster comeback as oil falls amid a swell and optimism around the war in Iran, is there light at the end of the tunnel? Hello and welcome to Power Lunch. I'm Kelly Evans, and we've got a jam-pack show on deck for you. Brian Sullivan is at RBC Global Financial Institutions Conference in New York. He'll be joined by the CEO, Dave McKay to discuss the state of banks, trade, the world economy, and much more. That's in just a few moments. But first, let's get a check on where the markets are right now. The Dow was up nearly 500 points at session. highs building on yesterday's big rally that saw the index erase an 800 point deficit to close in the green. President Trump hinting the war in Iran could be nearing an end that sent stock searching. On the flip side, oil continues to fall after hitting four-year intraday highs on Monday. Crude briefly topped 119 a barrel, really on Sunday night, and we are now just around 80.

The IEA and G7 nations are reportedly considering tapping into strategic reserves. While in a now deleted tweet, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the Navy successfully escorted an oil tanker through the strait of Hormuz. We'll drill down on all of the angles affecting energy coming up in the program. Plus Wall Street, keeping a close eye on Oracle, perhaps a bellwether for the strength of the AI trade. They report Q3 earnings after the bell. They missed revenue estimates eight out of the last 10 quarters, and the shares are down 50% from their September highs. As mentioned, Brian Sullivan is out at Arvarez. C's Global Financial Institutions Conference.

Let's go straight to him now for an exclusive interview. Hi, Brian. Hey, Kelly. Yeah, a lot going on, a lot to talk about. We're here at the RBC Global Financial Conference in New York City. Now, RBC's stock has been red hot. It's up 82% the last five years, net income jumping at the bank, wealth management assets soaring here and in Canada. RBC, now the fifth or sixth-ranked wealth management firm in the United States.

Let's talk about that, AI, energy, and more with our hub. host here, Dave McKay, he is president, CEO of RBC. Dave, I know you don't do a lot of interviews. It's been a year since you've been on CNBC. You're always welcome, by the way. You don't have to wait so long. Thanks for having us here. That's great to be here.

Great to see it, Brian. And maybe I should do this more often. It stocks up 80%. Well, let's say that after the interviews. Okay, see how this goes, Dave. All right, so I want to, there's a lot to get into with AI and rates. But I have to start with the lead story every day.

That's been energy. That's been the war. Helene Mccroft, her team, doing a amazing work for you guys. Thank you very much. How does something like a giant spike and then a giant collapse in energy prices, natural gas, your commodity-based economy up in Canada? How does that impact RBC quarterly and annual earnings, if at all? Yeah, I think Bryant's more the latter. I mean, the market, as I think Warren Buffett loves to say, is a voting machine to start, then a weighing machine over time. And certainly, in the short term, investors are having trouble kind of forked. What is the impact from the spike in oil and gas prices? How much does it translate into inflation to the consumer? Does it hold back spending?

In the short term, not a lot of impact. As conflict extends and the threat of an extended, protracted conflict, the worries increase. So you saw oil prices hit at one point spot, $120 based on market extrapolating against the uncertainty of prolonged war. As that range of outcomes narrows, you see the market pull back significantly as oil flows through the straits for our moods, oil is pulled back a little bit more. So the short-term volatility in markets, but in the long-term, it doesn't change consumer spending patterns. It doesn't really change cap-x levels. It has to be a prolonged structural change.

So for many CEOs, we're focused on the next five to ten years, and we're kind of moving forward, trying to understand short-term impacts. But at this point, it hasn't led to your point, any structural change in anything. We just witnessed the greatest round trip in the history of oil. I mean, 50 bucks, 60 bucks in two days' time. If oil prices were to remain elevated, if, I know it's an if, because they could go back up, by the way, like they did, Russia invaded Ukraine, went up like this, fell back, and then came back four months later,

hit new highs, if it were to remain elevated, I would assume that would then start to impact your thinking about the consumer and RBC's business. Certainly. We have K-shaped economies, from a consumer and business respect, to both in the United States, more of an extreme K, where 10% of the population driven by positive equity markets is driving 40 to 50% of consumer consumption.

And Canada, it's more 20% drives 35, 40%. But on that population that stretch financially, we see that in subprime, higher energy prices translates into less disposable income, higher gas prices. For a stretch consumer, they have to pull back. more and therefore you see more consumer default you see more stress in the overall consumption economy which is a big part of GDP both in Canada and the US right now we're seeing subdued housing markets but we're seeing strong consumption markets strong government spend so a prolonged

impact certainly kind of causes stress in that case-shaped economy that's quite exasper you have a huge energy and energy related business as well I know you've been involved let's say in the big LNG thing with Shell on the west of side of Canada. We forget, it's easy to forget, that our friends to the north, Canada, we're the biggest oil importer from Canada, US, four and a half to anywhere six million barrels a day. How much is RBC your investors, your shareholders, exposed to U.S. oil flows to the United States? And do you see, because it was rough, Keystone XL, getting canceled, et cetera, Do you see an opportunity for more energy imports to the United States?

We do. There's revived conversations around Keystone XL, and a lot of that pipe still bought waiting to go into ground. So you've got counterparties on both sides of the border, United States and Canada, looking to see can we export more energy? There's certainly significant demand for Canadian energy on the global marketplace. We're looking at deals with India, South Korea, Japan, China, Germany, getting more LNG to Germany. And right now, Canada looks like a safer, more secure option to export and secure long-term off-take agreements. So we're very much in the mind that we've got to get more of our energy to market to Asia,

Europe and the United States through Keystone. I think we're a secure, safe energy partner, a trusted partner that can make America more prosperous and more efficient. So let me ask it a different way. Do you believe, and more specifically, do you believe that what's happening, the war around Iran and what's happening with shipping and the Strait of Hormuz and all this stuff, that will make Canadian energy and thus, because you're directly connected with your business, to energy flows literally and figuratively, it will make Canadian energy more attractive to the United States.

You're a friend, you're physically connected, it's easy to run a pipeline. It's a lot easier than getting a ship from the Persian Gulf over to here. It's not only more convenient and safer, it's incredibly profitable. We ship heavy oil into the refineries and... Houston, Louisiana and into the Midwest as well. The upgrading profit from the discounted purchase from WTI to the upgraded price is roughly $30,35 billion of profit a year to the U.S. refining industry. So this is incredibly profitable, not just convenient and safe. So for all those reasons, profit, safety, really important to secure that long-term source of oil from Canada.

I'm going to move on a different topic. Record attendance here at this conference. Yes. I see a lot of young faces. so every face is little. We both are. Exactly. But that's a while.

They're all worried about AI. If I talk to any of these people over here, they'll say, oh, is AI going to take my job? You've got a bold AI plan, a five-year plan at RBC. What does AI mean to one of the biggest banks in the world? And is AI going to eliminate the need for all these younger people that are over our shoulder here? Eliminate? No. Change? Absolutely.

So we're looking at deploying. We made a very significant commitment. to the market in our investor day last year, as you know, up to a billion dollars of net profit by year three. We're already in year two. And we're on track to do that. And we're confident in delivering that benefit to the market because we've been doing this for 10 years. We've been building reinforcement learning models, machine learning models with a group of 100 PhDs. We've deployed those models into our trading businesses, into our consumer banking businesses. We've got our data in a great place. And we're leveraging that infrastructure into an accelerated

deployment of generative A.M. models with partners like Anthropic and others and our own in-house capability. And we're deploying, to your point, from our investment banking support to our sales and trading capabilities, to our automated trading capabilities, to consumer banking. There isn't a part of our bank, Brian, that is not touched by these models. And I think it's going to make our customer experience better. It's going to make our employee experience better. It's going to change the skills that we need around our business over time and the types of employees that we need. So I think, yes, it's good to everyone has access to these models. We've syndicated these models across 100,000 employees. We've asked our

employees to play and learn with them and see how you can change your job. And we've got thousands of ideas coming forward and how to transform the organization. It's very real and it's happening quickly. And very quickly, I don't want you to go into politics. I'm not going to ask you to go there, but you do have a relatively new prime minister, Mark Carney. Yeah, you're in? Former financial Minister of UK. This guy knows markets. He knows rates. Are you optimistic and hopeful that he can work a little better with our White House? Because tariffs are going to be keen to your earnings, keen to your net income, and keen to your clients and customers. I think irrespective who's in power, $400 billion across the border every year, those supply chains have been integrated for decades.

And they wouldn't exist if it wasn't really beneficial to the companies and to the customers on both sides of the border. To me, that drives the overall outcome. It's good for both sides, prosperous for both sides. It wouldn't be there if it wasn't good. And therefore, we have to protect that. But it requires change. The world's change. America's needs of change. Canada's needs have changed. And we're going into their restart these negotiations with an open mind to say, what has to change to continue this incredible relationship cross-border. And I think both sides are going to get it done. And I think that maybe war in Iran might change some of the thinking around energy flows. We shall see. And by the way, we didn't even, we don't have time. We have to go, Dave. We didn't hit the biggest news of all.

Russia is going back on tour. It's going to single-handedly add a couple of tents to Canadian GDP. Dave McKay, President and CEO of RBC. Thanks for having us here. Really appreciate that. It's great to be here. Thank you. Kelly. Back to you. Really enjoyed that. Thank you both. Let's bring in Pippa Stevens now with some more breaking news. Pippa on the energy complex. That's right, Kelly. So Writers is reporting that a U.S. military, the U.S. military, I should say, has not escorted any ships through the straight of, Hormuz so far. That is according to Reuters. Of course, we had that tweet on the Energy Secretary's page earlier today that was then removed. And now Reuters is saying that the U.S. military has not escorted any ships. Brent, still down, sorry, WTI still down here, about 13 and a half percent

at 85.95. Guys, Pippa, thank you very much. Clearly a lot's going on in the background of this story, Pippa Stevens. The stocks are moving higher still as we enter day 11 of the Iran war and amidst this whipsawing, what should investors do? Let's bring in Phil Strebel. He's the chief market strategist at Blue Line Futures. Ah, in Miami, I believe Phil soaking it up. So tell me what you make of this wild action in the oil price. Yeah, it's a few things that you really want to break down. It's not only the volatility in the market. You can look at OVX. It's jumping up to about a hundred as a reading. And typically oil volatility is right in the mid-40s. So where you get a normal $1.52 range, now you take the 10-day average exponential daily range, and it's about $11. You know, we define some

levels here, though. You saw how important just that tweak coming out that was quickly deleted. Was it potentially exposing that the U.S. is moving some through and making them a target? You know, no one's going to know. Normally they bring about 35 ships through the straits, not only about three are being reported. But look at every time that President Trump or, you know, the energy secretary has a tweet or a comment, we see five to eight dollar ranges in oil quickly. I think that if we break back below, we can get into the 70s, maybe we can work down into the lower range of that. Yeah, no, and I look, we all follow the market. None of us, God forbid me, is smarter than what we were saying last time with Jeff Kilberg. I watched the markets to try to figure out what's

happening. That said, it's hard for me to wrap my head around an oil price that was 68 before the Iran war when the straight, when 35 ships were going through and is 78 now when only a couple are. Yeah, the key level to watch is that 67. That was the day before that this conflict was announced. And that's going to be if we could break down below that level, then I would say that this trade is completely over. We've probably got a complete de-escalation and some kind of plan going forward. The oil prices often lead what the key developments are. So I think that that 119, that's probably the high end of the range. We probably won't revisit that again.

I think that it's in the administration's best interest with midterms and things like that to try and get oil and gas prices lower. Something that viewers should know is that every $1 move in the oil market equates to about a $2.5 cent rise at the pump here. So you get a $10 move. That's $0.25. $20 moves 50. And that really impacts the consumer.

and it becomes a tax on them. Yeah, Brian Selvin. Hey, Phil, it's Brian Selvin. Listen, how much of that 119, 120 on Sunday night, how much of that was fundamental versus financial and just some really, really off-sides positions in the options market? Any way to know that?

Yeah, a ton of volatility, a lot of FOMO buying. We've seen this just recently in the silver market, where it eclipsed, hit those same elevated levels. You tend to attract a different type of trader into that market. The algorithms come in there. And then the dealers, you know, they are in a position where they're selling call options to people. They're selling put options and you get that extreme volatility. Volatility works both ways of the upside and downside. But they've got to hedge that exposure there. So they are going to be buying futures contracts

against short calls. And then that's going to amplify that move upwards. And then of course they've sold puts. So they're going to have to short futures on the downside. And that's where you get that negative gamma situation, and you get these squeezes in one direction or the other. Yeah, and now we... I guess the confusing part, Phil, I guess the... Sorry, Kelly, yeah, we're in separate spots, Phil. I guess the confusing part is that the U.S. is escalating the war today. I mean, the Secretary of War, Pete Eggst, saying, we're going to basically blast Iran the next

couple of days, and then I'm guessing we'll probably announce some kind of victory toward the end of the week. The war appears to be escalating in Iran from the United States, maybe not around it, And yet the price of oil continues to fall. Please make sense of those two things. It's because of the fact that you're going to run out of a number of targets there. They just can't carpet bomb the entire country. They have specific things that they're going after.

And these objectives are being slowly crossed off. They're not going to be hitting the same sites multiple times. And really, Iran, it's in their best interest. They didn't close the straits that first time around because of the fact that that's how they fund themselves. So, you know, they've got to get things going back on. They're losing markets here to Russia right now. The market, you know, it'll come back. The question is, is how long does it take some of these areas outside of Iran that have been hit,

and their infrastructure has been damaged in order to get back online? And I think that's where price is really coming to the low 70s, and we kind of hang out in that area for a while. Yeah, that's interesting, Phil. You think that if they can't fund themselves and if they're losing market, share to Russia, you think that might result in a, you know, in an end, some kind of, some kind of ending to this war, because it feels like they're really digging in their heels. Yeah, it does. And I mean, they've got to get a resolution to it. I mean, for the Iranian people

and everyone else, they've got to get their economy back going. They've got to make some deals. And it's unfortunate that things have escalated to this level. But, you know, given the circumstances, I could see, you know, why it's happening. So we'll continue to just want to monitor some of those key levels, that oil volatility coming back down, any kind of confirmation that, you know, there's rising shipping flows going back online. How are OPEC respond? You've already said they're not going to increase production too much. And I think that that is kind of another leading indicator that they believe that oil prices or oil production will come up to a level that's comfortable to, you know, put off some of those higher prices. All right, Phil, thanks. Really appreciate you showing us how you'd be looking at this and think through it. Phil Strebel, joining us there from Blue Line Futures. As he mentioned, we're getting some relief on oil prices,

but our next guest says we aren't out of the woods just yet. He is looking for us to revisit those highs if the supply disruption continues. Again, that's the big if, the trillion dollar question. We're back after the break. Welcome back. We're up 300 points on the Dow. We've now given up almost all of those. Oh, no. Pippa Stevens is back. Pippa, what's happening? Hey, Kelly. So oil is well off the lows of the day with CBS reporting. U.S. intelligence assets have begun to see indications that Iran is taking steps to deploy mines in the straight of Hormuz shipping lanes. According to CBS, Iran is using smaller crafts that can carry two to three mines each. We are seeing WTI bounce on this off the lows of the session by about $10.

Below today with 76, 73. We're now at 85, 58, and the market's taking a little bit of a leg lower here as well, as oil does move higher, now down just about 10%. Guys? All right. 85 handle, which means we're up $8 from the session lows in oil, and the Dow Jones Industrial average, which was up 330 points at the session highs, was just up two and almost turned negative. Brian, over to you. Yeah, and I want to add something to that very quickly here, guys, if we can just hold it. Because the mines, so the last time the Strait of Hormuz was mined was in the 1980s, and there's an unclassified CIA document which explains the minds and what they are. The good news is this is that we have the ability to handle the mines fairly easily.

The technology of the mines, unless these are brand new and something totally different, is a little bit old, for lack of a better term. I'm kind of just freelancing on this, but the mining, obviously, not a good headline when it comes to shipping. I would say that's an odd headline, given that the majority of the flows through the Strait of Hormuz is a lot of Iranian oil, and a lot of those is going to Iran's customer China. And by the way, the mines, they don't really care who they hit, although I would assume maybe if it is true, that the Iranian captains get some kind of information on where those mines can get home. Maybe. Anyway, let's talk. Yeah, it's a weird headline. I'm not sure I fully buy into it, but let's ask Andy Lipow. Kelly, he's here. He's going to join us right now. And he is president of Lipau Oil Associates. Andy, all this is happening right now. And I'm not trying to like just throw out 1986 CIA documents about mines. But what's your take on that headline? I find it odd. Well, good afternoon, Brian and Kelly. Thanks for having me. Well, I think the fact that Iran is threatening to put mines through the straight really gives tanker owners pause whether the technology is new or old as to whether they want to transit through the waterway. And I think that's really what Iran is driving at is to get the tanker owner operators to really stand still and not do anything.

Yeah, but at the same time, Andy, how much does that the Saudis increasing dramatically, the oil flow on the East-West pipeline for the Abcake Refinery, over to Yanbu, which is on the Red Sea. I don't want to get into random Middle East geography, but if you look at a map, and I'm assuming we have a map, otherwise I'm going to use my hand. Persian Gulf is up here. Red Sea's over there. This is highly technical stuff right here, Andy, and the pipeline goes across the side. That's five or six million barrels a day. How much, I know it doesn't mitigate the Strait of Ormoo's, but how much does it help with the supply disruption situation? Well, it certainly helps a lot, and it looks like throughout the Middle East,

six to seven million barrels a day of production has been currently throttled back or shut in. So that, of course, would help Saudi Arabia to mitigate any supply impacts that they have. Of course, once you get to the Red Sea, your option is to go northbound through the Suez Canal, and that's good for Europe. But going southbound, you have to transit past Yemen and take on the risk of Houthi missiles firing at your tankers. I'd also point out that we have an Abu Dhabi pipeline that can bypass the Strait of Hormuz with another million and a half barrels a day. And even Iran has its own pipeline to bypass the strait that goes down to JASC, which is another million and a half barrels a day. So there are some alternatives to the closure of the strait.

But right now, you know, those alternatives are being developed. You need to get more tankers into the Red Sea to carry that oil as it exits the Yambu port. And with most of that oil going to China, a lot of that oil coming from Iranian ports, loading docks, Carg Island, whatever it may be, Iran, if they're doing this, is probably put Iranian ships in their own client interest, China, at risk, Andy, do you believe? I don't want to be clear. The story is basically that Iran may be taking steps to at some point mine. There is not a headline, as I've seen it, that they are mining the Strait of Hormuz.

The report is that they are taking steps to maybe, at some point, think about mining the Strait of Hormuz. The market clearly doesn't buy it because oil's down 10%. Do you buy it? Well, it's hard to say. I mean, you hear a lot of language out of Iran, and, you know, that's quite rhetorical in a sense. You know, I think we had the technology to follow those smaller boats, you know, and blast them out of the water before they're laying mines. I think if they were to lay mines, at least the Iranians would know where they were. They could, you know, maintain their tanker shipments in their own Iranian waters and still deliver to China. And that would be a way of bypassing the mines.

because the mines would be in the main channels. Kelly? Yeah, no, I was, you know, the only last thing, Andy, that I would say is that the price of the gasoline pump, which is around $3.50, sounds like a little under. We're all hoping maybe this blows over, despite the rhetoric, and the gasoline price can come back down. Well, I mean, now we're, you know, what would you say about the price where it is right now? Let's say we're at 85, Andy. It's hard to game this out.

Are we going to continue to see upward pressure? Well, actually, I think there's going to be a pause here, given how much the futures have come off from their highs. And when I look at what's happened since February 27th, what I would say is there may be some marginal relief in the price of gasoline. Maybe it'll fall of, you know, a few cents over the next several days. The same could be said for diesel fuel, where futures had gone up well over a dollar a gallon, but they're only up about 60 or 70 cents right now. So a little bit of relief, but this doesn't really ameliorate much of the pain that we're seeing from the consumer with a jump of 50 cents a gallon at the pump. The other thing I do want to point out is we talk about production quite a bit, but there's already about 2 million barrels a day of refinery capacity that is now offline either preemptively or that's been attacked throughout the Middle East. And that is further constraining supplies of refined products at the same time that you're seeing.

China and Thailand restrict their exports of products. Yeah. No, I, you know, it feels, go ahead, Brian. Yeah, it just feels like there, even no matter what we can do with the SPR, yeah, go ahead. There's just, there's gluts forming and shortages and production shutdowns. Go ahead, Brian. Yeah, sorry, guys. Very quick question, Andy, then.

Do you expect that if this goes on, we're going to see like jet fuel shortages in certain places, things that fertilizer shortages, things that are related to refining and petrochemicals, but not oil, per se? Well, I think the question is on refined products. And I think on jet fuel, you're certainly seeing that spike quite a bit. And what's particularly worrisome is the West Coast is a huge importer of jet fuel from Korea. And if Korea would follow the likes of China and Thailand, then we could be in, you know, for serious supply shortfalls. I think if that was the case, the U.S. would actually waive the Jones Act tanker requirement. We'd shift jet fuel from the Gulf coast to the West Coast. And keep in mind, the Gulf Coast is a huge exporter of refined products,

whether it's gasoline, jet, and diesel, to get it to either the eastern west coast. Frankly, we just have to simply waive the Jones Act requirement, and then we could be more or less self-sufficient on refined products. All right. Andy, thanks so much. We really appreciate it. These gyrations are just a while. Now there's some reporting about the U.S. asking Israel to stop bombing Iran infrastructure, and that has the Dow from a almost turning negative to up 153 points, the oil price stabilizing. Andy, thanks. We'll check back in soon, Andy Lipow. Coming up, we also have a mega-cap tech company tapping the debt markets. We'll tell you which one and why it matters. That's our mystery chart. Feel free to message us on X, even with all this

other stuff swirling around. We also have a quick market check as we had to break. As you can see there, the Dow's up 160. That's a third of a percent gain same for the NASDAQ, little less so for the S&P. Crude is down 11 percent. We're around 84 a barrel, and there's a whole lot more after the break. All right, welcome back. There is a lot going on in all the markets, particularly the bond market as well, and not on the government side. Corporates, Amazon has kicked off what is likely to be one of the biggest corporate bond offerings ever. It is the latest in Blockbuster fundraising to pay for the artificial intelligence boom. Rick Santelli, joining us now from Chicago. Rick, I don't ask you to dip into the world of corporates much,

but this is like the size of a small government offering. It's the size of a small government offering, but the amount of bids, the bid to cover, blows government offerings away. I'll give you an example. It's 11 parts in the U.S., eight parts in Europe. The 11 parts here, well, you have two-year fix, two-year floating, three-year fixed, three-year-floating.

Five, seven, tens, 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s, and 15. off fix. On the two-year fix, you're about 55 basis points over equivalent treasuries. If you go out to the 30 year, you're about 145 basis points over treasuries. Juicy yields. But right now, it looks like it's about 25 to 30 billion in the U.S. side, and on the European side, around 10 to 11 billion. The all-time record is rising at 49 billion in 2013. But it's interesting here is there's 126 billion of supply right. Now, bids for that $37 billion, I'm assuming around $37 billion from Amazon, that would make it a bid to cover, Brian, of 3.4. An average bid to cover on an auction in the U.S. is usually 2.4 to 2.6. And you're looking at all the Treasury market yields popping, led by the long end for obvious reasons, 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s.

And you see those charts? That means that many investors are selling treasuries to make room to buy the auction. of Amazon. I look for it to price any hour between now in the end of the session and maybe a little bit into the evening. Yeah, it's a flight to safety, the safety of Amazon at this time. Rick, thank you very. Well, I don't know if it's a flight to safety. I think it's more of a flight to greed. Okay, they're looking for better yields. I'm not sure that it's safer being in any issuance related to AI than it is U.S. Treasuries. I think it might be a race to the bottom. No, No, no, we're being too critical. It's for investors to decide. Rick, thank you. Rick Santelli.

Let's get to Julia Borson for the CNBC News Update. Hi, Julia. Hi, Kelly. A federal judge in Ohio today ruled that Cal She's prediction markets and sports amount to gambling and should be regulated under state law. Cal she argues its sports offerings are regulated swaps and should remain regulated federally by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The company had asked for an injunction against the state's gaming regulator. CNBC has a partnership with with Kalshine. A new report from the National Federation of Independent Business shows small business owners are less optimistic about the economy, with sentiment slipping in February for second straight month. The group says competition from larger businesses is putting stress on Main Street firms as they try to navigate the current climate. And Swiss chocolate maker

Lint says people on GLP1 weight loss drugs are eating more chocolate, not less. According to data from the company chocolate sales are rising faster among those users than the rest of the population. The company's CEO says while people are cutting back on junk food, they're still looking for some kind of indulgence in premium chocolate fills the void. Kelly, back over to you. You know, I've always got, I'm not on jail, but I might get on them if I could still enjoy this. Julia, thanks very much, Julia Borson. We have some more news coming out of the White House. Pippa Stevens, what's happening? Well, the White House press secretary, Caroline Levitt, commenting just now on the story we've been reporting

all hour about a possible naval escort through the street. Here's what she said. I can confirm that the U.S. Navy has not escorted a tanker or a vessel at this time, though, of course, that's an option. The president has said he will absolutely utilize, if and when necessary, at the appropriate time. Leavitt also said that she has not had a chance to talk to the Energy Secretary about it directly. We have reached out to Christopher Wright's office, and we will keep you posted on anything that we might hear. WTI now trading around $84. All right, Pippa, thank you. Crazy.

Yeah, just crazy whiplash back and forth, Kelly, between these headlines, did we, did we not? Now there's talk about potentially minds, really interesting. All right, Defense Secretary Pete Hankseth earlier today saying that today would actually be the most intense day of strikes on Iran. So what exactly does that mean about where this is going? Can the U.S. unilaterally say the war's over? Longtime DC insider, big thinker, Megan O'Sullivan. We'll join us on just that after this. It has been a relentless flurry of headlines around the situation in Iran over the past hour or so.

Moments ago, the White House saying the Navy has not escorted a tanker through the Strait of Hormuz, U.S. intelligence saying it's seeing some signs that Iran is ready to deploy mines in the strait. That was a CBS report. Joining us to discuss is Megan O'Sullivan, Director of Harvard's Belfar Center and Deputy National Security Advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan. under President George W. Bush can't be a good sign up for talking to you when we're saying that Iran won't go the way of Iraq and Afghanistan. And I would love welcome to the show. I loved your thoughts on that matter. Thank you, Kelly. Well, I think there are some obvious parallels that I think have captured people's imagination. And where we're back at what appears at least until this morning to be a game of regime change in the Middle East.

But I would say that Iraq and Iran differ in some very significant ways. One, of course, is that, there are no troops on the ground, no boots on the ground. That was very much the opposite in Iraq, where there were 150,000 troops in the early days of the intervention and the decapitation. But beyond that, I would highlight that the Iraqi regime was one person who kind of kept everything together. And so decapitating that regime led to its collapse. We're seeing something very different in Iran. This is a system that was made to be resilient. It was made to withstand decapitation. And it appears that that strategy or that structure is working in the sense that you've had dozens of Iranian leaders eliminated.

But you see the reconstitution of power, or at least what looks like the reconstitution of power, in the naming of a new Ayatollah yesterday. So it does look like this is going to be a much harder endeavor to crack this regime. than it was in Iraq. The question of what would come after a regime collapse in Iran, I think is one that probably hasn't been sufficiently contemplated. And we start to see that in President Trump's comments today, which suggests he may be looking to define success in a much more modest way in the near term.

Megan, what do we know about Motabha Kamani? Is he his father? Is he someone that is more likely to work with the West? They don't have to like us. that, but will he work with us, kind of like Delci Rodriguez is thought to in Venezuela? Well, I think that is certainly the hope of many in Washington. What I would say is we know very little about Ayatollah Khomeini's son, the new Ayatollah Khomeini. He's 56 years old, has been very close to his father all of these years. There's virtually nothing on him out there. Speeches

or other things on websites. He's been very quiet in that regard. It's believed that he is even more conservative than his father was. And people also point to the fact that he's wounded. We haven't heard anything from him since he's been appointed. He was wounded. It is believed in the strikes. And we know that his wife and his father were killed in those strikes a week ago.

So the sense is that he may prove to be a very difficult person to negotiate with. There was a lot of discussion among Iranian leaders, Iranian leaders within the regime about whether this was really the right person to put forward now, because if you are looking to de-escalate this confrontation with the United States, the sense was putting him in place was not sending that signal and would probably make it harder. I think in general, we're looking at his appointment as an indication that Iran is ready for confrontation that will last an indefinite period. period of time. Of course, that could change, but I think the signals are right now that

he's a hardliner and that the Iranian leadership is consolidating power around the very powerful IRGC. Obviously, it's going to be a much weaker government than the one that existed before this bombing campaign and certainly before last June. But it doesn't look like it is a regime that is going to be making concessions of a meaningful kind to the United States or certainly to the Iranian people in the sense of real reforms in the near future. It was interesting to see, you know, sort of the who are the athletes who are in Australia, the Iranian women who said, I'm not going back. Megan, we have to leave it there for now, but we hope to bring you back.

Actually, I hope not to. I hope that this can end and, you know, world peace will rain. I can talk about good news too. Yes, thank you. We should do that. Megan, thanks so much. Appreciate it today. We've had a lot of volatility in the energy space.

With that comes opportunity. and our market navigator will tell you some names to be buying right now after the break. We have had some wild action on the oil price again today as investors are digesting all these headlines. But our next guest believes the true extent of disruption has yet to be fully assessed. And he's using options to play the sector, a little bit more safely, perhaps. Tony Zhang is chief options strategist at Options Play. Tony, what are your ideas? I mean, you know, I guess, look, no one's more forcing anyone to trade oil.

be clear. It's just if you want to, what do you see as some opportunities here? Yeah, the way we're looking at this right now is really trying to identify which companies are going to marginally benefit from this disruption in oil prices rather than just simply chasing that momentum. The first one we're looking at here is Schlumberjay, because as oil prices continue to rise or we expect higher oil prices, this is really where drillers will make the decision to make capital expenditure decisions, right now and that's what chlain berger as the biggest oil field services company is going to benefit from you know the increase that we're seeing in international recounts especially for offshore drilling and

that's really why we like slumberger because the decisions for uh you know drilling is going to be made right now as oil prices remain elevated even if oil prices come back down a little bit those decisions are being made right now so slumbrgier is a way that we like to play that you know we're going out to the april expiration we look at selling the 47 and a half puts on Schlumbergerjee, you're going to generate almost 8% of the stocks value in income in just under two months. So because options premiums are extremely elevated, we want to take advantage of that by selling puts on a stock like Schlumbergerge. Understood. And there's kind of a sense of that trade, you know, in the green as it moves

up and where it's in the red, Tony. What else might you, what's catching your attention here? Yeah, the other one is Chenier Energy. You know, as Asian and European buyers are looking for, different, you know, alternative source of supply for liquefied natural gas away from the Middle East, you know, Chenera Energy is the largest U.S. exporter of liquidified natural gas and the 40% of it. And I think that's really where another potential beneficiary is going to be. You know, they're adding a ton of capacity in 2026. They're having 10 megaton capacity being added. So I think that's another key beneficiary out of the Iran crisis. So we're looking to use options as well. Going out to the April 24th weekly option, I'm looking at selling the 245,

230 put spread. Essentially, same trade we're making here on Schlumberger, but with a higher price stock, selling a put spread and set an outright put to reduce the margin requirements on this. All right. Schneer Schlumberger, Tony Zhang, taking that slice today. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. And more power lunch right after the break. All right. Well, here at the RBC Global Financials Conference, down on Wall Street or all across America, investors trying to catch their breath after ways of seemingly conflicting headlines about Iran and the Strait of Hormuz. Major markets, you can see, are marginally higher, up about two-tenths of one percent.

The price of oil well off its high, right around $84 a barrel. Mike Santoli joining us now. Mike and Kelly, I mean, this has been a, it feels like all summer in a day, to quote a Ray Bradbury, short story because it feels like we've lived a market day in just one hour. Yeah, pretty much. I mean, I think that I look at it as nobody knows what's going to happen next and the markets are behaving accordingly, which is the S&P is looking to oil for any kind of a clue on incremental movement in terms of whether this crisis can perhaps be de-escalated within the window that the market's been assuming would leave no lasting durable economic damage, whatever

that is, a couple of weeks. I think the big question was, was yesterday was $120-ish-dollar crude, the moment of maximum uncertainty, because everybody remembers from last April, that's the moment you want to buy, but you never know it's the one until you're looking back in retrospect. So I think it makes sense. Sixty-800 on the S&P is kind of not telling us much. We're just sort of staying there on balanced footing, ready to react. Market has a lot more to prove to the upside, though, to say that yesterday's balance was consequential. Yeah. Mike, we appreciate it. I know it's been a crazy day. We'll see you soon. And Brian, it's been good to see you as well this hour.

Yeah, I'll see you back at the studio tomorrow. Not sure I believe the mind story. We'll see what happens. I'm already doing more reporting on this. We will bring it to you tomorrow. That's it for Power. Let's closing bells are tonight.