Power Lunch - Who is the top player in the AI trade? 11/26/25

Episode Date: November 26, 2025

Retailers ready for the Black Friday shopping surge. Terawulf CEO Paul Prager joins the show to weigh in on the AI race.  And are there some year-to-date laggards that investors should be looking at into year end? 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, everybody. I am Brian Sullivan. Kelly will be back on Monday. All right, markets in the green ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday, mega-cap tech leading the gains. Yeah, the names you know, the NVIDIAs, the oracles, the Palantiers, they're bouncing back from their recent pullbacks. Investors doubling down on bets the Federal Reserve will cut rates at its meeting on

December 10th. We'll get more clarity, maybe when the beige book is released in like four seconds. And can Alphabet unseat NVIDIA to become the big winner in the trillion-dollar AI race? The CEO of Terawolf will join us exclusively for his take. He is partnered with Alphabet and both have boomed. All right, welcome, everybody. Hope you're having a great pre- Thanksgiving holiday. Maybe you're sitting in traffic somewhere on the radio.

Either way, thanks for joining us. Let's start off with the big story of the day. the week, the month, maybe the year. That is two AI giants moving in relatively different directions recently. Alphabet, Google's parent, and NVIDIA, are now on pace for their widest monthly divergence since February of 2024, in other words, in just under two years' time. So will this trend continue? Will Alphabet continue to soar, or will NVIDIA kind of get most of its mojo back and maybe

catch up. We're joined all hour by our friend, Sarat Sadi, managing partner of DCLA, CNBC contributor, and for today, a guest host, Surat, great to have you. Thank you for having me. Are you as surprised as some have been at this recent outperformance by Alphabet? So I wouldn't say surprise, but I think the key thing to focus on is Gemini is working, and now because of Gemini, the horse race is now in Google's favor. They're Gemini is their AI agent. Gemini, exactly, and that was competing with ChatGBT, GBT. And if you remember when ChatGBT came out, people said, whoa, wait a second, 90% of Google's revenue is advertising.

That's going to hurt. Now you come out with people saying, hey, this is a little bit better. So I think it's a horse race, Brian, and I think there's going to be enough demand and there's going to be enough for both of them, if not more, to survive. But in today's momentum-driven market, Google's come out. ahead. And then you got the news that meta might maybe be using their chips. So a combination of those two, Google's added over a trillion dollars of market value just this quarter. And I think the naysayers of Google are now kind of not there and probably got some shorts covered and have some longs going to the game. I mean, it has really been an outperformer. And we're not taking

anything away from Nvidia. I guess the bigger macro question for most of our audience, Sarat, is, is this a Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson moment where they don't fight against? against each other and they each can win in different arenas? Or is this more of a sunny listed Muhammad Ali where there's going to be a winner? I think it's going to be in the former because what you also, and Nvidia came out a couple of nights ago and said, hey, we congratulate Google on their chips. Which I thought was a little weird. Yeah, which was kind of interesting, right? However, our chips are first generation, right? So it's really who's got the technology, who's going to be using it for what? And if you're talking about computing power faster, they're going to

different demands, different needs for different computing power. So right now, I think it's the former, but Google, so Nvidia was so far ahead. We'll have to see when the next kind of chips come out, who's going to be buying them or are you going to be buying kind of, do you want the Ferrari or do you want the Nissan, right? That's going to be the question. Is Nvidia the Nissan? Because Nvidia's printed money for investors the last number of years. Only lately has it been relatively weaker than Alphabet, but you know Nvidia's been a giant money. It's been a huge algorithm. I mean, you owned it for five years. You have a solid gold yacht. Our top five holdings have Nvidia and Google in them. Okay. So if you think about it, and am I selling either one? No.

Am I trimming it? Yes, if it becomes overexposure. But I think, you know, it was natural for Nvidia to give back some of it. It was such a leader in this. Google's catching up. But I do think the two of them, what they're doing, are good core holdings for the next couple of years. Okay, so they're still top five holdings for you. Yep. You're trimming a little bit of NVIDIA. Only because if it comes outsized. Because it became too concentrated in your portfolio.

Exactly. So the headline is that Sarat Setti selling NVIDIA because you don't like it. It just became too, it was almost too successful, and it filled up that candy jar a little too much. Exactly. And any stock that does that when you have a diversified portfolio and you're looking to risk manage, You have to say, hey, I got to be careful because you don't want to fall in love with the stock. You have to have risk discipline in the same way that when you have a sell discipline, you also have to say if things are too big.

Okay, so you've made money on your clients have made money owning NVIDIA. Then what are you doing with the proceeds of that sale money? Is that all going to alphabet or something else? No, no, so you're now taking the story that we're going to talk about later in the show. Well, that's what I do. I front run myself. I front run my own show. So you talk about dogs of the Dow.

We talk about dogs of the market. And I would say good quality companies that have been oversold and you're going to a period, Brian, in the next four weeks, which is tax lot selling. So what do investors do in the taxable portfolios? They sell their dogs. They double up and they kind of say, hey, I'm going to offset. So sometimes you find really high quality companies that you want to own, like in our products. Okay. Well, don't give way too much because then I'm, again, frontwriting myself.

So we front them the idea, but we won't give the specific. Good. We call that a deep tease. and it'll keep people through the hour, just like we're keeping you through the hour. Sirat Setti, thank you, because right now we've got to get to Steve Leesman, who has got the aforementioned breaking news

from the Federal Reserve. Steve. Hey, thanks very much, Brian. The Bejewks saying that the economic activity was little change. Two districts saw modest decline in growth, one reported growth overall. Consumer spending declined further,

though high-end retail, as we've heard from some of the retailers themselves, has been resilient. Some retailers saw a negative impact from the government shutdown when it came to consumers. Auto dealers saw declines in EV sales. Remember that there was the expiration

of the tax incentive there. Manufacturing increased somewhat. That was good news, but tariffs and tariff uncertainty were headwinds for manufacturers out there. In fact, there's a lot on tariffs in this page book here. The ongoing recovery,

there was an ongoing recovery, noted in the office real estate market, I believe that's something Diana Olik has been talking about, but this is on the sad side here. Community organizations did see increased demand for food assistance due in part to snap disruptors. I don't think I've ever seen anything about food assistance in the Bayesbook here. Employment declined slightly over the period. Half of districts reported weaker labor demand. That's a large amount.

Employment was limited using hiring freezers and attrition, though, rather than layoffs. And we did get confirmation of those low layoffs again in the job was claims number. And now here we go. This is pretty interesting. A few firms say that AI replaced entry-level positions or made existing workers more productive enough that it allows businesses to curb new hiring. And employers did have an easier time-finding workers, though, in some sectors like construction, it was tough. Wages, something the Fed watches closely for inflation pressure from the labor market. They generally grew at a modest pace. There was rising health insurance premiums that put upward pressure. on labor costs. And then the important part on inflation. What are they seeing in the base book year? Prices rose modestly during the current period. Input costs did put pressures were widespread in manufacturing and retail, by the way, also, and that was largely due to tariffs. Passed through of higher input costs, however, did vary. And many companies, Brian, I don't know if you're seeing this in the company reports were talking

about margin compression or firms facing financial strains from tariffs. And the firms were expecting upward cost pressures to persist, but plans to raise prices were mixed. So a lot going on there, Brian. In the background, when it comes to, say, an effective AI through there, but also these effective tariffs, we don't hear or talk a lot about it because it seems to be going on in the background on the balance sheet of companies' books who are dealing with these tariffs, Brian? Yeah, and the food assistance, let's hope that's a one-time thing because it was right around the time of the government shutdown. Steve Leasman, thank you. Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours, Steve.

Sure. Thank you. All right. Let's get now to Rick Santelli with the Bonner report with the 10-year sitting. And Rick, when I say sitting smack dab at 4%, I mean 4%. Yes, absolutely. Now, real quickly, let's look at the maturity that most closely follows those minutes, and that, of course, and the beige book, and that is the two-year note. Now, if you look at the two-year note, you can clearly see we're right at the middle today's range, right in the middle at 348. Very little reaction to the actual Fed news, although we did drift a little lower going into it. Maybe the big news today, 216,000. That's the big number, or I should say a small number. That's the number of initial jobless claims today, a seven-month low. You see on that chart

very well behaved, and I continue to look at the equity influence on the interest rate complex. The S&P futures and the tenure followed each other after that good number, and then they separate about 11 Eastern. That makes sense. The reason, look at a two-day chart of tens. Yesterday's high yield was right around 404, right where we stopped and broke it back down today. We continue to monitor Fed Fund futures. 80% probability of an ease at the December meeting. As the prices rise, so does the intensity of easing, and that's a week-to-day chart. Brian, back to you and have a happy Thanksgiving. Rick, thank you to you and yours as well.

Your thoughts on the Fed. CME Fed Watch tool shows about an 85% chance of a rate cut December 10th. Yeah, I think the data here just confirms that you're probably going to have a cut. The market's discounting it. You look at productivity increasing, probably put some pressure on wages again, which is what the Fed's looking for. Unemployment's increasing. Companies are talking about, hey, we're not going to hire as many people. We're looking at AI, other productive. So, you know, when you see that type of data, it gives the Fed cause to say, maybe we do give the cut.

And, you know, look, if the market does not get the cut, this rally in the last three, four days, we'll have some. Does the market back up 5 to 10% if we don't get a cut? I think you could get a pretty drastic people will be off sides at that point. But if we get a cut, the market may not respond because we're responding now to the expectations of a cut. We are discounting what the market's going to do in the future. And it'll be a question of what they say then to say, are we going to stop here or we're still going to kind of say, hey, the data is showing that we're on the same track. Who is Sarat SETI picking his Fed chair? I'm going to be neutral in this one, I think.

Whoever is the most qualified person. Somebody named Kevin? There's two of them. Two Kevin. That's what I'm saying. You're not picking one. It looks like the odds are. It's going to be one of the Kevin's at this point.

How about this? Forget about who you'd pick. Is there a market difference between the names we know as finalists in how he or she may react and may influence interest rate policy in the quarters of years ahead. Well, from what we've read is they are, they are from, they're being supported by the current administration, so I think they will be more dovish than Hawkeying at this point. To get appointed, or I shouldn't say appointed to become a Fed nominee because the Congress will officially appoint them, you would need to be in favor of much lower interest rates,

would you not? Wild stab in the dark by me right there. Absolutely, and I think you have to support what the administration has been saying, and I think it will be interesting to see what it's going to be when they join the committee, because right now you actually have some dissent on the committee. Which is probably why the Russell 2000, the small caps, have outperformed so much the last couple weeks, expectations of a rate cut. Does the bond market listen to the Fed, or is the bond market going to stay around 4% regardless of what the Fed does?

A bond market, I think, is going to listen to the data and not what the Fed does. And if rates, if wages are not coming down and if inflation is stickier and higher as we go through the holiday season, I think the bond market will be very different and will disassociate itself from the equity market. Fantastic. Sirrat, you're not going anywhere. We got you for like the next 40-some minutes, Sarat Setti. Thank you very much. Coming up, we're going to switch gears.

Talk about this trillion-dollar holiday shopping season, which is now upon us. Stacey Widlitz is in-house, and she told me that she's got the magazine. of retail. We'll let you decide. She's got the list coming up. How can we not talk retail today? A record 187 million people are expected to shop from tomorrow through something called Cyber Monday. Which I can't believe I just said, Cyber Monday.

That according to the National Retail Federation, let's bring in now one of our favorite people. Stacey Woodlitz has brought some of her. favorite retail stock picks and maybe a little bit of a holiday surprise. Stacey, good to see you. Good to see you. And I know, Brian, Black Friday is your favorite holiday. So, so much so I took the day off. And I, you know, I'm not a fan of saying Cyber Monday because, you know, we don't use dial-up modems anymore. That said, before we get to your picks, why do you, why do you argue that tariffs may be good for retailers? So if you look at what the company's just reported, right, we were all panicking going into Q4.

you know, costs are going to go through the roof. Price increases that are going to be passed through will be, there'll be pushback. Operating margins will come down. We're seeing the opposite. We're seeing it from, you know, the tried and true, Walmart, TJX, you name it. But we're also seeing it from brands that we're supposed to be dead, right? Urban outfitters, the gap. Operating margins are at levels of last year, if not higher.

And that's because companies have been forced to cut costs and come in with very lean inventory. So it's like COVID. They learned how to be disciplined again. So it's like clean up aisle 7. And that's what's really happened. What's the, Sarat, what's the, I think it's a political statement, but it's like never failed to take advantage of a good crisis. Exactly.

And the retailers, it sounds like what you're saying is they've used, not calling tariffs a crisis, but they're using that cover to fundamentally improve the way they do business. Or this crisis has pushed them to be super conservative and super smart about their. inventory positions as they go into holiday. So for most of the companies reporting, you know, excluding one or two like the targets and bath and bodyworks that were not so great, inventories are lower than sales. So that's how you want to go into holiday because then there's very little margin risk and you're actually chasing product. So is this stuff they bought pre tariffs and then kind of how does that play out the next

couple of quarters? That's a great question. So some of it, A lot of it was bought pre, but now we're starting to roll new product in that the costs are higher. But again, from what you're hearing from the companies, they've been able to cut other places. And by the way, AI is helping, right? Because, you know, Best Buy was talking about their touch points with customer service down 17%. That's helping them cut costs. And by the way, customers are happier because it's more efficient, so there's less returns. So it's kind of, it's all coming together with a perfect store.

And the other question is, you know, we talk about this K-shaped economy, right? Where are you seeing that where, which are the upward K spending or and kind of who's benefiting or is it lower K and then kind of how do you associate those two together? Sure. Well, you're seeing luxury certainly have a bounce back here, right? When have we seen mass wealth creation like we're seeing now? So the luxury guys are starting to come back. And you're hearing from everybody across the board, Best Buy, saying that, yes, there's still value driven out there. and people are still being very choiceful and careful.

But at the same time, when there's innovation, people are opening their wallets and they're spending on innovation. We saw that with computing, with AR glasses, Nintendo Switch. So it's... Did you just say choiceful? I did. Courtney Reagan said that word yesterday, and I was like, what is this new word? It's like my wordal starting word.

It's a little long. It is. Choisful. That's the new thing. Choiceful. Choiceful. It's like a bad habit you pick up from listening to. Come on. When we saw you in the green room, we said you've got the math. mag seven of retailers. Yes. So forget NVIDIA. Forget, you know, we have exciting retail movements.

We're seeing Urban Outfitters up 15% today. It actually outperformed Invidia in the near term. Abercrombie was up 40% yesterday. So like forget the Mag 7. We have the Mag 9 here. We've got Walmart, T.JX. I'm going to count. Costco, Ulta. We have on the brand side, Urban, Urban Outfitters. Nike, I'm going to call the turn on that. I had to sell for it over two and a half years. I had a sell on it for two and a half years, and I upgraded it recently to a buy. And I'm going to say William Sonoma, which operating margins are up versus last year and positive comps across the board. If you want to look into 2026 for interest rate play, and, of course, they own the white space.

I think that's C-shaped upslope with the Lecrucrette pot. So let's go with the FAP 7 analogy, right? Because we know when you look at the market, you know, 40% of stocks are 50% of the market. cap. Is that the same in retail now, the big are going to dominate or the healthy? And then you kind of have to stay away from the others and to say, you know, maybe not do Target, but do Walmart and the others? Is that kind of how? Absolutely. And if you're seeing what Walmart is doing, their traffic and their ticket is up. And they are stealing share from everybody. They're stealing the high income consumer. That's where most of their comp growth is coming from. They have the power to crush

everybody in terms of costs. So you want to stick with the big guys and avoid the margin. Let me do the intersection there. You get Amazon, which is in the FAB 7, and you get Amazon on the retail side. How do you see that play with the Walmart? Do you see them kind of, Brian's question to me, does NVIDIA and Google coexist and Walmart and Amazon coexist? Absolutely. And I think both continue to gain share and both continue to dominate.

And the targets, the coals, you know, we saw this rip and coals the other day. But their operating margin is a third of what it was a few years ago. Their comps are still negative. That was a short squeeze. It was, hey, things are negative two. not negative seven. And the stock, you know, there was a huge short cover there. I would not look at that stuff. Is by now pay later? Is that affecting retail at all? And if so, how? So that's been around for a while. And yes, it's helping people stretch out payments with lower interest rates. It's hurt,

certainly credit card signups and adoption. So it's helping people manage their spending over a long period of time. Everybody's always been calling for that to destroy the consumer and put them into a debt whole and that has not happened. So are they spending more, are people spending more because they have access to it? Or is it just replace a target credit card? I think it's replacing credit cards. And of course, your interest rate on a credit card could be 20 plus percent, whereas by now, pay later. For a few months, you're not paying anything on that. So it's given them more spending power. But what we've also seen is all these price increases across the board, the consumers are taking it if the product is right, whether that's the gap, urban outfiters, or best

by. Stacey Woodlitz, thank you for coming down here. Have a happy Thanksgiving. And we look forward to having you back on because I want to talk more about Target because that company's been a disaster. Absolutely. And I want to dig a little more into it, but not today. Today's the day of giving thanks. I look forward to it. Exactly. Family giving thanks. Stacey, thank you. Let's get out of Contessa Brewer for a CNBC news update. Brian, a senior Russian diplomat said today that Moscow will make no big consections on a peace plan for Ukraine. U.S. Special Envoy Steve Whitkoff is expected to travel to Russia next week to meet with leaders there about the U.S.-backed proposal to end the nearly four-year-old war. Russian officials say they still have not officially received

the plan, but they have seen a copy obtained through backed channels. The Supreme Court deferred a ruling today on whether to allow President Trump to remove the government's top copyright official. This move leaves Shira Pullmutter in place for now. The Trump administration moved to fire her in May shortly after her office circulated a report saying some tech firms use copyrighted works to train their AI systems. And her lawyers argue the president just disagreed with the findings. And the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade balloons are being inflated right now in New York City ahead of tomorrow's big parade.

It can take as much as an hour and a half to get each balloon fully inflated. Some of them are as tall as five stories. This year's new addition to the parade include, what would you guess here? Luboo, right? Anybody who's got kids knows the Lubu's hot, and K-pop Demon Hunters. Brian, I'm going to spare you singing the song, because then we'll all have earworms for the rest of the day. I was one of the balloon handlers about 15 years ago. What? Yeah.

Was it raining? Was it windy? It was windy, and I was on Curious George's hat, and I was holding down the first rope. True story, you know, I'm a big dude, and it was hard. And I was really happy the parade was over, because. I it was a lot of work and it was like a workout curious george just sit on the parade route and have a bloody mary well that that's that's now that's the plan but i was too dumb to know that back then you know 15 years you've accomplished a lot i was i was too curious contesta brewer thank you coming up prediction markets they're booming but what stock might benefit the most for the prediction

market boom we've got some ideas in your market navigator next All right. Time now for Market Navigator. And really today it's kind of all about the prediction markets because trading platform Robin Hood teaming up with huge financial firm Susquehanna to launch a predictions futures market. It's clear that predictions markets are booming, but what stocks may boom because of the boom in predictions market? Well, let's get a prediction. Jessica Inskip is Director of Investor Research at stockbrokers.com and joins us now. So Robin Hood, getting a nice pop, Jessica, but you think there's another name, a big name, to watch in this prediction space.

And that I absolutely do. Robin Hood's leading into it because it's an easy entrant into this emerging retail client that we have. But pretty, Prediction markets are where futures were 150 years ago, and I even think there's parallels that we can bring in to the options market. It's fragmented because it's across CME. Interactive brokers has their own Kalshi, Saskwana. There's those sportsbook-style platforms, and that's the infancy stage, because it's exactly how early futures markets looked before there was standardized futures.

And that's where I see CME group as really being in a position to capitalize from this. They are taking this regulator-first path to become the standardized for the type of market structure. And if we go back to what happened with futures 150 years ago, all of the oversight that was required, CME actually acquired those companies, in which case they have been really leaning into these FCMs, which are the future commission merchants in order to own that market structure. And so that's where I think the opportunity is. I want to compare it to when we were first talking about artificial intelligence. NVIDIA was a major component to that because

it's the GPUs. The structure, CME group is the structure for prediction markets. Do we think, Jessica, the predictions markets are big enough or will be big enough overall to move the needle for CME? I think it can be because it ultimately is a futures product. And when I'm talking to brokerage firms, what I find really interesting about the prediction markets is it's, it's this entry for this younger investor. We see across all of all of the brokerage firms, this younger investor is increasing. That's where the new accounts are. That's where Robin Hood is absolutely leaning in, especially because of the darts that are occurring there, so the commissions. And there is, that's how the exchanges make money, of course, is order flow. So there's a lot of

order flow, and that's being pushed with social media. That is what this. younger investor is really influenced by his social media, if you will. So I do think it can move the needle, but what I think is just underpenned is it is a gateway to trading. It's so much easier to say, will Nvidia beat earnings yes or no, rather than placing an options trade, trying to understand the structure and premium and valuations to structure that properly. So if you've never invested in the stock market, a simple yes or no is an entry way. And that's why I think it will be bigger than what we realize. I like it, the binary outcome. And by the way, it's moving the needle on Robin Hood today. And Kalshid now has a private market valuation, I think,

of about 10 or 11 billion dollars. Jessica, inskip, stockbrokers.com, Jessica, have a great Thanksgiving. Thank you very much. All right. Speaking of eating, how about hungry like the wolf, WULF? We're going to speak with the CEO of a company that is thriving in part because of its part in Alphabet's PAC, the CEO of Terowulf. Next. Let us stay on one of the big themes of the market lately. How Google, Alphabet, is suddenly the leader in the trillion-dollar AI race. That stock has been red hot.

Alphabet is basically doubled in a year. One big reason is that it's come out of almost nowhere to really look like the powerhouse in AI and in power. In fact, needam analyst Laura Martin laid it out like this on Monday. The point I really need to make about Alphabet is they own everything. They own the chips. They own best in class consumer data. They own the cloud. They're totally vertically integrated.

And they are a threat to the Navidia open AI ecosystem because Google Alphabet does everything itself. Some people were surprised by that. The one company that clearly saw this coming is Terowulf. It recently aligned further with Alphabet, even having deck backed by the company, and Alphabet taking a 14% stake in Terowulf. That's something in Alphabet almost never does. That has helped power Terowulf to a more than double since January. It's up about 160%. Let's talk more about it now with Terowulf's co-founder and CEO. Paul Prager, Paul, thanks for coming back on, what did you and your team see an alphabet that it appears that others may have missed? I don't know if anybody could have missed it. I mean, they've been out in front of AI for nearly two

decades. They pioneered large-scale machine learning. They designed their own custom silicon, and they understand better than anyone that the next era of AI requires large, enormous, durable, power-centric infrastructure. And that's what Terra Wolf has, and that's what we deliver on. So it's a great partnership. It's a great alignment. What do you mean they saw coming for 20 years?

I mean, we've been talking about AI for like a year. Now, we have. Obviously, you haven't, but we're in the media. But where did they maybe make the right pivot years ago then, Paul? I think they were focused on large-scale machine learning early on, and they wanted to develop their own product. I mean, there's still a customer, of course, of NVIDIA. But they've been very, very focused here on finding the opportunities for large-scale power-centric infrastructure.

That's the key to what is currently happening in high-power compute and AI. You need to have the infrastructure. It's got to be electrified to be able to host these high-power computing facilities. Whether it's GPUs or TPUs, you need the power. Paul, you know, we were talking earlier about winner-take-all versus, hey, there are going to be a lot of players because the demand for this is going to be so big. In your view, do you think it's just Google or are there other players as well that could support this growth of this huge ecosystem? Sure. I think there are other players. I mean, Microsoft is terrific. Amazon certainly has got a good start. I really like our partnership with Google. I think they have in-house expertise at every,

stage, if you will, of the value chain, which is great cultural alignment for us. We're the same way in energy infrastructure. They're a terrific partner. We work well as a team. We're learning a lot from them on our sites in upstate New York and now in Abernathy, Texas. And they contribute like a partner. They're all focused on the end result. They want schedule and they want performance specification, and they help you drive in that direction. There's a lot of industry lingo, Paul, being bandied about. Not all of our viewers are as deep into it, probably none as you and your team and the alphabet team is.

So in sort of layman's English, right, what is the full stack? We hear that term a lot, the full stack. And then what is the difference between alphabet? They use these things, TPUs versus like a GPUs. right i you know i can't speak to i mean there's a lot of buzz about you know the tp u there's been a lot of new reporting on it what its capabilities are how price effective it is how efficient it is it's some of the aspects of high power compute what hardware selection folks make is what hardware selection the end user wants what terra wolf will do and what we are doing in our

partnership with Google is we're enabling the infrastructure to be ready to roll on the date that they want it with the performance capabilities that they have spec so they could compete in what is really now pretty competitive market here. The key is can you find the sites? Do they have the electrons? And can you complete the build schedule consistent with your partner's requirements. Power is short. That's what everybody's most focused on right now, certainly through 26, 27, and 28. Paul Prager, CEO and co-founder of Tara Wolf, Paul, really appreciate your time coming on the program. Best and a happy Thanksgiving to you and yours. Happy Thanksgiving. Thank you very much. Isn't it that the point of that segment, really in the stock you can see,

continues to go up, Surat, is this idea that people, I think, really underestimated alphabet. And they got it right? 100%. And look, again, I said this earlier in the show. 90% of their revenue comes from advertising, right? So they have to diversify their revenue stream. They are a leader or one of the top in all these other areas, whether it's YouTube and it's cloud, et cetera.

And you're on halftime a lot with Scott and the gang. And there was a lot of debate and discussion. Rightly so, by the way, about how, oh, AI is going to kill Google. Google search is dead. Man, that is being really ripped on its head right now. Because, I mean, Gemini 3 came out, and people have said, hey, right now it's ahead. But, like, this is a horse race, right? I mean, you don't know next week if somebody comes out with something, but they're innovative, they're there.

And if they diversify the revenue, they are so profitable. I think you do need to own the stock. It's just, it's going to be volatile on the up and down. It's one of your top holdings, Sarat SETI, stay tuned. All right, folks, coming up, do you understand what it takes to be a great CEO? Well, your next guest literally wrote a book on just that. He'll reveal some of his secrets and some of his names. Next.

Well, do you understand the characteristics that separate a good leader from a great leader? Well, it's what your next guest does for a living. And he also wrote two books on just that topic, including this new one right here. Vic Mahaltrow is here on set to us today. He has a senior partner at McKenzie and one of the co-authors of a CEO for all seasons, mastering the cycles of leadership. Big, it's great to have you on. Thanks for coming on.

Thank you, Brian. I know you've got some name. You're going to name names. But before that, is there one quality that either makes somebody great or maybe a non-negative quality that makes them great? In other words, maybe they don't have a blind spot certain things. Yeah, the great CEOs, and we've taken a very hard and analytical look at the 200 best CEOs of the last 25 years.

They stand out for their mindset around being bold. They're never incremental. They're very bold in terms of their thinking. They stand out for the way that they shape a performance-based culture, and they build extraordinary teams around them. They really build what I'll call a star team rather than a team of stars. So reading the book, and you talk about the four seasons, what are some themes that are relevant across these four?

seasons and maybe just talk a little bit about the seasons that you start with and how you end. Yeah. So just very quickly, the four seasons start with stepping up, getting ready to be a CEO or a leader. By the way, this is at the end of the day, a leadership book. It's about starting strong in those first few years. It's about staying ahead, the middle innings. And then finally, as you move to the last chapter, sending it forward. So those are the four seasons that we talk about. And there are some common threads that run across these. So, firstly, just to be very clear, transitions just aren't at the start and the end. You also have transitions at the two or three year mark as you move to the middle innings. You have transitioned into your last chapter. And one of the things we learned was transitions

create enormous value when done well, and they destroy billions and billions of dollars when done poorly, right? So that was one big lesson. The second big lesson is great CEOs avoid the sophomore slump, which comes at the end of the year one. But really, what they really avoid is stagnation in years three and four. As Arvin Krishna, who's in our book, said to us when we interviewed him, he said, Vic, the problem is we fall in love with our strategies. Things have worked well. Most CEOs, three quarters of the CEOs, start out really strong.

But they get stuck on their existing strategies, and they don't evolve them, and they don't really anchor in on some of the trends that go forward. So that's a second big piece that we picked up. When I look at some of the names, and I, you know, we covered this. I mean, on CBC, we get a new CEO and like, oh, the new CEO's here. And maybe the stock gets a pop, Vic, because it's a new person. You've drafted a new quarterback, so to speak. Talk to us about how much one person can matter to a huge organization.

I'm always shocked by how much you can. But also, you look at somebody like a Larry Culp, who's in your book, right? The head of GE and the turnaround that they've done. Is there a secret sauce here? Very much so. Larry is an extraordinary story in our books, not just for what he did at Danaha, but now what he's done at GE. And when you look at the story, again, really in kind of the early years in the GE world,

playing big ball, right? There was nothing shy about what he did in those early years. Quickly reanalyzed the portfolio, understood that the company needed to break up into three, did that, created extraordinary value across healthcare power and aircraft engines. also epitomizes a really great piece of continuous learning. He's always curious about what's going on in the external world. And the final piece I'll just say is Larry really brings out to me what I'll call a great servant leader.

All CEOs deal with paradoxes, balancing near-term earnings versus investments, balancing respecting the legacy versus disrupting for the future. Larry threads the needle on one other paradox, which is leading with confidence, while leading with humility. And he does that extraordinarily well. He has perspective, vision, foresight, but he is also a great listener and works extraordinarily well through others.

So when you wrote the second book, what surprised you that you didn't expect to learn because you've been around CEOs your whole life? Like what was something that you took away from this book that you didn't expect? So one of the big things I took away was all leaders, even the great ones, have blind spots. And what the very best CEOs do is they recognize and learn about their blind sports early

or put up systems around them that alert them to their blind spots so that they can deal with it. So, and by the way, they vary by season. So in the early years, your blind spots are often around culture. You're bold and visionary. It turns out cultures, and Satya Nadella learned this the hard way at Microsoft in the early years. Cultures don't move as quickly, and you've got to really work at it. There's often a blind spot about boards. You think you've got the board's confidence.

You're kind of managing board meetings, but it turns out the board's managing you. Are you really focused in on that? And there's often a blind spot around your personal effectiveness as a leader. Are you managing your time well? You know, you get a number of people who will have an issue on that. Because, Pete, I'll be direct, so you don't have to. People want to kiss your tush when you're the CEO. They're afraid to say no.

They're afraid to tell you the truth, right? Absolutely. And you've got to be willing to say to people, I imagine, Tell me what I'm missing. Because everyone's like, that's right, boss. You're exactly right all the time. It's not true. Yeah.

Yeah. You're suddenly, your jokes are funnier suddenly. You're two inches taller. All of that is true. And you don't have the true tellers in the room. One of the CEOs we interviewed actually had a wonderful way of putting it. He said, I've got a personal board of directors, right? The personal board of directors doesn't actually meet.

But they are, you know, the lawyer externally that I trust. It's an old CEO I've worked with who gives me great, great advice. It's my spouse. It's a couple of internal truth tellers who will actually call it like it is. Yeah, and we'll leave it there. But I think you nailed it on the last one, the spouse, right? That's just there to be like, you know what, really not that great. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Your kids can do that to you as well. Oh, every day. Every day. Vic Mahatra, great new book, a CEO for all seasons. Vic, thank you very much. Happy Thanksgiving. Thank you for having you. All right, on deck.

Just over a month ago, we warned you about one group of stocks, and now they've lost about half their value, the names ahead. The answer to our tease in the previous segment was the rare earth companies. On October 13th, we did a segment. We talked about it. I tweeted about it talking about some of these critical metal and rare earth companies. Well, we know we're going to need their product longer term, have no sales, no revenue, no earnings. Stocks literally that day, whether we got lucky or maybe it's because we talked about it,

those stocks are down 30, 40, or 60% from that October 13th discussion, rooting for every company to succeed. We're going to need these minerals. But sometimes there's a difference between what investors think and what the markets think and what the companies think we'll do more on that going forward. All right. Let's wrap it up with our guest host for the hour, Surratt Setti. We're going to talk about dogs. Not the great Dane that won last year's national dog show, but just dogs and investing as we head the new year, what is the thesis? Sell NVIDIA buy? Well, I think it's diversification

is the thesis, right? And if you look at kind of the bifurcation in the market, you've got the AI trade, the FAB 7, well, there are other really good companies out there that have not done as well as the market in the market. So if you look at, now let me give you some names here, like air products, industrial gas, growing 10% a year, selling it 18 times earnings, the stock is down 10% for the year, right? If you think industrial production is going to come back. These have long-term contracts, great inflation hedge. American Tower, right? Your cell towers. Again, company that has long-term contracts, it's a reed, it's defensive, that also is down, you know, for the year flat. And then lastly, animal health. I mean, all of us who have, you know,

dogs, cats, and if you look at livestock, this is a company that produces the vaccines. This is also down for the year. They missed a couple of quarters. So high-quality companies that are out of favor that going into year-end are going to be used as tax-lot selling or people. people just trimming their portfolios, if you're going to have a diversified portfolio that has exposure to different sectors and different market caps and different areas of the market, these are three high-quality companies that we are now putting capital into. American Tower, Air products, and Zoetus. Because you'd sit at the top of the show trimming a little Nvidia, not because you don't like it.

Yeah, it's because it got a little too big in your portfolio. That's it. And it's good to have exposure to other areas of the market as well. Well, listen, we've got 20 seconds left. Number one, want to wish you and your family, the happiest and healthiest Thanksgiving. And all to you out there, by the way, and how far your Lehigh Mountain Hawks going in the FCS championship? Undefeated Lehii high right here. It was a great game this weekend, and in two weeks we're going to play again. So here we go, 12 and 0 and strong.

Crushing the leopards of Lafayette. Sarat Setti, great having you with us. Thank you very much. I'm off Friday. Kellyback Monday. Closing bell starts down.