Closing Bell: 8/20/26

Welcome to Closing Bell. I'm Scott Wapner, live from Post 9 here at the New York Stock Exchange. This make or break out begins with stocks around their worst levels of this day. Higher yields, higher oil, certainly having an impact, especially as the reversal in rates does come just a day after the Treasury tried to soothe the markets. We'll have a lot more on that coming up, but there's the 10-year, there's the majors. You got two of the three majors down by at least 1% as we take a look at that scorecard with 60 to go. In regulation, most sectors are in the red as well. Most of the mega caps are as well. A little weaker today. That space looking ahead, though, as you might expect to NVIDIA's earnings next week. Momentum names like Micron, they are higher today. Walmart having one of its worst days in a long time following its earnings. You don't often see the stock down 10%. It is today. Coinbase is ripping, though, on Bitcoin's bounce back. And Moderna is giving a little bit back as well after yesterday's historic move in that name. But again, again, take that into perspective here. Down 22%. It was up like 140% yesterday. So that's where we start our talk of the tape. Where do stocks go from here as rates remain in focus, the war carries on, and seasonal weakness looms? Let's ask our panel. CIBC's Chris Harvey, J.P. Morgan's Gabriela Santos, Invesco's Brian Levitt. Good to have one and all here as we try and figure out what's up with this market. Is this a hang up on rates? I think it's a hang up on rates. I think it's a credit. I think it's more of a credit issue. What you're trying to do is you're trying to shove, I'd say, 10 pounds of IG issuance in a 5-pound bag, and it's not working. You're late in the season. What's happening is there's too much demand for the paper that's out there, and you're having a little bit of pushback. It's not going to stop. It's not going to stop, but we do have earnings on, I think it's Wednesday, Tuesday. Next week, Wednesday, NVIDIA you're talking about, right? NVIDIA, right. So it's a little bit of choppiness until then. And I think we just have to deal with it for now. Stocks do trade. We had a heck of a run, and now we're digesting some of the macro, and we're digesting a lot of the issuance that's come to the market. So do we think then, Gabby, that it's going to be both stock and rate volatility for a little bit? I think for stocks, in my opinion, primarily around the AI story, I think we've had a bit of a lull here. So rates getting a bit more attention, but I think for the stocks discussion, it's going to be after. After July sell-off in semiconductors and momentum, where are we now more appropriately priced for picks and shovels, hyperscalers, and software? I think, importantly, next week, there'll be a little bit more information. Of course, we have NVIDIA's earnings reports, but there's also this anticipatory buzz around when exactly will we get the S1 filings for Anthropic and or OpenAI. Oh, good point. So really important insight there into the annualized revenue. For these model labs and hence the actual sustainability of a lot of the spending. There's some talk in the marketplace, I read that on FactSet this morning, that some of the negativity around the momentum trade is actually around what Gabrielle is talking about, about maybe a little bit of softness relative to expectations in the ARR, the revenues from the run rates of these companies, OpenAI and Anthropic. How do you see the market? How do you see the markets here, given sort of everything, there's a lot of cross-currents, right? There are. I think on this rate question, we should probably put this a little bit in perspective. Everybody's focusing on debt in the last 10 years going from $20 trillion to $40 trillion. Household net worth went from $80 trillion to $175 trillion over the same time period. At the same time, we've seen rates move up amid higher oil prices after inflation peaked in 2023 and the equity market did just fine. So rates are rising, credit spreads are tight, equal weight indices are near all-time highs, so we should put all of this into some perspective. Of course we know that earnings have been robust, revenues have been robust, there will be some slowdown as we move forward, but I think we're still very much in a structural bull market. You think we're making too much of that screen right there? What was the screen? I missed it. Oh, it was the yield curve. The yield curve. Well, look, I mean, whether you're talking about short-term or long-term, I think we're still very much in a structural bull market. What was the screen? I missed it. long term, I think, are two different things. We're seeing rates grind up and the market's digested. And if they if they move quickly from here, then, yeah, you'll have some volatility. You'll have some valuation adjustment. But is that the end of the business cycle? I don't think so. We're still very much of the mind that we're in a longer term structural bull here. You've never been shy about, you know, stepping further out than some are willing to go. What is your target for stocks for this year? Target for stocks is 80-20. We still think there's upside. That's not a ton of upside from what we're seeing. But the thing is, everyone's making money in this market. Small cap managers, S&P equal weight, tech managers. And when you see that, people are going to put on more risk. They look at things more optimistically. We're going to have some chop in the short term because of credit, because of rates, because we're into the macro at this point in time. We're going to have Jackson Hole. But longer term or intermediate term, you're going to have equities go higher. The fundamentals are still really, really, really good. Are you tempted to bump that target up? I mean, because now you almost have everybody at at least 8,000. You know, your Denny's like at 84. Some have said, hey, you could do 9,000 in the next, you know, whatever period of time, just because as Brian was talking about, the earning story is so dramatically good. It's really good. I don't know if I want to do this on air, but let's just say that we're about to do it. I was feeling that. But things are good, right? And you do have to take with the good, the good with the bad. Sometimes things are good. Rates are moving higher. At the end of the day, it's real rates, which is making things more attractive for the bond investors. Sooner or later, you would expect them to step in. And if we ever get something relatively positive in the Middle East, you can see stocks take another leg higher. That's what Rick Reeder was talking about yesterday, the attractiveness of real rates. Yeah, it's really attractive. You're getting paid. You're getting paid more than you have in a long, long time. But people are just, investors, PMs are just a little bit tentative. And once they get off and they feel a little bit more comfortable, things can change very, very quickly. All right. I'll come back to you guys in a second, because speaking of yields, the Treasury Secretary was on this very network earlier today and said yesterday's intervention might not be the last. We routinely do buybacks and we're going to increase the size of the buyback. We're trying to signal that we think that this is a thinly traded area of the market, that we're in August and there's been a lot of corporate issuance that's influenced the market. Our senior economics reporter, Steve Leisman, as you see, has joined us at Post 9 with more. I thought that was interesting. So this may not be the last, but also using the word signal, because when I was talking with Rick Reeder yesterday, he also intimated that this was more about the signal than the move itself, to which I'm thinking, like, now we have a Treasury put to? Yeah. Maybe the question of, you know, don't fight the Fed is now don't fight the Treasury. Well, does that work just the same? Let's be clear about what they announced. What they said yesterday was at least $4 billion per operation from now through November. So that was $16 billion. $16 billion is a pimple on an elephant. However, symbolically, and I was just studying the chart and they just put up the chart, not even my asking, they put up the chart. That is amazing. It looks like they're good. It looks like the market is acting as perhaps there's a line it's not quite willing to cross that may be at $4.70 here on the 10-year. I don't know that yet. These are early days yet. They did give back some, the Treasuries gave back something of what they got yesterday in terms of the rally from the action by the Treasury. But what was really interesting, and this is why it helped that I was an English major and not an MBA, was when Besant steps to the podium here with Sarah this morning and he is not prompted and he says, it could be more than $4 billion. Those were literally the first words out of his mouth that told me a couple things. The first thing it told me was he was not satisfied with the market reaction and wanted to make sure the market understood what they were saying. It wasn't up to $4 billion. It was at least $4 billion. So he also said, which I thought was interesting, this notion that rates are not trading on fundamentals. He made that case and that he has, quote, asymmetric information that the markets don't. He just doesn't think that the market's rates are where they should be. And he's clearly intent on trying to get them there by one way or the other. Yeah, I would kind of say good luck with that, Scott, because what you're talking about is saying, I know better than the market, which was okay when he was a hedge fund manager. Whether or not that's okay when you're the treasury secretary is a little unclear because at the end of the day, and this is where it gets squirrely here, Scott, and really very interesting, the treasury's arsenal in this regard is very small. Unless they're going to violate their own kind of rules and start using the treasury general account to effectively things, it doesn't have a - So, the Fed? - The Fed. Now, did you read the report? You were sitting this close to Reeder yesterday. And Reeder, closer. And I understand why you keep your distance from me and not Rick. That's fine. But here's the deal. Reeder is the one. Boy, I wish I had this quote right in front of me. I didn't know I was going to quite go here. Reeder's the one who mentions the Fed. Well, I'm going to play that for you. Oh, you're going to play that? Don't front run this. Oh, mind melt. Because I'm thinking about the Fed. Well, I'm thinking about the Fed and then how the move in rates and the Treasury's intervention is going to play inside the Fed when Chair Walsh gives the speech next week in Jackson Hole. Some are also wondering whether he needs to give the markets more information on how it plans to get inflation down. St. Louis Fed President Alberto Musalem, he was on this set as well today and said the Fed can still get rid of forward guidance and communicate better with the markets. Listen. I think forward guidance is useful when interest rates are at zero. We're not at zero right now. We're in a normal state of affairs where the federal funds rate is our primary tool. So I'm open-minded and okay with putting forward guidance aside. That said, there's a big difference between what forward guidance is, which is a commitment to a policy path, and actually communicating your framework. Right. He did that with you guys. He didn't tell you what he was going to do or what. He foresaw in terms of his moves on rates. But he gave you the mechanism in which he's thinking how you can get from here to there, what they should be looking at to get from here to there, and an idea of how maybe they can execute it with the tools that they have in their box. You don't need to turn the whole box off. Right. You can do both. You can achieve what Walsh wants to, and still get to that place, can't you? So my lead for tomorrow's story, Scott, is the family fight is going on vacation in the mountains. Okay. And what that means is I don't hear that almost anybody on the FOMC is glomming on to Kevin Walsh's idea about holding back on their reaction function. I believe there's almost universal disagreement that they should follow that path. Walsh has his own ideas, and I believe. I think Walsh is going to end up in Jackson Hole closer to where other members of the FOMC are. I think it's likely that Kevin Walsh ends up giving us more of his views. I think he's trying to figure out how to affect his ideal with the reality of running the largest economy and being the most powerful person. And I think that means he has to meet them a little bit more halfway. And I also think that Kevin Walsh is going to decide that there's some things he can say and won't say after press conferences. But when he's giving an individual opinion, he may have more latitude to give us more information on what he thinks. I mean, I think even some of the largest market participants think that some changes need to be made and that Chair Walsh can achieve what he wants while at the same time expressing a little more information. Listen to Black Rock's Rick Reader. Here's what he told me about that yesterday. There is one thing that I think the chair needs to do over the coming weeks and maybe Jackson Hole, maybe at the next FOMC meeting. What are the metrics you're looking at? What is your reaction function going to be? If you saw this sort of data, and by the way, it doesn't have to just be core PCE. So I thought that was interesting hearing from somebody like Rick Reader, right? The world's largest asset manager. And that's where the segue is perfect for all of you guys. Like, you want more? Are you content with less? What do you think? I'm content with less. Tell us what the task force have. Give us the framework that you're going to look at. And let's move forward. And I agree with a lot of what he's saying. We want to move to the back page. We don't want to be the front story. We want to react to the markets, not the markets react to us. That is the right thing. Sure, but you play the ball, not the referee. But I go back to what I said to Reader yesterday. Players on the field at least want to know what the rules of the road are from the refs. How are you going to call this game? And then I'll play it. I don't need to rely on you to play my game at my best. But I at least know what the rules of the road are from the refs. I just need to know what the rule book looks like. Yeah, you don't need the answers to the test. You need to understand how the test is going to be put together, how you can study and respond to it. And I think that's what a lot of market participants are talking about. It's inappropriate and has been for some time to have such precise time-dependent forward guidance. But we still want to understand how the incoming data would affect the Fed's reaction function. That's what, you know, rate-sensitive markets do. And this is where I think it's interesting. This year, we've had, since February, a move higher in yields. From February to late June, it was just resetting inflation and rate expectations. But then since late June, it has not been about that. It's been about the term premium. So the extra little juice that investors want for a given macroeconomic outlook. And that's where I think it is about some of this confusion around, well, which exactly inflation metric is it? And is it interest rates and or the market? And is it a balance sheet? And that's where I think ultimately it's just probably some typical first press conference kind of misspeaking. That can be and hopefully is corrected at Jackson Hole. These concepts are not mutually exclusive. You can achieve all of the things that he wants to achieve while giving the markets and its participants just a little more clarity on getting from point A to point B. What do you think? What precisely are we watching? But the reality is I think I'm largely OK with this, Scott. I mean, what am I watching on a daily basis? I'm watching inflation break even. I'm watching leading indicators of the job market. So for the most part, I don't view this substantially as rocket science. I'm sitting here right now with contained inflation expectations, a job market that's relatively weak. I could surmise from that that it's unlikely that we're raising interest rates significantly here. If at all. And if we do, are we raising them beyond what the market is already expecting? So I'm generally comfortable with it. And I'll continue to watch indicators in the market. I understand why a senior economics reporter would would want more. More is more for what we we try and do. But what do you make of hearing from these market participants suggest that they're OK with less? And then maybe in this instance, less is more. But sure. In the context, too, of what? What readers talk. I've given my my take on that, which is that I don't know if they're saying this, but if you're going to give me less, I'm going to say pay me for less and pay me for less as I'm going to exact more in terms of uncertainty. So you could run the railroad any way you like. What I think is important here is to think about who Rick Reader is. Rick Reader is not one of those whiners that the journal's op ed pages complained about. Rick Reader is not a radical or a complainer in any way, shape or form. Rick Reader, I think you said, is the world's largest asset manager. Well, BlackRock is. He's the CIO of Global Fixed Income. Guess what? And the head of their entire allocation team. Rick Reader is one of Scott Besson's biggest customers. Rick Reader is an aorta through which the Federal Reserve affects monetary policy and helps to run this economy. If Riff asks for a little bit more, it's a perfectly reasonable and very important request that you could expect both Scott Besson and Kevin Warsh to acquiesce. That's why I thought it was meaningful. That's why we're doing it yesterday. But let me give you one more. One more thing, which is the other thing that he said, which is another horizon to discuss. Rick said, I think there's more firepower at Treasury for these buybacks. And we heard that today. This was yesterday. But here's the other part. I quite frankly think there's more firepower in terms of how you manage the yield curve sitting at the Federal Reserve. Now, if remember, Kevin Warsh said and my colleague Matt Peterson is writing a piece on this now. It'll be on dot com, I believe, this afternoon. Get to work. Matt. But here's the thing. Kevin Warsh said he wants to give the Treasury the responsibility for things that are the Treasuries. And the question becomes the extent to which the FOMC is willing to play ball in terms of what the Fed is, what the Treasury secretary is trying to do here. And we talk about symbols earlier in this conversation. You got to wonder, is the Fed going to be working with the Treasury on this YCC, this yield curve control? Or will the FOMC? Or will the FOMC balk at that concept? That's something I believe that's not quite in the back of the mind of big bond managers right now. But but maybe it's definitely on their mind right now. It ups the ante. It really seriously ups the ante. For next week and then beyond at the at the meeting. So we'll we'll see, guys. Yeah, good. I would just say. And for November, when we get the next Treasury refunding announcement, this asymmetric information that Treasury Secretary. What does that mean, Gabrielle? Was alluding to. Is he going to? What does that mean? A big change in the issuance calendar. In other words, I know what I'm going to do and you don't know what I'm going to do. I'm going to issue a lot more on the short end than on the long end. But that's the opposite of what his Treasury advisory committee has advised him and where he's going into higher percentages of short term debt as a percent of the total outstanding debt. And what that does is put pressures on Warsh. If he moves interest rates, he creates a bigger cost for the Treasury and the financial. Sure, but let's not also forget, and I think it's worthwhile just thinking about this too, and then we're going to bounce. The midterms are soon. Some say this is as much political as it is sort of mechanical in the markets to try and get yields down. So I think it's all in the soup pot, and we'll see how the markets end up tasting it and what they think. Guys, that was awesome. Thanks so much for everybody being with us. Let's talk Walmart today. It's one of the day's biggest drags, certainly on the Dow, despite that revenue beat. Pippa Stevens tells us why. Hey, Scott, worst day in more than four years after Walmart's same-store sales came up short, missing estimates for the first time in more than four years. Now, the company did beat revenue estimates for the quarter and raised its full-year EPS guide, but that is likely largely due to the $2.9 billion in tariff refunds the company was eligible for, the vast majority of which was received in the just-completed quarter. For the comp sales miss, that was almost one full percentage point below the $2.9 billion. Walmart pointed to changes in pricing regulations for GLP-1 drugs. The company also said customers are feeling pressure and looking for value, specifically calling out the rise in gas prices, with CFO John David Rainey saying on the call that looking at sales month by month in the latest quarter, it was clear when pump prices increased and got above $4, noting the trade-offs in June were the most obvious, leading the retailer to lean heavily into lower prices. Still, Walmart did say. that sales performance in its core business continues to be very consistent. Those shares down 10 percent. Scott? All right, Pippa, thank you very much for that. That's Pippa Stevens. We're watching SpaceX, too. Under pressure today, yet another post-IPO lockup expiration happening today. Stock down more than 5 percent. Seema Modi tells us more. Hi. Scott, about 319 million SpaceX shares have become eligible for sale. This is SpaceX's second lockup as part of the company's staggered approach to unlocking shares for early employees and investors. In the course of one year versus all at one time, bankers often recommend this strategy to limit volatility. Investors can choose to hold their shares, so the actual impact on the stock really depends on how much they sell. SpaceX shares did rebound following its first lockup in early August and are still up about 22 percent since then, though the stock has paired some of those gains. Driving today's price action, Chinese startup Landspace launching and recovering the bottom part of its rocket. Till now, SpaceX and Blue Origin were the only companies capable of reusable rocket technology. But now, SpaceX and Blue Origin are taking a step back and taking a step back and taking a step back. So it's seen as yet another sign of China attempting to narrow the gap with the U.S. in space. At this hour, watching SpaceX shares down about 5 percent on pace for its third negative session in a row, Scott. All right, Seema, thank you. Seema Modi, we're just getting started here. Up next, our analyst Dan Ives. He's back at post nine. How he sees the move in rates impacting tech stocks. Plus, we get his reaction to what Micron CEO said exclusively on this network today about the memory chip crunch. It was pretty significant. We'll discuss next. Welcome back, Micron shares. There they are. Three percent bouncing a bit today. The company's CEO, Sanjay Mahotra, was on CNBC today, said this about the ongoing need for memory. Memory is no longer a component in a system. Memory is their strategic infrastructure for AI. It's no longer a commodity. It is a high value. This is enabling value for our customers. Without memory, you can't do anything. You can't do anything. You cannot make AI smarter. You cannot make AI faster. You cannot scale up AI. You know, AI is advancing. A lot of context is getting generated. All of that context has to be stored, has to be processed through memory. For more, let's welcome in Dan Ives of Yorkville Ives and Company. Good to see you. Great to see you. He's making the case that don't judge us as chip makers in the way you've traditionally judged us because this time's different. Is that the message? And I agree. I mean, someone like myself has been to Korea so many times. You see the changes because the reality is you count on one hand the amount of memory players. And when it comes to the AI revolution, everything that we're seeing right now, demand to supply 15 to 1 when it comes to what we see from a memory perspective. And that's why, obviously, Apple is a good example in the future. But if it's not cyclical, this continues to be really foundational. What if it's still cyclical? The duration of that cyclicality has just been elongated. Is that fair? Or have we literally entered into a more secular time for chips because of the level of demand and how it's not going to dissipate anytime soon? That's a great point. That's definitely a hot sort of debate, in my opinion. Because it matters for valuations, doesn't it? Of course. And, to me, I think it's really, it's changed. There's no longer, the cyclicality at one point will come back. But I don't think you have true equilibrium to late 2028, early 2029, based on the trajectory of what we're seeing today. And I think that's why we're going to continue to have these ebbs and flows, no different than we saw with the KOSPY in Korea and some of these sort of white-knuckle moments. But the reality, and I think it's further instituted what we've seen from the hyperscalers in terms of demand, what you see in terms of enterprise use cases, memory players right now, it's their world and everyone else is paying rent. So if we, the valuation of Micron, for example, on a forward basis is like 6.5, 6.6, something like that. Is that where it should be? Is that cheap? I mean, how do you assess that, given if you're a true believer in what the CEO just said, as an investor, then if I agree with you, what is it, what do I do? 6.7 times. Yeah, I think right now, I mean, investors, are valuing these companies, the cyclicality, and they're basically giving no credit to what ultimately I believe is going to be the demand over the coming years. Scott, I think it's no different than what we saw with NVIDIA. If we just think over the last few months, as these companies prove it, the valuation will ultimately then start to, I think, manifest and actually generate what should be less cyclicality and really more of a multi-year cycle that's going to continue to play. Yeah, there's no way around it, because even when some say, okay, there could be Chinese memory players, or there's an alternative, Korea holds the cards when it comes to memory, and I think that there's no changes that I see in the future. And there's no implication at all for excess ordering or double or triple ordering, because you can't get what you need, and eventually it's going to catch up, and then that's when the problem happens, because people have ordered too much, even if there's robust demand. Yeah, and that's been a worry. But right now, you've got to get online to get those chips. And I think part of what we're seeing in terms of everything from a use case, from hyperscalers, from a demand perspective, it's just accelerating. So I don't think that we are near any sort of point of sort of overordering or worries about inventory, and then they cut back. And I think that's something where it's further validated from the hyperscalers, obviously companies like Palantir, software companies, chip makers. It's a Jenga puzzle when you put it all together. And I think more and more, it's really starting to play out from a bull case scenario. All right. So you get more from the CEO tonight with Jim on Mad Money, because he was the one doing the interview and the soundbite that you saw. So you don't want to miss that. I'm not going to let you go, though, without asking you about NVIDIA. Where are your own expectations ahead of an earnings print that's going to happen in now less than a week? I mean, it's our view, investors continue to underestimate the scale and scope of what NVIDIA is doing. How? How is that possible? How can they be under? The reason they're underestimating is that I think they are not recognizing what we see in Asia and what we see across from the hyperscalers. If you put it all together, NVIDIA right now, you're almost giving them a minimal credit for physical AI and what's really going to be the sort of next evolution of AI. And that, when it comes to physical AI and their next chips and everything that they're sort of building out, investors continue to be skeptical. And I think as they prove it out, no one has a better perch than Jensen. And I think that's why so much of this tech trade next week is just so important, because that really will be, I think, a huge sort of planning of the flag moment to show that we're not in the seventh inning. I thought we were in the third inning. And you could argue we're maybe bottom of the second. Wow. Well, how good how good does it have to be? How good does it have to be? They have to, like, crush expectations. I think there's got to be whisper numbers. I mean, there's whisper numbers, but I think it really comes down to it's them giving expectations numbers would be underestimated by 15 to 20 percent for the next 12 to 18 months. And I think that is really where some of the boogies are here. But betting against Jensen, it would be like, you know, there was that bet against, you know, Tom Brady. There was a bet against Mahomes and others. I mean, Brady didn't win every Super Bowl he played. It's a good point. All right. But he won a lot of them. He did. He got a lot of rings. Dan Ives, thank you. All right. Another big money deal in the world of sports. This time, the NFL, our own Mike Ozanian. He broke the story and he joins us next. Been a big couple of weeks for sports deals. And today, word of yet another CNBC senior sports reporter Mike Ozanian. Breaking news today joins us with his scoop. What'd you learn? Hey, Scott, private equity firm Arctos is in a deal to buy 10 percent of the Atlanta Falcons over 18 months in a transaction that will value the Falcons at 10.6 billion dollars. This deal. Still has to be approved by the NFL. If it goes through, this will be the fourth. team that Arctos has invested in. They have a piece of the Bills, the Browns, and also the LA Chargers. So $10.6 billion is the valuation for the Falcons. Where did they rank on your most recent list? The Falcons, I think we had at $8 billion. But again, that's a control stake valuation, Scott. So in fairness, there's even a bigger difference between the $8 billion and this $10.6 billion, because the $10.6 billion is probably a slight discount to what a control stake would be. This is on the heels, of course, of what we expect will be approved later this month, the $9.61 billion sale of the Seahawks. That set a new valuation benchmark for the NFL. Even looking at what Arctos has done, their first foray about a year ago into the Bills was at a $5.8 billion valuation. Now they've gone up to $10.6 billion. I didn't mean to step on your toes there. I'm just so fascinated by the fact that you have such a growing number of investors who just want in. They don't even care if they have any control over anything. They just want a piece of what is still a robust and fast-growing pie. And I don't care what of the major sports you're even talking about at this point. No, that's a great point, Scott. And I think even though it totally holds true for the NBA, I would put the NFL a little ahead of the NBA there because the profitability in the NFL is like no other sport. Because somebody said to me, one of the sports bankers, I'm a little surprised at an 11.6 buy-in for non-control stake of the Falcons when a control stake of the Seahawks was 9.6. I said, listen, the Falcons are bigger in terms of revenue and they're far more profitable. The Falcons are one of the best teams in the NFL in all of sports in terms of being run like a business. Not a surprise. I mean, Arthur Blank is so well thought of. Their stadium is amazing in Mercedes-Benz. The way that they priced their concessions to be more exclusive for their fan base. I could go on and on and on. But we'll certainly talk more in the weeks ahead. Mike, thanks. Great scoop. Thank you, Scott. Yeah, appreciate you. Up next, the big market call from one top technician that you got to hear. Fundstrat's Mark Newton's next. Welcome back. Our next guest thinks the Treasury's intervention on interest rates could send stocks to new highs as soon as next week. Mark Newton is Fundstrat's head of technical strategy. He's here at Post 9. It's good to have you back. Thanks, Scott. So this was that significant that you think the S&P, the Q's, equal weight leading into Jackson Hole, like we've got a little bit of room here? I do think it's a game changer. I think we need to see the extent of what they're going to start to buy in terms of securities and how much. And a lot of that has to do with probably the Treasury put, which is now at about $4.75 for 10-year, potentially $5.30 for 30. So, you know, in general, it's a hugely reflationary trade that does address liquidity concerns. We saw gold. We saw Bitcoin surge. Near term, the one-two combo of rates pushing back up along with crude is temporarily something that stocks don't like. But I think in general, the amount of breadth improvement that we've seen in the last few years is going to be a lot better. recent months, along with this ongoing skepticism, is definitely a positive with regards to stocks. The messaging alone from Treasury is enough to get us to where you think we can go. I mean, combined, obviously, with the robustness of earnings, right? I mean, that's the story. The one big problem was that the velocity of rates had really gotten out of hand on the long end. We saw breakouts on the 30-year. We saw breakouts on the 10-year. And it wasn't the level. It was the velocity of that move. I think the administration, as well as the Treasury, noticed it. So my thinking is that they're stepping in now at a time when TLT puts Q, it's very elevated, to say, look, we have to do something to help liquidity. Emerging market currencies are falling. The U.S., of course, has a huge balance. They have a ton of overseas securities and emerging market currencies. Meanwhile, their liabilities are in dollars. It would certainly help them to have the dollar go meaningfully lower at a time when growth remains still pretty decent. And that could actually decrease the debt to GDP that everybody's concerned about that now become a big hot button. Forgive me for interrupting you. It was Rick Reeder who used the word untethered, to your point, at the long end. It was starting to look that way in his mind. What do you like best in the market right now? What sector? What area? Honestly, I like three sectors. I like healthcare, I like energy, and I like materials. I think those three are likely going to benefit and be a good source of alpha for investors over the next few months. Why so? Well, healthcare per se, it broke out of nearly a three-year downtrend. We used to have concerns about drug pricing, about the price of drugs. We used to have concerns about the price of drugs. The ACA subsidies, now that it's turned, biotech is surging. We're seeing deals happen. Not only is it biotech, but pharma, but HMOs. Healthcare looks still very, very good to me. Obviously, the GLP-1 helped some of these other pharma stocks, but energy, my thinking is crude, is going to revisit $100, which is going to make ending the war probably tricky in the near term. Wait a minute. Isn't that a problem then for stocks? It could be a problem in September, October, yes. So I think it's going to prove short-term only, but we have one big final push. Up to right around $100, $110, and then crude should end the year down near the lows. So I think there is going to be an eventual solution better than what we're seeing now, but we know that they're using pipelines to take oil right now through the Red Sea, through the Gulf of Oman. We don't necessarily need to have the straight as much as we did. Already, some traffic is starting to be circumvented, but energy right now is very much a short-term long, along with materials. Commodities surged yesterday. I think that's going to be an ongoing theme just given what we've seen with rear rates hopefully starting to pull back, which will be a source of gains for most metals, precious and base. All right, we'll leave it there. It's good to see you again. Thank you. Mark Newton of Fundstrat, the head of technical strategy. Up next, we're going to track the biggest movers as we head into the close today. Markets are weakening as we speak. All right, 10 to the bell. Back to Christina now for the stock she's watching. What do you see? Well, let's start with Moderna shares because you talked about it earlier in the show, but they're pulling back following a historic 177% rally just reported positive results specifically for its experimental cancer vaccine developed with Merck. Likely today, we're just seeing some profit taking. That's why shares are down roughly almost 26%. It's worst day on record, but yesterday's surge was the biggest one day gain by an S&P 500 stock in 25 years. This according to Dow Jones. Switching gears, advanced auto parts also in the red today after posting weaker than expected same store sales in its most recent quarter. The company's CEO saying tighter household budget. It's hit sales with more customers just opting to make repairs themselves. Shares are down 26%. Last but not least, CrowdStrike is sliding on an Axios report. The company's CTO is leaving to start an AI-focused cyber venture fund. The new firm called Cognition is targeting a roughly $170 million fund. This according to Axios, and that's why you're seeing shares down almost 6%, Scott. All right, good stuff, Christina. Thank you, Christina Partsenevelos. Coming up next, we'll tell you what has shares of Deere rallying today. That and much more in the zone, which is the next. All right, we're now in the closing bell market zone. Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management's Matt Stuckey here to break down these crucial moments of the trading day, plus Oliver Rennick standing by live from the CBO Global Markets in Chicago. Contestant Brewer following travel stocks under pressure and Seema Modi on Deere's big rally. Oliver, at the CBO, what do you see? Yeah, Bitcoin, kind of the story day two here, Scott. Despite stocks selling off, it's up, and so is Hyperliquid Proxy Per holding strong. Perhaps the most telling thing about this crypto comeback is that it's happening while stocks and bonds are struggling on the back of the Treasury's big bond buyback. In theory, this is what Bitcoiners say it was made for, and it's arguably presenting a novel upside to Bitcoin after its worst performance for stocks in seven years last year. Bitcoin is up, while VIX is two today. It used to be the opposite. When equity vol was up, Bitcoin was down. Right now, it looks like options traders think it can last. They bought twice as many calls as puts in everything from iBit to Coinbase, Strategy, Circle, and of course, Per, up 190% this year, Scott. All right, Oliver, thanks for that. Appreciate you. Oliver Rennick and Tessa, tell us what's up with travel. Ooh, it's some rough seas for some of the big travel names today, Scott, and oil prices are rocking the boat for cruise stocks. Let's take a look here at Royal Caribbean, Carnival, Norwegian, all sinking between four and five percent, continuing their downward slide this week. Viking just reported strong earnings and forward bookings, but look at their stock down a percent today. It's stock suffering along with the group. Investors really are hitting the brakes as well on Camping World, with sentiment souring around demand for RVs when fuel prices are this high. Its stock declined by four and a half percent now. Winnebago's also down two percent. There's just skepticism around consumer discretionary spending now, and that is hitting timeshare company Marriott Vacations. That's down five percent. And TripAdvisor down almost four percent. Just travel names on the whole, Scott, settling into the red for the close. All right, Tessa, thank you. Contessa Brewer, how about Deere, Seema? So Deere is surprising the street by beating expectations on the top and bottom line and also pegging data centers as a source of demand. Executives sharing on the call that large-scale infrastructure projects, data center construction continue to support robust customer demand. Deere's order book for earth-moving equipment now full for 2026, Now, Milius Research analyzes there. Tying the company's sort of advanced layer technology as one of the reasons Deere continues to outperform and is positive on the stock, initiating or reiterating, I should say, its buy rating, saying the ability to layer on advanced technology to add tens to hundreds of billions in value to farmers really changes its earnings profile. You'll see the stock is up about 8 percent at this hour, Scott. So one to watch here, especially as more industrials lean into AI. All right, Seema, thanks very much. That's Seema Modi. All right, Matt Stuckey, tell me about this market today. What do you see? Look, I mean, I think we'll be just giving back a little bit of that surge that we saw from yesterday with that movement in rates kind of round-tripping. And so increasingly as rates have moved up towards 475 or so, that's starting to compress the forward multiple on the market. And that's kind of maybe like a technical level we should all keep in mind going forward, you know, despite, you know, really strong earnings as Q2 is coming to a close. Multiple compression is the other side of that with rates, you know, continuing to be over it. Do you expect more rate volatility and thus stock volatility? I mean, I think so. A lot of this is going to depend on kind of what happens with oil prices from here. And then from there, what type of data we get between now and September in terms of inflation and employment. So really, there's a lot of kind of balls in the air in terms of kind of where these kind of big factors are going to drive rates. But ultimately, you know, the main driver, the market, just in terms of the fundamentals, continues to be solid just with earnings growth now. More on Q2 year-on-year, you know, north of 30%. That's quite strong. Speaking of earnings, NVIDIA looming large. We're going to be in a bit of a holding pattern ahead of that. And quickly, if you could. Yeah, I think so. You know, for NVIDIA, you know, we get sequential growth that doesn't really surprise too much. But, you know, commentaries look to 2027. I think that's where most investors are going to focus. All right. We'll talk to you soon. Thanks for being with us. That's Matt Stuckey. Again, hear the clapping. It's going to be red across the board today. Russell's the biggest loser. Again, rates ticking a little higher. Markets don't like it. Crude's elevated. Dow's down 1.25%. That'll do it for us. I'll see you tomorrow. And I'll send it in another time.