Worldwide Exchange 6/26/25
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I'm Frank Holland, and you're listening to CNBC's Worldwide Exchange. Our show is live weekdays at 5 a.m. Eastern. Listen in. Wall Street back on record watch as mega cap tech gets back in the driver's seat. Futures, they're higher across the board. NVIDIA and chips a huge part of the rally. Now another name is on the move this morning. And some whipsaw dollar action as President Trump reportedly looks to put even more pressure on Jay Powell during the time that he has left at the Fed. I think he's a very stupid person, actually.

It's Thursday, June the 26th, 2025, and this is Worldwide Exchange on CNBC and streaming on CNBC+. Good morning. Thanks so much for being here with us. I am Frank Holland. Let's get you ready for the market day ahead. We begin this morning with the S&P 500 once again on the brink of a new all-time high. Take a look right now. You can see the S&P less than a percent away, pretty much where it was at yesterday. The S&P closed pretty close to flat yesterday. Down here, the NASDAQ 100.

at a record that composited about one and just some fractionally away from a new all-time record, the Russell Incorrection Territory. And with that, investors are also considering the possible impact of President Trump naming his next Fed chair sometime later this year. Taking a look at futures right now.

You can see higher across the board, as we mentioned, the S&P up just about a third of 1%. The Dow looks like it would open up about 100 points higher. The NASDAQ moving up just under a half a percent higher. Taking a look at the S&P 500, pre-market leaders right now. Right here you see Micron right here at the top of the list following earnings.

Another chip name here. Coinbase Global also moving higher. Cryptocurrency a bit higher. We're going to hit on cryptocurrency later in the show. Then we have the S&P 500 pre-market laggards as well. Taking a look at those. Steel Dynamics right here at the top of the list, pulling back more than 2.5%. Invesco, MGM.

At Agilent Tech and CF Industries, rounding out your worst performers on the S&P. All right, turning back to the tech trade, NVIDIA closed more than 4% higher yesterday after holding its annual meeting, officially approving Jensen Wong's pay package's 2025 salary, $50 million. NVIDIA now once again the most valuable publicly traded company here in the U.S.,

The tech sector, that was the leader yesterday, closing at another record high. Here are some of the best performers outside of NVIDIA. Supermicro, those shares were up, I believe, about 8% yesterday. Seagate up right now fractionally. Again, my Supermicro up about 1.3% right now in the pre-market. Down here, CrowdStrike up fractionally. Hewlett-Packard Enterprises just pulling back very fractionally, kind of the outlier of a bunch of these names.

Also looking at currency this morning, the dollar lower yesterday and on pace for its sixth consecutive negative month. Longest lower streak since all the way back in August of 2017. You can see right here, week to date, the dollar's down about one and a half and the pre-market pulling back about a half a percent. The journals, a journal report saying in part that Trump may try to name his next Fed chair as soon as September ends.

Also putting some pressure on the dollar. And we're going to take a look at the Treasury market this morning. Yields, you can see, have moved to the downside in recent days. The benchmark at 4.28. We're also highlighting the five-year auction yesterday. Rick Santelli gave it a C-. His view, average demand, but it was a bit light on pricing. Also looking at the moves on the two-year, moving to the downside right now. The two-year at 3.77. The two-year most impacted by decisions from the Fed. The long bond pretty much holding steady from where we were at yesterday at 4.82.

Okay, that's your setup. Let's now see how Europe is shaping up as this trading day gets underway. Our Juliana Tattlebaum is live in London with a look at the early action. Juliana, good morning. Frank, good morning. Well, here in Europe, we're seeing modest gains. A bounce back after yesterday, we saw a modest retreat in the stock 600. And the gains are pretty widespread across the different regions here. You've got every major index trading higher this morning. The Zetra DAX leading the gains up about 0.8% from a sector perspective.

We are watching the retail sector closely this morning. You had H&M deliver an update to the market and shares there among the best performing ones in the market. So H&M on the move higher this morning. In the UK, FTSE 100 is up about 14 basis points right now. It is all about strongholds.

sterling this morning sterling surging versus the dollar hitting its highest level since two since 2021 so big move higher in sterling we're trading above the 137 mark now we're also watching a couple of names in the energy space this morning bp and shell shell saying it has not

considered a takeover approach for its smaller rival, denying a report from the Wall Street Journal that sent U.S. listed shares of BP as much as 10 percent higher at their peak yesterday. So you can see BP shares coming off slightly now this morning. Year to date, the stock off more than 7 percent. On the Shell side of things, here's a look at how Shell is trading this morning on the back of this story and Shell coming out saying they are not in talks to buy BP. Shell shares are trading ever so slightly higher. Frank?

Juliana, thank you very much. Our Juliana Tatelbaum live in London. Time now for a check on some of this morning's top stories. Silvana Henao is here in studio with us. Silvana, good morning.

Hey, Frank, good Thursday morning to you. And as you mentioned just moments ago, the Wall Street Journal is reporting President Trump may announce Fed Chair Jay Powell's replacement by September or October. Now, the unusually early appointment, some suspect, could effectively create a shadow Fed chair with the power to influence market sentiment. Now, the president commenting on a possible Fed pick from The Hague yesterday. I know Fed

within three or four people who are gonna pick. I mean, he goes out pretty soon, fortunately, 'cause I think he's terrible.

Now, Elsewhere reports that Meta Platforms has just poached three OpenAI researchers for its super intelligence project. The departure of the three OpenAI staffers, which OpenAI confirmed, comes following Mark Zuckerberg's recruitment drive and reports his company was offering some prospective hires as much as $100 million to sign with Meta. Now, Meta plans to spend up to $65

billion on capital expenditures this year to build out its AI ambitions. And the Federal Housing Finance Agency has officially issued a directive ordering Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to consider cryptocurrency as an

asset in single family mortgage loan risk assessments without requiring borrowers to liquidate them into U.S. dollars prior to a loan closing. Now, Frank, the head of the FHA says that the move aligns with President Trump's vision to, quote, to make the United States the crypto capital of the world.

So, Vonna, thank you very much. We'll see you just a bit later in the show. All right. Now, turning our attention back to the markets, the S&P 500 within a percent of a record high. Investors may be switching their attention to potential market catalysts coming up, and that includes the U.S. tax bill, which includes an increase to the debt limit. Also, the pause for President Trump's Liberation Day tariffs ending on July the 9th. Joining me now is Ivory Johnson, founder of Delancey Wealth Management and a member of CNBC's Financial Advisory Council. Ivory, good morning. Good to see you.

Good morning. Good to see you as well, Frank. All right. Let's go back to the S&P within one percent of an all time high. So if you're an investor, what do you do now? Do you continue to buy equities into a market that's pretty much at highs or do you look for other alternatives?

Well, obviously, it's a function of your risk tolerance, what your asset allocation is. I wouldn't make any knee-jerk reactions right now. But while on one hand, I think we're going to have a sluggish economy, I think it bodes well for the economy, for stocks rather. We have to borrow or refinance another three and a half, about the $3 trillion in debt at much higher rates. The deficit spending is going up. What that does is

creates liquidity so you have more. Dollars essentially chasing the same amount of financial assets it's not just the United States. It's the European Central Bank it's India it's China. Who's relaxing- some of their interest rates their fiscal monetary stimulus so. That's all good for stocks I would expect stocks to go higher from here.

I think there's a certain level of fiscal inevitability to it. All right, so fiscal inevitability. Don't hear that term very often, Ivory. We're going to talk about this a bit later on the show, but one area that's not at all-time highs, that's the small caps. Still in correction territory, I believe about 13% off of their high. Is that one area you would put money to work in if you're saying it depends on your risk tolerance? If you have a pretty solid risk tolerance, bet on the idea of that area rebounding?

No, I think small caps are going to be more interest rate sensitive. I'd lean more towards technology and the Nasdaq. If you look historically, when global liquidity goes up, Nasdaq tends to outperform relative to the debasement of the currency. So I would lean more towards Nasdaq than I would small cap.

All right. Some more to that. What about another sector outside of technology? Actually, the laggard this year, consumer discretionary. If you look at it year to date, it's down about 6 percent. And some of the names on here are just deeply impacted by tariffs and also the thought that there's weakening consumer spending. I'm looking at Decker's, Lululemon, Best Buy, deeply impacted by some things that

potentially could be resolved. We were just talking about the idea that potentially the tariff pause might end and there might be a resolution. And then also it seems like at least we're making progress in the discussions with China. Well, we have a K-shaped economy. And so if you're one of the seven Americans who visited a food bank last year, you're not in the market for an iPhone. If you're in the top 10 percent, who, by the way, represent 50 percent of consumer spending, you're fine.

In fact, if you break down the budget, like this $1.3 trillion of our budget is just means tested. That's the Medicaid, the SSI, the food stamps, earned income tax credit. $3.2 trillion is going to be Medicare, Social Security. That's not going to make a cut, right? Then you've got $2.6 trillion. That's everything else. That's the government contracts. That's the PPE loan forgiveness. Those are the subsidies. That's wealthy people's stuff.

that's not getting cut and when they get those tax cuts and remember we still have a tax bill on the table so they're going to get even more of a stimulus they're not paying off credit card debt they're not buying a refrigerator that money's going into stocks so that's what i mean by the flow of the money the fiscal inevitability is good for the stock market yeah also maybe in the lululemon pants you never know um one other thing i want to talk to you about is gold i know you're a big gold guy so i just want to kind of talk to you about the trends when it comes to gold so gold's down about a half a percent over the last month even with all the geopolitical tensions

But it's had a huge run up year to date. And central banks in general, not in the last month, obviously, but over the last couple of years have been a big part of the gold story. We're showing the audience right now. Q1 gold buying by central banks. It was actually down 21 percent year over year, but it's up 25 percent over the five year quarterly average. In your mind, are we seeing a ceiling when it comes to gold? Have we hit resistance when it comes to gold or is there more upside for gold?

Oh, there's definitely more upside. You got to remember now in 2009, about 10% of central banks had gold on their balance sheet. That's up to 20%. At the same time, you've seen dollar denominated assets go from 70% of balance sheets down to about 57% today since 1980. What you're seeing is the dollar dominance. It's not going away. We're not losing the dollar as the reserve currency status.

But I think central banks are diversified for a number of reasons. One of those is that we've weaponized the dollar with all the sanctions. You can ask Iran and Russia about that. So, you know, you're going to see that continue. And also, you know, from a macroeconomic standpoint, when the dollar goes down, that's that's bullish for for gold as well. Aubrey Johnson, always a pleasure. Great to see you. Have a great day.

Likewise. A lot more to come here on Worldwide Exchange, including NVIDIA CEO Jensen Wong. He had his nearly $50 million pay package approved, but he's still far from the highest paid CEO in corporate America. We're going to look at who's on top and by how much. Plus, the Russell's still in correction, but it is making a comeback. We're looking at top picks in the small and the mid-cap space with TD Cowen. And then later, crypto's $100,000 problem with CNBC's

Tanea Michiel is here to break the entire thing down. A very busy hour still ahead when Worldwide Exchange returns.

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Cards issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank and a member of FDIC subject to credit approval. Welcome back to Worldwide Exchange. Market flash on metals. Take a look. We're watching platinum surging. You can see right now platinum's up over 5%. Month to date, it's up just about 34%. And at its highest level since 2014 on some speculative buying and reports that Chinese jewelry buyers are snapping up supplies. Take a look at the rest of the metals complex this morning.

You're seeing some upside movement really across the board right now. Palladium up more than 4% right now. Copper up over 3%. Down there, gold up about a third of a percent. Silver also up about one and one third of a percent.

All right. Turn it to NVIDIA now again. NVIDIA shareholders signing off on pay packages for CEO Jensen Wong and other top executives at the company's annual meeting yesterday. Jensen Wong's total compensation that includes stock awards rising to about 50 million dollars for 2025. But that doesn't even bring the NVIDIA CEO to the top of the list of the highest paid U.S. CEOs.

Joining me now is David Eikenberry, senior technical advisor at C-Suite Comp, a provider of compensation data. He's also the former dean of the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado. David, good morning. Good to see you. Good morning, Frank. Good morning. All right. Natural place to start. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Wong getting $50 million, including pay and stock, in 2025.

I think you got to put it in context. This is a stock that's had a huge run up over the last couple of years. Is that appropriate? Is that an appropriate compensation for a CEO with this level of success? Well, that's always the, you know, in this case, 50 million dollar question, Frank.

A lot of it boils down to the labor supply, so to speak, and the capability of people to run these complex organizations. And we basically need to defer to our board of directors and hope that they make the best judgments. His pay package is not particularly out of line, particularly for the amount of value that that company has, the growth that they've experienced over the last few years.

All right. That's fair. I mean, I think it's fair. We're looking right now at the chart, by the way. Over the last year, video shares up 23 percent. But if you look over a longer timeline, like 10 years, I think it's up like 20,000, 60,000, some astronomical number. That's right. I think one of the things that concerns a lot of people when it comes to CEO is the difference between what the average employee makes and what the CEO makes. Talk to me about some of the trends that you're seeing there when the pay disparity between obviously the CEO at the very top and then some of the people who are working and actually making the operations work.

I think that's a fair question, Frank. A couple things, though, particularly when we think about these pay ratios where we're comparing the CEO's pay to that of the rank-and-file worker, the median employee, so to speak.

Some of these ratios can get quite high. For example, in the retail sector, we have ratios in the 2,000 to 6,000 times. In other words, for every dollar that the CEO is receiving, the employees is only receiving a dollar.

So these numbers can get high. On the other hand, these can be distorted because some of those pay numbers are coming across in the form of highly structured packages, only a portion of which are really structured in cash.

The rest of it is coming in the form of equity awards, which actually, in some cases, may turn out to be worthless. For example, some CEOs are paid almost exclusively in stock options. Those options, at the end of the day, may actually turn out to be completely worthless. On the other hand, they may be quite valuable. The dollar value you're seeing today is the economic value that we think they're worth as of the moment.

On the other side of that ratio, you have median workers who are sometimes part-time employees. And so sometimes these distortions kind of get a little out of hand. So it can be a little bit skewed, it sounds like. Absolutely. One last question before we let you go. I'm looking at the list of the top CEOs. Brad Jacobs, who's the chairman and CEO and basically founder of QXO, is here at the top of the list. A number of other people have options awards, as you mentioned.

Should there be a difference between a CEO who's an executive or a CEO who's a founder CEO or a CEO who's both the chairman of the board and the CEO? Does that change your view on the compensation that they should or should not receive?

You know, that's a complicated question, particularly in Brad's case, because he is a founding CEO and taking that organization. And moreover, he had a lot of his own capital tied up in it. When you actually go through the top 10 list, what you'll find, Frank, is that quite a few of these folks, there's kind of an interesting story behind each one of those. For example, if you go to Brian Nickel from Starbucks,

He has roughly a $92 million pay package from last year. If you go behind the curtain a little bit, what you'll see is that a big chunk of that is really reimbursing him for money he left on the table back at Chipotle.

These numbers kind of these one offs, if you will, do kind of distort the top 10 list. The rest of the list is not nearly well compensated. Yes, the numbers are high relative to rank and file employees, but it still begs the question, maybe, you know, maybe they really are delivering the value that they need. That, you know, in other words, the pay is justified, right?

All right, David Eikenberry, it's great to see you. Thank you. Have a great day. Thank you. It was a pleasure to be here. Still on deck here at Worldwide Exchange, we've got your big money movers in the chip stock, not named NVIDIA, on the move after earnings, plus the future of when renewable energy industry is in question. One major project very close to home. We're going to take an inside look with our Pippa Stevens. Worldwide Exchange coming up right after this.

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Welcome back to Worldwide Exchange. Time now for your big money movers. We're going to start off with Micron shares up just about two and a half percent after third quarter results be forecast and the company's given an upbeat outlook for the current period, betting on continued strong demand for memory chips used for AI hardware and data centers. Micron says data center revenue more than doubled and total sales are on track to hit record levels this fiscal year. Micron CEO Sanjay Marotra will be on squawk on the street for an exclusive interview that's coming up at 915 a.m. Eastern.

The rising time for NVIDIA is lifting all boats. The company closing at a record high yesterday, sparking a rally for several chip makers in Asia. South Korea's SK Hynix, which supplies memory chips to NVIDIA, jumping 2.5%. Taiwan Semi, which makes NVIDIA's high-end GPUs, seeing a smaller gain of just about 0.5%. In Japan, chip testing equipment maker Aventest surging 5% to a record high.

Also, we got Nike reporting fourth quarter results after the close today. Analysts are expecting another drop in sales as the company continues to refocus and restructure under new CEO Elliot Hill. The stock is down 7 percent over the last three months and nearly 40 percent from its high that it hit last June. Right now, Nike shares are up. They're higher, just over a half a percent.

All right. Turn into energy, the future for new offshore wind projects facing some serious questions. Does congressional Republicans continue to push forward with President Trump's tax and spending bill? The legislation will cut federal subsidies for the projects. Our Pippa Stevens looks at one such project that's just getting off the ground in New York City and what it means for that surrounding community.

I'm here at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal, which Equinor is redeveloping in order to service its offshore wind project off the coast of Long Island. Called Empire Wind 1, it will include 54 turbines, each 951 feet tall, providing 810 megawatts. That's enough to power 500,000 homes.

It's a big investment for Norway-based Equinor, which is spending about $5 billion, including $1 billion to redevelop the marine terminal. It is a hub of activity, creating more than 1,000 union jobs. But just a few weeks ago, the fate of the project was unknown. President Trump issued a stop work order in April, forcing the company to halt offshore construction. Now, work did continue at the terminal, but the company was just hours away from ceasing all operations when the order was reversed,

on May 19. The offshore wind industry has struggled to take off in the U.S. thanks to high costs and complex supply chains. Federal incentives have helped on the cost side, with Equinor expecting to recoup 40% of the project's cost

through the investment tax credits. But the tax bill making its way through Congress right now would significantly reduce those credits for future projects, with the Oceanic Network saying it will stifle the industry. Still, Equinor is banking on other offshore wind projects using its specialized marine terminal, which can support the custom vessels and massive cranes needed to lift and transport wind turbines.

Equinor expects Empire Wind to be fully operational by 2027, capping off more than a decade of work. For CNBC Business News, I'm Pippa Stevens in Brooklyn, New York. And as we had a break, we're watching a number of vaccine stocks. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s revamped government vaccine panel, holding its first meeting yesterday. And today looks to review the long-approved childhood vaccination schedule, including those for measles, mumps and rubella.

This is the panel's first meeting since RFK Jr. replaced all the members of the panel with a slate of new experts, including some that have voiced opposition to currently approved vaccines. Taking a look at some of those vaccine stocks, you see Moderna shares up just about a third of a percent, AstraZeneca up over a half a percent, and then Novavax pulling back fractionally. We're back right after this.

When we go look at the chart of the Russell 2000 and you look at it on a weekly basis and go back over the past say 24 to 36 months, it has made what I would define as a pretty impressive inverted head and shoulders bottom. We see about 16% upside and Frank I'm not mincing words here but the Russell 2000 is very likely to make a new high and probably will do so before mid-October.

That was my personal is Craig Johnson, not mincing his words on Worldwide Exchange yesterday, making the case for the Russell 2000 have a breakout moment in the coming months. But the but the index, it's actually still in the red for the year and still off more than 13 percent from its record high. Welcome back to Worldwide Exchange. I'm Frank Collin. Coming up this half an hour, we're going to have much more on whether it may be the small caps and even the mid caps time to shine. And the stocks, our next guest says, could be ready to pop.

But we begin this morning with the S&P 500 once again on the brink of a new all-time high. And you can see right here it's within 1% of a new all-time high. The NASDAQ 100 still at a record. The NASDAQ composite about 1% away from there. The Dow about 4.5% away from its all-time high. As we mentioned, the Russell about 13% from an all-time high. This morning investors are also considering the possible impact

to President Trump, name his next Fed chair sometime later this year. With that, we're going to take a look at U.S. stock futures. Taking a look still in the green across the board, the Dow looks like it would open up about 100 points higher. The S&P and the Nasdaq both up over a third of a percent, right around a half a percent, but higher across the board. We're going to take a look at the Nasdaq 100 pre-market leaders right now. Taking a look at those names, Mike Ron, after earnings right here at the top of the list.

Shares up about 2%. Applovin, Marvell, AMD, and NVIDIA. NVIDIA, we just talked about NVIDIA becoming the U.S.'s most viable publicly traded company right here, rounding out your best performers on the NASDAQ 100. Then we have the other side of the coin, the NASDAQ 100 laggards. Taking a look at those trade deaths, pulling back about 3%. Big digital ad company, ASML, Datadog, Vertex, and PDD Holdings, big Chinese tech company, rounding out your worst performers on the NASDAQ in the pre-market.

Also checking the small cap futures this morning. Taking a look, you see small caps are up fractionally. We just mentioned we're going to talk a lot more about small caps. Small caps are on pace for a two-month win streak, and we're going to have someone from TD Cowan giving their best picks on the small cap and the mid-cap space coming up in just a moment. I also want to take another look at the

a look at a part of the market I've been personally looking at. It's the ARK Innovation ETF. It did pull back yesterday almost 1%, but take a look at this chart. It's on a five-week win streak. Month-to-date, it's up about 24%. I want to take a look at some of the top holdings in that ETF. It's some names that you know very well. Tesla pulling back right now, but still one of the top holdings right now. Coinbase Global, those shares up 3.25%, Roku up over 0.5%, and down here, Circle Internet Group, also known just as Circle, up about 0.5%, getting a big boost from the stablecoin market.

boom in recent days, but it has pulled back double digits over the last two days. Just keep that in mind. Also want to look at currency. The dollar lower yesterday and on pace for its sixth consecutive negative month. Its longest lower streak since all the way back in August of 2017. Take a look. The dollar pulling back about a half a percent right now. Week to date down about

one and a half percent. Also, there was a report in the journal saying in part that President Trump may try to name his next Fed chair as soon as September. That also put quite a bit of pressure on the dollar yesterday. Again, down about a half a percent right now. And a quick check on yields. Taking a look first at the benchmark, as we always do right now at four point two eight, pretty much steady from the levels that we saw yesterday. Also highlighting the

five-year. There was an auction yesterday. Rick Santelli gave it a C-. His view, average demand, but a bit light on pricing up here the two-year, 3.76, most deeply influenced by decisions by the Federal Reserve. We'll continue to watch that throughout the show. We also want to take a look at the early trade over in Europe, take a look at some of that action. So you see

The stocks, basically the S&P for Europe, it's up fractionally right now. Best performing BORS this morning. That's the DAX, Germany, up about three quarters of 1%. Some of the big movers over in Europe right now, H&M, those shares up five and a quarter percent. H&M expecting a strong summer season. And one of the biggest laggers down here, BP, pulling back about three quarters of 1%. We hit that earlier. Some talk about a buyout of BP by Shell. Also want to look at how Asia wrapped

the day this morning. Taking a look, Japan's Nikkei 225 up over 1.5%. The Shanghai Composite pulling back a quarter of 1%. The CSI 300 pulling back a third of 1%. The Kospi down 1%. Down here, India's Nifty 50 up just about 1%.

That is your setup. We're going to go back to the markets as the NASDAQ 100 hits an all-time high and the S&P 500 closes in on its own all-time high. One major index, it's still stuck in correction. That's the small caps. But where some beaten down names are stuck in limbo, others, they see some portfolio opportunities, including my next guest, Lisa Thomas, Managing Director and Deputy Head of Global Research at TD Cowan, out with her firm's annual SmidCap Sweethearts report. Lisa, good morning. It's good to see you.

Great to see you, Frank. Good morning. All right. So we're going to get some of your picks in just a moment. But I want to ask you, when we're talking about the small cap space, we heard again, Craig Johnson saying he believes there's a 16 percent upside. How much of that is hinging on what happens in D.C. with the one big, beautiful bill?

I think a lot does hinge on that for sure- certainly we've lived- this year and seen that Washington has a tremendous impact on markets and all of the underlying businesses- you know in our stock indices. So- so it does matter we do think that the bill is going to pass we think you know most likely in July.

later this month. That will remove a lot of overhang in terms of debt ceiling. It will give, I think, the streets some comfort in terms of the extension of the current tax cuts. And I think it just takes, you know, one bit of uncertainty and volatility off the table, which I think does clear a pathway for performance. All right. So in your Smigcap Sweethearts report, you give a couple dozen picks. You got a number of picks in here. I want to get to one of the first ones. I know it's a couple dozen.

I want to get to one of them. It's Lyft. So we've seen some big upside moves for Uber this year. When we're looking at Lyft, why is this one of your sweethearts? What is it about this company that you see a lot of opportunity in? It's obviously the number two player in the space here in the U.S.,

Yeah, absolutely. I think it's a really interesting one because I think it illustrates really nicely what you can find in this mid-cap universe where you can sometimes get a combination of stocks that may be a little under the radar versus the large cap peers, or maybe there's just a big valuation disconnect as the case here. You know, even just look at it for a second from a market cap standpoint. So Uber, as you call out their market cap is $180 billion more or less right now.

Lyft's market cap is $6 billion. And yet, while Uber is the dominant player in the U.S. ride share market with 70% share, Lyft has 30% share. And if you look at that share differential alone, you see that the valuation has skewed far too much away from Lyft. And we think that it's a time for a reset. We would also call out that

Lyft is doing a lot of really interesting things in its business. So, you know, the starting point is kind of taking a look at that interesting valuation disconnect. And then you go, you know, the next layer and see what they're doing in some of the tier two markets that they're playing in now, like in Daedalus and Charlotte. And they've got a great management team. There's a ton going on there. Okay.

Another stock that you have in there I thought was really interesting, Planet Fitness. Now, the stock's only up about 5% this year. It's not a big upside mover. And it's also, I didn't even realize this, a really high valuation stock. Trades at about 35 times forward earnings. What are you seeing in this? Because it seems like the gym business is stagnant. It doesn't seem like it's growing to these kind of levels that would justify this valuation that you would pay up for. What are you seeing in this company in particular?

Sure. Well, again, it's another company that has a relatively new and really strong management team. So it's a turnaround story that we feel high conviction about. They are doing a lot of things within the gym to reorient the equipment. For example, moving from, you know, more cardio to much more, you know, strength intensive. That's really going to attract and routine their Gen Z customers. They're working really closely with their franchisees. They're doing a lot

of, you know, test, you know, read, repeat. So very systematic. They're in a really high operational mode. We think that they could get back to a place where they're, you know, they've got 200, you know, gym openings. And, you know, you point to the valuation and I think that's fair, but they're still substantially below their pre-pandemic levels. And we think that the operating model that they have, and again, the management team they have in place is tremendous.

And I'd also call out that they have the biggest advertising fund on in the industry. They've got a little over 300 billion dollars and now a chief marketing officer who can put it to work. Lisa Thomas, always good to see you. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right. Coming up, Bitcoin in a holding pattern for the last two months, despite big inflows into ETFs, tracking the crypto coin. A closer look at what it will take for a breakout. Worldwide exchange returns taking a look at Bitcoin pulling back about a quarter of a percent right now.

And welcome back to Worldwide Exchange. We're watching shares of Circle coming off a nearly 11% slot yesterday. The stablecoin provider has plummeted nearly 25% over the last two days, but got to put that in context. It's still up about 500% since going public earlier this month.

Circle's recent woe is not hitting the other stablecoin players. Coinbase gaining more than 15% over the last two days. Oppenheimer today raising the target of the company to 395. You see right now it's trading at about 357. Also, Fiveserve up more than 4% so far this week after announcing it's teaming up with Circle to launch its own stablecoin.

Sticking with crypto, Bitcoin holding above the 105,000 mark, up more than 3% over the last week. Right now trading at about 107,000 and about 500 a coin. Still pulling back about a quarter of a percent right now. The asset, though, it's kind of been stuck in a tight range since early May. And this is despite ETFs tracking it, seeing some huge inflows this week. Danaya McKeel joins us now with a look at the market.

at the disconnect good morning thank you for joining us good morning frank yeah we talk a lot about who's buying bitcoin we do not talk as much about the seller so yesterday to your point about the flows frank um was the 12th session in a row of positive inflows for bitcoin etfs flows are on pace for their ninth positive week in the last 11. it's almost four billion dollars for the month of june and all of that underscores the strength of institutional demand that we've been talking about all year even amid market uncertainty and yet

Bitcoin is only up about 3% this month. We know who's buying, Bitcoin ETFs and corporate treasuries, but there's a fair amount of selling taking place as well that's almost perfectly offsetting the buying and keeping the Bitcoin price stuck. And it shows a real change in ownership in the Bitcoin market. Now, looking at data from CryptoQuant,

we can see that early mega whales, think Chinese miners around 2013, 2014, they've been holding onto their coins for longer and waiting to offload them in greater amounts to today's biggest Bitcoin buyers. We're talking about three different cohorts of Bitcoin whales. The smallest wallets hold one to 1,000 coins.

That's institutions via Bitcoin ETFs. They tend to fall into this category and they've been the biggest buyers this year. But if you look at wallets holding one thousand to ten thousand coins and then wallets holding more than ten thousand coins, they've been selling this year. And I'll also note that retail investors, Frank, have been sellers, but that cohort is a little bit too small at this point to be moving the needle on price.

You know, really interesting stuff. And I know you write about this quite a bit, so we'll have to continue to track this one. Taneya, really great to see you. Thank you for coming in. Thank you, Frank. Coming up here on Worldwide Exchange, we've got the one word that every investor has to hear today, plus the view from the C-suite on President Trump's policies, what CFOs are telling CNBC when it comes to the president's strategies on tariffs, taxes, and much, much more. That's coming up next. Stay with us.

And welcome back to World Wide Exchange. A couple stocks on the move in the pre-market. Citizens upgrading its rating on Penn Entertainment. You see Penn's up almost 3%. Citizens also downgrading its rating on MGM Resorts. MGM pulling back about 1.5%. Also, Wells Fargo downgrading its rating on Trade Desk. We hit this earlier. One of the biggest laggards in the pre-market pulling back more than 2.5%.

All right. Now it's time for CNBC's Q2 CFO survey, where we talk to the corporate financial decision makers of the biggest companies in the world about a wide range of topics. We're going to begin with one of the biggest issues for companies this year. That's tariffs. We're going to share some of the strongest opinions when it comes to that. Forty one percent strongly agree that tariffs will directly cost their company more.

Fifty two percent say tariffs will impact suppliers and indirectly raise their costs. Ten percent agree somewhat the tariffs will bring manufacturing back to the U.S. Then we have 66 percent that disagree either strongly or disagree somewhat. The tariffs will help the U.S. economy. Of course, tariffs are just one policy that we ask CFOs about when it comes to the administration. They say the administration, the policies coming out of the White House,

This quarter, they say 31 percent said the policy is having a significant impact on their decision making. I want to put that in perspective for you. Last quarter, only 10 percent said that this survey was taken between June the 6th and June the 24th. Now, that's important because many responses were before the Senate released the latest version of the one big, beautiful bill. So, again, during this time, 10 percent said the bill will pass as is.

86% saying it will pass after the Senate makes changes. And of course, there is that 4th of July deadline. One provision in that bill, CFOs are confident will be in the final version of the Trump tax cuts. 79% say corporate taxes will remain the same. An extension of the Trump tax cuts

10% see them moving even lower. And then one area we're not seeing a lot of optimism in when it comes to CFOs is their view of the economy. 14% of they actually believe that we're in a recession right now. 31% believe a recession is coming in the back half of this year. And then almost 25% believe a recession is coming in 2026, either in the first half or the second half of the year.

So for more, let's bring in Wetney Joseph, CFO of Zoetis, also a member of CFO's CFO Council. Good morning. Great to have you here. Great to be here with you, Frank. All right. So just for just for fairness, you didn't take the survey. You're not one of these survey respondents. So we're kind of getting a live read from you. I want to go to tariffs. So, again, 41 percent said tariffs will directly impact their costs. When it comes to your company, again, pet and animal medicine, how are tariffs impacting your business?

I guess a global company tariffs remain dynamic and we continue to watch it, but we have a global base while about 50% of our business just over is in the US. We're very diversified across the world and when we think about tariffs actually if you look at the US we manufacture, 60% of our manufacturing footprint is actually in the US and most of our intellectual property sits in the US. So in essence we're actually exporting more out of the US than we're importing in terms of our products.

And so we continue to have substantial mitigation strategies. And just like most major companies, we're doing all the scenario planning and so on. But our industry is very resilient. And this is just one other item we're keeping an eye on. But we have multiple ways to manage with.

So as I mentioned, you're in the animal and pet health business. We talked about with the CFOs about how policy tariffs, everything else is impacting decision making. There's been quite a bit of uncertainty as a CFO right now. How are you managing the uncertainty? Not only when it comes to the macro environment, but also for some of your holdings for the company, whether you're holding treasuries, how much cash you're keeping on the balance sheet and things like that.

Well, we have significant confidence in the future of our space. Animal health, as I said a second ago, is very resilient. And it's a relatively young industry with fertile ground in terms of unmet needs. So what that means is even in times of uncertainty like this, we remain focused on the long term.

And so we're managing the short term in terms of driving the agility that we need around the business, but not to take our eyes off of the long term and continue to invest in the areas of unmet need that are going to continue to drive our space in our business. And as an innovation led company that's purpose driven, we have ample areas to drive that and we'll make those investments even in times of uncertainty, although we'll be continuing to be very cautious in terms of some of the near term

at the same time. All right, cautious. That's an interesting word right now. The CFO, one of your key job functions is to help the CEO come up with the guidance, the guidance for the company. And then your tax rate obviously influences the guidance. A lot of the CFOs are very confident that we're going to see an extension of the Trump tax cuts. Right now, how much is the one big beautiful bill and some of the provisions in there, whether it's tax cuts, salt? Obviously, that impacts a lot of homeowners.

and may impact their willingness to spend on their pet. How much does that impact your ability to give guidance, decide on capex spending, things like that? Well, as an innovation company, we favor policies that support innovation and extending the tax cuts and some of those elements around that, continue to having immediate expensing of R&D, for example, and bonus depreciation. Those are all elements that actually help drive growth since the 2017 tax cut.

And so the extension and continuation of those will support our business and are continuing to invest in the long term, not only in R&D, but also in terms of our footprint and where we manufacture as well. Before we let you go, we've got to ask you just general. I know your earnings are coming up pretty soon. Just the animal health business. What's going on right now? We've heard a lot of talk about.

and agriculture being involved with it. What's going on in the animal health business just overall? We were very pleased to have a very strong start to the year. I know there's a lot of attention to the consumer confidence and what that looks like. We saw across different markets, including the U.S., a dip in consumer confidence back in the early Q1. We're seeing that again. But despite that, we posted 9% operational growth

across our business in the quarter and actually maintained our organic operational growth, although FX actually raised the dollar equivalent to that as the dollar weakened a bit into the quarter. But we continue to see strength across the business and the resiliency. We think of animal health as being recession resistant and it's proven so over different economic cycles. If you go back, for example, to 2009 in the Great Recession,

The industry grew about 3% while most industries actually declined. And our business, because of our innovation on top of that, actually drives even greater growth, which is why we've been able to grow 3% above the industry that grows about 4% to 6% through these various cycles. Wendy Joseph, it's so great to have you. You've got to come back. It's always great to have you here and kind of get some insight from you. Great to be here, Frank. Thanks again. Thank you very much.

All right. Coming up here on Worldwide Exchange, record watch for the S&P 500. As futures suggest a move closer to that mark, our next guest says the highs, they may just be getting started. We'll be right back. Stay with us. Welcome back to Worldwide Exchange. S&P near a record high. With that, let's bring in Ryan Dietrich, Carson Group chief market strategist. Good morning. Good to see you. What's your word of the day? We've got to jump into this thing, Ryan. It's always good to see you.

Good morning, Frank. Thanks for having me back. You know, I thought it's almost July, so we're going to go with fireworks. Because, listen, people are going to hear a lot about this. The month of July, Frank, has been higher the last 10 years in a row for the S&P 500.

It's the top month last 20 years, and it's the best month in a post-election year. Now, one more for the listeners. When you're higher in May and June, like we're probably going to be with June because we're up pretty good, July does better, and the final six months of the year have been higher 15 to the last 16 times. When these weak months are strong, like we're doing right now, that could be a signal this bull market's alive and well.

All right. Could be a signal. By the way, we're going to go over this data real quick. Over the past 10 years, in July, the S&P is up about three and a third percent. So it's a pretty significant upside move. I want to ask you, what do you see moving us higher? So techs at a record, do you see that continuing to break records? And then also we have consumer discretionary, the laggard. Do you see a reversal there? Where do you see the upside moves coming to push us to

all to newer and newer highs in July with a potential 3% upside move if you look at historical precedent. Yeah, those cyclical areas, we've liked them for a while. Come on with you saying that. Your financials, your industrials, technology. You know, those are the areas that you want to see leading. What's lagging is the defensive stuff, right? So that's a positive market. It's like signals and clues. Those are things you want to see leading in a healthy bull market. We think those areas got us to the dance. They're going to keep leading us in this surprise summer rally.

All right. So, you know, people always look for picks in this spot, Ryan. I know you don't pick stocks, but in general, if you're looking for opportunities to ride this July rally, what would it be?

Momentum stocks. We like those momentum stocks. There's momentum ETFs out there. Those are some of those areas I just talked about in healthy markets is what you see. And again, one more thing on this, Frank. There's still – I don't see a lot of optimism. I get to travel the country, talk to people. People are like, I'm still kind of worried. That is a good thing. So those momentum names could do really well in July, maybe even the rest of this year. Momentum is up 14% for the year. I don't think most people realize that. It's probably still going to lead, Frank. All right.

Really quick, Ryan, when you talk about momentum and I'm asking you to pick it, are you talking about things like the ARK Innovation ETF? We hit this earlier in the show holds things like Tesla Circle. Is that generally directionally when you're talking momentum? Not so much like the momentum ETFs like MTUM, though, that's a hundred momentum ETF. So we know, you know, Kathy's doing a pretty good job. And if you're hot, you're hot. So those are doing pretty good right now, too. All right. Ryan Dietrich, it is always a pleasure to see you. Thank you very much. Your pick for us today. Momentum stocks. I like it. Have a great day.

One more quick look at futures right now. As we just mentioned, the S&P within 1% of a new all-time high. Right now, we're actually seeing futures, I believe, hit, well, not their highs of the morning, pulling back just a bit when we're looking at the Dow. It looks like the Dow would open up about 100 points higher. The S&P and the Nasdaq both up just around a third of a percent, just a bit higher right now. That's going to do it for us here on Worldwide Exchange. You've been listening to CNBC's Worldwide Exchange. You can always catch us live weekdays at 5 a.m. Eastern.

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