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I'm Scott Wapner, and you're listening to CNBC's Halftime Report, the podcast, the most profitable hour of the trading day. We record this live weekdays at 12 Eastern. Listen in. Carl, thank you very much. Welcome to the Halftime Report. I'm Scott Wapner, front and center this hour. This rebound, stocks looking to continue their recent advance. We will discuss and we will debate with the investment committee where your money is going from here. Joining me for the hour today, Josh Brown, Kerry Firestone, Steve Weiss, Bill Baruch.
We'll check the markets here. We are green across the board and nicely so. We're at the highs of the day. Josh, we're on the back of this announcement, obviously with the UK. We'll let others debate the specifics of it, the importance of it. And there are obviously still bigger fish to fry. And we're going to start cooking on that with China.
Treasury Secretary obviously heading to Switzerland. But what's clear today is that this market seems very content with any kind of deal in hopes that it leads to more.
and bigger. I think that's right, Scott. Against all odds, the U.S. managed to make a trade deal with its greatest ally over the last 200 years. It's really remarkable. When you think about where we were a month ago and the sentiment around the Chinese situation escalating, around all of these different country-by-country, bilateral disagreements that were being aired out in public, all the market really needed to kind of like regain control
a little bit of trust that things are going to work out well was good headlines. And that's all we're getting right now is positive headlines. We're not getting any more of the saber rattling. We're not getting any more of the ratcheting up and new demands being thrown out. And it's good enough. And the reason why it's good enough is really important because I don't think we'll be able to say this in two weeks.
The reason why it's good enough is if you take the blend of actual earnings and expected earnings of the companies that still haven't reported, and we've got most of them by now, you're talking about a 12% year-over-year earnings growth rate, which, considering all of the negativity, is pretty fabulous when you also consider that the multiple has come down as these companies have beaten and exceeded expectations
It's been like the right elixir that we needed to pull ourselves out of that funk. Now, again, in two weeks, I don't know what the upside catalyst will be unless we get more deals, get something with Japan, get some talks going with China. Maybe that'll be good enough. But you're not going to have that backdrop of companies coming out with earnings and the rest of us being like, oh.
Okay, I guess things are still pretty okay. But that's what we've been able to do in the last two weeks. And you see the results. It's been more than enough. I mean, Weiss, the catalyst that Josh is talking about and many are still looking for could very well find itself
AT LEAST ACCORDING TO THE PRESIDENT WHO IN THE CONTEXT OF THE REMARKS THAT HE MADE IN THE OVAL AND THE NEWS CONFERENCE THAT FOLLOWED, NOT AN OFFICIAL NEWS CONFERENCE OBVIOUSLY, BUT THE Q&A WITH THE POOL THAT WAS GATHERED IN THE OVAL, THE PRESIDENT MADE THE FOLLOWING STATEMENT THINKING ABOUT THE BIGGER PICTURE OF A BILL THAT HE HOPES TO GET DONE IN THE HOUSE. WE'RE TALKING TAX CUT EXTENSIONS, OBVIOUSLY DEREGULATION, AND HE SAYS OF THOSE THINGS, QUOTE,
And if that happens, on top of all of these trade deals that we're doing, this country will hit a point that you better go out and buy stock. That's directly from the president today in the Oval. For somebody who has been... Did he mention any specific tickers? He did not. Not yet. Okay. For somebody who's been...
fully hedged at times recently, who certainly had a negative, if not more cautious bias than most, I think it's fair to say on this desk. This market's up a bunch, man. I mean, if you look at where we are, and this is before today, the S&P up 16.5% from the lows, and now we're at the highs of the day. What say you now?
Well, I'll say what I said last week, which is that the short-term market's going up. The intermediate term, the market's going down because we are going to recession. I sent Kevin a text last week. Maybe you were on that as well, that said I'm stupidly long, which means I was 120% net long of the market. A lot of that was through indices.
But I've added. And the reason why a lot of it's through indices is that I'm not married to the market continuing. Look, we got all the negative stuff out of the way, right? So the news couldn't have been worse. I got that right. I did not catch the first day of what is probably a 12-day move at this point. But I caught quite a bit of it. And don't forget the beta I have in my portfolio. So I've actually done quite well.
over this period, but my view is still that I can't find stocks that will withstand a recession, and I do believe we're going to a recession. Look, I'm very-- - Why are you so convinced that we're going into a recession? - Because unlike reacting to news and reacting to momentum in the market, I'm actually talking to CEOs. I'm talking to the heads of private equity firms.
I'm talking to companies that I'm involved in privately investing in, and I sit on the board. Things are frozen. CEOs are not investing in their business.
Private equity firms tell me the last big or even decent-sized private equity deal that was announced. They will get it sooner. Sure, but it doesn't necessarily mean that we're going into a recession. I think everybody knows a story well told at this point, exactly what you've said. We get it. We've heard it on earnings calls.
WE HEARD IT OUT AT MILKIN ABOUT HIRING AND CAPITAL DEPLOYMENT. WE GET IT, BUT THIS IS ALSO HAPPENING, MIND YOU, AT A POINT WHERE THE ECONOMY IS PRETTY DARN RESILIENT. THE LABOR MARKET HAS HELD UP, I THINK, BETTER TO THIS POINT, TO THIS POINT, THAN PEOPLE HAVE THOUGHT. THAT THE ECONOMY HAS HELD UP TO THIS POINT BETTER THAN I THINK PEOPLE THOUGHT.
The soft data hasn't necessarily become the hard data. The earnings have held up, I think, better than most people thought to this point. Let's talk about that. Let's talk about that. Let's go through it one by one. In terms of the economy holding up, there's a massive rush to stock your personal shelves, to stock store shelves before...
THE TARIFFS HIT. SO YOU'RE BUYING IN ADVANCE, YOU'RE STOCKING IN ADVANCE. I CAN TELL YOU THE SUPPLY CHAIN IS NOT FROZEN LIKE IT WAS IN COVID, BUT I CAN TELL YOU THAT THE SUPPLY CHAIN IS VERY, VERY SLOW. SO COMPANIES THAT HAVE SWITCHED, AGAIN, LIKE PRIVATE COMPANIES ARE INVOLVED, SWITCHED THEIR SUPPLY CHAIN FROM CHINA, INDIA, THEY WON'T GET DELIVERY FOR FOUR TO SIX MONTHS ON CRITICAL ITEMS. SO YOU HAVE TO DISTINGUISH THAT, NUMBER ONE. NUMBER TWO,
when you talk about earnings, have you ever, has anybody here ever seen an earnings period like this, even during COVID, where guidance was pulled because the CEOs don't know what the future is? Nobody has a problem with that? Of course they do. But I think you will admit, I hope, that
We've gotten more guidance than maybe we thought we'd get, despite the fact that they were pulled. No, we expected to get no guidance. That may be largely true. It's not mine. Weiss, you're going to argue with me no matter what I say, so I'm just going to say it. No, I'm going to correct you when I think it's different. We're not going to do this again. I think most people assumed that earnings were going to be, that guidance was going to be terrible, if any at all.
and that earnings wouldn't have come in the rate they have. Don't disagree. Don't disagree on the quarter. We saw earnings. So what's the problem? Where's our disagreement? Scott, can you give me a chance to talk? Where's our disagreement, Weiss? The disagreement, there is no disagreement on the quarter. The disagreement is moving forward. Again, let me repeat, I'm long the market because the short-term momentum is going to continue because the market is paying attention to the momentum.
Look, the president comes out and says, buy stocks. Every president says that. What's the analysis behind it? Of course he wants you to buy stocks. Of course he wants the market. There's nothing wrong with that. The last time he said buy stocks, the market went up like a rocket ship. Right, so all of us should go home, retire, and just listen to what he says. We didn't have a recession in 2022 because people didn't lose their jobs. So far, we don't have that yet either. We might, but it's not there. Right.
PEOPLE AREN'T GOING TO LOSE THEIR JOBS. THE COST OF REPLACING LABOR IS TOO GREAT A BURDEN ON COMPANIES AND THEY STILL HAVE THAT ISSUE COMING OUT OF COVID, RIGHT, WHERE WAGES WENT SKY HIGH, PARTICULARLY IN THE HEALTH CARE FIELD. IN TERMS OF A RECESSION, IF THE ECONOMY, IF COMPANIES STOP
Stop investing. If foreign capital stops coming in, if we cut entitlements and cut government spending, you will go into recession. So party now. I'm partying with you. But next quarter, the market may be a different story. I'm not the one throwing the party. I'm looking at a market that has been up a ton from the low. No argument. I'm there. And is...
Pretty content with where the situation looks to be today until the market or the economy or something shows it Otherwise, I'm gonna go commiserate with with Ken Griffin I'm gonna go commiserate with Paul Tudor Jones with all the others who see what I see. Okay, so they're all idiots We're all wrong said that they're idiots. Well, apparently you're discounting what they're saying So you don't buy into it. You think it's you're gonna keep going and going going
I'm going I didn't say that it's gonna keep going and going going the only point I was then we have no just that it's that it's gone I think a little bit better than many had feared that it would undoubtedly if we if we talk about what the market has done I mean let's just sort of get back to the market we started the year at the market was at
at a fairly lofty level. And then we had Liberation Day. And it was a perfect storm for how things could get worse. And the market took that seriously. So the market fell 20% from the peak. Now, what the market has done
done is just to the fact that it had discounted too much bad news at that time. That's why we thought they were attractive stocks to buy, like AMAD and Apollo. By the way, those stocks are up 20% and 15% respectively since you made those buys and came on the show and said, I'm ready to buy some stocks. It's gotten too ugly out there. Exactly. So you look at individual cases of stocks that you've been looking to buy,
that are down 40, 50, 55% and say, "This is a price that we like and we're going to take the plunge right here." So now the market is up 14.5% from that level. It's still down almost 7% from the peak. Is it still going higher?
If the news flow is good, it will. If it gets to a point where the news flow really can't get better, then people are going to say, wait a minute, maybe we've gone too far. If we're back to where we were at the end of the year, that may well be too much exuberance when in fact we don't know what's going to happen with tariffs. If there are 20% tariffs on all
all of the EU, for example, that would be a lot to handle. The market maybe is thinking too positively about some of the tariffs. China, maybe the market's too positive right now. I don't know. But that's what's happening here, and we have to adjust our thinking based on what the price of the stocks are that we're looking at.
Steve's running his own soft data survey. We know all the sentiment is in the drain. The purchasing managers indexes have already kind of told us the Michigan data sentiment is bad. But
But executives and managers, they're much more. Just hold your thought for a second. I want to get to our Pippa Stevens. We do have breaking news out of Vatican City today. Pippa, the details? Yeah, Scott. Well, we're now seeing white smoke billowing out of the most widely watched chimney in the world right now, indicating that the conclave has come to an agreement and a new pope has been elected. We will know in short order who is going to take over the papacy. But once again, you see there that white smoke coming out without
THOUSANDS GATHERED IN ST. PETER'S SQUARE IN PREPARATION FOR THIS ANNOUNCEMENT AND THE UPCOMING IRBY AT IRBY BLESSING THAT THE NEW POPE WILL BE DELIVERING. SCOTT? ALL RIGHT. THIRD TIME'S THE CHARM. A COUPLE DAYS OF BLACK SMOKE FROM THAT CHIMNEY AND THEN TODAY FOLLOWED BY THE WHITE SIGNIFYING THAT THE NEXT POPE, IN FACT, HAS BEEN CHOSEN. WE'LL OBVIOUSLY HAVE MORE DETAILS AS WE LEARN THAN PIPA. THANKS SO MUCH FOR THAT. BILL, MY APOLOGIES FOR CUTTING YOU OFF, BUT THAT'S IMPORTANT NEWS THAT WE WANTED TO BRING TO OUR VIEWERS.
But purchasing managers are much more versatile than they were a decade and two decades ago. We heard the same exact thing around COVID, that supply chains were going to be dried up and everything was going to fall apart. I've talked to people with COVID that were running...
big shops in Texas at the time, and heard the same thing I'm hearing from logistic managers now around this time. But at the end of the day, what we saw is market managers, portfolio managers, they're also more versatile than they've ever been. I mean, they move very quickly to discount basically what could be the worst case scenario
after the tariffs on April 2nd. And the market sold off. Again, I've said this before. We've had three of the most five high volume days around that. And that's capitulation. Now, there's two scenarios that we can see from here. To Josh's point, we've had great earnings beat. And to your point, too, earnings going forward, the revisions have already happened. According to FactSet, the first month of the quarter, 2.4% revision downward on earnings. And that's more than five
10, 15, 20 year average of around 1.8%. A lot of this has already been kitchen sink. It's already being priced into the market. So the scenario from here, do we get 2019 in the market where everything, the world was falling apart at the end of 2018, liquidity crisis,
Powell was, Trump was yelling at Powell and they were in a hiking cycle. They're not in a hiking cycle right now, but they're clearly not wanting to cut rates. And all of a sudden, the first or second week of January, Powell said, we're listening to the markets and we need to move. We're going to stop. We're going to stop hiking. I think that moment is coming around the corner at some point here. And everybody is offsides and under position in the market. But
To play devil's advocate to my end here, what would contain the market? Maybe the White House doesn't want the market to go runaway because 2026 is the midterms. And how do you have 25, 30 percent gains leading into the midterm elections by not being up 10 or 15, 20 percent in 2025? That's ridiculous. The White House is not going to manage the market. Let's not go 20 percent now. Let's go 20 percent. And you can't cherry pick data with COVID.
Okay, let's not forget that we had zero interest rates, that we had massive liquidity going in, and let's not forget what Powell said yesterday, that quantitative tightening is going to continue. So you can't just say, hey, the market went up and everything was great. December 2019, they were saying the same thing. Interest rates play a critical component.
in terms of what happens with the market and the economy. They're saving face against being yelled at by Trump right now, and he's going to continue to come at them. They're going to find the right moment to pick. Can I offer one thing? I think one thing that we can all agree on
is that the economy being 70% services, it's a very different economy than if we would have had this kind of supply chain traffic snarl even 20 years ago. This is a very different situation. And one of the reasons why earnings season has been such a success relative to what we were all worried about, A, it's early. Tariffs haven't really-- like, we don't have the impact of tariffs in the real world yet. So we might be whistling past the wave. That's fair.
But another thing that's fair, some of our largest, most important publicly traded companies that comprise the bulk of the indices that actually determine what the price is going to be are, number one, more defensive than we might have thought they were.
Netflix being a great example. Nobody will cancel. Doesn't matter all the economic uncertainty. Spotify, what Microsoft has been able to deliver. There is a degree of resilience that only comes from companies that sell something that looks more like a consumer staple than like a consumer electronic. And that's an interesting...
feature of the current market. Look at the top 50 market caps in the NASDAQ. You really can't find many that are reliant upon China shipping us more plastic things to sell in the $5 store. So I just think that's one thing worth putting out there. It's not to say it won't be painful, farmers, et cetera, et cetera.
We've said all the right things before. We don't have to rehash them. It's just to say we might have a stock market that is more defensive than it used to be, even in the tech sector, which quite frankly is the only sector that matters. And the only thing that I've just to wrap that up before we move. No one is suggesting that everything is rose colored glasses by any stretch. We could still easily have a recession.
It's a lag effect of these tariffs. It doesn't hit everything immediately. I think that it potentially is prolonged a little more than people thought. Just like when the Fed began its hiking cycle, even the Fed and others expected, well, we're going to go into a recession now because that's what always happens when the Fed embarks.
Jay Powell a million times said, well, it's a lag effect. Well, this is another lag effect. We didn't have a recession then because the economy was resilient. You put up a chart of visa. The economy was artificially inflated. I know that. And it's naive to suggest that all of that is not still in the system in places. That's why the consumer has maintained its ability to be strong, too. Guys, give me like more than more than the last 20 minutes. All right. Thank you.
I mean, that's Visa. It's either the biggest head fake on earth or every one of these credit card CEOs who reported is lying to us. I don't really know. This is not my expectation. I didn't go into this earnings season saying we're going to get incredible news from Capital One, from Bank of America, from Visa, MasterCard. They're all going to say incredible things about Visa.
how stable everything seems to be. I didn't expect it. That's what they're telling us. Hold on. We don't know how much we can pull forward buying, right? Fair point. If you're told 25% price hike, what are you going to do? Wait for that to hit? Or are you going to buy it now? You're going to buy it now. So we don't know how much of that is in Visa, right? Will we know next quarter? We also know that they benefit from balances, right? So the balances keep going up.
Right? People are hoarding cash, possibly, or just spending right now. The truth will come out as to what happened not in a month, not in two months, after we see the tariffs take hold. So you've got another 60 days or maybe more. Let's just hit a couple of stocks, too. I just want to note Boeing shot higher on the discussion in the Oval Office that the U.K. would be buying $10 billion worth of Boeing jets as part of the agreement. That stock's at the highs of the day.
THAT'S ONE NAME ON THE MOVE. I THINK WE REALLY NEED TO CHECK ALPHABET AGAIN AFTER YESTERDAY'S JUST AMAZING DECLINE ON THOSE COMMENTS FROM APPLE'S EDDIE Q ABOUT SEARCHES GOING DOWN IN APRIL FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME. ALPHABET CAME OUT WITH A STATEMENT GIVING YOU A
Trying to give you a look at where things really are. Quote, we continue to see overall query growth in search. That includes an increase in total queries coming from Apple's devices and platforms. I thought overall was the interesting word that they used there. But nonetheless, the move in the stock was significant. Seven firms at least are out today saying it's an overreaction.
There are negative calls today. Mellie is saying that it could be a historic turning point. Gene Munster, most of you know, former analyst now at Deepwater, said, quote, Google's likely going lower because search is in the very early stages of a seismic change that investors haven't fully factored in current valuation. Carey, you own the stock. Were you shaken at all as an investor and an owner of this name yesterday?
I think everyone has been expecting someone, either Google or Apple, to say that search searches are down. That was inevitable. The question is whether the stock fully discounts or appropriately discounts that risk. And we know that there's
perplexity and people are moving to chat, but the whole volume of searches are definitely higher. I search more and I'm using different platforms on which to search. Does that mean that the growth rate slows? Does it slow much more? I mean, yeah.
Yeah, all of these things are at play. The stock was down enough so that it's less than 16 times expected earnings for next year. Would we sell now? Absolutely not. Is it a buy right here? I think we're a little bit in the wait and see, but closer to a buy than a sell for us. So you're not...
You're not worried that this is that the first real sniff of an existential crisis that Google's going to have alphabet will related to search because it's been taken that way in some corners like the Munster comment I thought was pretty explicit going lower. Right. So I thought that was extreme. We all know that search is changing. It is changing dramatically and people are using all types of different
mechanisms to find out information. I mean, I started to use Google Lens where you can identify anything, you know, visual.
through Google. And whether Google is going to learn how to monetize what they're giving away for free, I think, is a big question. Right now, they probably have the capability to do much of what other perplexity or chat GPD can do. They haven't yet incorporated it sufficiently. Is there going to be war about this? I don't know if dropping from this point down another 10 percent or 15, it's
already down. - Look, the primary use case for AI right now is search. And with all these companies having raised billions and billions of dollars, and with the technology for AI search out there,
While search overall is up, I actually think search will increase because of AI, that the market share is going down. That's unquestionable. That's probably one of the reasons why Josh sold it. I sold it after Josh. This is where they make their money. He's holding it still. We hold it. I was on the show on Monday or Tuesday. We trimmed it on Monday. We're underweighted now. Now, Google's, or Alphabet's, one of the greatest innovators ever.
And I mean, this isn't new news that we're going to see, you know, search kind of dwindle around and be, you know, move around. It's new news. It's new news. The expectation, I mean, people have been using other search engines or the Groks, the Perplexities, the ChatGPTs. Heck, even if I have Google.com up, I'm searching using their AI. I'm not clicking on anything.
But so I would imagine that they have expected something like this to come down the pipeline where they're going to, as you mentioned, find a way to monetize the things that they already have available on their tools. Doesn't matter if if search is the
BREAD AND BUTTER GOAT BUSINESS OF ALPHABET AND IT'S GOING TO BE NOW MATERIALLY IMPACTED, WHICH IT SURE AS HECK LOOKS LIKE IT IS, JUSTIFY THE MULTIPLE FOR ME BASED ON ALL THE OTHER STUFF. THE POINT FROM THE PEOPLE WHO ARE TALKING ABOUT IT TODAY, IT'S NOT LOW ENOUGH BASED ON THIS NEWS AND WHAT IT POTENTIALLY MEANS. OF COURSE, ALL THINGS BEING EQUAL,
Is it low relative to some of the other mega caps? Obviously, and it has been for years. But this is enough of a game-changing question that even a low multiple might not be low enough. If they own the business, it's been commoditized. They're principal business. Here's your get-out-of-jail-free card. In December of 2023, Sergey came out of retirement. He had stepped down, I think, in, like, 2019. And the idea was that he wanted to work on AI. He wanted to—
uh... you know put his mark on this next generation technology and then after that nothing but we haven't really heard any detect price periodically writes about him being there we haven't heard much
I think if this gets much worse over the next quarter or so, it's not going to be long before you start hearing people calling for Sergey to take a more active, more public role as the face of Alphabet's AI strategy. And if and when that happens, I think that can help you with the multiple on the stock. I don't know if it helps you with the fundamentals. And by the way, the fundamentals aren't really the problem here. The problem here is the perception.
And to Weiss's point, if now it's a commodity business and a lot of the things that made Alphabet an automatic and untouchable are no longer applicable, it's just a tougher story. It doesn't mean the stock has to fall another 20%. And we own it, but we trimmed it. And I'll go one step further. Our fear, you have DOJ going after them, as well you have the EU with anti-competitiveness. They're in the crosshairs of this trade war. There could be tariffs on services.
So, yeah, we started moving down the road here, trimming it. And if we get a broad market rally, I expect alpha to be higher and maybe it's another trim. Well, it's higher. We have a broad market rally today. And, in fact, it is higher by about 2.5%. We'll take a break. We do have a bunch of committee names to get to. Steve Weiss adding to his stock. It's up more than 30% in the past month. Bill with a new buy as well. Josh adding a new name to his best stocks in the market. We'll break. We're back in two.
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We are back. Let's do some moves. We begin with a stock that has been one of the most defensive plays in this market while really enabling you to play offense at the same time. It is Netflix. Charts unbelievable.
Why should you buy more? Yeah, and this was, in fact, my largest position by a wide margin. You know, I've got a very concentrated book, which includes the top positions of Taiwan Semi. It includes Meta. It includes Microsoft, Netflix, and there's one or two others. Look, Josh nailed it.
They will do well in a recession because you will cut down the number of streaming services that you have. They have the most content and they still have pricing power. They can raise prices every year if they want. Every six months, it won't hurt demand. And plus, there are so many levers they can pull. We've seen them start to get into sports. I would expect more of that.
So to me, it's just a quintessential stock for this market. It may get overvalued shortly if this continues, but I'm not going to sell at that point. I did buy some for a trading position to get more exposure to the market.
So I wouldn't let that go, but the core position, which is high school, will stay. I mean, even if it's certainly proven to be, well, I mean, we're not obviously in a recession, but the idea being that it's at worst recession resilient because if you don't want to pay the top tier, you just trade down to the ad-supported tier and you pay a little bit less. If you look through, by the way, Disney's streaming numbers, better than most people expected. Warner Brothers streaming numbers, better.
better than most people expected. So again, the story of, wow, this economy is really going to be a disaster
Well, the cutting cord has continued, right? So we saw that in Comcast. Sure, but that's more of that idiosyncratic side of that business, right? Yeah. People aren't cutting the cord because they're worried about the economy, more or less.
They're cutting the cord because the trends are just what they are. And they have been. And everybody knows it at this point. If you're paying $120 a month and you cut the cord, you'll pay $50 for basic Wi-Fi broadband internet service and then add Netflix for $16. And that's good enough, especially if they're showing football, which they are. Boxing. It's a...
To me, it is an economic story. It is an economic story. And I think it's defensive enough, which is part of the point I was trying to make. I'm a little distracted. I can't stop thinking about Jalen Brunson. Part of the point I was trying to make is the sports component to it
Sports and Hollywood are two recession-resilient things. The consumer, when they have nothing to do, that's the thing that they lean on. And that's why I think these stocks are trading the way that they are. It's cheap entertainment. The guide on margin expansion, when everybody's worried about margin compression right now, that was just so huge for them coming out of that report. Yep. Clutch last night, yeah? Again? Again. Clutch like Brunson. Bridges with the block at the end, too. Super clutch. All right.
- Christina Parts, Kerry was at the game. - You are? - In Boston. - Condolences.
Hi, Scott. Well, let's start with the federal judge dismissed most of the claims against celebrities and YouTubers who promoted the now defunct crypto exchange FTX. The litigation includes stars such as Tom Brady, Gisele Bundchen, Steph Curry. The ruling narrows the scope of a sprawling lawsuit from FTX investors that accuses the stars of using their fame to market a fraudulent platform. The judge ruled the investors did not prove the stars had sufficient knowledge of FTX and CEO Sam Bankman Freed's misconduct to be held liable.
A judge declared a mistrial today in the second-degree murder trial of a Grand Rapids police officer who shot and killed a man at a traffic stop in 2022. Authorities say Christopher Schur pulled over Patrick Laioia, who ended up in a struggle with the now-fired officer. An independent autopsy showed Laioia was shot in the back of the head.
And Washington just became the first state in the country to set limits on rent increases. The measure caps increases at 7% plus inflation or 10%, whichever is lower. I was not at the game. Scott, back over to you. Maybe you watched. I don't know. Christina, thanks. Christina Partsenevelos. Up next, the new name that just hit Josh Brown's best stocks in the market. We'll get to those other moves, too, by Bill and Steve. Let's say your small business has a problem. Like maybe...
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All right, welcome back.
So, I think most of you know by now that Josh compiles stocks based on a number of factors into a group of the best stocks in the market. And he has a new one that he's added today, and it is eBay. Why so?
That's right, Scott. eBay is the sixth best performer in the consumer discretionary this year. It's up 13%. It's outperforming 89% of the other names in the category. And as a result, we know the types of chasing that managers do. They're chasing this stock. It's making a new 52-week high, about to challenge Amazon.
a high that we haven't seen since 2021. And I think it's notable. We're talking about all these recession resilient, not recession proof, we're not idiots, recession resilient stock market ideas. eBay is the granddaddy of the recession resilient technology company. It's slow growth.
It's not the kind of company that comes out and destroys its earnings or there's no cloud business, but it's reliable growth. And that's what people are looking for right now. It's a 17 PE ratio. Forward PE is 12. You're barely paying anything for the earnings that they have been very, very reliably delivering. And only about 10% of the GMV or gross merchandise value on the platform is coming from China.
China is a non-event. So when all these companies are raising prices on consumers, worried about the effect of international trade, et cetera, et cetera, eBay just kind of skates by. You've got a stock that is right at 52-week highs, 6% above its 50, 11% above its 200. RSI is about 71, not quite overbought.
not screaming away. And I think it's an opportunity for people that want a cheap technology play that has been and should be continuously resistant to the types of things that recessions can bring to bear on the consumer. One last thing. When times get hard, more sellers come out with more things to sell and more people turn to a platform like eBay to score a bargain.
That's why the stock has been working. That's why I think this has legs. Okay. It's up a little more than 2%, as you see. It was great. You did crush it. And it's one reason why now you're on CNBC Pro. And you can sign up for CNBC Pro to see Josh's best stocks in the market. All of them.
Go to CNBC.com slash Josh Brown or scan the QR code on your screen, and we hope you do. We'll see you at the movies. All right. Is that good? Yes, it was great. You continue to crush it.
Best stock on, well, right now anyway, on Bill Baruch's list is Fastenal, right? You bought that? That's a new buy. Yeah, we pulled the trigger this morning. They supply the products to manufacturers and industrials that they use on a daily basis. Now, the stock did get hit on Tuesday. It was down about 4.5%. The broad market was a bit lower as well.
But the only thing we really see there as a director was selling a large amount of shares. They had a great earnings report in April. It's a little bit of a high valuation. So it's a little bit of a starter position. We're 75 basis points into it right now. It's up about 10% to 12% year-to-date. I'd like to build into this. And it seems to be along the theme of what we've been rotating into of
Things that are levitating in a market that's been struggling throughout the year. So it gives us a little more industrial exposure. We do like this, and we'll look to build further into it. Okay, thank you. Steve Weiss, you bought more FTAI, is that right? Yeah, I did. I did. The company reported a quarter, and it got crushed. The stock was down 15% or 20%.
But the fundamentals haven't changed. And in fact, fundamentals have improved since, you know, which is one of the reasons I got into stock, because they executed a major loan agreement of $2.5 billion. And what that does, this company leases jet engines, leases aircraft. That allows them to generate more cash flow. So I thought it was a great opportunity to buy it. And it's responded. After that, the CEO came out and bought a ton of stock. And that took it another 10% higher. Okay. Mike Santoli, he's next.
with his midday word. We'll be right back. Senior markets commentator Mike Santoli joins us now for his midday word. I guess this just shows you we just want this trade stuff to be behind us and we'll take a deal.
for the sake of taking the deal, even though we know we have, as I said at the top, bigger fish to fry. For sure. So right now, the market's in a position where it's going to be responsive to signs of incremental progress. The direction of travel, if it's on de-escalation, that's great. We all know that the details of this particular U.K. deal, not particularly material, not particularly a reason that the U.S. stock market should be up $700 billion on a one-day basis. But we
But we do know that we've been under this weight, and you're seeing some of that relaxation of the tensions. It's an interesting spot here, the highs of the day, 57.13 or whatever. It's less than 1% from the 200-day average. That would be like a 19% comeback off the low, which was a month ago yesterday. So come a long way.
I do think it also has to be based on the fact that there's not an imminent or current economic emergency. Therefore, the Fed's non-response to it is OK for now. So maybe it's delicate the way things are holding together. But if I'm reading the signal of the market, is that there's still a bit of room for folks to get forced in in a way if the trade tensions continually eat? Yeah, I don't mean staples and masking tape work.
for a while until you can get something more substantive. And by the way, it's also the gestures about China that the president mentioned. Oh, for sure, for sure. And so, you know, maybe it sets us up for some disappointment if the weekend is, you know, fizzles. I was thinking that too. And now that we know a meeting's happening, we're obviously going to be waiting for any headlines and have less tolerance for something that comes off as negative. But, you know, we'll see. Mike, thanks. I'll see you at three on Closing Bell. Mike Santoli. By the way, a programming note. Our friends at Fast Money are holding a get-together on June 5th.
And that's up at the Nasdaq. You can grab a front row seat to watch Fast Money Live to order a ticket. You can scan the QR code right there, or you can go to cnbcevents.com slash fastmoney. Coming up, the crypto comeback. We are back on Bitcoin. Look at that. Back above 100K. First time since February, in fact. We'll trade it next.
All right, welcome back. Don't look now. Bitcoin's been in rally mode, crossing 100,000 today for the first time, as we said, since February. Artanea McKeel joins us now with more on that. I don't necessarily want to call it a stealth move, but there hasn't been as much focus on it lately because everybody's been fixated on the stock market and these trade deals.
Yeah, absolutely. Scott, someone I spoke to this morning calling the move back over 100K a reaffirmation of its status as the ultimate bounce back ability asset. Yeah, a lot of uncertainty in the market. The move in Bitcoin did start overnight when President Trump first announced
you know, announced that there was going to be a deal on trade between the U.S. and the U.K. So definitely interesting to see that back above 100K, lifting all other crypto assets, especially cryptocurrencies that have really been lagging Bitcoin this year. Coinbase up 5%, roughly 5%. And some other news in Coinbase, it agreeing to acquire Deribit earlier this morning. That's a major crypto derivatives exchange based in Dubai for $2.9 billion, a deal comprising $700 million in cash.
And 11 million shares of Class A common stock. That's expected to close by the end of the year. Scott, three things that are interesting on that deal. The size is number one. This is the largest deal in the crypto industry to date. Two is the structure of the deal. It's cash and stocks. So Coinbase should have bandwidth to make other acquisitions if they see good opportunity. As of December 31st, the company had about 8,000
$5 billion in cash on its balance sheet. And finally, Scott, the international strategy. It's important for Coinbase to diversify revenue, of course, but trading is how they make most of their money. And derivatives are a huge part of this market. So Deribit did over $1 trillion in volume last year. It has about $30 billion of current open interest on the platform. Not only that, while Coinbase is the biggest crypto exchange in the U.S., it has a smaller share of the global crypto market. So they may be poised now to become an international leader and potentially take on big players like Binance.
Scott? All right, Taneya. Good stuff. Thank you. Taneya McKeel, why did you buy more? I bid? I did. I did. Again, to get market exposure. The momentum was undeniable. So I bought it below 90 and I'm riding it. I think it's got real legs now. We haven't heard anything about regulation lately. That will come. So I'm going to stay there for a little bit.
Momentum dies. I'll reconsider. You own it as well, right? 75 basis point position in portfolios. It's really an alpha play. This thing can really start to get going. It's running into some resistance at the end of January level. The House is moving to vote on a bill about pegging some cryptocurrencies or stable coins against the dollar. So that's going to be interesting to see. But I personally do own some Solana. And if that gets going, I think that's an interesting space. You're going to get a Schwab announcement.
on crypto and brokerage accounts in the second half of this year. I think that's what they said. That's another tidal wave. In the meanwhile, you've got 30 million users on Robinhood. And Robinhood makes most of its money in options and crypto. So the more that they show crypto to the people that are in it, and the more those people make money, the more they continue to allocate toward it. It's one of these things. It's a flywheel at this point. You've got the ETFs.
companies as well. There are 15 of them. They all make a ton of money on their crypto products. There's no real fee compression thing happening there like there is in stock. So almost everybody benefits from crypto remaining buoyant and very much in the view of retail investors and institutional investors. If you have a theory as to why that might stop tomorrow, go ahead and get bearish. I don't know why it's a money machine for everyone involved. Why would it stop? All right. We'll do the setup next.
All right, we're back. Let's do the setup. We do toast today, which reports after the bell. It is a Josh Brown name, as most of you know. What are your expectations here?
I think it could be yummy. This is a company that is up 55% over the past year. It kind of was not on the radar of a lot of growth managers because it hadn't yet been profitable. That was deliberate and by choice. They focused on the land grab instead, getting as many customers as possible. Now the profitability is here. And they're announcing enterprise deals like crazy. They did a huge deal with Marriott last year. They just did the same deal with Hilton and Hotels and Resorts.
Every restaurant, every point of sale in those businesses, we're talking about hundreds and hundreds of locations now running on toast. They're signing those types of deals very often. And when you look at the expectations, $1.3 billion in revenue for this quarter, that would be 25% growth over last year, $0.19 in earnings, which would be 67% above the
These are huge growth numbers, and if they hit those numbers, I think the stock is north. I'm long. What else can I tell you? Three and two-thirds percent going into the print. That raises the stakes a little bit. We'll see that after the bell, as we said. We'll do finals next.
All right, I'll see you at closing bell today, 3 o'clock Eastern time, and I look forward to having you with us. We'll see what this market does. We're right around the highs of the day, too. We'll see what other developments we do get. Let's do finals. Bill Baruch, what do you got? Microsoft, it's been the dog of the NASDAQ, and I think we're going to start outperforming. Look at that cloud growth. Okay, thank you. Steve Weiss. Lido's put up a great quarter, and I took the opportunity to add to it. They're a winner in the space, for sure. Okay, who's got Blackstone?
I've got Blackstone. It's like another private equity firm such as Apollo.
turning around after got hit really hard. You think better days are ahead for the whole group because they got hit really hard? Yes, down 30%, roughly the group down 30%, and they're all starting to move higher. Yeah, I mean, I think you have KKR. It's still in your book. No, no, no, I'm not in KKR. Carlisle. Carlisle. Right? Yeah, no, but my final is JP Morgan. I know. I know that. You didn't hear this from me. Stock is now above its liberation day close. All right. This is quality, quality wins. All right, thank you. See you on the bell.
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