How To Invest in Volatile Markets 4/24/25
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All right, Carl, thank you very much. Welcome to the Halftime Report. I'm Scott Wapner. Front and center this hour, the state of stocks in this still highly volatile market. We'll debate it with the investment committee today. Joining me for the hour, Josh Brown, Jim Labenthal, Jason Snipe and Bryn Talkington. We will check the markets. We have a pretty decent day going, as you see. Green across the board.

Almost 54.50 on the S&P 500. Dow's trying to get back to 40K. And the Nasdaq is the biggest winner thus far. Big evening ahead, obviously, with Alphabet. Josh, I'll go to you first. You know, we have a little bit of a back and forth about trade headlines, obviously. And we're probably going to have that. I thought the Wall Street Journal's headline today was interesting. Trump meets his match, the markets. Forget about the trade talks with China.

you know, this country or that country, it's the markets that have maybe spoken the loudest and moved the needle the most. Eamon Javers yesterday, our own reporter, of course, on the ground, noting a, quote, tonal change in the conversation, perhaps, around China, a softer tone around the Fed chair. All of it adds up, in your mind, to what?

Yeah, we've been through markets like this before where there's this game and every day the game resets and you have to guess which side is going to win that day. Back during the European crisis, we used to play this game called risk on, risk off. And it was this thing where like if the dollar was up, the yen was up, probably it meant that oil was down, stocks were down, banks would be down the most.

And that would be like Monday is a risk-on day, Tuesday is a risk-off. Somebody actually invented ETFs, believe it or not. Remember these? ONN and OFF? Yeah. Are they still around? I don't know. There's a lot of zombie ETFs left, but we're doing a new version of this. It's Besant on

on or Lutnik on or like maybe it's Besson Navarro but like this has been documented Neil Dutter put out a funny chart yesterday there's a lot of these charts going around where it's saying very explicitly on days where the headlines have tons of Navarro

in them, like I don't need to look at my quotes. I already know what's up and what's down. So that's the short term. And I think most investors should not try to play that game. People that are trading, people that are swing trading, day trading, have at it, have fun. I know there's some money to be made there. It's not my game.

What I'm seeing when I look at my stocks is the winners keep winning. And Netflix is a really powerful example of this phenomenon. They crushed earnings, but that was already like the middle of last week. Normally the market moves on. It's like, okay, Netflix was a Friday story, who cares? But they happen to have done it on Thursday night.

The next day, the market was closed for Good Friday. So you had this delayed reaction on Monday where we reacted to all the upgrades. Monday, Tuesday, today. Yeah, up 12% week to date. Today's already Thursday. This thing won't stop rallying. It's up 40 points today. It's knocking on a $500 billion market cap. I talked about this name going into the earnings. And I think that this is a name that

Really, if you're a long-term investor and you're a growth investor, you have exposure to the communication services sector. You look at what's happening with Meta vis-a-vis some of the lawsuits and some of that stuff. You look at what's happening with the uncertainty around AI spend with Alphabet. And it's like this whole litany of problems. And then you look across and it's like, wait a minute.

so most obvious thing in the world that flex nobody cancels their subscriptions if the downgrade they go to add supported yet looks actually makes even more money it's reset recession resilient and by the way that earnings report is already in the past we don't worry about it for ninety days hit the buy button and that's why you get that phenomenon looking at crowd strike

acting in the same manner. We talked about this being recession resilient, whole sector. So those stories continue to work. Uber's another great example, expecting 40% growth this year, selling at 16 multiple. Guess what people do when they are laid off?

uber's a really great option to earn money while they figure out their next chapter recession resilient actually started in 2008 a lot of people know that so those are my names that are doing really well and i don't see why that wouldn't continue even on a risk on day like today or a besant on day

where big cap tech is rallying, semi equipment is rallying. These defensive names are still rallying. And I really like that setup. - Is that the way that you need to play this market right now? Just lean onto the winners? Whether they have a defensive tilt or not,

How should we play this here? I absolutely think so. I mean, you talk about Netflix, and I think about the quarter, right, where this is the first quarter they stopped reporting net subs, right? And they talked about the profitability metrics, and I think the key stroke for them is

the trade down optionality that is there. And to your point, there is margin growth even on the lower tier. So there's names like that where I'm not saying they're completely immune to the macro, but these are names that can continue to run. Uber is another example, as you mentioned. I think cybersecurity is the big one for me as I think about

the new wars that we face and these types of names that are software related, not so much hardware related, that have real opportunity. ServiceNow is another one that's exploding to the upside. I know we'll talk about it later. - Leading the S&P, at least it was in the pre-market after a beat.

And there's been a really big conversation around chips and software lately. If you look at what Texas Instruments did, and then you can throw up any number of chip stocks today, it doesn't have to be the biggest NVIDIA, but you can put that one up. AMD, Micron, Broadcom, the chip equipment names like Josh was talking about, LAM, AMAT, all.

All moving. All moving. And if I just kind of opine a little bit on ServiceNow, the concern was around Doge, right? They have a lot of government contract business. And that was kind of the concern going into the quarter. They've obviously blown through that. You know, they beat them. There's a double beat. They reiterated the guide. This is a guidance world where it's tough to kind of

discern through the macro and they are obviously confident in what lies ahead. So it's names like that and they're an optimizer. Again, if you're looking at trying to control costs and figure out, hey, I don't know what sales look like going forward. These are the type of companies that you employ strategically to help move your companies. All right.

I love this discussion. I just want to echo it on the opposite side of what I do not try to do is trade the markets. I understand some people do that. I will give full credence to Ken Griffin being an extraordinary trader, okay, or Mark Tepper, David Tepper, or anybody like that. What I want to point out to the people who are watching is that that is absolutely the faraway minority of investors out there. More people are successful

by buying the high-quality companies, the top name in each industry, and sticking with it through thick or thin. If you want to be a trader, if you think you're Ken Griffin, God bless you. I'm not a trader. Let me finish. I don't know. I find that that argument is a little specious in a market like you have today.

Now, like, why wouldn't you? I'll tell you exactly why. Why wouldn't you hyper-focus on the best companies in your book? That's exactly what I'm saying. How did I say something that sounded different than that? I said, buy the best companies, because whatever the market is going to do, if it's going to go down, if you're going to go down another 10%, 15%, eventually the markets will recover. But there are a lot of best companies that you would...

would describe as best companies that have still gone down a bunch. I totally agree. And they will recover. It's a matter of time. I don't know if it's a month, six months or 12 months, but they will recover. I think what you're, the eloquent way of saying what you're saying is, um,

Investors make trades as part of the investing process. Like, nobody would say Warren Buffett's a trader, but Warren Buffett places massive trades, buys and sells. Traders are not looking to make investments. What I'm saying, and I know you agree with me, I think Jason agrees too, is market timing is a fool's errand. More people destroy wealth doing it. By far. And I'm not saying this...

I don't care if you think I'm smart. I don't care if you think I'm a good investor or a bad investor. I'm experienced. I've been doing this for decades. I have seen more people blow up their wealth by trying to time the markets. And it hurts me when I see it. That's why in this moment, when I hear a lot of people saying, trade the markets, you should be in, you should be out, I think that is a way to destroy wealth. You can disagree with me. Absolutely. Allow me to introduce my new ETF, Besant On, coming very soon. It's a very easy way to do it. What's your take, Brent?

I think that 2025 is going to end up looking very similar to 2018, maybe on steroids. And that I agree with what Josh, Jim and Jason said about the resiliency of a lot of companies this year that you wouldn't necessarily expect.

When I look at my stocks I own, I mean Palantir at 104, it's still a really expensive stock. Robinhood, Uber, there's so many great companies that have really bucked the trend. I also think that there's an opportunity this year to accumulate names that you had not been in before. Because like 2018, which saw eight large drawdowns between 5% and 15%, very large drawdowns frequently throughout the year, this is a great name to accumulate some names in financials.

I think we'll talk about it later, like earlier this year, I bought APO and KKR. Those stocks have been decimated, but those are wonderful companies. And so I think investors need to look at this opportunistically as an accumulation year. Obviously, I do a lot of sell calling, which has just been a great strategy because call premium is so high. But I do think this...

which you guys haven't talked about it today, but this whole like obsession about recession talk is just so overblown. The U.S. economy is incredibly resilient. 45% of GDP are services. We are not China. We're not these other countries that rely so much actually on like

making tennis shoes, what have you. We are a service economy, very resilient. And so I just think that if you have a narrative that we're going to have volatility, that the economy will be fine, there's tremendous opportunity this year to pick up new names that you haven't had a chance to own before. The whole problem with this idea of, you know, the recession talk being overblown is everything is a lag. You just don't know what...

damage has been done by the trade war if you listen to a chipotle which says consumers are already reducing the frequency of their visits due to due to the concerns about the economy if you listen to some of the airline commentary it's only a matter of how bad does it get it the economy is obviously softening i don't think we're debating that it's the degree to which it

On Chipotle, this is a really good example because this is a stock that's in a 29% drawdown, reported earnings, earnings not as bad as feared, so it's up by half a percent. But what do you think this looks like tomorrow when the talk goes back to hawkishness on trade? So the tone has been softening for three days, and that's great, and hopefully it sticks. Trump met with all the major retailers on Monday. They spooked him.

They told him, "You're going to have empty shelves this summer. You think that's going to make you look good or bad?" To the average American who's not playing this Kremlinology game about who's ascending in the White House. So the tone softens, and that's productive for a couple of days. But here's the Chipotle story. They squeak out a one-penny beat, 29 versus 28. They miss on revenue, 2.88 versus 2.95 expected.

The CFO comes on and says tariffs will add 50 basis points to their cost of sales on an ongoing basis. No time limit on that for the duration, for as long as this goes on. And that's just where things stand today. In the second quarter, they're telling you tariffs will hit their cost of sales

by 20 basis points. So there's no end in sight. There might be, but for the time being, Chipotle gets hit by a softening consumer demand situation for traffic is down. Less people want to pay $17 for a lukewarm burrito. I can't imagine it, but it's true. And then their costs, their costs go up of operating the stores. Yeah. We're in a services economy. That's a services business. That's emblematic of the problem with this, uh,

uh stuff continuing on way past where it already has yeah i mean the shipper hoppeg lloyd says 30 of all container shipments from china have been cancelled to your point about like if the if the falling markets and falling consumer sentiment doesn't get the white

houses attention straight and center, empty shelves this summer just might. Because that's kind of the breaking point when consumers are like, all right, this is getting absurd. Right. And we know from the data that retailers,

and manufacturers have stocked up ahead of time, right? They front-ran the tariffs. How long does that last? Consumers, too, right? Consumers, to some degree, have tried to front-run it as well with different kinds of big-ticket purchases. Which, by the way, means that even if you solve this tomorrow, there's probably going to be some pull forward from the second half of this year. But

But the main point here is the longer this goes on, the longer the damage is done and or the more damage is done and the longer it takes to recover. The flip side of that is if you stop this nonsense, if you get this get this tariffs down to maybe just the universal 10 percent before, say, June, then everybody can start the Trans-Pacific flows again. By the way, think about this, Scott. The longer this goes on, you know, we're going to have that back up at

the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach again. They're already talking about that happening now. Bryn, you have Deutsche Bank's out today. Everybody pretty much has cut their target for the year. They have a still optimistic one from where we are now. They're 61.50. They were at 7K. So they've dialed it back considerably. They take their earnings estimates down considerably. What do you think about that idea, just kind of getting a little more

i guess real on of what we can actually do from here forward yet it's obviously a different scenarios that you have to play out the disc at the end of the year it seems like this would not be a year that stocks are gonna make all-time highs right it just seems that's very plausible you can end the year negative from stock market performance and that's why i think this is an accumulation here because

There is this self-fulfilling prophecy where I get consumer sentiment is negative and that can flip on a dime. But CEO sentiment, I don't think does flip on a dime. And so that's where if you start getting the self-fulfilling prophecy where CEOs are pulling back.

And you hear like Asatya Nadella, they're still spending 80 billion, but how they're spending it and what they're doing, he talks about. Well, there's economic uncertainty. So, hey, we're going to pull back some. And so I do think it's hard for these analysts that are trying to predict where the markets are going to end. I could easily see a negative here. We saw a negative 4% in 2018. Why can't that happen again? Because I don't think we're going to get the Fed come in

and just cut five times, maybe one or two. But I just think we're dealt with a different set of ingredients. So we can have a negative year and that's fine. We'll all survive. - What's Alphabet gonna, the importance of it, Josh, tonight is what? You're recently out of the name as of, I think maybe it was a week ago today, as a matter of fact, or right around that period of time. Good read on spend, there's no question about that. Good read on the economy, all because of advertising.

Yeah, Google is important because it is the number one or number two largest advertising business in the world, certainly in the United States, depending on which metric you're focused on. But it's a read-through to every part of the consumer economy. Travel had become a really huge portion of Google revenue in the post-pandemic period. So that's definitely something that we'll watch whether we own the stock or not.

just to kind of get a little bit of the heat check. They're expected to report $89.16 billion in revenue, which would be an 11% year-over-year jump versus last year. If they can hit that hurdle, I think the stock should be okay. $24.68 billion in net income, which is $2 a share, that would be up from $1.89 a year earlier. Again, if they hit that number, the stock should be okay. It's a very, very inexpensive stock.

Not just relative to the other Mag7, but on an absolute basis. Not the reason I sold it. I don't think it's expensive. I think they have other issues. So they just had a ruling go against them saying that search is an illegal monopoly. They're going to battle on that front legally. But they're also battling on that front for user attention because perplexity is not going away. I saw the guy this morning on Squawk. He was great.

Search is a huge priority now at Meta. It's a huge priority at, obviously, OpenAI. And Google's never really had competitors before. It came public in 2004. They already won the search wars before they IPO'd. This is a different situation now. The bulls would say, okay, I get it. More competition. Unclear who's going to win at AI. That's why there's an opportunity created. That's why I could buy this thing at 15 times earnings or whatever. Go for it.

I don't buy value tech. It's not my game. But I get it. There might be a big opportunity. I think this is an important report for a lot of reasons, and I'll be paying attention tonight, even though I have no position currently. You guys do? Yeah. And I think the concern for me is obviously we've seen Timo and Sheehan advertising spending slowing down. You know, Google Ads...

21% of Google ad revenue is retail, right? So when we think about whether forget about a recession if just a slowdown We know ad spend will slow down. So that's obviously a concern for me. The other is capex What's going on with capex? What what is the true number going to be? I think the bright spot for me as it relates to Google is is YouTube and obviously Google Cloud what is starting to increase profitability there so that

for me is what I'll be watching closely, but- - Not necessarily in that order. I just wanna make this clear, right? - No, not necessarily that order. No, not at all. Not at all. - The latter is the one that is most important, I think, to this market. - You got it. - Right? In terms of the CapEx. - Cloud revenue growth is the most important. - Yes. - The bogey is 25%. That would be $12 billion in cloud revenue for Q1

If they don't hit that, the stock's going lower. Now keep in mind, that's a 25% growth rate, which seems great. Unfortunately, last quarter was 30%. A year ago it was 40%. YouTube's important, also an ad business.

11% revenue growth is what's expected. That would be like 8 billion. If the YouTube number is good, if the cloud is good, I think we could overlook weakness in Chinese e-commerce. I think we can get past it. But again, there's a lot of question marks. And I think it's a fair point even to mention that Google is value tech. I mean, trading at 18 times forward, but only a 7% growth rate. Yeah.

Man, how the mighty are fallen. This is value tech. I get it. Listen, great points made by both of you. Right in your wheelhouse now. Stop. Stop. I mean, the argument has been made for the longest time that it has been the epitome of value, big tech, no question about that. Which is why it could work. Relative to the valuations of the other names, it's always been among the lowest value, along with Meta. Yeah, I just...

let me say two things. One, I want to make sure that we're not really, you know, pounding the heck out of it in terms of the labels that we're putting on it. Five-year track record on the stock, 20%. Three-year track record, annualized 10%. That was an annualized number. It goes through periods where it wanes. We know that, absolutely. This, for me, I'm not going to add to what

Jason and Josh have already said, they've covered the major points, but going back to where I was at the start of the show, if you're going to build an all-weather portfolio, then we don't know if the next 10% on the S&P 500 is up 10%, down 10%. I want Alphabet in there. And look, I'm not taking a shot at you, Josh. You could take a shot at me and say, well, Jimmy, you don't own Meta. Fine. Okay. I don't own everything, but I do own a lot of quality like Alphabet. I'm comfortable with it. You worried about the CapEx side of this equation? For the big...

big picture of the market for the economy, the global economy. I'm not going to say I'm worried. I'm not talking about the global economy. I'm talking about relative to the AI trade as it relates to Alphabet.

I am paying close attention to it. Close attention to it. We have this teetering going back and forth, whether it's Alphabet, whether it's Amazon, whether it's Microsoft confirming their CapEx plans. And then you get once a week a headline, oh, Amazon's pulling back. Microsoft isn't doing this data center release. So you betcha I'm paying attention to it. That's the thing I'm least worried about. I think they'll affirm CapEx because the narrative on

on the street around Gemini and Google's AI ambitions is that it's make or break for the company. It's existential. It's not nice to have.

If they don't win, if they're not among the three top AI plays on the street, then what is it really? So that's the part that I think is probably the thing that we could worry least about. They ain't going to come out and say, we're throwing in the towel on AI. It's just not going to happen. They may quietly spend less than we thought they would, but you won't know about it. Let's buy more NVIDIA then.

Well, I mentioned that stock, but also price targets today since we're talking about mega caps. Meta, target cut to $6.50 at Deutsche. Meta reiterated top internet pick at Citi. It was also, by the way, reiterated a buy at Deutsche. No one's getting all bared up on those kinds of names. Even though Goldman takes Microsoft's target down, Bryn, today, they reiterate buy. They go to $4.50 from $500. It's just, I think...

a move by everybody to just be maybe a little more realistic to where stocks can potentially go if this trade war persists in the manner it does. Now, a headline, a quote-unquote deal, deals, plural, anything can change this.

Right, and so I think that once again, analysts follow price. So prices are falling, so analysts are gonna pull down their price. They have to, they have to just be cognizant of the market we're in. I think Microsoft is interesting. They're looking for revenue and earnings to grow about 11 and 10%.

So decent earnings growth. Satya yesterday had a great post about how he uses Copilot and the agents and he's using Notebooks. So they're really obviously trying to push Copilot, show users how to do it. We'll see what happens, but I think like Google,

Microsoft, it's going to be about Azure. And I think the street expects about 31% growth rate in Azure. If it comes in at 29 or 28, that will definitely be a negative for the stock. And it's also interesting, you know, where these big tech companies have huge international business. Microsoft's about 52% in the U.S., 48%.

I'm overseas. So I know the dollar has been weak, but I will say that, you know, the strong dollar net net net narrative has been real where these companies are like on a constant currency basis. So I think if we continue to have a weak dollar and that becomes more of a stable place, that is incremental for these tech stocks that have so much exposure overseas. Yeah, good point. All right. Let's take a quick break. We come back. We have more committee stocks that are on the move today, including one of the biggest losers on the Dow right now. Jason's in it. We debate it next. Next.

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driving this market as well. Let's get some stocks on the move now. We start with Merck. Earnings beat. They cut their full-year profit outlook due to tariffs. The stock is a marginal loser today. Jason Snipe owns it. So I'm actually not in Merck. You're not in Merck. But yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. My bad. You own the IBB. I do own the IBB. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My bad.

But obviously, I mean, this is kind of just in the array and that arena of healthcare and obviously the tariff concerns. I mean, $200 million expected tariff hit, obviously, is a hit to the stock and a hit to guidance. So when I look at names in that space, I mean, Gilead has been one of the names that has worked, hasn't worked as well recently.

But there's just an overhang in the space just related to some of the macro. - I got you, I fumbled that, sorry about that. - Oh good. - Procter & Gamble, EPSB cut earnings outlook due to tariffs. I mean, you're gonna hear that a million times.

Do you own Procter & Gamble? I do own Procter & Gamble. So for me, as it relates to a slowdown, clearly there has been a change in consumer behavior. And with staples like Procter & Gamble that are expensive, by the way, and are not immune to, obviously, the macro background, these are stocks that do get hurt in the near term. So for me, it wasn't a huge miss. You know, on the top line, they did beat on earnings. So I'm just going to kind of

Continue to watch his name and see how it develops over the next couple quarters. What about PG&E? They reaffirmed.

Sure guy, Jim. Yeah, just a solid utility, but it is laboring under the shadow of what happened in Los Angeles. They were not responsible for that fire. But there's still a question about whether Southern California Edison is responsible. If it turns out that was sparked by utilities, all the utilities, including PG&E, are going to have to make contributions to the insurance fund. So that's what everybody in PG&E is waiting to find out.

Bryn, I'm looking at the uranium miners ETF coming off its best day since April 9th. Fourth positive day in five. You still in that? I'm still in it. It's the fourth positive day, but I mean, it's down 30% the last year.

There's all this talk about we're going to need more nuclear. China has no problem building nuclear plants about every 18 months, but because of the bureaucracy here, it's going to take us seven to eight years. So we'll see. This is all my chopping block. I've owned it for a while. It goes in fits and starts, so it's got a little bit of a bid. Maybe if it moves a little bit higher, I may punt this name. Just because there's so many other names, I feel like we're going to go higher. Yeah. You know what? We will do Adobe.

They're gonna launch a mobile app for AI image generation as open AI steps up its rivalry there Jimmy you own that stock to stocks up a little bit today Yeah, but I mean this is this is a value tech stock and I don't think it should be value But it is what it is. I've been in it probably about a year now It has woefully underperformed at the end of the day I look at a company that is growing its top line by high single digits in some years over 10% and is projected to grow earnings per share at around

you're getting this at a 17 times forward multiple i think it is way undervalued i'm sticking with it okay coming up we'll do calls the day first though we go to silvana now with the headlines for us today hi sylvana hey scott good afternoon the u.s will demand russia accept ukraine's right to have its own army and defense industry bloomberg reporting today u.s envoy steve woodcoff is expected

To bring up the issue with Russian President Vladimir Putin when they meet again as part of a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, the State Department and Woodcuff didn't immediately respond for comment.

There's been an arrest over the massive wildfire burning in southern New Jersey. A 19-year-old Ocean Township resident was arrested and charged with aggravated arson. Police say the teen set wooden pallets on fire and left the area without extinguishing the fire. The about 15,000 acres have burned so far, forcing thousands to temporarily evacuate.

And the FDA is suspending a quality control program for testing milk and other dairy products due to layoffs in its food safety and nutrition division. Now, that's according to a Reuters review of an internal email to staffers. An HHS spokesperson tells Reuters the lab was already set to be decommissioned. And although testing will be paused during the transition, it will continue. Halftime report. We'll be right back.

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We mentioned headlights can come at any time. In fact, we do have some from the White House. The president speaking moments ago about the trade war. Eamon Javers there. Eamon. Scott, that's right. The president is meeting with the prime minister of Norway at the White House at this hour. And just moments ago, he made some comments about China trade in this bizarre back and forth standoff between the U.S. and Chinese government in which the Chinese government insists there are no trade talks taking place. The president has said there are active trade talks taking place. Here's what he said just moments ago.

They had a meeting this morning, so I can't tell you. It doesn't matter who they is. We may reveal it later, but they had meetings this morning and we've been meeting with China

So the president there saying they had meetings this morning with China saying he won't reveal who they is. He may reveal that later. So sort of a mystery here, Scott, as to who's meeting with who. The president insisting there was, in fact, a meeting, but he can't say who it was who met with the Chinese side.

It's possible that refers to some kind of coordination on the intelligence lane, but it's just not at all clear what the president was talking about there, Scott. We'll have to figure it out. Yeah, yeah. I feel for you trying to figure out what all that means. Eamon, thank you for the headline, nonetheless. Eamon Javers at the White House, as you see. Market may be trying to sense out some optimism, obviously. We're not moving lower on that. But look, and that's part of the issue here, too, is that

The risk, it seems, has flipped from risk to the downside

When the market was all upset, when the bond market was screaming, when the dollar was acting the way it was, to now the risk feels like it's to the upside. Because if it is true that this market move has gotten the White House's attention firmly and squarely, and the commentary from the CEOs, the big box CEOs, got the White House's attention firmly and squarely, then any incremental headline

is liable to drive the market in one direction and one direction only. And the one you're looking at your screen where the S&P is at the highs of the day, good for nearly 100 points now. And remember, the starting point now is a lot lower than it was three weeks ago. We are certainly going to do this back and forth. I mean, we've been doing it for weeks. And I remember two weeks ago, Scott, the Friday after

The pause on tariffs, we were talking about the pain trade is higher. Go back to Monday of this week, the pain trade was clearly lower. Now it's higher again. What matters in all of this is where we are, 12% off of the high. I mean, that's a different starting point than where we were just two months ago. I think price sets the mood and not vice versa.

So we're having this conversation about a back and forth between the president and China. China says there's no negotiations. The president says there is. Everybody's pretty sanguine about it because the S&P is up. Uh,

Like 2% Nasdaq's up. We're coming off three to two up days going into this so like everyone's like yeah I guess it is what it is if we were down 700 points in the Dow and the Nasdaq were having one of its negative 3% puke days Nobody would be talking about that China us back and forth as calmly as we are so I think it's really like what's the backdrop of the market and

And then let's like draw our inferences about the ongoing tariff drama from that. It's not vice versa where something happens. And then, right, only on really big consequential days can we say that the rhetoric is driving prices. Last week, the week before was different. Last week, the week before was like tape bomb, bang, market reaction. Now it's like, should we react? I don't know. Stocks are green. Apple's up.

I guess who cares? That's a really weird place to be in, but that's where we are. Brent, I mean, we are, though, you know, obviously starved for good headlines and dying to hear positive outcome on whatever talks in whatever place with whoever the they is. The market is ready for something to happen.

But I do think we're also getting a little bit anesthetized because I don't think this is going to end quickly, right? We have 90 days, which I think ends up to be around July 4th, which probably isn't a mistake. And so I think we're going to stay in this volatility, but we are absorbing and becoming anesthetized to this. The treasury market, I feel what happened with the treasury market, there's so much leverage with hedge fund traders, et cetera, that we're definitely not positioned

very levered on August, on April 2nd. That is unwound. And so I think as long as the treasury market remains calm and moves in the right direction, earnings have been pretty good. Obviously there's scenario analysis. I think this is more unnecessary

us becoming anesthetized to the news than anything else. Obviously, we're always having talks with China. You know, China can say whatever they want. I absolutely believe Trump when he's saying, "We're having talks. Who's having them? It doesn't really matter." This is going to take a long time because China's about national security. We're not just going to get some trade agreement with China overnight because it's very complicated because they keep stealing our data, et cetera. And so I think you'll get some other wins, maybe with Norway. I guess we have issues there. But I think this is here to stay.

All right. So Dow's back above 40K. We'll certainly watch it. Stocks across the board at the highs of the day. We'll take a break. Santoli's on the other side. All right. We are back. Senior markets commentator Mike Santoli is here for his midday word. It really feels like, you know, anything incrementally positive is just going to drive this market in the direction in which it's going now, as you heard from Eamon and you saw on your screen. For now, yeah.

Yes, in this range, and we are at the very top of it. You know, the high for the day on April 3rd in the S&P was $54.99. It couldn't be any more clear. There's a line across $5,500. So keep in mind, it's another 2% or 3% above that to where we closed on the day the tariffs were announced, $56.70. So in this realm, it's all about which way did they turn the dial, escalate or de-escalate?

What the market truly would love is surrender. Like unilateral disarmament, let's forget this happened. It's not going to get that. So we have to read the gestures of, you know, are we pretending there's more talks than there are? Are we trying to find a path to declare some kind of a victory? And the market's willing to

sort of price that in the short term, but only because we're coming up a super oversold level. What I'm watching is the evidence of most stocks taking this opportunity to rebuild. You have 80% of volume to the upside again today. A lot of those signals that suggest you get these succession of broad rallies and it means good things for potential bottom are are

are close but not quite firing yet. So I think that's the game we're playing right now. How are you feeling about Alphabet this afternoon and what it means in the bigger context? It's a little bit of its own animal, as you guys were talking about, as opposed to just being kind of a pure bellwether for Mag7 or broader tech. The stock is cheap. Is it cheap for a reason? Is it not?

I've been, I think, more encouraged than discouraged by the stock reactions to most earnings. Not because they're all been positive, but because it does, the market's not pretending like it didn't expect any of this in general. So I feel like that's a net positive. But you string from one to the next. In other words, it's not like,

Alphabet's reaction is going to tell us a ton about, you know, Amazon next week or something like that. But, you know, little baby steps in the software group taken off today with ServiceNow. We'll see if that's a one day refresh or something more. Yeah. Chip's having a nice day, too. I'll see you in a little bit on Closing Bells. Mike's in totally coming up. The Bitcoin breakout. We'll talk more about this week's big rally. Find out how the committee is playing it from here next.

Welcome back. Bitcoin rallying this week, as you probably know, on pace for one of its best weeks of this young year. Bryn Talkington, you own the Grayscale Ethereum ETF and shares of the iBit, correct?

Yep. I own this long term. I think that you could see after gold's parabolic move that we've seen more of a trader speculator taking some chips off the table and moving into iBid or Bitcoin. I mean, Bitcoin's flat for the year. I do think the big change of the next few years is between Paul Atkins at the SEC and

David Sachs, the Sovereign Wealth Fund. I think from a regulatory framework, it's going to be a 180. And so I think we're going to get some smart regulatory framework around digital assets in general, which should be a positive catalyst over the next few years for the asset class.

You starting JoshCoin anytime soon? I mean, it's working for some. No, no, there won't be any vanity coin for me. I think the most interesting thing about Bitcoin is that if your pitch to your clients for why you were including it in an asset allocation, which is something that we did right at the last top in 2021, but that's fine. If your pitch was this is non-correlated, so this asset is

will zig while your other assets zag and when you do your rebalancing you'll buy it low and then all right fine that didn't work while it was trading with the nasdaq both up and down the most interesting thing that's happened over the last week or two is that it's decoupled from the nasdaq although not today and it started to trade with gold

And I think, so if you said, yes, we should have a 1% Bitcoin sleeve because it's not stocks, but it has the potential for returns, that's actually what you really want to see. You want to see it go up while your other holdings go down. And then you could say, look, I have a non-correlated asset. So that's something new and we'll keep following it and we'll keep watching that. Speaking of Bitcoin and crypto, Robinhood, there was a call on that, Bryn, today, the stock you own.

- Reiterated outperform at Mizuho. They raised their estimates. What do you think of it here? - This platform just continues to execute. Their earnings come out next week. They're gonna look for 48% revenue growth, 52% earnings growth. It continues to be one of the top apps on Apple, on the Apple App Store.

I just think Vlad and team, they've grown up. Stock's done very well last year. It's done very well this year. And so this, to the beginning of the show where Josh is talking about stocks that are working, this stock is working. I think if you want to trade it, you know, 36 to 50 has been the trading range so far this year. We'll see if it can get above that during earnings. But I think this is a great name to own. You can sell calls. It has great call premium as well.

Brins right on Robin Hood. This is on the best stocks in the market list. And notably, it did not fall off during the month of April with so many high growth names broke down. It never closed below its 200 day. It's been one of the strongest names. And that's that philosophy because, look, the market is now recovering and this is leading the charge. You didn't have to go buy the hardest hit stock.

to get the benefit of this comeback. Robinhood has been strong. I have this thesis on the, I don't own it because I'm an idiot. I have this thesis on the name where actually volatility attracts more activity amongst that age cohort. They have 30 million users and the average age is 30. Those people are attracted to market crashes and high VIX and all types of price action in both directions. It

It's more like a gaming app than anything else when you think about it in a correction. So I think this stock is both defensive and offensive. I wish I owned it. All right. We have more just after this. Let's talk about this call from Goldman, about Goldman. It's from Wells Fargo. They reiterate Goldman Sachs is overweight. They call it one of the best banks at investing for organic growth. I bring it up because there was another call today from Deutsche Bank saying that the financials have bottomed. You

You want to take the Goldman call first and then we can broaden it out to the space? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, listen, I think as it relates to Goldman, it obviously came out of the gate strong, right? And the financials have traded down due to some of the macro, but in this last quarter, obviously trading revenue was way up. That's due to all the volatility that we've seen.

As it relates to IB and IB Guide, it's all about the tariff uncertainty. And I think that that's obviously what the concern is. But they announced a $40 billion buyback and the IB backlog did rise in Q1. So I think that's a creative for the longer term into the second half and potentially into 2026. Nice move for everybody today. Goldman highs of the day, B of A, Citi, JPM, Morgan Stanley, everybody's green. We'll do finals next.

Big interview coming up today. Closing bell. It's an exclusive Vista Equity Partners founder, chairman and CEO Robert Smith. We'll talk about the state of enterprise software. That's their bread and butter. We'll talk about private equity. We'll talk about the markets, this trade war and what Robert Smith sees going from here. Hope you'll join me then. Three o'clock Eastern time. Bryn, final trade is what? Speaking of private equity, KKR.

Okay. I couldn't hear that, but I hope everybody else did. Jason. Palo Alto. I think the platform strategy is starting to really work here.

Applied material. Good report from Lame Research. Uber is ripping on this Volkswagen partnership. Volkswagen's the second largest auto manufacturer by sales on planet Earth. They will be deploying exclusively with Uber. Big news. Stock's going nuts. You said Lame Research. You meant Lame Research, right? Did I really say Lame? You did. That hurts. You did. I'll see you on the bell.

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