Navigating an "Unfamiliar Market" 5/21/25
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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 am Frank Holland in for the Judge Scott Wapner. Front and center for this hour, the next move for stocks is the S&P. It snaps a six-day win streak. The committee making some big moves in this market. We're going to run you through all the trades to get you ready for the rest of this trading day. Joining me for the hour, we have Joe Terranova.

Kerry Firestone and Bryn Talkington. But first, we're going to get a quick check on the markets right now. Bit of a mixed picture right now. Take a look. The Dow looking like it's down about three quarters of 1%, down more than 300 points. The S&P just fractionally lower than NASDAQ, higher right now, up over one third of 1%. Bond yields a big part of this story. Kind of shifting the market influence in the decisions that investors are making.

Joe Terranova, I'm going to turn to you. You're calling this, this mixed picture we're seeing right now, kind of an unfamiliar market. Why do you say so? All right, here we are. I have a 10-year at 4.54. What should have happened coming into Monday? After the news that we got over the weekend, bond yields spiked, bond yields are staying higher.

This is the best that the bears can do. The market is basically pausing. It's basically consolidating. I'm not really sure what people are afraid of. I think what we are really trying to identify is that 2025 is a different market. And it's an unfamiliar market to investors over the last several years. I say that because if you study

the 52 week highs. If you look at momentum, and by the way, momentum is a leading factor year to date. Generally, when momentum is a leading factor, markets don't go lower. Momentum being a leading factor is indicative of a confident good market. But the

But the momentum names are not the names that you think of. They're not the 2021 names with astronomical PEs and do-it-yourself type of names. They're not the names of 23 and 24 related to AI, software, and semis. They're industrials. They're financials. They're health cares. You have, finally, dispersion in terms of performance. I was looking at my holdings this week in Jyoti and personally.

In Jyoti, we have 16 names that are making 52-week highs this week. Frank, not one of those names is a technology name. No Mag 7. No Mag 7. All right, so you have Netflix. You're keeping us in suspense. Here's some of the components right here. Axon, Monster, Train, Insulet, Republican Services. Give us a sense. Is there a common theme when we're talking about these names? The common theme...

is that the last two years you had narrow concentrated revenue growth. And it was all about AI, it was all about technology. So let's pick one of the names. Monday, Bank of New York makes a new 52-week high. Bank of New York is giving you double digit revenue and earnings growth. Think about that. A regional bank, a super regional giving you that type of growth.

The point on all of this is this is not a bad market. This is not a market to be afraid of. This is a market that is just rewarding investors in different places. How about utilities? Utilities are up 9% so far year to date when you have bond yields ticking higher. Look overseas. Germany making a new all-time high. Europe very strong. So the unfamiliar places of the last several years is what is leading the market higher. They're becoming the momentum names.

And that's indicative of a confident environment. All right, so I want to bounce a few things. You're saying it's not a bad market. You're saying it's a healthy market, just a bit of a change of leadership. Piper Sandler said something very similar. They called it a healthy pause. They said the upward momentum, your word, is slowing the S&P 500 as it nears 6,000, but a healthy pause seems more likely than a significant pullback. I want to kick this around to everybody else. Let's show Joe's stocks one more time. We're showing the statement here from Piper first, but some of these names are

Are you guys seeing anything? One thing that kind of popped up in my mind is some protection from tariffs. You're talking Axon. They produce mostly in Arizona. Train Technologies had Dave Regneri on my show, Worldwide Exchange. They produce most of what they sell here in the U.S. Here in the U.S., you know, beverages are made here, obviously. Republic Services, they're picking up trash here in the U.S. Are you guys seeing anything else when it comes to these names?

Well, if you look at some of the names, again, that are hitting new highs, Schwab, for example. So financial services brokers, where I don't think they've come up with a tariff on brokerage services yet when you're trading on your phone. Let's hope not. Who knows? Let's hope not. But most of them are at all-time highs or close to it.

Waste Connection, that's a name that we own all the time. Again, it's local. They're not putting a tariff on your local municipality's garbage service. So you can go through a list and see that there is a theme. However, the market, remember,

started the year at about this level. You know, we're right where we were. You know, we had a drop of 20% overall. I'm talking about the S&P 500. We've started the year at a certain level, 30 times for the Mag 7. Can we pull up the little chart?

Annie, let's pull up that chart on multiples so far this year. You started the year with multiples on the max 7.4 at 30 times, went to 22.8 times. Now we're back.

to 27, almost 28 times, meaning that the overall market in these are still a big component despite what's going on underneath is sort of rotating on, started a level, fell 20%, has come back. So you've got

two tails, tails of two markets. One where underneath there's a lot of names that where you can make money on hitting all-time high, tariff-related, sustainable growth-related, and then you've got these big, big names, the MAG names and some of the other huge components in the S&P that are sort of doing this, you know, revolution, somersaulting over each other, now kind of back, back,

back closer to where they were. But that's a better market because you could generate alpha in that environment. You don't have to worry about the mag seven outperforming and now you got to chase beta. Right. To your point, valuations obviously lower than they were to start the year. They dipped. The second one you showed was about 22. That was the April 8th lows. Absolutely.

And so we had a lot of uncertainty. We've gotten, I guess, a bit more certainty now. The other thing, Carrie, you're doing my job. I'm supposed to call for the full screens. Annie, let's pull up Jotis Holdings when we're talking about some of these momentum names. Brent, we don't want to leave you out this conversation right now. What do you make of Jotis List? These are components in the Jotis ETF hitting 52-week highs. Any of these names that you like right now that you see as a potential buy or maybe some names you don't like?

Well, no, I think Joe makes a great point that you're having this broadening out across multiple sectors. If you look, train and monster have nothing to do with each other. And so I think that you do have this broadening out. At the same time, though, where are you getting the best margin and earnings growth? You're still getting them from the MAC-7. And so I think this narrative that

These companies are left for dead. The US is not exceptional. I just think that was garbage and that you continue to see, I think, these big companies are really inexpensive. Not all of them, but most of them are very inexpensive relative to their growth rate and also their margins. I think at the S&P level though, to punch through around 61.50, around the highs where we started the year, you're gonna need a catalyst.

And I think just because we have this unknown tariff overhang that isn't remotely resolved, by the way, not even remotely resolved, I think to punch through or go much higher seems not to be something that's gonna happen, I think, until later this summer, until we get past that 90 days or get more clarity.

coupled with what's going to happen in Congress with the big, beautiful bill. And I think that's where yields come into play. And I think that the probability of the tax bill approving is very correlated with bond yields going higher. And so, Joe mentioned the 10-year, the market not really doing anything with that. I think we definitely need to continue that because if the Fed doesn't cut rates,

then we are going to have really big interest on the debt, which is going to eat more and more into GDP. And so I think there's reasons why we're at the higher end of the range for the S&P, and we're going to rest for a bit until we get more clarity on yields, taxes, and tariffs.

I don't disagree with any of that. Look, I think we're going to make a run at the all-time highs. And what happens from there, I think it's up in the air. I think it potentially could be a trap when you're just basically allocating to the market. But there's more than just the names that we're showing there in the last several days that have made

52-week highs. How about Uber making a 52-week high? TJX, Visa, MasterCard in the insurance industry, Travelers, Hartford. How about ADP? ADP making a 52-week high. How about making a 52-week high? So I

I think, again, if you're looking at the market, yeah, I agree with everything that Bryn is saying. And I agree with you in terms of valuation itself. There's challenges ahead. But that's not what you're supposed to be doing, just buying the index. You're supposed to be looking for alpha opportunities in individual names. And the momentum factor is telling you right now that there are a variety of different names and they have reasonable valuations as well. It's not as if

it's an astronomical P yet your point to things are here in CBC we track momentum with the MTU METF what do you do about 20 percent over last month this guy comedian I also you know by yields obviously a big part of stories in the tax but you just mentioned it has the potential to raise those bond yields so I have to continue to watch that I want to talk about also is test our David favor he did an outstanding interview with CEO Elon Musk yesterday sitting down wide-ranging on a number of topics one of them of course

with self-driving and the outlook for self-driving for Tesla. Just take a listen. My prediction is that probably by the end of next year, we'll have probably hundreds of thousands, if not... Hundreds of thousands? If not over a million Teslas doing self-driving in the U.S.

And just to clarify, because we can't play the whole interview once again, that includes people who own Teslas and also robo-taxis. Bryn, you're kind of our resident Tesla expert here. What did you make of that interview and the idea there might be a million Teslas out on the road doing full self-driving?

Right. Well, right now it's supervised. I have a Tesla. I can drive it. My house to the airport, never touch it until I'm going to valet. Two years ago, two years ago, it drove like a 16-year-old learning how to drive for the first time. Very herky-jerky. Now it's so smooth. It's so intuitive. I know David talked about some report that said it ran through a red light. I drive it all the time. It's been exceptional. And I think that

All of a sudden, when we as Tesla car owners can just rely on that,

that is and pay $99 a month. People are gonna all flip that switch and pay the $99 a month. And then where the second half of the interview really came when Elon came back is with Optimus. And so between autonomy and Optimus, which Tesla is gonna build on that manufacturing plant already in existence, and then use them on their own plant at their own gigafactories to begin with is a whole new vertical. And so I feel like in the next few years,

People are really gonna understand this is not just a car company. They're doing so many other things. And I said yesterday on closing bell,

It is underestimated the manufacturing expertise of Elon and team and what they're able to do from a manufacturing efficiency. It's just like never been seen before. And so I think people will continue to buy the dip. I do think the stock around three to four hundred has a has a top there. And so you can sell calls. But I think this is going to continue to be a stock that investors will and should buy the dip.

All right, two things I want to correct myself. Supervised self-drive is what he was talking about, not full self-driving, where you can just go in the back seat and take a nap or anything like that. But our David Faber, he actually brought up a really great point. Currently, BYD, that supervised self-driving, it's included in the price of the car where Tesla's planning a subscription. Now, of course, Chinese EVs aren't sold here in the U.S., but what about the global business? How big of a threat is a BYD or other competitors not asking for a subscription, but including it in the original price tag to this business model and this idea when we're talking about Tesla?

I don't think it's an issue globally, but the country that matters the most for Tesla is China. That's where you're seeing, you know, they probably hit peak oil a few years ago. I mean, they have EVs all over the place. And so I think that, you know, it seems like Elon has a very good relationship with the Chinese government.

having somewhat of a fair playing field. And they talked about it yesterday. They need to execute in China and be able to have that full self-driving to be able to, I think, have broad mass adoption. So we'll see. I think that they'll get there. But BYD in China is 100% a massive competitor.

I think what was accomplished yesterday in that excellent interview with David was Elon Musk was able to successfully alleviate, maybe temporarily, some of the fears that you have. First of all, I mean, obviously, next five years, CEO. But beyond that, to Bryn's point,

You began to question over the last several months, is this a car company or is this a car company with really good technology? So kind of a little bit of a hybrid of the two. I think yesterday we stepped more towards, okay, this is a technology company. But I also thought the words where he said, we will be extremely paranoid about deployment,

I actually think that's comforting to shareholders. I think it's comforting that they're taking a very conservative approach and that they're going to supervise the rides and that, in fact, they're not going to go places that they're not familiar with in Austin. I think that's the right approach. And I think as a shareholder, that kind of made you feel good about the strategy. It made you feel good. But what about the other side of the coin, where Waymo seems to be well ahead of them doing about five million autonomous rides just in the last five months?

This cautious approach by Elon Musk, it might be prudent, but are you worried that they're going to get behind when it comes to this autonomous driving race? I mean, that's a next level of thinking about your ownership of the equity. That's not wrong, but I don't think in the near term it really affects the price as much as the words we heard yesterday, which were comforting, were able to positively affect price. You're not wrong in what you're suggesting, but that's something that evolves, I think, further down the line. I think he was able to really

reverse or steady some of the concerns that the marketplace had. Terry, I want to ask you, do you agree with Bryn's thesis that China is actually the most important market? They get about 20% of revenues out of China, and they're facing a lot of competition there from BYD and other EV makers who, again, seem to be folding this autonomous driving service into the product price, not asking for a subscription. And let's also keep in mind the Chinese economy is not in great shape by any means.

Yeah, that's definitely true. I would say that Tesla is a complicated story. And there are times, for example, the last month where investors gravitate toward all of the good news and excitement and technology. And the stock is up, I think, 55 percent from April 8th. And then there are times when

investors are going to worry and they'll just focus on what could go wrong and what's happening in China and who's the competitor and who else is competing with them on the autonomous side. So, you know, you can have these wild swings. It's a very expensive stock and

on a multiple basis, and therefore it's going to be subject to swings. This recent market, and highlighted in part by what he said to David Faber about the future and the concepts, which are kind of mind-blowing, is just another example of how dominant and how important these companies are

uh such as nvidia or google i mean look just quickly look at google today everybody was saying oh you know they're going to lose out on search they're losing uh let's you know take those numbers way down the stock got hit very hard and do you think they've been sitting around doing nothing related to ai of course not they've been waiting to introduce something which they're doing to your point alphabet shares up almost five percent right now very quickly we want to move on but you were mentioning how expensive the tesla is i'm looking at it right now

trading at about 163 times forward earnings. Just really quick around the horn, Joe, is what you heard yesterday, does it justify a valuation of 163 times forward earnings? Frank, valuation is something that generally I don't believe is really an accurate predictor of where the future price action is going to go. There's

there's a multitude of examples of stocks that have single digit valuations and have gone nowhere for years. And then there's triple digit valuations where you see very strong price appreciation. So is this the former or the latter? Obviously, everything that we do is anchored in studying momentum. So as long as something

presents itself as having the momentum and gives us the revenue growth along with it, then we're comfortable with that. Brent, Kerry brought it up, but I saw you nodding your head a bit. 163 times board earnings, is that justified based on what you heard yesterday?

Oh, PEs are, you just can't ignore a PE. Go with what Joe just said. Fair enough. It's arbitrary, right? It's completely arbitrary. It's like never gonna make you money looking at a PE, whether it's two or 2,000. There's Roblox doesn't even have an E, right? And so how do you put though a price on a million robots five years from now? And so, I mean, the robots are coming. Jensen has said multiple times, this is a multi-trillion.

Like a trillion is a very big number and there's many companies that are making them. But if you think about as a publicly traded company, they already have the manufacturing to build the robots. They're putting them on their floor. That is a whole new vertical, which today is zero revenue. I think the market is sniffing that out and doing math around the potential growth of just Optimus over the next three to five years. And that's where like an Amazon used to have a thousand P.E. and now it has what, a 30? So ignore P.E.'s.

Okay. Carrie, you brought it up. Just a yes or a no because we've got to move on. You're the one that brought us. You can't say it's nothing. I didn't say it was nothing. I think it matters less in the case of Tesla. How's that? All right. We're going to move on. Elon Musk also talking about where Tesla will buy chips from, naming two very notable chip companies, NVIDIA and AMD. Take a listen.

We expect to still buy a lot of GPUs from Nvidia, some from AMD and maybe from others. And as long as Nvidia is better than what we make, we'll keep buying from Nvidia. Is that the case right now? It is, yeah. Yeah.

And what timing? NVIDIA earnings coming up next week. Joe, I'm going to come back over to you. Hearing that from Elon Musk after what we saw over in the Middle East, that we're hearing from the hyperscalers maintaining their CapEx investments. I mean, a lot of bullish signs when it comes to this stock. Are there any potholes, landmines, whatever you want to talk about in this next road ahead for NVIDIA? I mean, it seems as though there's very strong, consistent demand.

And yes, we heard that yesterday with XAI. And we heard that in the Middle East, 18,000 chips being bought, Abu Dhabi data centers. And I also think the disposition of Jensen Huang has not changed at all while we've gone through this tariff.

challenge. Well, he's got a suit on now, not another jacket. One day, one day. But he seems to continue to have a very confident outlook on his business, and not only on the business, but the ability of the business to deliver

and meet the demand it seems as though a lot of people had concerns surrounding would he be able to enough supply to meet the demand and it just seems as though he he he speaks he exudes the confidence and as a shareholder that has to make you feel also

in the near term. The momentum has clearly turned towards the upside. I think the January all-time high is somewhere around 153. I wouldn't be surprised to see the stock make a move towards there. We'll see what happens with next week's earnings. - Scott Martin: Brittain, your take on Nvidia. Also very important to note, JetSwan has been very vocal about export controls, especially to China. I believe he said,

A few years ago, Nvidia was about 95% of the China AI chip business. Now it's just 50% worried about the US being involved in that AI build-out. Is China a concern center when it comes to Nvidia in any way similar to Tesla?

Well, it's similar to Tesla that both Elon and Jensen have been able to thread, I think, a really small needlehole between working with the CCP in China and Trump. And so kudos to both of them. China is incredibly important to their revenues. And so I think that we have this like existential threat if the, you know, the tariffs, which, you know, Besant probably said were embargoed.

type tariffs doesn't make any sense. And so I think we'll wait and see. And I do think that what happens with the export controls

are very, very important to Nvidia in the short and long term. We're not gonna have to worry about that this quarter. They're gonna be great numbers. This continues to be, I think, a cheap stock. If you look at like a PEG ratio, which is the PE growth rate, the PE versus the growth rate, very cheap name. But China is, I think, continues to be existential for this company, especially if Trump goes back and puts some type of real ban on those chips.

All right. Speaking of big tech, let's move on to Amazon. Amazon is holding its annual shareholder meeting today. Kate Rooney joins us now with more on what we can expect.

Frank, yeah, so this just kicked off. All the shareholder proposals were just getting news that those were all rejected. Executive compensation was approved. But the big real focus today for Amazon investors is going to be around the long-term strategy. Investors I'm talking to are especially focused on AI right now, especially coming off of Google I.O. this week. And Amazon doesn't always give out the numbers around this playbook, but any sort of peak

behind the curtain, as one investor put it, would be huge today. And that's what a lot of folks are looking for. It could include some numbers. You might see AI run rate, revenue run rate, expect to hear a lot more about their AI partner, Anthropic, as well, and how they play into the entire picture on AI. More broadly on AWS, though,

Expect CEO Andy Jassy to talk about cloud demand. So that opportunity to shift from on-premise Amazon semiconductor strategy as well is gonna be key. We do expect Jassy to address tariffs, but he's likely gonna be cautious after some of the blowback we heard around Walmart after they talked about raising prices on the e-commerce side of the business. Investors are gonna be looking for any details

about maintaining margins. What levers do they have to pull here? The Prime business as well, subscriptions there, plus advertising. Finally, you got some moonshots in there, balancing bets like satellites. You guys have been talking about self-driving cars. They've got Zoox rolling out. How does that all square with the larger business? So we'll get more details, Frank, and they'll let you know if we get any big news. Back over to you. Yeah, definitely expecting more details. By the way, I don't know if he's looking at Walmart. He got a call from the president himself about tariffs and pricing, so I imagine that would be on his mind. And he was just in the Middle East.

Yeah. All right. Kate Rooney, keep us up to date. Thank you very much. All right. Kate Rooney, excuse me, Carrie Firestone, talking to Kate Rooney. Your take on the Amazon shareholder meeting coming up today. What Kate just kind of laid out what we can expect. Yeah, I think tariffs obviously are on everybody's mind, but he can't speak to what's going to happen for sure. He can just try to be confident in his approach that they understand.

They supply an enormous network. They have suppliers everywhere. They have the best prices. They have the best delivery systems. He can emphasize that. It's not going to relieve people's fear about tariffs. He can talk about AWS and what is going on with sort of increased demand for storage because of all of the AI development. And that's definitely going to be a positive. It feels the stock is up 20%.

up 20% from its low. It's down still 15% from its all-time high. So we think there's room left in Amazon for upward trade. We were saying earlier, it's not all about big tech. In fact, it's not. There's one other stock that we are following very closely today. That's Target. The shares are actually falling. You see them right now. They're down more than 4%. After reporting a revenue miss and cutting its full-year sales outlook, Pat's on committee member. Stephanie Link owns the stock and joins us now on the phone. Link, what do you make of the quarter? Again, shares down about 4% right now and a

big drop to that four-year guidance. Hey, Frank. There was not much good to say about the quarter. Expectations were very low with the stock down 30%, but the quarter was very disappointing. I think the same sort of sales number was in line with whisper numbers down negative 3.8%, but higher inventories, lower operating margins,

it's the same old story with that uh... the state that the point in time me and the change on the margin is the traffic with itself two point four percent the past one and a half years i've been able to tell you that it hasn't been a traffic problem it's been an execution problem well now we've got a traffic problem so if the dot the at the watch point on the constructive side

Gross margins were in line. They're seeing less shrink. That is good. And the fact that they gave guidance versus polling guidance, because I think that's what people were nervous about. They gave guidance. It's a wide range. But let's just take the low end of that at $7. You're talking about 13.5 times forward estimates.

I do think PEs matter, by the way, to your conversation before. You also have a 4.7% dividend yield. That's crazy good, I think. Not for the right reasons, by the way. We know the stocks fall, and that's why the yield is going higher. But nevertheless, that's a support to me, and they've got a new growth restructuring in place.

I don't think the long-term story has changed in that they're going to add $15 billion to revenues over the next five years. They do expect to get back to operating margin expansion and mid-single-digit earnings, but it's going to take time. I mean, this is something that has been disappointing. I thought the expectations were low enough and the stock price reflected enough of the bad news, but I also thought they would execute better. So it's certainly something that I'm thinking about. I'm not sure. I'm not taking action today either way. The stock's down way too much for me to sell it.

But I'm not so eager to be buying it here. Yeah, a number of issues for this company. Again, shares down about 4%. Important to note, it's actually missed EPS in two out of the last three quarters. So this problem actually a little bit deeper than just tariffs and some other pressure there. Stephanie Link, thank you very much. All right, coming up here on Halftime Report, we're tracking the trades. Carrie and Bryn, they're ready with their latest moves. Halftime is back in just two minutes. Let's say your small business has a problem. Like maybe...

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As you can see, the Dow is down about 350 points right now. Welcome back to Halftime. Taking a look at shares of UnitedHealth. They are down 25% this month. You can see under pressure once again today. Shares down almost 5% right now. This is after The Guardian published an investigation saying UnitedHealth secretly paid nursing homes to reduce hospital transfers. The company responded to the article saying the Department of Justice investigated those allegations and decided not to pursue the matter due to significant factual inaccuracies.

Carrie, I'm coming back over to you. You own this one. You actually bought more after some of the recent troubles. How do you feel about this latest stock move? I can't imagine good, but also these other headlines that seem to be coming out about this company.

So if we put it in perspective, here is a stock that has been dominant in its field. It has had earnings growth of 18% compounded over many years. The multiple is down to 10. There's clearly bad news that can't stop coming right now. This has happened with other companies, particularly those that have to do a lot with government and regulations. But on the positive side, there are many companies that have

exited the insurance business to get Medicare Advantage, anything supplemental on the insurance side for Medicare, you had very few choices left.

So, UNH is the major player. The government does not want to take over Medicare plus insurance. It does not want to be the insurer of last resort. We're not the UK. We're not Canada. We have private insurance. They have to come back to UNH. And the government has agreed to give them a 5% discount.

hike in reimbursements because they see that these costs have become too much for companies, which is why they're exiting. So we think over the next year, we get beyond this news cycle. You're going to start to see things improve. There's been insider buying the CEO who's come back.

And we're betting a little bit more on the company. The stock prices come so far down. Making a bit more of an investment in it seems to make sense to us. This is the time you buy. I feel like you're trying to talk yourself into this one. I mean, this company has a number of problems. You're talking about Medicare Advantage, about 30 percent of revenues or so. The company itself said it was just a lot more expensive than they thought. Do you think that problem's been addressed?

that the management of this program is more expensive than they thought with the new patients coming in? Oh, it definitely is. And they're going to have to recalibrate what they're going to charge for that. And I think this has been a problem that they acknowledge. So, yeah, I think that they can resolve it. It's not an easy one. Any good decision is uncomfortable in our business. I think people are trying to understand, though, why a stock gets cut in half.

over a six-month period and a certain point, does price loss supersede fundamental analysis? Well, sometimes it does. If you look at Boeing as an example, when the stock was cut in half after the... We're getting on a tangent. We've got to get to some other moves. Shares of UNH down about 4.5%. Moving on, let's hit some more moves. Bryn, coming over to you. You bought more Dell ahead of earnings next week.

Yeah, it was my final trade last week. Dell, I think, is going to stair-step up to the 120s, probably 122. They have a $9 billion backlog. I think they're taking share from SMCI. They announced a stock buyback. Michael Dell is one of the best in the business. And their infrastructure services group, that ISG group, is where you get all of the data center networking and servers.

It's a cheap stock that has decent, solid growth. And I just think going into earnings, it trades up around 122 and continues to be a good long-term holding. All right. Shares of Dell right now, they're up just over 1%. You also bought some INQ, Brent. On the flip side, a very expensive, risky name is this is a small position. It's a toehold.

I think you can get VC-type returns in the public markets. We've seen it with Palantir, Hood, NVIDIA, many other names. So this is the toehold. So this is a quantum computing. They're probably the biggest and the best known. This actually was a SPAC that's been successful, one of the few, is that over the last year, they've made some really incredible acquisitions. And really, quantum computing is potential. It is not in its...

and form even remotely. But I think with their acquisitions they made over the last year, this company, their importance to the US government, China is spending billions on quantum computing. We need to have a good company here and I think this is the best one. So I took a small position and also I know Joe likes momentum. It is just stair stepping up perfectly on the 10 and 20 day moving average.

Yeah, technically, shares of INQ up about 1% and almost 2% right now. It just moved higher just then. Time now for some headlines. Let's toss it over to Christina Parts of Neveless. Christina.

Thank you, Frank. Well, a federal judge has rejected the Treasury Department's bid to cancel an IRS's workers' union contract. In his ruling just late yesterday, the district judge said the department lacked the legal standing to bring forward a lawsuit against the union. The agency sued the union after President Trump issued an executive order attempting federal agencies from union bargaining.

The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation of Andrew Cuomo, a frontrunner in the New York City mayoral race. The New York Times reporting it comes after a GOP member accused Cuomo of lying to Congress about decisions he made during the COVID pandemic as governor.

And New Jersey officials have issued a warning about a possible measles exposure by a concert-goer who had the disease during a Shakira concert at MetLife Stadium on May 15th. So as of Tuesday, no additional cases have been found, but officials recommend those who went to the concert to monitor their health as symptoms could appear as late as June 6th. Frank, I heard you're a big Shakira fan. You weren't there, right?

I was not there. But you know, the hips don't lie, Christina. Christina Parson-Evla is back in E.C. Thank you very much. Coming up next, the trade on Bitcoin as it hits a new all-time high. Halftime is back right after this. Let's say your small business has a problem. Like maybe...

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and we're back on the halftime report we're taking a look at bitcoin take a look at this chart hitting a new record high today it's nearing the 110 000 level bren you have quite a bit of crypto exposure

Yeah, Bitcoin and Ethereum. You know, I think we just have this much friendlier environment. As soon as Trump came in, obviously the Congress looking to repeal, you know, certain restrictions, letting banks be able to hold crypto, etc. And I think pile on top of that, this tax bill, which is, it may be big and beautiful, but it's going to be very expensive. And so I think for people wanting to have a hedge against Bitcoin,

dollar debasement, et cetera. It's just like everything's lining up. And I think the momentum of Palantirhood, et cetera, you just continue to get Bitcoin be part of that and continue to move higher. Just like animal spirits in full force here. - So I think the question always is, do you buy the coin or do you buy the ETF or does it even matter?

Well, I mean, it depends. I mean, I think I own both. I think it's so easy to go buy iBit. It's easy for everybody. You don't have to worry about your wallet, etc. So, I mean, it just depends. Institutions, I believe, are buying iBit. You've had really strong institutional flows over the last month. It just depends your flavor. They're going to trade right on top of each other.

Look at that chart, Joe. Is this one of these momentum trades that people should be looking? You're laughing, I'm asking. It's probably the ultimate momentum trade when you think about it. It trades like a commodity for sure. And, you know, it's built upon momentum and it's a reflection really of a reversal in sentiment.

Very quick reversal in sentiment. I think it's the easiest way to capture that reversal in terms of a position. Yeah, by the way, just looking at the dollar, year to date, it's down more than 8%. To Bryn's point about dollar degradation, was that the term? About the dollar degradation. Debasement. Debasement, there we go. So kind of moving in inverse directions, we're looking at the dollar and crypto. All right, coming up next, we've got Mike Santoli. He's joining us with his midday word. We are back on Halftime, right back after this.

And we're back on Halftime Senior Markets commentator Mike Santoli joining us with his midday word. Got two words for you today, Mike. Unfamiliar market. Those are actually Joe's words. I'm just taking his words. Do you agree with his take that we're seeing a bit of an unfamiliar market with momentum taking over and some names outside of mega cap tech? He mentioned an axon, a train technologies, monster beverage showing leadership at least right now. Yes.

Well, one of the themes is rotation, which is happening. And so there's two ways that a market that gets a little bit overheated in the short term and maybe needs to back off. Two ways it can cool off. You can actually do the cold plunge and pull back hard, or you can kind of just sit in place, turn around, let rotation do the job. You have some parts of the market that really did need to come in, and maybe they are. The majority of stocks are down today, but

Alphabet's up 5%. Literally, the S&P would be down twice as much as it is right now if Alphabet were flat. So that's not an indictment of the market. It's saying that it's finding a way.

Look, I think we're still a little bit wary of what's going on with bonds. They're hovering those yields. They're not really taking off. And that's OK for the moment. So I think it's much more about market needs to kind of get its feet back under it after sprinting higher by 23 percent and looking for also the next incremental piece of the puzzle.

I think we've priced in further de-escalation on trade. We've priced in a somewhat resilient economy. Earnings were good. You've got to see what takes the baton. So you mentioned bond yields. We talked way too much about bond yields earlier in the week, but we just want to hit it really quick. Mark Haefeli from UBS out with a note saying the Republican bill, obviously the tax bill, will likely lead to an increase of Treasury debt, exerting more pressure on the bond market. I know you don't have a crystal ball, but where does that pressure push yields to in your mind?

Well, we obviously have to see how it shakes out in terms of the numbers. I don't think it's that linear in terms of like, oh, if it's X hundred billion added to the deficit or supply next year in two years, then it's going to mean this much in yields. But there's no doubt that the bond market is trading as if it's really sensitive to the potential for this becoming a supplier problem. I'll also point out it's global.

So you had Japanese yields blew out last two nights. That was in part because of a bad auction. So I think that's why bond investors are just not eager to kind of lock in these yields. They're a little bit on the defensive. One more read coming up today. We've got the 20-year auction coming up, actually right after the show at 1 o'clock, I believe. So one more read on foreign appetite for treasuries and also just where

Bond investors are seeing things that right now. So we're going to get a read a little bit of a test. Yeah, I mean, the 20s and oddball one. It's kind of an orphaned maturity. But yes, you definitely want to see if anyone steps up. Mike Santoli with his midday word coming up. More committee stocks on the move. Halftime's going to be back right after this.

And welcome back to Halftime. This is some committee stocks that are on the move. Palo Alto Networks under some pressure despite an earnings beat. Joe, you own this one. There was a lot of tariff and macro disruption in this quarter, a lot of friction in that regard. I still think there's very strong demand for cybersecurity, whether it's Fortinet CrowdStrike,

Checkpoint or Palo Alto, I think you stay with that trade. Also, Northrop Grumman increases his quarterly dividend. Joe, you own this one. Also coming on the back of the president talking about the Golden Dome missile defense system. Quite a few defense names we own. Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics. We talked about Howman at the beginning of the show. I think the ITA is pushing towards a 52-week high as well. So it's obviously we're seeing very strong fundamental and technical momentum here.

All right. Also, we've got Capital One price target raised to $2.33 at Bank of America, another one you own. Stock actually down about 1.5% right now, I should say. Well, there's been a real good feel to this story. Certainly, Warren Buffett is very happy as a holder of Capital One.

forming the largest U.S. credit card issuer with Discovery now on that merger. Stock is down a little bit. I take the other side of that. I think they're fine looking forward. They're going to present the challenge to Visa and MasterCard, at least in terms of trying to capture a little bit of market share. Yeah, we're looking at the chart there over the last month, up over 15%. All right, coming up next on Halftime, they set up on a few key earnings that are still ahead. We'll be right back after this.

And you can see the Dow bouncing off its lows. We're back here on Halftime with the setup on some key earnings that are coming up. Let's start off with Zoom reporting after the bell. Joe, you own this one in the JOTI ETF. I'm very frustrated with this name. I own this personally as well. I mean, the revenue growth is just not there.

probably coming in somewhere around 2.2%. They really need to diversify the model here. They need to be not Zoom video, but Zoom communications, show the other tools that they have because it's very clear Teams is capturing market share. It does have a 30 PE for the PE referees and judges out there, so that maybe is appealing. We're going to move on. Autodesk reports tomorrow after the bell. Carrie, you on this one.

Yeah, we think stocks should have a good quarter, probably up about 20%. Autodesk, of course, is design software, the leader in its field. Starboard is an activist firm. It's in the company. They're on the board. They're looking to pressure them to save money and use it more effectively, increase the margins, and we think that's happening. All right, shares of Autodesk up just about a half a percent right now. All right, stay with us. Final trades here coming up on Halftime. Don't go anywhere.

And we're back on Halftime with Final Trades. Bryn Talkington, you're up first. Yeah, silver. Shout out to Jonathan Krinsky for his note this morning showing that while gold's up 35% over the last year, silver's only up three, breaking out of a one-year base. Could be a good old-fashioned catch-up trade. Carrie, you're up next. Paycom. So Paycom is an employment and benefits software company. They had some integration problems with one of their products, but they're beyond that.

Companies' earnings look to be better. Stock is acting better. And employment is still strong. So we like that one. J.O.T., last word. Two weeks ago, Dash reported strong earnings. They're delivering on the earnings growth. They're delivering on the revenue growth. And there is very strong positive near-term momentum that's pushing it towards a 52-week high, despite a triple-digit P.E.

You know, we've got P, judges and referees. I think that's what you call them, by the way. This one, 80 times forward earnings because we've got to have the judges and referees. We've got to have jobs, too. That does it for halftime. The exchange starts right now. You've been listening to CNBC's Halftime Report, the podcast. You can always catch us live weekdays at 12 Eastern, only on CNBC.

Thank you.

Let's say your small business has a problem. Like maybe...

One of your doggy daycare customers had an accident. You might say something like, Doggone it! Hi, Chihuahua! Holy schnauzers! But if you need someone who can actually help, just say, Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there! And get help filing a claim from your local State Farm agent. For your small business insurance needs, like a good neighbor, State Farm is there!