Nvidia roars back 12/18/24
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Carl, thanks so much. Welcome to the Halftime Report. I'm Scott Wapner. Front and center this hour. Out of correction, NVIDIA pacing for its best day in a month. One of our committee members making a move in that name as well. So we're going to trade that, the other big movers, and of course, the looming Fed decision. Joining me for the hour today, Joe Terranova, Shannon Sikosha, Bill Baruch, and Steve Weiss. Let's go to the markets. Let's check out the action ahead of

This afternoon's Fed decision, we are green across the board. Dow is trying to get off the schneid, the longest losing streak since the 70s. And we mentioned NVIDIA. NVIDIA, Disney, UNH, CAT, and 3M all helping the Dow with that bounce back today. So NVIDIA bill out of correction, right? That's like the important thing because it has been slipping a little deeper and a little deeper and a little deeper in. Barron's headline today says NVIDIA stock plummets.

looks dead in the water how it comes back to life you don't seem to be waiting around you trimmed it by some 20 why listen it has nothing to do with me disliking nvidia it did trigger some levels that that worried us but i want to remind you that the last time we bought nvidia was at 100 and last time we sold it was before it fell to 100 at this level it's really portfolio management here

It triggered that sell. And ultimately, with the move in Broadcom that we've had, we own more chips than we did, say, a week ago. So it's not about us disliking NVIDIA. It's managing the position. It's still a 5% position in our portfolio. And in our concentrated portfolio, where we own no more than 10 names, it's 9% to 10%. I still want this thing to go higher, and I think it can. OK, so you watched the technicals, and you just alluded to it when you talked about breaking some levels.

The Barron's article that I read today, I thought the commentary about the stock was pretty interesting. 135 is the level to watch. It's sitting right there. It had broken below that. It was back above it today. It's sitting right about there. Keep your eye on it. It's a 3.5% gain now. It's sitting right below 135. It's below its 20-day, which gives a good read in near-term momentum. The 200-day is 115.

which the commentary today suggested it's not going to go below that. And if it goes down to that, you're still talking at a stock that's 27 times its forward earnings, the low end of the range from when this whole thing started.

but you are watching the technicals closely absolutely yeah 130 to 135 that's sort of that balance area we start closing especially on a weekly basis the last thing i wanted to see is is a negative move in the market broadly post fed we closed the week at 127 in nvidia and i think the technicals become broken if we finish the week back above 135 i'm very excited now we put every single ounce of cash to work over the last 45 days and we've leaned into big tech

This is us just getting a little bit of cash to keep some flexibility. Okay. Weiss, you own it too. I do. Big event looming that I was reading about today that I didn't even know was happening, and I think it's worth mentioning for sure. Jensen Wong speaking at CES on January the 6th. So not that far from now. You really want to get all bared up ahead of, you know, the leather jacket on the stage? Really? Well, look, I mean, I think Jensen Wong's...

His speeches have had basically decreasing impact on shares. They may pop it for a moment after the speech, but you

But you can guess what he's going to say. He's going to talk about its strength has never been more apparent than it is now. The last time he's done, I don't know about this, Weiss. The last couple of times he's done this, he made the rounds in New York, not that time ago. Stock took off. He spoke at the Goldman Communicopia conference that I was at. And he talked about demand being, you know, I forgot the word that he used, but basically was suggesting it's unbelievable. And the stock dropped.

was up after that event quite substantially too. He has had a unique ability

Right. So if you talk from a trading move, you can play it. The shares aren't going to trade down after he speaks unless it moves up markedly into January 6th, an expectation of his speech. My point is that if you own the stock, that it's going to have a negligible impact on it because, as you see, the stock's traded down since those events. So that's not a reason to buy it. Look, I grapple with this because

Given what they charge for their chips, and given the pocketbook that Meta, Microsoft, Google, etc. all have, and how they're all targeting the manufacturing of their own chips, by the way, using the same fabs that Jensen Huang uses, which is largely Taiwan Semi,

You know, there's a big incentive there. It's not like they have to build their own fabs to produce these chips. All they have to do is find capacity elsewhere, and they build a competitive chip. They're not really doing that. They are doing that. No, no. According to a technology consultancy firm called OMDIA, O-M-D-I-A.

Microsoft acquires twice as many Nvidia AI chips as the tech rivals. That is according to today's Financial Times. Microsoft bought 485,000 of Nvidia's Hopper chips this year. That put Microsoft far ahead of Nvidia's next biggest US customer, which is Meta.

which bought about half that amount. Right. I'm not saying they're not buying now. I'm not saying their chips right now are competitive with NVIDIA. I'm saying they're hugely incented to build chips, design chips that are competitive. And that, in fact,

is what they're doing. So when will that start hitting Nvidia's demand? Not anytime soon. That's the question. Not anytime soon. I think within the next year, it's extremely possible, particularly when you've got Taiwan Semi opening up a new facility in Japan that's going to provide them capacity. That is a real issue. Okay. And by the way, Semi's, Nvidia too, with their gaming chips that nobody could touch,

That became sort of like an albatross on them because they're slowing every new growth. So semis don't have this type of advancement staying in front of others forever. Even though we saw every wave is going to be and bring more capacity, but let's also not forget the software to run these GPUs is really the moat that NVIDIA also has. Joe? Look.

Last six months, the momentum for NVIDIA is basically flat. You score it a zero. That's what it is. You pull the lens back over the last 12 months on a scale of one to 10, it still scores as an eight. That's because the marginal buyer is already in there as well. You can make that argument. Whatever the argument might be, that is the actual momentum score. In the near term, to your point, the 20-day, I'd call it a negative two at this point. So in reality, what's going on? You have heavy speculation over the last month. You have the options market

driving the actual stock price. There has really not been very much in terms of a fundamental deterioration been reported in any of the earnings reports over the last eight quarters. At the end of February, you'll hear the next report. Could the stock move lower from here? Without question, it can. I think it's right now in a range where it's basically $10 up.

$10 down and keep your eye on the options market because that's going to tell you the direction they're going to try and pin it. By the way, last week, Shan, there was a story out that suggested because of the stock's decline,

which has certainly outpaced to the downside any of the other mega caps, people are going to wake up in 2025 and realize that they were accidentally underweight, the stock, because it's gone down a bunch, which is going to lead to loading up yet again to get to the right size of position.

Well, I think we continue to focus on this idea of concentration and risk mitigation in your portfolio. We've talked a lot about portfolio construction over the last few months as it relates to this stock in particular. I think that you go back to early August on NVIDIA, Scott, and you saw really an interesting opportunity if you weren't in the stock at that time to be able to add to it. I would agree with you. I think what people are going to be looking at is, is this a position that I want to make sure that I have my full weight in? And if so, do you add to it or

Or do you do what we've been seeing, which is adding some of these other semi-names, looking for that next wave? We've seen what Broadcom has done more recently. So I guess the question is, do you want to--

move your position higher based on that math? Or do you want to actually take this as an opportunity to get some more diversification in the semis, given the pressure that some of them have been under? Well, you look at the performance of Broadcom versus Nvidia since last Friday, and you're going to see a tale of two stocks. And the chart line is going to tell a very distinct story, what's happened of late to both of those names. Broadcom has been out of control. Look at that, up 29%.

since last Friday relative to Nvidia. Broadcom's helped the SMH, by the way. The SMH, the semis, are having their best month since June after doing nothing, Bill. I mean, Broadcom's had good news. They've had an earnings beat. They've leaned into their infrastructure development. But

Look at Nvidia's move here today. It's responding with this Jetson Orion developer kit that was announced at half a cost. Now you get news. The market's responding to news. Broadcom, I think, was undervalued at the time. And this multiple extrapolation we've seen in Broadcom, I think, is something that can't go unnoticed. But it's also why I'm on the move with this. I'm letting Broadcom run, and I'm kind of managing the overall semiconductor. Well, you're trimming Micron by 20% as well. That company reports earnings today.

After the bell. Yeah, I love Micron. I do think, though, that there's some risk here in the earnings report. Now, it comes back to, again, portfolio management. This was a name in our portfolio at number six or number seven. It was about a three and a half to four percent size. We've trimmed it down to two and a half percent. In the case that this thing does miss, then we have a little more flexibility. But it's nothing more than that. The high bandwidth memory, I think that's a household name that you have to keep picking up.

The CEO, when he talks, the industry listens. So I think that's going to be very, very important. Listen, I still love the name. I may YOLO some calls for myself personally at the end of the day before the close. But I think right now this is all portfolio management for us. All right. How are we watching Bitcoin, which is down almost 3% today, Weiss? We know about your ownership. You bought more on Monday. You got the Bitcoin Trust. You got the Bitcoin Trust ETF. So you have increased your exposure.

to Bitcoin, which got, I think, as high, what was it, 108 yesterday or about that? And here we are back under 104K. Look, there's been volatility over the last few weeks. I mean, we broke 100 on the upside and we traded down to about 96. That's the way it's going to be. Look, people look and take profits. I do wonder if there'll be even more profit taking.

after the first of the year. But at the end of the day, I'm staying there. I said it a month ago, a month and a half ago, safest trade that I see on the board. And that remains the case because it's got no fundamentals to value it on. So it's purely momentum. The momentum will continue into next year with Paul Akers coming on as SEC chair and with the president

who we know has some self-interest as personality. It's great. The irony is you're calling what has been considered arguably the most speculative trade within the market itself. Yeah. For all the reasons you said. Yep.

being the safest trade in the market now. Yeah, and I'll tell you why. Because speculation is coming to a reality in terms of pro-Bitcoin, pro-crypto policies in the next administration. So that's one thing you could bet on for sure. When the Trump family owns a crypto business, which way do you think the regulation's going to go?

I mean, I know it's a rhetorical question because I think, obviously, if you look at the... Most questions I ask you are rhetorical. Yeah, whatever. If you look at the price move from the election until now, it obviously tells a story of newfound momentum. Now... That's without regulation in place now, right? Regulation's yet to come, which will open it to more institutions. So you can put a small part of your... Look...

Every time, every portfolio I have since I've been doing this has a speculative aspect to it. This is part of that speculative aspect to it. So I respect that. I like momentum. I think Joe would appreciate this, too, is that the monthly low in IVIT is about $53. As long as you hold out above there, the momentum, in my mind, is very strong. And then that's Bitcoin futures right around $100,000.

So, I mean, I'm playing this long speculating in the commodity fund I have with Bitcoin futures calls. We own IBIT in portfolios. But if we start making new lows, I would probably I want to be buying more IBIT at a lower level or portfolios over the long term. And that's the way to play it. That's where that's where I own most of it. So we have this Fed decision looming today. Yep.

As you sort of think about the way that certain stocks and asset classes have been trading, whether it is Bitcoin, you've had negative breath on the S&P for 12 straight days.

By the way, only 91 of the 500 S&P stocks are positive month to date, Shan. Some say it just doesn't matter that much. You obviously have had a top-heavy market again. So it's not like that statistic that I read you has caused the market to have some tremendous upset. I don't know to what degree a hawkish pause might mean for market breadth.

doesn't suggest to me that that would be necessarily something that reverses the bad breath of the market. How much do you think Chair Powell today holds the key to the year end and beyond rally? So it's really interesting what you're seeing in terms of expectations in the equity market and what you're seeing in the bond market. So in the equity market,

I do think that there is starting to be priced in this expectation of this pause in January and you know I think it really comes down to the guidance and if they're continuing to guide to two to three cuts next year which is I think what the market is sort of anticipating I think what you're seeing is although that may not be as supportive an environment for more rate sensitive equities such as small caps or REITs or real estate in general I think that two to three cuts is really what

had coupled with the anticipation above-trend economic growth next year is probably enough to support the brightening out as we move into the first part the year now Scott the interesting thing is the bond market actually sort of pricing that they could be I'm even you know perhaps more dovish

than the market is anticipating. And I would argue with you that if they come out more dovish, that actually could really be a catalyst as we move into January for some of this brightening out to accelerate. Oh, I don't think there's any doubt about that. But I don't think anyone's talking about them being more dovish. So I just... No, I feel like that's right.

I feel like that's right. I'm just saying, I don't think that's the consensus, that they could come out more dovish. Is that the outlier thing today? Of course. That they come out more dovish than we think? From my perspective, the hawkish cut is priced into the market right now. So we expect that we're going to get a cut and we're going to get a cut.

And we're going to get a hawkish cut. You're going to get movement on the dot plot where the Fed's going to kind of take their expectation for rate cuts in 25 to meet the market. It was a market C2 rate cuts. The Fed thinks you're going to get four right now. So, yeah, without question, that is the outlier. I think you have to. But is that driving some of this activity right now? Well, I think what you first have to think about is going into this afternoon, what does positioning look like?

And positioning is still leaning in favor of the broadening out theme that was in place around the election. How do you say that? Because values had 12 straight down days. Sector performance is over one month. Energy down 10, utilities down four and a half, materials down four and a half, real estate down three, industrials down two, health care down two, financials down one and a half. If anything, it's the exact opposite.

of what you just said that positioning is. It's not when you look at fund flows. So if you look at fund flows, you have seen a reduction in holdings, in financials, in industrials, in value, in some of the areas that supported the broadening out theme. But fund flows are not confirming both for mutual funds and ETFs that you have completed that process. The market is still a little bit

offsides. The market still today, okay, wants equal weighted to make its mean reversion rebound. It wants to see financials come back once again. It wants to see Alphabet and Apple and Amazon take a pause in the dramatic outperformance. If in fact today you don't get that outlier outcome where the Federal Reserve gives you a little bit more of a dovish communication, then I think positioning is in trouble

further extenuating what you have cited we've seen over the last several weeks.

Now, if you go back to September, rates were falling. And they cut rates, and that was really the bottom that week. I mean, I think rates have risen, as it is pricing in, the hawkish cut. The real outlier, though, kind of thinking two, three steps ahead, is the market rates also rising on the fact that these cuts are stoking inflation. And if the fact that the-- if he threads the needle really well today, that's maybe not as hawkish as the market might be pricing, but it's also saying that data dependence could lead to a pause,

Threading that needle, we could really get everything. We could get sort of that everything rally into the end of the year, and that's the green light. I think on both sides of here, I'm fearful. I'm fearful of them being too dovish and rates not coming down, and I'm fearful of them being too hawkish. That's not enough price tag. I can't imagine that they're going to be too dovish today. You may in fact get a descent. Yeah, I don't view this as the base case being the hawkish cut.

To me, hawkish is you're saying, okay, we're doing 25 now, and then we're troubled about inflation going forward. That's too inconsistent. You can't say we're troubled by inflation and still cut.

That's ridiculous. You don't have to use the word troubled. Well, I'm paraphrasing. He never used that word. He'll say, we're watching inflation. It seems to have stuck. They could certainly do that. I'm not saying they won't, but that's not the hawkish cut.

hawkish cut. What do you mean? I'm saying what they're saying, the base case I'm saying is not the hawkish cut. The base case is saying we're going 25 and we're going to see how things play out. We can be patient because the economy is still doing well. That would be put forward as a hawkish cut, a hawkish pause, however you want to characterize it. To me, a hawkish cut doesn't happen. To me, they

They don't cut rates. And they say... You don't think they cut today? No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying what's hawkish. I think you're being too worked up about what is hawkish. No, Steve, but the expectation was you were going to get four rate cuts in 2025. No long.

You're not going to get those anymore. No longer. That hasn't been the expectation for a couple of months. From the Federal Reserve, it is the expectation, Steve. The Federal Reserve. I do not believe. Look at the dot plots. The dot plots show that you're going to get four cuts. The dot plots are meaningless after they come out. Well, then what's the point of the Federal Reserve? If the dot plots are meaningless. Listen, if anybody traded on the dot plots, they've been driving an Uber now. Okay. That's just not the case. A hundred percent.

But now you go to a larger issue. You have a Federal Reserve that's going to say we're data dependent. You insulting Uber drivers? And we're also looking at the forward guidance, which is reflected in the dot plot. So which is it? Are you going to predict the future and tell us how many cuts are coming in 25? Or are you going to tell us you're going to look back

on the economic data to determine what you're actually going to do. There's an inconsistency there. Of course they're going to change. So we're saying the same thing. We are saying the same thing. Three cuts. The real issue, look at small businesses, look at the manufacturing sector. They have to thread this needle properly. Maybe the market has priced out

too many cuts. That's where the needle can be threaded, and I think that's where we can get the everything rally. Let's hit some names that I wanted to hit before we finished our A block. MasterCard. MasterCard. Buyback, $12 billion. They raised their dividend. Joe, you own MasterCard. I do. I'm going to warm Steve up a little bit. We've owned it in the JOTE ETF since July of 2022, so Steve's

happy about that this is about payments is about processing they also talk about visa sharing the same type of positive momentum they also mention global payments networks i'm not so excited about that name five service another name that you could play but really you're looking towards having the regulatory relief that's really that the center of why

2025 could be an extremely positive year for the payment processors, in particular Visa and MasterCard. And when they're giving you a $12 billion buyback and a 15% dividend growth in the case of MasterCard, that's something as a shareholder you're going to applaud. Why is Palo Alto down more than 3% today? Crowd strikes following suit. The only thing we could find is a price target that was cut, I think, late in the day on Friday.

at one firm, but the stock's down more than 3% today. You have that. - I do. Momentum. So look at the momentum factor today. The momentum factor is struggling.

The momentum factor has heavy allocation towards the cybersecurity names. You could pull up the JOTI ETF today. It's down. You'll see that. Again, it's because of it. You show it. The momentum factor has been struggling over the last several weeks. And even in a positive tape today, that continues. Okay. Are we not going to pull it up? You could show it. There it is. It's down. Look at that. It's down today.

We'll take a quick break. Coming up, buy any pullback. That is the call today on one stock that's nearly doubled this year. Bill owns it. We debate it. And we, of course, will trade it next.

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One of the best performing stocks since the election, if not the best individual name. It's certainly got to be up there as Tesla. It's a fractional loser today. Price target gets bumped to right where it is now, $4.80.

at bear, they say buy any pullbacks. You agree with that? I agree, especially above 400, above that previous high, buy any pullbacks. Now, we have owned this. It's really one of our top second half of the year plays and really leaning into it at $200. Trimmed it at 350. We've been letting it run. It's astonishing to see it really break out. But you're buying a seat close to Trump, obviously, with Elon Musk here and owning this name, the favorable regulations that are going to come with it, all

autonomous vehicles investment, the AI investment. But there's also, we can't ignore the flows. There is some craze in the market right now, meme stock craze, whether it's quantum, whether it's Bitcoin, whether it's Tesla making a move. The option flows, the money being owned, retail investors here, they're also driving it. Just know some technical barriers. And for us, out of a 400, you got to let this thing run.

Joe, Uber. It seems like these stocks just trade off one another. Uber's up 3.5% today. Bernstein, though, moves it down its preference list. They say the stock's oversold.

but they've cooled on the bull case for now. What do you think? Well, I think the analyst price target is a little bit too high. The 12-month price target is $91. What's interesting about that is in October, Uber was $87. That's the price of Uber. At the time, the 12-month price target was $86. Subsequent to that, Uber's price has now fallen, and the price target is actually going higher. So the analyst community

remains overwhelmingly bullish on Uber. There's not very much that's going to fundamentally act as a catalyst until earnings are reported in February in the stock. So I think the stock is kind of vulnerable to positioning from the perspective of everyone is bullish the stock.

But on the downside, I think there's a put underneath the market because this company is fundamentally a strong company that has focused on profitability. And I think what that leads you to is a period from now until February where the stock is just going to vacillate on either side of $65. You worried about your position here? I think profitability is key here, and that's why we still love the name.

I want to get technical for a second. There's a trend line going back to October. It's holding the $63 area on a weekly level. I think if it can respond that, we may be adding more. I just don't want to pick the bottom here in this type of week. But let's not also ignore the Waymo headwinds. And it's been a bit of a pair trade against Tesla. When Tesla was falling,

Uber was rallying. So I think there's definitely some headwinds here watching the $63 level on a closing basis. Citizens financial got upgraded today, uh, over at Raymond James price targets, 55 bucks. You have this in the team. Yeah, I did look, you know, we've, we've got about eight regional banks in, uh, in the, in the strategy citizens financial is, is one of the better performing ones. Regions financial fifth, third Huntington bank. They all now have negative momentum, uh,

Bank of New York, M&T, Cincinnati Financial. They maintain positive momentum. And a lot of

of the analyst community coming around and saying, okay, buy the pullback. That's built upon the premise that in 2025, the regional banking community is going to get significant regulatory relief. And that, in fact, might happen. I'm not calling that into question. The other tailwind that's being presented for 2025 is that credit conditions are going to continue to improve, such as they have had and supported the rally in the first half of

of 2024. So I think what's happening now is '24 was an environment where all the regional bolts lifted at one time. I think it's going to become very idiosyncratic as you move towards 2025. You're going to have to generate alpha in the industry and mine from the bottom up to try and find who the winners are going to be. I think Citizens Financial can be one of those. Weiss, Netflix has been a monster. The target at Morgan Stanley today goes to $1,050 from $830.

It's the only pure play. It's one of the only plays that's working. Their content is tremendous and they've added sports. So there's no reason why it shouldn't keep going. Now Disney says, "Hey, you know, this password sharing isn't working for us either." So now you gotta make a choice. Do you add another family member or somebody who's been sharing your password to Disney or do you go to Netflix? You're gonna go to Netflix. So to me, it keeps going.

and you know unlike some of the others uh where you sort of talk about the momentum to justify the way way way over valuation and to me that's a tesla no way should you pay a car a multiple car company like this it's uh and that's what's endemic with the market by the way sidetrack for a second is that we seek to justify the momentum and the dollars going into these stocks with fundamentals and uh ignoring the valuation those fundamentals

don't exist in any of those stocks, Tesla in particular. Because as good as it is, as close as it is to Trump, are you really paying 200 times for a capital-intensive company and 100 times EBITDA? It's lunacy. So if you're a technical trader, that's fine. It still makes sense. If you're thinking of it as primarily an auto company,

which is where you're talking about it being so capital intensive. Even if it's an energy company.

They've done okay in the energy business. What other energy company are you paying that for? It's still capital intensive, period. It's still a multiple. It's unsustainable. What do you see when you look at Netflix, Shannon? I think from my vantage point, if you think about the amount of capital that Netflix had to put into building their subscriber network, and you think about when they did that, they did it when essentially cash was free. And so I think that from a streaming competitiveness perspective, I don't see any real contender there.

to take their spot at the top over the next three or four years. Let's get the headlines now with Julia Boorstin. Hi, Julia. Hey, Scott. The CDC has confirmed the first severe case of bird flu in the U.S. Agency officials said the patient has been hospitalized in Louisiana, but didn't give more details of the patient's symptoms. The CDC said the patient had been in contact with sick and dead birds and backyard flocks, making it the first case in the U.S. linked to an exposure to backyard flocks.

President-elect Trump has tapped former football player Herschel Walker to serve as a U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas. Trump previously backed Walker for the 2022 Senate race in Georgia, which he lost to Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock. Walker, who campaigned for Trump during the presidential race, must be confirmed by the Senate for the post.

And at auction house Sotheby's, the oldest inscribed stone tablet of the Ten Commandments sold for over $5 million today, surpassing its presale estimate of $1 to $2 million. The 115-pound marble slab is about 1,500 years old, and the commandments are inscribed in paleo-Hebrew script. Back over to you. All right, Julia, thank you. That's Julia Boorstin. Up next...

We go global for today's ETF edge. Bob Pisani looking at the biggest opportunities in emerging markets in the year ahead. We're back on the half right after this.

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We are back on the half. Bob Pizzani has today's ETF Edge. Hi, Bob.

2024 was a great year for U.S. stocks, but what about everywhere else? The rest of the world generally up, but trailing the U.S., one sector still with strong inflows is India, the largest India ETF up 12% this year. Let's talk with Kevin Carter. He's the founder and chief investment officer of EMQQ Global, which focuses on the U.S.

focuses on India and emerging markets. Kevin, your India internet ETF, INQQ, is the symbol up 25% this year, rivaling the S&P returns. You said to me before, India is the perfect emerging market. Why are you so enthusiastic about India?

Well, emerging markets, you know, the reason people are investing there is because they have large young populations, a lot of growth, and that's driving consumption. And if you look at each of those areas, India is number one. It's the biggest population. It's the youngest population, the fastest growing, and that's driving consumption. And it's also driving an incredible digital consumption story. So it's really perfect on paper, but it's also got

the world's best human talent. There's 25 S&P 500 companies that have Indian CEOs, for example. And you also have, as we've discussed, this digital public infrastructure, the India Stack, which is sort of a digital secret weapon that most people don't understand.

Yeah. And here's the list of it. I mean, fastest growing GDP in the world right now. I think it's up 7 percent. Biggest population. Bigger than China. 1.45 billion people. The key to a lot of this seems to be technology, particularly this digital identification system India rolled out in 2009. Tell us about that and why that's driving growth in India.

Sure. Well, one of India's big problems historically was that very few people had an identification card. And so to handle that, in 2010, they launched an ID card program to give everyone a physical card, like a driver's license, but with their name and photo and so forth. But they also scanned their fingers and eyes so that people could be instantly verified using biometric information. And this is

now spread to the whole country. 800 million people have opened their first bank account in a matter of minutes just with their fingers and looking into a camera. So there's a whole lot of advantages that this digital stack brings to India in terms of efficiency and growth. Right. So your ETF focus is on e-commerce companies in India. Why the focus on e-commerce?

Well, because it's the fastest growing sector. I mean, that's been the case in emerging markets for 10 years. We saw it in China. We saw Alibaba, Tencent and these other, you know, enormous Chinese Internet companies, you know,

take a huge percentage of the global market cap for emerging markets. And now we're going to see the same thing in India. India is a lot like China was 15 or 20 years ago. But now you have smartphones that you can get for as little as $12 and this whole digital public infrastructure, which is like an operating system for India that has even led to more digitization.

$12 smartphones. We're going to talk a lot about that. Much more coming up on investing in India and emerging markets on ETF Edge. That's at 1.10 p.m. Eastern time. Kevin's going to be joined by Todd Sohn from Strategas. We'll talk about China as well and the government's recent attempts to address many of the structural problems that country faces. ETFedge.cnbc.com. Scott, back to you. All right. Bob, appreciate you. Thank you. That's Bob Pisani. Coming up, we have our year-end report cards. We are grading.

the investment committee. Some of their biggest winners and losers next. All right, welcome back. End of the year is near, which is why we are giving out our report cards on some of the picks from our committee members. The best and the worst.

At least some of. Interactive brokers, Joe T., up 115% year to date. Favorite financial name, reasonably valued at 27 times. Company has just done a phenomenal job diversifying the product offering. Full disclosure, I am a user personally of interactive brokers. It offers you everything you need, stocks, commodities, options, crypto. Arista Networks up 92%.

So this is cloud networking, obviously benefiting from AI. It's actually been in the ETF since January of 2021. This is one of our better performing holdings. I think we're up 457% on this stock. Revenue is growing near 20% over the coming quarters.

It plays into the AI story and for networking it's a critical aspect of it. I've got DR Horton here down 3.5%. This cannot be the worst performer in the JOTI. No, it's obviously not. I'm troubled. How'd this get on the list?

Joe wrote it, obviously. No, let's talk about the homebuilders because I'm troubled by the homebuilders. The homebuilders, the momentum has broken in the homebuilders. The homebuilders did remarkably well in 2023 and into the early stages of 24, but it's a challenging environment. They're offering way too many incentives. And now understanding that undocumented homes,

homebuilder construction, the industry, 13% of it is undocumented workers. So there's going to be a challenge as we move into 25 and the Trump administration tackles the issues surrounding immigration. Okay. Steve Weiss, Vertiv up 151%.

Yeah, and look, as I mentioned the other day, I bought more. The upside hasn't ended here. Momentum has taken out some of the marginal buyers. But look, they're still perfectly well positioned for data center growth, making a unique product. And they signed a multi-billion dollar contract with a data center builder. So I think the future remains very bright for them, and it's very attractive here. Taiwan Semi up 92. We talked about that. GXO down 23.

Yeah, and as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I did cut my position there rather significantly. And look.

Malcolm, you know, I thought he did a really good job, but growth wasn't there. So they need to reaccelerate growth in what's a very competitive space. So I've got really a tag-end position there. And keep in mind, they were in takeover discussions. As the price goes lower, those discussions coming back become more of a reality. But right now, as you saw with the others,

uh... that u_p_s_ just take out of its own way fedex is performed but sort of in the same space passing notes to the uh... six days six names in the joe t_t_ effort down here today and be the worst at fourteen okay thank you for your honesty your detention has been a little bit patty call-out charge one of our main users you know i'm just wondering joe like that only six names of the lower okay well

You have the huge rebalance, right? Yes. He gets rid of it pretty quickly. Asterisk. Asterisk. It does not account for quarterly rebalance. Exactly. All right. Bill, Oracle up 61%. Tremendous strength in the cloud services. I think that's going to be really as we shift to 2025. Can this stock continue that momentum? Are they going to deliver there? We're at a big level after a poor report, a little underwhelming. Yeah.

Ran up to 190, back and settling at a 170. So it's going to be interesting next few weeks. Wabtec up 56%. I love this name. It's been something we've owned in portfolios for years. And I mean, up more than 50% year to date. This was as high as our number five name. When we trimmed industrials, when we started shifting back into the big tech, they do technology-based locomotives and the freight and rail space. And if anything really needs infrastructure spending, it's really within that space there. Amgen down 8%.

This is getting punished because they haven't followed through on delivering a GLP drug here. It's been definitely underwhelming. Some lukewarm earnings and just the space in general in health care has slipped. So there's really not a good tailwind here. But this is a level we don't want to see really go much lower than here. OK, Shan, your contrarian pick for the year was commodities. It's up 10 percent. They are your

Year to date? You sure it wasn't gold? I thought it was gold, Scott. Was it gold? No, I'm kidding. I don't know. I'm going with what's on the paper, okay? No, it's definitely commodities. So, I mean, if you look at oil prices, those have clearly been a laggard, as has copper. But if you look at cocoa and coffee, natural gas, gold, silver, so it's really been a mixed bag. But I think if you think about the overweight and the commodity space in oil, that's really been a drag on this play this year. All right, Santoli, he's coming up next with his midday word. We are back right after this.

Welcome back. Our senior markets commentator, Mike Santoli, joins us with his midday word, which I don't know. I feel like it should be triggered because that's what I hear is happening about NVIDIA, whether it's in correction or out. Oh, yeah. As far as you are concerned. Talk to me. Look, I'm not I'm not a fan of this idea that somehow it's a different state of being to be down 9 percent versus 11 percent and you're out of a correction. You're not.

out of a correction until you get to a new high. But beyond that, what I find interesting is with Nvidia bouncing as part of this story, the market seems itchy to try to execute some kind of reversal of these dramatic divergences we've seen recently. Maybe a little bit of tension release, maybe clearing the Fed meeting and press conference out of the way could be a little bit of a catalyst

for that bonds. The yields are right at the spot where buyers have come in over the last six months, five months or so. So we'll see if that does in fact happen because you have the majority of the market comes into today really oversold, even with the S&P sitting near its highs because of these massive split in performance among the few versus the many. About the Fed.

We talked earlier, and I thought Shannon made an interesting point. No one's really thinking about a dovish cut today. We've sort of worked ourselves up. This could be a hawkish pause. That is very true. I don't think anybody is expecting Powell to come out or the committee with their projections to come out and really project anything.

determination to bring rates down a lot for sure. So slowing the rate of cuts probably is okay with the market as long as we're still talking about cuts. I'm always of the camp that says

But fewer Fed rate cuts, less Fed accommodation is absolutely fine as long as the economy reassures us that it's in good shape. The 95 soft landing, you only got three cuts over the course of about six or seven months. It wouldn't look that different than today being a one and done for a while. But, of course, that's because the economy has to then come in and take over along with earnings. Good stuff. I'll see you in a little bit. That was Mike Santelli. Straight ahead, the set up.

We have three of JOTI stocks reporting earnings within the next 24 hours. We'll get you set up for those next.

All right, Joe T., the setup. Lennar, after the bell today, it's down 13% month to date. We talked about DR. Let's talk about Lennar. Largest home builder by market capitalization. They will set the tone in the terms of what the spring selling season is going to look like in their guidance. Okay. And what about Accenture, which is tomorrow before the bell in the morning? New generative AI billings came in above a billion dollars. That's what

Everything that this company is going to report, the focus is going to be on what is new generative AI doing. Sintas tomorrow before the bell as well. This is going to be a tough quarter because you had a lot of distortions during the quarter from the election to hurricanes. So there's not going to be very much of a read through in the quarter. All right. We'll take a quickie. We'll come back. We'll do finals next.

Well you know it's coming three o'clock today. Obviously we're going to be listening to Fed Chair Powell during his news conference and then right when he is done Jeffrey Gundlach of Double Line Capital joins me exclusively once again on this Fed Day. Get his take and his outlook as well and his best investment ideas most importantly for the months ahead. Let's do some final trades though. Stephen Weiss.

I'm riding a horse that got me here today, and that's Bitcoin. IBIT, nice reversal today. I think it goes higher. Okay, Bill Baruch. Want to bring something from the energy space? Chenier LNG, regulatory tailwinds and a bullish demand structure for LNG. I like this. All righty. Thank you. Shannon?

REITs, we'll see how hawkish we come out today, but we think that there's an opportunity here going into the new year. Thank you very much. And Joe T. EIS, that is the ETF for Israel, 37% technology, CyberArk checkpoint software. Thank you very much for that. I will see you in a couple hours. The exchange is now.

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