Nvidia’s No Good, Very Bad Week 1/31/25
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All right, Carl, thanks so much. Welcome to the Halftime Report. I'm Scott Wapner. Front and center this hour, this volatile week for stocks, Nvidia, Apple, tariffs, they're all in focus for us today. We trade it with the Investment Committee as we always do. Joining me for the hour today, Stephanie Link, Jenny Harrington, Jim Labenthal.

And Rob Sechin will go check the markets here. Dow is in the red, but otherwise S&P and Nasdaq are green. Thank you, technology, today. But we are focusing to start here on NVIDIA's no good, very bad week because that's what it's been. In fact, there is the stock weak to date. It is down some 12%. It is the worst week since last September.

You can call it the deep seek sink on those headlines about that Chinese AI competitor. Headlines like the ones we're showing you on your screen right now. As a matter of fact, NVIDIA faces a reckoning. Trump considers restricting NVIDIA sales to China. Biggest one-day market cap loss in history. It's reeling. It's in danger of losing its monopoly-like margins. Jimmy?

I called you Jimmy Jitters yesterday on the air because you said you were trimming NVIDIA. Maybe the market itself is pretty jittery today. Wolf says NVIDIA is struggling to show upward momentum. The stock's tried to get something going a little bit, a couple of times, and it really hasn't been able to do it.

You know, I don't think it's necessarily, Scott, that the market has jitters, but I think a sector of the market has jitters, and that's the AI sector. When I say the AI sector, I mean that portion of AI that has led for the last two years, the big cap techs, Microsoft, NVIDIA. And I think it's reasonable. Now, I want to quickly point out that I trimmed. I didn't sell all of my NVIDIA.

I do think that what this news means is that in the year 2026, and I know we're only January 2025, that maybe those out years, 2026 and beyond, the projections for growth in revenue and earnings might have to come down a little bit. Now, the reason I'm being that specific is because

We did get news from Microsoft, from Meta this week, that indicates that their CapEx in the near term is not slowing down. So this is not a 2025 issue. But I think that we've seen that DeepSeek, regardless of whether it's glomming on to OpenAI, regardless of whether it's intellectual property theft, it is showing that

maybe you don't need to have as much capital expenditures as is currently going on. And again, that will speak to 2026 and beyond. As far as, you know, Jimmy Jitters, and I actually thought it was hilarious, Scott, when you did it yesterday. I'm just going to recharacterize myself as Jimmy, the prudent risk manager. These stocks, I don't care whether it's NVIDIA, Oracle or any of them, have gone up so much that taking a little bit off the table while still retaining some for future growth, I think it's just prudent risk management.

To summarize, I'm not sounding an alarm bell here like everybody needs to head for the hills. I am saying it is time to reevaluate risk. No, but I mean, look, there are, as we showed you in the wall, and we can put it back up for you again, that the DeepSeek Rise journal headline exposes NVIDIA's weakness.

Nvidia in danger, according to The Economist in their headline, of losing its monopoly-like margins. Rob, it feels like, and many are suggesting that the goalposts have in fact moved this week, that the narrative has at least changed somewhat. You own Nvidia. You feel like doing anything with your stock? If anything, I'm getting an echo here, Scott. Sorry. In the feedback, I hear myself. Can we come back to me? Yeah, sure. Sorry about that. It's not, yeah. It's gone. It's gone.

It left. I can come in. I apologize. I apologize for that. I was hearing myself speak. But anyway, listen, if you call him Jimmy Jitters, you can call me Robbie the opportunist in the new edge side of things, because we expected this volatility from these type of extended price points. And we've seen a lot of it. We did some trading around TSMC as well when we saw the sell off. So we are underweight NVIDIA, but we continue to look for opportunities.

to buy more of the stock longer term it'd be imprudent as Jim says to ignore the risk of inefficient computing power on their overall growth. However the company continues to have dominant market share they have a strong moat supported by a developer friendly ecosystem. I think

We've been a disciplined buyer of this name. We're roughly 50% the weight of the index. And the reality of it is if you buy at these levels when you have these recalibrations, it provides a margin of safety in what is still a very cyclical business. There's no doubt that more efficient compute

can be an issue. But as Jim said, none of the CapEx from the hyperscalers looks like it's coming in meaningfully. And we still think that NVIDIA is going to be the strongest beneficiary of that. And remember, we're up in the recent purchases we made. Sure. You said you traded around Taiwan Semi a bit. I mean, you bought more. Let's just make sure we're specific.

for our viewers. You bought more of that stock because a lot of the chip names were down a bunch this week. Teradyne down 10%, Micron down nine, Broadcom down eight, Marvell down seven, now Taiwan Semi down less, but that's the one that you decided to buy more of.

on on Monday I we increased our our way and we're out by thing about 10 percent since that Monday purchase in it shows you that the thesis of news created volatility is going to create opportunities this was one you know we added last year on the show were up 30 percent since we've added it's still not meaningfully expensive trades at a 20 times forward P.

has ridiculous profitability characteristics. It's a company with incredible market share in this advanced chip manufacturing. It's a key beneficiary of AI CapEx. I think that's why we've seen some of the rally this week. And this is a company that's built such a market share on decades of innovation. And it's an expertise that few, if any, companies

So, you know, we want to take advantage of some of these ebbs and flows and view this Monday as a real opportunity to do that. Feels like, Steph, this is still a let the dust settle a little bit more moment.

because for your Broadcom, for example, which I said was down 8% on the week, I know Rob owns that too, but these are often situations where you come in and you tell our crew, hey, I bought more Broadcom because I think this is overdone. Now, you may in fact end up doing that. I don't know, only you do, but you haven't yet.

And that to me is a sign in and of itself. No, it's not a sign, Scott, because the stock in the past year is up 92%, even with the 8% correction this week. So it's had a really nice run. It has re-rated on a multiple basis. I bought this thing three years ago at 14 times earnings.

It's now trading at 34 times earnings. Now, with that said, I think this company with AI, but also with their software business, which is 40% of revenues, I think they can actually do $11 to $12 a share by 2027. So you have to discount that back a bit, but you're talking about 20 multiple or 22 times if you believe those numbers. I do believe those numbers, but I just think it has had such a nice run. I want to get it a little bit cheaper if I can,

but i was very encouraged this week to hear from matter and from microsoft but they're going to spend that is going to be eighty five billion dollars in capex this year microsoft sixty billion the big seven two hundred and forty billion this year i don't think that's going to change and yes jimmy maybe next year the numbers come down but for now they're not and i have to tell you that that the comments that met i had to say about brought com was that

they are interested in using more custom ASIC chips. And that is music to my ears, that's music to Broadcom's ears, because that's what they do. So I'm just waiting for it to, yes, maybe settle, maybe come down a little bit, use some of the volatility, but it's definitely on my radar. I mean, if nothing else, this week, NVIDIA appears to have gone, and reasonably quickly,

from unquestionably in the driver's seat. And they may still be in the driver's seat, but they're at least more on the defensive. They're defensive driving, if you will, because they were only playing offense and the street was giving it the benefit of the doubt by a long shot. There are other stocks that have gotten a halo lift off of this over the last year, at least, which

which are coming back to earth, as we said. Your Teradyne is one of them, down 10% on the week. It is the biggest decliner of the ones that I have in front of me. Right. And on Teradyne, like, we have no worries about that. In fact, the day, what was it, Tuesday, right, the CEO of ASML came out and he's like, actually, by the way, and that stock got hit too. This is good news for us. I haven't heard the Teradyne CEO say exactly that, but it's kind of the same thing because however you cut this, however you cut it,

The world needs more semi chips and Teradyne is in the testing space. So as long as more are being manufactured, Teradyne benefits. So we already have a full position. If we didn't, we absolutely would have been adding to it. Yeah. It's interesting. It's, you know, they're going to report earnings in a handful of, a little less than a handful of weeks. Quiet period. What can they say? Not much. I mean,

This feels like one of those moments, honestly, like in the past when Kramer would run on to the set back at HQ and sit with us and talk about because, you know, talk about the situation. I don't know if he's grabbing lunch or whatnot, but if you're around, Jimmy, come on down. We'd love to have you. We even have an open seat today. But, you know.

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang is going to be at the White House today, by the way. I think most of you know that by now. At some point, he's going to be there to meet with the president. Seema Modi is joining us now to tell us what exactly to expect today with this now highly anticipated meeting. Seema.

Yeah, very timely. Scott NVIDIA CEO Jensen Wang will be meeting with President Trump very soon at the White House. According to sources familiar, the meeting has been in the books for a while, but of course, timely given the deep seek revelations that have raised the question as to whether the U.S. needs to do more to limit China's advancement in artificial intelligence and restrict China's

a wider range of chips that are sold to the country. According to analysts forecast, Nvidia generates about 13% of total sales into China. Huang, I'm told, will also bring up the so-called diffusion rule, which was unveiled by the Biden administration just days before President Biden left office. That would severely limit the shipments of chips, not just to China, but a large list of countries that analysts say would no doubt challenge the semiconductor industry.

Trump does have the power to reverse that ruling that is expected to go into effect this spring. However, Evercore ISI says DeepSeek might add a new complication to those efforts. Scott, we will see if Wong can convince Trump otherwise. The other topic is the onshoring of chips production as the Commerce Department looks to revamp the Chips Act. Scott.

we'll have a stakeout cam i'm sure uh outside the white house to try and get those pictures we'll see what develops sema thank you very much let's bring in steve weiss who joins us now on the phone because he in fact has bought more nvidia today tell me why today was the day to do that given the headlines that we showed our viewers from that wall the questions that are still out there the fact that this stock has tried to bounce rather unsuccessfully

That's all correct. And basically, I agree with everything that Rob said, including, by the way, his aversion to hearing him talk. But the reason I bought it is the headlines today, in part. And it's been a pretty successful strategy with Taiwan Semi, with Netflix, with UnitedHealthcare on high-quality technology.

permanent compounders to buy the dip. And so what we've seen this week is a lot of frightened holders who perhaps didn't know what they owned, bought the momentum, exiting the stock. So, look, I don't know what happens with the meeting of Jensen and Trump. Nobody does. But I can tell you anybody that's ever met with Trump recently has come out with

with Trump on their side and supportive of them. So you will come to a situation, of course, with deep seek where tech lines up on two sides. You've got the meds of the world who really want to drive down costs. Yet they said that they're not revising their budget. Nobody should in this. So you're going to win from that with NVIDIA.

Now, it's not news that NVIDIA's margins are going to come under pressure. That, in fact, is Moore's law. The only news is that it may be happening sooner than later, but they will continue to innovate. So right now, I'm buying the panic selling in that. I also bought the

panic selling in Taiwan Semi. I also bought smaller because it wasn't really a big decline on Microsoft as well yesterday. So I just take those opportunities for what I believe is still going to be a great AI APEC cycle for technology. Well,

The difference being, at least for now, you have to be more selective. So each of those have an idiosyncratic bull case to them versus the broader range that don't. So that's why I bought those and topped them up.

Okay. Great stuff. I also added to vertive again on the heels of the medicine announcement. They're not slowing down. Okay. I appreciate you, Steve. Uh, thank you for calling in. And so clearly laying out exactly why now is the time to add to these positions. Uh,

Well, we're lucky because Jim Cramer was listening and he did come down to join us on the set. I always listen. And I'm glad we had a chair here for you because I really feel like this is one of those conversations after one of these pivotal weeks that we need to hear from you. What do you make, first of all, of Steve's assessment that, look, a lot of these stocks were punished too much, that they still have an overwhelmingly large competitive advantage?

And now's the time, you might not time it perfectly, but why not today? - Okay, look, I think the problem is you can never pretend that you know when you don't know. And it's always gutsy to come out and say, listen, I don't know. I mean, look, right now, Jensen wants with the president.

I would like to hear what he has to say. And we need if you're long this stock, you need to hear that the president wants to undo what Biden did right at the end, which is to say, listen, we're only going to let them sell a lot to 18 friendly countries, which, by the way, they left off some major countries like Israel, which is supposed to be a friend. As far as I know, I was now ex-carper earlier and say definitely.

lots of other countries that are in the EU. So we need to hear that reversed. You need to hear that the president doesn't fear that chips are going to go to China of the lower level. Remember, they were giving lesser chips to China and that NVIDIA has been able to convince him that there is no backdoor from Singapore. There isn't because I think that they are able to account for all those. So let's go back to, and by the way, I know that Jensen Meng hates Moore's Law. He thinks it's dead. But I

But I think the biggest issue is we got through the hurdle of Meta saying they need it. We know that Oracle needs it without a problem. We absolutely got that. We know that Apple wants anything it can get, and they're a free rider. They'll be good. But we know that Microsoft needs more. But what we don't know is Amazon. And next week, Amazon, what happens if Amazon says it plays hardball and says, you know what, we don't need as many?

Then you have this plummet, and I am concerned about that. Otherwise, look, I think that DeepSeek's playing checkers and these guys are playing grandmaster chess. Just so you know, you cannot use—by the way, the reliability of DeepSeek is ridiculous. I don't know why anyone thinks it's any good. We were doing some stuff, putting in Winston 1984.

And first it was talking about how he was told to disassemble in favor of the government, and then it took that right away. But I will say, look, what can DeepSeat not do that Jensen knows that NVIDIA can do? Multimodal memory, spatial intelligence, physical actuators, vision, and touch. So you can't use it for robots, and you can't use it for self-drive. So what the hell good is it? So anyway, it's good and bad. But boy, do I ever want to hear from Amazon.

I want to hear from Google, too, before I just say, hey, you know what? We're home free. So is it then overstating it to say that they have, NVIDIA being the they, have gone from in the driver's seat to on the defensive? I suppose both can be true. I mean, they are still in the driver's seat. Look, we didn't even mention OpenAI, the fact that they're doing this huge raise at such an incredible valuation. Where are they going to go with the money to buy what they need? Probably NVIDIA. Right. Well,

Absolutely. You go to NVIDIA. I think that I used to work very closely with Stephanie and we would say, well, you know what? And someone doesn't have anything to say. You can't necessarily attribute that it's good. And there are many things you can say. And we've all had many different guests during quiet period.

And they didn't reveal the numbers, but they gave you a sense of what's going on. Alex Karp is quiet. He's reporting on Monday. And he just did this incredibly long interview with Sarah. And you can say, well, if he can talk like that and talk about broader themes of Palantir, then Jensen should be able to talk about it in a situation where obviously his stock has had a material move. So you're saying the silence is deafening?

I think silence is not golden. Maybe Jensen Wong uses the appearance at the White House today. As I said, I mean, obviously in these circumstances, there are cameras there. We're going to have a stakeout camera. And maybe he comes to the camera and he addresses some of the questions from our producer, reporter who might be on site. We'll have to wait and see. But you own the Amazons of the world that Jim wants to hear from. And you're going to hear next week.

from that company? Yeah, I think they're going to spend more money. And by the way, Jim, OpenAI, the rumor is they're actually going to use Broadcom's custom chips. Well, that's the custom chips. Broadcom's going up. So they'll use both. And we know, by the way, that Amazon likes custom because it's cheaper. That's right. I know that Meta does everything, but there's hot cans on the board of Meta. I think they're going to stop spending, though. You know what I mean? No, but I'm just saying... Maybe a little less than what they were going to, but I just...

I can't imagine that they would to keep. They have to keep up with the rest of the industry. Oh, they have to spend. I'm just saying what happens if they're caged? Yeah. Why don't they want to get the why don't they bargain to get the best price, even though they need everyone? I think NVIDIA is one of the best companies in the world.

That's not changed. But I do say that this is a thicket. I'd like to hear that even if Amazon walked away, you can. We don't know. Remember that demand was insane and demand was crazy. I just want to hear that. That's right. And that's what Jensen said. I want to hear it again. Is that too big? Is that too much to ask? I think that was at the Communicopia conference out in San Francisco. He does have a huge, you know, he has this huge conference in March. But I just look, am I nervous? If you're not nervous.

And if stock has that kind of move, I don't know if you're a good manager. And what do you make of the move from Jim to trim some of his position? Because he's, I mean, admittedly a little nervous about where we are. He's a good manager. Remember, that's what we do. But bear in mind, you know, you take NVIDIA. I don't have to tell you this. It's up threefold in 15 months. I'd be a fool not to. I think I actually, give me a second here. No, no, I'm saying this is why you're a manager.

Exactly. It's risk management. But can I just point something out that I think is important? NVIDIA, Microsoft, they don't exist in a vacuum. You started, Scott. Your first question was, does the market have jitters? And I said only a sector does. Look, Microsoft, and I want your opinion on this. Microsoft and NVIDIA are down on the year. The market, the S&P 500 is up. Is it possible, Jimmy, that maybe the market broadening can happen without a disaster rate? Because everybody says that concentration of the top 10 names is...

It usually comes down with the market having a wipeout. Is it possible that maybe we get the broadening without an overall disaster? I had an existential crisis this week.

I said to my wife, I believe I missed a 10-bagger in Brinker, which is Chili's, because I've been so concerned about NVIDIA. And that makes me a manager who sucks. And she goes, I think that's a little too strong. I think that's strong, too. I think it's too strong. Like I said, it was existential. But you can't do it. You can't just say, I'm going to focus on NVIDIA, and I'm going to miss a 10-bagger because I'm a good manager. No, you're not.

So that's what's at stake. Give me just a little more runway on this. As the market's up, you know, financials killing it. They have been for a while. Industrials killing it. They have been a while. But here's where I want to go to. Health care, right? Left for dead at the end of last year. And it's coming back. Eventually, the flows follow the price, which begets more price movement. Am I wrong? I mean, absolutely.

comes out today and I say, God damn it, NVIDIA. And everybody says, what do you mean? Well, I missed it. I could have had AbbVie. Merck and Pfizer next week. Well, now NVIDIA. I mean, go home. It's like NVIDIA, NVIDIA. It's not right. But Jim, to your point, actually value is outperforming growth year to date. If you look at the, you know, the Russell 1000 value, it's up 4% and the Russell 1000 growth is up 2%. So it's a broadening out to exactly what you're talking about. It's good. It's positive.

It's positive. It is good. Can I say something? This is like bigger picture in trading. But what really struck me on Monday was who was selling NVIDIA and what was happening. Because what I would have expected, right, as someone who's more value-focused, who's dividend-focused, we have a big international strategy, right, what I would have expected to happen on a day like Monday was I would have expected the market to be down one, one and a half. I would have expected our portfolios to also be down.

And instead, we had international stocks up like half a percent. We had dividend stocks up flat or flat, right? The Dow was flat. And what really, really struck me on Monday was that there was this willingness, almost this desire out there to rotate. And I didn't expect that. Like, I really thought to myself, who sold NVIDIA down 17 percent? It wasn't you. It wasn't me.

It's a zero-day option, Klaus. It was those crazy... This triple ETF, Nvidia, Eagles, Chiefs. But that's exactly right. So who's out there affecting it is this fringe where they're excessive risk-taking, excessive concentration. You know, they're mucking it up. Sure, it's going to give you... It's going to give Weiss... It's going to give you... It's going to give people little pops to get in. But...

But I think what struck me was really how willing, like, Conagra in my portfolio was up 4% on Monday. For no reason. I know. No reason. But Taiwan Semi is a big, Taiwan Semi and NVIDIA have traded together forever. But the people who are trading NVIDIA are not people who we can trust.

No, I would say they got to go to DraftKings. They got to take the two just and move on. And I say that because they're clowns. They don't belong trading. It is a shame. They shouldn't be trading. They don't know what they're doing. You know what? In my quarterly letter, I referred to them as players. Of course, my husband edited that out. Players? But I couldn't say traders. I couldn't say investors. You couldn't say idiots? You couldn't say fools? No, he didn't let me say that. Because he writes a proper article.

Before I let you go, and before you tell me what you got tonight, is there any reason to believe that either Amazon or Alphabet are going to deliver anything other than good results? I don't know about Alphabet because they have this Gemini problem, and I don't use search nearly as much as I used to, and I don't think I'm an outlier.

Amazon, the world's their oyster right now, but the stock has moved up a great deal. And Andy Jassy is not. Brian, neither one of those guys, they don't pump the stock. So you could have people say, ooh, that's really bad.

They won't have that deceleration that Amy Hood had to talk about on Microsoft. Can we hear what Jensen says? If he gets out and says, listen, this was a great meeting and I'm allowed to sell everywhere. Because, you know, they didn't, Biden, they didn't speak to him. They limited the number of chips he could sell on a Saturday. I mean, I saw him the next day, you know, saw him two days later. I said, wow, that was a bad conversation with the White House. There was no conversation with the White House. None. None.

None. What does he sell? Fossil fuels? We'll see. I mean, it's a big deal. He sells coal. This event. Quickly, what do you have tonight? Do you want to tell our viewers what you're looking forward to? Because Otis is China. Everyone has to know China, right? I mean, what is going on with China? They have a massive wave of deflation. And all that ever happens is people come on air and they say, look, I was talking to Tepper. I love Tepper. I mean, you know, not that team. The team is like just second rate. But he still loves China. He loves.

Maybe Baidu teams up with Apple and we find out who's short Apple and comes on and says the long Apple today, right, Steph? Who are those? There's so many people who are, I mean, it's like, it's Moe, Curly and Larry, these guys.

And maybe even Shemp, maybe even Shemp owns it. I mean, like these people, they come on. They came out of the woodwork this week. Now they all own Apple. I love Apple the whole way. You're the best. Thank you for coming down here and joining this conversation. I felt like I had to hear from you today. I shouldn't have been so definitively

But then again, Alex Clark made me look like I'm Cary Grant meets Bond. Mad money. Six o'clock tonight. Do not miss that with Jim. We didn't even talk about Apple. We'll do it after the break. We do have more committee moves as well to document today. Stephanie just added to a stock. It's under some pressure today on earnings. We'll tell you exactly what it is and what she did.

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Let's talk about Apple in the aftermath of its earnings. Obviously, iPhone sales miss, excuse me, China bad, but their outlook was better than expected. So the stock is up. Steve Kovach joins us now, who obviously covers this story for us. Not a great move today, by the way, in terms of follow through. Why was the stock initially up? And tell us what the most important takeaway for our investing audience is today.

Yeah, the move up, Scott, is because of the guidance. After this kind of crummy report where we saw iPhone sales down, we saw China sales down 11 percent, guidance came in on the call saying they're still expecting top-line revenue growth. They're still expecting the double-digit percentage services growth, and that's

all despite some foreign exchange headwinds. So that explains the stock move we're seeing now. It's come off its highs. It's not even up a percent, though. But look, the big takeaway from yesterday, Scott, it's China. China was down 11% to $8.5 billion. We've been seeing this play out for several quarters in a row. We saw it a year ago when I was here that business was down 13%. And Tim Cook gave several answers for why he thinks this is happening. One, he was blaming it on Applebee's.

which is not in the country yet. They need that regulatory approval from the government in order to launch it there. They don't have it yet. On top of that, he mentioned inventory issues through their channel partners. Those are those wireless carriers and other third-party retailers that sell iPhones that kind of he blamed for the mismanagement of the inventory there. And then he talked a little bit about this government stimulus program that's basically giving rebates back

back on smartphone devices. Apple wasn't part of that last year, but it looks like they're going to be part of it this year, which could help China a little bit. But at the same time, the stuff that Apple

Apple isn't saying about its China business is just as interesting as those excuses I just rattled off for you from Apple. And it's Huawei. It's these Chinese homegrown brands that are eating into Apple's market share. If you look at these third-party data from IDC, from so many other research firms that are looking at this, Apple's

Apple is the only major brand in China that lost market share last year. It's losing market share to Huawei. It's losing market share to Xiaomi. It's losing it to Vivo and so many other of these homegrown brands. And that's really what they need to pull off and show that they can compete with those Chinese brands. Eunice Yun, our colleague over there in China, she did a great piece today, Scott, talking about

how there is this gravitation towards these Chinese brands. The Chinese consumer tends not to see a big difference anymore between what Apple's doing and what Xiaomi and Huawei are doing. So that is becoming a challenge as well. We'll see how this subsidy thing plays out. That could be an interesting wrinkle in this China story as we talk about the March quarter, Scott. Tim Cook actually kind of teased ahead to that, saying maybe they see a benefit

uh... from the subsidies that now it sounds like the iphone is is uh... capable of getting target insight uh... steve thank you up for x that stuff steve kovacs rob your take away as the shareholder

Yeah, I think what I'm shocked by is how strong Apple's share price has performed in light of what has been pretty pedestrian numbers, as you cite on iPhone sales on China. We are neutral to stock. We find it tough to go underweight.

mainly because it's a very long-term holding for us that has done well. But on the positive side, service revenues were up 14% year on year, and it points to the strength in their ecosystem. And it's one reason that we believe it's very difficult to be underweight this company, along with incredible brand power, 140 billion in cash. And you kind of saw in the second half of last year, despite pedestrian metrics and performance,

The share price was able to perform. I think you have to be careful at 30 times earnings, though, Scott. Yeah. I mean, you still have a little bit, I suppose, of a tariff question over this company because of China, but we'll see. Speaking of...

of the news broke, I guess, about an hour ago at this point that tariffs are coming 25% on Canada and Mexico over the weekend. Barclays has a note out today that says the tariffs against Canada, Mexico and China could amount to a 2.8% drag on the S&P 500's profit.

if enacted fully materials and discretionary uh most at risk here um you talk about you know talking about mexico there's whirlpool that bank of america had specifically mentioned today it's a stock that you own it is down 18 week to date that would be its worst week in fact since october of 2023. lucky me actually i bought it in 2023 when it was down so much um

The reality on the tariffs and Whirlpool is that's really not the bulk of the problem. The bulk of the problem here is just that the housing market hasn't recovered. And I think this is indicative of people conflating tariffs into everything. One of the first things we did when Trump was elected was go through our portfolio and say, you know, how are each of these companies actually impacted? And again, I mentioned before, for example, we have this international strategy. So I have clients all the time who are like,

"Hey, with Trump in the White House and with these tariffs coming, aren't all these companies going to get hurt?" And the answer is no. It's much more nuanced. So Whirlpool does import some product over the border from Mexico. Who knows what or what will not be left in. But that's not why their earnings were down. Their earnings were down because the housing market hasn't recovered. Their partners destocked. You know, once the housing market does recover, I think at that point they can return to growth.

But it's easy to put a tariff headline on this when it's not really the bulk of the problem. All right. Let's get the headlines now with Courtney Reagan. Hey, Courtney. Hi, Scott. Well, the FAA has restricted helicopter flights near Reagan National Airport indefinitely in the wake of Wednesday night's fatal crash. Officials tell Reuters only police and medical helicopters will be only allowed between the airport and bridges nearby.

North Korean troops have reportedly pulled back from the front lines in the Kursk region in Russia. Ukrainian officials tell CNN North Korean troops haven't been seen for about three weeks, and it's most likely they've retreated after suffering heavy losses. Ukrainian officials and Western intelligence estimate around 4,000 of about 12,000 North Korean soldiers sent to Russia have been injured or killed.

And the National Park Service, which maintains the Carter Historical Sites in Plains, Georgia, released today the first official photos of the grave sites of the president and first lady Rosalind Carter overlooking the pond the former president built at his home. While not yet open to the public, the Park Service says it should be soon. Scott, back over to you. All right, Court. Appreciate that. Thank you, Courtney Reagan. Straight ahead, Stephanie Link buying the dip in one of her stocks today. We'll give you a trade update next.

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day uh they are lower they did uh beat revenues did miss uh however and stephanie link we uh sort of alluded to the fact already yeah you bought more eaten well you bought more already this week didn't you so this is the second yeah buy more of the week yeah so i bought it on monday because it was down 18 at one point i bought a little bit because i always around the quarter the stock always

trade's a little strange, a little more volatile than usual. And actually, the quarter was fine, was pretty much in line. But what I care about is the Electrical Americas Division. That's the data center. Trailing 12-month orders were up 16%, backlog at 11.8 billion, but the margins expanded 300 basis points. And the company guided higher organic growth between now and 2025, about 7% to 9% organic,

versus six to eight percent prior so i thought everything they had to say was good they are executing very very well they're seeing no slowdown in data centers and they have said there's one point seven trillion dollar met mega projects around the world and only fifteen percent have started there were four hundred fifty four billion dollars of new product projects in the fourth quarter so the momentum is there he was sounded very very bullish and so i just wanna

round out the position make it even bigger talk about deckers for a minute too thank you for that step all right it's our chart of the day uh because it is down uh quite substantially too uh there it is down about 16 on the guide here rob you uh own the stock here talk to us ubs does raise the price target to uh 284 from 267 and it did hit a 52 week high yesterday but what about this one

So it's a name we added on the show. It's up 37 percent since. It's given back a little year to date. It trades at 29 forward. This is a great quarter from a fundamental standpoint. Revenues rose 17 percent. Earnings rose 19 percent. They exceeded expectations in nearly every category. The reaction today is more a reflection, we think, of lofty expectations. After

the stock ran 80 percent in 2024. This continues to be an industry-leading retailer posting double-digit growth and profitability, and they have an incredibly loyal profit base. It's not surprising to see a little bit of a reset after that. We did see some hints of weakness in the HOKA segment during the holiday quarter, but

But, you know, running shoes aren't necessarily standard stocking stuffers. So it's not something that's bothering us too much, Scott. We mentioned already. Thanks, Rob. Vertex and AbbVie, you know, in the context of talking about health care with Jim. But tell me about Visa, because Visa beat and the stock is on the move to a record.

intraday high today. There it is on your screen. And Jimmy, you own it. Yeah, I think this is very simple. The consumer is quite healthy, actually across the globe, because this is not just a U.S. story. But they indicated the consumer is healthy. This is about volumes picking up. We got a pretty good indication that this was going to be a good report from MasterCard yesterday. And there was a good bump in Visa as well yesterday. Now, I have to say Visa's

kind of pricey at this level so i'm not adding to it here but i'm not selling it either let's just let this go until we get some fears that the consumer is faltering there are none of those fears right now you know i'll just ask you quickly about exxon you own the stock your overweight energy um it is the worst performer of the year thus far when you're talking about oil prices coming down because the president wants drill drill drill why are these stocks going to do well

Yeah. In 2025. When we talk about oil coming down, we've got to remember that oil has been in this range of 70 to 80 dollars on West Texas Intermediate when all where all of these companies make a lot of money. And I think it's going to stay there. It's not just so easy to say drill, baby, drill. It takes time. It takes money to get more out of the ground. So I think we're going to stay in this range.

But more to the point, if you're going to own, unless you're not going to own energy, you really should own ExxonMobil. It should be the first stock you buy in the energy space from a valuation yield and size point of view. And size really matters in a commodity business. Can I tack one comment into that? Just real quick because we've got to go. Let's say you're wrong and it's not 70 to 80. Let's say it's 60 to 70. The U.S. companies are still wildly profitable there. And so they make up for loss of, you know, revenue, whether they make it up on volumes is the bottom line if we get it to 70.

The trade here is infrastructure. The trade here is infrastructure, full stop. If you're playing the Trump export of liquid natural gas, this is a midstream trade in energy this year, for sure. But Rob, those stocks were all up like 60% last year, so they did move ahead of that to some degree. So you need to be careful. We're going to go. Mike Santoli's next with his Midday Word.

We're back with our senior markets commentator, Mike Santoli, here at the desk. I always love on Friday to ask you your big takeaways for the week. And this was another interesting one with a Fed meeting, deep seek, everything else. Uncommonly interesting also, just in terms of the way the market metabolized everything, almost record levels of just divergence among stocks within the market, especially relative to the indexes themselves.

So you've had this very active kind of rotation, a willingness to kind of move money around as opposed to exit. At the same time, an incredibly active retail dip buying reflex that has been evident for a while, but I think is really almost become more noticeable.

It's just a little bit of a separation between retail tenacity and institutions, I think, are a little more on the wait and see. If you look at the positioning numbers, they're not chasing so much. So I think what it's allowed is the indexes to stay supported at or near record levels,

Ten-year kind of holding in there. The economy seems good enough, obviously, in terms of both growth rates and inflation. And then it's a matter of just how high the bar is for earnings, because it actually the big beats are not getting across the board rewarded, but we're hanging in. And so all that, you know, built together. I don't know if it's creating a fragility down the road. If you have some slippage in that rotation, if retail buys one too many dips and it doesn't work, maybe like what's going on with NVIDIA. Yeah, that's a question.

Let's wait for, you know, NVIDIA's earnings now. You want to talk about the ante being up on this. Wow. I mean, but you still got to wait. You still got to wait for it. It's not next week. It's a few weeks. We'll get more mega caps. Mike, I'll see you on closing bell. Thank you, Mike Santoli. The setup is next. All right, let's do the setup for you now. Got some big earnings coming up. Pfizer is on Tuesday morning before the bell. Jenny, you own it.

Talk to me. So that shouldn't be too exciting. They held a guidance call in December. They talked about everything. What they're going to need to show is product pipeline and debt pay down. They really need to show that product pipeline. They have got to give investors some growth to believe in.

What about Regeneron? More exciting there. That's Tuesday morning as well. Yeah, no. So they're going to need to talk about Depixent growth and also their pipeline. That stock had been a huge, huge, huge grower for several years. It's down actually almost 30% over the last year. So this too, they're just going to need to show clients or sorry, investors how they're going to return to growth with the pipeline. It's tough. Chipotle is Tuesday afternoon. Steph, that's yours.

Yeah, I think 5.7% same-store sales, 4% traffic growth, and operating margin expansion of 70 basis points. That should be enough. If the comp is below 5.7, obviously it'll disappoint, but I would be a buyer. These guys have the best trends in the industry. H&R Block, Tuesday afternoon. Rob.

Scott, it's hard to get a ton of takeaways from this quarter. Nearly all their revenues come from the March quarter, but I would be looking for any commentary around their views on the IRS tax press software. That could be a headwind for their do-it-yourself model. Still a cheap stock, though, and we love the business. Stanley Black & Decker's Wednesday morning. Jenny? That'll be really interesting. When we were talking about tariffs before, here's a company that absolutely

actually has pressure from tariffs. So you saw that come down from like 108 before the election to around 90 where it is now. And they import from China. So unlike other companies that just get labeled, like they actually could have a problem and they're going to need to flesh that out. Although I'll say to a huge degree, it's already incorporated in the share price. But it'll be interesting. That'll be macro interesting. Yeah, got a lot of interesting ones next week for certain. Finals, we'll do those next.

All right, closing bell, 3 o'clock Eastern today. Jeremy Siegel of the Wharton School. We need to talk to him about this market. Eric Woodring, too, his first reaction, the Morgan Stanley Apple analyst on those earnings. That will be a critical conversation as well. Rob Seachin, your final trades, what? It's got to be Amazon. Earnings momentum fueled by AWS and operational efficiencies and dominance in e-commerce and cloud computing. Thank you very much, Farmer Jim. Small caps. Let's keep playing for the broadening of the rally.

Jenny. For dividend investors only, UPS, 5.7% yield and still decent earnings growth ahead. Decker's, I'm not there yet, but I like it. All right, you let us know what you do. I'll see you on Closing Bell. The exchange begins 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.

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