The Committee’s Playbook for New Highs 6/26/25
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All right, Sarah, thanks so much. Welcome to the Halftime Report. I'm Scott Wapner. Front and center this hour, the new high playbook as stocks close in on another major milestone. We're trading the markets today, as always, with the Investment Committee. Joining me for the hour, Josh Brown, Jenny Harrington, Shannon Sikosha, Rob Seachin. We will go to the markets. We are green across the board. Sarah was just telling you we're not that far away from a new high on the S&P 0.3 percent. The

The market just continues, Josh, to march higher. We are on pace now for its best May to June stretch since 1997, up near 10% during that period of time. This market continues to climb a wall of worry, a wall of whatever, but it continues to go up.

Yeah, the playbook is very simple, and it's been the same playbook since the market bottomed, and that is momentum. But I want to talk about why. The S&P 500 is up 23% in total return since April 8th. Stock picking has been somewhat difficult for a lot of professional asset managers who are looking at every sector and trying to build a balanced portfolio, because we definitely have haves and have-nots. From the bottom through today, only 165 names in the S&P 500 are outperforming

are outperforming the index. So it's about 33% of all stocks do better than the index.

Year to date, the S&P is up only 4%, which is a below average year, obviously. And you've got 220 stocks beating the index, so about 44%. So year to date, it's been a little bit easier. When you look at the momentum factor, it is far and away the best performing factor. Nothing's even close. Up 16% year to date. The next best factor is the growth factor, which is up 6.5%. So that's the playbook. It

It could change. It just hasn't changed all year. MTUM, which is the major momentum, back at all-time highs. And it's up 22% versus the S&P up 12 over the last 12 months. So this is what's happening in the market right now. I think it's pretty obvious. People understand that.

And it has never been more important to focus not only on the fundamentals of the companies you're buying, but price action, at least if you care how you're doing relative to the benchmark. Rob knows and he cares because the momentum factor, you're all over that as the MTUM. So if you look, I know it's an NVIDIA and Microsoft world. We're going to get to those stocks, obviously.

But there are some huge winners from the April bottom, and the momentum factor is all over that. Stocks like Vistra, which is up 82% since April 8th. NRG is up 79% since April 8th.

Broadcom, 69%. LAM Research, 59%. Jenny's got Microchip, the preferreds, 99%. It's a near double. Coinbase, a 52-week high today, up 127%. Seagate is a double, a record high today. Palantir is a record high today. Jabil is a record high today. Amphenol is a record high today. Dell with a positive call. Coinbase had a positive call. This is where you want to be. You want to stay here.

Positioning has been the most dominant driver for markets. When we came into the year, we were in the 98th percentile. We were at the same valuations that we are today. Today, we're in the 20th percentile for institutional positioning, and so people are playing catch-up.

You've seen that catch up in the form of low quality, but you've also seen that pick up in the dominant areas of the market, right, that have bounced off the base. A lot of the names that you mentioned we own are in and around the AI trade. Even the utility companies that you mentioned are in and around the AI trade. So that's a comfortable place for investors to kind of chase. But you've also seen some of the lower quality, lower margin, high beta names kind of

play catch up to. We don't play there, but you've definitely seen it. And you have an environment where I think investors are going to continue to play catch up in the short run because of that underweight positioning. Intermediate term, you start to bring in things like slowing economic growth. You start to bring in things like is this earnings bottoming really for real? Are we actually going to see that?

And ultimately, you're starting to see some of the economic data soften just a bit. So you hope some of these animal spirits that are going to pick up actually manifest themselves and start to drive markets a little bit more forward. There's catch up in positioning and there's also catch up in sentiment from individuals

investors like Jenny, who has not been a buyer into this move, certainly from a sentiment standpoint, not nearly as bullish on this market as others have been. Is it time to change that view? I mean, as I said at the top, you can have worry about this, that and the other thing, and the market just continues to climb it and

and leave those people in the dust? Well, let's define buyer, right? If you're talking about buyer in terms of putting money to work, I was a buyer. I added Microchip, Ryman, Ethan Allen, all in early April because I had some cash. So in terms of actually putting money to work- I mean, kind of figuratively and literally, right? No, the figuratively, like the-

Am I a buyer that I believe the market should continue to run at the pace that it's run at since it bounced off of the April lows? No, I don't buy that argument. Well, you qualified it, though, at the pace. Forget about the actual pace, but why does it have to go at that pace? It may not go at the markets up 27% for the S&P since the bottom. So here's the thing. Whenever anyone listens to us, you need to consider what perspective we're coming from. And I'm coming from the perspective of,

of a dividend income investor, right? Even our growth strategy is a disciplined growth strategy where we look for these free cash flow yields. So like I am not a positive growthy, raw, raw outlook. I'm always going to look for the worst. A long time ago, there was this cool book out called

I think it was called Tree Ring Capital. And it talked about the way the Japanese invest. And the Japanese invest differently than the U.S. Or they have a different investment philosophy where they kind of look for everything that can go wrong and then spend a little bit of their time on what can go right. I literally just wrote down on the bottom of my page, waiting for things to go wrong rather than what actually could go right. Ah.

There is a difference. It's not waiting for things to go wrong. It's thinking about things that can go wrong. Yeah, but you get consumed with thinking about all the things that could go wrong. Earnings aren't going to be good. Look at the multiple. Oh, I don't like the way that the administration's putting forth their policy, the trade thing, the tariffs, this, that, and the other. Like waiting for something, thinking about going wrong. If I was waiting for something to go wrong, all three of our strategies would not be fully invested. They

they are fully invested. I don't wait for things to go wrong, but I always worry about what's going to go wrong. And so I just always have a more cautious, more pessimistic perspective. And so I sit here today and I'm like, all right,

23 times this year's earnings. The earnings growth rate is slowing from what it was in the past couple years. Economic uncertainty relative to where we were a year ago. Geopolitical uncertainty relative to where we were a year ago. Sure, maybe. I love the improvement in potential bank regulation, but

Even regulatory improvement is happening slower than we expected it to. So I look at this and I just don't see how we go significantly higher. You know, great, awesome, the market's up 4.25% year-to-date. How do we go from that to up 16% or 17% on the year? I don't think we do. I think it's just a tepid return environment. I feel like, Shan, it's a tale of two markets. If you look at it from a year-to-date standpoint, you missed the whole movie.

The year to date, obviously, has been lackluster, but that's not the story that should be told. It's where we are from the April bottom. The S&P is up 27 percent from the April bottom. The Nasdaq is up 36 percent since April. Last I checked, we're not even in July yet.

that's the story I think you look at the movie short actually that like that that high time period action would make you a little bit more cautious I don't think it would make you more optimistic actually think you should look at the overall time period because we came into this year your expectations were obviously not for

the type of the double-digit low 20s returns in the S&P 500 that we had been delivered the last two years. Now what were the catalysts that you were waiting for? You were waiting for the potential catalyst around the tax bill. You were waiting for an expansion of CapEx. You were waiting for some of this deregulatory impulse, which frankly hasn't really come yet. What we're seeing is a lack of enforcement of regulation. That's not technically deregulation. We actually need to see follow through on that. But I think what you're asking, Scott, is at this inflection point,

Is it the time, based on the strength and the momentum in the market, that you want to feel more comfortable adding back into your positions in the U.S.? Or do you want to actually continue to look for these broader opportunities? That is the question. And I think that it comes down to, in the second half of the year, do you think that some of these pro-business forces are actually going to catalyze stronger earnings growth than we have seen or have expected or estimated? And our view is that

in those industries and sectors, there will be stronger earnings growth based on these catalysts. And so you can justify some of the run-up, maybe not in the individual stocks that you're discussing that have been the leaders thus far in this quarter, that that broadening out actually can bring other stocks into the market rather than just relying on the force that has driven second quarter performance. What do you think? What are

What do we think? What do you guys think? I personally think it was driven by fundamentals. These are earnings-based concentration. Those stocks have been the best performers from an earnings standpoint. I do agree with you that I think you can get a broadening out because, you know, if we get rate cuts, if we get some of the certain things that we would hope to see that drive earnings, productivity from AI, you name it, you can get a broadening out.

I don't think that is today. I don't think it's now. That is all predicated on what the Fed does. And frankly, it's all predicated on what happens to the dollar if you're hoping for international. Do we continue this downward trajectory to maintain that type of momentum? So I think we're going to be concentrated.

while we are having this positioning chase. And ultimately, I think when you want to get cautious is when you see skepticism fade. Can I counter that? I'm actually not questioning the fundamentals of the stocks that many of that you've laid out that have performed well. I'm not questioning that. What I'm stating is that, you know, I also think the impact of the Fed through the second half of the year is overstated from a transmission perspective. I think the one area where actually it will be boosted

is in small and mid-cap stocks because those are perceived to be much more interest rate sensitive. But if you're waiting on the Fed to deliver in the second half of the year the gains in the equity market, you're probably mispositioned in my view. Okay. So then let's do, I gave you the angel view on the shoulder of the bulls, okay, of the market. Now you go the other shoulder, the devil's over there and he's like,

Maybe you guys are all too complacent. Do you really think this tax bill is going to get done nice and clean? Do you really think that tariffs are not a non-starter? Are they not going to be a story because the market feels like it's desensitized to it? Do you really think that there's not going to be this lag effect?

from what's already been done, and then the market, then the economy is going to slow more, the labor market is going to slow more. Do you really think that the Fed's just going to come to the rescue and cut rates and don't fight the Fed? What about all that? What about that side of the debate? Well, you need those things to be in place, or the S&P would be at 30 times earnings. You need there to be a wall of worry. I don't know. I'm doing this show since 2011. There's nothing to worry about. It's one side going to win out. The markets are at the top.

Is one side going to win out, or do you just play this market? Look, the whole thing at the top, we said, what's your new high playbook? Define winning out. You play the market you have. Can I keep it above with you? We're in a bull market, okay? So we had a cyclical bear market. In my day, they used to last an average of 13 months. The last one lasted three weeks. But we had one. We were down 20% as we repriced, obviously tariff risk.

Obviously, layoffs and things that might take unemployment to a point where it's like a no return. We did that pricing in, and then the cardboard cutout thing was thrown out the window, and everybody had to reprice back, and that's natural. That's how markets function. But look at stocks. Look less at some of these headlines, and just look at the way the stocks are behaving. My four biggest positions all made record highs today.

Not 52-week highs, record highs. Nvidia, yeah. Okay? It just went. No reason, no catalyst, no news. Just goodbye. Take a look at CrowdStrike. Broke 500 today. Boom. You like that noise better? I did. Okay.

Shake Shack. Trying to be like being a kid. Shake Shack hit 138 today. You want to know what the news is? The Dubai chocolate pistachio shake just went from being limited edition. I'm not even kidding. To a full menu item. To a full menu item nationwide. People are lined up. The Dubai

- Do they know you're taking a two week vacation? Do they know you're taking a two week vacation? - Also, a deal between Shake Shack and Delta on domestic flights, first class passengers, which is me, can pre-book their Shake Shack order for those flights. This is a very bullish time for me. And then last but not least, Uber. New all time high right now, as I'm talking.

When I look at stocks and not what are the mid caps doing, what's value doing, what's law, it's a totally different picture. Now, does that mean just buy whatever and who cares? No, I talk about the best stocks in the market. And every time I roll one out, which I will in about 20 minutes, the idea is, well, where does the stock go? Where does the market tell you you're overexposed or the story has changed or the momentum is gone? And that way you can be in this market

but not in a cavalier way where you're just expecting a half a percent off every single day. Isn't that why the policy does matter? Because it matters to the individual companies that we're all looking to own. Like, Scott, the delay on the transmission of tariff inflation, it's a delay, right?

Companies will experience tariff higher prices and they will have to transmit those down. It may be just a one-time thing and so what? And it may be a longer drag. Right. It continues to be kicked down the chain. So in that interim period, if you have been a company that has been really watching for protection of your margins and that you have really been focused on maintaining your competitive advantage in this more difficult economic environment, why wouldn't you be able to catalyze that into earnings over the next couple of

quarters because we haven't had the environment that you were bracing for. How are earnings going to be this season? Because it's going to come down to that. I mean, the market's obviously what some would say, like Jenny would make the argument. Market's too expensive.

based on what expected earnings are. And expectations are probably going to end up coming down. I think earnings will be fine because we're still working off of an environment where tariffs hadn't kicked in all the way. We're still working off of a healthy corporate environment, a healthy consumer environment. Nothing started to change. I think, again, how do you argue against the multiple of the market? If you think earnings are going to be fine, you just laid out all the reasons why they're fine, because 23 times earnings has already accounted for all

All the excellent earnings growth that we went into this year are already expecting. It's pulled forward. If we were at 18 times and there was room for multiple expansion, that would be better. But we've pulled forward 23 times, presumes the very best situation. So what we really need to see now is what they're going to say about third quarter. Because now tariffs are starting to get a little bit real. Not really real, to your point about the transmission. Like, how long does it take?

how long before people start to make different decisions. So I think that third quarter commentary will be more important. I don't see why second quarter shouldn't ring in decently. There's two reasons why you're right. Thank you. Did Scott hear that? Yes. I did. There's a phenomenon that Bank of America's economist talked about a couple weeks ago called sneakflation.

And sneakflation is this idea where, let's say a company has higher costs to deliver something to consumers here in the US because of the cost of raw materials coming in from overseas or finished goods or whatever it is. They don't necessarily have to take the tariff to that item. They could spread out that higher cost across everything they sell

but in smaller increments where the consumer is less likely to notice and they don't have to piss off the White House. So sneakflation is going to be a part of the witch's brew that we just start to encounter and people say, oh wow. - And can I say something on that?

Well, as soon as I finish, you can. The second part of this, which I think is equally interesting, yes, you can make the argument that we haven't felt the full brunt of the tariffs and it's on a lag, but you know what else is on a lag? You know what else we haven't felt the full effect of? It's the productivity gains and the increased margins from AI. And that's not in, maybe it's in the multiple, but it's not in the earnings yet, but it's

It's coming company by company. Especially anything outside of the enablers. It's not in the earnings. Here's what's funny too, Jenny. Sorry. You want to dominate? So here's what's interesting. When you look at earnings, which you were talking about, value earnings are getting cut.

growth earnings are accelerating. Josh said at the beginning of the show, the most important thing right now is momentum. So if earnings estimates are getting raised for growth businesses, doesn't that indicate that that's where the momentum's gonna stay for the time being when value estimates are getting cut? Value was a trade at the beginning of this year.

I'm not saying it won't ever reemerge if we get a cyclical acceleration, right? But you need that cyclical impulse. And until then, we are where we are, and I would not get off your surfboards, folks. What's value? Financials? Industrials? Are those value? No, financials are not trading like value. Right, that's what I'm saying. Value is anything related to home building. Home building.

So let's get away from-- anything out of housing. It's a very small bucket of things that are actually value right. Health care, home building. You're right. Here's what I want to say. So I had a very interesting last two days. This better be so good. I think it is. I mean, yes, the build up was big, so it really better be. OK. Yeah, you're going to sneer. Whatever. You sneered at all my conferences. Go ahead.

I spent, you know, I was at the CFA conference and I was at the JP Morgan Energy Conference. But like crystallizing this, Generac was talking. And Generac had such interesting insight. And they said, look, when the tariffs started hitting, we were expecting $125 million hit, right? And that would have created demand destruction because we're passing it on to the consumer. With the change, now we're thinking it's 60 million. With 60 million, we don't know what the demand destruction is. But this is your point. We don't know what these things are going to be. It's the sneakflation, right? If $60 million of Generac

increased expense gets passed on to the client. Like, what does that really do? How does that really hit? How does that multiply out across so many companies? We don't know. And they also didn't know for a month if it was going to be 125 or 60. Those are big numbers. I don't know what category Generac falls into. Is it a growth company or a value company? I don't know. I don't care. I just think this stuff is going to start rolling down the pipeline in the 2Q earnings. And this is what we need to listen to. And we just have no idea what way it falls. So what... Are you...

using that as evidence of

the kinds of stocks that you would not buy? Generac, not yet. Right? That's always been on our short list. It's an interesting company. The free cash flow generation is interesting, but there's too much uncertainty there now. And I like that term. I hadn't heard it before, sneakflation. But when you said that, I'm like, this is exactly the case in point of when it's going to creep in. This part of my point about how the whole conversation started, there's been uncertainty around everything forever. Always will be. Yeah. And yet... Thank God. But...

I want to say something on that. So I've always thought that when you're buying a stock or when you're choosing a sector to invest in, you look at like a decision tree. And there's maybe 12 branches. I would argue that in the last few months, there's not 12 branches to the decision tree. There's like 1,000 right now. I think there's more complexity right now to predicting

future returns on stocks and the market because of the geopolitics, because of the domestic politics than there has been in a long time. But isn't that what we actually have to do is focus on what is going to cause the change in the rate of change that allows assets to be attracted to whatever asset class it is

and stay there for a period of time. There's always a catalyst, right? And the catalyst in the case of the larger growth companies, the tech companies that have done well, were superior earnings. I mean, it was remarkable what happened. And so you need a catalyst in any one of those things. If it's the home builders, you need rate cuts.

If it's Lowe's and Home Depot, you need the same thing. Would you buy financials today? Would you buy financials today, which are less than 1% from a new high? I think it depends on the financials. We own some that are expensive. We own some that are cheap. We obviously own Jefferies. Wells Fargo you owned. The price target got raised. Jefferies was lower today off the back of its earnings. You own J.P. Morgan that hit a record high today. So I think J.P. Morgan is the best-run bank in the world. It's our largest holding and one of our dividend portfolios.

It's our largest holding in one of our dividend portfolios. And, you know, I think they have benefited from conservatism and from being the safe choice. And we're not changing that. I think at the margin, if you want to focus on a business that has not done as well and has the possibility to have some cyclical receleration and optionality in it and it's not expensive, it's Jeffries. OK, and Jeffries is down a lot.

year to date, right? We've owned it for a long time, so we're still up on Jefferies, but it's given back a lot. I think it's down 30% year to date. But if you listen to their earnings call, their M&A pipeline is building. They're very excited about the capital markets activity they're going to see in the second half of the year. They didn't miss by as much as they thought it was down, but it was not down as much as people thought from an earnings standpoint. And I

I think they're very excited for that. So if you wanna have some things that are working and ride that momentum wave and marry them with other assets that have embedded optionality to this broadening out trade thoughtfully, I think that's a great way to do it. - Anybody care about what's been happening with the dollar before I get to Bitcoin and the fact that it's been sitting this little run out? - Positive tailwind for multinational companies. I wouldn't buy stocks because of it.

And if the dollar were up, I would give you the optimistic side of that too. I know of no people on the planet, I could be wrong, who utilize the dollar as their predominant lens through which to decide how big or small their equity allocation should be.

You know one now. So, he- You're predominant. The dollar is the most important thing as it relates to international investing. It is the same- Different conversation. Okay, okay, but you said, you were talking. Where is it? I bring it up. Have an international stock tailwind. Yes, you do. I bring it up because the more that Trump pounds on Powell, the more the dollar goes down, okay? The dollar's pacing for its worst first half in decades.

Now, years, decades. Dollar index is at a three-year low. Josh sees the positive side of it. Good for multinationals, obviously. And internationals. And internationals. It should be a portfolio. Yeah. So we can't- It's certainly- The buck, pardon the pun, stops there?

It's certainly something, as Arsenio Hall used to say, things that make you go, hmm, why when we have these risk-off moves are we seeing the moves that we've seen in the 30-year? Why does the dollar continue to weaken when these have consistently been safe haven trades?

And now they're not acting like some other state. What is Bitcoin acting like as the market approaches? Well, is it? Taneya McKeel joins us now because it really isn't.

rallying despite a lot of inflows and despite what this market's doing. What's up with that, Tania? Yeah, Scott, $4 billion of inflows in a Bitcoin ETF this month, but the price of Bitcoin itself only up about 3% in that same time. So there's a missing piece here. We talk so much about the buyers. There are the sellers, which are these mega whales who are likely Chinese miners. We have data from CryptoQuant showing that while ETFs and corporate treasuries are

have been big buyers this year. That's mostly being almost perfectly offset by the selling by bigger whales. So check out buying from wallets with 100 to 1,000 Bitcoin. Those are likely the ETF wallets as well as corporate treasuries versus selling from the over 1,000 Bitcoin and over 10,000 Bitcoin cohorts. So this, Scott, is one reason Bitcoin's price is stuck.

It's evidence of a big shift in ownership in the Bitcoin market retail. So under one Bitcoin for what it's worth, those sellers, those are sellers, too. But they're kind of an insignificant cohort at this point, unlike in previous cycles. And it could mean we see we see traders adopting more sophisticated options based strategies or turn to proxies and treasury companies for their Bitcoin returns. Scott.

Taneya, thank you. That's Taneya McKeel. You have a thought on this? You still own some Bitcoin, don't you? Yeah. Look, I don't pretend to know what drives the price of Bitcoin. I talk to a lot of people who are much more involved in the ecosystem and they have interesting theories. But my take is

is that this is now a central part of the ecosystem. It's being sponsored by 13 ETFs, trillion-dollar companies that issue ETFs. So we should start thinking less about this as some anomalous thing from another planet and more about it just as yet another asset class that people buy and sell on a daily basis for various reasons which are unique to them. And it's really hard to define ETFs

on any given day why it might be up or down $600 per coin. I don't even try to. Let's take a look at Circle, which is up huge today. Obviously, a recent IPO up 600% since and really volatile. There it is. I mean, a big move today, but you look at what it's done the prior days, down more than 15%.

over the last couple days just to point that out no no ownership here well i think what'll happen on the circle front is that you're gonna get five more of these in the form of IPOs in the second half of the year you could see Kraken, Gemini filed you'll see a whole host of companies capitalizing on the obvious excitement around

digital asset infrastructure plays, which is what Circle is. And the valuations won't make sense because there's a ton of scarcity right now. Circle, for example, almost approaching the valuation of Coinbase. Coinbase makes more money from Circle than Circle does in net income because of the distribution fees. None of it makes sense at all. If there were 20 of these things trading, probably multiples wouldn't be doing what they're doing, but there aren't. And so

US equity managers who want to have exposure to crypto and can't themselves buy Bitcoin, can't themselves buy any other assets in the ecosystem, they can own Coinbase, they can own Robinhood, they can own Circle, and they can tell their board of directors, "Hey, look at us, we have crypto exposure." So that's a big part of the story.

It's fine. I'm not in the stock. I have no issue with it. But people should understand that that's what's driving these names. All right, we'll take a quick break. Coming up, more on today's top movers plus our calls of the day. And later, Josh Brown, he told you he's got a new stock, his best stock in the market list. Get ready. Best stock in the market list. Hit a new 52-week high today. We're back in two.

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Let's hear some stocks on the move. There obviously are many today. Hims and Hers pacing for its worst week ever. You flagged this to our crew. It's something that I've never seen before. So the stock started this week with a 35% crash because they had a joint venture with Novo Nordisk to sell legitimate, no, I shouldn't say legitimate, to sell branded version of WeGovie versus the compounded version that they've been selling. And then Novo Nordisk, after a month,

put out a press release basically accusing them of false advertising and endangering patients and pulled out. So HIMSS got crushed, but the thing is they still have millions of users who like that platform. I don't know if this is a newsflash. People don't like going to the doctor and face-to-face talking about erectile dysfunction,

or being fat slobs. So, I'm speaking for myself. All right, so I think like when you think about whether this stock could recover or not, I think you go with the distribution versus the original product manufacturer because HIMS could pivot to selling any other version and there are now 10 of them. So maybe this sell-off got overdone and I thought it was an interesting story to mention. All right, JetBlue.

The second largest investor to consider selling the stake, their stake, according to Reuters. It's a near 10% stake. Jenny, you own the stock. That's not that big of a reaction to...

I guess a news headline that would lead you to believe that the stock might be down more if the second largest investor was considering selling the stake. Yeah, I mean, the thing is so beaten to nothing. But I want to share another nugget of wisdom from my exciting week of conferences. So the subject of value traps came up.

and one of the portfolio managers who was presenting said a lot of our best performers were the worst performers. Be careful not to be too quick to deem something a value trap. And I think this has been a terrible stock, but the reality is things are going better than they were. There's a new management. They haven't had

They started in February of '24, so a year and a half. I don't think they've had quite enough time to really start to turn things around. But if there's any improvement to earnings growth, if they could ever get back to $1 a share-- they used to be at $2 a share-- it's really cheap, and there should be some improvement. But I think that's the point of the response. Why do you own the stock still? Because we don't think it should be sold here. I think there's upside potential. So every time you own something, you look at it as what's the opportunity cost.

And just to beat myself up a little more, you know how we were talking about Organon over the last couple weeks? - Yeah. - And I didn't sell Organon when it had its big hit down to eight. Now it's above 10. So even though things get just shellacked, sometimes they're down too much. And I think there could be upside. - You go to a lot of conferences. - I know, it's why I'm so smart.

Okay. Why don't we do a reverse? That's a big vote of confidence for the conference circle. Why would they allow themselves to have a $4 stock? Why not do a reverse stock split? Nobody could buy this. Maybe they should. Institutional investors are not buying it under $5. I think that's right. But I don't know why they're not doing it. They don't want to see a stock that's under $5. All right, up next, Josh. So maybe they'll listen to you.

We got Josh Brown's best stocks in the market list ahead. First, though, Silvana now has the headlines for us. Hi, Silvana. Hey, Scott. Good afternoon. Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, today claimed victory over Israel, saying the country was crushed under the blows of the Islamic Republic.

public. In his first public remarks since the U.S. strikes last weekend, Khamenei also claimed the country gave the U.S. crew a big slap in the face in its attack on the airbase in Qatar, adding that Iran would not surrender. The Pentagon this morning releasing footage showing how bunker buster bombs work in a test of the

30,000-pound munition, which is the same type used in the Iran strikes, which the Pentagon says is the largest ever operational strike by B-2 stealth bombers. And in Gaza, Israel has reportedly stopped humanitarian aid from entering for two days. That's according to Reuters, and it comes after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday there were indications Hamas was seizing aid. Israel has yet to comment, but

The Higher Commission for Tribal Affairs, which represents influential clans in Gaza, said trucks were protected as part of a security process. Halftime Report, we'll be right back. CNBC News Update is sponsored by Morgan Stanley, where old school hard work meets new business. If your small business is booming, you might say, but you should say, and we'll help your growing business. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

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Blue Emirates business. All right, we're back. Christina Partsenevelos has a market flash for us on CoreWeave. I just saw this report. What's going on here? Well, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that CoreWeave is looking to acquire Core Scientific once again. I say once again because the two companies have been working together for years. CoreWeave rents GPUs as a service. They're considered a neocloud. Core Scientific is a company that operates a lot of these digital infrastructures for big

COIN MIMING, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. SO THE TWO WORK TOGETHER TO PROVIDE THOSE SERVICES. AND SO IT JUST KIND OF MAKES SENSE THAT PERHAPS THEY WOULD BE TRYING TO JOIN FORCES. HOWEVER, LAST YEAR, CORE WEAVE DID TRY TO ACQUIRE CORE SCIENTIFIC, CORE WEAVE DIDN'T OFFER ENOUGH CORE SCIENTIFIC

rejected the bid. Perhaps things are changing this time around, according to the Wall Street Journal report. I did reach out to Corweave and I'm just checking my phone. I have not received any confirmation just yet in regards to this, but that is why you're seeing core scientifics price jump just on the notion that Corweave could be back in the market to acquire this name. Okay.

You hear from Coral Weave, you let us know. This is Christina Partsenevelis with the update. Josh Brown's best stocks in the market. The spotlight today is on a name that has hit a 52-week high today. It is Coupang, CPNG. Yeah, so we were talking about the dollar before. One of the bull markets that's taking place right now that not a lot of people are that excited about

at least not yet, is emerging market stocks. They're really starting to go. The IEMG is having a great year outperforming the S&P. Within the IEMG, Korean stocks are the fourth largest country allocation. The KOSPI is on fire, up 28%. Korea's 2550 index, which is a little bit growthier, is up 42%.

And almost nobody knows this or is paying any attention. Coupang is on the best stocks in the market list because it's a Korean business, but it's incorporated and based in Seattle. So this is a US company with a US founder, but most of their business is being the Amazon of South Korea.

The best comp here is MercadoLibre, Melly. Melly is up 9,000% plus since its IPO. This company is probably five years behind Melly in terms of its margins, its earnings, its growth. So there's still a lot of opportunity. It came public in 21. Everybody forgot about it because the whole growth stock market crashed for a year. But now it's working its way back.

And the reality is that it's not terribly expensive. It's in a 40% drawdown from that 21 high. Barclays has a $36 target. And it's a best stock. It's breaking out. You've got a 50 to 200-day moving average crossover, which signals short-term momentum. And I think the stock probably gets itself into the mid-30s at a

minimum based on the breakout that we've seen. So Kupang is a name that not a lot of people know of in the United States, but it should be on people's radar.

It is on our radar now. You got a question? No, it's just an interesting thing. So, you know, we have this international strategy. And one of the things that's interesting about Korea is that people always think it's, you know, it actually counts as an emerging market, where it's a very developed market. It's a very sophisticated, robust economy. So I wonder, from an index perspective... Great question. Vanguard does not consider it emerging. Let me see an intraday. You can throw the intraday back up. CPNG. Vanguard has South Korea in developed markets. Yeah.

But the MSCI has it as emerging. Weird, right? Which is why the BlackRock, the iShares products that are based on MSCI include South Korea as emerging. And it's right behind Taiwan, India and China as the fourth largest weight. But this is a U.S. stock.

that a large mid-cap U.S. stock that you can use to capitalize on what's happening with Korean stocks, which is just absolute dynamite this year. All right. We will continue to watch CPNG. Mike Santoli, he's next with his midday word after this break. All right. Senior markets commentator Mike Santoli joins us now with his midday word. What do you think of this market here, Mike?

You know, it's checking off some of the boxes that you'd want to see. I mean, the fact that we're getting right to the doorstep of the old highs obviously leads you to that moment where you say, OK, should I fade this? Are there reasons that I should be suspicious of the staying power here? I'm not seeing too many of them. You're not seeing people super over aggressively positioned, at least not institutions. There's silly stuff going on with a lot of the recent IPOs and a lot of the kind of story stocks with not much behind them. But

that's a feature of bull markets. It's not necessarily outright indictment. Um, you see this kind of boring grind higher for no particular reason today. That's bull market behavior. That's sort of what the way it goes. I do think we have to maybe get a reality check on what the underlying, uh,

economy is doing because I think that the market has made everybody say, you see, the economy is fine. It's so resilient. Everything is great. Well, the economic surprise index was making new lows for the year just last week. Continuing claims are higher. I think we're kind of retro reasoning in terms of what the economy is doing. And so that's why I think pay attention to the two-year yield at 375 again. We're positioning for rate cuts. We hope it's good news rate cuts.

But you've got to get confirmation of that from the jobs number and everything else next week. All right, good stuff. We'll see you on Closing Bell. Mike Santoli, thank you. Coming up, we take you inside the alternative universe with momentum now building around private assets in your 401k. Our Leslie Picker following that money. Dow's good for 345. We're back after this.

Welcome back. Wall Street, Washington teaming up to bring private assets to your 401ks. Leslie Picker following that money for us and has more. Hey, Les. Hey, Scott. Big trend in this space. BlackRock making a push just this morning out with a paper describing the firm's plans for putting more private assets into 401ks. BlackRock intends to offer a target date fund with as much as 20 percent allocated to private assets by the early part of next year, I'm told.

The firm estimates that incorporating private equity and private credit into a 401 will deliver 15 percent more income over four decades, and that is before fees. Washington is entertaining this concept as well. Just this week, the House advanced a bill that broadens the so-called accredited investor status, which would allow more people to invest in private markets through their 401 s. And there have been recent reports about the Trump administration's expected plan to issue an executive order that directs federal agencies to study

and proposed rule changes involving private assets in retirement plans. There are still sizable hurdles, though, among plan providers, including high fees, illiquidity, opacity, and litigation risk. BlackRock in its paper says a lot of the structuring would require products that are built specifically for 401 s to address those concerns. Scott? Let's see, Leslie, what the group thinks. This is your wheelhouse. What do you think? Why not?

- I'm not 1000% opposed to it if people really wanna do it. I'm just not convinced it'll be as additive to returns as everyone's saying. There's obviously a ton of money being spent by the industry in order to get these rule changes because these are higher fee products.

And it's very difficult to make the leap that, oh, you're paying more so the performance will definitely be there. It very often doesn't work that way. There's a chart floating around today conflating IRRs as the same thing as compounded returns versus the S&P 500. It's literally not how it works. That very chart that I'm referring to comes from a private equity firm and has nothing about fee calculations or any other metrics that might actually affect the user experience of owning the fund.

So, don't get so carried away would be my take. If you want to do it, feel free to do it. If you look at the State Street Private Markets Index, which I think is probably the gold standard here, the S&P outperforms on one year, three year, five year, and ten year periods, and it costs three basis points. I don't really see what the burning desire is to get these things in the midst of people's retirement.

The burning desire comes from the retirement community itself. So our holding company is called Edgeco Holdings. We own two businesses, New Edge and we own American Trust and Custody Services, which is a very large $570 billion player in that marketplace. The demand from our clients is very significant in that space. You are going to see this migration. By the credit.

everything. You're going to see what happens in this space in that there's massive demand from the plan participants. For alts in your 401k. For alts in 401ks. And it's our institutional clients. It's a B2B business. So the institutional clients are asking so that their clients can have it. The plan advisors are asking for that. It is very important to make sure that the community of investors kind of intelligently gets what they want. We also, on our side of the business, own

Own Blackstone, right? Because the larger players are going to be able to service that community much more easily and better than some of the boutique providers. That's how I would do it. I would buy Carlisle, Blackstone. I would rather own the equities of the GPs than be an LP in a third-tier fund that's been purpose-built for mom-and-pop 401ks. I'd rather own the companies. Got to go. Finals are next. All right, let's do finals. Cici, what do you got?

Novartis, bright spot in the healthcare space this year, up 27%, it's still cheap. Okay, Shannon?

Deregulation and capital markets are positive tailwinds for financials, and valuations are still not too bad. Yeah, less than 1% from a new high. Jenny. Okay, Sixth Street Specialty Lending, 9% yield, the creme de la creme of the private credit firms. Here's a great way to own it directly. Okay. More directly. Thank you. And Josh Brown. Amazon making waves in AI, in cloud. Everywhere you look, they are advancing the puck. I really like this situation. Thank you. Second half. Thank you, everybody. See you on the bell.

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