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Can Stocks Reverse Course? 4/29/25

2025/4/29
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Bill Baruch
创始人和首席投资官,拥有丰富的金融行业经验,专注于商品和股票交易。
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Christina Partsinevelos
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Jason Snipes
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Josh Brown
金融分析师和评论家,专注于金融市场趋势和经济预测。
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Megan Casella
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Scott Wapner
主持《Halftime Report》,领导投资委员会讨论市场趋势和投资策略。
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Shannon Sikosha
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Stephanie Link
首席投资策略师和股票投资组合经理,曾任职于Nuveen和TheStreet,现任高塔威尔财富管理公司首席投资策略师。
Topics
Scott Wapner: 特朗普总统上任100天,股市表现不及预期,标普500指数下跌7.6%,纳斯达克指数下跌11.5%。市场对“美国例外论”的预期落空,美元贬值,债券抛售,企业下调业绩预期。我们讨论股市能否反弹。 Josh Brown: 11月至2月上半月股市表现良好,之后情况发生变化。第一季度财报与当时的市场环境差异很大,公司给出模糊的业绩指引,市场对此表示接受。标普500指数第一季度混合净利润率为12.4%,高于五年平均水平。 Stephanie Link: 市场已从低点反弹,部分股票涨幅超过50%。盈利好于预期,关税方面出现一些明朗化。36%的已公布财报显示盈利增长15%,销售增长4.1%,利润率正在提高。银行和工业公司给出了符合预期或区间范围的业绩指引。市场需要克服关税、减税和放松管制带来的不确定性。 Shannon Sikosha: 尽管消费者信心指数下降,但实际数据并未显示出消费者支出大幅下降。企业信心比消费者信心更能预测经济走势,目前企业资本支出并未减少。美国消费者信心可能在失业率上升时才会下降,目前尚未出现这种情况。每周失业救济金申请人数比非农就业人数更能预测经济走势,三個月平均失業救濟金申請人數遠低於衰退水平。 Jason Snipes: 我卖出卡特彼勒股票,因为它面临艰难的一年,并且即将迎来新任CEO。微软的业绩将强劲,因为它受关税的影响较小。我增持富国银行股票,因为它宣布派发新股息和进行400亿美元的股票回购。 Bill Baruch: 我仍然看好Spotify股票,并计划在股价下跌时增持。其收入增长良好,运营收入和自由现金流强劲,这是一个利润率的故事。 Megan Casella: 白宫将对汽车关税进行调整,包括降低关税和提供抵免额度。 Christina Partsinevelos: 英特尔计划今年晚些时候开始其18A工艺芯片的大规模生产。 Mike Santoli: 市场存在低迷的买盘,但债券收益率下跌,市场对经济数据反应敏感。

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I'm Scott Wapner, and you're listening to CNBC's Halftime Report, the podcast, the most profitable hour of the trading day. We record this live weekdays at 12 Eastern. Listen in.

I'm Scott Wapner. Front and center this hour, 100 days in for President Trump. Not the market performance many had hoped for, at least so far. We will debate whether stocks are poised for a major comeback with the Investment Committee. Joining me for the hour today, Josh Brown, Stephanie Link, Shannon Sikosha, Jason Snipe. We will show you what we're doing now. Mixed day. Majors are all good. The Russells red will follow all of that. S&P is, by the way, trying for its sixth straight quarter.

day of gains. But as I said, 100 days in, not exactly the performance that people were looking for. The S&P is down 7.6% over that period.

The Nasdaq's down 11 and a half. And then the Russell's worse than that. As many of you know, the EUSA is the fifth worst performing country ETF. Only Turkey, Thailand, Indonesia, and Taiwan have performed worse. Wall Street Journal's editorial board today says at 100 days, Trump 2.0 is in trouble. I think the point here is it is certainly not what many people expected. Not back on election night when we talked to investors, many of whom you know,

Let's watch. If Trump gets elected, we think those tax cuts will provide further stimulus, so we're not going to need as many rate cuts. So I think the backdrop looks incredibly constructive. So you have a lot of these positions that actually are going to start to take off if you continue to see him gaining the lead tonight. If animal spirits come back for companies, and if businesses have cost of money fall, and if there is a general wave of mergers and

regional banks work and actually biotech start to work, you have so many reasons for the Russell 2000 to go from trading at 10 times median PE towards 15. That'd be a 50% move. All right. Josh Brown, you were on the panel that night as well. The American exceptionalism trade hasn't worked out that way thus far. Can we get back to the level of optimism that you and others had on that night in November?

Well, the trade had worked and then in February everything fell apart. And so I think you had a really nice November, December, January, half of February. So the honeymoon was a good one. It was short. And now we're in a different situation. And I think what's most interesting about the reports that we're getting from Q1 earnings is how irrelevant they are. Like these are companies telling you how things were going in January.

And it was just to your point, it was a different world. It was a different era. It was a different mentality. So the important thing, and I've said this before, I think is how many companies use this opportunity to yank guidance or to give like very wide, broad guidance that's not really very useful to anyone. And we're seeing a lot of that. And so far the market has been okay with it. The market has been accepting. They understand.

They don't necessarily need very specific guidance. People that are trading these stocks understand that they're trading them under this cloud of uncertainty. And so far, we've kind of been okay. It really hasn't been as bad as a lot of people had prophesied. So that's kind of where we find ourself. It's not that bad, but it's also not that good. If you think about the blended net profit margin for the S&P 500 for Q1, it was 12.4%.

That's still better than the five-year average, which is 11.7. So it's not a bad quarter. The beat rate is a little bit less than usual. It's just that guidance piece. But so far, we're muddling through. Stephanie Link, never, I think, did most people think that

We mentioned the words American exceptionalism countless times on this program, countless times. I did, others did, because that was the expectation coming in. S&P down 8%, just about. American exceptionalism trade has turned into sell America trade. The dollar's on track for its biggest two-month decline in more than two decades.

The DXY is down almost 10% since President Trump took office. You can say it's good for international businesses, I get that, but that's not what people expected. Bonds sold off hard, not what people expected. Firms have taken down their S&P targets, not what people expected. Got another one today, HSBC goes to 5600 from 6700. Can we get the optimism back? And if so, how?

Well, sure we can. We have to get through tariffs and we have to get through tax cuts and we have to get more deregulation, which will come. But we've got to get through tariffs and the uncertainties regarding tariffs. In the meantime, we have a lot of wood to chop this week alone with 30 percent of the companies in the S&P 500 reporting earnings, big tech reporting earnings, lots of economic data, including big PCE inflation data and jobs as well. So we have a lot to get through. But let's just step back for

First and foremost, yes, the market is down 5% year to date, but it's also up 8% from the lows. The Q's are up 10.5% from the lows, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average is actually up 5% from the lows. So we have seen a recovery of some sort. 50%. Not 100%. Not 100%, right? No, we've gotten 50% from the February, I mean, from the high to the...

post-liberation day low. We've gotten 50% back. We've got a nice move back. We have. And I think the reason is because earnings actually have been better than expected. We are getting some clarity on tariffs, not a lot.

But the earnings picture, so 36% of the companies have reported so far, and you're running up 15% in earnings growth. Sales growth is up 4.1%. What does that tell you? That tells you what Josh was just talking about in terms of margins. Margins are doing their job. They're going higher. And so you are seeing better than expected bottom line. And that is why I think the markets have actually recovered. And we have gotten a lot of guidance. We got guidance.

decent guidance from the banks. I didn't think you were going to get any guidance from the banks. On industrials, all last week, every single one of my industrial companies gave guidance, either that was in line or maybe bracketed numbers. So, yeah, I mean, we don't have a lot of certainty, but we're at least getting something from these companies. And we headed into the print not expecting anything. So I'm encouraged.

by the action in the markets, the action in some of the cyclical stocks. And let's see what happens with technology. Well, Royal Caribbean, to your point, they

They raised their annual guidance on strong demand, defying what some had expected, because there's all sorts of negativity around the consumer, which we'll get to, but we'll stay on the business side of things first. Honeywell had better than expected results. Coca-Cola reaffirmed their full-year outlook as well, saying that the effects of the trade war should be, in their words, right now at least, did James Quincy, manageable results.

We'll see what develops, but that is the picture currently. Jason Snipes, speaking of industrials, you sold Caterpillar ahead of its earnings tomorrow before the bell, which is an interesting move to make now. Trade war related or not?

So, you know, I look at a name like Caterpillar, which for me is in the eye of the storm in terms of a pure cyclical play. And I think what folks are looking at, instead of buying equipment, they're looking to rent equipment. And prior to the announcement on tariffs,

This was suggested to be a tough year for Caterpillar as it was already. So they have a new CEO coming in in May. The stock is down close to 16% year-to-date. It's been a tough year, year-over-year, but for us it was time to take this name off the desk and look for other opportunities because there are other cyclical plays that are working. So for us, as it relates to kind of construction, data center build, and power, which I think is a bright spot for them,

we decided to kind of move elsewhere and look at some other opportunities. - Shan, Steph's optimism in the market stems largely from the fact of what she obviously said in her own words about earnings and guidance, but also the fact that the consumer has hung in there.

that the soft data, the surveys hasn't translated into the hard data, actual numbers. That the consumer confidence number you got today at 86 is the lowest since May of 2020. Until it shows up into the actual numbers, Steph says, okay, whatever. JP Morgan says though, the clock is ticking on hard data resilience.

We know that the surveys have been bad. UPS is cutting 20,000 jobs. Torsten Slocke at Apollo says you have the possibility of a negative number on Friday. But how do you see things in context of what you've heard from companies, what people are saying about the consumer, where we find ourselves 100 days in, which is a different picture than many had started to paint back in November?

I think the challenge is that we don't want to fall into the same trap that we fell into with consumer confidence during the sort of post-pandemic era. Because, Scott, the consumer hasn't been particularly confident for the last several years. What I think is more predictive, however, is business confidence. And so what you're seeing is if you look at, for instance, in the last couple of earnings seasons, you've actually seen companies continue to talk about capital expenditures

over the course of the next 12 months. Those that, you know, 2.3 times is higher than, you know, kind of your typical range for capital expenditure announcements. We haven't seen capital expenditure being pulled back. But, Scott, to your point, like what could be the tipping point for U.S. consumers if businesses, business activity, business confidence continues to decline? That is actually going to translate into slower activity.

And when you translate into slower activity, you're not only in a low hiring, low firing environment, but you start to see tick-ups in firings, right? Right now we're seeing a little bit lighter jolt report, a little bit lighter on job openings. That makes sense given the uncertainty. I think the challenge here is something that Steph talked about. These animal spirits, this business confidence that we were anticipating, if

I'm a business and I haven't reinvested in my business in the last couple of years, Scott, why would I do that right now? Why wouldn't I wait until the second half of the year or into 2026? The challenge is going to be the tipping point for the U.S. consumer is going to be when they start to lose their job. And we're not seeing that. We actually saw quit rates tick up.

So, for me, when I read through some of these earnings announcements, you talked about, for instance, Royal Caribbean. Look at Lufthansa versus Delta. Look at Hilton, which actually reported pretty good numbers considering some top line slowing. There is a lot of divergence in the market right now.

Because people think it's a little too soon. It's too soon to see business activity fully fall off. It's too soon to see consumer activity fully fall off. There was a lot of pull forward in anticipation of tariffs.

Labor is obviously a lagging indicator. So this could actually be the first real read coming on Friday because Liberation Day was on the second beginning of the month. So you've had some weeks to see. You may not get a huge number of firemen

HIRINGS, LAYOFFS OR WHAT HAVE YOU, BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE TOO SOON FOR THAT. BUT YOU COULD CERTAINLY GET A SUPER SLOWDOWN IN THE HIRING PROCESS BECAUSE OF THE UNCERTAINTY. WEEKLY JOBLESS CLAIMS ARE MORE LEADING INDICATOR THAN NON-FARM PAYROLLS. THAT'S BACKWARD LOOKING. SO THAT'S WHY I ALWAYS FOCUS ON THE WEEKLY JOBLESS CLAIMS. AND I SMOOTH IT OUT.

out, though. I don't look at just the week. You can't. But if I look at the three-month, you're running at $220,000. That's well below the recessionary levels of $350,000, $375,000. So I think that the weekly jobless claims are the most important, not the Friday number. That's my mind. We've got to see also, Josh, price increases that are starting to make their way into the system.

uh... adidas warning it's gonna raise prices on all of its products in the u_s_ tells he has started you know tells the advisory they started tracking price increases over the past week

publicly traded Abercrombie Jean prices up 33%. Target Barbie doll prices up 43%. Amazon, just for example, Echo up almost 39%. You know, retail giants are saying they're gonna try and keep the lid on prices

but that might only last so long, and then you have consumers faced with the prospects of paying up. There are two sides of that story. One has an obvious direct economic impact. The other is the ability and pricing power of businesses to do that, which translates potentially into a more positive stock trajectory. So you have to look at it from two different places, from an investor and then from a consumer and an economist, I guess.

I think it's actually more complicated. It's not two-sided, it's like six-sided. It's a Rubik's Cube. I spent some time talking to Rebecca Patterson about this and she had been in Washington for a week talking with heads of state, people running institutions. The big takeaway, what people are really saying is it's like impending doom. They know it's coming. It hasn't hit yet. That's why it's all about these Q1 reports being basically irrelevant.

It's documenting the quarterly earnings for companies that were in a different world than they're in today. And Scott, to your point, like we don't know what the calculus for investors is gonna be. Would we rather have empty shelves or shelves filled with merchandise inventory that nobody wants to buy because the prices are too high? I'm actually not sure which the investor class would rather hear about when they look at retailers as one example.

The bigger issue that you're going to come across is we're already seeing in the leisure and hospitality sector, other than the top decile of consumers, everyone else is done. Look at the prices of the airlines. They're done. They were done before the tariffs. Like a lot of these drivers of the economy, the consumer economy, have already been running out of gas going into this. So are they going to pay higher prices?

for things when they already were getting exhausted of the spending they were doing. It's hard to imagine. So look, I think we're in this period where the results are okay. 73% beat rate. The historical average is 77. It's like good enough.

The company's giving guidance like Coca-Cola, okay fine, it's a consumer staple. You're hearing from other companies saying, we have a game plan. A lot of the industrials, the materials company, we have a game plan, we know how to deal with this. We dealt with it last time, okay that's all fine.

So you've got like this environment, you have the dollar 8% drawdown. Stephanie has made this point and she's right. The dollar being in an 8% drawdown since the start of the year definitely is more of a tailwind. May not be great for U.S. stocks versus international stocks, but it's better for earnings that way. So we're kind of in this weird period before the storm actually hits. None of us know what investors are going to want to see when it does. Well, we're going to...

We're going to really get into earnings, as everybody knows at this point this week with Big Cap Tech. Amazon reports on Thursday. It finds itself today in the crosshairs of the White House. I'm sure another story that most have heard about by 12:15 on the East Coast because it sort of dominated the news cycle for a while of the briefing at the White House today where the press secretary called a report

that Amazon had planned to display tariff costs for consumers on its site, a hostile and political act by Amazon. Amazon put out a couple of statements on this. The most recent is a more direct one than its first.

which says the idea of disclosing import charges on some products, quote, was never approved and not going to happen. So the stock was down a bunch on the Levitt criticism. The stock comes back from the bottom on its comment that,

Never approved, wasn't going to happen, ain't going to happen, and whatever. So let's move on from that to Meta. I thought Tafts were good. No, they don't want people to know what the price increases are going to be. I do have some breaking news with Megan Casella at the White House. Megan?

Hey, Scott, we have just gotten off a call with senior commerce officials who have been detailing exactly what we can see later today on auto tariff relief when the president signs an executive order that we're expecting. So there are two main parts to this auto tariff relief. The first is that there will be what the White House calls a de-stacking of tariffs for auto companies. The short of this means that the auto manufacturers will pick the highest tariff that applies to them and they will only pay one. That means they are very likely continuing to pay the 25 percent auto tariff

on cars and car parts, but they will no longer have to pay any steel and aluminum tariffs, any Canada and Mexico fentanyl tariffs that might also apply to them. It's just the 25%. The second part of this is a little more complicated. It's an offset or a credit that's going to be paid back to auto manufacturers. So it's a 3.75% credit in the first year and a 2.5% credit in the second year, and then it gets phased out. That is going to be paid back to auto manufacturers. And the way that they got

to those amounts, Scott, is that they said they spoke, the Commerce Department and the White House have been speaking with auto manufacturers who told them that about 15% of a car is the amount that they would not be able to source from within the United States. So 15% of a car, a 25% tariff, if you multiply those together, you get to that 3.75% credit that will be paid out of that tariff revenue straight back

to those manufacturers. Now, this isn't designed to give the companies some runway to give them at least two years in which they have this credit that can get offset some of that tariff impact while they continue to move more manufacturing into the U.S. So if they have at least 85 percent of their car sourced from within the U.S. in the first year and at least 90 percent within the second year, then they won't have to pay any tariff at all. After that, it's up to them. All of it

the White House says, should be sourced from within the U.S. At that point, otherwise, you're paying a tariff on the non-American content. Just a couple notes here. This would apply to both domestic and foreign manufacturers. They say it doesn't matter where your company is based. If your manufacturing is based in the U.S., then you would be allowed to collect this relief. They also say the offsets, as I mentioned, will be paid using the tariff revenue. A senior commerce official says that means there will be no direct cost to government. Of

Of course, that does mean there will be less tariff revenue coming in than previously estimated. They could not give me an estimate on exactly how much less revenue is coming in. But at a time when that is a big focus for this White House, saying they're going to be making a lot of policy decisions based on that tariff revenue, we should note that a little bit less of it now will be coming in. Scott.

Okay. Megan, thank you. Appreciate that. Megan Costello. Not confusing at all, right? Shannon, I saw you listening to this report, and you're like, okay. Well, you know, when it comes right down to it, I mean, at some point, you know, when you announced the tariffs that you announced on Liberation Day, and everybody thought that that was, you know, obviously unpalatable to the market, but to companies in general, each of these companies is now going to speak with the president and speak with his advisers about,

about what that really means and what they can actually do. And I think what we're finding is that this is the type of deal where there is a realization and an acknowledgement that there is not much that can be done here. And so instead, what we're going to start doing is we're going to take this tariff revenue and instead of actually using it for deficit reduction and some of the things that they're looking at in terms of Tax Cut and Jobs Act, just going to be moving it around. This is what we've seen in past tariff expectations.

execution. This is what ends up happening. All right. So we'll watch all those stocks, obviously. Many have moved off their lows of the day. Tesla is a good one to look at, though. Stellantis is getting the biggest boost at 4%. And Tesla tried to, but it's still down by more than 1%. And you go right back to where we started this program of the stocks that

people thought were going to be a home run. And this one looked like it was going to be for a while. And then in the whole tariff controversy, and then obviously some other issues related to Musk and his role within the apparatus of the White House, you've had a real different story. And there's a good picture on our screen. Thank you for throwing that up. But can we get to Meta?

So it's Wednesday, all right? You bought more on Friday. That's when they report. It's going to be with Microsoft that day. What are your expectations here? As we now have a lot riding on these results, we always do. I feel like given their performance, we have even more.

Yeah, I bought more because Alphabet showed us that advertising was okay. And 96% of Meta's revenues are advertising. So I think with 3.3 billion users, they're somewhat insulated, number one. Number two, the stock's down 27% from its highs. And that's when I started buying. Actually, it was down 30% when I started buying it back again. Because you're going to see about 20% total revenue growth. I think you're going to see something like 40%, 42% margins.

And they're going to do fine in terms of advertising. So I think at 17 times 2026 numbers, it's kind of been de-risked. And I think at 13 times EBITDA, it's definitely been de-risked. And Alphabet and Meta, both cheaper than the commercial.

communication services sector at this point, right? They're actually bringing down the multiple on that sector. I do have another little nugget here. I thought we had moved on from the Amazon story, but not so fast. Not so fast. Because, and this is interesting, because NBC News has confirmed that President Trump called Jeff Bezos this morning to express his displeasure over that report that I mentioned, the one where

Amazon, there was a report that Amazon said it was going to display the tariff increase cost next to the regular price to show just what the impact was from the trade war. Amazon later disputed that, said it was never approved, they were never going to do it. But that little nugget from NBC News is quite interesting, and we will follow that. I just wanted to make sure everybody had that. All right. Microsoft Wednesday. What do you got?

So I think what's interesting about SAP earnings and ServiceNow, I think those blowout reports will be a read-through to what Microsoft potentially will report. I think, again, not that they're not immune to all the tariff exposure as a software company, but it's a little bit different, and I think what the investor class is looking at is,

what businesses are less immune and have accretive products and are also drive down some expenses, right? In a kind of a tariff and uncertainty environment. So I think Microsoft will be strong. I think the Azure number will be up 30% year over year.

You know, and I think I think it will be a solid report, less exposure to OEM and PC. You know, I'm not very concerned about that. So I think we'll be a solid, solid one here. OK, the last piece I want to get to has nothing to do with the mega caps, but it has everything to do with Wells Fargo. You've been buying more. You bought more in the pullback. They announced a new dividend today. You see that? Yeah. And a 40 billion dollar buyback.

Yeah, $40 billion. There's a stock reaction to that news. And they have $6 billion left on the current authorization. So this is good news. I wonder if either they have Basel III endgame timing or do they have the asset cap lift decision.

So those two things we have to keep an eye on. Those are catalysts for sure. For the industry, Basel III, the capital levels, that's going to be an industry-wide thing. You're going to see buybacks across the board once you see that news come in. But in terms of asset cap, that's obviously going to be very accretive for Wells Fargo. Something like 5% to 10% earnings accretion once we figure out what the details are. Okay. We have another news alert, and I'm going to go to Christina Partsenevelos for that. It's on Intel. What do we know?

Well, Intel's Foundry event just kicked off at 12 p.m. Eastern, and we're not getting any new financial figures today, but we are getting a clearer picture of how they're advancing their manufacturing business. So Intel Spotlight is on their cutting-edge 18A process, which essentially is just a super precise recipe for building smaller, faster, and more power-efficient chips. But the big news today is that Intel expects to actually hit volume manufacturing later this year. Though they haven't named any specific customers, that's probably why you're not seeing the stock really react.

but there have been other reports over the last few months that tech giants like NVIDIA, Broadcom, and AMD are testing chips made with that specific process. This now does put Intel in direct competition with TSMC's two nanometer class process. So again, super precise. And TSMC has that process slated also for production in 2025. Looking even further ahead though, in this news today, Intel revealed plans for their next generation 14A process technology. There's clearly

customer interest, according to the company. Multiple companies have already committed to building test chips on this future platform, which is a strong vote of confidence in Intel's manufacturing roadmap. Again, no customer's name. Production for 18A will start in Intel's Oregon facilities first, with Arizona manufacturing ramping up later this year. Intel has made it clear that all of these processes, as well as 14A research and development, wafer production, will remain firmly on American soil. Shares not even up 1%. Scott?

All right, Christina, thank you. Christina Partsinevalos. Up next, we track the trade Spotify dropping after earnings. Bill Baruch, he joined us yesterday. He was all bulled up. He bought the stock. He's not happy with the reaction today. He joins us next to tell us what he's doing now. Plus, Josh Brown has a new update on a trade that he's made as well. We're back in two. If your small business has a problem...

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All right, we're back. I told you about Spotify. Take a look at the stock, down 4%. It's off the lows of the morning, importantly, but they missed. Revenues were in line. Monthly actives were in line. Bill Baruch, maybe his buy of this stock was out of line. He joins us now. So you were pretty positive going in. What do you say now?

I'm still happy with the buy, although, yeah, of course I want to see it higher. It's all about sizing the position properly. In a 75 basis point position here, I want to buy another 25, 35 basis points. I'm not pulling the trigger yet. I like seeing it come off the lows. The revenue growth was okay. Operating income strong, free cash flow strong. But this is really a margin story, and they did beat in first quarter margins. It was the outperforming.

I think, you know, you start to see a gravitation in the coming year of more premium subscribers. And I think that continues to improve margins. The other thing is here, are they sort of, you know, lowering the bar?

given some of the recessionary-like talks. And then they beat gross margin seven quarters in a row. So lowering the bar here for a beat in quarter two, I like the setup. If we trade down closer to 500, I see us adding. If this thing breaks out, I see us adding. So we're right here in no man's land right now, and I still like the trade. You suggested yesterday, if I recall correctly, that they not only had pricing power,

And you may have even compared it in some respects to Netflix. I can't remember exactly, but I think so. And you implied that they were recession resilient as well. Does the margin guidance call that into question at all with you?

You know, I don't think that calls into question. I think what we're looking at here is there was a worry of just companies probably throwing guidance out the door given the environment. They're raising costs in Europe and Latin America. They've been raising costs here in the U.S.,

And I think as that trickles through, I mean, of course you get some subscribers that say they don't want to pay more, but then they lose out on the tools that they may have. And I think that kind of works through. And it's a little bit of a wonky start. And I think as we look at this year evolved,

We're going to see those margins pick back up. I think they actually beat in quarter two, and they surprised me with what they're doing is lowering the bar. And then the ad revenue, I think, will continue to increase. I think it will be a bigger part of the revenue generation. And I'm pretty upbeat of the trajectory of the name. It fell off really sharply from the level it was

uh... coming into search report earlier the year and i think it's on the part of the market has all the while the momentum names did you being one of them there's going to be a reading of who is are the momentum names now this sort of second half of the year and i think spotify can find themselves right in the midst of it

All right. Good stuff. I appreciate you calling in. Nice to hear from you after yesterday for certain. Let's talk Pfizer for a minute. We can take a look at that stock, too. There it is. It's up quite nicely today. Four and a third percent. They expand their cost cuts. Top quarterly profit estimates. Sales down. EPS beat. Josh Brown has sold half of his Pfizer position. That's our news today regarding that name. Why?

Just using the strength here, the earnings report was fine. It's like the best they can do given the circumstances. They have declining sales in all of their most important drugs, which is very well known and understood. That's why the stock has spent the last few years down here in the 20s. They really didn't have anything for a longer term investor to hang on to, to give you the impression that anything's going to change here anytime soon.

And I just think the world has changed since I first got into it. So there's another stock that has roughly the same dividend, but a much better outlook for the second half of the year. And I decided to reallocate. But I'm still here. And if Pfizer could figure it out, I'll still make some money. I just didn't need to own as much.

You've got a take on Uber. In-office requirement, three days, clawing back remote workers as well. Does that have any impact to you in the way you think about the stock from here? Judge, Dara is a certified boss. So whatever he says goes. Do you understand that Uber is up 30% on the year?

How many internet companies can you honestly say that about? How many technology companies? There's like six. This is one of the best stocks in the S&P 500 year to date. He knows what he's doing, trouncing Tesla's share price performance, announcing huge partnerships with companies all over the world. We don't have time for people who want to lay around their house in pajamas taking phone calls here and there. We need to drive forward as a shareholder. I like this. I want to see more of it.

All right. Up next, we get the committee's hot take on the red hot cyber trade, because it is just that for

First, though, we get to Pippa Stevens, who has today's headlines for us. Hi, Pippa. Hey, Scott. Mexico has received almost 39,000 immigrants from the U.S. since the start of President Trump's administration in January. That's according to Mexican President Claudia Scheinbaum, who said today 33,000 of those sent back are Mexicans. Last year, between February and April, Mexico received about 52,000 immigrants deported from the U.S. during the Biden administration.

Meta is launching a standalone AI app and going head-to-head with chat GPT maker OpenAI. The tech giant said today the new offering will use its Lama AI to power an AI assistant for users and it will be able to create images.

And the only black all-female unit to serve in Europe during World War II, known as the 6888, will receive the Congressional Gold Medal today. In 2022, Congress unanimously voted to give its highest honor to the battalion, which was credited with clearing out about 17 million pieces of mail in three months. Halftime Report will be right back.

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Show cyber because the cyber ETF CIBR is coming off its fifth day of gains, the longest since January. BCA Research says now's the time, a good time to build or top up positions. Stephanie Link, do you agree with that? You own CrowdStrike and Palo Alto. Yeah, I do. I don't think you could go wrong with just about any of these names.

You can own Zscaler as well, or you can own HACC, which is the ETF as well. It's not as volatile, but I mean, we've been talking about cyber for such a long time that it's probably bigger than AI, and because of AI, it's actually that big. So, you know, when you have cybersecurity companies themselves having cyber attacks on them,

right so I think you're gonna see massive consolidation you have 4,000 cybersecurity companies around the world and as I say you can pick whichever one you like CrowdStrike has had a nice run so actually I've been I had been trimming that Scott Palo Alto has not it's been a laggard so that's why I

And it trades at half the price to sales multiple. So you can pick which one you want. I like them both. It's kind of like a barbell for me. You like Palo Alto more than the others? I do. I mean, you know, obviously it's lagged. It's only up 2% year-to-date, but it's up 25% in the last year. I really like talking about AI. They just...

They just announced they're gonna be acquiring a company called Protect AI, which I think is going to be huge. And you talk about the advances in the genetic AI and everything AI related. Cyber is just gonna be really important to protect these companies. - Josh, you called this a couple of weeks ago or a few weeks back, a secular bull market, regardless of what the economy does.

- Yeah, and look, CrowdStrike being up 24% on the year as the largest and most important name in the space, I think kind of cements that idea. And I've been looking at names like Zscaler, which is in the same space. That stock was on my best stocks in the market list.

when the Liberation Day thing happened, it immediately got destroyed below the 200 day. But then look at the recovery. It's not back 50%, like the S&P. It gained it all back. And I think that's so emblematic of the accumulation that's taking place in these names. People are using any pullback

to own their favorite one or ones. And even the ETF has managed to raise money during this pretty tumultuous time. Whether you're looking at cyber, CIBR, or hack, this is just like a secular trend that people are seeing through the tariffs and they want to be here. All right, Mike Santoli, he's next with his midday word.

Mike Santoli, our senior markets commentator, is right here at 9. We keep moving higher. So we got over that 54.50 hurdle. And now we're trying to get to the next one, 55.50, which looks like a little bit of resistance there. There's a whole

kind of block here where it's sort of, there's some freedom to operate because really I think the next test is like a little bit higher than that. Let's say the close on April 2nd, that's more like 56.70. And then even people looking at the longer term moving average, it's like, okay, fine. Even if it's just

a rebound rally within a downtrend, you have room for that. There is this kind of low drama bid in the market. Most days have finished above the midpoint of the day. So it feels as if people did a whole lot of selling into the purge in the beginning part of April, into tax day. And now it's sort of, OK, our exposures are low enough. If volatility is coming in, we can earn a little more. Now, where it gets complicated is bond yields crashed.

this morning on the confidence data. And the stock market's treating it as the more the survey data crashes, it's almost like a stock market crash. Well, it can't stay down there for long. It's like political conditions tighten so much it forces a policy response. And so we're waiting and waiting for the backtrack of the day. And I guess that's enough for now, as long as that's sort of theoretically the carrot that's being held out in front of this market. Yeah, I mean, there's still a firm belief in the

in the two puts. I mean, they were maybe repriced from where they were originally thought. Right. But they still exist in the minds of many. But the higher you go, the farther it is down to the strike, right? So that's the issue. It's like, you know, when you work your way back... Yeah.

Do they really want to let it go back all the way there? Unless people consider the strike 5% on the 30-year Treasury yield, in which case you're farther from it. And if the economic news worsens, you're not going to get back there. I understand why the market's doing what it's doing, and there's room on the upside. But there's the jaws of the hard versus soft data.

are still open really wide, and we're enjoying that because so far the actual numbers seem fine. If that changes, that's the question. Yeah, well, all roads are going to lead to Friday's jobs report. We'll get past the mega caps, and then we focus on that. I'll see you at 3. Mike Santoli, he'll be back, of course, on Closing Bell. Josh Brown has another move to tell you about. We will tell you next. All right, welcome back. Josh Brown has bought more Chevron ahead of earnings, which come this Friday. Why more?

It's definitely not an earnings call per se. I have no idea how the quarter will go, but this stock's been absolutely creamed in the month of April. And I saw an opportunity to swap out of Pfizer and buy Chevron. Chevron's a way better company with, I think, a better outlook going forward this year, probably 10 or 11% earnings growth and roughly an equivalent dividend yield and valuation. So you got to stop right now at a 9 PE forward.

You got a dividend yield just under 5%. Massive buyback authorization in force. $75 billion announced. Last year, they only did $15 billion worth, probably because the stock price was okay.

But it's a very safe yield. That payout ratio is about 65% of its expected forward earnings, 73% of its free cash flow. So I like the opportunity here to just upgrade the portfolio, concentrate a little bit more heavily on one of the cheapest stocks I own.

And it's not out of the question that these commodity names could have a good second half. First half hasn't been great, but it's not totally out of the question. They're pricing these stocks as if there's no chance. Steph, you prefer Diamondback and Schlumberger? Yeah, but they've been painful. I mean, absolutely painful.

Diamondback actually pre-announced their quarter so that they actually could buy back more stock. So they're buying about 2% of the shares outstanding because they think their stock is cheap. It is cheap. I just don't know what the catalyst is going to be short term. Were you in Chevron before or am I thinking somebody else? Yeah, I was in Chevron. You were? Yeah.

You sold it, what, like six months ago? No, no. I sold it a couple of years ago and I bought Exxon. And I made money in Exxon. That was the right call. But I just don't want to be overweight energy at this point. And I have enough. Okay. We'll step away quickly. We'll come back with the setup. Setup time. Lily is on Thursday before the bell. Stephanie Link, you own it.

it. Expectations are always high with this name. We talked about it on the show yesterday, I think it was, where the price target got demolished at one shop who really took expectations back. I mean, this stock was viewed as like the other mega cap, right? If you didn't want the Magnificent Seven, you added this like the fifth beetle. Yeah.

So you threw this one in the mix. That's very true. What about now? I bought it two quarters ago when it fell 13% on a disappointing quarter. Only 40% earnings growth and 25% revenue growth. So I actually like the pipeline very much. I like what they're doing in terms of their investing in R&D. It's actually double of what

its peers are investing in. So I think this growth has longevity to it. It's had a nice run off the bottom, but I still like it. Okay. Josh Brown, Shake Shack is also Thursday. What do you think?

This name is now 37% off its all-time high. It's in a 19% drawdown relative to the 200 day. Any time historically since this company came public more than 10 years ago that you've been able to buy it in a 40% drawdown, historically you have made money. I think you'd make money right here. I don't know why they always hit this whenever they're worried about the consumer. The Shake Shack consumer can't stop, won't stop. You can take my word for it.

We will. We will. Man with experience. Final trades are next. Big closing bell today. BlackRock's Rick Reeder is with us, along with Morgan Stanley's Chris Toomey from their private wealth management. So we'll look forward to catching up with them. We'll see what the final hour holds. The Commerce Secretary is coming up at 2 o'clock on CNBC as well, which could have market-moving implications. So we'll see you then. Josh Brown, your finals what? Netflix.

Thank you. Jason, tonight? At V, really strong earnings quarter. Okay. Shan? Industrials, there's some insulation for aerospace and defense from tariffs. Wow, I thought Stephanie Link was going to pick that one. Sherwin-Williams. Ask Sherwin-Williams. I'll take her trip. What are we asking of Sherwin-Williams here? Sherwin-Williams had a great quarter. Market share growth, too. All right, good stuff. I'll see you guys 3 o'clock on Closing Bell.

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Introducing the new 2025 Ford Maverick truck. With in bed power, up to 4,000 pounds of towing capability and elevated off-roading capability. The new 2025 Ford Maverick truck with a standard hybrid engine and available all wheel drive. Ford, make it with Maverick.

Max towing on all-wheel drive models with available Max trailer tow package excludes Maverick Lobo and Trummer models when properly equipped. Max towing varies based on cargo, vehicle configuration, accessories, and number of passengers. Always consult the owner's manual before off-roading. Know your terrain and trail difficulty and use appropriate safety gear.