Can the Market Bounce Continue 3/24/25
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I'm Scott Wapner, and you're listening to CNBC's Halftime Report, the podcast, the most profitable hour of the trading day. We record this live weekdays at 12 Eastern. Listen in.

Welcome to the Halftime Report. I'm Scott Walker. Front and center this hour, the state of stocks, which are bouncing, as you know, again today. We will debate and we'll trade it with the markets. We'll trade the markets with the Investment Committee. Joining me for the hour, Joe Terranova, Jim Labenthal, Steve Weiss and Bryn Talkington. We will go to the markets, show you exactly what we are doing. There is green today.

across the board today. So we have this news, Joe, the tariff news, really, the Wall Street Journal reporting that tariffs on industrial sectors like cars and chips are not likely to be announced on April 2nd. Therefore, you look at names like NVIDIA and Micron and AMD and Broadcom and Ford and GM, and they are all bouncing, as you would expect. And Tom Lee is out with a note today that says the markets are setting up for a potential face ripper rally.

Is that what you see. Does this bounce go on. Well I do see ahead of us this week that we have now a lot of positive momentum and we also have a little bit of a mean reversion. And what I mean by that is some of the overseas names that were carrying the market some of the areas of the market that the defensively oriented sectors that were carrying the market over the last several weeks. You're now seeing that other

that other areas like the momentum names which have stabilized like the magnificent seven are taking leadership again so what do i think that means i think for the remainder of the week as you move into the end of the quarter i do think you're going to see markets continue to move higher

I do believe that this rebalance that we're going to see at the end of the quarter could be significant and probably will lead towards the expectation that you want to get in front of what will be perceived to be buying of equities at the end of the quarter and maybe a little bit of selling of bonds concurrent with that. But clearly, I think we've seen in the month of March probably the worst during the week of March 10th.

And from there, we've had a nice little recovery that could extend into April. Weiss, are we set up for a face-ripper rally like Tom Lee suggests? We had a nice little bounce. We're up 4% from the low. We, the S&P, we're only, only down 2% on the year. I know the one-month period looks a little worse. But for everything that the market's been through,

Down 2% year to date. Okay. Yeah. And I think there's broad agreement on the desk on Friday about a buy on the news that, in other words, that when April 2nd comes, negativity will be so high by that point, positioning so low that you'll see that face ripping rally after that.

What we're doing now is pulling that forward. And today's news was a catalyst for that. And the sentiment that people don't want to wait to play that, because who doesn't know it, is what's pulling it forward. So we still have April 2nd to contend with. I think the rally post-April 2nd will be muted, and you'll see it now in advance of that.

You're also in an all clear period, the exception of PCE on Friday. But nobody's going to be surprised if that says, OK, the Fed's still on hold. So what can get in the way? Well, obviously, more news flow. But any headline, any time. I mean, that exactly therein lies the issue. Right. Yeah. One moment you feel good. The next minute you're thrown off. Exactly.

So I think, you know, look, I still have a lot of cash, as we'll talk about. I put some of it to work. But we still have earnings and we still have guidance. And to me, that's still going to be what could tip the scales here. And tariffs aren't going away. We've already started that game. And the others, meaning the other countries,

aren't going to back off as easily. So look, it's still a choppy market. You can trade it. You can make money in it. Obviously, today is a great day. I'm missing out on part of it. And then again, given the beta in my portfolio, like with Meta, with Netflix, which is a little absent today, I'm doing OK. See, Brent, I mean, therein lies the issue with this market, is that the president can

flip the switch almost any time he wants. He can go hard on tariffs one minute, the next minute he can back off.

And thus, an investment decision that you made on the go hard for a minute move suddenly doesn't necessarily work out on the pullback. I look at the Nasdaq. It's up sharply today. Meta is the only mega cap up year to date. That's having a nice day. Your Tesla is up. Last I checked was up 8 percent, might be more than that, almost 10 percent.

as we look right now and whether tech can stabilize is really, I don't know, you call it the key question in this market. If you think the bounce can continue, can tech continue to move higher?

I think where in tech are we talking about can continue to move higher? I think you'll definitely get, once again, the Mac 7 or let's say Meta should outperform Amazon. The Apple, I think, gives you a market perform. But where you're already seeing, to Tom's point, a face-ripper is look at Palantir. It got into the 60s in January. It's back at 90. Robinhood was in the 30s. It's almost at 50. Tesla was, what, just at 230, back up at 270.

And so I think that investors need to really understand, and Joe's talked a lot about this, the mechanics underneath the market. And Scott, right now, the CTAs and the hedge funds are incredibly bearish. And I think you want to fade that signal and do the opposite of what they do, because once they get done going to the other side, once again, they're very mechanical. There's no investor emotion. They will go on the other side. So if there is this rebalance at the end of the month, which triggers more buying, then

I promise you the hedge funds will not be so bearish, will go long. And so I think just the basic mechanics underneath the market can continue to go higher. But I do think these growthier names, the Robinhoods, the Palantirs, are going to outperform these trillion-dollar companies, maybe outside of Nvidia, where you see a clear line of sight for revenue and earnings growth. And Nvidia has probably the lowest PEG ratio of the MAG7. I know it does.

And so I think still I would prefer to own these other smaller names that I think have a lot more momentum and growth than just the Mag 7, which to me are obviously much more mature. It's good points, Jimmy. The pain points of this market, the reason why we've been able to bounce, mega caps have stopped going down.

and momentum names have stopped going down. The MTUM snapped a four-week losing streak. Oh, big surprise that the market looks more stable for the very names and the likes of which that Bryn just mentioned. We still have some work to do because the magnificent seven has looked more like the mediocre seven of late.

but you do have some stabilizing moves and some big bounces therein. Yeah, well, but I still think this is a very jittery market, so I'm not trusting it. I'm not in Tom Lee's camp. I want to be in the face-ripping rally camp. Let me also be clear, and I don't want to talk out of both sides of my mouth,

But I'm not selling anything. I'm fully invested. So then you get down to what am I fully invested in? And I think Bryn gave us some good insight right now. What have I added to recently? Microsoft, NVIDIA. To me, attractively priced mega cap tech. I'm not jumping into the high momentum names. I'll leave that for the experts on the panel who do that. But I think that you're just one headline away. This is what you were saying a second ago, or at least asking, Scott.

You know, you're always one headline away from this market turning down. And with it, the higher beta names will go down. So if I want to be invested and not worry about what the next headline is, I want to be in the juggernauts that right now, to me, are really attractively priced. Bryn mentioned NVIDIA. I mean, the PEG ratio is around 0.5. Why don't you buy more? I mean, I've got people making moves. Well, I did not that long ago.

I'm fully invested right now. No, I know, but your whole point of view, you're talking about not being so reactive. You're worried about a headline here and a headline there, but you're overreacting.

overall view of the market is we're not going into a recession. And this is just a growth scare. So why aren't you investing more on that view? Because I am really invested in that view right now. I mean, if you look and you do know, obviously, Scott, my portfolio intimately well. But if you look at the things like the deltas and the financials of the world, you know, and the materials and the energy stock, man, if this thing goes into a recession, I got to make a big, big course adjustment. Oh, you're leveraged heavily to the economy, man.

Yeah. I mean, it's unequivocally true. So if you're in my seat, what you're looking for is not do things get better. That's the base case. What you're worried about sitting in my seat is does all this doge tariffs, all this sort of, you know, get the animal spirits in the C-suites dialing down. That's what worries me now. I'll take some comfort when we get earnings. We get some, you know, some insight into how CEOs and CFOs are looking at things. But let's face it, that's three weeks away. So I got to know.

In other words, what are they going to tell you at this point that you don't already know? I hear you, Scott. I hear you. Again, where I am is I'm trying to gauge the negativity. Because what we've got here is a bunch of positive indicators. The economy is still growing. Forget the whole gold arbitrage thing, right? The economy is still growing. Unemployment is low. Most importantly, profits are growing. Corporations want to lean into that. That's not the situation in which they start dialing back firing workers. If they started to say, wait a second, profits are...

aren't going to grow the way we thought. That's where you might have to worry about unemployment creeping up. And that's where a guy with a portfolio like mine would have to make a major course adjustment. I'm not there yet. Let me be clear, I'm not. You are looking at areas differently than Jim. You're not so leveraged towards the outcome of the economy. You bought more Amazon today. You're looking at a stock that's down 19% from its high.

And you bought more at the open. So I look at everything from the perspective of how is my portfolio allocated, in which direction does it have risk, and in which direction does it absorb a lot of risk because we're not in the place it should be when the market makes a turn. On March 10th, I think, Steve, you were on the show with us. We talked about the potential for that week to be the buyout.

and I bought Amazon at 194. The reason being, I don't own any of the Mag7 and the majority of my holdings are in an equally weighted strategy. So I needed to get some exposure there. I added to it again this morning. Amazon to me, along with Meta,

that appears to me to be the company that has the greatest potential to continue delivering that double digit revenue growth and the ability to very similar to what Netflix is doing to expand its live programming in particular in sports. And I think that's what you're going to see. So it's a name that

I've looked at over the last six months I wanted to get into, and I looked at the portfolio and said, okay, I have risk here. If the MAG-7 stabilize and begin to try and take hold of leadership once again, I'm going to underperform. Let me grab something here. I view that as the number one MAG-7 for me. Meta, a close second. All right. So, Weiss, Morgan Stanley talks about earnings revisions out of the MAG-7 looking to bottom potentially.

So let's just say the worst of the revisions is over and the multiples have come in right across the board. Cantor Fitzgerald today says, don't be forced to live in regret by NVIDIA. It's our top pick. They say we 100 percent understand the near term setup and the macro geopolitical risks that are pressuring that stock. But this short sightedness has resulted in the name trading at 16 times calendar year 26 earnings power.

which is too great an opportunity to ignore. We believe when we look back, this too will be viewed as one of these key inflection points. You must agree because you bought more of it at $117. Yeah, actually, I went back into it. If you recall, I was on the show. I sold it when earnings came out at about the $130, $131 level.

So got back into it. Look, the growth is there. Why I sold it was basically everybody loved it. Everybody still loves it. But now at a lower price, I'm comfortable there. So it's a trading market. Now, there are some positions that I don't sell out of, that I don't cut back, that

that I periodically add to as we go on. Because the way I look at it, Scott, is this, is that I love what I own, so I buy what I love. I'm not looking to leave monogamy with my portfolio and stretch into other areas, with the exception of one we'll talk to later, which I think could be a long-term hold. So yeah, there's a lot of beta in it. I like beta because I can manage the risk. And

I like these companies because they are insulated from the economy. I take a different view of the direction of the economy than Jim does because I do see the economy weakening. I do see companies laying off people. I know the companies on the private side that we're involved with, we're all laying off people despite strong businesses we're preparing for the future. So look, exodus came there. We saw it before. You know, people hired way too much coming out of COVID.

I think they still have their workforce based upon a very robust economy, which I don't see. Bryn, what about this canter note for your NVIDIA as well? Is it going to be short-sighted to not look at this today and buy it? And will you have regret if you don't?

I think so. I think if it's in your wheelhouse, I think you're going to see the value guys. I mean, you know, Jim is Jim. You would say you're a guardbeat, right? You want to buy good companies, make money. We bought more at 111. I just think it's right in front of you. It's right there. This is a great company. I have not heard one hyperscaler.

whether you're in the US, China, wherever, that is cutting back on the spend and you're gonna get more investment. I mean, think about just what SoftBank is doing or what they promised to do. This has a long runway and I don't care if it's popular or not. The company itself is getting stronger and stronger from an earnings. They're competing against themselves. They're coming out with another black

And so it's like, I don't understand how the competitors are keeping up when they're competing and cannibalizing their own products with new products. It's really just ingenious. So I think this is a durable company. It's cheaper than Apple. It's got much higher margins, revenue and earnings growth.

than one of the, probably any company of this size. And so I think it's a wonderful time to own this stock. This is when you wanna own it, when people are kind of unsure about it. Once they're sure about it, the stock will not be at 122, it'll be at 160. - Yeah, I mean, there's been some degree of debate in terms of the competitors. Where are they, right?

First mover advantage for NVIDIA doesn't mean at the end of the day they have the whole pie. Others are going to come take a slice, maybe they'll take half the pie, who knows. AMD is up, as you point out today, rather sharply. That's a 6 plus percent move. Yeah, I appreciate you referencing that. If we could get a six-month chart on AMD while I'm speaking about it, what we do is we look at momentum. We try and see where you get the most dramatic reversal in a very short period of time.

and we've had conversations on the show about amd looking like a ski slope we said you you could ski down it i've been hypercritical of it we sold out of it many quarters ago but i could tell you that this is one of the more powerful reversals in momentum that i have seen in the last year it has quickly swung from being dramatically bearish to in the near term being dramatically bullish

I think it's above the 50-day moving averages I'm speaking right now. So you've got a low-risk trade here where you could probably buy it against the upper 90s, and you've got the potential for AMD to run into the 140s. Let me do this. We'll get back to this in a second because we have other comments, but we're having breaking news right now from the White House. Our Eamon Jabbers joins us now with the very latest. What are we learning, Eamon?

Scott, the cabinet meeting here is underway as we speak. We do expect that the White House pool will go in there shortly. So we will see some pictures and some sound. We will hear from the president here very shortly in this cabinet meeting. One update that I want to bring you, Scott, to the president's

previous tweet on secondary tariffs on Venezuela. This is important and could have enormous potential implications for global trade because a White House official is telling me now that the way the president envisions those 25% tariffs on any country that does business with Venezuela

is those 25 percent tariffs will be in addition to any existing U.S. tariffs that are applied to that country. Why is that important? Well, Sarah Eisen smartly brought up the fact earlier today that a big customer of Venezuelan oil is China. The United States has now put 20 percent tariffs on China so far this year. I am told that this means that

As of April 2nd, the president envisions 45 percent tariffs on China as a result of the 25 percent from Venezuela, the previous 20 percent. All of that, the president said in his Truth Social post earlier today, will be papered and lawyered and go into effect on April 2nd. You see there the tweet from the president saying, any country that purchases oil and gas from Venezuela will be forced to pay a tariff of 25 percent to the United States

on any trade they do with our country. That obviously includes China, and I'm told that 25% is on top of the existing Trump-China tariffs. So potentially huge implications for global trade there, Scott.

One caveat, as with everything at this White House, this hasn't been done yet. It is a threat on social media as of right now. I'm told that there was an executive order contemplated with this. That executive order did not end up happening on these secondary Venezuela tariffs, so

Maybe there's wiggle room here for this administration, but as of now, I'm told that's what the intent is, Scott. Your point's so well made towards the end there. When you underscore the fact that this is just a threat on social media, it's not actually put into practice, which leads me to...

wonder at some point whether the market just stops paying attention to a comment here or a comment there, like Friday's comment of there will be flexibility, which moved the market. And now we have this post regarding a threat and then the potential of a 45 percent tariff on China. I mean, at some point, you just have to wait for the actual news.

Yeah, I mean, but look, markets love to buy the rumor and sell the news, right? And I think that applies here. I mean, we don't know whether this will go through. The president is signaling what his intent is. And as we know, his intent can shift from moment to moment. But I don't think you can ignore the prospect of a 45% tariff on China. I mean, the effect that that would have on global trade next week

is enormous. So how do market participants figure that out? That's why they're paid the big money to make those decisions. But the president is very clearly signaling some intent here from the White House today. And I should also point out our Megan Casella got a statement, I think we have a graphic of it here, a statement from a White House official on this idea of whether the sectoral tariffs will go into effect

at the same time as the reciprocal tariffs. The statement is may happen or may not. No final decisions have been made as far as sectoral being tacked onto reciprocal. So there was this sense over the weekend that, well, maybe they're backing off of sectoral and reciprocal at the same time. That means auto tariffs and the like wouldn't happen at the same time as the reciprocal on April 2nd. Well, now a White House official is saying it may or may not.

How do you factor that into your calculations? Again, people get paid a lot more money than me to make those decisions.

Like the ones at my desk right now, which is why I'm going to ask them about it. Eamon, thanks very much for that. It's Eamon Javers, North Lawn of the White House. Good luck if you are charged with trading a market that gets a headline versus another headline. We said at the very top of the show. Yeah. How do you deal with that sort of environment? I don't mean like, you know, literally ignore. Right. But at some point, the market's just going to grow exhausted with dealing with

every single incremental headline. Now, right now, the market's not weakening at all. Yeah. In any meaningful way off the prospects of what Eamon was talking about. Right, because if you look at what Trump's trying to do with this tariff, he's trying to have Venezuela completely put the brakes on sending, you know, he's alleging they're sending gangs, murderers, criminals, spies to the U.S., which, frankly, we see that a lot of the gangs...

that are popping up are Venezuelan. So that's easy for them to rectify Venezuela. So if you take a look at what he's going at and what can be done, this one is something the market should shrug off because Venezuela come out. - Yeah, but the prospect of, forget the Venezuela,

In general. But if you talk about a much higher tariff with China, well, then it's a whole different ballgame. Well, it is. My point is I don't think you see that tariff come through because of what's at the root of it. So you almost have to do it on a case-by-case basis. Just like when he came out and said 200% tariffs on Europe and Canada because they're retaliating against us. You knew the 200 wouldn't stick. Yeah.

However, the broader tariffs, you know, those are going to be problematic because a lot will go on. So, look, you know, just for a bigger point,

I don't disagree with a lot of the policies. I disagree with the way they're being communicated and the way they're being changed back and forth. That's the issue. So I'm just not public to negotiate. That in and of itself has been the root of the uncertainty. It is. I just wonder, and I want everyone's view on this.

At some point, does the introduction of where we go here with the tax bill, front and center in the headline, does that soften or blunt some of the headlines that we're getting here as it relates to tariffs? I think he's absolutely softening up the beachheads with all the nasty stuff he's got to do with tariffs, and then comes in and kind of makes nice with a big tax cut. If he can get it through Congress, that's a...

big if you have to competing headlines you know if we've got tax cuts were gonna extend the nobody's thinking about it right but he's thinking about that in the markets right now the markets are completely focused on tariffs by you know hopefully hopefully he knows what he's doing is gonna get the tariffs done then move to sort of what makes the market she'll know the great about the tax cuts either yeah no it's not a secret steve but nobody's focused on which one is the market pay attention to my heard in a debate over growth scare versus recession and whether

this trade war policy will put the economy into a recession or not. Yields have been falling for six straight weeks. Yes. For the wrong reasons, okay? Yields aren't moving lower because, you know, bond investors think that the economy is in just terrific shape. Correct.

Which leads me to a move of yours, which is buying the TLT. I did. Betting that rates are going to continue to fall. I am, because everything that I'm hearing from this administration is that they're focused on two clear economic outcomes. Lower oil prices, and I'm not necessarily sure they're going to be able to be successful there.

lower interest rates and I think that I don't even think they're they're going to be pressuring the Federal Reserve I just think Treasury Secretary Besson has spoken to us here on CNBC to other

to other media outlets about the 10-year treasury. Yeah, so Fortune magazine says the new saying in the bond market is don't fight Besson's treasury. Right. Forget about don't fight the Fed. To your point, he has said over and over and over and over, we want to get the 10-year yield down and keep it down. And I think that, in fact, is what's going to happen. I'm not saying, so my position doesn't require

a recession and i i don't think we're headed to a recession i do think the next two labor reports are gonna look really ugly with all of the losses of of government jobs treasury secretary best can limit the size of auctions on on the ten-year he can talk about loosening regulations in the banking industry and therefore hints a sent advising demand on the part of banks for those treasuries so i i just

I just think that the low hanging fruit for me is probably that the next 50 to 75 basis points per year in a 10 year treasury is lower. And I also I'm pushing up. I'm pushing up against what sentiment thinks, because sentiment thinks tariffs are inflationary and we're going to get the spike in the 10 year. Well, OK, I mean, that's a that's a big.

move, maybe you get it, maybe you don't. No, it's contrarian. It's contrarian, for sure. What I would say to you is just be careful because when we ever get to the debt ceiling, I mean, Besson's a smart man. He's a very smart man. That's why he's where he is. And he may just be talking down this market because he knows he's got to flood the market with treasuries once the debt ceiling's lifted. Bryn, give me a real quick wrap because I've got to take a break here, but I want your perspective.

Yeah, I would urge all investors to listen to Scott Besson Chamath and David interviewed him because about a growth scare. He talked very specifically about the math equation, about how how how quickly they are or how long it's going to take for them to reduce government spending. And so I think from a trade perspective, you could definitely see the long income down as the jobs number and the economy, I think, will weaken before they strengthen just because of the reduction of federal spending.

Okay, let's take that break. When we come back, I've got a number of moves still in front of me to get to for all of you. Joe's got several. Weiss has some coming up, too. We're back after this.

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All right, welcome back. Let's get to these moves. Joe, you have several here. Yes. Let's do this buy that you have personally. Joe T. already owns Interactive Brokers. Why did you feel the need to buy it personally as well? Well, I've been waiting to buy this. This is a name that I've owned in the past personally. Josh has done a good job in the last couple of weeks talking about the value of owning exchanges here. And I really view Interactive Brokers personally.

as exactly that. It's offering you exposure to trading and equities, commodities, currencies, bonds, and crypto. The activity is very fluid right now, very strong volumes, and you had a significant pullback, largely attributable, not really idiosyncratic to interactive brokers, but this is a momentum name. This has been one of the better momentum names in the financial sector, and I really believe it's been more about that universal macro environment, the unwind of momentum that's pulled it down.

okay uh we'll continue to follow it's up uh looks to me about four percent uh but we'll watch it you sold cvs

Why? Sold CVS, took about a 6% gain, and I was looking here for a reversal, a reversal more in the fundamentals. You know, a lot of times when we make a sale for an existing position, I think people incorrectly interpret that as it's binary. You think it's going lower. No. I'm just looking at the risk-to-reward profile and saying, okay, why did I take the position? I took the position because I wanted to see some fundamental shift.

You've got that unfolding. I still think the stock could go a lot higher. But for me, it's time to step to sidelines and take the profit on it and move into another health care name that's more aligned to what I do, which is where could identify strong technical conditions. I don't think you could really do that when you pull the lens back on CVS over the last three years or five years. What is that? McKesson? That's McKesson. That's a fresh new buy. That's a fresh new buy. And I think the other thing that's important, Scott, you know this, you've been

You've been doing this momentum stuff with me now for the last several years. You know, we're talking about all these momentum names.

and the fact that they're stabilizing and potentially recovering, guess what? In 60 to 90 days, all of the momentum funds, these aren't the momentum names anymore. These names are going to be liquidated and momentum is going to shift elsewhere within the market. I think one of the areas that's going to shift to is healthcare. McKesson is a fantastic name. It's already guided higher on EPS than 19 to 20%. Oncology, BioPharm are working really well. And you can see from the chart,

here it is pressing towards a 52-week high why speaking of health care you bought vertex pharmaceuticals i did i do i think i followed jim into that it's a new buy brand new buy look my bet here is that they've uh they just uh launched a non-opioid uh uh medication for moderate to severe pain and i'd say that street expectations surprisingly are somewhat muted in the near term on that they're not expecting any

even, you know, meaningful uptick to earnings from that until next year sometime. I think the ramp's going to be a lot stronger. We've already seen the first two weeks, but data's kind of limited. So, look, I've been looking at buying this. I've been remiss in not buying it sooner because it's been phenomenal. It's not typically what I buy. Stocks near their high, but I still think there's pretty good upside here.

You want to comment on that? The pain medication is going to get picked up more and more and more indications. You're absolutely right. That is the thesis, and it comes from a foundation of a cystic fibrosis platform that's the best in the world. All right. The headlines with Silvana Hanau. Hi, Silvana. Hey.

It's got good afternoon. President Trump announced today that his former personal lawyer, Alina Haba, will be the interim U.S. attorney for New Jersey effective immediately. Haba is currently serving as counselor to the president and she'll take over for the current interim U.S. attorney, John Giordano, who is being nominated as the ambassador to Namibia.

A federal judge is blocking Doge from accessing some private information from the Department of Education, the Office of Personnel Management and the Department of Treasury. The ruling this morning said the Trump administration likely violated the law when they tried to access private data of nearly 2 million people that included social security numbers and citizenship status.

And the race is on for emergency crews in the Carolinas as they fight a series of wildfires that have been burning through the weekend due to dry conditions and strong winds. In South Carolina, the governor declared an emergency, while in North Carolina, the Forest Service said crews are fighting three wildfires triggering mandatory evacuation in areas still recovering from Hurricane Helene six months ago. Send it back to you, Scott.

All right, Silvana, thank you. Silvana Henao. Up next, an update to a story we first brought you last month on the first ever private credit ETF. That product raising some concerns with regulators. Bob Pizzani is standing by with the person who runs that new fund. Do it next.

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Welcome back. Time for ETF Edge. Bob Pisani has that live in Las Vegas for us at this year's ETF Exchange Conference. Bob? Good to see you there, Scotty. We're here in Las Vegas at the Exchange ETF Conference. This is the largest gathering of ETF professionals. It's about 2,000 asset managers like BlackRock and Vanguard with investment advisors.

that buy the ETFs. They're all here to discuss the latest investing trends. Let's talk to one of those industry leaders. Ana Paglia is Executive Vice President and Chief Business Officer for State Street Global Advisors. She runs the Spider business. That includes the largest ETF in the world, Spider S&P 500 ETF. Ana, good to see you.

Give us an overview here. What are the two or three main themes that's on everybody's mind here? Sure. So if you follow the flows, you will see the trends and what investors are really worried about. The first one that I would mention is confidence in the U.S. economy. We have seen that 90% of the assets in the industry to date are U.S.-based. So investors still believe in the U.S. industry.

And the other thing is volatility. We have seen very good flows in commodities and gold because these are the products that are helpful for investors to hedge against the volatility risks. So getting access to private credit is hot. We talked about this a little while ago. You recently launched the SSGA Apollo Public and Private Credit ETF. Investors are interested in this fund because

they want the private credit exposure. And investors sort of anticipated this fund, PRIV is the symbol, would hold between 10 and 35% private equity. But one analyst found that it actually only holds about 5% private credit.

that's in that fund. Can you tell us how much private credit is in the fund right now? What's the limit that you're working under? And do you expect to increase that amount at all? Right. So that's a really good question, Bob. The limit is, as advertised, between 5 and 35 percent. To date, the exposure to private credit is in the range of 19 percent, between 19 and 20 percent. And we expect

to change that exposure based on our view about the overall portfolio. So it's, I know the private analysis was 5%. You're saying now there's 19 to 20% private credit in the fund right now and you expect to increase that? Well,

Well, it's up to the portfolio managers. They are going to have to look at the overall performance of the portfolio, but the range is always going to be between 5 and 35 percent. Is all of the private credit right now sourced through Apollo? And are you confident there is sufficient liquidity

to meet the demands of the fund? Not all of it is sourced through Apollo. And yes, we are confident that whatever exposure to private credit we have in the fund is going to come from sources where there is enough liquidity. So this ETF, it caused a little bit of a controversy because the SEC had questions about this after the fund was launched. That's a little bit unusual. Can you explain what happened here?

So Bob, it's not unusual for the SEC to have questions after a registration statement goes effective. We have seen that in other launches. What was a little unusual here was that the comments were public on Edgar. So everybody looked at those comments and said, "Oh, there is something wrong with the funds." But if you look at also the answers to the comments, we were able to sort out those things within 24 hours.

Actually, there is also correspondence on Edgar that shows that the SEC staff did not have any additional comments. Just quickly, are you going to remove Apollo from the title? They seem to be interested in that. Yes, indeed. You will be removing him. We have agreed to do that, yes. Okay. Ina, thank you.

Always a pleasure to see you. We're going to have a lot more coming up on the hot ETF investing trends on ETF Edge. That's 1 p.m. Eastern time. Our guest, all-star cast here, Travis Spence, the J.P. Morgan's global head of ETFs, Jay Jacobs, U.S. head of thematic and active ETFs at BlackRock, Ben Johnson at Morningstar, Ben Slavin from BNY Mellon, all-star cast, ETFedge.cnbc.com. Scott, back to you. Bye.

Bob, good stuff. Thank you very much for that. Bob Pisani. We have more committee moves ahead. We have our calls of the day as well. Bullish call on a stock Steve White just bought more of. Aftertime is back after this.

All right. Calls of the day. We start with Netflix today. Reiterated overweight. Eleven hundred fifty dollars price target at J.P. Morgan. They are bullish, supported by a healthy double digit revenue growth, continued operating margin expansion, strong streaming leadership position and the potential to become a global TV leader.

Weiss, you already owned it. You bought more. Yeah, I already owned a large position. It's one of my top positions. And as I sometimes do, I try to take advantage of volatility to add to that position, sort of putting a trading layer on it. And I've done that with this. And I added to that again this morning. It was a little skewed, still not participating in the market as others have.

and frankly as it has over the last week. So I upsize with that trading position. Look, look, everything you just said about the company fundamentals is true and they are in fact really making tremendous inroads into ex-US regions.

They're unique. They're one of one at this point. As others have backed off, like Prime is backed off with spending for content. They will go more to sports, which is an important thing. They just have the best product and global product. Jimmy, Lockheed Martin downgraded at B of A. That's not even the big part of the news. The price target, let's see the stock. The price target cut to $495 from $685.

They have dramatically taken down their expectations, to say the least. You own the stock. And this, of course, is after Boeing was chosen by the White House over Lockheed to build the F-47. And the F-47 is the news that is still moving the stock down today. I mean, the downgrades are a response to that.

Steve just said something pretty wise here. Sometimes you put a trading layer on top of things. I'm tempted to do that now, and I probably will. I'm not doing it right now. I'm going to let this find its level. But we've got to put the overall F47 news into perspective.

It's going to be years and years before that plane flies. It's going to be years and years before that would have hit Lockheed Martin's profitability or Boeing's profitability, for that matter. In the meantime, you've got the company that is producing the best plane in the air today, the F-35. It's the plane our allies want. There's a lot of headline news about

that, about people worried, is there a kill switch in there? No, there's not a kill switch in there. I mean, come on, we've got to trade through the headlines here, which is what we're talking about. I'm using your terminology, trading layers, so stand by for that. But this is like, this is not just a headline. This is actual news. Fundamental news. Can I ask a fundamental question? Well, can I, let me finish. No, let him ask the question, and then you guys can figure it out. All right, good. Let's figure it out.

How do you think about this? We're seeing warfare the way it's being fought now. We're seeing using drones and right now using missiles that are $500,000 to $4 million to shoot down one drone and new technology which can shoot down a swarm for a nickel. So we're seeing going away from the metal benders to more on cyber, to more on cheaper stuff.

that every country can build, like Ukraine. So they're a metal bender. So how does that impact? So the F-47 is a manned plane. And that's a pretty big endorsement that we're not moving away from manned airplanes anytime soon. It is a manned airplane. Let's not get...

So here's the thing. You're putting your finger on what the issue is because Elon Musk brought this up back in December. Like, why are we building F-35s? We're building F-35s because they're needed. Drones can't do everything. I mean, you talk to any Air Force, they want F-35s. That's the end of the story. You've got a stock here that's producing the F-35s. It's in production. It's not developing. It's not going to sink costs and ramping up factories for this. It's producing it now, trading at 16 times earnings.

which is very much at the low end of the range with a 3% dividend yield. And it's trading cheaply more because of the F-35, what you're saying. People worry that the F-35 is going to be replaced by drones. I'm focused more broadly on their metal bender is what they're called. So it's not just the F-35. It's not just the new jet. It's cutting back on

all the big expenditures in these heavy equipment. Here's what I'm trying to say. Let me just be really clear. I don't think budgets around the world are cutting out the F-35. You're talking to the headline, that's fine, but the budgets are not actually reflecting that. I know, but the biggest budget of all is... I'm not talking about just the F-35. The biggest budget of all...

in the world is just awarded it to somebody else. Right. But we're talking about two different things. The F-47 is years and years and years away from production. That's not in any near term estimates, earnings estimates. All right. We'll take a break. Santoli, he's next with his midday word.

We are back. Senior markets commentator Mike Santoli has sat down at our desk for his midday word. Peak uncertainty. Those are the two words you're thinking about. Yes. So going into the weekend, I thought that was the big question is finally everyone knows you're supposed to buy the maximum uncertainty moment. And are we near there or at least peak acknowledged uncertainty about the things we're in suspense over?

And so today's action suggests that it's plausible that that's where we are. Still a lot of kind of spring-loaded mechanical stuff is working in the market's favor today. You saw the momentum in high beta up twice what the market was at the start, maybe a little less than that right now. It just suggests that the ball being held underwater, it's springing higher. You're above the 200-day average in the S&P. So things are progressing.

I don't think all the questions have been answered in terms of economic knock-on effects, but expressions of flexibility. You know, if at $5,500 in the S&P you were basically assuming or pricing in very aggressive across-the-board max tariffs, now you can say something different and you have some wiggle room. For now. For now. That's exactly it. Everything is reversible and contingent. All right. We're learning that. Mike, thanks. I'll see you on Closing Bell. Mike Zantoli. Finals are next.

I'll see you on Closing Bell, 3 o'clock Eastern, with Dan Greenhouse, Mohamed El-Erian, Mike Mayo, and Shannon Sikosha. And we'll have an interesting market, as we always do, during that final stretch. Brynn, what is your final trade today? Dell. Michael Dell thinks the stock is cheap. $10 billion buyback, raise their dividend. Key company in the data center tech stack.

Okay, that's been in the momentum basket, as has Vertiv. Weiss? Yeah, so I bought it back last week, and the future's still very bright, and the valuation got reasonable. I also had to get on Brent's speed dial because I missed hood. Wish you would have told me about that. I paid up for NVIDIA, so I got to work that out. All right, we do have a nice bounce in a lot of those momentum names, Vertiv included.

Farmer Jim. So I said earlier, I think it's still going to be a choppy market. I want to make a recommendation that I think I'll be happy with no matter what the markets do. And that's Alphabet. I think it's easy at this valuation. All right. Thank you very much, Joe T. Well, we talked about defense before, and I think it's important to talk about cybersecurity. One of the best names in the world in that regard is really based checkpoint software. Thank you very much. I will see you on the 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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