Stick with what’s working for 2025? 12/16/24
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Getting there starts here with State Street.

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.

Carl, thanks so much. Welcome to the Halftime Report. I'm Scott Wapner. Front and center this hour, the home stretch and whether two of the best plays of this late year run will keep working into the new year. We will discuss and debate with the investment committee. Joining me for the hour today, Joe Terranova, Amy Raskin, Kerry Firestone, Jim Labenthal. Dow's trying to snap a seven-day losing streak. We are looking green, well, for the S&P and the NASDAQ, but we are just flat on the Dow. We'll watch all of that. But of note, as I said, two of the hottest late-year trades

Keep on ticking. Joe, Bitcoin, new record high today, about 105, 106,000. It's up 53% since the election. You own Coinbase. You throw up MicroStrategy, Riot, Robinhood, almost anything that is crypto-related.

is running. I'm wondering how our investing audience should be thinking about this as we head into a new year with one of the hottest trades around. I think it's a classic chase for performance. I think it is the most identifiable example of momentum I could remember in my professional career on Wall Street. I am not saying that it doesn't come without fundamental validity to it.

I do think there's something to be said about the very premise that we live in an intangible asset economy.

and that Bitcoin is an intangible store of value versus gold, which is a tangible store of value. So for me, the easiest way to play it is through the strategy. The strategy identified an opportunity where momentum was building in Coinbase on October 31st. It took a position there and obviously we've been rewarded handily for that. Should we play it though? I mean, I'm trying to think of what the great takeaway is for our audience.

You're either in it or you're not. It's binary, right? If you're not in, you wish you were.

because you look at this go up carry unabated almost and you wonder well is it too late to get in some have said like Tom Lee next year you could see 250k that portends that it's not too late what do you think I mean what would you advise people to do as it relates to crypto right now specifically Bitcoin because I think everybody has it on their minds yeah exactly so I

I would tell you that it's very hard for us at our firm to embrace Bitcoin right now. We've seen the run, we've watched it, but there's been a run on many different stocks and groups, technology, but particularly those for which this administration seems favorably inclined. If one doesn't want to just buy Bitcoin, you can.

participate with financials. You can own one of the alternative asset companies, Apollo or Blackstone or BlackRock. You can own exchanges. You can own CME. You can own Robinhood. By the way, they're all, I'm sorry to cut you off, but all of those are running today too. Correct. If you threw up the exchanges. Yeah.

Because if there's going to be more activity on the exchanges because of all this, throw up CME, throw up NASDAQ. Correct. Throw up interactive brokers, for example. I mean, CME was up early. You can see a little bit of a tail off. But when I looked a while ago, and you can see here after the market opened, it was green for a moment. There's interactive brokers, which is Joe. But to your point, you don't have to just play it this way, but

Why can't I just play it this way? Well, you can if you want to believe. What I would fear, and this is something that we've talked about a little bit on this desk, there is a lot of leverage that applies to Bitcoin. A lot of people borrow, a lot of institutions borrow, and that is something we are concerned about right now. What happens if there were

all to be some sort of squeeze and institutions start to call in any of those loans. If Bitcoin starts to go down quickly, you know, who knows? And if you're just time, why wouldn't it? Because speculative assets can go up and down. Gold can go up and down. There's no reason why Bitcoin has to keep going higher. But if you know that the coming administration is so intensely behind it and regulations around it,

are going to become much less onerous. You have a different head of the SEC who's going to embrace it. You have, I've heard, like I'm sure all of you have. It's in the price of the stock to some extent.

Maybe. Yeah. That's part of the reason why the election swung the way it did, certainly at the congressional level, was because of Bitcoin, that those who embraced it were rewarded for doing so because it's something that the public wants. This is not like you said this because it's in the stock. Well, obviously, there's no that could be any earnings. Bitcoin is not reporting. But as long as you have this embracing of it, even if it's speculative earnings,

Trying to think of what would cause that tremendous upset unless the administration, President-elect Trump came out and changed his mind. Just because markets can go up and down. A market downturn. That's what would cause it. If you needed, if people, as Kerry said, it's a levered trade. And if you get markets start going the other way and people need liquidity and people are just get scared of risk assets, that's what's going to make it, you know, pull back. It doesn't mean it's not going to come back up. It's just

Usually it's not a straight line one way. Is that an opportunity for an investor that doesn't have any exposure and doesn't want to use leverage? Possibly. You only have Coinbase. You're going to rebalance soon. You know, you're going to be looking at you. The rules are going to tell you you have no choice. But they're going to look at MicroStrategy and Hood and Riot. I mean, among all those players, not to front run anything that you're going to do because you don't even know yet.

But that's on the table. Oh, without question, the exchanges, the building of momentum in the exchanges has made so many more of them appealing to be included in the strategy. I'll say just personally, though, and look, one of the ways I'll get my exposure, full disclosure, is I would probably turn to SkyBridge and Anthony Scaramucci. Obviously, we maintain a personal friendship. But I think Anthony understands the business well. But I think personally...

I probably would say to myself, okay, let's take 1% to 2% exposure with no leverage. I don't understand the concept of you need leverage here in the ownership. If you are retail, if you're an individual investor like we are, 1% to 2% exposure is the right way to do it. And maybe there's like a little bit of meme craze here too. I mean, just these names that are all caught up in the flavor of the moment. Now, this could be a 31 flavors of the moment. It could have a little bit of distance, Jimmy, but let's switch to the other

Certainly hottest trade as the year winds down. That's mega cap. NASDAQ's up 7% in one month. Now, maybe there's a bit of a correlation between this level of risk asset, whether it's speculative risk in terms of crypto or just risk assets in the place that you have put money to work, the American investor has, with great success. That's mega caps.

Is this going to continue to work? Is this a sign of something? Well, it feels like it's going to continue through the end of the year, Scott. I mean, that's an obvious sort of just the trend is your friend. Joe, you mentioned performance chasing. There's going to be that going on in the institutional investment management world. So you should expect that this MAG7 trade is going to continue through year end. And frankly, some of these names do have value to them. Alphabet, which is a big position for me, or Amazon, also a big position. I would look at those valuations and I feel quite comfortable considering

Nvidia, you know, I know we talk about it being at a relatively expensive multiple, roughly 35 times forward. But given that growth rate, that's very much justified. So I actually, I'm much more comfortable in this part of the discussion than I was in the crypto discussion. That's why I didn't ask you about it.

But I, well, thank you. But can I make a point that I think is relevant here? Because you asked starting off the show, like, what do you do with crypto right here? And I think part of the answer has to be, we talk about this a lot, know who you are, know what you're doing in the markets. If you are somebody who is trying to get rich in the market, hey, you know what? How much is Bitcoin up in two months?

100%, it's a good way to get rich. On the other hand, I can't tell you when it's gonna go down and I couldn't tell you that it was gonna double. If on the other hand, you are somebody who has earned a lot of money in your lifetime doing hard work and you're looking at that money and you wanna invest it safely with a cogent, rational explanation of why you're invested in things, you look at things like the names I just mentioned, Scott, Amazon,

Alphabet, NVIDIA. And you can rationalize being invested in those investments in a way that you just simply can't with Bitcoin. You can rationalize it if you listen to Saylor with Carl and Sarah talking about, you know, buying Manhattan in the 1600s and making the analog from then to now. That's what he says. And we'll see what happens with his positions within Bitcoin. But, Amy, you bought more Alphabet, too.

The point we're making now. Figuring that this run is, you know. There's more left. We're underweight than MAG7. It's hurt. We've made it up in other ways, Japanese banks and other things, and cobbling it together. But we've been underweight than MAG7. And it's hurt us. So in our more defensive portfolio, I'm reducing the underweight a little bit. Maybe I'm marking the top.

but it will be really interesting to see what happens in January because this is a momentum market. It's one of the biggest momentum markets we've ever had. Just if you look at how well momentum is doing versus other factors, it's only 99. Before the last couple of weeks, momentum's like had a,

big rollover. Right. But not, well, still the financials are doing well. Like if you look at what stocks have still have momentum, it's still pretty strong. And there's a lot of complacency. The volatility is obviously, the VIX is low. So we'll see what happens in January. We have a lot of clients are saying, you know, we have a lot of profits after two years of very strong markets.

Don't sell our stocks now. Wait till 2025. And we don't want to pay the gains this year. So we'll see what happens in January if we do get a rollover. But this is just reducing the underweight.

Nvidia, by the way, is officially entering correction territory. It's down 10% from its November 7th closing high. We'll talk about a related stock that is having a really great moment of its own, but we'll do that a little bit later because we have a move around it. But we knew that at some point these were not going to trade as a monolith. In fact, they've separated themselves from

one another. You've had record highs today for Alphabet, record high today for Amazon. You've had recent record highs for Meta and Apple. And then the distance is a little bit for the NVIDIAs of the world or Microsoft, which hasn't hit a high since the summer.

Yeah, so it's very interesting. What I wrote down in my notes, these are the stocks in the MAG7 that are at all-time highs, right? Apple, Google, Meta, Amazon, Tesla. And what isn't on that list is Nvidia. So all of the talk we've had

over the last few months about the market broadening. The market did broaden in the third quarter. It's not broad in the fourth quarter. We have a little chart if you want to show it. I mean, we've really gotten to a point where 76% of the market gains are back in the MAG7. Take us through this. What did you want to show? Yeah. So what you see is that in the second quarter of this year, we went from the MAG7 represented 110% of all the gains in the S&P. The other 493 names were down.

And then that changed in the third quarter. They were only 9% of the gain, but now they are 76% of the gain this quarter, except Nvidia. So the market, if you talk about broadening, it's just the Mag 7 is broadened away from Nvidia.

other names in the Mag 7. I mean, this trade, Jim, is back with a vengeance. That's how we've been describing it. And you could, I think, make the argument that it's even better that it is back the way it is without Nvidia carrying everything.

Because some doubted the fact that, well, if Nvidia struggles, well, you know, that means that the Mag 7s are going to go down and then the overall market's going to be in trouble. Not so fast. You've had a continued big jump in tech positioning, according to Deutsche Bank today. You're looking at the stocks month to date for many of these names. And it is stark, obviously, where Nvidia is relative to the rest. But they suggest positioning is very elevated again, factoring in modest reacceleration and earnings growth.

bucking the gradual slowing over the last three quarters.

The leadership is absolutely growing. And I know we're going to talk later about one of the newer additions to the $1 trillion market cap club. But I remember last decade, and it wasn't more than 10 years ago, it was less than that, when Apple first crossed $1 trillion, that was a big, big deal. Now that's becoming kind of ho-hum, like that's almost an everyday occurrence. Certainly, it's healthy. You know, with regards to NVIDIA and good analysis, Kerry, I think we all know that it corrects quite often.

And then usually that is a setup for a very big rally, which I think is going to happen again. There's no indication that demand for the chips that they're producing has gone down at all.

The only thing I would worry about with Nvidia is when their supply catches up, there's just no, I don't see that on the near term horizon. Yeah, I know, like wake me up when that happens. Exactly. Because it doesn't feel like it's anywhere anytime soon. So if I can just, you talked, Joe, about dip buying if Bitcoin corrected. Well, hey, guess what? Happening in Nvidia, I'll bet you'll see the buying come in. Oppenheimer today says that last week's acceleration in large cap growth, i.e. the mega caps, confirms a resumption of a larger breakout.

So here's what bothers me about it, and it absolutely could. I'm not dismissing, I'm not forecasting what the future ultimately could look like. I'm just understanding the environment of now.

If there was this desire to own mega caps and to own mega cap growth, why is Nvidia not performing as well? It would just be universal buying. So I call into question, hold on, I call into question the possibility that if you look at around the world, Asia, weak, Europe, weak, the China trade, which everyone was so excited about in September and October, fell apart.

The U.S. is the only place right now to invest. And I just wonder if we looked for post-election areas of the market where you saw underperformance. You didn't have the underperformance in NVIDIA. NVIDIA was performing through the election. You had underperformance in Alphabet. You had underperformance in some of the MAG-7, to your point on the chart. And I wonder if that's what's going on. I wonder if the reason why S&P growth is up 4% this month and S&P value is down 3%

is more a fact of money just trying to find a home in the places that in the third quarter didn't see the strong outperformance. I think it's mostly regulation. I think the stocks that were hurting, like Google even, people thought about, oh, you know, maybe coming after Apple.

Apple, these are stocks that have rallied really, really hard because that regulation risk is not there as much. And Nvidia wasn't just up, right? You had a 500% return on that stock. It's still up 160 plus percent this year. To your point, I mean, you have a ticket, like one of those ticket machines where you pull a number outside the gate of Mar-a-Lago.

Right. And every tech CEO is coming down. It says the big and the digital number. Right. Tim Cook, your number 65, because he was there for a Friday evening dinner with the president elect. And they've all been the tech CEOs have been parading down there in part for what Kerry said. This administration had been all over them.

And even if the president-elect in his first term was kind of all over them too, verbally, they don't want to see any of these things go into real action. So they're down there trying to make

make sure it doesn't happen. Right, and it could work. So that's, you know, it's worked before. So I think it's a smart strategy. I think that's what they're going to do. I don't think this means that they're up for four years, though. I think, you know, we saw this a little bit in 2016. The trade that worked right after Trump was elected didn't follow through for the next...

for the next three and a half years. So I think we have to be careful. But I do think a lot of this is fund flows. We had record flows into the U.S. stock market in November, outflows in every other market. That also can't continue. 40% of the S&P earnings comes from abroad. It can't be that the U.S. just works and the rest of the world falls apart. Unless this is the appearance

epitome of the American exceptionalism trade. The problem is that 40% of S&P earnings comes from outside the U.S. No, I understand, but nowhere is American exceptionalism on more full display than with these hyperscalers because we have the greatest technology companies on planet Earth, period. That's part of why they've started to dominate again because everyone recognizes that these Mag 7 are

Right. There's a lot of Tesla's earnings like they come from everywhere. Tesla's up 70 percent. I mean, that's a Musk thing. But again, I think it's going to be hard to see the earnings if we say the rest of the world is going to fall apart. It's just a hard it's hard to square that circle. Scott, to your point, I mean, the dollar is up 6 percent.

6% in this quarter. And that's a reflection of the exceptionalism. Now, at what point does that hurt the- That's typically not good for the market. At what point does it hurt earnings? Okay, I don't know the answer to that.

that, but you have to acknowledge the strength in the dollar is real and it's a representation of something tangible that's gone on. You feel like, you think Massa is at Mar-a-Lago with President-elect Trump because of American inferiority? No. He's $100 billion based on the exceptionalism that he wants to be a part of and get a return on that investment from.

And he's far from the last who's going to be talking about sizable investments in the United States. As you bring up, Masa, and I was listening to the interview with both of them earlier, the thought that comes to mind, it's an old saying, but capital goes, it flows to where it's treated best. And generally speaking, that has been America, but especially under a President Trump administration, that is likely to be the case. That's why it's flowing here. All right. So...

Fed. You guys realize the Fed's going to make a decision this week? Sure do. Right? I mean, we're watching. Who's the Fed? Right.

I mean, I don't know. Maybe if the Fed cuts a lot slower, it's going to upset Bitcoin. I don't know. But you do have a decision on Wednesday where it's widely expected, Amy, that they're going to cut rates. Goldman's Hot Seas has removed one from next year as we sort of rethink expectations, right? Smaller cuts. The likelihood of getting another 50 seems outlandish. The likelihood of getting as many as we once thought equally as outlandish. So they take their...

They pair their expectation back. Evercore ISI has a price target for the S&P for 25 at 6,800. So we're still optimistic, even if we're going to get fewer and smaller cuts. Right. We're really optimistic. I mean, coming into this year, the average price target was 2% above where the S&P was. So we started the year around 4,700. The average price target was about 4,800. This year, we're starting probably 6,100, between 6,000 and 6,100.

And the average price target is close to $7,000. So we're starting in a very different place this year in terms of optimism. And it goes to everything that we've been talking about, U.S. exceptionalism, MagSeth, and everything going to work. Expectations are high this year, and it's going to be harder to meet them. It's funny. I wanted to get through some moves before we bounce from our A block today. And I'm looking on social media, and a viewer says, Amy gave viewers a big winner two months ago that

doubled. And it is? Eye on cue. It just so happens, coincidentally, we were slated to talk about it. So here's your conversation that I think you were hoping we'd have. You trimmed a little bit of it. I did trim a little bit just because it got to such a big percent position. We put it in at $12 or $13. It got to $39-ish. It's now in the low-ish 30s. But

It's been a great stock. It's been a big winner. I didn't expect it to do this in two months. We still like the company long term. We're just managing the position size. This is a quantum computing play.

It actually has customers and performing computing for real live companies and the government. We like it a lot from a longer term perspective. I just trimmed a little. All right. I appreciate you, Dominic, for talking about that because it just worked right into what we were trying to do. All right. So there's that. Joe, you have some moves as well. You sold the XBI. Hasn't worked. Bad trade hasn't worked. Healthcare is abysmal. I just, you know, I've had...

a full year of trying to find opportunities, trying to find where there's momentum in the healthcare space and the momentum presents itself and then it just kind of falls apart. I still think the healthcare industry is working off the effects of COVID.

And I think COVID took the attention away from the healthcare industry in terms of R&D. So out of XPI. You want to assess that, that it's been a bad trade, it hasn't worked, and whether you think it's going to work in 25? I remember when you bought it and I said, I remember thinking and saying. I love that you pay attention to what I say. I remember that. Well, especially in this space. I mean, nobody knows it better. No one knows it better. It's a trade that needs patience.

And it's hard to have patience when, I'm not talking about you, I'm just talking about the trade itself. When you have an administration that might say, you know, we don't believe in all of this. We're going to cut funding. We're going to get rid of the NIH. Maybe the FDA should be privatized. You know, who knows? And therefore, you have to have more patience to see the underlying value of what those businesses are going to produce over the next decade. And so it's hard to own right now. I agree with that.

Can I ask you, Kerry? People have said to me, because I was talking to someone about this trade the other night before I got out of it,

And he's a hedge fund manager. And he said biotech can't go up without lower rates. Is that true? No, I don't think that's true. I think biotech can't go up without the IPO market starting to heat up and people caring about new companies, new entities, new products, new ideas. It's had no interest since the vaccines in 2021. Lower rates obviously help. I mean, there are companies that rely on a tremendous amount of capital. Yeah, of course.

The cheaper cost of lower cost of capital is obviously helpful. We get that. Healthcare never works in an election year. You're right about that. It is. It is a very tough place to live. All right. A couple other moves. You bought DocuSign and Datadog. Yes. Right. And Zoom. But I think you told us about Zoom before, didn't you? Or no? I told everyone that I would buy Zoom. I bought

So you did. So DocuSign and Datadog, why? Okay, first of all, Zoom is more of a longer-term investment. Zoom, what I see there is that they're pivoting towards AI. I think what you want to do with Zoom, if we could quickly throw this chart up, forget about everything that happened with this stock before December of 2022. They weren't living in a real world. In fiscal year 2021, they did 365% revenue growth. That world is over. It's a new world for Zoom.

uh for zoom it's a company with a reasonable valuation this is an investment long term docu sign and data dog these are trades these are trades i think that before the year closes out you're going to see some of these emerging software names that had strong momentum that has tailed off over the last couple of days and i'll include app lovin in this conversation

I think you're going to see flows back into these names, and I think you're going to see these names close out the year strong with a strong S&P itself. All right. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we will tell you our chart of the day because it is Broadcom. It is surging another record high after its post-earnings pop last week. We have a move related to it as well, and we will document that next.

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Visit Chevron.com slash anchor. We're back. Broadcom. I mentioned our chart of the day because it has hit a new record high Goldman Sachs today, raising its price target to 240 from one 90. You bought more ahead of the print. Yeah. Good for you. Yeah. We really like this name from a longer term perspective and the

The quarter wasn't a blowout quarter. I mean, Hawk was very exuberant. And so I think people got-- and were excited about the guidance. But we like their ASIC strategy longer term. We think it has real legs. And we do think that they're really well positioned to continue to gain share sort of as AI broadens out and it's not all about training.

You, my friend. Yes, sir. Feel good. Are on the wrong side of the Broadcom trade because, well, you sold it on December 4th.

Do I defend myself and say I made a hundred cents? I know, it was up a lot. But you got out too soon. No, you're right. Way too soon. And by the way... It's up 45% since you sold it. I just want to make sure our viewers have all the facts. And you're right. I'm going to give you a great closing bell plug. I'm sitting with Anka Crawford the other day in the commercial break. And she's literally schooling me because I say to her, well...

Hoctan said that he expected this to be the quarter, that it's the non-AI revenue that makes the return. Which could turn. I was skeptical of that. I'm like, okay, I just don't see that. And I felt as though the AI story was already priced in. She looked at me and she said, no, it's not. It's going to be about the AI. She nailed it. 100% nailed it. And it is about the AI story. It goes beyond whatever I could have imagined.

It exceeded those expectations. And again, I'm sorry, but it's a testament to the non-discretionary approach that we take with the ETF and the strategy. Because they stayed into Avago, and I thought my way out of it. You've got to listen to the peeps we have on the closing bell. Absolutely. She nailed it. Stacey Raskin has been telling us on that program that this is the second best chip stock ever.

for AI outside of Nvidia. He has made that case over and over and over again. And after the numbers came out this time, he was talking about their non-AI businesses having bottomed. - Which turned, yeah. - Right, which are making the turn. And that this is just the beginning.

for what they're trying to do related to AI. That the ramp up, the upside is potentially huge. I think that's right. I mean, I do think you're going to need these companies. The hyperscalers want custom ASICs. They want their own chip. They want to make it. They want to design it and they want to optimize it.

optimize it for what they want it to do. And Broadcom is the best position playing for that. They're all going to Broadcom for that. I have a few other chip names that are in the news today. ASML target cut to 939 from 851. That's at B of A. You own that stock. I do. We like it. We haven't added to it in a while. We keep looking at it. Again, we're underweight tech, so it's a name that I might get to. But I just don't think there's a real near-term catalyst to move it

very soon. The equipment names, Jim, are in the news today too, because Deutsche has taken KLA applied and lamb targets all lower. You own applied. They take it to 170 from 200. You can see on your screen here the other calls that they made as well. Earnings in this sector have been disappointing for a couple of quarters. That

That does not take away the long-term thesis here, which is simply that semiconductor plants are being built all over the world. The whole supply chain for semiconductors has been reconfigured and continues to be reconfigured for several years. So, Amy, you just made a very good point. There is no near-term catalyst. We'll see what the upcoming earnings are. But if you look at a lot of these companies, the earnings revisions have been down on the back of earnings that have come in less than expected.

Still, the long-term thesis and the valuation on a lot of these companies is very inviting. You just have to be patient. KLA and AMAT are yours, right? So KLA, I said the price target, what that was. AMAT to $170 from $2.00. KLA to $725 from $750.00.

KLA has been in the strategy since November of 2020. We actually sold out of Lam Research a couple of quarters ago. Consumer electronics has to come back once again. And I think, you know, the Trump administration at some point is going to have to address the consternation that exists

as it relates to the semiconductor industry and the relations with the Chinese. I think at some point that ultimately is going to have to be addressed if these stocks are going to make the patient return that you're expecting to higher levels. All right. The headlines now with Contessa Brewer. Hi, Contessa.

Hi there, Scott. The Treasury Department announced new sanctions this morning on North Korea and Russia. They affect North Korean banks, generals, other officials, along with Russian oil shipping companies. The U.S. sanctions are intended to disrupt North Korea's support for Russia's war in Ukraine. Kyiv estimates about 11,000 North Korean troops are on the battlefront. Is

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is back in court today for the second week of testimony in his long-running corruption trial. He was indicted in three cases and is accused of accepting gifts and offering regulatory favors for media tycoons in exchange for favorable news coverage. Netanyahu denies the charges. He is the first sitting Israeli Prime Minister charged with a crime.

And Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson made history this weekend. She became the first justice ever to appear on Broadway after she made a cameo in the musical "And Juliet" yesterday. She was featured in three scenes as Queen Mab. That's a character created specifically for the evening. But, you know, Scott, she probably has a lot of experience because, you know, the courtroom and the theater of justice.

You know what I'm saying? I hear you. All right. Contessa, thank you. Contessa Brewer. All right. Up next, no stopping Netflix. The share's up roughly 90% this year, near another record high. One Wall Street firm sees no signs of that rally slowing down. We'll debate it next. Get the Honda of your dreams during Happy Honda Days. Whether it's a rugged new passport...

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Welcome back. President-elect Trump just wrapping up that news event at Mar-a-Lago. Let's get to Eamon Javers, who has the highlights. There are many over this, what, 90 minutes? Yeah, it was a long one, Scott, and a lot of business topics covered. I'll give you a couple of bullet points from the tail end of the presser here that we didn't take live on CNBC. The former president talked a little bit about the killing of the UnitedHealthcare CEO and some of the outpouring of support.

for the alleged killer online. He's called that a sickness in this country. He said it was a terrible thing that happened. He said he can't even believe that there is such support for the alleged killer in that case. He also talked about the Des Moines Register threatened a lawsuit against that newspaper and its parent company, which is Gannett, because in his view, he said, the Des Moines Register's

polling before the election amounted to election interference. It would be interesting to see if he follows through with that lawsuit threat and what the basis is for that lawsuit. I've never seen a presidential candidate sue a newspaper for its polling before, but he has had some recent success against ABC, so maybe feels like he wants to continue that.

uh... we also saw him talking about tim cook in his meeting at mar-a-lago and he suggested that c_e_o_'s are coming to meet with him in a different way than they came in the first term he said in the first term uh... that he had back in twenty sixteen twenty seventeen time frame c_e_o_'s were hostile to him now he says c_e_o_'s are no longer hostile to him they all want to come they all want to be his friend and he was seems

highly energized and encouraged by that and rattled off a list of people who come to see him including Jeff Bezos of Amazon who says Scott is coming there this week back over to you. Alright, I appreciate that. Thank you for the update. That's Eamon Jabbers in Washington. Well, there's been no stop in Netflix this year. The stock's risen more than 90 percent. Now Oppenheimer suggests today that there is a lot more room to run. The firm raised the price target to a thousand and sixty-five dollars

from 825. That's our call of the day as a result. Julia Boorstin with us now to look at why shares have rallied so much. This is one of those best performers that people don't talk about enough, I don't think.

Scott, that's right. Netflix shares are up 95% over the past year on confidence that the company will continue adding subscribers and will also have some new growth drivers. Netflix added 23 million subscribers in the first three quarters of this year. That's after adding 13 million last fourth quarter. Now, Netflix is going to stop reporting subscriber numbers next year as it works to shift focus to profitability. But here are some key areas that investors are counting on to drive growth.

First, Netflix's move into live events with two Christmas Day NFL games is seen as a great way to attract users and also advertisers. And second is advertising. The company says ads will be a meaningful revenue contributor post 2025. It also helps the company offer a lower price subscription,

which in turn minimizes churn. And that's third. Netflix's broad content library gives it leading retention, which means it has lower churn than its rivals, which are actually seeing growing churn. 57% of analysts have a buyer overweight rating on the stock, 35% have a hold, and 7% have a sell. Shares up about half a percent today, Scott. All right, Julia, thanks for that. That's Julia Borson. Joe, you own the stock. It really has been remarkable, up 90%.

- It has. - Year to date, from where this stock was, remember when it traded down to 400 after, you know, 700 to 400, and here we are.

I think what's remarkable is the analyst community is so far below current price in what their price target is over the next 12 months, $840. That's well below. You can make the claim that the stock is expensive from a valuation standpoint relative to history and certainly to its peers. It trades at 39 times, which is a 50% premium to its peers. But I think it's warranted. I think live sports...

is creating such an opportunity for revenue in advertising. You're talking about a multi-billion dollar opportunity. So this journey into live sports, you could criticize the Tyson-Paul fight and say it didn't live up to your expectations. People still paid for it. They got subs out. Exactly right. People watched it.

So all you're criticizing is, well, the content isn't what I liked. You're going to watch the NFL game too, by the way. Exactly. Oh, they sure are. And I'll be one of them. So I think it's a tremendous opportunity as it relates to advertising.

Is it vulnerable to some form of a correction if we turn the calendar into New Year? You see a lot of stocks that are being sold that were held off because of taxes. Yeah, potentially it is. But I still think that's not an inflection point. That will be a January test for the market, no doubt. A lot of big winners. You've added Amy to Disney recently, right? The target goes to 135 from 122 at Rosenblatt today. Yeah. No, we...

I think the whole streaming space has gotten more rational. I mean, it's almost hard to follow. There's a new deal sort of every day of somebody getting out of something or spinning something off. But we do think Disney is on the right track now with its streaming. YouTube raising its pricing, you know, sort of

is raising the umbrella for everybody to do that. So I do think they're well positioned. The valuations come down a lot. Borman's in charge of finding the new CEO. So just things lining up better for them. Watching the airlines today, Delta and United named top picks at Barclays. Jimmy, you have Delta. Yeah.

Yeah, it seems like a lot of things are going right for the airlines right now. The pricing is good. Demand is still, you know, off the charts. You've got great labor relations. You don't have fuel price pressure. So there's a lot of things going right. As far as why the stocks have not done anything recently, I mean, they've had a very good year. And I think it's just a small pullback, a consolidation before they go higher. But I just don't see any headwinds here. All right. Airlines to autos, where there appear to be a bunch of headwinds now.

Yeah. Ford got downgraded today to underperform. That's at Jefferies. We can show the chart and see what it's doing off of that downgrade. There you go. It's down, well, near 4%. So you sold General Motors the day that tariffs were talked about for the autos. It's down 13% since then. Yeah. Are these, like, I don't know, what are they? Are they investable here, the OEMs?

I mean, look, from a valuation point of view, yes. From a sentiment point of view, I'm not rushing back into GM. I do like Mary Barra. I think she's done a very good job with the multiple tasks that she's had. But let's also face it, Scott, that right after the tariff announcement, a couple

couple of bad news is came out one was there uh... downsizing china restructuring it taking a multi-billion dollar charge and then they shut down the cruise division so is this kitchen sinking i think so but having said that i'd like to wait for the fourth quarter earnings report before deciding whether to get back into the stock or not okay we will take a break will come back and we will have mike santoli actually we have i'm sorry we do not have mike santoli we have sector nomics

And we'll talk about whether a red sweep means a lot of green on the screen. Dom Chiu is sweeping that up for us. He'll join us next.

All right, welcome back. Only two weeks left to trade in 2024. Seven S&P sectors posting double-digit gains this year, but will the coming red sweep in D.C. lead to new winners and losers? Dom Chiu has today's sectornomics. Hey, Dom. All right, so Scott, the top three sectors of 2024 are comm services, tech, and consumer discretionary. The bottom three are energy, materials, and healthcare, up more than just about 3% or so. Now, this all

comes in a year when the S&P was up 27%. So now we are exactly five weeks away from the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump. When he takes office, the 119th Congress will be waiting for him on Capitol Hill after the Republican sweep, putting the GOP in the White House, the House of Representatives, and the United States Senate. Now, the last time Republicans had the White House in both houses of Congress was from 2017 to 19. The S&P was up 11% in those two years.

The Democrats won the same setup in 2021, and the S&P for those two years was up about 1%. 2022 was a rough year. Now, with the help of our friends at YCharts, we went back to 1991 and checked on one party's seats to see which sectors fared the best. When the Democrats take both houses of Congress and the presidency, energy fares the best. It's up around 2.3% or so.

The second best performing sector for Democrats is real estate. It's up about 2 percent and tech comes in third, up about 1.6 percent when the Democrats sweep Washington. Now, when the Republicans sweep Washington, the best performing sector overall is real estate, up about one and a half percent. Utilities comes in second with the average year in a GOP sweep up about 1.5.

Again, one and a half percent. And energy ranks third on that list on average in 1991 when the Republicans swept the Washington Triple Crown up about 1.3 percent as well. So as we talk about the state of play, those are just some guidelines. But still, in recent history, this is how those sweeps tend to go. Scott, I'll send things back over to you. All right. We'll see how it all plays out in real time. Dom, thank you very much. That's Dom Chu. Still ahead, Nike reports its results later this week.

Shares are down more than 25% year to date. We'll have the setup coming up. Nike reports on Thursday, stock has not had a great year. I think we know that. You sold it in May, Amy. I did, yeah. What would get you to buy Nike back?

Oh, I don't know. I mean, a new CEO plan. I mean, they have a new CEO. Well, they have a temporary CEO, right? I haven't, I actually haven't followed it. So last time I checked, they had a temporary CEO. They have a new CEO. Oh, okay. Well, I haven't, I haven't been looking at it. Wow, so this thing was like out of sight, out of mind, for real. I really, I was done with it. And I'm happy to be done with it because it hasn't, it hasn't worked. But I do think they need to, you know, they have a lot, a lot of new competitors and they have, they,

they need new product and to start gaining share back as they've been bleeding share. Joe, you previously owned it. I did. Let's talk about Decker's all-time high. Would you buy Nike back? No. What would get you to buy Nike back? No. Did you see what Foot Locker reported? Why would I buy Nike back after what Foot Locker reported? No. No interest. No interest.

Great American company, no? No. They need new product. They need more time. Even if they have a great quarter, you still have time to get into the stock. And I'm not for one second saying they are going to have a great quarter. But with the amount of disappointment that this has had, it's going to take two or three good quarters in a row for this to really get some momentum. I don't think there's any urgency here. I mean, you prefer on.

Still. Yeah. I mean, that's where you talk to people. And are they buying on or deckers or excuse me, Hoka? Or are they buying Nikes? They're not buying Nikes. I just I haven't seen that that turn around. All right. We'll come back and do finals next. I'll see you on closing bell today. Dan Ives, Cameron Dawson, Chris Heisey. We'll take you through that final hour trade. Let's do finals here. Farmer Jim.

Farmer Jim Labenthal. What do you got? BlackRock. Markets keep going higher. BlackRock's assets under management are going higher with it. All right. Thank you. Asset managers doing well today, too. Carrie Firestone. Okay. So sticking with financials, I'm going to give you Schwab. Trades for 17 times earnings. And after a flat year of EPS growth, big growth next year, 24%.

Amy Raskin. Impinj, it's a small cap semiconductor stock that has a lot of growth in front of it. We like it a lot. You know what the market cap is? It's about $5 billion. $5 billion, okay. Has it had a good year? It was up a lot. It was up over 100%. It's pulled back. We trimmed it a little bit. I spoke about it, I think, on the show around $220. It's now like $150, but I think it's still up 89% for the year. Wow, okay. So it's had a good year. We'll watch it. It looks like it's moving now, too. Joe T.,

Consumer discretionary name, Urban Outfitters. Strong momentum. All right. I'll see you on Closing Bell at 3 o'clock Eastern. The exchange begins 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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