The Record Setting Rally 6/27/25
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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.

All right. Thanks so much. Welcome to the Halftime Report. I'm Scott Wapner. Front and center this hour, this record-setting rally, both the S&P and Nasdaq hitting new highs. We're trading the markets, of course, with the Investment Committee today, as always. Joining me for the hour, Stephanie Link, Kevin Simpson, Bryn Talkington, and Brian Belsky. Let's see where we are. We have a very good day in front of us today. Dow's good for more than 1%. S&P, Nasdaq.

Also higher. Wolf Research today says this rally could continue to run into mid to late July before consolidating. Kevin Simpson, I love your note to our group today. No trades, which is rare for you because you're always doing something. But you said sometimes you buy stocks, sometimes you sell stocks.

and sometimes you just let your horses run. Why is this one of those times? - You know, it's incredible how far we've come since April. We saw the Vicks almost at 60, which is a covered call writer's dream, as Bryn can contest. But the fact that it's down to 16, 16 and a half is an indication that maybe you just kind of sit back and you enjoy the ride.

And literally, there's an inverse relationship often between volatility and market performance. We're seeing it here. I think it can continue. It doesn't last forever, but we're going to sit back and take advantage of it for sure. It feels like, Brian, and some are talking about that we're about to reach, if we're not already in the FOMO stage of this rally. Maybe it's already here. Maybe people like you represent the FOMO trade. Just the other day, raising your price target back to where it was yesterday.

because you think this market's going higher and you don't want to miss out.

I don't think we represent the fear of missing out trade at all, Scott. When we made our move in April, we said in our note that we own what we own. We made absolutely no allocation changes to our portfolios. As I said on the show the other day when we talked about the upgrade, we've had one of the best quarterly performances of myself running money in over 20 years. Again, when you set a market target,

And as a strategist, you live by the sword and die by the sword. I believe that it's an academic practice. I believe that investors should not follow a strategist's market target in how they invest. And so we've been excessively bullish during this entire time, maintained our bullish stance. So we have no, ourselves, we have no fear of missing out because we've been there the entire time.

Yeah, I mean, I don't even mean it as it doesn't have to be meant as a negative. It's just sort of is what it is. This market just continues to go higher, Bryn. And investors obviously don't want to miss what kind of gains they think might be ahead. Are we at that stage of this move? And is this what continues to take the market higher from even these levels?

Well, I think the index level returns here to date are quite benign. Where the FOMO is, is in this collective, this basket of stocks. I own some of them. I don't own others. Core, Weave, Circle, Palantir, Robinhood, Roblox, etc.,

that are up between like 50 and 200% over the last six months to one year. And so you have this basket of hyper growth, I would say mid cap names that have just gone, I think quite parabolic. And so to me, I definitely,

can see that. But the headlines, to me, the top line index levels, I think are just trucking along nicely. Forgive me, Brynn. I have to interrupt you. We're going to go to the White House where the president is taking questions out of that news conference. And we're in the process of making some others. But ultimately, in fact, Scott is here. Howard Lutnick, these two guys have been doing an incredible job and the people that work with them have been doing an incredible job.

But, you know, we have 200 countries. You could say 200 countries plus. We can't do that. So at a certain point over the next week and a half or so, or maybe before, we're going to send out a letter. We've talked to many of the countries, and we're just going to tell them what they have to pay to do business in the United States. And it's going to go very quickly.

SOME OF THE BIGGER COUNTRIES, INDIA, I THINK WE'RE GOING TO REACH A DEAL WHERE WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO GO IN AND TRADE. RIGHT NOW IT'S RESTRICTED. YOU CAN'T WALK IN THERE, YOU CAN'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT.

A FULL TRADE BARRIER DROPPING, WHICH IS UNTHINKABLE. AND I'M NOT SURE THAT THAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN, BUT AS OF THIS MOMENT, WE'VE AGREED TO THAT, GO INTO INDIAN TRADE. WE'RE GOING TO BE TRADING IN CHINA. THAT'S GOING TO COME A LITTLE BIT DOWN THE ROAD, BUT WE'RE GOING TO BE TRADING IN CHINA. WE HAVE A LOT OF GREAT THINGS GOING, AND WE'RE GETTING ALONG WITH COUNTRIES, BUT SOME WILL BE DISAPPOINTED BECAUSE

because they're going to have to pay tariffs. And we've taken in already hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs, no inflation. The only problem we have is we have a Fed guy that doesn't understand what's happening. And it would be great if he'd lower the rate because we'd be able to borrow a lot cheaper.

Why don't we keep it on this subject? This is such a big subject. You know what? Trade is so big, but this, I don't know, in a certain way, this might be bigger than trade. I think this is bigger than trade. Yes, please, go ahead. Sir, on the transgender ruling, the Supreme Court ruling that parents with religious objections can pull their kids out of public school lessons that use LGBTQ materials.

Pam brought it up, your reaction to that ruling today, sir. I think the ruling was a great ruling, and I think it's a great ruling for parents. It's really a ruling for parents. They lost control of the schools. They lost control of their child. And this is a tremendous victory for parents. And I'm not surprised by it, but I am surprised that it went this far.

It took us to bring life back to normal. So it's a wonderful, it's parental. And I kept saying, we will give you back your parental rights. They were taken away. And this is a tremendous victory for parents. Yeah. Mr. President, if you look at the back of the last week, it's been extraordinary in terms of the

Action the Middle East you were at the Hague. I'm wondering how the week has an I'm wondering now if you believe that I'm like I'm wondering now sir if you believe that Iran has given up its Long history of ambitions with nuclear weapons or what you would like to see from them To prove that they do and what type of meetings is your administration looking for next week with Iran? So Iran wants to meet

As you know, their sites were obliterated. They're very evil nuclear sites. They were, now has been proven. We had some fake news for a little while.

the same people that covered the hunter biden laptop was from russia the same people that did three or four of the russia russia russia hoax but on their end no no wait wait just listen they came up with something that delayed the credit that our great pilots and these great america i mean they what talent that was and they hit it right down in the spot 52 000 feet think of this dark no moon you couldn't see a thing

And they hit the refrigerator door, as they say. That's the size of a Target. And overwhelmingly, and it's amazing what was done. We're the only ones that could have done it. And we took out two of the other sites also, in addition to that. We finished them off. That was very evil intention. I believe that, and again, time will tell, but I don't believe that they're going to go back into nuclear power.

anytime soon. They spent over a trillion dollars on nuclear and they never got it together. And nothing was moved from the site, by the way. To do that is very dangerous. It's very, very heavy material. Those cars were most likely the cars of masons because they were pouring concrete at the top

at the hatch as you know the hatch going into the nuclear site they wanted to reinforce it and they had some masons there pouring concrete by the way that concrete was obliterated it hit exactly at the concrete it was i don't think it had a chance to dry but everything's down there it's under millions of tons of rock

Your administration has said that El Salvador is one of the safest countries in the hemisphere. So why haven't you yet canceled temporary protective status for that country? Was it part of the deal? Well, we'll take a look. We've had a great relationship with El Salvador. They have a fantastic leader. They built a massive prison system.

And I don't know exactly why, but it's a hell of a system. And we bring people there, and when they go there, they don't get out. And frankly, when they hear they have to go there, they become very nice people. They become very nice people. It's a tough system, but it's a brilliant system. And it's a system done by a very, very good leader. We'll talk about El Salvador. A lot of respect. Mr. President.

Thank you. A question for you and then a question for the Attorney General. As you go into negotiations and talks with Iran, are you demanding not only that there would be no uranium production inside of Iran, but also that Iran would turn over all existing stockpiles of uranium? Well, you know, we're a little early for that, but something like that. Yeah, we'll do something like that. Let me say that I've been saying for 25 years, even as a civilian, you cannot let them have

a nuclear weapon, and that's what happened. It's been obliterated. It would be years before they could ever get going, and I really think it's probably the last thing. They have to recover from a hell of a tough war. -Would you also be demanding that the IAEA have full rights to inspect in Iran? -Or somebody, yeah. Or somebody that we respect, including ourselves. -And a question for both the president and the attorney general. Under birthright citizenship, if this is implemented, who would be tasked with actually vetting citizenship?

And how, like, would this be a situation where you have nurses and doctors checking for citizenship of parents or? This is all pending litigation. It's going to be decided in October by the Supreme Court. And we'll discuss that after the litigation. If you have an undocumented baby, would that baby then be an enforcement priority?

The violent criminals in our country are the priority now. I will monitor the briefing room for anything more that we think we need to discuss related to the markets and the economy, of course. This news conference called so the president can react to those Supreme Court decisions today. But he did comment, as you heard, on tariffs, in which he said a decision on many of the levels will be done within the next week and a half. He does continue, as you did hear there as well, to criticize tariffs.

Fed Chair Powell, a Fed guy who doesn't understand what's happening. Those are the exact words of President Trump there. And a comment on Iran as well. He said he doesn't believe Iran will move back to its nuclear enrichment program, quote, anytime soon.

Again, we'll monitor that. We'll bring you anything that transpires from the briefing room there. But I should touch on the market, too, because we are at the highs of the day. The Dow is good for 500 points right now. The S&P with a new record high today, along with the Nasdaq. Steph, I want to turn to you. Brent, I'll come back to you. Forgive me for having to interrupt you there, but we wanted to go.

to Washington. It leads me to, I guess, you know, as we're still waiting, as the president said, on these final levels for tariffs, whether there is some degree of complacency about the risks that still abound. It's not like we've taken care of everything. If you look at the economic data today, there are some who will say, well, that's more evidence of potential stagflation. We still have the tariff issue unresolved. And yet,

We march to new highs and now beyond. But we got to such extremes, Scott, in April and May. And it's been pretty hated, this rally. And that speaks to the $7 trillion of cash on the sidelines, right? So there's that.

So to me, I think we're slowly getting some answers, not all, but some answers. You heard the president on trade. So we're making progress on trade. We're making progress on the geopolitical front. That seems to be calming down. Don't know, but it seems to be.

Inflation, the University of Michigan today has the one year inflation expectations lower than in a year from now, like 5% from 6.6%. And then of course you have the Fed, that's kind of the wild card, but it did, we talked about this the other day, that it did sound like Fed Chair Powell was a little more, I thought it was a little more dovish in that he said, we're waiting on tariffs. If we didn't have tariffs, we would have been cutting by now.

So I added it all up. The latest Atlantic Fed tracker, GDP is 2.9%. That's not stagflation. And inflation was okay. It's sticky.

And then earnings are growing. I think earnings are going to grow double digits going forward. All right. The president's making some comments, we're told, regarding the tax bill. Let's listen. 68, a record, the highest in the history. The Democrats won't approve it only because politically it's so good for the Republicans. The Democrats aren't approving it. But think of what they're not approving. They're not approving border security. We've done a great job at the border, but we have to add some wall. We have to do various things.

We have no money for that. We have no money for the border. We have no money for so many things. But if the Democrats -- it would be interesting to see if we get any Democrat votes. We should. If I were a Democrat, I would absolutely -- maybe Fetterman, because he seems to be the most sensible one lately. If I were a Democrat, I would vote for this bill all day long because it's tax cuts and so many other things that are common sense. They're basic things.

I think they're doing fine. The parliamentarian's been a little difficult, and I would say that I disagree with the parliamentarian on some things, and on other ways, he's been fine. But we'll have to see. It's a big issue. I will tell you this. If that bill doesn't pass, the country will get a 68% tax increase. So think of this. You're a Democrat, and you vote against it.

That means you're voting in favor because essentially you're voting in favor of the largest tax hike in the history of our country.

And you can't do that. In addition, we're cutting costs by $1.7 trillion, and it won't affect anybody. It's just fraud, waste, and abuse. -Mr. President, a leading -- Mr. President, a leading global economist just did a 180 and says your tariff plan, you may have outsmarted everybody with it. What is your message to -- -I love this. I love this question. This is the favorite -- This is the best question I've ever been asked, because I've been going through abuse for years on this.

Because as you know, we're taking in hundreds of billions of dollars

No inflation whatsoever. But, Mr. President, what is your message to critics who think your tariff plan will cause a recession? I think they should go back to business school. It's so obvious. It's so obvious. I mean, we're taking in billions and billions of dollars from China and a lot of other countries. We took in – I had a call from somebody in the House and a high official –

"Sir, we have a problem. We don't know what to do. The books are a mess." I said, "What do you mean by the books?" "The books. The money coming in is so terrible." I figured, "Oh, boy. What's this? I don't like this question." I said, "So what seems -- There's so much money coming in, and there must be some kind of an accounting mistake because we have hundreds of billions of dollars more money than we thought." I said, "Do me a favor. Go check the -- Call me back. You have to call me back. Check the tariff column."

He calls me back two hours later and says, "You're right. We took in $88 billion in tariffs. They have so much money coming in." But more important than the money coming in, we have companies coming in, factories coming in, auto plants being built. AI is being built here instead of being built all over Europe and Asia. We have all of it. We have over $15 trillion, just about, Scott. I think we're right about that number. We went to Saudi Arabia.

We went to Qatar, we went to UAE, very smart people, very smart leaders, great leaders, and we took in $5.1 trillion just there without the tariffs. I mean, they also like the thing called

November 5th, November 6th and November 7th. That was a very good little period of time. It's called the presidential election. You know, you used to have one day election. Now you have it go over it. But even if you just took that little period, because it was pretty obvious it was going to be a landslide. But and they like that. But they love the tariffs. I had Texas Instruments come in the other day. Big company.

And he said, we're putting in $60 billion into new plants and new equipment, new everything. Sir, you're going to keep the tariffs, aren't you? Because whoever took the tariffs off and we are going to absolutely keep it. And they're worried that somebody that like this communist from New York someday gets elected. I can't believe that's happening. That's a terrible thing for our country, by the way. He's a communist.

We're going to go to a communistic city. That's so bad for New York. But the rest of the country is revolting against it. But if somebody got elected, they're afraid that if this was taken off, well, we're going to guarantee it's never going to be taken off. And again, we're taking in hundreds. Think of this. Hundreds of billions of dollars. And they were all confused because they've never seen this before. You know, it's always the other way. We don't have enough money.

So much money is coming in at levels that nobody's ever seen. But most importantly, we have factories being built, car plants being built, companies moving to our country like never before. If you look at $15 trillion, and that's only in a few months. You know, I haven't been here that long.

Presidents, like the last one, was a disaster. He's the worst president in the history of our country, by the way. What he did on our border can never, ever be forgotten. To me, that's the worst of all the things. And he's done some terrible things. Grossly incompetent. Nobody knew it was him because I don't think it was him. I think it was whoever was controlling the auto pen.

But our country is doing great. And those leaders and other leaders, I just left, as you know, a large group of the most highly respected people. And that includes big countries. When you look at Germany and France and Spain, although Spain didn't come through, but they will. By the way, guaranteed they will. That was the only country that sort of tried to hold back on putting up the money. But just so you know, they said...

It's unbelievable what's happened to the USA. You are a dead country. We didn't respect the country, the leader. You were dead as a doornail. One said to me, you went from being a dead country. You are right now the hottest country anywhere in the world. The whole world is talking about the USA and everybody wants a part of it. And they're pouring into our country. And you're going to see those numbers. Thank you for that question. Thank you.

The Press: Thank you, Mr. President. I have a question about trade. Secretary Besant has said that he hopes tariff deals with major partners will be done by Labor Day. So if some deals are not done by your July 9th deadline, will some countries' tariffs go back up, or will they stay where they are now? The President: Yeah, well, there are some countries that are used to ripping us off, to be honest with you. And I don't want to name them, but you sort of can name them.

And they're so used to just, you know, getting, taking it billions and billions of, look, we had a trade deficit of more than a trillion dollars. Think of a trillion, a trade deficit. That's because nobody cared. Nobody, we cared a lot when, you know, I took in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariff. We had the greatest economy in history up until now. I think we're going to blow it away.

But during my time, and especially prior to COVID, we're the greatest economy in the history of our country. I think we're going to blow it away now based on the kind of numbers that we're seeing. But some countries are very angry because they've been ripping us off for years. They've been making billions and billions of dollars. There was nobody to negotiate with. They could do whatever they want. They charge just tariffs, by the way.

at numbers that we've never seen before. And we ended up losing much more than a trillion dollars a year, a trillion dollars a year on trade. And now they're being met with a force that's far greater than them. And they don't like it. So they're upset because instead of making, you know, five billion dollars, they're going to break even or

Or they'll make a little bit. I want to be nice. They'll make a little bit. Oh, we'll make a little bit. It's a big difference. Yeah, please go. Go ahead. Redress. On the 2020 election, is there any more information on the special prosecutor? So many Americans still have questions about the 2020 election. And speaking of rogue judges, would you consider appointing somebody at DOJ maybe to investigate the judges that allowed for the political persecution of you, your family, and your supporters during the Biden administration?

I love you. Who are you? Tom Carrow from Lindell TV. Well, that's just a very nice question.

And it's not a setup. I have no idea who you are, but I appreciate that question. All I can say is we're not here for that. I hope so. I hope they're doing a thing because that election was rigged and stolen, and we can't allow that to happen. You know, a lot of people tell me, sir, you just won the greatest election in the history of our country. You won at numbers that won all seven swing states, won the popular vote, won everything. Sir, go on with your life.

And many people say that, good people, friends of mine. Then you have people that say that same thing, go on with your life, but you have to find out what happened because you can't let that happen again. Look at what this lunatic did. Look at what he did. He opened our borders to people that were murderers, 11,888 to be exact, murderers. And we've captured many of those murderers.

and we're bringing them back. Some of them are so dangerous that we don't even want to bring them back. We're afraid they're going to try and come back in. But he allowed people to come into this country, people from mental institutions, insane asylums. That's a mental institution on steroids. People from mental institutions, gang members, drug dealers,

People, oh, jails being emptied out into our country. Venezuela emptied out almost its entire prison population into our country. But I don't want to blame them. Many countries have done that. The Congo, you know, we have a great press conference coming up later. And it's the Congo.

All right, we'll come back and focus on that chart that we were just showing you there. That, of course, the president in the briefing room. Wide-ranging comments, of course, tariffs, taxes, even the New York City mayoral race. But we're following a market that is at record highs right now. Brent, I'll come back to you. And forgive me for interrupting you earlier, but there's a belief, too, that there are not

100% believers in this market yet. And there's a lot of money on the sideline that is going to see what's happening on days like today, whether it's fear of missing out or just want a piece of the action. And money's going to come in. I want you to hear what Rick Reeder told us yesterday on Closing Bell and have your reaction to it on the other side.

Look at the amount of cash that's sitting out there the amount we were looking at the total net worth to the size of the fixed income market size the equity market Globally there is so much money that wants to come into the market that didn't for a while and I just think if you don't have any negative news the natural Gravitational pull is across all these assets you think about what Rick reader had to say yeah Well, I think you know when we see the cash on the sidelines. We've actually researched this and

The cash on the sidelines has actually never come off the sidelines. So I don't think that's a catalyst. I do think, though, as the market has made, the NASDAQ and the S&P made these highs, I think the only people that bought the dip were mainly the retail investors. And so I think that people who were calling for recession, people that were panicking from an institutional perspective are still very underweight this, right? Because remember, technology was dead just two months ago.

And now we're seeing Nvidia breakout to all time highs. And I do think Nvidia, which is what close to seven and a half percent of the S&P and 9% of the NASDAQ, this is incredibly bullish that after a year of consolidation, now the largest company in both indexes continues to make new highs every day.

I think that's going to continue to lead, gravitate people into tech. But I still do believe though, as I was talking about earlier, there is this FOMO underneath the market in these mall and I'd say mid cap tech stocks that have really, to me, a lot of them have gone parabolic.

Yeah. You know, if you look at, for example, high beta, Brian, those names are flying, the more volatile names within the market that some are flagging. You know, the ETF that tracks that space is at a new high. Some would suggest lower quality names like

Brin is alluding to there. If you go to the momentum names, the momentum ETF is at a record high as well. The gains from the April low are extraordinary for the Palantirs of the world, 88 percent. Nobody's suggesting that these companies are lower in quality, obviously, but

Look at the moves. They're just straight parabolic. 88 for NRG and 86 for Vistra and 76 for Vernova and 73 for Broadcom. Some of the cruise lines, industrials. What do we think about that?

- Scott Bauer: Well, I think it's part and parcel what we talked about in terms of the broadening out, number one. Number two, I think why we are positioned for financial sector earnings to be just lights out for the second quarter, Scott, because what does volatility mean for financials? It means that the capital markets business are doing a lot of trading,

in the wealth businesses, and Bryn absolutely nailed it. The private wealth people got this right. They've been investing all along and allocating to stocks. So I think financials are set up because of all this trading volume. But look at that list of stocks. We're not talking about the MAG-7 there, aside from Broadcom, technically. But at the end of the day, we're starting to see more broadening out in technology, and that actually has been our call all along for the year. So we think this is very healthy for the market, not just all about momentum.

Yeah, I mean, it's a Robinhood kind of market. Target goes to 96 from 64. 96 from 64. So the stock, guys, please. Reiterated by at Compass Point. There it is. I mean, it's blown past 64. So you just chase it up to 96. Kev, that's a name that you've owned. Yeah, both Brent and I have Robinhood. This is a stock that I just can't stop falling in love with. Everything that they're doing is fantastic.

Amazing. The amount of users is going up daily. The AUM is incredible. And when you think about this stock longer term, not as a meme trade or someone playing on their phones looking at crypto, this is an infrastructure for the wealth generation of the next multiple decades. Bryn, it's a Roblox kind of market. Seven straight winning weeks, up 11 out of 12 weeks, up 58% in the last couple of months.

and you sold it. Yeah, you know, we've been talking about this name. I've owned it for about two and a half years, maybe a little bit longer. And I think that this is an important conversation. It's easy to buy a stock. You're going to have your reasons, but when do you sell? And so what I like to do is re-underwrite my names pretty frequently, but especially after a big move like this. I love the team at Roblox, et cetera, et cetera. But I really feel like the stock growth and the financial growth

have gotten dislocated. And so whereas the stock is up to your point year-to-date 50% over the last one year, about 180%, the revenues are only growing about 25%. There's no E in the name. And so this is where one of those names that I just think that I've had a great run. I don't fall in love with stocks.

And in fact, I know the data that over very long periods of time, over 50 percent of stocks don't even outperform a 90 day T-bill. So I thought it was time to move on. I think the stock is ahead of itself. And and so we move on and find other names that I feel are undervalued. Steph, it's a Qantas services market up 54 percent from the April low. It's a GE Vrnova, as we said, market up 76 percent.

from the low. It's an Eaton market of 41% from the low. I have a basket, as you know. But they've all really... You know what? A lot of people have baskets now of these kinds of stocks because so many stocks have parabolic moves like the ones that I've documented. Because it's all about, it is AI. It's an AI play. AI, data center, grid, and then power.

And we have 1.7 trillion megaprojects out there, and only 16% have been completed. And I am a firm believer that we are going to see

$4 trillion plus in spend on electrification between now and 2050. That's a long ways to go, but it's such a momentum and a tailwind for these companies. And they have record orders, record backlogs, margins are going higher. And I just think this is a different way of playing that NVIDIA theme. And you know I own Broadcom, but this is a different way of playing the AI space. It's Brian of Financials Market.

That sector hitting a record high today on track for the second positive month in a row. Month to date, just month to date, right? We're three weeks in. Goldman's up 14.5%. Citi's up 12. You have that. You have JP Morgan, which has been at a record high. That's up 9.5%. B of A and Wells on that list too. 7.5% and 7% respectively.

Yeah, we own all of them for very different reasons. But again, I think it's going to be a bang on and very surprising second quarter earnings period, Scott. But also, as mentioned earlier about climbing the wall of worry, man, from the institutional perspective,

My institutional accounts around the world have been underweight financials in the U.S. They have not participated. So going back to your original theme that we talked about at the top of the show in terms of fear of missing out, I think there's going to be an increasingly fear of missing out trade in financials, especially when they react to their earnings that I think, again, are going to be absolutely stellar. Yeah, and they're coming really soon, too. You've seen it in some of the private equity names.

as well, which have really picked up lately on this optimism about the market, whether it's IPOs, M&A, and maybe, just maybe, a piece of animal spirits coming in the second half of the year, too. Up next, pops and drops for some Dow stocks today. We'll debate the big moves in Nike and Boeing and Disney and McDonald's. We are back right after this. Choose the best Honda with more Best Buy awards than any other brand.

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All right, we're back. We're showing you shares of Nike here. That stock's a ripper today, up 17%. So, Brian Belsky, you own the stock. We talked about it going in to the print. So, you still had the biggest year-over-year revenue and EPS decline in five years. The question, obviously, that the market has made its decision on is that the worst is now behind this company. Is that true?

Man, I'm so glad Linkster's on with me today because her and I have gone back and forth on this name for a long time. And the last time I was on set, we talked about Nike again in my value portfolio. Sometimes you buy value stocks and put stocks in a value portfolio for the turnaround. And we bought this stock because operationally, we really thought it was going to be turning around. We saw that from a

From a valuation and earnings growth basis, this stock had a lot of problems. But obviously with the news today, it's starting to come out to fruition with respect to these operational issues that they've changed. So that's the quintessential type of value bottom. We feel good about the report, and we still like the stock. I mean, let's be clear, though. Nothing's happened yet, right? You can't claim any bit of victory on any bit of turnaround. You're just thinking that maybe now the turnaround can actually start.

Right? Yeah, I mean, I think when you start to see these types of things and you're starting to see a move like this and people start to believe it, we're not the only ones kind of thinking that the turn is coming. So, again, it's affirmation, confirmation. It's still early, but, you know, last time I checked, when you're an investor, you want to be early, not be chasing things after they've moved.

Sure, but I mean, you know, there's absolutely nothing good in the corner. Nothing good whatsoever. I'll just hand it to Steph. I mean, direct down 14, digital down 10, North America down 11, China down 21. They haven't invested in their products in years. That's a problem. And now you have so much competition. I have no doubt they'll get back. But I just think this is at least a two-year turnaround. I'm all about turnarounds. You all know that. But this one, I think you have, I would sell it today. You would sell it? Yeah, I would. Wow, because that's a statement in and of itself.

when the turnaround guru on the halftime report takes a look at this and says, I'm not even touching it now. And Brian, what do you make of that? I'd sell it here for all the reasons that Steph just articulated to you.

Well, we run several different type of benchmarks and portfolios. This is only in our value portfolio. And I love when you hear people say this is a very small position. Dude, just play it straight with me, man. Just play it straight with me. She says sell it. She doesn't believe in the turnaround. I don't care about 4,000 different portfolios and which one you hold it in, man. Come on.

It's 10 different portfolios. We've been doing it for years. If Steph's going to be a tactical investor and look at Nike, she should be selling. If I was a tactical investor, I'd be selling. She's not a tactical investor. She's not an in-and-out, today-tomorrow kind of investor. She's not that. She's as long-term investor as we've ever had on this program.

I'm not going to question her process in terms of turnaround. If she doesn't think it's a turnaround, it's a turnaround. For my perspective, owning it in a value portfolio, we own it today. You should sell it. Sell it.

I would sell it. I would. Why do you think you should sell it? I mean, we talk about being early, Belsky. We sold it in April of 2022 at $135. It went down 60%. I use this pop to sell calls or get out of the position. I agree with Stephanie. All right, let's go Boeing. Upgraded today to buy from neutral. Remember, this is all Dow stocks on the move today. Target 275 from 180. Steph, I'll give you this one. Boeing. Well,

Well, it is up 55%. Speaking of turnarounds. It's up 55% from its low. So is GE. They trade on the same, right? GE delivers the engines. But it is a turnaround. It's the CEO doing a really good job at executing. Last quarter, I think we talked about, it was the first quarter in like five years they had operating margins that were up.

year over year. So the deliveries are coming on track. They're going to increase them and the cash flow is going to go from negative 2.2 billion this year. I think it could get to 12 billion as they deliver more planes by 2027. And the stock is trading at a big discount to its EV to free cash flow multiple 24 times versus its historical average of 38 times. So I like the CEO. He's doing a good job. Duopoly too. All right, Brian, Disney.

137, the new target at CFRA. They reiterate their buy. 140 is the new target at Guggenheim, and that stock is at a 52-week high today.

Yeah, Disney's actually done a pretty good job in their streaming stuff. We own it in a couple portfolios. We've minimized our positions because we prefer Netflix and other areas and communication services like Spotify, but we're obviously happy with the results that we've seen lately, and we endorse these upgrades. We like that a lot. What portfolio is this in, Brian? Wow, I just can't. Look at the headlines now with Sylvana. I'm not going to get any grace today. Hi, Sylvana.

You deserve that. Good afternoon to you. The Supreme Court has ruled to keep a key part of the Affordable Care Act's preventive health care coverage requirements that affect about 150 million Americans. In a 6-3 decision, the court decided in favor of the Trump administration, which was defending the law, arguing that members of a panel that recommends preventative care services were legally appointed to their jobs. Three conservative justices dissented.

A top Republican senator is proposing an overhaul of the office led by National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard. A new bill introduced by Tom Cotton of Arkansas would slash the workforce of the office of the director of national intelligence by roughly 60 percent.

And the trial of Brian Koberger, that's the man accused of killing four University of Idaho students, will begin in August. An Idaho judge rejected yesterday requests from Koberger's lawyers to delay the trial and present evidence suggesting four alternate perpetrators. Koberger is accused of stabbing four people in an off-campus home in 2022. If convicted, prosecutors have said they will seek the death penalty. Halftime Report, we'll be right back.

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A record-setting day that has stocks at their highs. Let's get to Steve Kovach now for more on tech's big rally with that sector and the Nasdaq, both at record highs. Steve? Yeah, that's right. We're doing sectornomics today, and tech is the focus. Now, the sector hit a new high this week and is up 8% so far in June. We're digging in on cybersecurity, though. That's, of course, because of the heightened interest in stocks like Fortinet, Palo Alto Networks, and CrowdStrike after those U.S. strikes last week.

on Iran last weekend and the threatened Iranian response. The CEO of CrowdStrike, by the way, George Kurtz, says he's already seeing an impact. Take a listen. First, we've seen an increase in denial of service attacks that happened right after the bombings. We've seen increase in website defacements. And really what we're starting to see is some other activities in the pre-positioning of wiper malware and those sorts of malware activities which are linked to Iran.

Now, after that, we have CrowdStrike up almost 4% since that U.S. attack on Iran's nuclear sites over the weekend. Stock is also up 44% so far this year. Meantime, you have Palo Alto Networks, which has also seen a pop up more than 2.5% just in the last few days. And shares of Fortinet up 4% so far this week, about 10% in all of this year. And then the HACK ETF, that's the hack ETF from Amplify, it's up more than 3% so far this week, Scott.

All right, Steve Kovac, thank you very much for that. We talk about these stocks all the time, which, Bryn, you choose to play through the bug ETF. Why that versus some of the individual names? Well, I think the names rotate, but first of all, the bug is very focused versus the other ETFs just on cyber. Some of the other ETFs really move outside of that. But in terms of the individual names, you get Zscaler, Fortinet, CrowdStrike, and ZScaler.

And CrowdStrike is the top three holdings and it's market cap weighted. So I just think like long term, I don't have to walk through and worry about if they have a hack or what they miss a quarter. I can just own that. I feel for a longer period of time than one individual name, which may or may not be the winner five years from now.

Steph? I think the big five get bigger. We have 4,000 cybersecurity companies in the world. Some are public and some are private. And none of them talk to each other. And we have cybersecurity companies themselves that get attacked. So I think you're going to see massive consolidation. I think cybersecurity is bigger than AI. And it's because of AI, cybersecurity is going to be bigger. And so I'm playing it through. CrowdStrike, certainly. It's the best of the best. Consolidation among the

the big names? Yeah, I do. I think the big five get bigger and bigger and they're going to buy the other companies around the world. Some of them might be small, but because they don't all offer 100% to their customers. So they'll buy capabilities and that's what I think you're going to see. CrowdStrike is amazing. Palo

Palo Alto has been a laggard, and I think it's just a much better value at 11 times price to sales versus 30 times price to sales for CrowdStrike. But I like them both. I like the whole space. Everything almost looks a laggard compared to CrowdStrike, which is up 47.5% year to date, although

I mean, Z scale is up 75, so everything's lagging. You have Palo Alto also. I do, but just broadly speaking, I agree with the basket idea. Morgan Stanley projects that cybersecurity spend will surge from $15 billion, which was 2021, to $135 billion by 2030. So I think they're all well positioned. All right, coming up.

After this break, the self-driving race and your money. The committee gearing up to debate whether Tesla or Uber is the better stock to own for the second half of the year. Which one's going to do better over the next six months? We'll debate it next. All right, welcome back. Time for a debate. Tesla versus Uber the next six months because the first six, no contest. Uber's up 51% year to date. Tesla's down 19%.

Bryn and Brian own both. Kevin only owns Tesla. Stephanie Link only owns Uber. Which is going to have the better second half and why? Well, I think Uber, obviously, because I own it. But it's actually lagging the past year. Well, it's only up 29% in the past year. Tesla's actually up 64% in the past year. But I like Uber because it's diversified. They've got ride-sharing opportunities.

They've got food delivery. They've got new products. And I think the AV market, it's big enough for both of them. I mean, the total addressable market is going to go from $1.5 billion this year to $13 billion by 2030. That's a 32% CAGR. They both can win. But I think the diversification, and oh, by the way, given the growth trends, 15% gross bookings and 35% EBITDA growth for 26 times, that valuation makes more sense to me.

Is the whole bet on autonomous to answer the question? Because if you just go by what Tesla's sales numbers are, that doesn't leave you feeling very upbeat about what the near-term future looks like, especially if you take a look at the international sales, which can't get out of their own way still. Well, Stephanie brought in logic, math, and fundamentals. What are you bringing in?

Robots and self-driving. Okay. And Elon Musk. So I just think both are diversified. It's not an either-or story. One's not going to cannibalize the other. I think you should own both in a diversified portfolio. We own Tesla because of the robots, and we believe in the full self-driving. Bryn, you do own both, as I said.

If I can do a total return trade and sell calls against Tesla for the next six months, which I'm in, I feel like the Tesla total return selling calls outperform Uber's. If I have to take away my calls, I'm going to go with Steph and say Uber. Okay. Belsky.

Yes, we own both. What I think is interesting, Scott, is that in the fourth quarter, obviously, with the news that autonomous cars, Uber got hit and Tesla went up, some of that was due to what was going on politically as well, and now they've kind of flip-flopped. Uber, I think, don't discount how important Uber has been to the industrial sector. Industrial's been one of the best, if not the best,

performing sector year to date as more and more funds and flows go into industrial. So we would say that Tesla's got a catch-up trade coming, but from a total return perspective over the next 12 months, we think too that Uber will outperform. So if you had to buy one fresh today, it would be Uber? Yes, it would be. All right. We'll take a quick break. We'll do finals next.

Are you following the Halftime Report podcast? What are you waiting for? Look for us in your favorite podcasting app. Follow the Halftime Podcast now. Track this record-setting market at 3 o'clock today right into the weekend with Ed Yardeni, Mira Pendant, Mark Mahaney, Warren Pies, Shannon Sikosha. And all of you, I hope, because who knows what this market's going to do. We're pretty much highs of the day, barely off of that. Let's do finals. Bryn Talkington, what you got?

- KKR just broke above the 200-day. They're in big-time fundraising mode. I think the stock goes higher. - All right, well, we said private equity picking up, too. Financial's at a record high. I know it's like a broken record because it's more than just tech today. Brian Belsky. - Lululemon, L-U-L-U, quickly becoming a value stock. Again, another one of these turnarounds that we think can do very well. - Quickly becoming a value stock. You've been watching this thing. It's been a value stock for a while.

Sure has. 15 times earnings. We'll take it. Maybe a value trap stock. We'll see. Okay. Kevin Simpson. Meta. Don't fight the tape. AI powered ads. Scale AI. Think growth meme. Beat on real scale. The Lancaster. Okay. Rockwell Automation. All right. Good stuff. I'll see you on the 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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