Transcript
Laura Castleton (0:00)
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Scott Wapner (1:02)
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. Hi, welcome to the Halftime Report. I'm Scott Wapner. Front and center this hour, Trouble Tech. The Nasdaq on pace for its fourth straight down day. Many momentum names continuing to unwind as well. We've been all over that, which means we'll trade all of it with the investment committee. Joining me for the hour today, Josh Brown, Jenny Harrington, Shannon Sokotia, Jim Labenthal. I'll show you what the markets are doing at this moment. Dow is barely green. Elsewhere, though it's not great. S and P off 2/3 of 1%. It is the NASDAQ, as we said, where the weakness persists, down 1 1/3%. Josh. So we've got that. We've got Trump talk in Mexico and Canada, tariffs going forward. The president, you have worries about a slowdown. The 10 year is lowest level since December 13th. Consumer confidence was a miss. The Vix is near 20. The momentum trade continues to unwind. I set the table for you. Now I'm going to let you cook.
Josh Brown (2:10)
All right, Ready to cook. Rates are not just down in the ten year. I think it's important to point out every duration and specifically the belly of the curve is where you find rates down the most. The seven year is off 10 basis points. The five years down nine to 10. The 10 two year spread, which I think is the most instructive thing to look at actually Hit a high this year back in the middle of January when we thought the coast is clear. Trumponomics, here we go. Today that spread is down 2.27 and falling. That is happening along with consumer sentiment. We got conference board dropping seven points on consumer confidence. That is the biggest monthly decline. You have to go back to August of 2021 to find anything like it. And along with that you've got the S&P 500 down 3% in the month. But momentum, Scott, to your point, is really where the action is taking place. We'll start with the MTUM etf, that shorthand for how bullish or bearish the most aggressive traders in the market are feeling these days. And the answer is not at all. MTUM down 3% in a month. It's still positive. 5% on the year. Look at the top five holdings. You've got Broadcom, JP Morgan, Wal Mart, Nvidia, Costco is in there. Those five names alone are about 23% of that ETF. And they're all coming in and for different reasons or for a big broad reason, which is that people are abandoning that strategy. The only one of those top five names still above its 50 day is Costco. Wal Mart's close year to date. Through February 19, momentum was the best performing factor, up 9% on the year. Now it's up just 4%, almost 5%. It's below low volatility which is the best strategy, plus 5%. Look, take a look at PM, the old Philip Morris if you want to get an idea of where people are buying. And quality is up 4%. So that momentum and even bitcoin, by the way, I have to mention in a 14% drawdown below the all time highs, Bitcoin's worst drawdown in recent memory was the the carry trade, Japanese thing. That was last August. It bottomed in a 25% drawdown. Right now, still only down 14%. There's more room. And then you look at the Tesla's of the world. People just do not want to be in these trades today. I think what that adds up to though as an investor is this continued idea that 2025 does not have to be a bad year and it doesn't have to look like 2024 in order to be a good year. We would all agree 24 was a great year for stocks and a really great year for momentum. This year you can have a good year for stocks but just do something else later on in the show. As a little bit of a tease, I'm going to Talk about the quote unquote something else stocks, but we'll leave it here for now.
