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Halftime Report
The Post-Fed Market 12/11/25
00:42:59
Scott Wapner and the Investment Committee debate the state of the market after Fed Chair Powell announced another rate cut yesterday. Plus, the desk shares their latest portfolio moves. And later, a street fight on Uber. Stephanie Link sells out of the name but Josh Brown disagress, they both make their case. Investment Committee Disclosures
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A rich life isn't a straight line to a destination on the horizon. Sometimes it takes an unexpected turn with.
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Detours, new possibilities, and even another passenger or three.
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And with 100 years of navigating ups.
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And downs, you can count on Edward Jones to help guide you through it all. Because life is a winding path made.
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Rich by the people you walk it with. Let's find your rich together. EDWARD Jones, Member, SIPC.
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Before the trophy and bragging rights are rightfully yours. Before your sleeper turns, in a season no one saw coming before, stats and projections turn into points on the board and your lineup falls perfectly into place, you flip the lid on a can of on nicotine pouches. And as you make your first pick, you know this is the season where fantasy's going to surpass reality. It's on products for tobacco consumers 21 years of age or older. Warning. This product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.
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D
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.
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Welcome to the Halftime Report. I'm Scott Wapner. Front and center this hour, record setting stocks. The Dow hitting a new high today. We're trading the markets following the Fed decision and Oracle's earnings. Joining me for the hour today, Josh Brown, Jim Leventhal, Malcolm Methridge, Bill Baruch. We'll take you to the market, see what we are doing today. And it is an interesting picture. The dow is surging 1.15% s and P NAS are both red. The Russell new record high today as well. The equal weight S&P 500 hitting a record as well. Less of a hawkish cut than feared. That's the headline, Josh, the tension. So you know the headline. The tension to me in the market feels like lean into other things versus tech now that the Fed has spoken and it wasn't as hawkish of a cut as as might have been feared.
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A
Yeah, and I think the best way to express that idea, Judge, and we've been doing it on this show. Anytime you're in doubt about what's really going on because you own one or two of the mag sevens and they're having a difficult day. Very simply, pull up the chart of the equal weight stock market. RSP is the etf. That's the shorthand. You don't have to get involved with all these different internal metrics and the percentage of New York Stock Exchange stocks that are above whatever. Forget all that here's the chart. Look at this. If you don't understand technicals, I'll make it very simple for you. Nobody is down in, in this trade right now. And this trade represents the overall stock market. This is at a record high. And what this is indicative of is that broadening out and is that idea that if there's too much controversy in an Oracle on any given day or a Microsoft or whatever, there's so many other games worth playing right now on the, on the floor. So I think this is the key thing that we continue to point people and say, okay, I understand all your concerns that this company, that company, this is what the overall market is doing right in front of your face.
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D
Take a look.
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It's a bull market.
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D
Okay, Malcolm, is this the lean in area of the market? Lean into the equal weight. Lean into the Russell, lean out at least a little bit for the time being on AI related trades.
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I hesitate to say this is that moment completely. I think we're showing the year to date number on the screen. I think maybe since October 3rd, 4th, whatever that interview was with Sam Altman and Brad Gerstner that changed investors sentiment related to all things touching OpenAI. I think that's where the equal weight index actually picked up like 3 percentage points or something. I think most of what we're seeing this broadening so to speak is investors trying to get the heck away from anything open air touches and over to other things. In this case Google, Broadcom, I know a bunch of others will talk about, I think that's more likely what's happening. Not so much just a broadening across.
- [04:07]
D
Understood. But, but I feel like you and some of the moves that you're making are representative of the tension that I'm referring to. It's we know what the equal weight and we know what the Russell are doing, but we also know what Oracle is doing. And we said going in and some on the street said that this was an exceptionally consequential earnings report. Given the name, given the questions, given the timing, given everything else. You sold it at the Open?
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E
Yep.
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D
Tell me more.
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E
Well, I told you the last time I was on that I would take a wait and see approach. I wanted to see what earnings had to offer. There were two questions that I had gone into the earnings call hoping to get answers to and neither one of them was answered. One was the, the very first question that an analyst asked was basically where's the ceiling? How much of a lid are you going to put on this spending? And OpenAI's I mean, sorry, Oracle's management team came back and basically said, we can't answer that question for you, but we can tell you that it's, it's not $100 billion.
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D
I like your Freudian slip there because that's what it was. Well, right. You talk about Oracle and you say, well, OpenAI. You make the mistake of doing that. That in and of itself tells part of this story. This so intertwined reliant, whatever words you want to use is Oracle on OpenAI. Their revenue missed, their capex is huge. Their backlog is soaring as well. But you finish your thought. I just thought that was an interesting slip.
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E
Well, Scott, I'm old enough to remember when proximity to Sam Altman was the best possible thing for your company and its share price. Now we're seeing it go the other direction.
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A
Right, right.
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E
Like now we're seeing it go the complete opposite direction.
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A
Don't you think? Like you either believe in this RPO being $500 billion and a lot, most of it coming from Meta and Open AI, or you don't. Well, that's the other, that's like, that's, that's you buy or sell decision on the stock is you believe that much spending is going to happen and Oracle is going to be collecting revenue on that or you don't.
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E
That's the other question that I was looking for an answer to coming from this earnings call that I didn't get. It was what are you going to do if Open Air comes back to you and says, hey listen, winter is coming, it's code red over here. That $300 billion we committed to, it's more like 200. It's more like 150. It's more like 100. What does that mean for you as Oracle? How much of these commitments can you back away from? How much of the spending that you've told us about, can you cancel? And we got a little bit into the weeds around like some of these are leases. We don't own the land. Well, maybe I would have rather you own the land because at least there's some tangible book value I can talk about.
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D
I mean there, there is a stock story, there's a CDS story, 9% gain, 5 year Oracle CDS, the highest level since 2009. Both of those charts tell competing sort of stories. Jim, you're in the name too. We're looking at the worst day since March of 2001. Malcolm's out. What about you?
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F
I'm sticking with it, Scott, and I'm not adding to it here, but I will say that new money that comes into client accounts, I am building a position in new money in Oracle. I'm basically not giving up on it. I would have liked in an ideal world to have seen a quarter where they did better on free cash flow, maybe showed a little bit more sobriety on CapEx. But ultimately what these guys are saying is we're in this for the long haul and they do believe open air is good for the money. It's not so much right now a question of whether it's 500, 550 billion on the RPO. For me it's a question of where the stock price is right now and on current fiscal year earnings at the 27 times multiple. That for me is tempting enough to stay with it and take the chance that this all works out. This all being the open air aspect of this. I don't think that this is a speculative name from the point of view of oh my goodness, it could go down 50% from here. I mean, remember there is a software business. Remember the Oracle cloud infrastructure grew over 50% year over year. So it's not like it's a crummy business. It's a question of what is the right price for the shares. And at 192, I think that's fine to build a new position, but I'm not getting bigger in it than I already did.
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D
So the target, what's the right price for the shares? Let's run with that as you own the stock too. Okay. 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Price target cuts in front of me today. 230. 230 looks the lowest at JP Morgan. The highest remains 370 brought down from 375 at City Ives. Dan Ives of Wedbush.
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He comes out this morning, he's like pounding the table on it based on the backlog and some of the other stuff. Bill Baruch, what do you think?
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C
We have a lot of Support down in 180. We own the name. I'll answer your question. First to 60 is a great place to look to see this through the time of next year, but it's going to have to go through these growing pains. 180 is again a lot of support they're executing right now. They're in the execution phase and they're executing faster than anybody else. Reminds me of that, that TV show Silicon Valley. Pre revenue, you know, you don't want to go and just sit start claiming revenue. This execution phase and it could be something similar to that where you now have to See this continue to play out and the liabilities are picking up, their capex increased but you also to see the revenues that are going to be coming in and the end user needs to start increasing those that revenue and that's where the question mark will.
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What do you guys think? What do you guys think stops this? Because it's not. This didn't start today. The stock is in a massive drawdown. What could, what could put an end to the desire to people trading in the credit default swap market as though this is like some sort of calamity by the way and how do we get a bottom by the way before.
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D
That's a great question. Before you answer it. It's not like, you know, David Faber asking Sam Altman this morning in an exclusive interview on this network, you know, a trillion plus worth of commitments and he says essentially we're good for the money, the stock. It's not like Oracle turned around. It's not like Oracle came off the lows of the morning. So to Josh's question, what is it you said Sam Altman, in what respects?
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Well, part of the one of the cracks that started to form back in October was questions around whether or not they would go public. And that was one of the things that I think investors were hanging their hats on as a 2026, not necessarily guarantee, but we had a reason to believe that that company would be coming public potentially at $1 trillion valuation for the first time ever. And that was the thing that investors were getting excited about. So any way that I could have a proxy investment into Open air, that's what I wanted to own as an investor. That's what's done a lot of the heavy lifting since the April 2 lows. And so I think that it's important that we consider every single thing that comes out of that company going forward where we're hearing about the code red, for example, that doesn't say to me we're good for our $1.4 trillion.
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D
What's more concerning to you, that chart or the CDS chart, the drop or the gain?
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C
I think the liabilities are a concern and the drop in the CDS is definitely concerned. Using Malcolm's OpenAI proxy, this was a blow off top, if you will. When this was above 300, we trimmed it above there. It felt like it got out above its shoes. The problem is here is now it's just a precipitous fall. When did that rally start? It started the June, the June report. When we broke out above once, was it one that 180 that's why I think that support and 180 you're going to start to find buyers. So the whole story makes a round trip. That's what I think is going to.
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Bring some support if open I were to file an S1 on Monday. I'm not saying I think that's going to happen but hypothetically if this thing requires for there to be some stability to the open air bull case in order for for this company to find its bottom in the stock market. First of all, the last funding round was $500 billion I think SoftBank. All right. Are they like do we still think that this is a $500 billion IPO if and when it happens I think.
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E
That'S one big got to be more than that. Right. That counts as a down round.
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So so to your right so to your point, like the proximity to Sam Altman went from being positive momentum to now being I don't want to say negative momentum but definitely making people feel shakier. So maybe that's the thing that needs to happen. Some, some guidelines about their biggest customer.
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E
Coming public and we haven't even talked about a revenue miss an earnings beat because we sold shares of a company that we owned inside blanking on the name but we sold to soft. That's what helped on the earnings side. But that means next quarter maybe we're not talking about.
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C
Well that's what I was thinking about the growth, growth in the end user. That's where those revenues are really going to be driven from and the continued.
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A
Build out is well here's the problem. Here's the problem. You have metal leaking to the tech press that they'd be more than happy to work with TPUs. Yeah, Oracle's made this huge bet on Nvidia GPUs. Is that not look looked upon now as the most efficient way and then.
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They decided to assuage those concerns on the call by saying well you can bring your own chips to the party. Maybe we build that way and we all well that's where the margins are. Nvidia's GPUs are what everybody wants access to which is why you can charge larger wider margins and that's helpful to that revenue store.
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D
When we're talking about, you know, TPU's versus GPU's. That's one side of the one side of the story so to speak. You're talking Gemini 3 versus ChatGPT. Sam Altman asked about that also this morning says Gemini 3 has had less of an impact on our metrics than Maybe we feared, maybe it's early, others might believe something different. But there's, there's Alphabet today. Since you guys mentioned Meta, the target gets cut to 750. It was at 820 at Morgan Stanley. And I thought Tony Pescarello of Goldman was out with an interesting note today. If you look at Oracle and you're feeling blue about what's happening with AI and you're asking yourself all these questions and you feel like you're going to get all beared up, he essentially says, be careful, that you're going to need to fight the momentum in earnings growth. And he has a chart that shows this is the realized earnings growth of the Mag 7 versus the S&P over the past 20 years. He says, quote, while I understand that a highly concentrated market invites questions about sustainability, the Bears need to be willing to fight the momentum of that dark blue line. Let's put that back up so you can see the dark blue line that I'm talking about, please. There it is. So you want to fight that.
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So Danny said the opposite today. He said. I think he said next year is about the 493, not the 7. So I guess there's intelligent things to say on both sides of that debate.
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D
That goes right to the heart of the question we asked at the very top of the show. That's the tension within the market, the tension of Pascarello versus Yardeni, the tension of, okay, earnings growth is going to slow in these names and it has the potential of picking up in all of these other 493 +. So lean in.
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That would be a best case. That would be. That would be good for the investor.
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F
I'm going to say something that all four of us know is this is why you diversify portfolios. I mean, I will be very honest that 2023 and early 2024 was painful for me because I didn't have enough AI and that was the only game in town for about 18 months. Now you're seeing why you have other things in your portfolio. I'm obviously unhappy about Oracle, but I'm not unhappy about something like Alphabet. And I'm even less unhappy about a Delta, about a Citigroup, about a Wynn. Resorts. There are a lot more ways to make money and they're shining through right now and they're likely to continue to shine through as the earnings growth in the 493 pick up. It's a reason that also four of us run diversified portfolio.
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D
Did I read. Go ahead.
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E
I'd argue that we should be Careful what we wish for though because as I'm obviously biased as a person whose own portfolio over indexes into the max 7 right. But something would have to go meaningfully wrong for Apple, Nvidia, Google, those names to no longer be 6, 7, 8% of the S&P 500 index. The reason that that run up looks so crazy I up and to the right in the mag 7 we just looked at is because of those names having such a heavy weighting. So in order for the equal weight to take effect something has to go meaningfully wrong where I don't know those names are coming down. I don't think they're going to get.
- [16:45]
C
I think it's more shocking like which one is in favor at that point. And what we always try to do is look for what's out of favor. I mean it got us to buy Apple this summer, it's got us to buy Microsoft Last October still Max 7 and Max 7 and and it's just how you're picking those. But half of our portfolio, more than half our portfolio are other names.
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Financials were a home run this year. Buying yeah, didn't work, didn't require a problem in the Mag 7.
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F
Look at.
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C
You may start to see the Mag 7 start to fall out of love a little bit over the next couple of months. I'm extremely bullish into April and I think there's me a moment where you get the, you get the small caps, you get the other sectors leading here for maybe the next month or two and then there's going to be a moment where there's Max seven step back in and maybe they lead well from February to March.
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D
Maybe tonight is a good tell on that. AI is going to get another test from Oracle to Broadcom reports after the bell. You own that stock. Been a horse. This thing has been a horse. Look at the chart. 73% year to date. This might answer or help answer the question that you just posed.
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C
Free cash flow juggernaut. They don't have the same capex cycle that you're seeing in some of the other names like an Oracle. I think we could get a really solid report and the market or at least the tech side of it, the Mag 7 they need to see that come out through today. And I think you're going to see the response. I think it's going to be a very solid report. It may not be the beat that we typically get and the Stock responds up 10%. I think a good solid beat today and we see Broad come up 1, 2, 3% tomorrow in a very stable manner is exactly what this market needs.
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D
Now don't tell me that Broadcom is going to do something great tonight and then you're not going to see follow through from the mag sevens or not all of them necessarily, because we've made the case too of the dispersion within the group. But we'll have to wait and see. Now, a stock that has not been a horse, it's been a horse's.
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A
What a segue.
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F
It's turning.
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Should have gone for it.
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F
Turning around.
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D
It is cable. But sometimes you leave things to the imagination. Everybody knows what you mean.
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A
Anyway, another great reporter, another great report. Are you talking about Adobe?
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D
Adobe?
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If this, if this stock had a different ticker symbol, any other ticker symbol under the sun, it'd be a big percent today.
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F
You have no idea how much of a win this is. I'm not, I'm not being sarcastic in the slightest bit. Up one and a half percent. I mean. Josh, go look back and I know. Thank you for joining. I'm sure you're the reason it's green today because the last eight quarters it has produced stellar reports and the stock has gone down in some cases double digits as a percentage. Look, this is a stock that continues to outperform at the operational level and the stock is now just starting to.
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A
Realize that you think shrinking the float like crazy too.
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F
Thank you very much. I mean it's a cheap stock.
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D
You bought more of 14 the lead here. You bought more of it today, right?
- [19:29]
F
I did buy more in my personal account where I could just quickly do it. We may add to clients a little later on today or tomorrow, but I'm a very big believer that this stock has been unfairly tarnished for a couple of years now on the premise that AI is going to eat its lunch. Well, year it's been through three years now that the stock has been outperforming in that context and the analyst community is now coming around to, hey, this stock is not going away.
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A
No. It's so funny like, like Morgan Stanley has it as an equal weight. Same thing. Oh, it's a good quarter. But we don't have the conviction yet to I guess raise the outlook. So they cut their price target to 425. Every shareholder in this name would love to have 425 week. You could hold the, the upgrade. We don't need the upgrade for 25 would be just fine. I, I'm not going to stay in this as long as you. I bought it on the technicals finally it's breaking a downtrend and I'm not going to tell you when I sell it I'm going to Irish Exit and then I'll tell you later because it's hard for me to get me, it's hard for me to get long term conviction here. But I just think the stock is ridiculously oversold given I didn't.
- [20:34]
F
Well, this, you're going to be a long term investor. But thank you for propping the stock up over the last week.
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D
All right, so we'll, we'll continue to follow that. We do have another trade alert and it is from Josh Brown. Maybe surprised by it. I'm not sure. Exxon Mobil.
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A
Yeah. So I have a long term position in IEO which are the American natural gas and oil producers. The problem with that ETF not problem. The thing about that ETF, it's very concentrated into ConocoPhillips copy. And that's okay. It's a great stock. But Exxon is breaking out right now. We talked about this two weeks ago or three weeks ago on the show. It was the column that we wrote up for CNBC Pro is best stock in the market. It's now following through. This is exactly the level that I wrote about. As she gets toward this level you would way rather be long than on the sidelines or God forbid, short. This is a stock that has not performed in a long time. Give me a, give me a longer term chart than 60 minutes if you guys don't mind. Thank you. You could see here third time's a charm. This 120 level has been overhead resistance. I think the sellers are cleaned up. I think there's, there's really no reason for this stock not to be able to break out right here. So I am long personally not a huge position, not buying it forever buying it for a trade. But I think it's going to work.
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D
Okay, I'm going to come back to this in just a second. I'd want to get some breaking news which is happening right now. Philippeau, tell us what you know.
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C
Scott. We are out here in Palo Alto, California at the Rivian offices, engineering offices where CEO RJ Scaringe is outlining a number of developments when it comes to autonomous vehicle technology and artificial intelligence. Let me run through a few of these. First of all, Rivian is designing a new chip designing it itself for autonomous driving. The new autonomous system will incorporate artificial intelligence. This AV system will, will be built into R2 models that go on sale late next year. The Rivian Autonomy plus is what the system is called. The price will be $2,500 or $49.99 a month. We'll be talking with RJ Scaringe next hour on the exchange about this development and their decision to design their own chips. Scott, previously they were using Nvidia chips for a lot of their hands free driving. This time around they decided to design to design it themselves. Scott, send it back to you.
- [22:56]
D
All right. Interesting move in the stock today. It's down more than 3%. Phil, we'll look forward to your interview. Thank you very much for that report. That's our Philippe. So let's get back to the Exxon conversation. The headline josh Brown buys a stock, It's a new buy. Stock is moving on this conversation and the revelation you own it, right?
- [23:14]
C
Yeah, we own it. We like the name. We don't own enough of it. I see us look, I'm kind of looking at this breakout as a reason to continue to add. I don't want to to see it stall up here. I want to see follow through. But it's been doing this and holding crude oil is down 5% this week. And that's something to really kind of think about how strong this name is because even names like the refiners, Marathon Petroleum and others, they're not getting the type of follow through this week because of that. So I think this shows how internal, how strong the internals are for name like.
- [23:39]
D
Well, you know what's interesting too, let's continue to look at the chart is the comment that Jeffrey Gundlock made to me yesterday following the Fed chair's news conference about commodities and his outlook there. Let's listen and we'll continue to watch this and we'll talk about it on the other side. I also think commodities broadly have quietly started to rally. If you look at the Bloomberg commodity.
- [24:04]
A
Index, it's been rising and now even.
- [24:06]
D
Its 200 day moving average is rising. And of course, the spot, the actual value today is above its 200 day moving average. So for the first time in a long time, I turned positive on commodities broadly last week. So I think a commodity index makes.
- [24:24]
A
Some sense in here.
- [24:26]
D
It's Jeffrey Gundlach, I throw it back to you. You're kind of our commodities guy.
- [24:29]
C
Yeah, we, I mean, I really like commodities. Now playing devil's advocate, where we are right now is the commodity index has risen so much because gold and silver have such a high weighting on that. But here's the positive thing. Gold is usually the leading indicator. Gold moves first yet Silver making a move now. Copper follows, I think crude oil. You know, we're in the mid-50s here. That's a great spot to be looking to buy it. We like having commodities in our portfolios. We own, we own some mining names in our main portfolio. We want a mining portfolio. But when you get down to diversified portfolios, talk about 80, 20 and a 60, 40 having a real asset basket. That's where Gundlock's talking about. You need to fit that into your portfolio, complement the fixed income. If inflation stays high, it's the commodities that are going to be driving.
- [25:10]
A
It's an implicit, it's an important point. Like the only hedge that you have as an equity investor against the sort of commodity price spike that could really screw up a portfolio, really hit the economic data, is exposure to commodity companies. I'm not a huge fan of having like tons of these stocks, but like Exxon is an avatar for that theme. Swapping out. Ieo going to Exxon is a more concentrated way to capitalize on that. And look, you own other things in your portfolio. You own airlines. The airlines will get wrecked if crude has a meaningful bounce out of the mid-50s. They'll get right the stocks, they'll get wrecked. This is how you hedge that, that.
- [25:48]
C
Cash flow with midstream energy and others that I know, I know a lot of the team has on their, on their portfolio. But yeah, you can create a basket with, with cash flow as well.
- [25:57]
F
The reason Exxon Mobil out of all the energy sectors, because of the diversification. Crude oil. Oil is down. Natural gas is above $4. It was up at $5 two years ago. It was below $2. In ExxonMobil. You got natural gas, you got crude oil, you got refining, you got marketing, you got everything. It's your first stop in the energy sector.
- [26:14]
D
All right, so we'll watch that. It is on the move. XOM is coming up. Stephanie Link with a trade alert on a battleground stock. What she just did and the street fight that might follow, that's next.
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A
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- [27:59]
D
All right, we're back. We do have a trade alert. Stephanie Link joining us now. So this kind of surprised me, although maybe I shouldn't have been based on what some others are doing lately with Uber. So you sold it. Okay. Joe sold it yesterday. Bryn sold it last month. Tell me why you did that and then I have ownership here. We'll fight about it. Go ahead.
- [28:24]
B
Well, first I was up on the name, so I did take some profits. Long term, I love the story, I love the concept. The total addressable markets are real and there's a lot of growth out there. But I think short term the overhang is going to be continue to be the competition in robo taxis. Any time Waymo opens their mouth like they did yesterday and talked about they're expecting a million AV rides per week by the end of 2026. The stock takes a hit. Any time Tesla talks about the, the, the progress that they are making in their business, the stock takes a hit. And so I just think that there is this perception that they are way behind and that they're going to have to continue to aggressively spend. And we saw that last quarter when they missed on ebit. Initially I thought EBIT was like a what the miss was like a 1/4 quarter thing. But I do believe they have to heavily and aggressively spend to catch up. I think they will, Scott. I think they will be a winner long term. But I think from a stock point of view this is going to be an overhang. And so I just think and I took the money and I put it into Rockwell Automation and we can talk about that if you like, but I think there's just a lot more upside in Iraqwell automation for the next, say, six to 12 months than there is for Uber.
- [29:43]
D
Let me, let me bring it back on the desk. All right, so you, you, Josh, maintain a position in this stock. Why has this become such a battleground? And I think this program is pretty representative of what's been happening in the marketplace. Steph sells it, Joe sells it, Bryn sells it. You like it, Bill likes it. What's going on here?
- [30:04]
A
The people that are saying Uber has to catch up have it precisely backwards. Uber is the only majorly profitable version of ride hailing in the country and one of only two profitable delivery players right now. And that's not going to change this year. Waymo is not going to make money and Tesla is definitely not going to make money. The amount of money that those companies are spending in order to catch up to the size of Uber's network is unbelievable. Now, lucky for Waymo, the shareholders don't expect to make money. And it's still privately held. Google is the majority. And of course Tesla, if they never made money ever again for the next hundred years, nobody would even notice. So they have that on their side, the competitors. What Uber has on its side, the size of the network, the size of the ridership, and the fact that ultimately autonomous vehicles will be a commodity. Uber will not have the cost of owning owning them. Instead, it'll have the most profitable layer, which will be the software layer that connects riders to. So I don't think there's any advantage in Uber going out and trying to compete. Who has the most cars and own those cars? I think ultimately autonomous vehicles will be owned by private equity firms. They will be a dime a dozen. They'll be everywhere, all over the roads. And what Uber will have is the only profitable network of both autonomous and human driven vehicles on the road. This is a huge market misunderstanding, Josh.
- [31:31]
B
They missed on EBITDA last quarter. That's. Yes, they did. Yes, they did.
- [31:38]
A
So why.
- [31:40]
B
That's why the stock fell and. Excuse me, that's why the stock hasn't done that. Well, and you're right that Waymo is not going to make money and Tesla's not going to make money. They don't have to do because they. That's right. The investors don't expect them to. We do expect Uber to actually be profitable. And I'm not saying that they're. They're a loser.
- [32:00]
A
Hugely Profitable, Stephanie.
- [32:03]
B
Enormous amount of money on, on, on av. They're going to have to spend an enormous amount of money while Waymo and Tesla are collecting data, while they're using AI infrastructure to better their products as well. I'm not saying Uber is not going to do the same, but they have to spend a lot more money in my mind to catch up. And by the way, stocks also up 40% on the year. I just think it takes a pause.
- [32:27]
A
Yeah, it has taken a pause and you're exactly right. But I'm making a different point. They are not going to build a fleet of millions of autonomous vehicles. That's not the strategy. So what's the money that you. They're doing a $20 billion stock buyback. What's the money that you see them spend, spending. What they're actually doing is partnering with the other 500 companies all over the planet who are doing EVs. Uber is not building a fleet of Jaguars with cameras on the roof.
- [32:54]
B
They're there. They're not going after volume, but they're still spending a lot of money and they're going to continue to spend a lot of money. I mean, 300 million just for Nuro and Lucid and they have to spend probably double trip triple that with, with those two brands just to actually get any kind and make any kind of progress in, in that particular part of the segment of the, of the, of the market. My mind is, look, this company is a great company. I like it for the reasons that you said. I think the total addressable markets are huge. But I don't think this stock works if they don't make money. If they miss another EBITDA number next quarter, quarter, the stock is going a lot lower.
- [33:36]
D
All right, we, Steph, thank you for joining us. Appreciate you filling in our viewers on why you made the move you did. And you get the last word because you have the stock, too.
- [33:46]
C
I see adding it to it, I mean, it's still up 30% year to date from what I see. Even margins expanded, free cash flows rising. It's a free cash flow story. Fundamentals can't ignore the sentiment right now. And there's obviously some selling, some negative sentiment, some fears maybe around discretionary spending. But it's a name brand. I'm going to Google something. I'm going to use my iPhone. I'm going to call an Uber, and that's not going to change.
- [34:06]
D
All right, let's get the headlines now with Bertha Coombs. Hi, Bertha.
- [34:10]
A
Hey, Scott. The White House submitted a confirmation questionnaire to the Senate Judiciary Committee in order.
- [34:16]
D
To have Lindsey Halligan confirmed as the.
- [34:19]
A
US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, according to Ms. Now, the confirmation push comes after a judge tossed indictments brought by Halligan against New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey, ruling that she was improperly appointed and lacked legal authority to prosecute anyone. Homeland Security Chief Kristi Noem is facing intense questioning on Capitol Hill this morning.
- [34:44]
B
Over the Trump administration's immigration agenda.
- [34:47]
D
Representative Benny Thompson, the top Democrat on.
- [34:50]
A
The House's Homeland Security panel, used his opening remarks to call on Noem to resign.
- [34:57]
B
And NASCAR reached a settlement today in.
- [35:00]
A
An antitrust lawsuit filed by two of.
- [35:02]
D
Its racing teams, including Michael Jordan's 2311 racing. 2311 and front row Motorsports accused NASCAR.
- [35:11]
A
Of controlling revenue sharing and refusing to.
- [35:14]
D
Grant permanent charters to team, saying it.
- [35:17]
A
Effectively forced them into unfavorable deals.
- [35:20]
D
The terms have not been announced. Scott, you know I would never bet against Michael Jordan. All right, Bertha, thank you. Up next. Up next, Josh Brown's best stocks in the market. He says buy this baby Berkshire stock. Say the name next.
- [35:37]
A
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C
Could make a difference.
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A
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- [36:22]
D
This message is brought to you by Apple Card. Apple Card members can earn unlimited daily cash back on everyday purchases wherever they shop. This means you could be earning daily cash on just about anything, like a slice of pizza from your local pizza place or a latte from the corner coffee shop. Apply for Apple Card in the Wallet app to see your credit limit offer in minutes subject to credit approval. Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch terms and more@applecard.com all right, that was a record high for the Dow. We're pushing past 600 points.
- [36:53]
A
Could we do 50,000 on the Dow. I'm going to come here naked when that happens. Could we do it? Is that possible?
- [36:59]
D
Please don't. Oh my gosh, please.
- [37:00]
A
Look how close. What's the percentage?
- [37:02]
D
Go back. Let's show it again. Show it again.
- [37:04]
A
I mean nobody, nobody was talking about Dow 50,000 this time last year.
- [37:07]
C
Year two days like this should be there.
- [37:09]
A
Not that I think that's like imminent, but.
- [37:11]
D
Wow. One and a quarter percent. We'll watch it. So you got your best stocks in the market list?
- [37:17]
A
Yeah, let's do it.
- [37:18]
D
You say is a baby Berkshire Hathaway. That's a buy right now. What's which one?
- [37:24]
A
All right, so we wrote about insurance stocks today, which I know everyone's super. Hold on. So everyone's super excited about that. All right. Insurance has not had a great year. This name, this, this area of the market has been choppy. But I have two winners. One of them looks better than the other. So we wrote about the Hartford Group, which is in my mind the most technologically advanced of all of the insurers. They make it super easy to get a quote back. The brokers love dealing with them, etc. This is a pretty good chart. It's not bad. It hasn't broken out yet. The one that I want to talk about though has, and I didn't coin this term, baby. Berkshire Markel Groove Group is very much thought of as a miniature version of Berkshire early along in its career. Tom Gaynor is a Warren Buffett acolyte. He's in his 60s, not in his 90s. They have a big concentrated portfolio of holdings. They own a lot of Berkshire. They own Alphabet, Amazon, Brookfield Properties, etc. This, this is a breakout right here. 2020, 100 has been overhead resistance hanging above the stock. Here you go. You can see that over the long term and now we are bursting through it. Look, it's, I don't think it's a trade. I think if you become part of this Markel shareholder group, hopefully you hold it forever like you would a Berkshire Hathaway. But I wanted to shine the spotlight on it because not everything that we look at on the best stocks list is a trade. Some of these are identifying long term winners. This a year worth of consolidation. We're breaking sticking above right now. If you've never heard of it, let today's segment give you the reason to go read up on it.
- [38:56]
D
I mean, you know, Bill finding financials are on pace for their first back to back gains of more than 1% since June. That's one part of this story since the insurance stocks are part of that and insurance is playing a big role in that today. Hartford being one of those stocks along with Chubb and Progressive that is outperforming the market. You have some of these names.
- [39:16]
C
Yeah, we really like financials going into next year. I think you may have seen some front running with that narrative. You know, J.P. morgan, Goldman Sachs, they look, they look terrific. I like Berkshire actually. You know, it's one and a half times book, probably too low yet oil prices already very low being priced into that. I think there's definitely some things to look at next year. And you know, at Berkshire, I think a great level here, you know, some financials, I mean we've even gone to on a lift maybe with a SoFi. But I like an ice that owns new York Stock Exchange. I think there's some really great places to look in finance.
- [39:47]
D
Get your view, by the way, on Todd Combs leaving and going to jpm. Yeah, guys. A longtime Berkshire shareholder advocate and everything else. What do you think?
- [39:58]
A
I think it's a really big job that J.P. morgan or J.P. morgan offered him. And it's the kind of thing where his mentor Warren Buffett is officially stepping down from his day to day duties like within the next two weeks. The timing seems right. He's not going to be the CEO of it. This job that Jamie offered him is a really big deal for the bank. So it seems like it's a normal thing that would happen. There was some other turnover at Berkshire. Maybe some people noticed it. But I think overall it's not going to be a big deal to shareholders given the depth of the bench at the, at Berkshire, the key, key, key people operationally are staying.
- [40:38]
D
All right, we'll take a quick break. We'll come back. We have calls of the day plus a setup on a stock that's gotten a lot of love lately. If you haven't noticed, it's Micron. Another target boost today. Ownership on the desk trade coming up next. All time high on the Dow617 highs of the day. We're back after this.
- [40:57]
We're back. Calls of the day. We start with Micron today. Target goes to 295 from 275 at UBS, reiterated by the report week. You own the stock. I feel like there's been calls almost every day for the last handful of days on this name, positive ones.
- [41:11]
C
I've liked the stock for a long time. I mean right now it's still trading at a 13 forward multiple. It's growing earnings 120% high bandwidth memory is crucial for the AI development. Now the other thing that they've announced recently is they moved away from their consumer business, the more cyclical business. And that's really why this multiple is so low, is because the cyclicality of the other half of their business and that's going to stop. It's going to end in February of next year. So I think Micron can really go through a repricing next year. Imagine this name at a 20 multiple. I mean we just got through to 60. I'm not going to throw some crazy targets out there, but I think there's a lot of upside for this name.
- [41:47]
D
All right, well, I mean they threw 295, so that's why we mentioned it today. Planet Labs record high, better than expected revenue guide. They also raised their full year revenue forecast. Josh, you own this one?
- [41:58]
A
Yes, I do. And look, this is a very early stage for something that people are calling the low altitude economy. I have a bunch of bets in the space. Look, of course I'm excited that it's up 40% today, but I'm really thinking about this as a multi year play and I doubt it'll hold massive gains like this forever. I mean I could be wrong. I'm not adding to it, but I'm also not taking profits.
- [42:21]
D
All right, Bill Thermo upgraded to a buy today. 660 is the new target at Citi. That's about 15% from here. You own this name. You also own Intuitive Surgical. This got downgraded to neutral. The Target goes to 635. So they up 1, they down 1. You have both.
- [42:39]
C
Yeah, turbo stable revenue growth, growing earnings, 10% last quarter. It's sort of consolidating very well. It had a terrific was coming out of the summer and through October. Terrific. I think this just kind of sideways the last month looking for this earnings report. The thing about surge, Intuitive Surgical, the robotics side of that, they're growing the robotics 20% over year over year. I think that we're going to start to see this is a multi year compounder. We're going to start to see it come out of this consolidation. A good earnings report. There's a lot of upside here over the next two years.
- [43:11]
D
All right, Santos, he's on the other side of this break with his midday word.
- [43:16]
Our senior markets commentator Mike Santoli joining us now with his midday word, which probably will sound somewhat familiar to what we talked about yesterday. At the end of the day, watching the market react to the Fed chair.
- [43:27]
F
Exactly so there's very high torque rotation into real economy plays. This the market is really pressing the bet that's been on and building for a couple of weeks index which is.
- [43:38]
A
The run it hot in 2026 trade.
- [43:40]
F
For the economy after the Fed decision in the commentary yesterday really did open the way to kind of further extend risk in that direction. You see cyclical risk on but speculative risk off. So crypto, you know, it's wounded and it's taking a lot of the kind of profitless tech related stuff down with it. And it's almost the perfect day for Oracle to really puncture the AI and semi trade because the rest of the.
- [44:05]
A
Market and the banks and everything else.
- [44:06]
F
Is right there to pick up the slack. Don't know if that's a formula for persistent gains on an index level. You know I'm always wary of like a broadening market is not a safer or more stable market. We could see that tested soon and some stuff maybe is getting overheated. I mean Goldman Sachs screaming higher to two and a half times book value chart looks great but good luck. You know it's, it's pretty much going back toward pre global level financial level valuations. So I think there's going to be tests along the way. But the message of the market's pretty clear here.
- [44:35]
D
All right, good stuff. I'll see a little bit on closing bell. Mike, thank you. That's Mike Santoli. We'll do finals after this break. I hope you join me. Closing bell today, 3 o' clock Eastern Time. Tom Lee of Fundstrat, he's going to be with us. He's going to give us 2026 outlook today. You don't want to miss that. Gene Munster is going to give his own outlook for the tech trade. Don't want to miss that. Cameron Dawson will be with us and Brian Levitt too. We'll see what happens with this market. Dow hitting a new record high today. So we'll see where it closes. That'll be interesting to watch. Remember yesterday the S and P set a new closing record high. So going to be interesting. Last hour of trade. Bill Baruch, give me your final trade.
- [45:11]
C
Core CDE Gold's above 4300, silver above 64. That will help it be up 10%. But this stock has been a discount and after acquiring a company called New Gold. I really like it here. March is going to improve.
- [45:22]
D
All right, who's, who's Netscope?
- [45:24]
E
Yeah, I'm going to go Netscope. I talked about it on the show last week. They report earnings today for the first time since the ipo. Should be good.
- [45:30]
D
You just picking Delta because your win was busy or picking Delta because it.
- [45:35]
F
Hit an all time high today, Scott. And I know you're excited about that. I am too. It's going higher.
- [45:40]
D
All right, there's Josh with zoom.
- [45:41]
A
Obviously what's why this here's an all time high. Great earnings companies following through stock is making a new 52 week high. Raise the roof.
- [45:48]
D
All right, I'll see you on the bell.
- [45:52]
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- [46:03]
B
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B
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A
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Before the trophy and bragging rights are rightfully yours, before your sleeper turns in a season no one saw coming, before stats and projections turn into points on the board and your lineup falls perfectly into place, you flip the lid on a can of on nicotine pouches. And as you make your first pick, you know this is the season where fantasy is going to surpass reality. It's on products for tobacco consumers 21 years of age or older. Warning. This product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.