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Semis Soar, Fintech's Future & Robotics Race 1/6/26
00:43:11
The VanEck Semiconductor ETF hits its third straight all-time high. Why the “death of crypto” was greatly exaggerated. How Google might be undercutting the robotics part of Tesla’s valuation case.
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Kelly Evans
Everyone deserves to be connected. That's why T Mobile and US Cellular are joining forces.
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Andrew Jeffrey
Switch to T Mobile and save up to 20% versus Verizon by getting built.
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Kelly Evans
In benefits they leave out.
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Andrew Jeffrey
Check the math@t mobile.com switch and now.
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Kelly Evans
T mobile is in US cellular stores.
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Andrew Jeffrey
Savings versus Comparable Verizon plans plus the.
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Kelly Evans
Cost of optional benefits. Plan features and taxes and fees vary. Savings with three plus lines include third.
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Andrew Jeffrey
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Kelly Evans
Credit stop if you cancel any lines. Qualifying credit required. Oh, could this vintage store be any cuter? Right, and the best part, they accept Discover. Except Discover in a little place like this?
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Michelle Caruso Cabrera
I don't think so.
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Kelly Evans
Jennifer.
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Michelle Caruso Cabrera
Oh yeah, huh. Discover's accepted where I like to shop.
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Kelly Evans
Come on baby, get with the times.
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Michelle Caruso Cabrera
Right, so we shouldn't get the parachute pants.
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Kelly Evans
These are making a comeback, I think. Discover is accepted at 99% of places.
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Michael San Satara
That take credit cards nationwide.
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Andres Garcia Amaya
Based on the February 2025 Nielsen.
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Kelly Evans
Thank you very much, Scott. Voracious demand for chips, a recipe for a continued rally. And crypto's demise they say has been greatly exaggerated. Welcome to the Exchange, I'm Kelly Evans. That's all ahead this hour. Let's start with the Dow hitting a fresh high again today before backing off. It's still at 422 points today. It's the outperformer, the S and P and the Nasdaq up a half percent. The Russell's trailing today but the trade does remain dominant. Just look at the memory names continuing to break out. Seagate, Western Digital Microchip which gave an Update there, up 10% micron. They're all seeing gains. Look at this now. 16% for for WTC. Just amazing. All but one name in the SMH is higher and that one is AMD down 4%. We'll have more on that momentarily. But speaking of breakouts, look at the metals once again. Copper surging to a fresh record. Nickel up 8% and at one point a lot more than that. Its best day since 2022. Silver, platinum and gold all hovering near all time highs. Gold which is now about 4,500. They're continuing to benefit from Geopol turmoil it seems. And that's where we begin today with the latest on Venezuela as Congress heads back to the Hill and the President floats the idea of the US subsidizing oil companies to rebuild energy infrastructure in that country. Let's bring in Eamon Javors with the very latest. Eamon.
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Eamon Javers
Hey there, Kelly. That's right. President Trump spoke to the House Republican member retreat earlier this morning, in an upbeat and wide ranging speech that was designed to energize his allies on the Hill, the President spent much of his time sort of just joking with members, making lighthearted remarks about his own dancing, boxing and golf, among other topics. But the president did say he's going to be meeting with American oil companies who he wants to spend billions of dollars to revitalize the Venezuelan energy sector.
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John Ford
I'm also meeting with oil companies. Let's go.
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Kelly Evans
You know, you know what that's about.
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Eamon Javers
We've got a lot of oil to.
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John Ford
Drill, which is going to bring down.
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Kelly Evans
Oil prices even further.
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Eamon Javers
So far, at least, American oil companies have telegraphed reluctance to be involved in Venezuela. They would face some significant hurdles in so including the expense of reconstruction, the uncertain security and political dynamic in that country, and the open question of what U.S. policy after 2028 might be. Still, the White House yesterday said that the US Companies are going to be involved. In a statement, White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said all of our oil companies are ready and willing to make big investments in Venezuela that will rebuild their oil infrastructure which was destroyed by the illegitimate Maduro regime. American oil company, she said, will do an incredible job for the people of Venezuela and will represent the United States Well, Kelly, so some open questions here, but the president very upbeat with his fellow Republican members of Congress up on Capitol Hill today.
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Kelly Evans
Any further details about this, you know, possible subsidization plan he's talking about?
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Eamon Javers
We haven't heard from the president directly on that at all other than what he said to NBC News yesterday. So we're waiting for some, some new details. What he's kind of floated over the past 48 hours is this idea that the oil companies will come in, make the investments upfront to rebuild Venezuelan oil, and then on the back end be reimbursed by the US Government through additional oil leases or some additional profit sharing from Venezuelan oil. And you heard the president in that sound bite just now, Kelly, saying that what he wants to do is lower oil costs in the United States.
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Kelly Evans
Right? Exactly. 2. I didn't check today, but 289 was the latest I saw. Amen. For the national average price, it might have been down to 283. Actually.
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Eamon Javers
Yes. Kelly, I'm having a little bit of audio difficulty. I lost you there, so I'm not sure what your question was. If you can restate, I think we got audio back.
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Kelly Evans
No, it's no problem. When you, when you fill up on your way back from the White House, you'll know what I'M talking about Eamon. Thanks, we appreciate it. For now. Amen.
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Michael San Satara
Fair enough.
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Kelly Evans
Let's get to the other top story of the day, which is the AI trade lifting the broader market. With the semiconductor ETF hitting an all time high for the third straight day. The SAH is up more than 7% in just this short period of time. Nvidia is still 10% off its record intraday high from October. But Wall street is liking what it hears as they share new details on Robotaxi robotics and new chip ambitions at CES Evercore saying Nvidia is positioned as the ecosystem of choice. Piper Sandler astounded by their level of involvement in the AI space. Bernstein says Rubin that's the next gen computing platform looks like a monster. And JP Morgan says 2026 is lining up to be another strong year for AI compute demand growth. John Ford sat down with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and AMD CEO Lisa Su at CES and he joins us with more. John, I don't want to start on the kind of bad news, but it is notable that AMD shares are down percent of 4% on a day when everyone seems pretty enthusiastic about everything they've heard from both of those companies so far.
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John Ford
Yeah, and if you look at a chart over the past month, it did have a nice little pop running into Christmas. So you wonder if some of this is just selling the news a bit. Lisa Su did have the keynote last night. Join me this morning and maybe some comparison a bit between the two speeches. And sure in video is out ahead of the entire industry leading a lot of the conversation about AI. Jensen Huang, you mentioned some of those comments about Vera Rubin, their upcoming platform. Really making the case that with Vera Rubin they're staying ahead of themselves, much less everybody else. And these AI factories, that's how he likes to put what's being built. With Nvidia's technology, there's such demand for them that more power, more performance is actually going to go to great use. Take a listen.
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Andres Garcia Amaya
You have to use the factory for three things. Three fundamental things. The first thing is to train your next frontier model so that you could build the best AI get to market first. So you want to train it as fast as you can. Comparing Blackwell to Rubin Rubin is a 4x leap and so that 4x jump you could either do something in four months or do it in one month. So it's a very big difference. You could either do something with 4 times as many Blackwells or 1/4 as many. Save a ton of money.
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John Ford
Meanwhile, Lisa Su at AMD arguing that all of that AI demand is so staggering that by 2030 the world's going to add 4 billion more AI users and that AMD will benefit.
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Michelle Caruso Cabrera
Listen, when we look at, you know, just the demand environment that we've seen just over the last couple of years, you know, just today, you know, we have like a hundred zeta flops of compute, which sounds like a lot. It's 100 times increase over the last four or five years that we're projecting forward and we're seeing a demand environment.
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Kelly Evans
Where you're going to have, you know.
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Michelle Caruso Cabrera
You'Re going to go from a billion active users in AI today to over 5 billion active users over the next five years.
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Kelly Evans
And so you need a lot more compute.
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John Ford
So, Kelly, the argument here, and away from both, is that the entire technology stack is being remade right on down to the software, how people are getting things done, how people are building things, and that these companies, they're arguing their companies are going to benefit from that rebuild based on how they position themselves.
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Kelly Evans
With their technology right now. Just to go back again, one more time on Nvidia, John, down, I'm sorry, on AMD, down 4%.
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Michelle Caruso Cabrera
Any, any. Anything.
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Kelly Evans
Was there an inflection in her voice when you guys were talking? Was there any hint as to why?
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Michael San Satara
No.
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John Ford
Really? Nothing in particular that that would argue for the stock being down 4%. If you're looking for a headline or a headline that people expected that they didn't get, I didn't see anything like that. I mean, note was long, couple hours. Greg Brotman from OpenAI was on stage. They have that partnership. They talked about robots, they talked about, you know, all the standard things, right, that the companies are talking about, about. We also talked about APC and how the personal computer business with the enterprise is going to need to get in line with some of these trends. So there was no missed forecast or downbeat thing that's sending the stock down now. It's, you know, we'll see what happens throughout the rest of the week.
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Kelly Evans
Even with Nvidia, it was up a few points earlier on and now it's a little bit off that level. So I don't want to make too much of it, but we appreciate it for now. John, thanks very much. John Ford out at the ces and our next guest isn't getting off the Nvidia train. It remains his top holding in the Morningstar four star rated virtues Sylvan focused fund which was up 14% last year. Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet, Amazon round out his top five Michael San Satara is Chief Investment Officer at Sylvan Capital. Michael, it's good to see you again. What are your thoughts about Nvidia and AMD so far based on everything that you've seen and what an incredible start to the year it's been?
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Michael San Satara
Yeah, I mean, it's always nice at ces. It's an exciting period for tech investors and tech users, I would say. Nvidia. Nvidia's commentary was somewhat expected and that's part of the reason why the stock's not tearing today. The demand in AI and chipsets continues. And the most important part for Nvidia is are they on the cutting edge? And they very much are. So the fact that Vera Rubin is going to ship early has folks excited. The expectation was it would be great and it is. They're talking about 10 times cost savings per token per watt. So you got faster, better, cutting edge stuff coming from Nvidia sooner. That's a positive. I didn't hear anything bad out of amd. We don't own any AMD at Sylvan. But you know, I think things there are plenty of room for all these ships to do. Well, the rising tide is raising them all. But Nvidia clearly the leader, no question.
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Kelly Evans
You know, many have suggested this might be the year to jump from an Nvidia to others, especially as the TPUs. I don't know all the details, but these kind of other processing options become, you know, more at the forefront. We've seen how Gemini has done quite well in terms of its kind of battle with ChatGPT also. So why are you sticking with Nvidia throughout all of those changes and crosscurrents?
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Michael San Satara
Yeah, that's a great question. In the Virtus Sylvan Focused Growth Fund, our goal is to have a little bit of all of the winners and we think there is, there's a handful of them, including Nvidia, including Alphabet. TPUs will have their place. Custom ASICs will have their place. You know, we're seeing Nvidia even move into, you know, acquisitions to find other places that will ultimately take portions of the stack. We like Nvidia primarily because of the magnitude of the stack, but we like, we like Alphabet as well. We think they're well positioned with Gemini 3. These models tend to leapfrog one another. Right now they're showing not only strong benchmark performance in their model, but we're also seeing them really defend their moat from search. So there's going to be multiple winners here and I think you can own handful of them. Particularly when you look at the Russell 1000 growth indexes 50% tech, you've got lots of stocks you can choose from.
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Kelly Evans
So let's talk also about the memory names because these are just ripping. And there was this data out of the Korean I think Economic Daily yesterday where it said that SK Hynix and Samsung were going to raise server dram prices by 60 to 70% in Q1 from Q4 of just last year. You know so I understand the market was expecting pricing to go up maybe more in the range of 40% across the board this year. What could possibly is that how bad the shortages are? I mean what's driving that and what do you do with those stocks who I'm sure a lot of people sit there and go geez, I thought I missed the move in 2025. Now once again I feel like I've missed the move in 2026.
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Michael San Satara
Right. The memory stocks are volatile and folks that trade them, we're investors, the folks that trade them know that what we tend to do and the way we look at it is a little bit differently. I want to buy the tools maker that takes advantage of DRAM pricing and that's asml. ASML is the litho king. Then the more DRAM pricing and the more expansion of capacity which we're going to see 2026-2028 way for DRAM puts ASML perfectly situated to profit from that. So if you're afraid of chasing super high memory you can buy SML at a reasonable price. We think the next few years it's going to beat expectations. You're seeing some sell side upgrades now kind of coming around to it. We've owned it for the last couple three years but ASML is well situated to take advantage and maybe not quite the same crazy ride as chasing some of the pure memory guys.
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Kelly Evans
That's an interesting point to kind of who are a little bit on the sidelines last year were Amazon and Metta. What do you make of that?
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Michael San Satara
Yeah, I think people are trying to figure out exactly where the hyperscalers Capex is going to give them roi. And at the end of the day Met is seeing it on the advertising side and Amazon is just beginning and Amazon Web Services to really start to monetize it. I think, I think those stocks will do better as the quarters come about. I think you'll see good fundamental data from both. We own them both in the focus Growth strategy. I think you'll see expectations rise throughout the year despite the fact that the stocks have done well. And you know, ultimately, again, these are the players that have basically built these systems in the largest scale, the largest in video clients, if you will. They're still spending, they're seeing more opportunity. With Vera Rubin, you're going to see more opportunity for them to monetize it as well.
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Kelly Evans
Yeah, and I hear you saying what, you know, a lot of the analysts are coming out of CES saying, which is the demand is so strong that it's really going to continue to lift all of these boats. So do you think this is now a story for all of 2026 and does it matter whether people are using? Because you mentioned it might not matter. Chad, BE T versus Gemini, you know, is that as we get warring data points and continued updates to those models, is there a lot at stake one way or the other?
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Michael San Satara
There is, but there isn't. Right. The models themselves are important and you will continue to see them leapfrog. You know, at some point there'll be a deep sea commentary that scares the market. You'll might have a chance to buy some of these stocks on pullbacks. But the point is this AI's demand for processing, the number of tokens, the amount of processing that Jensen was talking about yesterday, that is just incrementally increasing. And as that happens, there's just more and more problems we can solve. You know, right down to robotic AI, to autonomous driving. Those problems are huge, complex problems. And the better we get at doing it, the more we can trust the results. So there's a lot of room to grow from 2026. We're pretty confident that this continues. We can see pretty clearly into 2027 as well. Now stocks can always pull back, can always have options, people get scared, et cetera. But the fundamentals sequentially are increasing Q2 to Q3 semiconductor demand and semiconductor shipments, broadly in memory, broadly in the tools, in semicap equipment, sequentially increased Q4, 23, Q3, Q4 should also sequentially increase. So you've just got demand that's really ripping and the market sees it. The market's paying for it. There's a premium on these stocks. That's the real risk is the pricing, right?
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Kelly Evans
Exactly. But you know, I heard what Brad Gerstner said last hour about Nvidia stock up 1200 percent in five years, but the earnings are up even more than that. In other words, the P E has contracted somewhat.
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Michael San Satara
Yeah, a little bit. That's kind of funny. People tend to forget it's actually less expensive than it once was.
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Kelly Evans
Right. Evercore price target is almost double where we are now. I think they're around 350 and they'll.
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Michael San Satara
Raise it when it goes through it.
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Diana Olek
Yeah.
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Kelly Evans
All right, raise the roof. Michael, thanks so much. Appreciate your time today.
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Michael San Satara
Great to see you, Kelly.
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Kelly Evans
Michael San Satara with Sylvan Capital. Coming up, will the rest of the world continue to outperform the US Next year? Korea, for instance, helped a lot by what's going on in semiconductors there. Our market guest is bullish on some emerging markets this year and says earnings in one part of the world in particular are breaking out. We'll tell you where that is next. Speaking of which, how will the US Involvement in Venezuela affect the rest of Latin America? We'll unpack that ahead of the president meeting with oil companies. And here's another check on stocks with a nice rally again as we start the year on a really strong note. The Dow at a fresh all time high 49,429, nearly 1% gain. We're up 453 this hour session highs even with Chevron's 4% drop shaving about 40 points off the index. This would be a record close for the S and p here at 69:36. We're back after this.
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John Ford
This is the Exchange on CNBC.
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Kelly Evans
What made you confident that you could do something that hadn't been done before? I have no fear of failure. Trailblazing women, changing the game.
- [17:22]
Julia Boorstin
One of my favorite pieces of advice.
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Kelly Evans
Think about what your boss's boss needs. Leadership can look in many, many different forms. It really does come down to just trusting yourself. Life is short and you just gotta think big to accomplish big things.
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Julia Boorstin
Julia Boorstin hosts CNBC Changemakers and Power Players.
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Kelly Evans
New episodes every Tuesday, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back. Stocks are trading sharply higher as we mentioned, following yesterday's already strong rally with the Dow at new highs again could be on pace for its first close above 49,000 ever. The S and P trading above its record close. All this sounds great, but my next guest says the ingredients behind this rally are very much in play. And if I'm not mistaken, you think international could do even better. Andres Garcia Maya is the founder and CEO at Zoe Financial. Good to see you. Do you want to start with the US or international? You look there seem to be positive.
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Andres Garcia Amaya
Well, they have the same ingredients for success when it comes to earnings growth, monetary policy that's accommodating and then call it a rolling growth on the on the GDP side. So not stellar but also not low enough that it becomes an Issue Tim.
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Kelly Evans
Seymour yesterday said dereg valuation he thought was a big theme as well, especially in Europe for some of those financials.
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John Ford
So.
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Andres Garcia Amaya
Exactly. So what I was going to say to a certain extent is that up to there same ingredients, but Europe and international in general has one more ingredient which is valuations are much more attractive. Right. So better entry point even after they were up significantly higher than the US last year.
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Kelly Evans
Yeah, yeah. So it's always made sense they should trade a little more cheaply because in recent years they haven't done so well. They don't have the GDP growth and so forth. But you think they're going to overcome that.
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Andres Garcia Amaya
The biggest difference has been earnings growth has seen an inflection for them that started last year. Ultimately, earnings growth drives stocks.
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Michelle Caruso Cabrera
Right.
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Andres Garcia Amaya
And it has been a value trap for a number of years because the US earnings growth was look like this and they look flat. Last year you saw that inflection point of earnings growth and as you know is not only earnings growth, but the expectations are still pretty muted. So they don't have as high of a bar to beat versus in the US as you know. Right. Expectations are pretty high to begin with.
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Kelly Evans
Right. So in the US So and I take your point on that. We did talk a lot about, you know, how he thinks. Sounds like you think these, these runs could keep going internationally. What about in the U.S. what are the, what is the recipe for the rally that we're seeing? Why do you think we've had such a strong start to the year?
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Andres Garcia Amaya
Yeah, to a certain extent there hasn't been a shock to the things that has allowed it to work. So earnings growth continues to be strong. If anything is broadening beyond the max 7, which is a positive and potentially a good new driver, if you will, this year versus last year. You also have the idea of monetary policy not being an issue. If anything, they could cut one or two more times. And then lastly, the economy has held up, if anything is showing some signs of re acceleration.
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Michael San Satara
Right.
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Andres Garcia Amaya
You throw all those in and nothing has changed. From December 31st to the beginning of January.
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Kelly Evans
The economy you think is reaccelerating even with a kind of weak labor market.
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Andres Garcia Amaya
Yes. So that is, let's put it this way, there are potential risk here to the equation.
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Michael San Satara
Right.
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Andres Garcia Amaya
Which is the job market is not improving, slightly deteriorating, but not enough to send the economy into a recession. Right. And that's kind of the, the where we have to kind of keep an eye on. And then the other one you have to keep an eye on is if inflation Stays in check, monetary policy could stay accommodative. So those are the things to watch for where all of a sudden the story could be very different this year versus last.
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Kelly Evans
Right. So what do you most. There's the Hang Seng, the Shanghai. I mean some of this has been the narrative, you know, both here and that's right. Markets like Korea and China's at a four year high and things like that. Japanese stocks have been the best two day start for the Nikkei I think since 1990. I mean so it sort of seems like everywhere you turn there's idiosyncratic but maybe shared reasons, they're doing well and here in the US I mean the financials in particular, look at caterpillar breaking out. So what does all of this tell you? Is it as simple as your first comment which is that if anything the economy may be picking up momentum?
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Andres Garcia Amaya
Yeah, I think you want basically an economy that's picking up some momentum but it doesn't overheat. That's kind of the, you know, the happy medium. And that is where we are right now. It's not gangbusters where inflation becomes an issue, but it's also not recession fears. Right. And that then allows the market to focus on earnings without kind of being concerned about.
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Kelly Evans
So Friday we get the jobs report. What do you, what does the market want? Plus 30, probably not a negative, probably not a plus 116.
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Andres Garcia Amaya
It's almost like anywhere within range of expectations it becomes a non event. As I said, it's not like it's improving. It is deteriorating, but is starting from a very low base of unemployment rates.
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Kelly Evans
If it's deteriorating, the why are the jobless claims data always so strong? I mean it doesn't show that the pace of layoffs is picking up.
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Andres Garcia Amaya
Yeah, to a certain extent. One, there was a lot of noise to the data that I think as we go throughout the first quarter that noise will be clear from the shutdown. So I don't want to make like a strong statement of like it's getting much worse, it's getting much better, but it is fair to say that is not reaccelerating the same way that GDP is reaccelerating. Right. And that dichotomy can go on forever. But for now it is holding housing.
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Kelly Evans
Let's end then with this. Is this then a productivity story? So in other words, is this just a typical cycle where kind of, you know, spending picks up first and then the labor market's going to do better or is there something more and different at Play here where this kind of positive productivity shock. Some say post Covid because you could trace it back to 2020. Others say it's probably a little bit of both.
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Andres Garcia Amaya
I think it's both. The air is probably on the earlier side but even if you look at revenue per headcount for the S&P 500, it is moving higher over the last couple of couple of years and that has helped profit margins be near all time highs.
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Kelly Evans
If it's true that work from home is a major productivity. But can we get that out? I want that narrative now right before everyone says, you know, it's five days back in the office. No, look at the productivity boom that this country was undergoing that it can't. It has to be resulting from then that right?
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Andres Garcia Amaya
Oh, that is a touchy subject. I would say that a lot of it has to do with people having the ability to do more than they did before through AI, but just through automation. Forget about just using models and that trend is going to continue for a number of years. I don't, I don't see a reason for that to stop.
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Kelly Evans
I want our Andres to say everyone can work from home and you're going to be good for the economy. They can just do two jobs at once. No, I know, I know. Companies weren't a fan of that part of it. Andres, thank you. I'll leave it there before we get in any more trouble. Andres Garcia Amaya of Zoe Financial. Coming up, no real estate exodus yet in New York City after Mayor Mamdani's election. The positive stats on Manhattan office leasing that we're seeing, we'll talk about that next. And as we head to break, check out some of the names hitting all time highs today. And there's a lot of them but names like Tapestry, Ulta, Expedia, Marriott and Delta. 10% of the S&P is at 52 week or record highs today. 10%. We're back after this. Not every sale happens at the register. Before AT&T business Wireless checking out customers on our mobile POS systems took too long. Basically a staring contest where everyone loses. It's crazy what people will say during an awkward silence. Now transactions are done before the silence takes hold. That means I can focus on the task at hand and make an extra sail or two. Sometimes I do miss the bonding time.
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Andres Garcia Amaya
Sometimes AT&T business Wireless connecting changes everything.
- [24:46]
Kelly Evans
What made you confident that you could do something that hadn't been done before? I have no fear of failure. Trailblazing women, changing the game.
- [24:55]
Julia Boorstin
One of my favorite pieces of advice.
- [24:56]
Kelly Evans
Think about what your boss's boss needs. Leadership can look in many many different forms. It really does come down to just trusting yourself. Life is short and you just gotta think big to accomplish big things.
- [25:08]
Julia Boorstin
Julia Boorstin hosts CNBC Changemakers and Power.
- [25:11]
Kelly Evans
Players New episodes every Tuesday, wherever you get your podcasts. After many predictions that the New York office market would never bounce back fully after Covid and amid the rise of work from home and with the threat of of Mayor elect or Mayor Mamdani, well, anyway, it does appear to be coming back to life. Diana Olek has the details in today's Property Play.
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Diana Olek
Diana well Kelly, Manhattan Office leasing in Q4 was the strongest in six years, driven by continued return to office and increased tech hiring, especially for artificial intelligence. Leasing increased by more than 25% from the third quarter, according to Colliers. Demand was 16% higher year over year and close to 52% above the five year quarterly average. So it was the island's strongest single quarter of leasing since the end of 2019. Now for all of last year, leasing volume was the highest since 2019 and just over 2% below 2019 pre pandemic total. Experts at Colliers pointed to factors accelerating the recovery, like tenant flight to quality in order to attract and retain talent, strengthening return to office, emerging industry leasing and sizable expansions by major tenants such as Amazon, NYU and BlackRock Industries showing an uptick in demand finance, tech, legal, education, medical, nonprofit and government. Now the supply of available office space is still much higher, up nearly 37% than it was at the start of the pandemic in March 2020, but much lower than the post pandemic peak in February 2024. As demand rises, the oversupply is slowly being absorbed and Manhattan now has the tightest supply and demand since November 2020. Rents are finally rising a little. There does continue to be that flight to quality to Class A leading. So we're not totally out of the woods yet. Now for more on this and other big plays in commercial real estate, go to cnbc.com property play for your property Play newsletter. It is free, Kelly.
- [27:07]
Kelly Evans
It better be. No thank you. It's free for now. I know how this works, Diana. Then it's $20 a month, then it's 40. Diane Olek in Washington. We appreciate it. Let's get to Christina Parts. The Neville is now for the CNBC News Update. Hi Christina.
- [27:22]
Julia Boorstin
Hi Kelly.
- [27:23]
Kelly Evans
The White House today marking the fifth anniversary of the deadly attack at the US Capitol with its own version of the events on the White House website.
- [27:30]
Michelle Caruso Cabrera
Including references to, quote, mass arrests of.
- [27:33]
Kelly Evans
Patriotic protesters and the greatest election theft in U.S. history. House Democrats are also holding an unofficial hearing today, folks, focusing on the president's pardons of more than 1,500 people criminally charged with participating in the violence.
- [27:46]
Michelle Caruso Cabrera
Nick Reiner, who's being held in a.
- [27:48]
Kelly Evans
Los Angeles jail and charged with killing his parents, Rob and Michelle, is no.
- [27:53]
Michelle Caruso Cabrera
Longer on suicide watch.
- [27:54]
Kelly Evans
NBC Los Angeles reports that while he is still being monitored, his anti suicide smock has been removed. He is scheduled to be arraigned tomorrow. And Meta says it's delaying the international expansion of its Ray Ban display glasses because of unprecedented demand in the United States. Metta is pausing plans to launch in the UK, France, Italy and Canada to concentrate on fulfilling US orders. The $799 glasses let users watch videos or respond to messages and is controlled through a wristband. Kelly maybe those are the glasses that you need. I experimented with, I think the first generation of them. They're, they're fun but better if you listen to a lot of music, you know, kind of walking around. I don't walk anywhere. That's the problem. Somewhat intrusive too. Perhaps that's maybe why it's not expanding in the eu. But I'm true guessing demand here though. Christina. Thanks very much, Christina. Parts and Evolis coming up. Crude prices are giving back some of yesterday's gains. So where should you turn to invest in Venezuela's uncertain future? We're going to look at some ideas for that next. A glance at the markets because this is again the big story just in and of itself. The dow is up 442points. Record intraday high could be a record closing high and the first time ever closing above 49,000. The S& P is pretty much at a record high right now as well. Nasdaq, Russell's all up about half a percent. As for the big movers, look at shake shack jumping today after Deutsche bank said this could be an attractive entry point given its value, valuation and growth potential. Stocks up about 8%. It goes to 115 there with a buy. On the flip side, AIG is having its worst day since April after announcing its CEO will step down in the middle of the year and transition into the role of executive chair. CEO Peter Zaffino is credited with helping turn the company around after a decade of underwriting losses. And those shares are sinking 8%. And a nice move higher for Uber, announcing at CES that it'll partner with Lucid to introduce a production Ready Robo Taxi. This car would Feature specialized sensors and a cabin designed by Uber. Uber shares are up 5%. Lucid said they expect to begin manufacturing those units this year. And now to the latest in Venezuela, where the country swore in Delsey Rodriguez as the acting president yesterday following the US Capture of Nicolas Maduro. Rodriguez will have to work with the US Government to try and stabilize the country in the next few months as America looks to revitalize its oil industry and bring the economy back. How exactly might they do that? Our next guest has been privy to some of those details and talk in Washington. Joining us now is Michelle Caruso Cabrera, the CEO of MCC Global Enterprises and a CNBC contributor. Michelle Spill the tea, I think, is what they say.
- [30:29]
Michelle Caruso Cabrera
Welcome, Kelly, Good to see you. Yeah, you know, we have to see if Delsey Rodriguez will cooperate with the US Government. It seems she may be forced to, the way things have been set up, an offer she can't refuse. And speaking to oil executives extensively over the last couple of days, a lot of them think if there is stability on the ground and security on the ground, Venezuela can get to three and a half million barrels per day, which is what they used to produce by 2030. That's going to require a lot of investment. And then they say what's very crucial and which hasn't been widely reported is that in 2020, this socialist government passed a law called the anti blockade law. It was to deal with sanctions. And what it does is it allows the executive branch, the president of the country basically to enter deals and do full privatizations if necessary to protect the economy. It used to be that the Venezuelan government would have to own at least 60, at least 51% of a project, usually 60%. And now that doesn't have to be the case anymore. So she actually has a lot of leeway to do things if she's willing to do deals with oil companies.
- [31:46]
Kelly Evans
And I guess the president is going to speak with the oil companies and has talked about possibly helping to subsidize them for their efforts down there. So does all of this now speed back up the possible timeline in which Venezuela might get more supply into the market? And you know, again, you mentioned the issue with the now Delsey Rodriguez and to what extent she's cooperating with the US or not in all of this, as she kind of tries to to toe the line between saying, you know, this what happened was wrong, but also I guess behind the scenes flecking at working with the US that is going.
- [32:17]
Michelle Caruso Cabrera
To be what she has to do. From the outside, that looks like Something very difficult to do, but so far, so good. If you watch Venezuelan state TV, they stream it on YouTube.
- [32:29]
Kelly Evans
You can watch it if you want.
- [32:30]
Michelle Caruso Cabrera
The government and her government seems very much in control. Often when things go badly in a country, if there's a coup d', etat, a change in leadership, what do they do? They take over the TV stations. That has not happened here. This government is still in control. They have a march going on today, a women's march, demanding that the US Send back Maduro and his wife to Venezuela. But so far, she seems to be in charge, so she's going to have a lot of leeway if she chooses to work with the United States.
- [32:59]
Kelly Evans
What happened with Maria Machado, is it, you know, she spoke and thanked President Trump when she received her Nobel Prize. And then it was pretty clear that the US Said, you know, we don't think she has the confidence of the people. And maybe that, to your point about the women's march, maybe that's factual. And I didn't know if that was simply just there's kind of more to the story, you know, behind the scenes.
- [33:17]
Michelle Caruso Cabrera
Yeah, that was heartbreaking for the opposition in exile. They certainly had thought this was their moment. Marco Rubio was pressed on that question multiple times over the weekend on the Sunday shows, and he said, it's too soon for that. We first have to, you know, look at what's immediately in front of us. The national interests of the United States are the following then. But he didn't discount that she could eventually be the leadership, the leader of the country. And in fact, many Republican members of Congress held a news conference a couple of days saying they still believe she.
- [33:47]
Kelly Evans
Will be the future leader of the.
- [33:49]
Michelle Caruso Cabrera
Country because her ticketmaybe not herself, but her ticket did win an election. What happened? And there's a lot of talk from people close to this administration who believe that what they saw post Saddam Iraq was problematic, that if you decapitate too much of the leadership of a country, it can fall into instability, disarray if you do a de Ba'. Athification. Saddam Hussein was a member of the Baath Party, and they got rid of the army. They got rid of all these people who work for the government. It led to a lot of instability in Iraq. And their goal, number one, was stability. And they weren't sure that would be achieved if she was brought into power right away.
- [34:28]
Kelly Evans
That's fascinating. And then finally, where does it leave the US Oil companies? Do you think they're going to be explicitly asked to go down and help increase production, obviously some of them are already there. Others I guess could be, could volunteer and say, you know, we'll go do it as well. I'm curious what the administration wants and how willing our companies are going to be to help achieve those goals.
- [34:48]
Michelle Caruso Cabrera
Well, President Trump has made clear he's going to tell them that he wants them to do that. The financial incentives are going to have to be there and safety and stability security on the ground is going to be number one. Venezuelan oil is cheap to extract. It's $13 to $16 per barrel. There's a ready place to refine it. They are going to have to improve the infrastructure. And best case scenario, people get in immediately. They think 20, 30 to three and a half million barrels per day. It's not just Chevron who's here by the way. Any the Italian oil company, the Italian energy company is, is in a partnership with Repsol out of Spain. They're drilling for gas and that's an active project. So there are companies here. It can be done if everything lines up politically and safely.
- [35:33]
Kelly Evans
Right. And with a little bit of an extra sweetener or incentive, I imagine. Michelle, thanks very much. We appreciate it. It's a pleasure. Michelle Cruso Cabrera McCarthy Global Enterprises in Washington. By the way, don't miss our exclusive interview with the energy secretary. Chris Wright will join tomorrow at 2pm on Power Lunch in his first comments since the capture of President Maduro. Still ahead, after months of weakness, bitcoin is back on a little upswing. Crypto up 5% since the beginning of the year, although taking some of those gains today around 91 and change. Was the death of crypto greatly exaggerated or not? We'll talk to the analysts who give gives us his bullish case for two big names in that space next. Crypto had been starting off the year on a little bit better Note. It was up 5% month to date but losing more than 2% in this big rally after that big rally yesterday. Today fintech players Circle and Coinbase, they're up about 6 and 11% respectively. But again we're trimming those gains. My next guest is betting big on those two names in particular as he thinks crypto will rebound and says the so called death of crypto was greatly exaggerated. Let's bring in Andrew Jeffrey. He's William Blair's fintech equity analyst. Andrew, I love how it's changing in real time. Like literally as, as the afternoon is playing out. We're going from some gains to some more. You know, we're almost back to unchanged on the year. What do you think is really going on beneath the surface?
- [36:52]
Andrew Jeffrey
Hi Kelly, thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. You know, I think that what you're seeing in bitcoin primarily is just action of an immature asset. This is an asset that is only about $1.9 trillion in market cap. Roughly a third of the total supply is controlled by a very small number of wallets, about 2 million wallets. And I think the most recent buyers, namely retail in ETFs are probably the weakest hands. And so I think downdrafts sort of become self fulfilling. And what you're seeing is risk off environment, which I think is ultimately transitory because I think I see bitcoin over time being a true store of value and supplanting gold in a lot of respects, certainly approaching gold's market cap, which is 15 times higher than right now.
- [37:41]
Kelly Evans
Respectfully, I have heard many of these arguments for a long time now. And for a long time they worked. Right? Once the market knows those arguments, the arguments aren't new, they don't change. But bitcoin kind of becomes old news, right? Even today our reporter Mackenzie Segalos was talking about how ripple's now like the hot, you know, the cool thing. So I just wonder if everything you said can be true. But that doesn't necessarily mean that bitcoin itself remains the big, the big chase, you know. And I think the longer that it kind of just hovers around here, the less interested people seem to be in kind of chasing it and trying to push it to the upside other than the bitcoin treasury companies. But that's a different story.
- [38:22]
Andrew Jeffrey
Yeah, I mean, I think the price in the short term is certainly driven by investor psychology. If you look over the last decade, bitcoin's been the best performing asset in the world. So I think you have to zoom out a little bit and keep perspective. I think it's going to be virtually impossible for the crypto ecosystem system as a whole to make sustained gains without Bitcoin leading the way.
- [38:45]
Kelly Evans
Why, I would almost be the opposite. It would. It seems to me that now that people understand when you have Jamie Dimon talking about, you know, yeah, this infrastructure is an enhancement, right. It helps the whole financial system. It's becoming the whole financial system again. That's kind of an uninteresting bitcoin play.
- [39:02]
Andrew Jeffrey
Well, I don't think that bitcoin is necessarily the pain. I think that's where stable stablecoins come in and USDC is, is the play. And that's why we're so bullish on Circle, but I think Bitcoin is much more fungible, lower cost alternative to gold and ultimately a hedge against the demise of fiat economies. Right. I think that's long been the bull case in crypto and Bitcoin in particular, I think it continues to be, it's a hedge and gold has been a wonderful asset over the last couple of years. Bitcoin has been a relative laggard and I think over time Bitcoin and all the merits of Bitcoin, including lower, lower carrying costs, constrained supply and so forth, will make it more desirable.
- [39:46]
Kelly Evans
Yeah, we are showing circles. Yeah, circle's down 44% over the past three months. And you know, I note that perhaps one of the reasons why the financials are doing the traditional financials so well this year is because of this anticipation of lower interest rates along with a few other things. But that's a headwind for Circle, which, you know, makes a lot of its money on that spread. You know, it earns what the Federal Reserve is paying basically, and what the Federal Reserve is paying is going down.
- [40:10]
Michael San Satara
Yeah.
- [40:11]
Andrew Jeffrey
I think there are two things to consider. One is that demand for USDC will rise with commercialization and that's going to take time. Again, it's not going to happen overnight. But I think as US DC supplants fiat for cross border B2B commerce, for example, you're going to see market cap growth outstrip the effect of lower interest rates. I also think the important thing to remember here is that Circle today is essentially generating revenue from interest, but over time, as it builds up the Circle payment network, cpn, it's going to become sort of a Visa type analog for usdc. It's going to be a network play and again that's going to take a couple of years, but more of the revenue is going to come from transactions and less from you.
- [40:53]
Kelly Evans
Quickly, on Coinbase, you know, there's been a lot of excitement around prediction markets and obviously there's so many different platforms vying to kind of be the one stop shop like Robinhood, which says we can do crypto and we can do traditional and we can do it all. So why does that name in particular jump out to you?
- [41:08]
Andrew Jeffrey
I think Coinbase is particularly compelling because it's building the infrastructure for the entire system. I think narrowly it can be defined and viewed as an exchange today, but it's also providing infrastructure for white label USDC issuance, for example, for the TRADFI that wants to offer its customers access to crypto, it is Offering increasingly equities, prediction markets and so forth, as they announced last month. So I think this is the, this is the place you're going to go if you want to trade crypto. It's the most hard infrastructure, it's proven and increasingly it's going to be partnered with Tradfi. So I think over time that the services and subscription part of the business become a much more important part of Coinbase's financials.
- [41:54]
Kelly Evans
All right, death has been greatly exaggerated. Andrew, thanks for joining us today. Andrew Jeffrey with William Blair. Still ahead, while robots take center stage out at ces, AI developers are duking it out for the rights to power them. We'll tell you who's leading the way in that space when the exchange returns. Google's DeepMind unit announcing a partnership with Boston Dynamics as humanoid robotics tech steal the show at ces, potentially undercutting the robotics part of Tesla's valuation case Those shares are down 4% today. Deirdre Bosa gets into the details in today's tech check. Deirdre.
- [42:35]
Julia Boorstin
So Kelly, this is why it matters. It's because Autonomy is no longer Tesla's story alone. It power Tesla's valuation in 2025. But the competition is getting real and it's happening fast. So Boston Dynamics put that on full display at sea. So it's next generation Atlas robot. You're looking at it now. In a subtle but important move, executives, they actually avoided some of the hype that has dog Tesla's humanoid push, saying right up front that the demo was tele operated. They then moved on quickly to what actually matters. And that is what you're seeing here. A robot that pushes past the human form, fully rotational joints, built to operate in heat, cold rain. It can move its arms and legs, you see, in ways that humans can't. Now at the same time, Nvidia is pushing deeper into autonomous driving and robotics with open reusable software models designed to run across many systems. And that is a direct challenge to the core Musk dogma that owning the data and the full stack creates an insurmountable edge. Now, on the flip side, Kelly and for the Tesla bulls, CS also does validate Tesla's core thesis. Ship early learn in the real world, improve through software. And that is exactly what Tesla has and is doing. As my colleague Laura Clodney put it today when I was chatting with her, Musk Musk doesn't need cs. He already has the biggest marketing platform in the world. And right on cue, he responded to a post on Access Morning calling Nvidia's release, the first real competitor to Phil self driving Tesla software. Writing he said, I'm not losing any sleep about this and I genuinely hope they succeed. But Kelly, as the competition intensifies, Tesla's autonomy premium, that may be harder to defend going forward.
- [44:10]
Kelly Evans
You know, it does feel like, you know, on the east coast here we're still not expecting experiencing the Waymo flourishing that you guys are out there, but it really is now feeling inevitable. It feels like it's coming and it feels like it's going to be Tesla's and more and more full self driving Teslas and Waymos and this new partnership between Uber and Lucid. And I mean we're right on the cusp of this going mainstream.
- [44:34]
Julia Boorstin
I mean, and that's a key question. Is it going to be two players like a Waymo and a Tesla or is it going to be many? That is sort of the proposition that the rideshare companies Uber and Lyft are betting on. You mentioned Uber shares are up today on that Lucid partnership. There's also Baidu in London which is going to be really interesting because that sort of neutral territory, right, to have American automakers go in or self driving car companies go in like a Waymo and a Baidu, navigating those regulations and those streets. So I think what it comes down to is, you're absolutely right, Kelly. It's coming probably sooner than many had anticipated a few years ago. And this year you're really going to see it take off. Can Tesla defend that Autonomy premium when you have so many players coming in?
- [45:15]
Kelly Evans
All right, Deirdre, thanks very much. Deirdre Jabosa, as mentioned, Tesla down 4 and a half percent today. Quick check of the broader markets that will show you the narrative of the day, which continues what we've really seen since the turn of the calendar year. Strong stock markets here and internationally. The Dow's up 460 points. Could be the first close above 49,000 today. That's it for us. Thank you for watching the Exchange. We'll pick up coverage with Dom Choo on Power Lunch right after this quick break. A rich life isn't a straight line to a destination on the horizon. Sometimes it takes an unexpected turn with detours, new possibilities and even another passenger or three. And with 100 years of navigating ups and downs, you can count on Edward Jones to help guide you through it all. Because life is a winding path made rich by the people you walk it with. Let's find your rich together. Edward Jones Member, SIPC.