Panel = CNBC's investment committee; "View" is the panel's net take this episode and the cell names which member(s) held it. This is an audio podcast, so each "At" cell opens the Spotify episode (not a deep-link); the (mm:ss) cues cited in the talking points are from the Spotify transcript. Order: Positive → Neutral → Negative. Research: QT Qualtrim · SA Seeking Alpha · STK Stock Analysis.
| Ticker | Name | Research | View | What the committee said | At |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NVDA | Nvidia | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | The only mega-cap tech name green, up nearly 4% after Elon Musk endorsed it on the SpaceX earnings call ("they have the best AI computer"); Melius loved the endorsement. Lebenthal: "you can buy it right here, just to cut to the chase… new money that comes into accounts at our firm, we're putting in NVIDIA, we're not hesitating" — ~5–7% from an all-time high, roughly 19–20× forward against a 30–35% EPS growth rate, and the endorsement "just continues to show that NVIDIA will have more demand than it can supply for the foreseeable future." Terranova: "it is literally a hanging curveball down the middle" — he bought at 199, got stopped out at 193 while on vacation, called it "the next Apple," and says "I handled the position wrong. It's going to a new all-time high." | listen↗ |
| GOOGL | Alphabet | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Down 3.5–5% on a DeepMind reorg (Mackenzie Sagalos): Demis Hassabis moves to a chairman role focused on frontier research, AGI implications, AI safety/policy and a bigger role at Isomorphic Labs; Koray Kavukcuoglu — already running much of the lab's model research as chief AI architect — takes day-to-day leadership; and 27-year chief scientist Jeff Dean leaves to start a company Google will invest in and that will partner with Google Cloud (amicable; the role won't be refilled). It follows John Jumper to Anthropic and Noam Shazeer to OpenAI. The desk is unanimous it's an overreaction. Terranova: "cloud revenue growth 82%, revenue growth 24% — that's what's important to me… a knee-jerk reaction… a shifting in intellectual capital. That's normal." Lebenthal: "there is a lot more talent in the overall AI industry than just one or two or three individuals… Gemini has gone through many versions. This is not a one-man show" — and points to the chips, search, YouTube and Waymo. Snipe: cloud growth 82% vs 60-plus last quarter is "significant runway… this to me is a viable opportunity," and "the deputy is taking over." | listen↗ |
| SHAK | Shake Shack | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Up ~11% intraday: Starboard's Jeff Smith told Bloomberg he's taken a several-hundred-million-dollar stake, calling it "too cheap," and may now be the largest holder (unconfirmed; 13Fs next Friday). Josh Brown, a long-time shareholder, phoned in: a stated trajectory to 1,500 stores, 65 openings this year, "a great royalty business internationally," an unbelievable product and a loyal base — "what's missing? It's a $2 billion market cap. Clearly the potential does not match the progress in the share price." Starboard's QSR record (Darden, Papa John's) is "unimpeachable… this may be exactly what the doctor ordered," and he'd bet on constructive conversations already under way ending in a board seat. What needs fixing: last quarter's surprise loss blamed on paper-goods and red-meat costs (~$6.75/lb beef) — "you should not have a business this mature that shocks Wall Street to this extent." Terranova: "a paradigm shift… Jeff Smith and the Starboard team have excelled in quick-serve restaurant activism" — Darden 2014, the entire 12-member board replaced, +143% over the next five years; and the Olive Garden detail he remembers, that Starboard made them salt the pasta water. "He will be active here, he will be engaged, and I would imagine he's going to be on board." | listen↗ |
| DAL | Delta Air Lines | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Lebenthal's exhibit for the broadening: as the other 493's earnings growth is set to surpass the Mag 7's in the second half, "you're seeing it in the stock price reaction. When you have a good economy, when you have broadening profit growth, a company like Delta is going to be approaching new highs as it is right now — and not just new highs, but a re-rating of the multiple." | listen↗ |
| MSFT | Microsoft | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Jason Snipe's final trade: "Azure was strong, Copilot starting to show some life." Also cited by Terranova as proof the tape "wants to get behind the underdog and the underperformance" — Microsoft (and Palantir) rewarded for exactly that, which is why he finds Disney's muted reaction so telling. | listen↗ |
| WYNN | Wynn Resorts | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Lebenthal's final trade: "Wynn Resorts — good earnings last night." (Wapner: "you're going to win with Wynn.") | listen↗ |
| SpaceX | SpaceX | — | Neutral | Down ~9% (was −10%) on its inaugural report as a public company, with the first lock-up tranche hitting tomorrow and a "stair step" of supply after that; several target raises and cuts the same day. The numbers: revenue +92% to $7.8B, Starlink revenue up 66 (the transcript garbles the unit), AI revenue +247% — "but it's that $18.4 billion of CapEx that causes the problem for the Street." Kevin Simpson (shareholder, by phone): "just looking at the operating report, I thought it was fantastic… my enthusiasm for this business hasn't waned at all, but it's far different than my enthusiasm in the stock," because of the lock-up. Like every hyperscaler, "if you're going to spend this kind of money you need to show the shareholder there's some path to a return on investment" — not a next-quarter story, but "if you're 2, 3, 4 years into the future, this is an incredible business. We're going to own it." He put a half-percent position in his growth ETF at 160 and has deliberately not added: "just because a stock pulls back doesn't mean you need to add to it… I want to see how it trades with these new shares as part of the marketplace." He doubts a big lock-up selloff — the stock is already down ~50% from the highs (low 200s to low 100s), so "a lot of this is embedded into this price action." | listen↗ |
| AMD | Advanced Micro Devices | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Down almost 6% despite a good earnings report — "I don't know what you could pick and not like." Lebenthal's explanation is relative, not fundamental: "Elon Musk spoke at length about Vera Rubin chips and the relationship with SpaceX and NVIDIA. We didn't hear very much about AMD." AMD has relationships with Meta, OpenAI and Anthropic, "but in return there are warrants on 160 million shares — a much different relationship." And the multiple gap does the rest: AMD in the mid-40s forward versus NVIDIA around 19.5. "Nothing wrong with AMD's earnings except what we heard last night from Elon Musk. If it was happening on another day, you'd get a better reaction." | listen↗ |
| DIS | Walt Disney | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | A frustrated hold. Lebenthal (owner): the operating results "are pretty darn good" across entertainment, theme parks and streaming, with "great potential in the studios" as the box office recovers (Spider-Man), and the stock trades ~14× forward — "and yet what are we up, 2%?" His question about himself: "how much of a mistake am I making here? Am I being patient or am I being stubborn? Now I'm not selling it today, but… I don't love it, because I don't love what the share price is doing." Terranova reads the muted reaction as a signal: "this is a market that wants to get behind the underdog… look at what happened in Microsoft, look at what happened in Palantir. Now you see Disney today and it's only up 1.9%. The stock is down double digits on the year, double digits over the last 52 weeks… so where are all the buyers rushing in to buy the underperformance? It tells you everything you need to know." Lebenthal's own hypothesis: M&A overhang — the market may fear Disney enters the cable-spinoff scrum and overpays as it did with Fox. | listen↗ |
| NFLX | Netflix | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Brought into the Disney debate by Lebenthal — "I'm going to bring Netflix in, not because I want to make myself feel better, but because I think we have to look at the industry, streaming and broadcast overall, and say that maybe there's going to be more M&A. Maybe that's what's holding this stock back." No fresh stance on Netflix itself. | listen↗ |
| APO | Apollo Global Management | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Reiterated overweight today amid a strong month for private equity. Snipe: still down around 10%; fee-related earnings of $785M, up 25% — "a record quarter for them" — with insurance spread income driving results and private equity performing better. His hold condition: "I need to see those monetizations continue to pick up to see the stock move further." Terranova's read on the group: "one of the reasons private equity is trading better is because software is trading better — there's a very strong correlation between the two," plus "this environment where the market loves the underdog and the underperformance, and private equity certainly characterizes itself as such." | listen↗ |
| UBER | Uber Technologies | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Down ~7% on weaker-than-expected bookings; revenue up ~12% versus a ~14% expectation, EPS in line. Truist's same-day note: the results and guide "reflect very healthy demand for mobility and delivery" and AV rollouts will accelerate. Snipe: $10B of free cash flow and continued AV investment, "but there's no real catalyst to move this stock forward… this is kind of a wait-and-see" — down 17% for the year. Terranova: asked for the catalyst, "I don't [have one], and it's the reason why I'm not in the stock — and I want to be in the stock, because I believe in the long-term business model. But it hasn't proven itself, and if you're focused on price, you're going to be out." | listen↗ |
| BKNG | Booking Holdings | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Up 6% on earnings — the trigger for the travel discussion and for reviewing the travel names Terranova just removed from his ETF. No individual committee call on Booking itself. | listen↗ |
| EXPE | Expedia Group | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Sold out of Terranova's ETF at the July rebalance — and at a record high today, which he concedes looks odd: "if you pull up a one-year chart you're going to be like, well, what are you talking about? There's great momentum for Expedia." The removal was a quality-rule exit, not a view: "one of the metrics we're using for quality is debt-to-equity. Debt-to-equity can be distorted by a company that does significant buybacks… Expedia's just got uncomfortably high — it's sitting right now at 500%. So that disqualified it, and that's the reason why we sold it." He adds that the rule itself may need revisiting; Lebenthal's suggestion: distinguish debt raised for buybacks (which he hates) from debt raised for productive, cash-generating investment. | listen↗ |
| RCL | Royal Caribbean Cruises | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Also removed from Terranova's ETF at the rebalance, and the one he minds: "the one that's painful is Royal Caribbean… a name we have had in the portfolio for the better part of the last two years and done really well with. So I'm disappointed to see this move to the sidelines." The exit is rules-based on near-term price performance, "a lot of that attributable to what's going on in the Middle East. So that could reverse itself very quickly" — not a negative fundamental view. Context: consumer discretionary is "the one sector in which I don't think momentum is very successful. It's a lot of fits, a lot of starts." | listen↗ |
| MU | Micron Technology | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Named (with NVIDIA, Marvell and Corning) in Terranova's concentration warning: "where the narrative falls apart is if the 493 and the broadening out falls apart… if the market concentrates back to NVIDIA, if the market concentrates back to Micron and Marvell and Corning, the momentum factor is not there. That's where the market has a challenge." Market color, not a call on the name. | listen↗ |
| MRVL | Marvell Technology | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | One of the four names Terranova says the market must not re-concentrate into if the broadening narrative is to hold. No individual call this episode. | listen↗ |
| GLW | Corning | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Also named in Terranova's re-concentration risk list (with NVIDIA, Micron and Marvell). No individual call. | listen↗ |
| AAPL | Apple | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Cited only inside Lebenthal's arithmetic for how easily the index reaches 8250: "if you look at the top ten stocks in the S&P 500, most of which are momentum, if those stocks went 5% higher, most of them would not hit an all-time high. NVIDIA 5% higher is not an all-time high. Microsoft 5% from here is not an all-time high. Same with Apple." No stance this episode. | listen↗ |
| LVS | Las Vegas Sands | QT · SA · STK · FA | Negative | Removed from Terranova's ETF in the same travel-and-leisure rebalance — and unlike Royal Caribbean he offers no defense: "Las Vegas Sands, that's price momentum." A straight momentum-failure exit within the consumer-discretionary sector he says momentum works worst in ("a lot of fits, a lot of starts, a lot of quick entry into positions and a couple of quarters later you're out of it"). | listen↗ |
"View" = the panel's net stance this episode, with the committee member named in the note. Discussed but not tabled: the growth ETF in which Kevin Simpson holds his half-percent SpaceX position (the transcript garbles the fund's ticker, so no row was created); Sony, credited alongside Disney for the Spider-Man box office; the cable-network spin-offs referenced generically ("including our fine company"); and the news update (an FAA review of a momentary loss of separation near Reagan National, the Pope's November Latin America trip, LIV Golf securing an outside investor) — no securities stance. Liz Thomas's final trade is garbled in the transcript (a commodities/inflation reference with no discernible ticker) and was deliberately not reconstructed. People not tabled: Scott Wapner & the committee (Joe Terranova, Liz Thomas, Jason Snipe, Jim Lebenthal), Kevin Simpson, Josh Brown, John Waldron, Ed Yardeni, Jonathan Krinsky, Jeff deGraff, Jeff Smith, Demis Hassabis, Koray Kavukcuoglu, Jeff Dean, John Jumper, Noam Shazeer, Elon Musk, Mackenzie Sagalos, Brandon Gomez, Oliver Renick, Seema Mody, Alex Morgan.
A jargon-free summary of why each substantively-argued name matters. (These render on each ticker's consolidated page, where this audio episode has no excerpt to pull.)
Alphabet fell as much as 5% because of people, not numbers. Google reshuffled DeepMind — Demis Hassabis moved up to a chairman role focused on long-range research and AI safety, his deputy took over day-to-day — and, more strikingly, chief scientist Jeff Dean left after nearly three decades to start his own company (which Google will invest in). Two other senior researchers had already gone to Anthropic and OpenAI. Investors read it as a brain drain.
The whole desk called that an overreaction, and each for a different reason. Joe Terranova points at the business: cloud revenue growing 82% and total revenue 24% — "that's what's important to me," and a shuffle of intellectual capital after a strong run is normal. Jim Lebenthal argues the AI industry has far more talent than any two or three individuals, Gemini has already been through many versions, and Alphabet is not one product anyway — it makes its own chips and owns search, YouTube and Waymo. Jason Snipe notes cloud growth accelerated from 60-something percent last quarter to 82%, which is "significant runway," and the person taking over sat right next to the strategy: "a viable opportunity."
Nvidia was the only mega-cap up on the day, gaining nearly 4% because Elon Musk said on SpaceX's earnings call that Nvidia has "the best AI computer" — a customer endorsement from one of the biggest new spenders on AI hardware.
Jim Lebenthal's case is simply that the price no longer matches the growth: at roughly 19–20 times next year's earnings while profits grow 30–35% a year, "new money that comes into accounts at our firm, we're putting in Nvidia, we're not hesitating." Joe Terranova agrees and uses himself as the cautionary tale: he bought at $199, set a stop just below, and got knocked out at $193 while on holiday — right idea, wrong position management. "It is literally a hanging curveball down the middle… it's going to a new all-time high."
Activist investor Jeff Smith of Starboard Value revealed a several-hundred-million-dollar stake in Shake Shack, calling the stock "too cheap" — possibly making Starboard the largest shareholder. The stock jumped about 11%.
Josh Brown, who owns it, frames the gap: Shake Shack has prime locations everywhere you'd want them, a plan to reach 1,500 stores, 65 openings this year and a profitable international franchise-royalty business — yet the whole company is worth only ~$2 billion. "The potential does not match the progress in the share price." What went wrong is operational, not strategic: last quarter the company shocked investors by swinging to a loss, blaming the cost of paper goods and beef. A mature restaurant chain shouldn't be surprised like that, which is exactly the kind of problem an activist fixes.
Joe Terranova's point is that Starboard specialises in this. At Darden in 2014 they replaced the entire twelve-person board and the stock rose 143% over the following five years; Jeff Smith personally ran the Papa John's turnaround as executive chairman. His favourite detail on how granular they get: Starboard made Olive Garden start salting the water it boiled its pasta in. Both expect a board seat.
SpaceX delivered its first earnings report as a public company and the stock fell about 9%. The business results were strong — revenue up 92% to $7.8 billion, AI revenue up 247% — but the company spent $18.4 billion on capital projects, and that is what unsettled investors. It has become, in effect, another hyperscaler: spending enormous sums today for returns years out.
Kevin Simpson, a shareholder, splits the two cleanly: "my enthusiasm for this business hasn't waned at all, but it's far different from my enthusiasm in the stock." The reason is the lock-up — the date when early investors and employees are first allowed to sell — which begins tomorrow and is followed by further tranches. He holds a small half-percent position bought at $160 and deliberately has not added: "just because a stock pulls back doesn't mean you need to add to it." He wants to watch how the market absorbs the new shares first. He does doubt a crash, since the stock is already down roughly 50% from its highs, so the supply is largely anticipated.
AMD fell almost 6% on a report nobody could find fault with. Jim Lebenthal's explanation is that it lost a comparison rather than missing a number: Elon Musk spent his earnings call praising Nvidia's next-generation Vera Rubin chips and barely mentioned AMD.
He also draws a distinction in the quality of AMD's AI relationships. AMD has deals with Meta, OpenAI and Anthropic — but those customers received warrants (rights to buy AMD shares cheaply) on 160 million shares, meaning AMD partly paid for the business by giving away future equity. "A much different relationship." And AMD trades in the mid-40s times earnings while Nvidia trades around 19.5, so any comparison starts against it.
Disney reported good results — entertainment, theme parks and streaming all solid, with the studios improving as the box office recovers — and the stock rose less than 2%. It trades at about 14 times earnings and is down double digits both this year and over the past twelve months.
Jim Lebenthal owns it and is openly conflicted: "the company itself is doing really well, but the stock just isn't… am I being patient or am I being stubborn?" He isn't selling. Joe Terranova uses the non-reaction as evidence about the market rather than about Disney: this is a tape that rewards beaten-down names (Microsoft and Palantir both surged), so if buyers won't chase Disney's underperformance after a good quarter, "that tells you everything you need to know." Lebenthal's guess at the overhang is merger risk — with cable networks being spun off, investors may fear Disney buys one and overpays, as many think it did with Fox.
Apollo manages private-equity and credit funds and owns a large insurance business. It got an overweight reiteration, and the numbers were good: fee-related earnings — the steady management fees, as opposed to lumpy performance profits — hit a record $785 million, up 25%, helped by insurance spread income (the gap between what it earns on investments and what it pays policyholders).
Jason Snipe still wants one more thing before the stock re-rates: monetizations, meaning Apollo actually selling portfolio companies and crystallising gains. Until deals close, the private-equity value is on paper. Joe Terranova adds a useful cross-market observation — private equity has been tracking software closely, so software's recovery is part of why these stocks are working, alongside a market that currently rewards anything unloved.
Uber fell 7% on weaker-than-expected bookings — revenue grew about 12% against expectations of 14%, with profit in line. Truist argued demand for rides and delivery is still healthy and driverless-car rollouts will accelerate.
The desk's problem isn't the business, it's the absence of a trigger. Jason Snipe notes $10 billion of free cash flow and continued investment in autonomous vehicles but "no real catalyst to move this stock forward" — a wait-and-see, with the stock down 17% on the year. Joe Terranova is blunter and turns it into a rule: he believes in the long-term model and still owns none of it, because "it hasn't proven itself, and if you're focused on price, you're going to be out."
Expedia hit a record high on the same day it emerged that Joe Terranova's ETF had just sold it — and the reason is a good illustration of how rules-based investing can override a good chart. His strategy screens for quality using three tests he wrote himself in 2020: revenue growth, return on equity, and debt-to-equity. Expedia's debt-to-equity ratio hit 500%, so it was automatically disqualified.
His own caveat is that the rule may be too blunt: a company that borrows to buy back its own stock shrinks its equity, which mechanically inflates the ratio without necessarily being reckless. "The market is always teaching and you're always learning… there might be something there in the future we'd have to pivot on." Jim Lebenthal's refinement: separate debt raised for buybacks from debt raised for investments that generate cash.
Royal Caribbean was removed from Joe Terranova's ETF at the July rebalance, and he says it's the exit that stings — a holding of nearly two years that has "done really well." The removal was mechanical, driven by weak recent price performance that he attributes largely to Middle East disruption, "so that could reverse itself very quickly." In other words, this is a rules-based exit rather than a negative view of the cruise line.
The broader lesson he draws: consumer discretionary is the one sector where momentum investing works worst — "a lot of fits, a lot of starts, a lot of quick entry into positions and a couple of quarters later you're out of it."
Las Vegas Sands was dropped from Joe Terranova's ETF in the same travel-and-leisure rebalance, and unlike Royal Caribbean he offers no mitigating explanation: "Las Vegas Sands — that's price momentum." The stock simply stopped performing well enough to keep its place, in the sector he says momentum strategies struggle with most.
Delta is Jim Lebenthal's proof that the market's gains are spreading beyond technology. His argument: with the other 493 companies in the S&P expected to out-grow the Mag 7 on earnings in the second half, an ordinary cyclical business benefits twice — from higher profits, and from investors being willing to pay a higher multiple for those profits. "A company like Delta is going to be approaching new highs as it is right now — and not just new highs, but a re-rating of the multiple."
Jason Snipe picked Microsoft as his final trade on two specifics: Azure — the cloud business — was strong, and Copilot, the AI assistant bundled into Office, is "starting to show some life," i.e. beginning to show up in revenue rather than just in demos. Joe Terranova separately cites Microsoft as evidence that this market rewards previously unloved names.
Summary derived from the public CNBC Halftime Report audio episode (transcript in transcript.txt) for personal study. Not investment advice. © CNBC for source material.