Title: The State of the Tech Trade as SK Hynix Opens for Trading 7/10/26
Show: CNBC Halftime Report (Spotify podcast — Scott Wapner + Investment Committee)
Guest: Committee: Steve Weiss, Jenny Harrington, Bill Baruch, Kevin Simpson. Also: Christina Partsinevelos (SK Hynix report), Mike Santoli (midday word), Oliver Renick (options action), Julia Boorstin (Musk interview — postponed), Kate Rooney (news update).
Date: 2026-07-10
URL: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3eLsZT3pgkmY2yUWTU4aQy
Length: 43:00 (audio only — no timestamps)
Note: Speaker labels from the auto transcript: Speaker 1 = Scott Wapner (host), Speaker 2 = Steve Weiss, Speaker 3 = Kevin Simpson, Speaker 4 = Bill Baruch, Speaker 5 = Jenny Harrington, Speaker 6 = Christina Partsinevelos / Kate Rooney, Speaker 7 = Julia Boorstin, Speaker 8 = Mike Santoli. Garbled proper nouns corrected inline in [brackets]. Cleanup: fillers (um/uh/you know as interjection) removed and stutters/false starts collapsed; wording otherwise verbatim. Audio only — no (mm:ss) timestamps.

We are moments away from that interview. Elon Musk joining our Julia Boorstin. We'll take you there live as soon as that is ready to go. Welcome to the Halftime Report. In the meantime, I'm Scott Wapner. We're going to focus today on the state of the tech trade, Apple and that new intraday high it is approaching. SK Hynix is now open for business at the NASDAQ. A lot of focus on what's been happening in tech. I've got Steve Weiss, Jenny Harrington, Bill Baruch and Kevin Simpson alongside today. We do have a mixed market picture. How do you see things? Again, we're going to break away at any moment here for this interview that we're waiting for, but you want to just give me your opinion on the markets while we wait?

Speaker 2 (Weiss): At this point it's got to be catalyst driven in terms of the tech stocks, the AI stocks, because there seems to be a propensity to take some profits. And that goes back to MU. Now we see NVIDIA finally breaking out above — not breaking out, but above 200. And that again is news driven; Apple trading lower, that's news driven. So that's where you are: it's tough finding the marginal buyer to come in at these levels to drive these meaningfully higher. It doesn't mean the story's over. It means the market's nervous about when the story ends, and particularly nervous about any of those companies that are the big spenders in AI coming on their call and saying we're slowing down. I think it'll be OK for Meta to say that, because they found another use for the compute that they're buying and they're building another business as well. But the others, that could really take the trade down quite a bit.

Speaker 1 (Wapner): Kev, tech is the top sector this week. So the dip buyers showed up — you figured they would. You didn't know exactly when, but you figured they would and they did. Michael Hartnett at Bank of America says the Mag 7 is still the key to this overall rally. He says so long as the MAGS — the Mag 7 ETF — holds the 200-day moving average, 65, as long as it holds 65, investors will likely reload longs or bullishly rotate rather than retreat from risk assets. So there it is — 67.53, needs to hold 65. How do you see this?

Speaker 3 (Simpson): It's the right place to be, because these are the companies they're gravitating towards, the companies that will deliver earnings. And I agree with everything Steve said about the setup, because it's not just about whether or not companies beat, whether they beat by a penny, whether they beat the whisper number. Everything comes down to guidance, to what the expectations are. And if you don't deliver — we saw this with Samsung already this week — you're going to get slammed. So it'll be interesting to see which of the Mag 7 embrace the earnings reports and flourish and which ones suffer. But we know we'll get a little bit of both.

Speaker 4 (Baruch): I agree totally with what Hartnett's saying, and we've been saying it for a couple of weeks. In fact, right after Micron's earnings report — remember, the day after you saw all the spenders getting tagged as Micron was up and memory was running. I looked at that as capitulation on the fear of CapEx. Not saying that CapEx on the next earnings report coming in higher than expected isn't going to derail a name. Meta [Meta] was our biggest concern out of the Mag 7. We've seen that capitulation on the CapEx story make a U-turn, and we've seen the Mag 7 really outperform since then. Our base call in the second half of the year is the Mag 7 is going to outperform. I love what we're seeing in a name like NVIDIA waking up right here. It's basically maybe up 10% on the year, flat over the last month. It hasn't done anything. It's been digesting, holding the 200-day moving average, really constructive this week. Apple making highs. We're getting cash to work for new clients that have come in and new monies that are coming in. I'm trading the target — NVIDIA, Broadcom. I think these are buys right here and it's going to run.

Speaker 1 (Wapner): Well, there is a lot of money that continues to flow into tech. More from the Flow Show from Bank of America — almost 19 billion into tech, which is on track for a record. I don't think that's going to surprise anybody. But as these stocks have pulled back, you have had some money going back in there. You're on target for $183 billion in inflows in 2026.

[Unpacking Meta's AI Spending and Future Revenue Vision]

Speaker 1 (Wapner): As I turn to you, Jenny, the makeup of the market's been changing. I think that's been obvious to everybody. But this week was a reminder that it's not going to change fully. You look at the equal weight, which has been setting new record highs almost weekly over the last month — it's down a half a percent this week. It's not a surprise that technology is leading as a sector, and then you have the equal weight, which is off. So how do you see it here?

Speaker 5 (Harrington): I think Weiss is exactly right that from here on it's got to be news driven. I just finished writing our quarterly letter. And what I was talking about was, for the second half of the year, everything's supportive, right? You've got these unbelievable earnings growth that we just had. Interest rates are pretty visible. There's a favorable regulatory environment. So I think we need to wait for the news of earnings to come in to see which way we go from here. We're up 10% on the year. And do earnings then boost us to up 20%, or do they just support a plateau? And I think the challenge, Scott, of all that good news is we need to remember that Q1 earnings came in at plus 29% growth. Expectations had been for up 13% growth. So now we ask ourselves — the huge move that they had in Q2, is that anticipating another total blowout?

Speaker 1 (Wapner): Yeah, we're expecting 24 and a half percent earnings growth.

Speaker 5 (Harrington): But it's already there, right? So now we're expecting 24%. Don't forget, we were expecting 13, we got 29. Now we're expecting 24. If we get 36, does it blow it out? Or if we get 24, are people like, hey, yeah, we expected that, and that's why these prices already ran up. So do we plateau because things are truly great, or do they exceed? And that news is going to start flowing in the next two weeks. I'm kind of excited to see what comes our way.

Speaker 1 (Wapner): I think the earnings are going to be great. And I think Steve's right, and it's not going to be a shock to anybody. And the fact that — unless a hyperscaler suggests they're cutting back their spending, which is not going to happen. You're not going to be an Amazon and go now to the debt market and then come out three, four weeks later and say, well, we're going to slow down the throttle on the spending. There's no indication whatsoever that Meta is going to do that either. It's the best mega cap month to date — it's up 19%. It's the top S&P gainer today, up some 6%. It leads me to Kevin Simpson first, and somebody else who's making a move here too. But you bought Meta today as a new buy, correct?

Speaker 3 (Simpson): We added this to the growth portfolio. We have not owned Meta for some time. And for the past two years, it's been a constant criticism of their AI spend. And I think the pivot this week for us is that now they're going from just blindly spending to a path, at least, for how they can produce revenue within this AI ecosystem that they're building out. So I like a lot of the things that are doing. Whether or not the new Spark 1.1 is anything that really translates to profitability, I don't know. The fact that they're able to sell some of their space within their compute makes them a competitor to some of the things that we're seeing with Google, with Amazon. And it's not just a media company or an advertising company. They're branching out a little bit, and I like what we see.

Speaker 1 (Wapner): That's how Zuckerberg sees it, and he's saying as much. He tells an interview, I think it's a backstop — even if for whatever reason we don't need all the compute ourselves, or for any number of reasons, there's a very large amount of demand that I think you could sell it long term, like AWS or Azure or Google Compute. He sees what they've done. They don't have a cloud business at Meta, and he says I want a piece of the pie. And you're buying into that vision.

Speaker 3 (Simpson): I think it's a great idea. Now the only thing that would scare me a little bit is, why do they have extra compute — because of all the spend that they've done. But I like the fact that they're branching out. I like the diversification. I like what they're doing with hardware. This is a neat company. I'm happy to be back in it.

Speaker 4 (Baruch): They're on the verge of that bottom-of-the-ninth-inning comeback right here. They just needed to deliver and execute and finish the job here, and they're on the verge of doing it. From a PE standpoint, they're at the lowest level since late '22, early '23. So if they can deliver here, it could really be a great one.

Speaker 1 (Wapner): I was going to come to you off the top of the story, because you flagged that you had bought more Meta. Then we got the news from Kevin that he established a new position, so it took a little bit of precedent. But what about your theory behind why you just did this?

Speaker 2 (Weiss): So as you recall, I bought more early in the week when it was down. I texted you guys last night after the close and said I bought at the open when the shares were down. The shares were down 89 bucks, which made no sense to me. So it was a good opportunity to pick up more. Now this is a monster-size position. I don't think I've ever had this size position. So I'm going to cut back on what I've added recently. But the reason I was perplexed is — let's look at it this way. Of the Mag 7, who are the visionaries there? The CEOs that have come in to Apple, to Microsoft, to Alphabet, they've come in as managers. You've got Zuckerberg, who was a visionary. So that visionary, in my view, is going to be ahead of the others as they innovate with AI. And what he's saying is not that we bought too much, but that if you're worried about it, I'm looking at other uses for it, and I paid so low for it that I can sell at a premium. So that's phenomenal. What are the big clouds over the stock? We don't see how Meta's going to make money off AI. Well, he's just told you how he's going to do it. And there's so much need for cloud, so much need for compute. They're going to be right there front and center. So I don't want to say he's playing chess and they're playing checkers, because they're brilliant CEOs in their own rights, but that's why I bought it in addition.

Speaker 1 (Wapner): I think that chart is representative of investors trying to figure out what he is playing — whether it's chess, checkers or some other game.

Speaker 5 (Harrington): I think that chart has more to do with the big flows in and out of tech, and I don't know that it's that specific. You know, we added to this two weeks ago at $555, and we weren't saying, oh hey, investors have lost faith. We've said, hey, the broader market's pulled all —

Speaker 1 (Wapner): No, I'm going to stop you. I think there have undoubtedly been instances in time in this name where investors have questioned the faith and their belief in where they were deploying the amount of capital that they were spending. I don't think that's even debatable.

Speaker 5 (Harrington): OK, agree. And like I've said many times, way back when we were entering the stock several years ago and it was sub-100, we were saying, hey, this year capital efficiency is coming. So all I'm just saying is, the last two months, I don't know that it's as stock specific as it's been market specific, because we've just seen a huge swing.

[Elon Musk's SpaceX, AI Cost Efficiency, and Meta's Outlook]

Speaker 1 (Wapner): We've been promoting this exclusive interview that Elon Musk was expected to give to our Julia Boorstin, which is now apparently no longer happening. I want to bring in Julia Boorstin, who's been in Sun Valley. Julia, do you want to explain to us exactly what happened here, as this was imminent?

Speaker 7 (Boorstin): Yeah, we were expecting to start an interview with Elon Musk right now at noon Eastern. We just got word that he has to postpone. Obviously it would have been great to talk to him in his first TV interview since SpaceX went public. There is so much to talk about. Look at today: SpaceX shares are trading below where the stock traded for its first trade. It's well off its highs since that IPO just a couple weeks ago. And we were really looking forward to hearing his thoughts on Grok 4.5, which just launched on Wednesday. He's been retweeting some information about how much more efficient Grok is than the rival platforms, specifically around this question of cost. And of course, Scott, this comes on the heels of yesterday, my interview with Sam Altman, when he talked about OpenAI's new models and how much more efficient they are. We really seem to be in a moment right now where all the AI players are focused on cost efficiency. So we would be very curious to hear what Elon Musk says about that, and also how he answers the question about how they're managing their own costs as component costs go up and they're trying to deliver lower costs for their customers. So a lot going on here. If we look at SpaceX shares now, trading down nearly 3% today at $148. So Scott, we hope he will give us a new time for this interview, but we've just heard that he is postponing.

Speaker 1 (Wapner): OK, it's an unfortunate development for sure, but you'll let us know what happens from here. Julia, thanks so much. That's Julia Boorstin. We'll continue just to keep the ball in the air here for a moment, because Kev, you do own SpaceX. And I think one of the issues investors are having a hard time figuring out is how to value this company — a literal out-of-this-world TAM that they've talked about, revenue projections that are astronomical, and how they can in fact reach those targets. How did you get past that to decide you wanted to own this?

Speaker 3 (Simpson): Well, we're down a little bit on it, as most investors are at this point, sub-150. We have a small position in it. You can make the argument for the bull case that they have the dominance, the monopoly with respect to the Falcon. Obviously we know what they can do with Starlink — again, almost monopolistic. And then the Elon Musk factor, which we put a massive premium on, for better or for worse. Sometimes he doesn't show up for an interview, which would have been awesome, because what I was most interested in hearing about was just his thoughts on whether or not Tesla, which we also own in the growth portfolio, and SpaceX might be thinking about working together.

Speaker 1 (Wapner): That's the issue hanging over everything. Did you buy this stock because you look at that as a catalyst, potentially a combination of SpaceX and Tesla?

Speaker 3 (Simpson): We definitely did not, because we wanted to own both with the mindset that maybe you can't, from a legal perspective, bring these companies together. But I think under the surface, a lot of a merger has already taken place. If you think about the AI effect, whether it's with respect to Tesla or with respect to SpaceX — which literally has AI and Grok and X — I think there's a lot of synergies that can take place whether or not there's ever a formal merger. But these things trade with incredibly high multiples. For people that have been in Tesla for a very long time, you know that you can sort of fly up, fly down, ride with these ebbs and flows. And I think we need to expect the same thing with SpaceX. If this trades down close to 100, Scott, we'll double down on it for sure.

Speaker 1 (Wapner): You have the lockup issues as an overhang too. I figured that this had Bill Baruch written all over it. We don't own it, I know why.

Speaker 4 (Baruch): It's on my radar, and we typically don't buy in our model portfolios names that are so early after going public. But — you didn't mention the Colossus and the Cursor acquisition, that is really training their models. I think this is really a great story for the now. And they could scale — this is the largest supercomputer and it could scale to 1 terawatt. So I think here, really — the market digested, I talked about the open going above 200 — these things sell off 50 to 70% while we're there. I think we can settle out here for a few months, kind of see what an earnings report can give. But I think you have to be excited about what's around the corner for this name.

Speaker 1 (Wapner): All right, well, we'll see what happens if he does in fact reschedule the interview. You want to just wrap up the Meta part of our conversation?

Speaker 5 (Harrington): The last thought is that it's trading at 20 times earnings, and it's gone from this huge free cash flow producer to like no free cash flow. But at the same time, they have $200 billion a year of revenue from their social media business, and that's growing at 28%. So you've got to believe that they probably get back to free cash flow positive. And I think that Mark has proven over and over that he is focused on efficiency and that he'll continue to be. And the comments today on how to use that compute and that data — that's what he says: I'm going to maximize the returns and go where it makes sense. So I think of the Mag 7, this continues to be where we're the most comfortable. It's the only one we still invest in.

[The SK Hynix IPO and Volatile Semiconductor Market Debate]

Speaker 1 (Wapner): OK, so I look at SpaceX and I say, hey, why not Bill Baruch? I look at SK Hynix and I say why not a Steve Weiss? It's the kind of thing that I almost would have expected you to say, yeah, I established a little bit of a position here as it opens for business — the largest ADR listing ever in this country, up at the NASDAQ, 26 and a half billion they raised. You see how it's trading. You know the Micron story because you've been in and out of that name at periods of time. Memory is really at the epicenter of the debate right now within tech. So what about this?

Speaker 2 (Weiss): It's a good point, because it's actually a little less of the valuation, a little lower than Micron. My miss was not on this. My miss was on Micron, because I sold it all, as I said on Monday, and then it got down to a level where I at least thought I could trade it. So I don't think it's over for these companies. My only statement was, I've made a lot of money in it. I bought it start by at 350 when they missed the first quarter — when the market thought they missed the first quarter and they hadn't. So when you have that kind of return, you sort of got to say, do I want to be piggish about it or do I want to take profit? So I took the profit. I also am sitting in a stupid amount of cash. My belief has always been there will be no deal with the Iranians, and any deal with the Iranians is going to be broken. Because it's not the religious part of the government you've got to worry about, it's the Revolutionary Guard [IRGC] who launched the attacks. So what does that mean? What that means to me is that oil prices are going to go higher, and that could pressure the market with inflation. So I'm looking for opportunities to deploy that cash, because I do think that after the initial shock, the market will see through it. I can't time that initial shock, but nonetheless, I want to be opportunistic. Meta was one example of that. If Micron got down to around 925 or so — Bill can give me the support level — I think I'd get back to it.

Speaker 1 (Wapner): I like the way that our Christina Partsinevelos has framed Hynix as a bigger, cheaper, closer-to-NVIDIA than a Micron. And she joins us from the NASDAQ. She's been covering this from the outset. So what do you make of how this has opened?

Speaker 6 (Partsinevelos): Liquidity was great. They didn't hit the — normally they want to put out eight to 10% of the share offering. So there's 177 million shares. It opened at 11.5 million, but you can see the share price well above the 149 listing price — so 16% higher right now. Retail was involved as well, maybe not so much on a volume game, but in terms of the number of orders. So they did play up, and that raises the question, how is everybody funding this bid right now? 173, 16% higher. A lot of shares out there — are they using money from Micron? Are they using money from chips? Are they using money from the ADRs that did close lower in Europe or South Korea? So that is something we have to ask ourselves in the coming days, especially as the options market provides their leveraged products as of Tuesday. But overall, this is seen as a pure play for high bandwidth memory, and that is the memory that is used in the AI infrastructure. It's the number one supplier to NVIDIA too. So that's why I had that pitch to all of the shows — that this is the direct line to NVIDIA. We know that they have a good relationship there. Micron is part of it, but is just not on the same scale when it comes to market share. Roughly, SK Hynix is roughly 56 to 58% of the high bandwidth memory. You have Samsung and Micron just around 21%. But Samsung's definitely catching up.

Speaker 1 (Wapner): Very good stuff all day today thus far, Christina. Thank you. You guys are holders, Bill, of Micron. Jefferies today says longer term they'd rather own DRAM than hyperscalers.

Speaker 4 (Baruch): It's our largest position. It has been for a long time. Pounded the table on it for a long time. I think the big switch earlier this year was in February — they announced it end of last year, but they spun out, or they ended, their consumer business, and really to focus on this high bandwidth memory. This earnings report that we saw a couple weeks ago was out of this world. I think it's one of the top five earnings reports we've had since the start of the AI, early '23. What you had to think about is, yeah, they're smaller share than Hynix has, but also just the growth, and then exiting the cyclicality from that consumer business and shifting the focus. They're sold out through 2026. You can assume the high bandwidth memory sold out further, through 2027 — 40% was that.

Speaker 2 (Weiss): 40% somewhere.

Speaker 4 (Baruch): Yeah, you could assume potentially more than that. So I think it's still a great place to be. It's an ebbs and flows. There's a lot of support at 850 to 900 if you're looking for that. But I think it's going to stay a low multiple. And if it does go through that rerating and goes to a 20 multiple, at some point it's going to be a lot higher. And that's where you have to think about maybe a top.

Speaker 1 (Wapner): Good luck trying to figure out the directional movement of the semis. The SMH has only had four trading days where it moved up or down less than 1 and a half percent over the past month. It's enough to drive people crazy, because just when you think it has bottomed, it goes down. You see it go up and then it goes down again, you see it go down, then it goes up. 15% pullback, JP Morgan says, sets the stage for outperformance — though therein lies the debate in this space that the market's trying to figure out.

Speaker 5 (Harrington): On semis, it's so hard. I think about that old market quote that says the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay liquid. And I tweak it to, the market can stay irrational longer than I can stay sane. And this is a little bit like that. Because even as we're talking, Bill, and you say Micron at 20 and that's where maybe you sell out — and we know that it's kind of grown into its multiple — there's so much speculation here, and there's so many ifs, ands or buts. I was at that JP Morgan energy conference a couple weeks ago, and Jamie Dimon made an offhand comment that he'd spoken to someone who showed him software that could improve the energy efficiency of data centers by 60%. What if that comes around on memory? What if there's one small move on some kind of software that improves memory? How do these fare then? And you see so much competition coming in, with Samsung doing huge — it's not going to be developed. You have no idea. The whole point is, how do you know?

Speaker 4 (Baruch): And Micron invested $3 billion into the US infrastructure for the semiconductor ecosystem yesterday.

Speaker 5 (Harrington): And will they get the return that they need on that to justify these valuations?

Speaker 4 (Baruch): Aligning yourself with the US and the White House in the semiconductor space in recent years has paid off.

Speaker 5 (Harrington): OK, but here's the other thing. You made a comment that they're sold out through 2026. That doesn't sound far enough along for me to justify an up-to-100% move this year. But this goes to, is it an investment or is it a speculation?

Speaker 4 (Baruch): It's like NVIDIA '23.

Speaker 5 (Harrington): Maybe, but who knows. And then also — and this goes back to our conversation before — how much of that's already priced in? When you have a stock run up to 100%, it's pricing in those earnings for '27, '28. So it's already expecting a best-case scenario.

Speaker 4 (Baruch): Well, the 20 multiple is where I think it gets egregious.

Speaker 5 (Harrington): Historically traded at five times. But to your point before, yeah, it's gone from the mercurial nature of consumers to corporations, and sure, that evens it out. But the point is there's so much ambiguity, there's so many ifs, ands or buts, that it's a hard space to trade. And I think right now you trade it — I'm not sure it's really investable, because the cash flows are frankly too ambiguous.

Speaker 2 (Weiss): Every stock is ambiguous in terms of the future. You just have to be able to connect enough dots. You can't predict with certainty what any stock's going to do.

Speaker 5 (Harrington): But I can tell you, like Sabra Healthcare [Sabra Health Care REIT] in my portfolio, that's 90% leased to skilled nursing and retirement communities — there is far more predictability on that.

Speaker 2 (Weiss): And what's the average annual return on a REIT or something like that?

Speaker 5 (Harrington): You know that it's much lower, of course.

Speaker 2 (Weiss): It is. So if you want to take risk, you want to outperform the S&P. But in terms of predicting stocks, now — and I don't.

Speaker 5 (Harrington): I don't think you're ever going to see a 20 multiple on a Micron.

Speaker 4 (Baruch): I don't think so either.

Speaker 1 (Wapner): It's 10, isn't it?

Speaker 2 (Weiss): Yeah, but 10 — if you go through the history of the PE, you'll see 10 is the peak. Now there are moments it got a little higher, but these stocks generally trade mid single digits. But all roads lead to Taiwan Semi. So whether you're Meta making your chip, or Apple, or NVIDIA — guess what, you need capacity, Taiwan Semi. So to me that remains the cheapest and most predictable, because they're not pricing their production based upon what prices are in the market, spot prices. You want their capacity, you pay for it, and that's it. So they're the most predictable of any of the semis.

Speaker 5 (Harrington): It's just hard right now. And like, we own Teradyne for the same reason, right? Because everything needs to go back to testing, and the more complicated chips get, the harder and the more important testing is. The bottom line is, it's a hard place to be right now. And I think you're better off being a trader with your instincts and charting than an investor like me who needs to see out, with great clarity and great certainty, the next three years of revenues in order to come up with a valuation.

[Investment Committee's Latest Moves and Midday Market Outlook]

Speaker 1 (Wapner): All right, we got some committee moves to tell you about. So you're back in a name that you've traded around for the last few years, FTAI Aviation. You brought it back after selling out of it completely in May.

Speaker 2 (Weiss): So the history is, I bought the stock originally in the 40s and traded out of it at about 110, got back in when it came back to the 90s. And I look at it — it's down significantly. What I look at now is a company that's really undergone a massive change. It used to be just an aircraft engine leasing company and maintenance company. And now they've taken lots of capital, they've gotten in and have turned into a power generation company. So it's no secret that aircraft engines are being used to power data centers. So I just thought it got down to a level, both on a valuation because it's trading at about 17 times EBITDA, which is very cheap when you compare it to GEV and to others, and on a PE basis it's also going to be in the teens on '27 numbers. So to me it's sort of like an orphan stock, because it's not widely followed. Now I'm down on the trade, right? It's a recent thing that I put on, but I'm going to stay there for a little while and see what shakes out. It's part of the whole AI trade as well, so it's got all that volatility. So I'm not going to ride this down to 200, but I think there is pretty good upside here.

Speaker 1 (Wapner): Bill's move is related to gold, which is coming off its worst quarter since 2013. You bought more of the miners, and you bought a gold ETF and more of the GDX.

Speaker 4 (Baruch): Yeah, it's been a little bit of a rebalance. In January we trimmed GDX and we sold CEF to go into OUNZ [OUNZ] to cut out the silver exposure. It was great timing. But now we've seen this market beating down. Now you have seasonality in gold picking up here in July, which I like quite a bit. And the chart is actually pretty constructive, kind of building out here. Now the one thing I really find to be the biggest catalyst is, we had the Kevin Warsh press conference in June, post-Fed-meeting, and it was taken very hawkish. We still see the odds of a rate hike later this month at about 30%. We still see the odds of a rate hike later this year, by the end of the year, at 50%. I do not think that they're going to hike rates. And in fact, I think his press conference delivering that hawkishness is misunderstood. And ultimately what we're going to see — just like the tariff billboard on Liberation Day, just like the antics around Iran and nuking them — I think what we're going to see is this incrementally walked back over time. How else do you goose the economy, goose the stock market into the midterms? And I think gold is a great way to play it.

Speaker 1 (Wapner): Interesting. You ever thought about it?

Speaker 5 (Harrington): Not really. This is another one where I think it's just too speculative. And it's funny, because yesterday I was going through some clients' portfolios and there are some legacy GLD and SLV positions in there. And I was sitting there trying to think about, how do I, as a fundamental investor, say this should be up another 20%? I don't think you can. I think the only way you can do that is from a technical perspective. But from a fundamental perspective, there's never a great valuation case or a great cash flow case on gold. It is speculative. It's based on other people's behavior. It's not an investment.

Speaker 4 (Baruch): Well, here's the reason why it's down this year so much. Last year, July of last year, gold became a tier one asset officially because of Basel 3 [Basel III]. This was talked about for 10 years and no one really realized it came into effect last year. Central banks have been buying gold because of that, because it's as good as cash — the de-dollarization trade. But if it's going to be on your balance sheet, and the oil exporters now don't have the cash that they think that they need, or the oil purchasers have to spend more — how are they going to raise that capital to make up for that? Well, they're selling gold on their balance sheet, and that's what we've seen.

Speaker 5 (Harrington): But there's no way to wrap actual dollars around that. And that's the challenge. And you can see too, that huge move that they both had, silver and gold, that was purely based on speculation.

Speaker 1 (Wapner): Can you tell us then the punch line on why you own Freeport, and how — if you're still like the mining space in some regard — why?

Speaker 5 (Harrington): Copper's different, right? So Freeport's more of a play on copper. And copper — as we build data centers, as we build electric cars, you see the endless demand for copper. And on that one, you can see a much more clear-cut scenario on how the copper miners are terribly productive and make lots of cash over the next years. This is like — I'd be more comfortable again owning a gold miner perhaps than gold itself.

Speaker 4 (Baruch): We did increase miners as well, but I was in copper. This would be in supply deficit, and that supply deficit is going to increase over time. I think miners there set up pretty well too.

[CNBC news update — Kate Rooney: Trump removes Election Assistance Commission members; Spain wildfire kills 12; US heat dome warning.]

Speaker 1 (Wapner): Mike Santoli's next. Senior markets commentator Mike Santoli joins us now for his midday word. How do you feel like you're going to assess this market for the week?

Speaker 8 (Santoli): We kind of held our ground, actually marginal progress, if you just look at how the S&P has managed to perform. A lot of the hardest-hit stuff in the beginning part of this month did not knock things off course. So that's a net positive. I think over the course of the last few weeks you've had positioning reset into a more neutral spot. I don't think it's by any means underweight or screaming buy or anything like that, but a lot of the overcrowding and overstretched momentum positioning has taken care of itself. I don't know that semis have truly answered the question — was that an important crescendo top that we got to a few weeks ago? They're bouncing, they're kind of push and pull. I think that's OK as long as the rest of the market hangs in. I do think the bar is very high for earnings. Pretty much everybody would agree with that. It's probably going to be supportive. The denominator is going to hang in there for the PE, a lot of valuation compression in the big cloud platforms. We'll see if that really dictates what happens in the next couple of weeks.

Speaker 1 (Wapner): But how do you feel about the financials, which are going to kick things off later next week?

Speaker 8 (Santoli): I think it's one of those deals where it's kind of a widely acknowledged good environment. The capital markets side of things seems like it's fully reflected in a lot of these stocks. I'm sensitive a little bit to what they're going to say. We have to keep in mind that this is the quarter when a lot of the supply chain disruptions for most companies, and also the capital markets dislocations that happened around the war, might be felt a little bit. It's kicking into the second quarter. So I'm alert for the idea that there are things we're not really considering there, whether it's on the consumer front or elsewhere. But I always come down to — banks usually do fine, but then the stocks don't trade great off the news. So we'll see if that holds.

[HSBC's Top Stock Picks and Analyst Downgrades]

Speaker 1 (Wapner): We told you earnings are just around the corner. HSBC today has their top picks into the prints: AbbVie, Caterpillar, Marriott. AbbVie, Bill.

Speaker 4 (Baruch): It's about our number 15 name. They've had 7% earnings growth. Skyrizi and Rinvoq have really made up the lost revenue of Humira. I think they're expecting 24% revenue growth here. The stock's up, I think, 7% on the year. It's trying to break out. I like healthcare quite a bit, outside of tech, and I like Lilly a lot as well. And I think there could be some great momentum that continues from here.

Speaker 1 (Wapner): Kev, Caterpillar.

Speaker 3 (Simpson): Yeah, it's not just an AI story or an AI-adjacent story — power generation, mining infrastructure. I think it's a multiyear play. The stock is up a lot, 65% on the year, 132% over the past 12 months. We're not selling.

Speaker 1 (Wapner): Marriott, Jenny.

Speaker 5 (Harrington): So this is one that we've owned in our growth strategy since the growth strategy started in 2013. It's, as my friend Steve Weiss says, a permanent compounder. Also, when we talk about earnings and certainty and clarity of earnings, this is a company that you can really rely on. Right now earnings for the next three years are mid-teens, and they should stay that way. Now it's a little expensive. It's trading at 30 times. It's got a 3 and a half percent free cash flow yield. It's up 22% year to date. Maybe you don't buy it here and now — maybe you wait for a blip at some point, because the market will do that to it. But this is truly the kind of stock that you can put in your portfolio and hold for a decade or more.

Speaker 1 (Wapner): How about Lamar Advertising, which you own, but today to neutral from buy at Citi, target to 160, which is basically where it is.

Speaker 5 (Harrington): It's so tough. This is up over 30% this year, and my challenge is in our dividend strategy. The challenge here is that I bought it — not the second time I've owned it, but I bought it not too long ago. I am long term on it, but I have a huge capital gain. The dividend's down to 4% now. What a great company. It's billboards. So in this crazy world that we live in, it's the only place where you're sure that people will actually see your advertisement. Everywhere else it's hit or miss, but billboards, they're going to see them all the same. It's pretty expensive. There's not that much upside left, I don't think, and that's what the analyst report also thinks — that there's limited upside, and that's real. So I'm in this tough spot of, do I just realize the gain? Do I replace the 4% with something that's got 5%? But I also have an incredibly high quality company with an excellent management team and a really indelible business. It's a tough call. I'm not selling it yet, but I'm not too far off.

Speaker 1 (Wapner): Pepsi downgraded, Kev, to neutral from buy. The target at Citi goes to 145 from 170.

Speaker 3 (Simpson): Yeah, I agree with the downgrade. The demand in North America has been atrocious. This is a very small position, Scott, actually in our growth portfolio, which seems weird, but it's part of the Russell 1000 growth. Stock's down 5% on the year. I wouldn't get in front of it. In our dividend portfolio we have a huge position in Coke that's up 20% on the year. I like Coke.

Speaker 1 (Wapner): You agree with the downgrade, but you're going to hold the stock?

Speaker 3 (Simpson): Hold it because it's part of an index, we have to have a slight allocation there. But our conviction is with Coca-Cola.

Speaker 5 (Harrington): One comment on Pepsi. As you can imagine, with that dividend yield creeping to 4.4% on such a high quality company, I haven't been able to resist. But I start diving in on research, and it's such a bummer, because I keep hitting roadblocks. Between GLP-1s and the potentially weakening U.S. consumer, and the fact that their North American business showed some glimmers of health and then in this last earnings report faded again — I don't think you want to get in front of Pepsi. It's still not that inexpensive. If it comes down another 20 or 30%, then it gets attractive. But I need the numbers to come down that much to warrant the valuation that compelling.

Speaker 3 (Simpson): It reminds me of Nike.

Speaker 5 (Harrington): Yeah. And the GLP-1s are scary for companies like this. Even with all their beverages, they have a huge snack business. So I could not get to a point of comfort. And I really wanted this in my portfolio.

Speaker 2 (Weiss): I want to ask — would you add to CAT here? I've sold half my position. I think it's way overvalued.

Speaker 3 (Simpson): I can't, we have a 5% max holding.

Speaker 2 (Weiss): If you didn't have that, would you add to it?

Speaker 3 (Simpson): Probably not. I think it's up against the threshold to perfection. But I don't want to be out of it. I do think it's a multiyear story, but just like with your Micron, I'd buy it on all weakness.

[Crypto Options, Upcoming Earnings, and Panel's Final Trades]

Speaker 1 (Wapner): Oliver Renick live at the CBOE in Chicago with today's options action. What do you see there?

Speaker 3 (Renick): Hey Scott, we're seeing a huge amount of bullish appetite for Circle, the crypto network that just got regulator approval to establish a National Trust bank. Shares are up more than 5% and options volume is 4 times heavier than the 30-day average, with about 200,000 contracts traded in Circle, and 78% of them calls, with almost three times as many calls bought versus puts. There is a lot of short-term speculation happening right now. The top five contracts all expire today and range from the 59 to 80 strike calls, which of course are very low probability. There is a lot of excitement about how crypto technology is disrupting the derivatives market, but Circle's still down 70% over the past year. And the biggest trade today was actually someone selling the 85 strike August 21st calls and using that money to buy half a million dollars of 55 strike puts. It's a very bearish position, Scott.

Speaker 1 (Wapner): All right, let's do the setup, some non-banks. United Health next Thursday.

Speaker 2 (Weiss): Yeah. Look, Steve Hemsley's come back, as we know — he's the former CEO, was staying the chairman. I think it continues to beat to the upside, and that this is a surprising quarter to the upside. He's just ruthless in getting cost under control and going back to what made them such a permanent compounder in the past.

Speaker 1 (Wapner): OK, Fastenal next Monday. Bill, you own that name?

Speaker 4 (Baruch): Yeah, it should be a real gauge on the US industrial economy. I think they benefited from reshoring and energy. I have high hopes that they can do well here.

Speaker 5 (Harrington) [NOTE: the subject of this reply is not named in the audio and does not fit Fastenal — a dividend-trim/GLP-1/8.5x setup name, left unattributed]: Yeah. So we talked about this last week, because Barron's had an article saying they're likely to trim the dividend. They are likely to trim it. And with that, I think the stock has been de-risked. It's trading at 8 and a half times next year's earnings. It's a well managed company. They have a great product line within the huge threat from GLP-1s — they have on average better products. So I think they could have a crummy quarter and the stock could still do well next week, at which point I'll probably get out if it does have a nice pop.

Speaker 1 (Wapner): OK, we'll do finals after the break. What's your final trade, Weiss?

Speaker 2 (Weiss): Dick's Sporting Goods. Stock's corrected a little bit. It has these peaks and valleys, but it's still the top play in retail in my view.

Speaker 5 (Harrington): Clorox. A dividend aristocrat with a 5% yield, trading at 17 times, as petrochemicals return to pre-war pricing and supply chains normalize. By the way, that's their biggest cost. This stock should get a pop.

Speaker 4 (Baruch): Nebius. AI infrastructure, ultra-growth story. It's sold off 40% from its recent high into big support. I think it snaps back quickly.

Speaker 1 (Wapner): Super volatile area of this market. Kevin Simpson, what do you got?

Speaker 3 (Simpson): Scott, I've got NVIDIA. I keep coming back to this ticker. Blackwell continues to outpace. The demand is unbelievable, and they're finally now approaching $100 billion per quarter.