Closing Bell 11/9/26

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0:59Scott Wapner: Welcome to Closing Bell. I'm Scott Wabner, live from Post 9 here at the New York Stock Exchange. And this Maker Breakout begins with a tale of two markets today. NVIDIA's all by itself, its singular slide. Almost everything else surging at this hour. Let's show you the scorecard with 60 to go in regulation. All three of the majors have been higher throughout. Market breadth really positive today. Every sector but energy is higher. RETS Energy really reflecting. Oil's significant move lower. That's helping the overall story. Look at crude across the board down. NVIDIA's big decline has several other chip names reaping the benefits of that newfound uncertainty.

1:35Scott Wapner: AMD and Broadcom are among the biggest movers. Take a look at those gains. AMD 13 plus percent. Broadcom following suit too. There's some of the power names which are rebounding as well. We'll have the very latest on the NVIDIA bombshell in just a bit. We do begin, though, with our talk of the tape this big day. And the market's what it says about where stocks can go from here. We ask our panel, CNBC contributor Fundstrats Tom Lee, Schwab's Kevin Gordon, Chris Heisey of Merrill and Bank of America Private Banks. Good to have everybody here and on set as well. It's good to have you, man. I mean, you, gosh, you did not expect the huge drawdown that we had last week.

2:12Scott Wapner: And here we are with this huge run today. What's it mean to you in the big picture? I think there were two encouraging data points today. The first is we had a flurry of bad news over the weekend. One involving NVIDIA and some about Texas going after Elon Musk companies. And yet the markets are at those stocks are rallying today. I think that's a good sign that markets are rallying on bad news. But the second is the VIX, the VIX term structure, which is the four month VIX versus the one month that inverted last week. It's now normalized today. That's usually a sign of a bottom. So I think that this is more proof that last week was the low.

2:50Scott Wapner: And you were getting some incoming on social media. You saw it, too. Yes. Right. Because you were saying, look, the market's set up to do really well. And then the market totally fell out of bed last week. People are like, Tom, what are you talking about? But you're sticking to your guns on that. Yes. So I'm I'm sticking with the the idea that we definitely had a big wash out last week. But I think that's setting us up for the bottom. So I think markets are a lot safer than people think. What do you think? So I think that we're still in sort of this knife falling territory where you don't want to necessarily you don't want to necessarily think extrapolation.

3:23played any particular day in terms of what the cap-weighted market is doing. And I say that because I think the better signal that you got throughout last week, whether it was post-election, the day after the election, whether it was the massive drawdown day, is that throughout all of that, you still had equal-weighted S &P outperforming the cap-weighted S &P. You still had almost 60 % of members above their 200-day moving average by the end of last week. Most of the stress was concentrated on what those leveraged and highly leveraged bets were within the tech space. And that was a story that predated the election, by the way.

3:55So even though you were seeing a lot of drawdown activity in tech and kind of the adjacent parts of the AI trade, the mega cap AI trade, the rest of the story for the broader market was still relatively positive, consistent with what has been a relatively strong economy, certainly consistent with what was a strong jobs report on Friday.

4:11Scott Wapner: Well, when you say knife falling, I mean, that insinuates you think that you shouldn't trust the bounces, that you still think the market's going lower. Much of it is pushed around by tech and the mega caps. If you took them out of the indexes last week, needless to say, but it is the case that you wouldn't have had as severe of a decline as you did on Thursday and even carrying over a little bit into Friday. So that's why I don't think the signal as much from a cap-weighted S &P 500 perspective is as strong as what you're getting underneath the surface or maybe from an equal-weighted index. Want to settle it?

4:42Is there something to be settled? Not really. That's a relatively narrow bin to ask right there. I'm going to go right in the middle, but the circulatory system are the banks. Financials are acting really well today. They've been reacting a little bit better in the last week or so, slowly, and then all of a sudden you get this move today. That tells us that deal activity is around the corner. It tells us that the interest rate margin is still there. It tells us that even though we're going into mid-cycle for the economy, you still are far away from peak profitability. And I think that's what we're going to continue to point to, which is how close to peak profitability are we, not just for the market itself, but for the collective whole of NEPA profits.

5:24And it's not 27.

5:26Scott Wapner: You're sure about that? I mean, that's the biggest debate, I feel like, right now. I've got people come on and say we're late cycle. Profits are peaking. Look at the AI trade. Looks like people are making the bets. Semis have peaked. Things like that. You say mid, though. Why? Well, a few reasons, right? When you switch from expecting rate cuts to actually having hikes, that's a mid-cycle sign. When you start to look at the activity below the index of what was moving below the index, 60 % of the S &P was in bear market at one point just a couple of weeks ago. That was a signal that at some point it got top heavy.

5:57But now let's look through this reset and we say, okay, why is it not a late cycle? Well, late cycle implies that not only are you going to slow down in your growth, you're actually heading closer and closer to zero in your actual earnings growth. We're going to have double digit next year. Now, it's not baked into the cake, but that is a reasonable assumption. And I would also say nominal GDP growth. OK, six or seven percent this year. There's nothing wrong with five. Scott. Yeah. And maybe just to add to Chris's point. Sure. Consumers aren't highly levered. So we know consumers aren't tapped out.

6:33And the ISM only turned above 50 in January of this year. If we're late cycle, it would be the shortest ISM expansion ever. So I think it really, again, to Chris's point, it was probably another 18 or 24 months.

6:45Scott Wapner: Doesn't everything hinge on where the AI trade goes? I mean, Leslie Picker was over at Goldman today at their conference. Talked to David Solomon, who said he's still optimistic on data center investment and compute. I see other notes today that suggest sort of the same thing. Adam Parker, our sense is that the recent selloff is overshot to the downside. Dubrovka over JPM, 8 ,000 still my target. Morgan Stanley, reaction to midterms overdone. Yeah. Yeah, I think if you disaggregate the investment data and the business investment data in the U.S., it's not all related only to AI. No, no, but when it's accounting for like 75 % of GDP this year, that's why everybody's so hypersensitive about it.

7:28To me, that implies that you're about to see just a sudden slowdown to nothing. If that was the case, then, yeah, mechanically, you would tip GDP into what I think would be considered recessionary territory.

7:38Scott Wapner: Well, I mean, the midterm results sort of spooked everybody, saying, well, we may not go from 1 ,000 to nothing, but if we go from 1 ,000 to 10 and we have to put the brakes on significantly in data center investment and infrastructure build-out, that's why the stocks got annihilated. I mean, I understand the angst around it. And the fact that it is very much a bipartisan issue, sort of the social pushback that you really much saw reflected not only in the polls, but in the actual results. But at the same time, I think one of the reasons that it might take a while for us to figure it's maybe elongate some of the pressure on that build out if it is going to come from policy is because there is no sort of singular or straight line thinking around what the policy is actually going to be.

8:17You still have both parties that I think are still trying to figure out exactly what the stance is, because there is again, there is that kind of one sided pushback, at least from the electorate on how people are thinking about it. So I don't think that it's going to be this moment in time, you know, right when the Congress switches in terms of leadership, that you're going to get some sort of policy that comes out of the gate restricting that investment overnight.

8:36Scott Wapner: I think there's a note today from Citadel Security's Scott Rubner, I think, sort of asks a really good and provocative question. He said the question for the coming week is whether tech can begin to stabilize without reversing the broadening that has taken place elsewhere. It's like you need tech to stabilize, but not all the money to rush out of everywhere else right back into tech. How do you assess that question? Well, I think I would view that as a platinum lining versus a silver lining. If you can stay broad and sort of you get stabilization in tech, but also the other other, everything doesn't unravel.

9:14Another sign of mid cycle. This is where you get a broadening out where the hyper growth areas come down to the rest of the market. The rest of the market comes up there and it's no longer what have you done for me lately? It's now what are you going to do for me tomorrow? Free cash flow, high quality. That's elongated to Kevin's point. That elongates the cycle. Now, there's a lot of discussion as to how far the cycle elongates. Let's cross that bridge when we get there. But as of right now, it's important to watch the margin story. Margins are not narrowing at this point. Higher oil prices, higher rates, you didn't see narrower margins.

9:52You actually saw an expansion of margin. And, Scott, we haven't hit productivity yet. I'm not going to say productivity is going to be the miracle, but we still haven't hit the productivity pitch yet. And AI adoption is still early. So we use these big resets as an advantage to rebalance a portfolio.

10:08Scott Wapner: You think with today's price action, there's a risk of people are too complacent about the NVIDIA fallout? I say because people right now are like, oh, hey, NVIDIA is down, but everything else is up. And there are a lot of competitors that are rising maybe at NVIDIA's expense. Are people too complacent, though, about the tentacle reach of this most important company? and if there's more dramatic fallout, what it could mean for the AI trade in general? Yeah, I mean, it's possible, Scott. But I do think today's price action indicates where positioning is. And I've done a lot of Zooms in the last couple of days, actually even seven today with institutions.

10:46Really? It's a lot of FaceTime, Tom. It is. It's a lot of apology tours, too. But they're all almost universally cautious. So no one's even convinced of this move. And I think that's what makes me more bullish. Why aren't they right? They could be right. But as you know, markets bought them when the last seller sold. That's why they bought them on bad news. I think we've had a lot of bad news. I mean, if this happened in January, this headline about NVIDIA, I think the AI complex would have sold off huge. And the fact that it's rallying is a contra signal. But, you know, to the broadening statement you made about Citadel, you have to keep in mind there is CPI this week and oil's been falling.

11:25I mean, those are arguments for a broadening trade, but that's also supportive of tech.

11:30Scott Wapner: Do you believe in this potential for a big broadening between now and the end of the year? I do believe it, but I think also to the sentiment point that Tom is making, it is important because, you know, when you look at some of the, not the attitudinal sentiment, you know, over the past week, but in a behavioral sense in some of the positioning, you did on certain indicators get to what would be considered, you know, close to washout status last Thursday into Friday. So not to be ignored, especially when you do have a really strong update today, not just from some of the tech companies and the leaders in mega caps, but from the rest of the market.

12:04It's so far, you know, last time I checked before we went live, it's the best day so far of the year for the advanced decline spread for the S &P 500. So more of those clusters that you do get, in addition to a lot of the selling pressure, what we saw last week, especially from the retail cohort, that I think does build up that story for at least a more durable bounce.

12:20Scott Wapner: How can you speak to the NVIDIA effect without speaking of NVIDIA specifically, because it's not obviously what you do, but it has potentially such a profound impact on the very story that has gotten us to this conversation in the first place over the last few years. So people look at the market today and say, oh, the market's going to be fine. This is NVIDIA's idiosyncratic story to deal with. Is it? We'll leave that to those who cover the actual stock itself. But if you put a circle around it, it actually, I think, early to tell, but it actually potentially signals that you get less capital destruction.

13:06Because the worry was that the capital financing wasn't going to be there. And if it was there and it was going indiscriminately to those that were of lower quality, you can't have it both ways. You might actually see lower compute prices, lower oil prices, lower inflation, lower yields than what was expected. And at the same time, more competition to elongate the cycle. Yes, slower growth, but probably more durable. That's how I think we should start looking at it.

13:35Scott Wapner: I mean, people have tried to sort of look at that data center issue in very much the same way. Try to see the positive in the elongation of the story rather than rushing to, you know, blow up a bubble. That's right. You've made that take, too. Yes. I think that makes sense. I mean, I think we have to remember markets probably look only 12 months ahead anyway. So I think the visibility around AI spending is actually quite high for the next 12 months. And then everything beyond that is excess visibility. And it's not necessary to support prices. All right, guys, we'll leave it there. Appreciate everybody coming to Post 9 for the conversation.

14:11Scott Wapner: Now to that latest on that NVIDIA story. CEO Jensen Wong admitting to an affair with an alleged Chinese spy. Eamon Javers joins us now with the very latest. Hi, Eamon. Yes, Scott, that's right. The Department of Justice has now issued a new statement in response to New York Times reporting earlier today that investigators there shut down an investigation into possible chip smuggling after an inquiry from a high-ranking NVIDIA official. A commerce official said the Bureau of Industry and Security conducts all enforcement strictly by the book. BIS enforces aggressively across the board, including with respect to chip smuggling and enforcement is at an all time high.

14:49Now, that statement came after The New York Times report that the Commerce Department engaged in a months long investigation into NVIDIA's customer Megaspeed last year. But that effort was closed and the investigation transferred to the Department of Justice. The newspaper also reported that Commerce Department investigators were, quote, alarmed that an NVIDIA official called them to ask about the investigation into Megaspeed and invoked the name of a high-ranking political official at Commerce while doing so. Now, that report adds to the swirl of intrigue around NVIDIA today after a staggering series of sex and spying revelations through the weekend.

15:26President Trump offered some cautious support for NVIDIA CEO Jensen Wang last night. After that extraordinary series of revelations, the president said he hopes that everything is fine with the technology executive who's been at his side time and again over the past two years. Those comments coming after NVIDIA's announcement that it has opened an investigation into Jensen Wang's relationship with a businesswoman who intelligence agencies allege is a Chinese spy. And the New York Times reported Friday that U.S. officials concluded that the woman, Alice Wong, who was a top executive at Megaspeed, was recruited by the Chinese Ministry of State Security, their top spy agency, to spy on Wong.

16:05Alice Wong is no relation to Jensen Wong, even though they share the same last name. And on top of that, it was the Financial Times that reported Saturday that U.S. intelligence agencies believed that Wong and the female spy had a romantic relationship. Jensen Wang released a statement Sunday apologizing to his family and his employees, but insisted that he would stay on at NVIDIA. And the company's board said it's launching an investigation and that it has confidence in Jensen Wang and his leadership team. Scott.

16:33Scott Wapner: That remains a central question. Eamon, thanks so much for that reporting. That's Eamon Javers. It's worth noting, too, that Mr. Wang does not control his own destiny, as NVIDIA does not have the same share structure as some other founder-led large tech firms. Our Robert Frank joins us now with that sidebar angle, and it's an important one to note. It really is, Scott, really will shape the future of both this investigation as well as Jensen Wang. That's because Jensen Wang owns less than 4 % of all NVIDIA shares. And since the company doesn't have any super voting share structure, he has far less control than many of his tech billionaire peers.

17:12Scott Wapner: So you look at Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Sergey Brin. They all have super voting power that effectively lets them call the shots at their companies. But Anthropic also has voting share structure with the seven founders there. They have the ultimate control. Jensen Wang's control is also complicated by the fact that his ownership structure is very different. All of his shares are held by trusts that are co-owned with his wife, Lori. Those trusts divide the ownership and votes equally between the two of them, so they each have a say in how those shares are voted. So when you talk about his 3.6 % ownership of NVIDIA, really it's more like 1.8 % that Jensen Wang owns, giving him less of a say in his own futures.

18:01So Scott, when you look at this investigation, whether he stayed on as CEO or in this company altogether, this will depend a lot more on the power of his personality than on his actual economic ownership in the company. And that's one of the reasons why NVIDIA is a bit different here. All right. Well put.

18:20Scott Wapner: Robert, thank you. That's Robert Frank. Now to CNBC contributor, Big Technologies, Alex Kanchowitz. Good to have you on this story as well. It truly is hard to think of a CEO more synonymous with their company than Jensen Wong is with NVIDIA. He is NVIDIA as much as NVIDIA is him. How are you thinking about this story in the context of what Robert was just talking about and in the general sense of how it might unfold? That's right. Well, anything that would happen to Jensen would be shattering for NVIDIA in terms of whether he'd be removed because of this. As we've been talked about on the network today, he has 60 direct reports or thereabout.

18:58The company really runs through him. It's his relationship. It's his vision. And so were he to step down or be fired as a result of the scandal here, it would be very bad for NVIDIA. That being said, I will say I don't see him stepping down as a result of this. The board is very friendly to Jensen. It seems like when it comes to everything in this artificial intelligence world, whether that's Sam Altman's issues with the board of OpenAI or the rebellion against the technology by and large, it's continued to move forward. And so I think it would take something extraordinary and new to come out for Jensen to have to step down.

19:36Scott Wapner: When you know what he means to NVIDIA, it's hard to overstate it. And Gil Lurie of DA Davidson was asked this question earlier this morning. How much of NVIDIA's success do you attribute to him? And his answer was all of it. Is that fair to say that? What about internal talent? People talk about a lack of a succession plan. It's not easy to come up with a name right off the tip of the tongue, for example. Well, I think all of it is a bit of an exaggeration. He obviously has some very smart people working within the company. And let's just do a thought experiment and say he were to step down today.

20:15They still have a roadmap. They still have a production plan. They still have all the chips that they're going to end up producing. So NVIDIA doesn't just falter immediately. immediately but that shouldn't be a way to discount what he's meant to the company which is that it has been his vision he's been there for 33 years he stuck with it when it was largely a gaming company that nobody knew the gpu has become central to ai and he's ridden that and and actually expanded the company in very impressive ways over time so there there is a balance it's not going to be over for nvidia if jensen leaves again i don't think he will um you know but that being said with Al Jensen, would they be here today?

20:51Absolutely not. Absolutely not.

20:53Scott Wapner: But you used the word now, you used it twice, stepping down. Obviously, there's a difference between stepping down and being fired. Have you thought about the possibilities of that, depending on where this investigation leads? Right. So I should say at the start of this answer that basically, we're not 100 % sure what exactly happened here. Now, there's going to be more that's going to come out in this investigation. There are going to be hearings, most likely. We're going to learn more. We don't have the full story now. That being said, the board is largely loyal to Jensen, and they understand what would happen to the company if they do fire him or he does step down.

21:33So I think they're going to remain loyal to him. But on the other side, he did lie to them. I mean, he did come out with this statement, say that he did nothing unusual or improper. And he did. He did do these things. And boards don't like it when their executives lie to them. So I'm not going to say it's a zero percent chance, but I still would be stunned if NVIDIA's board fired him.

21:53Scott Wapner: What about the impact on the AI trade overall? Obviously, if you look at the market today, one might say, well, there's clearly no broader impact because there are enough companies either making their own chips, there are enough competitors. Some of those stocks are having an incredibly great day. Gil Luria, I want you to listen to a soundbite from him. I referenced what he said earlier about Jensen Wong's importance to NVIDIA itself, but here's what he thinks he means to the overall story. Listen. Mr. Wong orchestrated the growth of AI, not just NVIDIA's success, but the growth of the entire industry.

22:36Scott Wapner: You want to react to that? Yeah, I do. I have kind of a counterintuitive take on this one, which is that, let's say Jensen were to step down or be fired. What happens to the industry? Well, it loses its biggest advocate against export controls to China. And it doesn't mean NVIDIA's production pipeline stops. Right. And they could potentially see, you know, further export controls put back on China. You know, Dario Amadei from Anthropic has argued strongly for export controls to China. And obviously, you know, there's a safety side of it, but there's a business side of it, which means that the more export controls you have to China, the harder it will be for Chinese competitors to come in and compete with Anthropic and OpenAI, which are both going to IPO, you know, in the next Anthropic, probably a couple of weeks, OpenAI early next year.

23:25If the Chinese competition to these labs ends up struggling because it's harder for them to access GPUs, you could end up seeing the OpenAI and the Anthropics of the world actually do better. And they're starting to rely more on alternative chips. Now, obviously, it would hurt if NVIDIA went away, but they are building on TPUs. They are making deals with AMD. So I think counterintuitively, you could see benefits to OpenAI and Anthropics. if Jensen's leadership against export controls were to be diminished, which I think it will, or to go away.

23:56Scott Wapner: AK, we'll see you soon. Thanks so much, Alex Kansowitz. We're just getting started. Coming up next, the countdown is on to the Anthropic IPO. New developments, perhaps. The roadshow could kick off as early as tomorrow. Anthropic investor Lo Tony standing by ahead of that. He'll join us next. Legacy credit scores only look at a brief snapshot in time, and that limited view often leaves millions of qualified credit seekers out of the picture. VantageScore is changing that by modernizing credit scoring. VantageScore uses 400 % more credit and alternative data to create a fuller picture of financial behavior, including trended credit data, rental payments, and timely utility payments.

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25:56Scott Wapner: The Forza Anthropics Roadshow, ahead of its highly anticipated IPO, could begin as early as tomorrow. Goldman, the lead on that deal. Our Leslie Picker spoke with the CEO, David Solomon. That's why she's sitting right there. Made it across the West Side Highway to come over here. Nice timing to be over there talking with Mr. Solomon. Yeah. What did he tell you? I mean, the timing these days, you could pick a day and it would be good timing to talk with David Solomon. But to your point, Scott, Anthropic disclosed its S1 almost 15 days ago, meaning it is soon free to begin officially marketing the deal if it so chooses.

26:30Of course, it's been a long two weeks with big swings across the AI complex garnering lots of speculation about what it means for timing and the price tag of the Anthropic IPO. Because Goldman is lead underwriter, Solomon couldn't comment on the specifics. But I did ask him about whether there's been a shift in capital markets receptivity to AI companies in recent weeks. There's still very strong demand for investments in the AI infrastructure build and the technology around the growth of AI. As we talked at the beginning of the segment, you know, the market is calibrating risk slightly differently than it was a couple of months ago.

27:08But that doesn't change the fundamental interest, you know, in this technology, in this infrastructure, et cetera. And so the market is open. Transactions are occurring. And, you know, we'll see, obviously, if this IPO moves forward, how it all plays out. Can't comment on it, you know, any further than that. But I would say that the market environment is still pretty constructive. I followed up on a conversation Solomon and I had back in June where he described the capital markets environment as having more greed than fear. And I asked if that has now reversed more fear than greed. He said that he expected there to be recalibrations along the way and that growth and investment in AI infrastructure would not be a straight line as people have a better understanding of the facts in the political environment, the demand and how the application layer starts to develop.

27:56Scott.

27:57Scott Wapner: So I understand he couldn't comment on, you know, what we would have loved for him to be able to comment on, but he can't do it. However, I mean, if you read between the lines, he sounds pretty constructive himself on the markets. I think he projected that he'd be kind of surprised if it didn't go. That was that was fair. Yeah. I mean, that was that's kind of the tone that I've gotten just talking to sources across the spectrum is that this deal is so important to the AI ecosystem. system. And it is so important to the capital markets writ large that it's incumbent upon its advisors. And the company, you know, given that it has been on this trajectory for such a long period of time, months at this point, you know, everybody has an incentive for it to go.

28:44Yes, there are a lot of people with a lot of incentives. It just makes it more difficult to price an IPO like this, but it doesn't mean necessarily that it can't get done. All right.

28:52Scott Wapner: Good stuff. Les, Thanks. It's Leslie Picker. Now let's bring in investor Lotoni, Plexo Capital. He's also a CNBC contributor, early anthropic investor, as we said. How are you feeling about this? Yeah, I feel good, Scott. I believe that it will get out in the next few weeks. And I think that the thing we have to do is just separate anthropic, the company, from anthropic, the investment, because the company is performing extraordinarily well. Revenues grew 47 % sequentially and to nearly$17 billion in the third quarter. So it's not a question about whether AI demand is real. What's changed is the public market's willingness to pay for that growth.

29:36So we're moving from proving demand to proving economic returns. And I think for investors, considering nearly$900 billion in infrastructure, over time, people are starting to think about what the value is. So I think what we're really looking at is a question that's more about what the clearing price is for the IPO, as opposed to is this company extraordinary and is the demand there? So, you know, we've moved from a range of one and a half trillion to two trillion to a range of one trillion to one and a half trillion feels like 1.2 to 1.3 is where it will land.

30:15Scott Wapner: Is that OK with you? That's fine with me. We entered at the Series D at$18 billion, which was the valuation then. But that aside, it's just a great opportunity to be in such an extraordinary company. So we're going to be very happy no matter what the clearing price is. But what does it say, I guess, about the current environment? If you had what was once a one and a half to two trillion, come down to potentially between one and one and a quarter. Does that say more about the environment or Anthropic itself? It says more about the environment without question, because what we're looking at right now, again, is just investors trying to understand how they should price the long-term demand that clearly is there against the risk of building out these data centers.

31:12And, you know, I just do want to say that we saw a little bit of a shock from the midterm election, but the investors were actually already kind of thinking these questions about how to value risk. The thing that the midterm elections added is now there's additional risk when it comes to thinking about the issuing of permits at the local level. But again, overall, Amthropic is an extraordinary company. You know, these IPOs are just another financing point. Amthropic has a long road to go of being one of the most important companies that we'll see over the next decade and beyond.

31:53Scott Wapner: How are you thinking about this NVIDIA bombshell, what it might mean not only for that company, but the AI sort of ecosystem in general? Yeah, I think there's, in my opinion, there's three things to really consider here, and the implications go beyond NVIDIA. I think, you know, the first is, if we think about them as concentric circles, the first is internal. So, Jensen built one of the most extraordinary companies in technology history, and the question is whether NVIDIA has the leadership, depth, and succession planning to sustain that success without him. The second is this industry leadership.

32:30So Jensen's really become the leading spokesperson for the AI infrastructure industry, and one could argue AI in general. And because of his vision, he works with governments around the world and brings together an enormous ecosystem of companies, capital providers, who replaces him in that role if he were to step down. And then the third is the global economy. AI is becoming an important driver of investment and economic growth. And so much of its direction rests with a small number of individuals. Jensen, Dario Amadei at Anthropics, Sam Altman at OpenAI. I would add Sarah in there as well. And then Elon Musk and a few others.

33:14So as AI becomes so important economically, globally, the institutions surrounding these leaders need to become equally strong. That's the bigger issue for me. It's about the resilience of the AI economy, not just the secession plan at NVIDIA. All said, I do not believe we will see Jensen step down, assuming that we've contained what the news is at this point.

33:39Scott Wapner: Appreciate your insight. Valuable on a day like this, for sure. Lo, thanks. We'll see you soon. Lo, Tony. Coming up, the big money behind the big changes coming to college football and the playoffs there. Michael Zanian following that. Big, big money next. Weren't agents supposed to take things off your plate? Building another to handle the others is a bit much. Don't make more work out of work. Gemini is the one agent that knows all parts of your business and actually gets stuff done. You give it a project, close your laptop, and when you come back, the job's finished. No matter your industry or role, your agent has the skills to help every team stay in their flow.

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35:38Scott Wapner: All right, welcome back. College football playoff doubling in size now to 2014 starting in 2027. Part of a new five-year deal with ESPN. CNBC senior sports reporter Michael Ozanian joins us now. Sounds like a page out of, we'll just call this January madness or what? Spot on. Scott, you and I have talked about this happening for the past year or so, and here it is, a five-year deal starting next year. worth$1.7 billion. That would gross out to an additional$345 million for college football. However, this will eliminate the conference games for the big four conferences. So the net is much less because college football is going to be giving ESPN some money back.

36:25They're going to be giving Fox some money back for the elimination of the conference game it had. So it's really going to net about$155 million for 11 extra games for each of the next five years starting 2027.

36:39Scott Wapner: Yeah, I mean, that's one of the, I don't know, starting so soon, too. What do you think people, what's the reaction going to be around college football about this, do you think? Well, I think the teams that have been squeezed out of the 12-team format and have just missed are going to like it. As a huge football fan, I'm kind of a little disappointed. To me, it takes some of the prestige out of actually making it. There was some concern also that for some of the, you know, let's say lower level bowl games, that this might leave less money for those games. But I tend to disagree with that because the ratings, even for some of these small bowl games, have been very strong.

37:21So I think the overall pool of money is going to grow because I think the ratings for college football, even when you go out of the top four conferences, are still very strong.

37:33Scott Wapner: Interesting. It's always all about the money, obviously. And, you know, some are, speaking of money, some are trying to game out what the midterm result means for that so-called Protect College Sports Act, which I've seen a lot of headlines suggesting it might now be in doubt. Anticipating, you might somehow ask me that question. I did some reporting, and almost to a person that I called, they're giving it a 10 % chance of passing. I don't know what Calci or any of the prediction markets have, but that's what my reporting is telling me. All right, well, we'll stay with the Ozanian prediction market.

38:08Scott Wapner: We'll see. We have a partnership with it, too. Thanks, Scott. See you soon, Mike Ozanian. All right, up next, much more on this market rally as we head towards the close. We're back on the bell after this. 10 to the bell. Let's get back to Brandon Gomez now, looking at the stocks to watch. What do you see? Hey there, Scott. Let's start with shares of Eli Lilly ticking higher after its obesity pill, Foundeo, was found to significantly reduce the severity of obstructive sleep apnea. In a late-stage trial, the drugmaker plans to file for U.S. approval for the drug by year-end. Shares there you can see up 4 % on the news.

38:40Next up, we have asset management names emerging today. KKR is up over 2 % after a rise in Q3 fee-related performance revenue and growth in management fees. The earnings seem to be giving a boost as well to Apollo Management and Blackstone. And then finally, cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike in the green after Bernstein maintained it at market perform, bumped its price target higher. That, you can see, shares up about 5 % today, Scott.

39:03Scott Wapner: All right, Brandon, thank you. Brandon Gomez coming up next. The last check on today's big rally. We count right into the close. Plus, we've got the setup ahead of hims and hers, the earnings and OT. Next. All right, we're now in the closing bell market zone. Mike Santoli and Preston Groves. Andrew Cry here to break down these crucial moments of this big trading day. Plus, Oliver Rennick is standing by live in Chicago. from the SIBO Global Markets. We'll play a little options action coming up. Brandon Gomez watching hims and hers ahead of those earnings coming in over time. Michael, the first word is yours.

39:35Yeah, I mean, Scott, once it became clear right after the open that the NVIDIA story was going to be treated as a company-specific issue, it felt like it was a bit of a green light for investors to just re-engage with what was by everybody's old tape. And you can see that broad re-engagement Even things like Apple, half percent, the rest of the Mag seven kind of getting the money recycled out of NVIDIA. I don't think it cleared any decisive bars to say, OK, you know, this period of choppiness is over or we're up, up and away from here. But it's absolutely a pretty, I would say, assertive and broad based rebound rally that that at least gives the bull something to go on here and supports the idea that we did enough work on the downside.

40:20and questioning the whole AI story for a few weeks, that there was, you know, enough real buying to come in.

40:27Scott Wapner: You continue to investigate that in overtime in, you know, six minutes or so? Yeah. Actually, I've been right. Just a long time in video, Bull talking about what it means for the company, as well as a lot of market voices as well. OK, awesome. We'll look forward to seeing you and Mel then. That's Mike Santoli. Let's go to Chicago. Oliver Rennick, where are we playing options action today? core weave scott i think the biggest surprise would be if it didn't post a massive move after this report right now market makers are poised for a 16 swing a sign that nerves are still clearly high particularly when you consider core weave has dropped after five of its six reports since going public flows were balanced early in the day today but turned quickly as a few big bears painted the tape this afternoon.

41:15Notably someone who sold 25 ,000 contracts of the 60 strike call expiring November 20th next Friday for$4 million while also buying 25 ,044 strike puts expiring the same day. It's a trade that uses CoreWeave's high implied vol to offset the cost of expensive puts by selling what is also fairly rich premium way out in the calls to give this trader a wider range of not bullish outcomes, Scott.

41:47Scott Wapner: Good stuff. What a time to hear from them. Look forward to that. Brandon Gomez with hims and hers speaking up, hearing from companies. They'll do it in overtime. Yeah, absolutely. You're going to hear earnings after the bell with investors watching to see whether its weight loss business can turn rapid growth into more consistent profitability. Now, Wall Street expects EPS of six cents on revenue of $893 million with revenue growth near 50 percent from a year ago. Key focus will be how the company's branded drug partnerships are expanding its GLP-1 offerings. HEMS recently announced a partnership with Eli Lilly, adding access to ZepBound and Fundeo on top of its existing partnership with Novo Nordisk.

42:22Investors will also be listening for updated revenue guidance and clarity on regulatory uncertainty around compounded peptides, another area they're focused on and what it could all mean for growth in the company, Scott.

42:31Scott Wapner: All right, good stuff. We'll look for you then. Brandon Gomez, thank you very much. To Andrew Cry, we go. Does this rally today mean all clear? I mean, how do you see it? No. In fact, if you look historically, these periods of volatility tend to cluster, right? So you tend to see kind of the upside vol coming with the downside vol. So you think about systematic strategies in particular, vol targeting strategies that have to reposition when you get a vol spike like this. We would say we're expecting another week or two, at least kind of the follow through of this initial kind of spike in vol that we saw, largely what it looks like, at least based on all the prime broker notes and so forth, the color that we've gotten last week is just kind of a positioning thing as much as anything, as opposed to real fundamental shakeout.

43:14But again, for us, we would expect more price vol as we move forward over the next week or two. But the good news, again, if you're a fundamental investor, is that it doesn't look like the fundamentals are really impaired.

43:24Scott Wapner: Well, how do you assess NVIDIA today and the ability of everything else to stay intact? And by everything else, I mean everything else, even in the close periphery of it. Yeah, I think it's, again, being treated very much like a stock-specific story, as some of your prior guests have alluded to. And it just speaks to, again, the fundamental strength. And if you really zoom out, big picture economic growth perspective, if you look at GDP now kind of forecasts, we're still running in the low-mid threes, right, for broad GDP. And we've got a nominal GDP environment on the 6 % to 7 % range for Q4.

43:59So big picture, this is a healthy economy. Earnings growth still has been very strong. probably see a little bit of deceleration as we move into 2027 from a growth perspective. But nonetheless, you're looking at a really good backdrop. You had great payrolls last week. And you've got kind of rates coming down a Fed trajectory that potentially is not going to be as hawkish as people were anticipating moving into next year. So I think all of those things together kind of point towards a much more buoyant backdrop for stocks, again, with seasonality as a tailwind behind you here over the next few weeks.

44:28Scott Wapner: Depending on how you want to play it. I mean, And you're looking outside of tech and the mega caps to do that, right, into the equal weight and kind of the everything else market. That's right. Yeah. We think the rotation theme continues to rule the day. And even going back to last year, the beginning part of this year, you know, pre-Iran conflict where you had non-U.S. markets receiving their fair share of flows or the lion's share of flows, as it were, out of U.S. But ultimately kind of this tech versus everything else phenomenon, we still think that's poised to continue. you may see a little bit of a relief rally here in tech just because we probably overshot a little bit when staples are trading at a multiple premium relative to tech in this environment.

45:07But broadly speaking, things like health care, things like financials, value segments more broadly and kind of cyclical segments of the economy, we tend to like that more still relative to crowded tech trades.

45:19Scott Wapner: Why do you want to go outside the U.S. to places like Japan and especially Europe? Europe's got so many issues. Why do you want to do that? They do have issues. In fairness, France, of course, has their own set of very unique issues. But if you look at the manufacturing data, look at the ISM PMIs, the manufacturing PMIs in Europe, look at Japan, look at export data, right? It's still trending to the upside. And you've got a scenario in a backdrop where you've got a lot of defense spending that's occurring, re-industrialization, sort of re-regionalization, broadly speaking, around the world, partly as a function of the political and geopolitical environment, but also just governments being committed more towards those segments of economic growth moving forward.

45:59So we want to play that in markets that are pretty cheap, right? If you look at the EFA trading at, call it 14, 15 times forward earnings, to us, that looks like an interesting opportunity. And if you get a little bit of dollar weakness as you're flashing the dollar chart on the screen here, that would be another tailwind for non-U.S. markets in this environment.

46:15Scott Wapner: We'll talk to you soon, Andrew. Thanks a lot. Sandra Frye. Thanks, Ken. We're about to ring the bell here. It's going to ring out a very, very strong day for the markets, even with the NVIDIA bombshell. That stocked down a bunch, obviously, but a lot of green on the screen. This bell does ring. Nasdaq is going to be good for almost 3%. Everything else above 2, minimum, into overtime is known like.

46:45AI is here, transforming how we work, live, and lead. And the women I talk to aren't waiting for the future, they're shaping it. I'm Julia Boorstin, Senior Media and Tech Correspondent at CNBC. This is CNBC Changemakers, where I talk with the female leaders transforming business as AI reshapes the world. Follow and listen to CNBC Changemakers, Women Leading in the Age of AI, wherever you get your podcasts.