Closing Bell Overtime: 10/30/26

0:00Some of the most important design choices are the ones that go unnoticed. The details that together make an experience feel intuitive, comfortable, and above all, exhilarating. At Acura, that means looking closely at how every detail can make your experience behind the wheel more rewarding. Every lesson learned and every idea refined becomes part of what comes next, and it lives inside every MDX, ADX, and Integra. That's precision-crafted performance. That's Acura. There are three kinds of investors that listen to this show. Those protecting what they've got, those looking for solid returns, and those swinging big.

0:32Most tools pick a lane. VectorVest doesn't. Every stock gets three scores. Value, safety, timing. You decide what matters most. Stop overthinking what to buy and sell. Go to VectorVest.com slash closing bell. Get 30 days for just 99 cents. VectorVest provides stock analysis tools, not personalized investment advice. Terms at VectorVest.com. The Bells bringing an end to the trading day at the NYSE. WLDA ringing the closing bell and at the NASDAQ. Movember turning the page on a week and a month. No word if Mike will grow a mustache to support this cause. Welcome to Closing Bell Lover Time. We are live from Studio B at the NASDAQ Market Site.

1:09I'm Melissa Lee along with Mike Santoli. Stocks hit very hard today as big tech earnings season continues to disappoint. NASDAQ Composite losing nearly 3 percent. NASDAQ 100 hit even harder. S &P 500 down 1 percent, 1.8 percent. All three of those indices having their worst day since the beginning of June. The Dow holding up in comparison, but still losing more than 500 points or more than a percent. Intel, the big culprit following its disappointing guidance, down nearly 30 percent and crushing the chip sector. NVIDIA, Broadcom, AMD, all with huge losses. The Sox losing 8 percent and trading below its 200-day moving average for the first time in a year and a half.

1:46And every area of the AI trade getting hit. Memory, Sandus down 13 after its own results. Dell and hardware, coherent and networking, and Bloom on the energy side of things. All of those names down at least 9 % on the day. But we did see rotation into sectors such as Staples and healthcare, Regeneron, Gilead, Mondelez, Colgate, Palmolive, all trading higher after earnings much more in those sectors coming up. They did hit new highs in today's session, by the way. And this does close out the trading month. The Dow managing a game, but it was a rough October for technology. The Dow down more than 5%.

2:20That's its worst month since March 2025. Let's get the first take on this close here. We did close off the lows of the session. A bit, yes. That's positive. It could be positive unless we're looking for a little bit of a no place to hide type washout situation, which maybe we are. I mean, in the beginning of a stall in the market or when you're starting to get a pullback, you like to see the rotation that holds things intact and doesn't really hit the indexes. after it's gone on for months and after you have had a lot of the pressure from the leader leadership group, maybe you actually want to see people not have something to hold on to.

2:55That remains to be seen. The end of the month, I would just flag is possibly noteworthy because the end of March and the end of July were the dead lows of those corrections. OK, we haven't done. March was that was the Iran war low. July was the A.I. liquidation of the of the hedge fund. And so, you know, keep that in mind. But I do think that essentially what you had is a challenge to the major premise that earnings were going to be the story that was going to help lift this stock. Two quarters in a row, 30 percent earnings growth. Market just sneezed at it. And we have seen, you know, the spending on CapEx has yielded results when it comes to cloud.

3:33I mean, we saw results in the cloud business, but at what cost in terms of the money spent, in terms of the damage to the core business? I'm not sure we're going to get answers anytime soon. We thought earnings season was going to give us some answer to those questions, and I'm not sure if we got any answers, and we have more questions now at this point. So it'll be interesting to see what sort of catalysts we latch on to, if Anthropic actually goes public in the near future, how midterms will factor in next week. It's interesting because there was such a consensus, probably still is, that the post-midterm election relief rally was, like, just in the books already.

4:06And I was sort of thinking, look, we haven't actually had the pullback that usually happens in the midterm year. Maybe now we've kind of built a little bit of a lower base to have that kind of rally. You did have some hawkish Fed speak again today. I did. And you had this weird feedback loop going on where if AI is driving economic growth and to some degree inflation and the Fed is attacking inflation, the Fed's kind of attacking AI CapEx to an indirect degree. Right. And you're seeing treasury yields move a lot lower in response to all this because it's almost like a mirror AI trade. That helps consumer.

4:40You had equal weight really do much better than anything else. And consumer stuff has held up fine. So maybe all of that kind of rebalances itself as we go along. But in addition, we mentioned XLV in terms of health care, in terms of energy. We've had these sectors that have hit highs in today's session. They're higher quality. But there's a lot of stuff that's just, you know, so beaten down that at this point, that's where some money is finding a place to go. Exactly. You're finding the sort of deep value type parts of the market. Well, as you mentioned, the Nasdaq and big chip ETFs all having their worst days since June.

5:14Has this earnings season changed the narrative on AI spending and how if and when that spending will start to show returns? Joining us now is Tony Wong, Portfolio Manager at T. Rowe Price. Tony, great to have you with us. Yeah, great to be here. Your top 10 holdings, if you look through them, they've gotten clobbered this week. I'm sure you know, NVIDIA, Microsoft, Alphabet, Broadcom, AMD, et cetera, Meta. Do you think the narrative has changed now in terms of the AI trade? Yeah, I think there's been a lot of cross-currents, right? So we're definitely later on in the cycle. At the same time, demand for AI continues to be really strong, and the cloud players are seeing really good signals.

5:55I think that when you are in this environment, the companies really need to be and impress because you're spending a lot of money. And so you need to see the show, the returns for the market to to kind of make sure that the ROI is there. And, you know, there are a lot of narratives. And so, like, when you don't beat or impress, like a lot of times, like what results is there's narratives about competition or macro that that that creep in. So I think that's what the market's like wrestling with here. Well, for sure, Tony. And I guess the other conclusion that the markets maybe are sniffing out is, you know, one group's gain is the other's expense or net loss.

6:33You didn't see memory stocks rally today, even though Intel's saying no end in sight for high memory costs. And we have that as a bottleneck. So I just wonder if you think, in fact, there's something out there that's going to persuade people that you can have this kind of most players win type environment in the buildup. Yeah, so I think that what you're alluding to is essentially that the market is saying it's cyclical, right? So like when good results are getting sold, you know, people think that the end is near in cyclicals. I think that what could really turn kind of how people are viewing the market is essentially like a big breakthrough in AI, like, you know, Frontier Labs with AR accelerating.

7:13So something that really bridge that, you know, perhaps like enterprise adoption, you know, like genetic teams really taking off. and kind of going beyond just more private-backed companies. And so I think that's kind of what the market's looking for, and they can turn the tide here. I just want to ask you specifically about Alphabet, Tony, because I'm wondering if you think there is concern here when it comes to delivering more AI queries at the expense of traditional search. It obviously costs more to deliver those AI queries, and the monetization of that is not as clear. Are you confident that Alphabet's going to find its way, or do you think that this is a moment where we need to hear the plan?

7:51Because, you know, according to a lot of investors who actually who listened to that conference call, they were not happy with how the CFO, how management team handled those questions regarding monetization of AI. Yeah, well, look, I think that, you know, Google has like a lot of different levers of pull in the ecosystem. And I think that the users are pretty sticky. I think that, you know, this is a new kind of way to search and to find answers. And AI mode is like a different format. Right. So I think that there are things to kind of tinker with and experiment with. But as long as the users are still engaged, I think that they're going to figure it out.

8:30And it is like a different format where you get more signals, actually, I think over the long term, that should monetize well. Given the breadth of the destruction in some parts of tech and AI and just how dislocated a lot of these stocks have become, arguably from some of the fundamentals. Where in particular would you focus to say, look, the market is serving you up some kind of a good risk reward here in a bargain? Yeah, well, I think that, you know, there's some areas where you want to have it, you know, essentially a second derivative is accelerating, the fundamentals are improving, the multiple can expand.

9:06And those are kind of like maybe some earlier areas. And I think you want to have, you know, your portfolio has some balance, right? So I think Apple has held up pretty well. They have good free cash flow and high terminal value confidence. So I think you want to have the portfolio be well-constructed, in addition to having some offense here with semis. Have you done any buying this week, Tony? Yeah, we are active. So we are always managing the position sizes, the cycle. And so we are active, I would say. I don't think anything long-term has changed in terms of the world of view. I think it's more just, you know, managing the cycle and taking it kind of week by week to see how the fundamentals are.

9:49So our team's always on it. And, I mean, what is your, if you had to say, what the call is in terms of where this cycle goes to next? Because is it just going to be, you know, we gave the semis and the memory stocks all the credit, you know, early part of this year for the growth for this entire cycle? Or do you think we're going to have another wave? Yeah, well, I think what you've seen is that the AI kind of investments have flown through different parts of the ecosystem. And I think that what the next leg is is probably enterprise adoption. I think that area is still pretty underpenetrated.

10:25So there's like, you know, companies that are going to help enable that. I think the data layer is like super important where companies have to get their data ready in order to apply to LLMs. And I think that the intelligence is already there. It's more of like working through the plumbing to get there. So, you know, I think that the enterprise is going to be an interesting place. And in addition, I think physical AI is probably like out there a little bit more, but still like a very interesting area where, you know, the dodging curves are earlier, but I think are inevitable, essentially. Tony Wong, appreciate the time today.

10:55Thank you, T. Rowe. Great. Thanks. While tech falls sharply, money is rotating into other areas of the market. Health care and staples rising to record highs today. Annika Kim-Constantino watching the pharma names for us. And Brandon Gomez is on the consumer staples. Annika, we'll start with you. You're exactly right. So health care is really hitting these record highs. And that's on the back of these upbeat earnings from pharma giants, including Lilly, Merck, as well as Gilead, all of which beat on the top and bottom lines yesterday. We also saw some strong earnings from AstraZeneca. And what we're really seeing going on is two kind of dynamics going on here.

11:29And so Mizuho health care specialist Jared Holds today told clients that we are seeing that rotation out of tech and into defensive sectors such as pharma. specifically pharma out of the health care sector. And he called these inflows into health care unusually strong here. So he believes that we're going to continue to see these stocks rally, you know, regardless of the fundamentals of individual companies. But at the same time, we are seeing some strength in the pharma, genuine strength in the pharma companies here. When you think about Merck, we're actually seeing some of their investments start to pay off.

11:58You think about a subcutaneous version of Keytruda, that's starting to rake in almost$1 billion in sales. And so we are seeing some genuine strength here. Yeah, and Eli Lilly with its pipeline as well, which Dave Ricks highlighted the other day. Still, evaluations are extremely high. I mean, you take Eli Lilly, for instance, it's double the forward PE of an NVIDIA or a Meta. And it's interesting today to see the divergence between large-cap health care and biotech. Biotech really was an underperformer today, and you would think that perhaps it would be relatively more defensive and still have that sort of takeover notion since the stock prices are so rich on the acquirers.

12:34You're exactly right. And that's the biggest question that Jared did bring up to clients today, too. Are valuations really getting ahead of themselves here when it comes to pharma names in particular? OK. Annika, thank you. Annika Kim-Constantino. Let's get to the consumer staples and why those stocks are drawing investor interest right now. Brandon Gomez has that story. Hey, Brandon. Hey, Melissa. Yeah, as you said, the defensive trade is getting a boost. The XLP consumer staples ETF rose nearly 2%, briefly touched$90. That's a new intraday all-time high. As you've already said, investors are pulling back from tech.

13:05Tobacco stocks were among the leaders there. Altria popped more than 2 percent, hitting a 52-week high near$79. Philip Morris rose 1.6 percent to a 52-week high there, around$214. Now, that company also support by a top and bottom line beat last week. The market clearly rewarding cash flow durability today in this risk-off session. And that strength is broader than tobacco. Keurig Dr. Pepper also reached a 52-week high, raising almost a percent and a half. Mondelez getting a boost as well after strong earnings last night. Walmart, Coca-Cola each rose nearly 2 percent. Among the best performing names in the winning basket today, though, Constellation Brands, General Mills, PepsiCo and Colgate Palmolive.

13:45A clear bid for steadier everyday consumer businesses. The question now, though, is whether rotation lasts if tech stabilizes and which names have the fundamentals to support that boost that we saw higher today, guys. Yeah, exactly. Brandon, I would just point to Walmart's up like 19 percent this month. So it's almost a buying frenzy because of this kind of seeking of safety, the mechanical rotation. And it's not so long ago that we were talking about, oh, these companies are kind of in the in the squeeze in terms of costs and their ability to pass it on and everything else. So aside from the results they've just reported, do you think anything about the broader environment has changed for them?

14:23Look, it's really you have to look. There's been nothing more volatile than the consumer. And exactly to your point, those input costs. If you look at some of these charts going out year to date, I pulled some of the ones who are winners today. Constellation Brands, General Mills, PepsiCo, Hershey, Hormel, McCormick. Those are all down year to date because the fundamentals don't support to your point there. But then the names that you do have are Mondelez. Again, the fundamentals, their earnings this morning, Coca-Cola, Walmart, Costco. Target was actually the winner in the group. And again, that just sort of has to go to the fact that these are the companies that are catering towards value consumers.

14:54So the ones that are really prioritizing value in this consumer basket, those are the ones who have pulled ahead today and have been pulling ahead for the year so far. All right. Brandon, thanks. Brandon Gomez. Coming up much more on this week's tech turmoil. Is it the end of the AI bull run as we know it or just another blip in a longer term trend? We'll dive into that 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. Vantage Score is changing that by modernizing credit scoring. Vantage Score 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.

15:37Vantage Score safely broadens access to the credit economy and brings 5 million mortgage-ready borrowers into the market. That's why top lenders like Rocket Mortgage, as well as nine of the top 10 banks, rely on Vantage Score 4.0. With higher predictability and greater access to credit, everybody wins. Get started at VantageScore.com. Some of the most important design choices are the ones that go unnoticed. The details that together make an experience feel intuitive, comfortable, and above all, exhilarating. At Acura, that means looking closely at how every detail can make your experience behind the wheel more rewarding.

16:12Every lesson learned and every idea refined becomes part of what comes next, and it lives inside every MDX, ADX, and Integra. That's precision-crafted performance. That's Acura. 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. Seriously, make work less work with Gemini on Google Cloud.

16:48Check response, subscription required. Welcome back to Overtime. Here's a look at the closing bell at SIBO in Chicago, which ends the regular trading day for options.

17:03Well, tech getting crushed today as the sell-off deepens. The Nasdaq down more than 3 % with the S &P 500 off about 2 % as the AI trade takes another hit. Is this a chance to buy tech at a discount or a signal to get more cautious? With us now to share his take is Warren Pies, co-founder and strategist at 314 Research. Warren, always good to talk to you. I know you sort of pivoted a little more cautious just a couple days and a couple percent ago, I guess, in the S &P 500. What were you seeing there and did today accomplish much in your eyes? Yeah, thank you for having me. I mean, it kind of goes back to our overarching principle at 314 is that we build conviction on fundamentals, but we manage risk on technicals.

17:46And so I think the fundamentals are intact. That's the big picture. If you zoom out months down the road, like I don't see anything broken in the AI trade. There's definitely challenges. But that's the starting point. But when technicals start rolling over in a certain way, you have to pay attention and manage risk. And so that's why we cut exposure early this week. And so what did we see? Number one, index momentum stalled out and entered into what we would call a consolidation. So basically been flat for three months. And then within that consolidation, going back to the last point that Brandon was talking about, is staples were pounding financials.

18:23Usually, you break out of that range in the direction of the leadership. And this is very unhealthy leadership. And so that was nerve-wracking for us. The other things we saw was hyperscaler credit spreads like everybody else jumping up above those July wides. And so all this technical evidence, and we don't see the sentiment and fear that we would be able to ignore it. So we took down risk on Monday. At the same time, in terms of your longer term conviction, Warren, what do you point to? What's a foundation for that? Yeah, well, I mean, number one, the market, the 4P ratio has already contracted more than 20%.

18:59So if you go back through history and say, OK, this is going to go much further, say 25 plus percent, you're in a world where there's only a handful of cases where we've had contractions of that much. 2002, 2008, 2020, 2022. So you're either in recession territory or fed in a monster hike cycle to get that kind of contraction. So you have that forward earnings estimates are ramping faster than they were even last year at this time. And that's not normal for end of the year. So those fundamentals look good. The Anthropic S1, I think that the most important metric we saw in that was a dollar revenue dollar per dollar spent on compute.

19:40So that's gone from 57 cents one year ago to over$2. So quadrupling of that within the Anthropic numbers. So I think there's a lot to like in that Anthropic S1. And then you go back and look at all of the real time GPU metrics, and I just don't see anything broken with the AI trade. Fundamentally, technicals are another story. And so those are the things I'm seeing that give me the my mindset is that as we move through this period, I want to be aggressive and look for opportunities to add exposure rather than call for some big bear market. What would be some of those triggers or some of those signals that suggest to you this is running its course and we're going to reengage with the fundamentals?

20:24Because, look, I mean, if we say there's been no real change point to point in the fundamentals for semis, they're down 30 % from the high. So I'm just wondering what you'd be looking for. Yeah. Well, one thing to remember is obviously we ran so much in those two months leading to the June top. If you go back to the late 90s semiconductor secular bull market, we had four separate pullbacks of 20 % or more, including one that was like 38%. We've had some big ones in this cycle already. So I mean, this is kind of the nature of the beast. I think that for the index to work, I still believe that tech has to lead.

21:00These days where staples are up 2 % and tech's down like this, this is not healthy. So I'm not ready to add risk yet. I would like to see semis bottom out. That's been the ideal leadership for the market. So I want to see if we can test those July lows, hold them. Maybe we challenge them, break through it. But I want to see us start to establish a series of higher lows on the semigroup and find the same kind of I think for the NASDAQ, that's where we need to get the leadership. We're not going to have this sustainable bull market where we rotate into staples in health care. It's just it's just not going to hold us for much longer, you know, so that's what I need to see.

21:38And then the other thing is I want to see sentiment really get washed out. We look at inverse ETF volume like that hasn't really spiked in a way that marks a short term bottom. Also, vol target positions, those are still elevated. So we need a little more sustained volatility and fear in the market in chart repair on tech. So, Warren, do you think, I mean, is it possible that we are in a period where the markets will broaden out, that not all the money will go back into technology and that maybe now this signifies investors sort of, you know, opening their eyes and saying, you know, we need some more diversification and we need to be in these other areas.

22:14It can't just be all tech. um i i i maybe a little bit i mean but that's just more of a cut that's more of a saying like tech is going to struggle like if the index is going to break out and go to 8 000 9 000 start going back into this bull kind of mania that we've been in then there's all roads lead lead the tech quite honestly and i am actually worried about the equal weight s &p 500 here because this is just a rates trade in disguise. And so to me, I think we are, right now, we've had as much support out of falling yields as we can get because yields and, as Mike alluded to, yields and tech stocks have started to run in correlation with each other.

22:58I kind of think at this point, we've got as much juice out of yields as we can. And so that's what propels the equal weight in reality. And so when that rolls out, I think you end up with a broader based sell off than just tech. Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, the times when you have sustained outperformance by the equal weight are called bear markets. I mean, that's kind of how it works. So hopefully it's not what we're headed for here. Warren, great to speak with you. Thank you. Warren Pies. Thanks for having me. Coming up much more on today's sell off in the market rotation out of tech and into other sectors.

23:32The Nasdaq having its worst day since June, but health care in Staples heading new highs over time. Be right back. Your name may not be on it, but you know what you built because long after the job wraps, what's left is the work, the details done right, the standard you kept, the mark you made. Pros know pride lives in the finished product. Leave behind work that speaks for itself. Backed by Hilti tools, systems, and support.

24:09For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Tremphaya offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start. Tremphaya is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks, followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks. If your doctor decides that you can self-inject Tromphia, proper training is required. Tromphia is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis. Serious allergic reactions, increased risk of infections, or lower ability to fight them, and liver problems may occur.

24:50Before treatment, get checked for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms, or need a vaccine. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Trimphia today. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit trimphiaradio.com. Some of the most important design choices are the ones that go unnoticed. The details that together make an experience feel intuitive, comfortable, and above all, exhilarating. At Acura, that means looking closely at how every detail could make your experience behind the wheel more rewarding. Every lesson learned and every idea refined becomes part of what comes next, and it lives inside every MDX, ADX, and Integra.

25:31That's precision-crafted performance. That's Acura. All right, time to survey the damage and look at any potential critical junctures that a lot of the parts of the stock market are getting to. We've been talking about the semis. They did crack through their 200-day moving average for the first time in a year and a half or so. When you go down in price, you go back in time. I always like to say that we're basically back to that early May area. So it was sort of this huge burst off the March 30th lows. Everybody got excited. And so it is a little bit of a nice gut check and reset for this market going sideways for six months.

26:06You know, it's a genuine consolidation. Take a look here at, again, health care versus tech. It is interesting how strong health care has been recently, but it's really just on a one year basis overtaken technology. And remember, XLK, that's really kind of Apple and semis. That's what's driving that Microsoft to a bit of a lesser degree. So this is like maybe getting a little bit aggressive, but, you know, certainly a better trend as things move forward. And then the defensive trade, what's more defensive than Berkshire Hathaway? So much talk about how this stock has underperformed the S &P 500, especially since Warren Buffett said he was going to be stepping down a year and a half ago or so.

26:41And now we are outperforming on a one year basis. Usually you don't necessarily love to see Berkshire Hathaway leading, but it is also kind of a quality stock and obviously all the cash they hold. Yeah, it'll be interesting. I mean, they've been getting a little bit more into technology. Yeah, that's right. Keep in mind, Alphabet. The Alphabet is flat year to date, and they were buyers all that time on the way up, and they even participated in the equity offering. So it isn't going to move the whole needle on the company performance, but it's noteworthy. Time now for a CNBC News update with Mackenzie Cigalos.

27:13Mack. Hey there, Mel. Here are the headlines we're watching this hour. A federal appeals court rejected the Justice Department's request for California to set aside some 20 ,000 ballots that it claims were sent to non-citizens. California has questioned the accuracy of the DOJ's list. Earlier this week, a lower court denied the department's request, warning that the move could disenfranchise U.S. citizens. A federal judge who's repeatedly criticized government attorneys in the case over the future of a historic D.C. golf course is now launching a formal probe into their conduct. She says it will determine if they misrepresented President Trump's plans to renovate the East Potomac Gulf links.

27:50The court could conduct the investigation itself or instead appoint an outside party to do so. And the White House says that it rescheduled previously canceled weekend rallies featuring President Trump in Kansas and Iowa. The reliably red states are home to close races that could determine the makeup of the Senate. President Trump said this afternoon that he planned to do tele-rallies instead, but changed his mind after Republicans in both states said in-person events would be better. Guys, back to you. Mack, thank you. Well, gold and silver are settling at their lowest levels in a year. So why aren't metals attracting investor interest as tech stocks think?

28:27We'll discuss that next on Closing Bell Overtime. Welcome back to Closing Bell Overtime, live from the Nasdaq market site. Big market sell-off to end the week and to end the month. The Dow losing 570 points. It was the best performing index today. S &P 500 losing 1.8 percent. Nasdaq down nearly 3 percent on the day, 5 % for the month of October. Intel was a major culprit, falling nearly 30 % today. The chip sector and the AI build-out trade getting crushed. Amazon, which is also a big post-earnings decline after our recession yesterday, was well off its lows, closing down only about a percent.

29:01Bond yields falling along with stocks, 10-year around 4.93%. While stocks sell off, oil continues to move higher, approaching the highest level since early April, shortly after the Iran war began. Pippa Stevens joining us now with more. It's easy to lose sight of that. Everyone focused on tech, but it's been pretty stubborn at these levels. Yeah, we've seen this kind of consistent, steady move higher now with Brent topping 118. That contract does roll today. The more actively second month was right around the 113 level, but a four straight week of gains. And, of course, geopolitics is very much in the driving seat here.

29:31We could see something over the weekend, but more likely everyone is looking now at the midterms and what happens after that. So there's been extensive reporting about how Trump administration is looking at a short but intense attack. Now, the extent to which we see this blue wave will also inform what happens, because if there is this blue wave, then, you know, is the appetite for all the military assets we have in the region and all that we're spending the U.S., will that decline? If there is a blue wave, President Trump could also say this is more of his legacy, and then he wants to increase the attacks and have it be more of a longer-term war.

30:00But in the meantime, what we're seeing is Iran is clearly in the driving seat as well here. You know, they have the options to negotiate, escalate, or just endure. And right now they are escalating. We've seen a record number of attacks in October. We heard from Exxon and Chevron today. They both posted bumper quarters led by that downstream divisions with fuel prices still really elevated. And they both warned about the ongoing supply issues on the product side. ExxonMobil's Darren Woods was saying a third is thanks to China having spare refining capacity, not using it. A third is thanks to the Australia Firmus and a third is thanks to Russia and Ukraine.

30:29And he said that could actually take a lot longer to resolve because First, the attacks have to stop, and then the repairs have to come into focus. Ukraine did stop for about two weeks, but then we saw another renewed attack today. So essentially, Darren Wood said that he thinks that the supply crunch is going to endure certainly into next year and possibly beyond. And despite what happens with the midterms, it sounds like. I mean, even if there is a blue wave, there's going to be some time before oil is restored, and there's a question as to whether or not we'll ever get to pre-war prices again.

30:56That's right. And kind of there's this increasing realization that now in eight months in, we're kind of right back where we were at the start. And while oil is coming out, we're not seeing it consistently come out. So the latest figures show about 12 million barrels per day, down from 17 million barrels a couple of weeks ago. And so it's, again, that consistency and also the cost to move it, which is growing and is not a sustainable long-term solution. Pippa, thank you. Pippa Stephens. Well, Guy Dami is here. He's a fast money trader, of course, CNBC contributor. And I'm sure he took note of the extraordinary earnings from an Exxon and Chevron.

31:28Ridiculous, in a word. Of course they did. By the way, Pippa breaking it down. As she does. I learned a third, a third, a third. That would be a hole, as it turns out. So a little math here. And look, today's not the day to be an alarmist. It's a Friday. I get it's a bad day. But the energy earnings are staggering. I think we've done a decent job breaking that down over the last year or so. And they're manifesting in the prices of the stocks, which if you've enjoyed the energy sector, I think there's a continuation that's going to go on. I think people realize that, you know what, there is value here.

31:56Number one. Number two, I think your point just now about the extended nature of this energy move, I think it's spot on. I think the energy market has been fundamentally changed. So the war could end tomorrow. Hopefully it will. It probably will not. But I don't think it necessarily means the price is going down in the way that one would think it would, number two. Number three, and maybe most importantly, listen, the concerns I think a lot of people have had in terms of the market have been unfounded for hundreds and hundreds of S &P points, right? I mean, the market goes up. We've voiced concerns about certain things.

32:28The market doesn't care. I don't know the reasons why the market is deciding to care now. But those reasons are still here. It's just now people are more focused on it. Yeah, I mean, the market is migrating to where there's actually cash flow, where previously the stocks were under-owned. But, you know, energy and toothpaste stocks leading is not usually what you want to see. No, that's not what you want to see. Let's back out energy for a second. I agree with you. But the staples thing. Look, look at the move in Procter & Gamble a week and a half or so ago. So that's I mean, actually, I shouldn't say it's never happened because it happened in January, I think, or February of this year.

33:00We saw a straight move to the upside. And then look at the subsequent move in the broader market, which is what you're seeing now. And you are a student of the market, Mike, as is Melissa Lee. Look at where the S &P defended today. The S &P made an all time high this month in October. Right. Look at where it traded down to today. We were flirting with the lows that we saw in September. Why do you bring that up, Guy? Well, I'll bring it up because there was a potential at one point today to have an outside month, which we haven't seen. I don't know when the last time. So the market defended that.

33:29I guess that's a good news. The bad news is, as you said earlier, the structural damage in this market in terms of moving average and all those things has absolutely been done. In terms of, though, the move in, say, health care. Yeah. Is that sustainable at these valuations? Yes, because I think in certain, you know, I had to think about my answer. Eli Lilly is obviously trading at a premium to its peers, without question. And maybe it's deserve it. I don't know. We can have that conversation. But if you look at some of these other names, I mean, whether it's Merck or even a Bristol-Myers and throw some biotech stocks in, they are reasonably priced, especially in an environment where they were overlooked.

34:07And now I think if money is starting to move out of certain sectors, it will find its way into a health care that might at some point be deserve it of a market multiple, which it's nowhere close to now. I mean, Lilly is like essentially the biggest non-AI stock. That and Berkshire Hathaway. And so, you know, it's like the top of the XMAG or whatever, the XMAG. Gold, no bid. Also no cash flow coming off the gold. My bad. I mean, again, we play the game, Michael. You've been familiar with the game because you host from time to time. If you had told me all the things that would transpire over the last couple months, especially the bond market rallying and all this other ancillary stuff, where's the price going?

34:44I'm like, it's got to be$5 ,000. Obviously, it's not. So what's going on here? well, maybe that robust bid from the central banks is not as robust, and maybe there's some sort of behind-the-curtain selling that's going on that I'm not privy to. But what I think most of all is what's going on, we're clearly in a risk-off environment. And that's what it's trading like. I mean, throw into those factors, if I told you X, Y, and Z, the biggest crypto hack in history, and you would think that there would be some... Flight to quality in the form of gold. Like, here you go, wait a second, a little bit.

35:16And yes, throw that element in the mix and say, wait a second. I wonder how much co-ownership there is, though. Do you think there is? Let me ask you a question. Do you think there is? I don't know that there is. I wonder. I think there's a—listen, I mean, I don't pretend to understand crypto. I don't. But I think there's certainly a faction of people that are crypto only. There's certainly a faction that's gold only. And maybe there's some small overlap, but I don't think it's a big overlap. And by the way, silver melting down. Melting down. Obviously, it's post-bubble move. That can't help gold.

35:43No, and silver is part of this whole AI infrastructure trade. So it's not as ridiculous as you would think. Guy, thank you. I enjoy this. You do? We'll consider having you. We have a show. What time is it? We've got 20 minutes. See you later. I don't leave until the commercial break, so I'm not going anywhere right now. All right. We'll see you at the top of the hour on Fast Money. Up next, the CNBC investigation into unusual trading activity and prediction markets tied to election outcomes, raising questions about who is placing these bets and what their activity could signal. Gamble on Democracy preview is coming up with closing bill overtime returns.

36:22Four days until the midterms and citing prediction market odds has become a regular part of Americans' information diet. But could this impact voter behavior? And are these odds vulnerable to manipulation? Here's a preview of our latest CNBC investigation, Gamble on Democracy. The race for mayor of Los Angeles was unconventional in every way. Former TV reality show star Spencer Pratt versus a city council member and the incumbent mayor in the June primary. I know what the consequences of failed leadership are. That's why I'm running for mayor. AI-generated campaign ads and prediction markets buzzing with activity.

36:59In fact, it is the highest traded mayoral race in 2026, surpassing$47 million in bets. A highly liquid market that theoretically should reflect the will of the people. Raman overtook reality star turned wannabe politician Spencer Pratt. Except it didn't. The prediction markets not only got it wrong leading up to the election, but during the race, there were numerous unusual instances of price spikes on Calci and Polymarket International that pushed the odds in Pratt's favor, according to an exclusive analysis for CNBC by the Anti-Corruption Data Collective, or ACDC, a nonprofit that brings together journalists, academics, policy experts, and data scientists.

37:41who work to expose corruption. I feel extremely worried that we don't have enough information, we don't have enough data in order to truly know what may happen come November. In the L.A. elections, the discrepancy between the prediction market odds and the actual outcome fueled voter doubt about the integrity of the election itself, a precursor of what could come this November. Already on these platforms, the amount wagered on contracts related to the 2026 congressional elections has more than triple total bets on the 2024 races. And people are increasingly using the platforms as a source of information.

38:21And as election wagers become more and more part of the national discourse, the concerns are growing about the impact the odds can have on voter behavior and whether those odds are vulnerable to manipulation. In data shared exclusively with CNBC, ACDC found that of 167 congressional markets worth more than$100 ,000, 38, or about 23 percent, experienced price spikes, moving the contract price 30 cents or more. both polymarket and cal she say markets are efficient and price spikes do correct both platforms did give cnbc an exclusive look at how they combat suspicious trades and market manipulation a top priority for them especially as we near the midterms still there is concern that too much responsibility is being placed on the platforms themselves when the stakes are so high cnbc has a commercial partnership with cal she and uses the company's market data across its broadcast, digital, and subscription platforms.

39:19And for more, the full investigation, go to cnbc.com slash investigations. I'm fascinated by every aspect of this, honestly, including really how little money can sometimes move these markets in the short term. So if you're kind of financing a campaign and you have another vested interest, it maybe isn't that tough in the short term to affect the price. But given that they do say that the price has tended to correct back towards some kind of norm or fair value or something close to the polls. What do you expect? What do you think is the harm potentially? Well, the harm is, even if the price spike's correct, which they often do, is that it's used as a snapshot.

39:58Somebody will go to a site, see the odds, and that will influence what their behavior will be. But also what we found, and we have an example of this in our piece, is that there was one instance, for instance, and this is just one example of this happening many times. Price spikes happen. They continue to go higher and they do revert, but they don't revert back to the price where it started from. It ended five cents higher. Five cents higher sounds like not a big deal. That is five percent higher in terms of the odds. Right. And so to affect that kind of you can go from 47 percent to 52 perception, you know, perception wise, that's a big difference.

40:36And it's another great reason why you can't interpret the pricing of these things as anything that says, you know, there's some kind of authoritative expectation of the margin of victory or how likely one thing is over another. The platforms say they are more accurate than traditional polling. And Cali will say that across U.S. elections since 2024, anytime a candidate has been predicted to win, nine times out of 10, they go on to win. It'll be interesting to see now that the 2026 election, the volumes are clearly much bigger. Many, many more participants in these markets to see if that accuracy rate holds up.

41:13Right. How efficient is this market, you know, under these conditions? All right. Excellent stuff. All right. Well, tech stocks may be struggling, but Apple closing higher for the fourth straight month. Up next, we'll discuss how to trade this hot stock ahead of its earnings after the bell on Monday. Let's get you set up with next week's trade. Another huge batch of earnings coming, starting with Apple, Palantir and OnSemi on Monday. AMD, Pfizer and Amgen are Tuesday's highlights. We'll get McDonald's, Qualcomm, Snap and Uber on Wednesday. Airbnb, Affirm and Lyft on Thursday and Humana and Under Armour on Friday.

41:47On the economic front, we will get ISM manufacturing and construction spending on Monday. The latest job openings and labor turnover survey, jolts and auto sales on Tuesday. Wednesday brings ADP employment report and ISM services. Thursday's weekly jobless claims. And the week closes out with the October jobs report and consumer sentiment. Very big week. Yeah, plenty, plenty happening. Well, as Melissa mentioned, Apple is the big name after the bell on Monday. The stock closed out its fourth straight winning month and retook the market cap crown from NVIDIA for the first time since July. And check out Apple's October versus the other MAG7 stocks doing much better, as you can see here.

42:25So can that momentum continue through its earnings. Joining us now for more is Craig Moffitt, co-founder and senior analyst at Moffitt Nathanson. Craig, it's good to see you. You know, Apple is so many things to so many investors. It's obviously a source of safety. It's the one big name not spending hand over fist for CapEx. So it has this sort of valuation premium as a result. So where does that sort of set your sights going into the numbers? Hey, Mike, good to see you. Even on a day like this. Good to see you, Melissa. Well, I think you said it right. I mean, it is clearly perceived to be the safe choice among the mega caps.

43:07The problem that that poses, though, is that you've seen that trade now playing out for months to the point that now you're looking at a stock that's trading at 36 times forward earnings, which, you know, think about that in the inverse. if you will, sort of the earnings yield on the stock that you're paying when you go into earnings on Monday, it's got about a 2.8 % earnings yield. So it's about half the treasury market. So it's already priced in so much safety that you wonder whether it's overshot somewhat. I think it's interesting that it was clearly down less today than the broader market or than the than the mega caps.

43:54But the fact that it was down rather than up, even as money was coming out of the other mega caps, I think makes you wonder whether where the money is now rotating into is companies that are actually cheap on a free cash flow or earnings yield and not the ones that have already performed so well like Apple over the course of this year. I wanted to ask you, Craig, about Intel's commentary about memory prices and the PC market, and some are making a straight line, you know, this should impact smartphones. And I wonder if you would connect that also to Apple, and this is going to be an issue for them, high memory costs and whether or not they continue to pass it on and whether or not there's going to be an issue there with that.

44:40No question. It's already raised the price of devices by$100 in all the base devices. And I think what's been really interesting is to watch the U.S. wireless carriers where they've said going into the new iPhone cycle, the iPhone 18 cycle, that they were going to be more disciplined and they've actually done it. So they haven't really raised their promotionality in response to the higher prices. So consumers are actually paying more. Now, they may or may not be paying it up front. They may be spreading it out over 36 months with their wireless carrier. And you could argue that$100, therefore, isn't really showing up all that much in consumer perception.

45:27But generally speaking, everything has price elasticity. And I think the last time I was on and we were talking about Apple, I said, you know, what you worry about with Apple is not that customers are going to leave Apple and go to the Android platform. The competition that Apple faces is from the Apple device that you already own, where if customers look at the new device and they see the price tag, they decide to keep their device just a little bit longer because it actually works pretty well. It runs all the software really well. And that's the real challenge, right, is the inertia of saying I'll stick with the one I already have for another two, three, six months, whatever it is.

46:08That's what Apple got to fight. And that's what I think you're going to see over the next few months. Craig, great to get your thoughts. Thank you, Craig Moffitt. My pleasure. All right, two days to think about what we achieved this week in the market at a pretty critical level for most of those indexes. We'll see how it goes. Fast Money begins right after this quick break. Some of the most important design choices are the ones that go unnoticed. The details that together make an experience feel intuitive, comfortable, and above all, exhilarating. At Acura, that means looking closely at how every detail can make your experience behind the wheel more rewarding.

46:43Every lesson learned and every idea refined becomes part of what comes next, and it lives inside every MDX, ADX, and Integra. That's precision-crafted performance. That's Acura.