9am Hour: Exclusive: CoreWeave Craters, Red Hot PPI, AI Buildout Fears 10/15/26

0:00At Janice Henderson, we strive to deliver better outcomes through insight-led investing, innovation for clients, and a partnership approach that's core to our identity. I'm Jessica Lianzini, Head of Fixed Income Client Portfolio Management. I'm passionate about my role in investments. It allows me to partner with our clients, simplify fixed income, and support them in achieving better outcomes for their clients. Janice Henderson, investing in a brighter future together. 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.

0:38At 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. That's precision-crafted performance. That's Acura. It's Jim Cramer here. You're listening to the opening bell of CNBC's Squawk on the Street. Don't miss a minute of the action.

1:08Good Thursday morning. Welcome to Squawk of the Street. I'm Carl Kingston, A.O.A. Jim Kramer, David Faber at Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. Bulls trying to regroup here after the worst day for S &P Nasdaq since July, worst day for tech since June. Chips and Neocloud still under some pressure. Meantime, wholesale inflation, second hottest monthly print in 15 years, up 1.3, double the estimate, up 5 year on year. Treasuries, though, still getting a bid here and around the world, 10-year, 5.06 or so. Roadmap begins with the S &P and NASDAQ coming off their worst day in months. PPI jumping 6.3 annually in September, largest gain since 22.

1:43Plus, Coral Weave stock is set to extend its losses. This follows yesterday's 15 % drop. CEO Mike Entrader writing to his staff, when building out new tech, sometimes the market can act irrationally. And Anthropic telling investors that it posted third quarter revenue of$16.8 billion, also mentioning that it is cash flow positive. Obviously, those two names were reflective of a lot more than just the companies that they represent. Let's get right to the markets and the pain in this AI trade. Names like CoreWeave, SKHynex, Micron, all down sharply on the week, Jim. I think in the case of CoreWeave, down, what, 30 % in six or seven days?

2:23Yeah, I mean, a lot of people are focused on the public debt. Some people are focused on the private lending, the actual loans, apparently trading a little bit higher because they're more of their asset-backed. I don't want to get too far in the way. What I want to say is that I think that people are terrified. I think there's a moment of fear among people who own these stocks that is worthy of having TV cameras in front of the New York Stock Exchange. I think there are people who feel that it's over. that Larry Fink represented the last hurrah, that he wants to be able to figure out how to be able to raise money because we are out of money, that interest rates aren't going necessarily lower because of flight to quality, but because there's not going to be so much crowd out because the core of the world won't be able to issue any more bonds because they traded, say, 15%.

3:09And I don't want to be like a calm voice because no one's listening to calm. But when you see something like, and I was making a facetious reference to it with SK Hynix, selling it two and a half times earnings. And you see the collapse of the Korean market. And you see that ever since the July 10 issuance of SK Hynix here, what you get is a notion that it's get me out. Right. And get me out has a habit of creating these kinds of prices we're seeing right now. And it was a lot more, obviously, than core weave yesterday as we come into today. It was any number of these neoclouds, whether it's the nebbiest of the world.

3:49It was also many of the names that provide all the stuff that goes into the data centers that these companies are building. So perhaps not a surprise to see shares of Dell down 11 percent. Oracle, obviously, was very, very weak yesterday, in part as well because of concerns about constraints around capital. And that's what it's about right now. That's the narrative. It's around is there. And we've been asking this question at this test for a long time already. Is there enough capital to satisfy at a price that will make sense? I don't think we have the answer. I'm not hearing about any deals dying or not being able to be completed.

4:29The question, though, simply becomes, are they getting completed at levels that will not make them nearly as profitable? That said, when you build one of these data centers and things get started, The companies that are the tenants, so in this case, like in Oracle, once things get moving and open AI is in there, they can become incredibly profitable very quickly. Once you start generating the cash, and so I do wonder, you know, will there be something that changes this narrative? But to your point, Jim, right now when you look at a company like CoralWeave, where it isn't really about the contracts, which they continue to sign, but it's about the funding further out.

5:11Right. and the psychology and narrative around cost of capital becomes the story, you start to see moves like this. Absolutely. Now, it's interesting to see that the loans that are backed by, yes, NVIDIA chips are holding up very well, actual loans, but the publicly traded debt is what you feel that Michael and traders can be able to raise capital at. And if that's the case, then maybe they aren't worth doing. If they aren't worth doing it, and then you have a Broadcom, a hot tan, saying, well, wait a second, this is going to be harder to finance. What happens— Well, Broadcom, by the way, is a huge borrower right now in the bond market.

5:50Huge! $60 billion! They're doing a$60 billion deal with Anthropic. And we have seen rates go up. SpaceX did the$40 billion deal. Remember a bond deal? I think they're paying at least 9%. Right. Anthropic did something, I think it was last week,$5 billion just for compute. Small, small deal, paying double digits. The numbers have moved up. Right. But they don't want to be all over the place. But I think that the central narrative last night from the bulls was, you know what, if we can see Anthropic do a blow away number, we can all go home and enjoy ourselves. Now, what's blow away? I mean, there are people who say that they announce a number that can give you a run rate of 100 billion.

6:26Then there are other people say, oh, my God, I thought we were going to get a 20 billion dollar number. We got 16 billion. And now we're like scared. That's why I was going about fright. You know, you make your calls. And people return the call and you hear things. And then sometimes they don't return the call. And when they don't return the call, it's going to be a tough day. Now, I do think that we are, you know, I mean, that's why I'm saying it's just the fear factor is much higher than what we think it is here. And does it spread? In other words, tomorrow, do we come in and it's like everyone realizes, wow, we were right to be fearful?

7:02Or do these people say, you know what, this thing has already gotten out of control over in Korea. It's come here. They've exported the fear. Core wave's really bad, but we know that. Anthropic's still going to do 100, which is pretty good. And maybe this is all much ado about nothing. We should just sit back and enjoy the fact that rates have gone down. Well, that was an interesting part of yesterday, Carl. In fact, the rates actually ended the day lower despite all this concern around cost of capital. I mean, rates are lower today with PPI up six on a yearly basis. I was looking at, I mean, we're acting like this is somehow new.

7:38Vertib's in a 40 percent drawdown. Cat's in a 30 percent drawdown. GE Vranova's in a 22 percent drawdown. This has all happened since the end of June. I think that that's a fantastic point. You do not get a top when you've had a top. If anything, I come back to David's Dell interview, and I'm listening to Dell, and everything is really terrific, Dell, but no one cares. Why? Not because people are ignoring Michael Dell, but because, yeah, the stock went up 400 points. Of course. Right. Someone cut numbers today for a price target for today. I said, oh, OK. Down 43%. I will cut the price target, too.

8:16I mean, we have recognized that there's been pain for a while. Listen, we had Larry Fink here yesterday,$15.5 trillion asset manager of BlackRock. We put this question to him any number of times in terms of capital constraints. And what did he want to talk about? The securitization of the GPU market, because that is going to be, or at least in his opinion, an unlock of an enormous amount of capital. So not surprising. But what does that mean? I don't know. Wouldn't you like better if the banks had mentioned it? I mean, I would text you guys. Mention what? But I thought that Goldman was going to make a big case for how we're going to make the CP market the way we did auto, the way we did mortgage.

8:53I don't know. Go through that quarter. I don't think you see all this. Yeah. And the commentary was more about the broader concerns about unchecked models. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Right. And now you got the FTC with this inquiry, you know, a subpoena for OpenAI and Anthropic on consumer harm. That's an Axios report today. Right. Right. But how about the fact that Taiwan sent me last? It's easy way. A guy that we love. All I can say right now is the demand is extremely robust and we did not see any sign of a slowdown. Whether it's a high 50 percent compound annual growth rate, it doesn't matter.

9:23It will probably be higher. Who cares? I know. Who cares? To David's point, you can have the backlog, but if you don't have the financing for the hardware, who cares? Listen, I'll go to Dell now because I did. I mean, this is the basic conundrum. It's like he says there's a lot of demand. But what about the capital? Take a listen to Michael Dell the other day. fueling all of this, of course, is the capital markets, the debt markets. Yeah, maybe there's not enough capital. Well, there you go. All right. That's my question. I mean, is that a concern for you? You know your way around the capital markets.

9:58I think all these things are concerns, right? Maybe it's regulation. Maybe it's capital. Maybe we don't have enough memory chips. Maybe some of all of the above. But what we see right now is a lot of those are being addressed. and there's incredible demand, and we're still at the beginning of the S-curve of this. I mean, any cycle for technology is sort of a combination of excesses

10:28and incredible opportunity and skepticism all at the same time. No. I mean, look, how many quotes did I see last night about the railroads? Don't forget, there were many railroads that went under. I mean, just a second, don't forget him. Was I training? Was I training? The 1870s? Oh, you were a kid. I think it's 70 % of them all went bankrupt to the existing railroads at the time of the boom. You don't want to go back to the rails, because in the end, the rails got down. They divided the country. They split it up. They got the ICC to ratify it. And it was the end of all these wars. But while you're in the war, you know, do you want to be Jay Gould?

11:04Commodore Vanderbilt? Who do you want to be? I don't know. It would have been fun to have been either one of those guys. Yeah. True. Yeah. They had an interesting run, both of them. I mean, it didn't end that well for Google. But I just constantly refer to it as to say to me, you really have no analog in the last 150 years. I mean, it's very difficult. No, but at the same time, we have this concern around capital and what it's going to cost and how much of it can be deployed as a result and or borrowed in order to generate the returns that we think are coming. We also have the equity side, which is certainly embraced in part by Anthropic.

11:34And that big meeting yesterday that we all kept a very close eye on, we got the number. $16.8 billion in third quarter revenues for the company. But the question is all about, well, what does that mean for the run rate? You raised this. What are they in the year at? What do they do next year? Now, the bulls will tell you they're all in on a$200 billion revenue number next year. They believe that that's a real possibility. What does that mean? It means if you price this thing for its IPO at 10 times next year's revenues, you're getting a$2 trillion valuation. We'll see. I will say, not to get too deep in the weeds, there are some who also point to the fact that they have stopped the distillation of their models by the Chinese.

12:16They have done things, they have come up with techniques, apparently, that have really mitigated that. But remember, the Chinese were spending a lot of money hitting the models. So that was a revenue number that has been potentially diminished, some would say, by low percentage points. Five, six, somewhere in there? Correct. Right. And once they have dealt with that problem, it's a good thing for them, not a bad thing for them. Well, let me ask you, speaking of China, don't you think that behind all this optimism is a belief that we have no choice? We have to spend because otherwise China wins.

12:57So what does that mean, Jim? If our capital markets won't cooperate, will the U.S. government have to come to the... They will, yes. The U.S. government can come to its aid. They have to do it. It's just too important. U.S. government, not NVIDIA, but U.S. government. You haven't even talked about NVIDIA, what NVIDIA's up to. You mean more equity stakes or like pure nationalization? Yeah, no equity stakes. I think they won't let us lose. Because we've already done like 30. No, sure. Look, I think it's endless because this president doesn't want to lose to China. But I do think at the core of what's going on is you need the securitization and what is the worth of an NVIDIA H100.

13:33Now, you have Larry Fink and you have Michael Entrader. Michael Entrader still matters for Corlea. Saying that this stuff has held its value. It's nine years. So, therefore, it can be securitized. As a matter of fact, some of the values are up. And yet here's NVIDIA, obviously, in the throes of just a horrendous throw. Well, even Larry raised the prospect of huge advancements in chip architecture that could weigh on the duration value. Could happen. But he seems to be a firm believer that they are going to be successful in creating this securitized market that is the collateral for which is the chips.

14:06Right. Even though I have spoken to other people who are like, well, how are you going to seize the chips when they're in a data center in Iraq? Like, it's not all just a commodity that can be easily... It's like when the banks didn't want to own the house. Yeah. And everybody's got their different techniques. Corweave puts them in differently than this company does, and this one, it's all their secret sauce. So it's not commoditized. But how about Corweave has a six-year loan against what it has, against its chips? Yes. And it owns, remember, it owns the tail. Yeah. After six years, what are they worth?

14:39Well, it turns out that they're worth a ton. They are. So then he can securitize those and get money, and it would be great. So far, that question about the depreciation of the chips that we put to Intrader so many times has been going the right way for them. Listen, we wanted Intrader to come on. He often does. I think during a quiet period. He's a quiet period. The last time I spoke to him, I think that we did, was about a month and a half ago, a month or so ago at the Goldman Sachs conference. And I did ask him about the question of their continued borrowings and need for capital. Take a listen.

15:12When we have built our business, we really built our business around the idea that you go, you make an investment, you have a long-term offtake with a counterparty, and you go out and you borrow money to support that deal in and of itself. And I said this to you, and I've been saying this to you for quite a while, that the deal-level economics are excellent. We've added between 5 % and 10 % of operating income, operating margin, to the more recent deals. So not only were they good, but they're getting better. And they're getting better in spite of the fact that the price of the inputs are increasing because the amount people are going to pay for them is increasing faster because the demand...

16:00There's the bullish case, Jim. Right. Now, I think against that, just in terms of zeitgeist, was the interview in the FT, the person we really haven't heard much of, from Brandon McBee, co-founder of Corweave, who was talking about the unlimited pools of capital and the insurance money. And when you read that, it came off as being totally out of sync. That was yesterday. Right. And your reaction was, oh, really? So you can go fleece the insurance companies now. It just didn't read right. And I think that this plus the net-net note that Michael Entrader put out to his staff both seemed out of touch with what is really a fire drill moment where there may be a fire.

16:43And that's not what we want. We don't want this. We don't want arrogance. And this fellow, I don't know, Brandon McPhee, I've never met him. But the piece came off as being, all right, look, stop worrying. We got the insurers. Well, Jim, for a note that said the market is acting irrationally, I mean, people are passing around the list of insider sales at CoreWeave. The insider sales. We couldn't even put it on the screen. The type would be so small. No. Look, it's been front and center. There's been a huge amount of insider selling. Now, Michael and Trader still remains the largest shareholder.

17:19I do think that, David, when you see these things, it's just like in the background, people are saying, you know what, it can't be. It's got to be bad because of. And I turn to you because we have a situation in Oracle, but I don't hear everybody just picking on Oracle. I think we've picked on Oracle through time. It's about a year ago that we first put the CDS of Oracle up. Well, I waited until the... It's almost a year ago, exactly. We've worked our way through force majeures and all kinds of stuff. I waited until the music to bring it up so I can leave it hanging. Well, we will revisit Oracle's stock price, which was down, what, 9 % yesterday, 9 % as well?

17:52We're looking at it, and you should look at Walmart. We are going to look at Walmart. Walmart's going to open up near 120. Full-facing credit at Walmart. I'll take it. As the market finds ways to rotate into Lilly, we'll get to some other names as well, like Schwab, Tesla, Apple, of course, KMV, in a minute. 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.

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19:08Every 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 check response Subscription required.

20:15Kenview deal. Of course I do. That was a deal where people felt that that underperforming group of brands in the hands of the right buyer could be terrific. Kimberley Park went in and bought it. Now, we've been waiting for approvals. We got European approval. It is a position of my travel trust. I'll be talking about it today at noon at my club meeting. David, China approved, and I've got the translation that says that that's what that was. I'm waiting for Brazil. The deal will close. The amazing thing is they put out some preliminary numbers last night. The Bears the other day have been saying that they were not going to do, they might do$1.60.

20:47Well, it turns out it's$1.70 on these preliminary numbers. Michael Hsu has had to deal with a lot of, you know, they had a big warehouse that burned and there was some Chinese social media that was negative about one of their products. That's also been denied now by the Chinese government. David, this was a premier name and it's got a 5.5 percent, it's a dividend, whatever you want to call it, dividend king. And it's hated. And it's hated because the last couple quarters have been not great. But once they merge with Kenview, I think Kenview, which had really no club strategy, didn't really have an e-commerce strategy, I think it's going to dovetail perfectly.

21:24And this is the one you want to be in. This is without Kenview. Right. You're a believer. You're a believer in the deal. The acquisition of Kenview, in your opinion. Now, they did get it at a reduced price in part because, remember, RFK Jr. came after Tylenol, right? Tylenol, right. But I will tell you, David, that people are looking for something other than Procter. And I'm a believer. It's going to be Kimberly. I'm going to talk about that today. Great. Oh, a noon in the investment club. Yes. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Thank you for watching the show. Yeah. I watched the first 10 minutes.

21:51Yeah. Everyone. Yeah. It was good. It was a good summation. I'm like, I want to hear what you have to say. That's nice. I just think you ever said it. It made a lot more sense than you do in the morning. Thank you. I'm sorry. That was a joke. No, I know. It was a joke. Look at you slumping. I love you. We're back after this. 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.

22:27Every 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.

23:07Gemini. 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. Check response, subscription required. The margins that we are earning are expanding faster than the rates are going up.

23:43So the overarching profitability of the infrastructure that we are bringing online is higher than it was a year ago. And so you can't look at rates in a vacuum. You have to look at the economy around AI holistically. And holistically, we are getting more orders because there is more demand and the profitability on each piece of incremental infrastructure is growing core weaves mike and trader when he joined us on the show about two weeks ago you know i got a lot of notice yesterday jim was elon musk tweeting the word yikes in response to the 15 percent yield now i would point out that i would have changed the narrative if i weren't michael and i do you know michael and i think it would be better if he had talked about the fact that the public debt is only 20 % of the debt that he has, 80 % is asset-backed.

24:34And the 80 % asset-backed is traded at cost. And that is significant. And I'd rather go with the numbers than with the emotion. Let's get the opening bell here and talk more about it at the big board on Wall Street. It's TGE Value, Creative Solutions, a SPAC based in France, recent listing at the NASDAQ and Times Square. Iambic Therapeutics, developer of small molecule cancer therapies, an IPO. At CBO in Chicago, it is the internal floor operations team, Jim, as we did lose 7 ,700, but we're going to talk in a minute about areas in which the market is moving to, like a Walmart, like a Lilly, like a Visa.

25:14Yeah, well, excuse me, no credit risk there. MasterCard's been up day after day after day. Do you want to comment on news? They bring the bell ringer from the NASDAQ. I think people have to keep track. There are so many innovations in cancer treatment And these companies are being snapped up by the big companies. We did have Merck on yesterday talking about this golden age for oncology. Yeah, just incredible. He let me feel, we all know people, sadly, who have had cancer. No false hopes from Rob, from Updates. But I do point out, David, that when you have healthy M &A from a pipeline of these kinds of biotechs, it's something we should be watching because it can change the way we look at Merck Or the way we look at Lily, or certainly the way we look at Johnson & Johnson.

26:00Acquisitions have been a key part of the overall strategy for Big Pharma, particularly of those smaller, but not small, biotechs that maybe are in phase three. You're taking a bit of a chance, but not that huge a risk in terms of buying something that's got a key therapeutic of some kind or key drug that is going to change things. And listen, when it comes to cancer, of course, any number of the people who are at the labs will tell you number one on their list is, you know, can we figure out cures for cancer? And then otherwise maintenance, multiple myeloma. We have maintenance. We want cure. Yeah.

26:34But it's worth it to keep track because I felt that there had been a dearth of these for a while. And now they're back. Wait, a dearth of what? Sorry. Of all these little companies that ring their bellies. Oh, yeah. Oh, I see. The IPOs of those companies. Got it. By the way, Merck, now the third best Dow name of the year. You know what's now number one? Chevron. Chevron supplanting Cisco. Better to be lucky than good. The bike's good. That's the best Dow name of the year. Yeah, because Cisco's held that. Cisco and CAD have been going back and forth for a while. It's really interesting that most of the appreciation of late Chevron occurred in this with oil stuck at 100.

27:12I mean, a recognition like everything else that we read, which is that oil's here to stay, and so therefore go by Chevron. Right. Or by Exxon. Not a part of the Dow, but up 47%, actually, eclipsing just a bit the performance that Chevron has had. Do you keep buying both of these, though? I think you can buy Chevron just because the capital structure is really great, the money that they throw off. You're not going to get killed. It goes to$190 if the war is solved. Well, look at what, I mean, we've been showing six-month rent at all-time highs. And listening to Delta and some of the airlines, they're not planning as if this will be over anytime soon.

27:49No, and now some of the smarter people I talk to say, Hey, listen, Jim, November 3rd, November 4th, the midterm elections data center, November 4th, do we go to war against the Hooties? How many people the Hooties have armed? I don't know the actual army there, but one of the people I know says, Jim, there's 300 ,000 that are armed. Do you have a plan? I have a plan. I mean, I'm just hoping the Secretary of Defense has a plan. War. Excuse me. War. That was wrong. Secretary of War, yeah. I don't know the answer to any of those questions, Jim. But people are worried that that's the day we go to war.

28:22And so what are you going to sit here and buy a lot of core weave ahead of something we don't know, which is the war with the Hooties and whether the Saudis are going to do it, or are we going to back the Saudis, or are we going to do it ourselves? And, you know, look, I can't factor in the Hooties. I can factor in the loans versus the public debt of core weave, but it's hard to keep track of the Hooties. It is hard. It's hard. And to understand the damage being done, which we know is considerable. Right. Have there been any overnight attacks, though, on Saudi Arabia that I'm unaware of? We've had two ships sunk in recent days.

28:54The Saudis just put out a note this morning. 20 attacks this month, 17 dead. We do know that they've postponed the GCC-EU summit. So, I mean, the notion of Vision 2030 in Riyadh has taken some deaths. And they've got their big FII conference coming up. Again, hard to imagine that a lot of people attend there, at least the CEO level that they typically get. You can't imagine a head of security in any number of companies allowing their CEOs to travel, given the current conditions. People want security in New York. You see the guys outside. When you have dinner or lunch with a CEO, there's always two or three guys outside.

29:35They're trying to make themselves look like they're not bodyguards. Stop being 6 '3 and strong. That's the way you stop being a bodyguard. Jim, do you start to nibble at Lennar or Horton or some of these rate-sensitive sectors? You know, I don't think that we're done with the inflation scare. I still feel that if Kevin Marsh, if the Fed chairman, feels that we don't have 2 % inflation, that you're going to be wrong. You have to get those in trades. Versus some of the things where I see inflation coming down and people are excited about. Now, I'm going to give you an analog that's incredible. Texas Roadhouse has been killed by beef.

30:15It's a good outfit. Well, suddenly that's got a deflationary tone to it, and people are buying that kind of thing that's deflationary. My most exciting play right now is this Walmart and Costco, which are the guys who have just pledged to be able to keep prices down. Costco taking out$1 ,000, going back to 44 B.E., David. I find that these Costco and Walmart are at the bulwark of keeping prices lower. And the American people are actually beginning to understand that. That these are the two you can go. I had a caller last night. Look at Dollar General today. That's an eight-month high. No. Look, I had a caller last night.

30:51He's from Allentown. And I said, hey, chief, have you been to your Costco? He goes, I just came back yesterday. I dropped a huge amount of money. I said, you got the best Costco. I mean, people are talking about who has the best Costco? David? I wouldn't know. I've not spent a lot of time in Costco. I know. I'm sorry. Never had big enough closets. You spent a lot of time in SpaceX? I don't know. You spent a lot of time in it? I'd like to spend some time in Brownsville. I'd like to spend some time at Starbase down there. It's easier to go to Costco. I'll give you my card. I really would. I don't think Elon's going to invite me anytime soon, but I would love to go.

31:26Yikes. It's 11-Cena. It's 11-Cena. Look at this. A launch. Look at this. There's Walmart. There's 10. I know. That's the economy. Yes. Yes. By the way, Deutsche ups Walmart today to buy. They say 17 % upside. Even ACI, Jim, is getting a bid as J.P. Morgan cuts to neutral. Man, I don't know. I mean, Walmart's where it got crushed on the P.E. multiple, and I thought it was unfair because these companies, these two companies, are breaking away. And I would use Albertsons as an example and Kroger's example about how they are leaving those two in the dust. It's just incredible. The prices, you know, that's why, Dave, I mean, I'm just the prices.

32:07The Albertsons. Did you know that Meg Whitman is the executive chairman of Albertsons? Yes. I did not until the other day. Yes, an old source of yours, right? Yes, old friend. Yes. Old friend. Yes. I have a great deal of respect for Meg. Is she on the Colesport, too? I don't know. I missed it. I don't know where I was. I don't know. Carl never misses anything. No, he doesn't. He didn't inform me. Next time, I'll tell you. I would point out that, look, we've got this torrent of money. Albers is really being a great example. Downgraded, a torrent of money going to what was hated for so long. And, you know, SK Highness, I mean, two and a half times earnings?

32:42No. What does that have to go to? One and a half times earnings? So one good question for you, Jim. Yeah. Why is Amazon unchanged since April? I mean, is it because it trades on AWS and not North American retail? Yeah. I mean, look, I think we were hoping that they would have some sort of earnings break out on their own$50 billion semiconductor business. That hasn't happened. Look, I remain on my child trust as long as Amazon. But look, people want Microsoft. And people want Meta. And they don't seem to be able to like more than one because so much money is going toward Apple. I mean, Apple, the other day, remember some clown, I'm sorry, some analyst came out and said, Well, the components, the components aren't that good for the 18.

33:27The 18, I want, I'm going to jump the line and get ahead of that guy for the duo. I'm taking down five duos October 23rd. Are you really? Yes, I am. I don't believe you. Family members. Really? Five? Five. You're going to buy five of them? Costco, T-Mobile. What are those running? Two? I'm telling you. Two grand? People tell me, but the T-Mobile deal, we don't know yet. So you don't think there's vulnerability on an affordability thing on the duo? It's obviously a premium product. No affordability issue at all. None. It did close. Now with T-Mobile trying to get those customers back. It did close yesterday above$5 trillion for the first time.

34:04Market cap. No, I'm not worried. And this thing is so revolutionary. What are you, Alfred E. Newman? Wouldn't he worry? Wouldn't he worry. Okay. But we worry about Intel at 92. There you go. I mean, we do have a collapse of some of the most favorite stocks. And then we have stocks that have been hated for so long that it's incredible that people even remember the symbol. I mean, right? I mean, when was the last time you ever heard anyone talk about Kimberly? Well, I just heard you talk about it during the Mad Dash. I know, but that was... I was actually paying attention. Kimberly, boy, I'll tell you, do you know that they used to find...

34:37I'm going to just show you the old before Michael Shue, how stupid... I mean, get ill-advised. They were making the Kirkland brand, Scott, you know, paper towel. And they had their own paper towel next to it. and they were killing themselves. I mean, they were literally killing themselves by putting a product that was right next to their product that was less, that was actually theirs. That's over. That's over. Those days are gone. Now it's Kenview, and I am telling you, there are people I deal with in Kenview who just say, look out, this is going to be great now that Kimberly got this quarter out.

35:06It's good. You know, it's a fun one. Give us a one-month XLP versus XLK. This is Staples versus Tech. Basically the same. They've converged in a month, staples in tech. Wow, people like boring again. Hey, don't forget, I mean, Eli Lilly. Is there a day that Eli Lilly has not gone up? Can you look and see how many days it's not up? I don't know those numbers. I can't tell you it's up 15 % for the year and has a$1.16 trillion market value. So far above all the other companies. Let's see if Jamie come back. I'm trading units of Jamie. We should talk a little about the banks because the performance of the bank stocks since earnings has not been any better than it was prior to earnings.

35:49In particular, we saw yesterday that reversal. And the P multiples here, 11, 12. Yeah. Bank of America shares did end, I think, actually crept back a bit on the day. They ended lower. It was much ado about nothing in the end. It was only down a couple of smackers. Why was it much ado about nothing? Because it was just fine. I mean, it was just fine. Do you want to look at B of A versus the BKX over one year, two years, three years, five years? I mean, it is a consistent underperformer. Their CEO's had that job for 16 years, right?

36:25How about that, Penske? Just saying. What? You don't want what? We can't say those things? Come on. You can say whatever you want. Yeah, damn right I can. No, I have an account at bank. No, big deal. Carl just points out, there it is. All right. All right. All right. When do you catch up? That's not good. J.P. Morgan. That's not good either. That's not good. Look, the banks are not a good place to be, but I'm saying that maybe that's what the opportunity is. We weren't talking about the banks. We were talking about one bank in particular. Okay, I didn't like the money. You just are afraid to be critical, that's all.

36:54No, that is so untrue. That is so untrue. The facts say you should know Bank of America. The facts say that the OCC came out with one of the most poorly timed. Yes. Although when we had Brian Moynihan on the show yesterday, he was not willing to say in any way that this was sort of retribution for the debanking, so to speak. Well, it was hard to find because a lot of companies were mentioned negatively in that report. The other one, guys, is MS, which in the summer was up 29 % for the year. It's back to flat. I know. And I thought that Leslie Picker's interview, I know, Picker to Pick. Everyone made that joke.

37:30Made that joke before, yeah. That's a CBC joke. I do think that Morgan Stanley is overdone on the downside because, again, it sells at 12 times. You know, these stocks, the absurdity of where they sell at when Walmart is screaming at 42 and 43. Like, Walmart has some sort of cure for disease. The cure that it has is for the e-economy. Good piece of the FTD about the e-economy, the bottom tier. But, you know, I've got to tell you, the Dollar General, you know, I like to shop at Dollar General, but it's a small form factor. If you actually do, David, the ounce number and you divide the ounce number like the young people do, like the Gen Z, it's no bargain.

38:08You lost me there. Oh, divide the ounce number. Oh, I see. The pricing is really got to be careful. Well, the number of junior mints in a box of junior mints in Dollar General is smaller than the number of junior mints in a box of gold. So on a price per junior mint, you're really not paying any less. Exactly. Thank you for that. The other government, guys, really quick, on Schwab. No, go ahead. You do it. I'm going to do the private credit. It's going to be the lowest print since early July. I mean, margin debt, Jim, significant, up 93 year on year. Well, people are saying that it got mused. It really does have some money coming out.

38:40We know that, look, I've got to tell you. It got mused. I just want to stop for a second because now you're using it as a word. It got mused. Referring, obviously, to the agent from Meta, mused, this idea being that it will allow people to move balances very quickly. Right. But I think very few are really doing that. By the way, it's not going to give permission any longer. I mean, Jamie Dimon's not letting out. Charlie Sharp's not letting out. Wells Fargo. The banks are like, stay away. Send all my money to the First National Bank of Nebraska. I want to pick up a quarter percent. That is not what's happening in this country.

39:14And I think Rick Worcester will tell you that. I'm glad to find out. I would point out that other than Blue Owl, all of the alternative asset manager stocks are up. Now, it's been a horrific year. And I think that's actually an appropriate word to describe the performance of so many of these names. And they've been coming under pressure in part for some of the same things that we've been talking about in terms of their heavy reliance in certain areas on data center financing and so many other things that at least there are concerns around whether they're justified or not. But a bit of a rebound ever so slightly in some of those things.

39:48Obviously, Apollo and Blackstone, huge financiers for so many of these things. When I look at the Broadcom thing we were talking about earlier, of course, That involved Apollo as well and Blackstone, remember? What was it? A landmark strategic platform to accelerate more than 20 gigawatts of global AI deployments with a$35 billion transaction formed in one gigawatt led by Apollo. All of that. It's really important to their business. And they're believers, 100%. Apollo, obviously, with Athene, has this incredible platform where they go out and sell annuities, take money in, and then are able to find a home for it that matches up.

40:26If they're looking at the values and they're not just saying, hey, I'm in for$10 billion because I want to get hit over the head, I think that they're taking a longer-term view like Larry Fink. It's just that the market takes an incredibly short-term view. We do have a couple of take privates this week between Penske and Bumble. That was kind of an interesting result. Penske was a big deal. Penske was a big deal. Bumble was, do you remember when it was very exciting? David, we had. For a period of time. Blackstone obviously was the original, was an investor in the original Bumble. We have 15 minutes before I leave.

40:53Is that enough time to talk about the Skydance warrant? I'm giving you a solid 15 minutes of the warrants. I thought I wrapped it up rather briefly yesterday. I really tried. It's for open discussion. Will you look at Sandish? Skyd is now up today. And, yes, if you have a warrant, the warrant trades separately, and don't worry about it. How was that? Was that correct? That's perfect. You've got to look at the Sandish. You've got to look at the Seagates. These are so cheap, I've got to own them. And it's just not. Well, look at. We've got a double-beaten raise out of TSM. Down 4%. Lowest since middle of August.

41:26Listen, that call is really great. I mean, well, really great. What does it matter? We're in some purgatory right now. All right, when do we get out of it? What takes us out of the purgatory? You think it's the midterms? You do. I thought you were going to say a December 9 micron buyback thing. Well, but I do care about that micron buyback. That's after the federal government allows them to do it. But I do think that we have a little problem of clarity with this midterm election. and then what the president's going to do with the war. I think that's... You've got to stay focused that those are big issues.

42:00You were making the point last night on Mad Money. The war ends and oil prices come down. Which war? Yeah, which war? Ukraine? He was talking Iran. Okay. No, not Ukraine. I know, that's Starlink. That was always about Starlink. And drone swarms. Yes. Apparently, Star Shield has now been allowed back on or in the sense of, I don't know. That was good. Those good announcements. You can continue that announcement. Would you like to hear more about Starship and Starlink? I could actually go on a long way. Thank you for that. Maybe we can all get invited down to Starbase. Watch a launch. Wouldn't that be amazing?

42:39That Starship is going to go up again soon. And then they're going to try and catch it this time. I have no idea, Jim. Not better than expected. Watch Bonds this morning here with the Dow up about 116. S &P down 30. But really interesting action has got yields down across the curve. Longmont gets back below 5.4. We'll back in a minute. Not every day you get Nike at the top of the Dow list this morning. About a one-month high there. Same for Depot back at 3.06. We own it. I can't believe it. Thank God I got that meeting at noon. Yes. And guys, listen, I'm buried at 2.90 at Home Depot. No, you're not.

43:15We're going to talk about the club meeting today at noon. And we'll get stopped trading with Jim after the break. Stopped trading with Jim, although we want to talk about the club meeting, too. Yeah, I mean, just the company is going to cover things like J &J today. I mean, J &J is almost back to where it was when it had the so-called disappointing quarter, because it's the kind of stock that people are buying right now. And I want to mention and remember the context of all stocks, what you'll pay, the PE multiple. That's what I'm talking about. And here's the stock people, you know, people said, oh, my God, they really were bad.

43:41It was ridiculous. Upon further review, it only has one division, a BIMED, that had any sort of problem at all. I think that's going to be cured by mid-year next year. And people want a J &J. They want to have a high-quality AAA balance sheet situation with really good numbers, 18 big drugs coming. And this is what the market wants. And that's what I'm talking about is what the market doesn't want and what it does and how to identify it. That's going to be the crux of the meeting today? Yes, that is. It's about what we won't pay, why we're not paying the multiple for NVIDIA that we thought we would.

44:12And NVIDIA being, I think, a stock that I would say from the beginning of the show has done nothing to go down. Right. Will you discuss anything? I mean, I don't think we only have like 50 some odd sessions before year end. Oh, my God. Look, I'm more concerned about November 3rd and 4th because we get through those. Then I think that we have a real good sense of what's going to happen. Right now, you're taking a little bit more chance than I like. So that's why we have one of the highest cash positions since I started this more than 20 years ago. Really? Yes. I want the money to be able to take advantage of things.

44:45And I don't see the advantage to take yet. Just to wrap things up, Coral Week shares are starting to have more significant losses again, down 9%. If you want to use that again as a reflection of this overall concern about cost of capital and access to it. And by the way, Meg Whitman is a board member of Coral Week. Who knew? That I did not know. Yeah. Wow. Really? I hope we're right. That's what Todd Bonin told me. It's all on him. Hey, maybe she can be an insider buyer. Would that change things? If he was an insider buyer. Yes, yes, exactly. Jim, we'll see you at noon. Don't forget Kimberly. I'm going to talk about that, too.

45:17And, yeah, it's a big meeting. A lot of with Jeff Marks, and I worked very hard on this two days ago. Yes, you do. And threw away everything because it was wrong by the day I got. Things move fast, Jim. And, by the way, faster every day. There you go. Why SpaceX? Soon it will be a recursive self-improvement, and then it will all be over anyway. But then you won't be here. No, I won't. The simulation ends. We'll see you at noon, Jim. When we come back, we'll stay on top of this tech weakness core weave, as David said, extending some losses. You've been listening to the opening bell on CNBC's Squawk on the Street.

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