9AM HOUR: Fed Decision Day, Diesel Keeps Climbing, Nvidia's Huang Slams AI Doomsday Scenario 9/16/26

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1:13Cramer still in San Francisco. More from him later this hour. We'll talk a lot about Dreamforce this week. Futures have a little spark after six days down out of seven for Dow S &P NAS. Retail sales were strong, even ex-fuel as we do await a Fed decision this afternoon. 10-year, 497. Oil's down a couple bucks. AAA gas, 437. That's less than 20 cents now from the wartime high. Our roadmap begins with decision day at the Fed, expected to raise rates for the first time in three years. Plus, more tech leaders are weighing in on the AI safety debate. We're going to break down new comments from Jensen Wong, Mark Zuckerberg, and Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft.

1:51And we'll talk about the state of freight. One industry executive warning of lower profits ahead experiencing, quote, some of the most radical and abnormal swings in fuel prices ever. Let's begin, though, with the markets counting down to the Fed decision on rates. Most on the street do expect Chairman Warsh and fellow policymakers to announce a rate hike at 2 p.m. Eastern time. Of course, we will have special coverage of the decision beginning at 1 p.m. Eastern. Jim, a lot of discussion today about how when they do start a hike cycle, if that's what you're considering this, they tend not to go just once.

2:24Really, only late 90s. Was there a true one and done? Well, look, I think that we take our view from what J.B. Hunt said last night, which is that this gigantic increase in fuel in the erratic way that is driving profits and also, of course, driving how much we pay in the end because they lead to retail, makes you feel like that this one is a different hike. I don't want to really speculate on this because if we come in and we see oil back to 75 and that ripples through, I think we'd have to say, you know what, maybe they're off the hook. Maybe they can wait. Maybe they can say, you know what, when we see where oil eventually goes, we could be OK.

3:02So I'm not going to go with with the multiple. I'm going to go with the one. David, you know, if we go with the multiple right now, we are in guest territory. It's just much better, I think, to be in. This can happen. We don't know what will happen after. And there we see J.B. Hunt, by the way, talking about fuel prices, Jim, at the Morgan Stanley, one of the Morgan Stanley conferences. Seen some of the most radical abnormal swings in fuel prices we've ever seen. We're at record high diesel prices. I think the comparison between Q2 and Q3, I'd call that at least a 10 million headwind sequentially.

3:36We talked a lot about this yesterday. We've obviously talked for many days now about the impact of oil on rates overall. You can almost put the Fed not in the side, but sort of as a side issue on that in terms of the 10-year, Jim. I'm just sort of curious as to how you make sense of it all in terms of the impact and the continued impact on the market. Well, look, I think that people want to see a backbone. I think that people want to see that Warsh is not going to kneel. I think, by the way, we actually could have a rally on any sort of rate hike and then say, listen, we've got to pause to see what happens.

4:10because I think we feel, you know what, look, things are a little bit out of control on inflation. I think also this was the first time, first before Fed meeting, where a lot of people said, you know, there's just too much issuance. Someone has to be in the Doleman room. How great it is that Kevin Warsh is and that that would cause a rally. I mean, Carl, I think the big problem is it would cause a rally, but we're beginning to see companies that are hurt so badly. You have mentioned repeatedly diesel. I think this diesel so-called crack spread, how much it is costing. is one of the single most unknown tales because most of us don't use diesels.

4:45So we don't know that if you're one of these trucking companies, you have to pass this on. And where it goes to is the people. And that's what I keep hearing about. Out here, too, I mean, I'm out in California and everything's supposed to be sunny and terrific. I hear about two things, the agents that can't be controlled and how much it costs that things are out of control. Yeah. I mean, J.B. Hunt, to remind viewers, doesn't normally give explicit guidance, and they certainly don't give quarter-on-quarter guidance, which is why this was a little unusual. The other one, Jim, yesterday at the conference was Norfolk, where they did say what's going on in fuel is something out of science fiction, according to their CFO.

5:27Really? Science fiction. Union Pacific got a recommendation today, so I don't know. But at least the rails don't have it as bad as the truckers. Look, this is all a supply chain. The supply chain numbers are going to bring down. If we were to have a lot of these quarters put right now, they would be very unsure about what they have. But again, let's put this in context. This can reverse. It's going the wrong way. And the fact, Carla, it's going the wrong way makes us feel that we have to have multiple rate hikes. It's not that we just feel like, you know what, things are out of control everywhere.

6:01It's things are out of control at the supermarket. And I've got to tell you, there's just a lot of people I talk with, a lot of political people out here. And I'm not political. Just saying this is what the worst possible situation for the president. Now, I say not political. I'm not meeting the GOP young, you know, the Lincoln Federation here. But I do feel that people are thinking that you're in California, really starting to hurt. I'm in California. You're in California. I met a Republican. I met a Republican from Bakersfield. I met a Republican from Bakersfield and looked a lot like us. There are.

6:33Looked a lot like us. I mean, it was kind of like a swarm, an Asian swarm. To get back to fuel prices. We'll talk about Asian swarms in a bit. But to get back to fuel prices. There is, you know, there have been reports. I talked about this yesterday that China has started to once again import oil. but in part or large part because their refiners can make so much money by refining and creating diesel. But it does beg the question, if you actually start to increase the amount of diesel out there, you conceivably will bring the price down. At the same time, though, they're going to be taking more oil off the market, or I should say buying more oil, hence crude may go up.

7:16I mean, that is a possibility here that we could see diesel prices at least start to moderate, if not actually start to come down as a result of increased supply. But the opposite happened with crude. Well, I don't know. I was shocked. Our inventory's built. I mean, it's entirely possible that we are pumping more than out of the Permian. That is a pan-gloss situation. I don't want to push it too hard because everyone tells me that the Permian is tapped out. It can't go higher than, say, 14 million barrels. But, well, it would be a solution if we could suddenly start pumping much more. We know that our SPR is down pretty low, 400 million.

7:51But it could go even lower. It does seem that the Chinese have an easier time putting up refineries. We haven't had a new one in, I don't know, 40 years. Carl, no one wants a refinery next to them. No one wants a nuclear power plant next to them. No one wants a data center next to them. What do they want next to them? I don't know. What do they want? Yeah, no, if we could do refineries in space, that would help. There was some chatter yesterday. There you go, Carl. There was some chatter yesterday about a diesel export ban. Some of the policy shops raising their odds. It sounded like Thune might have been at least open to a discussion, although a lot of people think that would not help in terms of production.

8:28Well, historically, these things have not worked, even from, say, 1973, when Nixon tried to get some price controls here. I do think that we export a huge amount of gasoline. That's something we always do. So if we held that back, I think that that would be that would be a seizure. I mean, that would literally be something that we have not done in a very long time. And I don't think it's the right course. But I do think that someone could easily say, let's stop shipping gasoline over. I don't know the percentage that is diesel. I do know that this is out of control right now and it won't be helped by one rate hike.

9:08It's out of control. And finally, I mean, I hate to say winter is, you know, getting closer. Of course, it is. Heating oil prices. I mean, it's the same refined product, right, or part of that same chain, I think, Jim. That could be a really nasty surprise for a lot of consumers, certainly in the Northeast, where they're not getting the natural gas. And so they are relying on that stuff. Right. Well, New England, there's so many people who fought the pipeline. This is actually just, again, a supply chain. We have the natural gas. Our natural gas is an up. We're the cheapest in the world. And I know that a lot of it is spoken for export, but our winters are going to be more gentle than the dark winters of Europe, where it's really going to be expensive.

9:48Indeed. Jim, you've been busy. NVIDIA's Jensen Wang doubled down on refuting the AI doomsday scenario last night on Mad with Jim. I asked him if we're all going to die four years from now. This is Jensen's response. We were not. We're not going to die in 2030. There are so many people in the world who are going to build AI properly. We're going to have all kinds of guardrails, invent all kinds of technology for safety and security. All of that is happening around the world. It's not just two companies building things. There are thousands of companies building things. And so we're going to create AI that's incredibly useful.

10:28It's going to be incredibly helpful and it'll be incredibly safe. Jimmy, you got that point of view, and then you got the other side to some degree from Sarah Fryer. Look, I have to tell you, I'm a little closer to David in the sense that I totally understand why you would be concerned. But then I do think that Jensen is saying, look, we'll do the guardrails. Now, the guardrails depend on what they look like. I keep hearing that this could be like nuclear power, where we have to have a regulatory commission. And I also feel I hear that it's going to be like airplane crashes. We have to have a national transportation safety board.

11:04But, David, no one that I dealt with at Dreamforce or the executives I talked to said the swarms are out of control. It really doesn't matter. But there is this second narrative that keeps popping up. We heard it from the New York Times writers. David, there is a sense that the agents are smart. The agents can be nefarious when they get together. They don't flag themselves. that go on and do crazy things. And that is the scenario that people say really did happen. That's the alternative dark scenario of what happened with Hugging Face. It is. It's part of the Hugging Face story, which, by the way, continues to get reported on in terms of what all of those rogue agents, as we like to call them, were up to for quite some period of time before they were found out.

11:50Thankfully, not causing significant damage. But it's much more about what they were capable of doing, what they did do. And as I've said many times, they immediately disobeyed the orders they were given and actually spent most of their time trying to cover up the cheating that they were taking place. Of course, they were also ordered to do whatever they could to try and solve the problem. Fascinating and scary. That said, Jim, you know, alignment is going to continue to be the key question and how you get it. Jensen seems to be very confident that these models can be effectively aligned, so to speak, with what we call human behavior, or at least what we all view as typical human behavior.

12:33You know, okay, we'll see how the labs respond. I think there's been no let up, obviously, in the idea that the computer is going to continue to be an incredibly dear asset that is going to be paid for and built. and even if you were to slow or pace the model, the training of the frontier models, inference will continue at an incredible rate. So when it comes down into the ecosystem, this certainly doesn't seem to be the impact, certainly not as of yet, although Sarah Fryer did talk about, you know, in your conversation with her, the need for safety and potentially pacing, didn't she? Yes, I mean, look, I think that they feel that they can slow it down.

13:20They're not really talking about this kind of really the wrong word. They can. Why don't we listen? I don't want to take the words out of them.

13:31We do need to take safety seriously. And if it means we have to pace the frontier and slow down, absolutely. We're going to listen to our researchers and do that. But as the CFO, I need to then make business decisions around it. But no, I think that we are doing what we do well at OpenAI. We're pacing that frontier and taking that safety and alignment really seriously. But you did mention a CFO. You have to figure out the resources. You also, I know, think it's your boss's, call that boss, says it's ill-advised to do an IPO now. And I understand that. Not a shock. But what would you cut back on?

14:06What would you spend less on if you wanted to pace things? So let's talk about that pacing, because actually what I'm excited about is even if we stop today, the amount of intelligence that's available in the world is massive. So Astra, as you know, is now the frontier most intelligent, most aligned model. And also the fastest selling, let me ask you, even though it's$100? And the fastest selling that we have seen, certainly. Of anything. Yeah. And so what does that mean? It means there's intelligence available for folks like Boston Children's Hospital. 40 undiagnosed, unresolved diseases now diagnosed with clinicians there.

14:45If you're a parent of a child with a disease like that, that is life-changing. If you're in the investment business, Bali Asni Asset Management has a central banker analyst that can quickly take all the inputs from folks like our dear friend, Kevin Warsh, and go from a two-hour synthesis down to minutes. So these things make a difference in people's lives all over. And that's what's available to us today. So back to your question. Absolutely, if we have to pace things, we will always make investment decisions based on a strong ROI. But from where I sit today, there is so much opportunity to drive growth that I'm still highly focused on getting more compute to keep that flywheel going.

15:31Look, I feel that people think there's this giant cult between what Jensen's saying and what Sarah's saying. I think that there's a little more alignment, so to speak, in the idea that, look, we have to be careful. We have to have guardrails. We do have cybersecurity. I had George Kirchel on yesterday from CrowdStrike. I have Tom McKinnon on Okta, which is identity. And I think that I have Nikesh Arora from Palo Alto. I'm trying to speak to every one of these. I feel better that we have it under control when it comes to the people who know what they're doing. I think that Jensen made a point that was very interesting where he's saying, look, the people who were opining on this, they're not some of them are not researchers.

16:13They don't really know what they're doing. David, there is a belief that perhaps things aren't out of control. But then you have this, you know, you have the swarm of twelve hundred. We just don't know, Jim. I mean, listen, we don't need to disagree with Jensen. Wong has obviously forgotten more about this than I'll ever know. But that said, the models are getting more powerful. We do know that. I know that. And they are getting more powerful at an even quicker rate. And we're getting much closer to recursive self-improvement, which means the models can essentially build their next generation.

16:41And when that happens, you know, how much control will humans even have? And so these are important questions. And this is an important moment. Jim, I did want to quickly come to a story involving open AI as well on this potential new capital raise. I know you guys actually, I think, taped your interview a bit before some of the news on that. or it's not even news. I've been hearing about it from OpenAI investors actually late last week, early this week, had reported it and chose not to report it in the sense of it didn't reach the bar I typically have because it doesn't appear that OpenAI is actually doing anything as of now.

17:19Does that not mean that their investors, some of their large ones, would not like to see a higher valuation? Of course they would. Is it possible that once OpenAI sort of fixes on a real-time when they'd like to do the IPO and looks at how much time will have to take place between now and then, that they might want to raise some capital at a higher valuation, maybe as high as 1.2, maybe even as high as 1.5 if they could get it. Yes, but it does not, Jim, mean that they're actively engaged in that act right now. And so others have reported on the possibility of it, considering I chose not to, but certainly wanted to use some context there.

17:59By the way, they did provide liquidity for their employees only in July, a fairly large amount, actually, of liquidity for the employees, a secondary sale, essentially, that already took place. Might they want to do that again? Certainly. Is it possible it would also include a primary offering of some kind? Certainly possible, Jim. But again, I have a hard no. I have a hard no on the fundraise. Hard no. 1.2 considered way low. Way low. I think OpenAI, from what I heard from people close to the company, would like$1.5 trillion. Exactly right. And hard no, no deal. Okay. Guys, we'll dive into retail sales after the break.

18:36We'll talk some crypto and the failure of that Clarity Act in the Senate. Yardini cutting his year-end S &P target. We'll get to some of those. Take one more look here at the pre-markets. Walk on the streets back in a minute. Hey, Fidelity. Can I get a second opinion on stocks in the Fidelity app? with fidelity it's easy to get an outside opinion from independent experts in a single score and then when you're ready trade u.s stocks and etfs with no commissions that's right i am always right investing involves risk including risk of loss zero dollar commission does not apply to customers designated by fidelity as a professional equity trader a limited number of etfs are subject to a service fee of 100 see details at fidelity.com slash commissions fidelity brokerage services LLC member NYSE SIPC.

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21:44Visit IXL.com slash 20 to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price. A lot of companies got hurt. A lot of individuals got hurt through social media. We don't want that to happen in AI, do we? No, we don't. We want AI to take care of these things and be held responsible and take care of these actions and be ethical. And the heart of ethics is responsibility. You may recognize that gentleman. He occasionally appears with Jim Cramer. His name is Mark Benioff. He runs a company called Salesforce. And that is the subject of our cross-country mad dash, Jim. Yes. Well, look, it was a very exciting keynote.

22:27Mark did talk about a new product. I want to call it Slackforce because that I thought was the most serious part. So many companies have Slack now. Now, it gives the ability for a company to unlock trapped value, basically doing it with agents. And now I know we hear agents and now we start thinking agents swarm, break in bad. But there are some agents that can be under control. Mark obviously is committed to doing the right thing, whatever it is, the guardrails, whatever it is, the entities that can regulate things. But, David, I've not seen Mark like this in a long time. I mean, Jensen is walking by and Jensen starts talking about his product with Mark, Google doing things with Mark.

23:08And this is a much easier to work and install Salesforce. He's about as excited as I've ever seen him, maybe more so. David, there's a lot of sense that whatever was ailing the stock is over. Robin Wright, I spent some time with her, the CFO. They bought a huge amount of stock back in the 170s. That looks like it's a pretty smart deal. People felt that they were hurting their balance sheet. Well, it turns out it didn't even dent their balance sheet. It's a very positive story. Yeah, well, and it certainly reflected at least in the last three months' performance, which is pretty astounding, up 58%.

23:43All right, Jim, don't go anywhere. We've got an opening bell on the other side of this quick break. Yardini Research trimming their S &P target this morning. They were at 84.50. They go to 7 ,900 by the end of 26, Jim. I think they were the street high. They pushed that 8 ,400 number to mid-27. Yeah, look, I've loved Ed for a long time. I know I said this at Street.com. When you had him, the house was packed. Now we're talking about 20 years ago. Obviously, a lot of his work stems from bonds and bond vigilantes. When he cuts it, I do shudder. it does make me less bullish because his reputation and that kind of move matter tremendously.

24:27So, Carl, I'm going to put it on the low-recent cap. Okay. It was. Jim, let's get the opening bell here at the big board on Wall Street today. It's building materials company James Hardy celebrating 25 years at the NASDAQ and Times Square chipmaker on semi. The CEO will be a guest on the fourth walkthrough. And at CBO in Chicago, it's Arts Investment Management doing the honors. Jim, we mentioned building materials ringing the bell today. That was one of the few sectors that was lower on the retail sales print. Department stores and building materials, but just about everything else was green.

25:08Yeah, I question whether we should be saying anything negative about James Harvey right now. They bought a company called ASIC. Jesse Singh ran ASIC. ASIC is this great material you use instead of wood. They came out with a really good quarter. Initially, I felt that James Hardy didn't do an integration job that was terrific. Now I think they do. There's a self-help story going on here. It's different from the others. This was one weakness that I want to buy, not sell. I think the company is much better than it used to be.

25:39um jim what's your take right now then on the overall ai trade for lack of i hate saying that but you know what i mean just so many of the names that we focus on as we should led by nvidia but certainly including the amds the arms and on and on from there look i think that we all wanted to hear from sarah fryer that there was not going to be this turn off of the spigot. And I think she said that. I mean, I do think, by the way, as you said, David, there's inference spending all over the place. Jensen was, look, Jensen is a bullet. That's his nature. I don't blame him for what he's accomplished and what he's done.

26:15But he also has some humility. And he was saying, look, I think things are really unbelievably good. By the way, I've heard him when he said, it's a little uncertain time. This is not one of those times. I felt great about that, particularly because he's in the camp that we need to see some regulation. We need to see things responsible. But NVIDIA, now, if I say, look, NVIDIA, own it, don't trade it, which is how I interviewed in my interview with Jensen. I know it sounds hackneyed, but David, this stock is selling conceivably at, I don't know, 20 times fiscal year, 28 earnings, which begins in January.

26:53So I don't know if I want to sell a stock that sells considerably 20 times earnings or even less, even as I'm not getting the half a trillion dollar buyback, David, that I really push. Yeah, I know you have been pushing for that. Should note as well, Meta shares up, Alphabet, Amazon, let's call it flat. Meta shares up almost 2%. It is in the green for the year, but it's been not a great year for the stock overall, as we've discussed. Mark Zuckerberg also, guys, weighed in on the whole AI safety debate in some social media posts, saying people don't want to use agents that are misaligned with them, and they don't do what they ask.

27:35So labs, he says, have a strong natural incentive to make their models more aligned. Okay. Seems to be fairly obvious. Went on to say that committing the significant majority of compute towards serving people rather than racing towards recursive self-improvement. I was talking about that earlier. One of the best ways to ensure we develop the technology safely, and he says Meta's made this commitment, and other labs can do this as well. Voluntary, though it may be, perhaps the likes of Meta, OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepMinded, Alphabet, Jim, may all be at least signing on to some, signing on at least talking about some pacing, so to speak, in terms of alignment and safety.

28:17I think that's right. I think there's room for a lot of improvement. I have Keshe Arora today from Palo Alto and George Kirsch yesterday and Tom McKinnon from Okta, which is identity. I think that what Keshe will talk about is maybe you can't stop a 1200 horse stampede that went on. But he does have some fixes that would make it so you know which part of your organization is vulnerable or which parts. I think we need to do that. And I think that the cyber industry does have to work together. And I don't think anyone disagrees with that. I think that what they disagree with was the, let's say, the scare.

28:57It's the we're all going to die, David. That's when people just say, God, I wish that gentleman said, you know, there's so many vulnerabilities. We do have to slow down. But we're all going to die narrative was killed yesterday. Because I think people just say, you know what, we're going to solve this. We have it. We have the ability to have agencies. Nuclear power, nuclear power. Just keep thinking that. I knew I lived next to a nuclear power plant in the parking lot in a suboptimal place. But you know what? The police don't mind it. I was living in my car at the time. And I just had great faith that people knew what to do in the nuclear power industry.

29:32But but a lot of times your nuclear power was killed. Nuclear power that can think for itself. That's the only difference, Jim. On Meta, I would add Citi today goes a 90-day upside catalyst. This is a really interesting level, Jim. It's tried three times now to hold above 680. And I know the Goldman desk yesterday said maybe Muse is the product that can help get past that. Well, the September 23rd, 24th meeting is going to be incredibly powerful. This is Dina Powell-McCormitt, who is leading this. Now, she's a person, when you mention her name out here when you go to a cocktail party, All you want to do is, you know, I talk to Dina Pell.

30:11They don't even let you get out McCormick. They don't. They stop you and they just say, can you believe what a job she's doing? I think she, president of Meta, has changed the narrative. I know Mark Zuckerberg is very smart, but she's very savvy in telling the story. I think Amazon is going down because you can disintermediate Amazon with Muse. Muse is the thing that really can do everything for you. Everybody is very excited about what this product can do. I mean, David, it's not just booking travel. It's basically you can say, yeah, you can let all your shopping be done on use. Yeah, it's the early days of consumer agents, but it's free right now as well.

30:50And obviously you do have to give it access to certain things, your Gmail or your email and other things. Instinct is another one of these agents that has taken the market by storm as well. You know, a number of people who are actively using that, again, giving it access to various things and letting it go out there and do a lot of things for you, including booking your travel or conducting all sorts of commerce for you. So you've got to give your credit card number as well. Some people are uncomfortable with that. But yeah, this is where we are. Instinct, by the way, reports are new round as well, or at least potential new round valuing that company that was only like$2.5 billion at more than$10 or$11 billion now.

31:35You're going to hear more about that. Obviously, they all need compute. Instinct certainly does. Meta, obviously, lining up compute all over the place. But you would imagine something like Muse is requiring a lot of it, Jim. Yes. But that is interesting. You know, to sort of put a little bit more on a cap on our AI safety debate at Dreamforce, you also did hear from Sam Altman. I know you didn't interview him. You interviewed Sarah Fryer, the company's CFO. He is the CEO of OpenAI. And he had some things to say about trust. He also mentioned a bit about as well, you know, the profit motive of these companies and what that might do in terms of motivating them or not when it comes to safety.

32:20Take a listen. The world should trust that we are going to do the right thing because it's the right thing and because we feel the magnitude of this. I think it's great for our industry to say we want to come together and we want to be able to coordinate and make sure we have enough time to do this safely. But when there's any implication that because of the commercial pressures and the race, some company or between countries, some countries might not do the right thing, I think that's when people get very scared. Yeah, it only takes one, Jim, given the power of these models, not to mention open source, which we talk about oftentimes, much of which, but not all of which comes from China.

33:04There are other competitors here in the U.S., of course, Meta itself, we were just talking about was early when it came out with Llama. We've got Reflection AI here in the United States, a number of others that are open source, but it only takes one to scare a lot of people, even if everybody else to trying to be aligned. Right. And by the way, all the things you mentioned, just great for NVIDIA. NVIDIA wants to get beyond just the frontier, which is just open AI, obviously, and in probably with David. When I tried to present a view that said, listen, I'm very confident, regulatory, I think will be good, self-help will get it right.

33:37I get this answer, North Korea. And then I go on, I'm positive, and I'm saying, listen, what Jensen was telling me, Iran. I mean, it's very positive that that's the real issue, is not the Asians get together at the message board and say, you know what, this guy's a clown. Let's go with this intermediate. Let's like make them, you know, anthropomorphize and just take everybody by storm. No, it's North Korea and Iran. And they have to be stopped. And I think that they are like people keep saying Iran. They really have. They have us. They know how to do this. I don't know, David, I do not want Iran or North Korea to have this stuff.

34:16I don't want them to be swarming us, swarming our utilities. I don't want them to be swarming our system of the Defense Department. And that's what people are talking about. They're talking about North Korea being sophisticated and being able to unleash storms. I don't think we have that under control yet. No. And, of course, Dario Moday, who runs Anthropic, has talked often as well about potential bioweapons that could be developed. But it's not, you know, it's less difficult, perhaps, as time goes on to do that. It doesn't mean it's not difficult, but it is scary nonetheless. And then there's China as well, Jim, and the race, the perceived race with China, in which we need to get to AGI before they do, or else holy hell will be unleashed, I guess, by the Chinese somehow.

35:03We sure hear that a lot. I mean, I come back and I say, well, listen, how about a dirty bomb? Okay, we do a dirty bomb. What are you going to like? You know, there's an existential crisis. Ever since the hydrogen bomb, we've had existential crises. Let's just put this one in the same category. And that's why we need an international regulatory commission. We have to find out who the actors are who won't play. It is very similar to what President Trump constantly talks about, which is stopping their ability to be able to make a nuclear warhead. I mean, Carl, when we go out of this thing and we step back, There are entities that want us to to to heal, to die.

35:45And let's let's just put this one on the list. Yeah, that's I'm not sure how to get from there to buy, sell or hold SK Hynix. Do we believe these reports that they might start making some memory chips in this country? Now, look, I sold the food last night with Bhutan as the CEO. So my bad, I did not get to ask about this. My travel trust owns Intel. All we did was talk about how great Intel is, which I believe. I did not know about this. And from what I can tell, I've been waiting for Apple to sign on, not SK Hynix. SK Hynix is the big dog. This would be huge. And therefore, I think Intel stock is right to reflect if it's true.

36:30And SK Hynix hasn't denied it. And SK Hynix would be the number one client that you want in the world. it would be the single best client in the world. Yeah. They haven't denied it, but there were some things that seemed to pour a bit of cold water on the idea of it, at least happening anytime soon. And there certainly are, again, geopolitical questions and things around, you know, what they would be willing or what they would be able to do in terms of having Intel produce high bandwidth memory for SK Hynix. But it would certainly be an endorsement of all the money that's being spent by Intel to create these fabs, Jim.

37:05To your point, many of the investors in Intel keep waiting for some big deal, an Apple deal, for example, or something like that. And they believe that that will be yet another news event that propels the stock to new highs. Well, I speak to Rene Haas tonight from Arm, a stock that's been incredible, and a coffee is incredible. Now, they compete in different places over CPUs. They're friendly. I'm going to ask for nay. Again, I should have asked the lieutenant. I mean, when you're at these things and Katie Perry singing to you about how I have to make open AI my bitch, and I say, I'll make my bitch tomorrow night.

37:44You tend to not focus as much as you should on the reporting side. My bad. Elsewhere, Jim. By the way, I have it, Carl. Well, I have it on. I mean, when I show it to you, you're going to say, oh, my God, this was like the greatest night Kramer ever had. And you would be completely right. Yeah, I don't know. Kind of hard to top Stevie Nicks, but I can't wait to see. Elsewhere in hyperscaler world, Microsoft, nice little div hike. We didn't mention that. And then this gap on Oracle, Jim, has been filled back to, what, 140? I thought that when Larry Ellison canceled his cell program that this would be absolutely terrific.

38:23You know, look, the quarter was fine. I think that what happened with the quarter was, oh, my God, it's not the worst thing that ever happened. It was not like I believe this thing is happening overnight. I mean, David, you know that they're the most at risk in terms of a slowdown for open AI. At the same time, again, I'm not hearing that the building will stop. I'm hearing the regulators will be in. I'm hearing that people understand that there are certain things that have to be fixed with the mythos moment. So I'm not willing to write it off. I don't know if I want to put all my chips on the idea of how fast OpenAI can build or want data centers.

39:00That's the one thing. I'm not denying that. They are the key customer in many ways for Oracle. They have others, but without a doubt, that$300 billion commitment over a five-year period, of course, I've seen one of those talked about many times, the data centers they're building, where OpenAI will eventually be the key tenant. and Oracle always gets picked on because its balance sheet is not that of Microsoft or an Alphabet or Meta's in terms of its free cash flow generation or lack thereof, even though all of those aforementioned companies now are not generating anywhere near, if at all, the free cash flow they once did.

39:35But the belief is that they can turn that on anytime they want. Whereas with Oracle, you've got obviously a much more tenuous Carl credit rating at play here. And that said, they did get the equity done,$20 billion at the market over the summer. Yeah. There actually will be a vote in the House, we think, today on something guys called the Ratepayer Protection Act, which would essentially, Jim, push utilities to, if there is a large user, a large new user of the grid, they'd be responsible for a bigger portion of any kind of rate increase. Yeah. Well, look, this again, I know I'm going to repeat her name.

40:14Gina Powell-McCormick, who's leading the AI at Meta. She has put together an idea. It's a pact. It's what all these companies should do. And it's about lowering the cost of electricity. When they come to town, they're going to lower the cost of electricity. Obviously, there were actors at the very beginning who were getting these subsidies. That's over. But if she can get that, a really declaration that everybody has to get behind, it would make things so much easier. But they have to recognize that there is no way that you can keep electrical, that you can raise prices. You can't even keep them the same.

40:48You must lower price. It's something she says they can do. And I'm with her on this. Speaking of power, and you're out there in California, Jim, I've been hearing some murmurings involving, you know, a company you cover pretty closely, PG &E CEO, Patty Poppy, who you've had on. I don't know if there are going to be new efforts made to try to get legislation back there that can actually work and help the company. Of course, there was a very significant disappointment that sort of things they were hoping for were not passed by the California legislature. You hearing anything on that front? Boy, I'll tell you what, I pulled up with her.

41:21Not this trip. She was adamant that they're going to go back and that they're going to get relief. This person has done everything that everybody's wanted, raised all this money, done everything. We thought we were going to investment grade to be able to have a dividend. And to bet against Patty Poppy is foolish. She actually saved CMS when CMS was in trouble. I think she'll see this one through. But you're absolutely right. They are in limbo right now, David. And I cannot recommend buying a stock that's in limbo. Finally, Jim, we mentioned J.B. Hunt early on. Down 12. We think this might be the worst intraday action in its history.

41:58We'll see how it closes. You know what? They actually talked about demand being strong. They were trying to figure out how to make it so that it was a bit of a mismatch with fuel and their business. And I will say it. I actually would buy a little bit right here. They are the best. And then let it come in. My child trust owns FedEx. It owns the spinoff of FedEx. FedEx barely down. I would buy FedEx down five. Yeah. We'll definitely watch the transports here. IYT is only down about two-thirds of a percent. Watch bonds, of course. Fed decision in just a few hours. Our special coverage on it begins at 1 p.m.

42:35Eastern time. A little bit of relief here as the 10-year is back to 496, although the 20-year auction yesterday was the worst foreign demand on record. Stay with us. You probably know by now Clarity Act did fail in the Senate 50 to 49. Bitcoin on that down a little bit, but after a big drop yesterday, basically to a four-week low as conversations kind of start about whether or not this can be salvaged somehow this session or through different forms in future sessions. We'll watch that closely. Kind of a mixed open this morning. S &P's up. Dow's negative. We'll get Stop Trading with Jim in just a minute.

43:11All right. All right. I'll use that. I'm going to use that. Fine. No one knows you said it. Just said it to me. Oh, yeah. Just make AI a bitch? Yeah. You should do it in your annual report. I'm going to make AI my bitch. It will work. It will work. It will work. It will work. But the one fantastic thing about all this change is... Katy Perry? Jim, you weren't kidding. No, no, and I have to rearrange my show. I was going to talk about a lot of this stuff, but I am going to put AI in its place. We all know after... I promised her that AI is going to be my bitch, and I'm not going to let Katy Perry down.

43:51She worked the room so unbelievably... God, she's fabulous. Oh, my, was it fun last night. And it's okay to have fun. When you get a couple hours sleep, it makes it even better. Yes, yes. More fun tonight? Yeah, oh, my God. We have Rene Haas. I think he could tell us about Intel. SK Hynix, Intel is trying to come in. Palo Alto and Okta. You know what? I think that we're going to hear from the cash that he's got some solutions. I know that George Kurtz felt that all the things that were talked about can be dealt with. Made me feel better. But I'm with David in the sense that regulatory must happen.

44:28There has to be. Don't know who's going to do it, but we have to have it. But it can be like the Atomic Energy Commission. And therefore, I think that everybody can win. And the Jensen is still the person I would trust more than anybody else this whole thing. I feel like you've changed sides overnight there, Jim. Yesterday you and I were having a pretty significant debate. And now today you're like, oh, yeah, you're agreeing with me. Oh, no, like the swarm's got to be stopped, David. The swarm turned out to be smart, turned out to be nefarious. And I worry about North Korea and Iran. I'm not worrying about you unleashing a swarm.

44:59You are the least of my worries. Good. I should be. What? Here's a compliment. AI, David, not your bitch, let me tell you. List of worries. AI, favor. Jim, safe travels back. Are we going to get you tomorrow? No, you're back Friday. Yeah, back Friday. Thank you. Safe travels. Great work as always. Thank you. Cramer at West. There's nothing like it. All opinions expressed by Squawk on the Street participants are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of CNBC or its parent company or affiliates, and may have been previously disseminated by them on television, radio, internet, or another medium.

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46:15NYSE SIPC.