9AM HOUR: SK Hynix Leads AI Trade Revival, GE Vernova Erases Gains, Fed Decision Day 10/28/26

0:00Tu Sausage McMuffin with Egg no cambió. Tu recibo, sí. El Sausage McMuffin with Egg Extra Value Meal. Trae un hash brown y un café pequeño por cinco dólares. Solo en McDonald's por tiempo limitado. Precios y participación pueden variar. El precio de la promoción puede ser más bajo que el precio del meal. This episode is brought to you by Schwab Market Update, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Schwab Market Update, an original podcast from Charles Schwab, provides an information-packed daily market preview on stock updates, U.S. and global economic news, monetary policy decisions, and key results and statistics that may impact your trading.

0:35Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com slash marketupdatepodcast, or find Schwab Market Update wherever you get your podcasts. 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. Good Wednesday morning. Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla with Jim Cramer, David Faber at Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. The tech trade continues to build on this recovery as we get some reassuring earnings from SK Hynix and Vertiv. It is Fed Day, only about a 9 % chance of a hike. Microsoft and Alphabet earnings after the bell.

1:09Ten years still pinned to five. Brent 115 as the Iran conflict turns eight months old today. Our roadmap begins with the AI boom's earnings impact, fueling a record quarter for SK Hynix on memory product demand and AI power needs, boosting G-Vernova as it raises its revenue forecast again. We'll keep an eye on that stock, though. I saw it may have turned around. We also have Sam Altman with those renewed AI cybersecurity warnings, saying he is shocked by how many vulnerabilities he is seeing in AI systems and the ones they're finding. And Visa's saying resilient consumers still spending despite macro headwinds.

1:45This is the Fed prepares to announce its latest interest rate decision. That'll be a bit later this afternoon. Let's begin with the AI trade continuing to rebound. SK Hynix and GE of Renova getting a boost from their respective quarterly results. Kospi up six, almost seven overnight, Jim, is constructive for some. Yeah, so the way this is playing out is that there's initial levels of skepticism that is just so deep that you can be watching, as I was, the SK Hynix news come out, and people just not buying it, people selling it down, people selling it down. And then they just say, listen, we're going to buy as many shares as we can.

2:20We think that things are very, very undervalued. And frankly, you just come back and you say, well, why am I selling it? And then the stock goes up. GE Vinova stock has the same pattern, then goes up as people study the release, and then goes back down again. I will argue vociferously that that's the wrong pattern for GE Vinova, and the right pattern is SK Hynix, which just continue to go up, up, up. But what happens here is that there are a lot of people who are looking for excuses still to sell these, Carl. And when you see them, what you say is, okay, this is political. GE Vinova worried about data centers being built.

2:56There's been no cancellations whatsoever. Yeah, well, you know, the call's been going on as well. I want to make sure there's some things that may or may not have been said that have perhaps dampened some expectations in some way or other. Because that stock was looking up, as you know, and has come down. That's why I mentioned that at the open of the show. Oh, absolutely. As a result, perhaps, of some stuff on the call or just what you're talking about, Jim, but we'll certainly clarify. I mean, look, there's a lot of ways to be able to paint anything negatively right now. If you're paying GE Vernova negatively, then you have to believe the cancellations, which were nil, that no-piled political repercussions for what people are talking about with data centers, the amount of gigawatt, the unit metrics doesn't seem to matter.

3:39They went from just for gas turbines, gigawatt, 7.4 in the third quarter of 2025, to 16.6 in the third quarter of 2026. I spent a lot of time talking to Scott this morning and came away thinking this is much better than I thought. And their revenue guidance for fiscal year 26 increased to$46.5 to$47.5 billion. That's the range from what had been$45 to$46.5 billion. So that went up. Adjusted EBITDA guidance went up as well. Free cash flow guidance went to$16 to$17 billion from what had been$11.5 to$12.5 billion. If you do$17 billion on a$240 billion market value, you're talking about 14 times free cash flow.

4:16Yes, but you also have a huge buyback amount of stock that they just bought back in the last four weeks. I think the stock is down. And they also did this$9 billion deal today. Which I thought was very good because it's for electrification. A private equity-owned company. There's some DC, but one of the things that I just enjoyed talking to Scott about was I said, OK, so how much of this is Neocloud? And he said, Jimmy, we don't really traffic with Neocloud. How much of it is CoreWeave? Well, we don't really deal with companies like that. So, you know, go sell it. This is another one of those where I'm not sending a note to funeral, okay, because I'm dropping that right now, okay, because there's some things that have happened in my life.

4:56Jim, I mean, I'm just looking to see what the drawdown is from the peak. I mean, it's already suffered quite a bit. Yeah, you know, I bought some last week at 820 for the trust. But I just say that, look, if you want to hate the data center, if you really hate data center, there's one worth hating. Just go after it, because even though two-thirds of it is electrification, it has the stink of data centers. Well, what about, all right, but Vertiv is going to be up nicely this morning. That's another one you can hate. And if you hate data centers, you can make the same argument. I'm just making the case that here's two companies.

5:25Vertiv shares have been in a significant downtrend again. That is a great quarter. But Vertiv, I'm going to have them on tomorrow night. But here's the problem. These things are hated. Now, David, some of them are hated. Well, it doesn't look that hated right now, Jim. That's called a bad chart, David. By the way, the Q4 guide, the midpoint of the Q4 guide is 225. Street was at 220. So the Q4 guide is not some kind of blowout. No, but OK. Absolutely true. Onvertive. Absolutely true. Not a blowout. But I just think that your expectations were that you were going to start to see cracks, that they're going to say, you know what, we can't be as certain because of Election Day coming, or we can't be as certain because we're dealing with Iran or Nebius, whose stocks have been on fire ever since we learned that they were doing badly.

6:11These companies are at ground zero for what we are here were the 200 neoclouds that were going to be guppies. So you have this, you know, you have the guppy comment from Musk, which just crushed all these. OK. And you have the core weave 50 % blowout. Actually, they're all up since the comment, Jim. Well, the guppy comment was that was when you had to buy the guppies. You had to put them in the bucket. You put them in the pond. They became frogs, and they're having a time of their damn lives. And that's what I am saying about guppies. I thought tadpoles became. Well, as it is, I went to. Guppies just stay guppies.

6:52I was from Indian guys. I was never a boy scout. No, but actually, it's kind of interesting that Musk may have called the bottom. Well, that's my point. Hey, by the way, I said to Strazak, I said, so, I mean. At least for now. Now, when you're dealing with what, you know, like, you know, you got Musk there. I mean, he was talking about veins and, you know, remember he was talking about veins and blades? They're not doing well. I mean, so what's going on between you and Musk? He goes, well, I don't know. Next week we'll have a good photo opportunity. We'll spend a lot of time together trying to figure out veins and...

7:21This is Strasik you're talking about. Yeah, he's not... Obviously, this is a key part of their business is making the turbines that make the natural gas plants work. Right, but they're partners. I had thought that Musk was on his own, but they're partners. So I'm just saying that Musk threw a couple of grenades, the guppy grenade, and you had to buy, buy, buy. Now, there was a 15 percent problem, we know, with debt, right? Unsecured debt of core weave. Is that what you're referring to? But, you know, if the First National Bank of Jensen would stop buying steaks and buy the debt, you know, you'd have that core weave up.

7:57I'm glad you brought that up because we have an updated map of the circularity in AI funding. Have you seen this one lately? Remember we showed it earlier in the year, which was already fairly complex, but it got updated as of the 26th. So that circle in the middle is NVIDIA and OpenAI and Anthropic and Oracle. It's getting more difficult to read. Well, I'll tell you, when someone asked me last night, my father asked me, What do you think about Anthropoc? I think it could be the most profitable company in the world other than SpaceX. So, you know what? I want to be in that graph, David. You see the upper left side?

8:33A lot of companies do. And by the way, I know, I assume Broadcom's in there now as well. If you're not in that, you know what you are, your Kraft Heinz. The residual value guarantee that they have for the 63 billion that the SPV, the established Northstar, will be issuing to fund the purchase of all of those chips from Broadcom and Google. People have gotten tired of buying food, and they want second rate. So I sell them all the Boston Scientific they want. Sold to you, which is, by the way, located not in Boston, but in Marlboro. You wanted to go to Boston Scientific already? You want to get away from AI?

9:08I'm just saying that I'm sick and tired of people saying you've got to be diversified into things that aren't that good. Okay, maybe get lucky with GE Healthcare today. But these companies are great companies. They were doing really well. And we turned on them. We turned on them. And I find myself thinking, what am I turning to exactly? So you're not a believer in the idea that price leads fundamentals. I mean, there's a nice chart today looking at the NASDAQ in 2000. By the time JDSU finally warned, stock was down like 70%. Well, it was just don't sell us. And it became just don't sue us. I'm talking about a company that had nothing that we needed.

9:46We didn't need their stuff in the end. I'm talking about warehouses of stuff. Okay? But I listened to Morgan Brand this morning. We've got warehouses, and they're filled with stuff that we need for data centers. And e-commerce needs three times as much warehouse space. That was a good interview by Morgan. You had to be up at 520. I don't recommend that. But I watch Karen Cho. Yeah, great. I don't watch Cherry anymore because I've found a new medicinal quality thing that works for me. What's that? What? What? It's a magnesium uptaker. Oh, nice. So I've been missing cherry. Oh, you have? You've been missing our global colleagues.

10:26Got it. I found the cherry thing. I called that Heinecks double. I called that Heinecks double. And I am welcome in Korea. My book is selling in Korea. The number one market for my book is not U.S., it's Korea. No kidding? Yeah. Wow. In the original English, or you have it translated? No, no, I translate it. You speak Korean. I just got a new Chinese title. It's a new Chinese title. just loves regime on the car. It does. Loves regime. I'm sure there's a whole cohort that would love your time to book in Korea. Look, I am ready to go. I'll stay my own way. Maybe you got some advice on what they should be doing with their domestic auto manufacturing business, which is producing so many more cars than they need.

11:06Well, but they're our colleagues. In China. Yeah, they're our colleagues. It's a frenemy. No, it's just an enemy. No, I'm saying that you can go and you can buy McDonald's. You can buy a stop at McDonald's. Wendy's. Yeah. Well, Wendy's today, you're lucky there. But I'm saying the diversification trade that takes us into things that aren't doing that well because we want to be diversified sticks in my craw. Because GE Vernova is an incredible company, a growth company that had a triple B. I feel like I was sitting here a couple of weeks ago and you were saying something different than that. You were saying keep an eye open for all these opportunities because this other thing's not working now.

11:48Well, I was saying that we had to worry about Corwin. That's true. But I refuse to use that stupid bird in wherever because we don't have coal mines anymore and birds aren't in there. We have things called detectors. You're talking about the canary in the coal mine being Corwin. I'm done with that. Let's just retire that. Coal's a new cat. Let's even retire something. You were always an animal rights activist. Oh, man, I was. Except what you had to say yesterday about the baby seals. That was terrible. And I was a member of Greenpeace. I backed that, whatever, that attack on whatever that was.

12:22Greenpeace. I'm for Greenpeace. I was also a shop steward. Were you like the guy in Seinfeld who liked Elaine who was out on the boat there? And I helped close J.P. Stevens with a labor strike. Dating myself here. And I called a wildcat strike, and I lost a job there, too. So I am very pro-union. It's incredible. The life you lived before you sat down here. Amazing. Tenth and P in Sacramento, single best place to sleep in your car other than Rancho Seco nuclear power plant, where the police said, just stay there. You can sleep there all you want. You're Homer Simpson. The nuclear power plant. When we come back, we'll set the stage for today's Fed meeting and the decision, the road ahead for rates.

13:00Take a look at the pre-market. We'll get to Hood and Visa, Stellantis, and whether Jim likes it or not, we'll get to Wendy's and J. Mike 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. Vantage Score safely broadens access to the credit economy and brings 5 million mortgage-ready borrowers into the market.

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14:27may impact your trading. Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com slash market update podcast or find Schwab Market Update wherever you get your podcasts. The Fed slated to release its decision on rates today, 2 p.m. Eastern. Policymakers widely expected to stand pat, take a wait and see approach. Markets also waiting to hear what the Fed might say at his 2.30 presser about the road ahead. Be sure to watch our special coverage of the decision beginning at 1 p.m. Eastern time. Jim, it's his fourth meeting now, and we'll see what kind of things he says about December, if anything.

15:03Well, I think he's going to say, look, I raised it by a quarter, and we already have had kind of a big slowdown. I know he's worried about whether he could really slow down housing work, but it's not a slowdown enough. And I think he'll say, look, we're not ready yet for another hike, but we will hike, and we will hike, and we will hike. Because the working person must be helped. The savings of the working person are not going to be able, under his watch, are not going to be diminished. That's what he's going to say. Okay. Okay? That's a radical damn view I just proposed. It is, but I got a lot on my plate, my friend.

15:43I didn't know you were jammed. It does not really include the Fed. How did I know you were jammed? I'll try to get back to you when your plate's a little more clean. Thank you. I appreciate that. We are getting PCE tomorrow. Headline 3-6, I think, is the consensus. Core 3-1. Mortgage apps today. We actually got a gang for the first time in a couple months. Look, I think that we have to do something in housing because when you see some of these numbers of companies that deal with housing, they're so, like, the floor decors of the world. Or, you know, when you look at how Brad Jacobs' company is doing.

16:14Well, yeah, you pointed that out yesterday. when we were also talking about Whirlpool and just how housing, and we always talk about how housing punches above its weight because, of course, it does enable, conceivably, in a strong housing market, the purchase of all these other goods from companies that aren't necessarily involved with housing. Right. Although roofing is a part of housing, so that does get you back to Brad Jacobs. And that stock is not done. PPG had a good number. They did, but Lenox today, down six pre-market. That was a good example. It's just the housing bit, but look, I think WARS, Look, that's a collateral damage of preserving purchasing power of people who make$40 ,000 or$60 ,000, whom he represents.

16:54I think a lot of people, when I mention that, I think people just say, you know what, that's just a Potemkin Village view of this man. I think this man is more about what's happened in history. And when you have a country that has purchasing power diminished for that cohort, what happens to a democracy? That's where he is. Later this afternoon, we're going to hear from the Treasury Secretary as well. Brian Sullivan will have a post-decision exclusive with Besson at 4 p.m. Eastern Time as the trade deficit for September, at least, largest since March of 25, $135 billion trade deficit. We'll get Kramer's Mad Dash in the opening bell in a couple of minutes.

17:51This episode is brought to you by Schwab Market Update, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Schwab Market Update, an original podcast from Charles Schwab, provides an information-packed daily market preview on stock updates, U.S. and global economic news, monetary policy decisions, and key results and statistics that may impact your trading. Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com slash market update podcast or find Schwab Market Update wherever you get your podcasts. Computers are getting smarter, Silicon Valley's getting weirder, and AI is taking over. At least that's what everyone keeps telling us.

18:28Welcome to Machine Gods, a new NPR podcast that will be your field guide to the AI-powered future. We're veteran tech journalists with front row seats to the industry. And twice a week, we'll make sure you get smarter about AI. So you know what's real, what's hype, and what might come next. Listen to Machine Gods from NPR on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

18:53Let us get to a mad dash, a little less than nine minutes before we start trading here at the New York Stock Exchange on what Jim and I like to call hump day. Robinhood reports earnings. I believe Vlad Tenev will be joining us later in the broadcast. Stop looking down, Jim. What are your thoughts? David, I'm shocked. I'm shocked to find that gambling is going on here. Who? Vlad Tenev? Because I've got to tell you something. When I looked at the makeup of their book of business, it was not about IRAs, my friend. It was much more about crypto and options. Very little equities. $120 million in equities out of a total of$1.4 billion.

19:31By the way, they had a huge amount of net income of sweep income. I wonder whether when do we get the agents? Will they follow his cash and take it back to where they are? I did not like this quarter. I will tell you this, though. This is libertarianism. If you want to take your money and burn it in the incinerator, not unlike Lem in the classic Shield episode, I don't know. I did not like the mix of business. But remember, Vlad is libertarian. And I like that. I like that you have every right to do whatever you want with your money. Yep. But I felt that there was too much crypto. But, you know, you don't want to be linked to crypto.

20:10I think that, well, when it's going down. And there was just a huge amount of options. And, David, we want people to save. We do? Well, really? Because it feels like they're not doing that. Well, that's why I suggested that we go back and look at. They're spending, man. They are spending. What are you writing? Oh, Casablanca. Just so people know exactly what I'm talking about. No, I know. I know.

20:39I came for the waters. You're good. But Mr. Rick, this is the desert. I was misinformed. All right, we've got an opening bell about seven minutes from now. Don't forget, you can catch us anytime, anywhere. Listen to and follow the Squawk in the Street opening bell podcast. I think the only way through this is to go find all these issues and fix them. In fact, I think we'll need new ways to fix them. It's maybe too hard to patch every bug one by one across the entire supply chain that we're all dependent on. I find myself shocked at just how many vulnerabilities these AI systems are finding and what it's going to take.

21:15Just the incredible, the Herculean effort that it's going to take to get ahead of this. Open AI is the CEO, Sam Altman, yesterday at Oracle AI World warning about AI-related cyber dangers. the power of AI systems to find vulnerabilities. And we were talking off camera yesterday, David, about just the constant refreshing of software versions to patch things in real time. This is a number one concern, I think, of boards and CEOs everywhere. I mean, we certainly can talk about financial services, and we have in terms of, and I've asked many of the CEOs that come on, certainly the regional banks, are they prepared?

21:52It's got to be top of mind for everybody. And you can hear it from Altman. Now, by the way, they could be ultimately a beneficiary of making those same tools that could defend. This was a good—I'm glad you brought that up, Jim, because there's this notion that eventually the labs will be able to do the cyber work. And if 27 will be a reversal of what we've seen in cyber protection names this year. I find that what's happened is that a lot of the vulnerabilities are actually known to the companies, but felt that the vulnerabilities would never be sussed out. Well, exploitive. But now you can have a swarm of agents that can do it almost instantaneously.

22:30You are at risk all the time in a way that you are not. I think that is a fair point that Altman is making. It's certainly one I've heard from many others. And we've all got to be aware, frankly, and how quickly this can get fixed to the extent it can. And will they ultimately be a beneficiary, as we've indicated, whether OpenAI and Anthropic, for example, will actually, their models are the ones that will defend. And by the way, you want real world examples, guys. We talked briefly. You mentioned Boston Scientific, which does nothing but go down. They got hit by a cyber attack that they are still dealing with the ramifications of for their business.

23:07And it is figured prominently in terms of the discussion around the quarter. Just take a look at that stock. Yeah, they cut the guy in again today. Yeah, it's pretty bad cut. Netronic apparently became some share. But that is a real world example right there of an impact on one particular company. But we're talking about more, there's worries about more catastrophic kinds of things. Right. And look, I both asked Tom McKinnon from Okta last night, George Kurtz on Monday. You guys had a good interview with George Kurtz on Friday. And they're both, hey, listen, we've got to get time. It's time. If you get us in, we will be able to give you time to deal with what it is.

23:46In other words, no one's saying, listen, don't worry about it. They're saying, listen, we need to slow it down. We can find time to be able to figure out how to do the patches, which I don't find very reassuring. But it's better than just saying, hey, let's not win. But don't you think that explains some of the social pushback? I think that people don't fully understand it yet because we haven't had our bank accounts empty. Print out all your stuff. I'm not kidding. No, I know. Put it on hard paper. I'm not sure it's going to help, but it can't hurt.

24:36We don't need no stinking passwords. Let's get the opening. There's the bell at the big board on Wall Street today. It's Blackstone Secured Lending Fund celebrating 5th anniversary of listing. At the NASDAQ and Times Square, Forge Nano, a chip equipment and battery tech company celebrating going public via SPAC. And at CBO in Chicago, it's PeakBot, a platform connecting retail traders with automated trading technology. I wonder whether you can sweep with that. I mean, I think that, by the way, the guys that I deal with in cyber, they say, yeah, everyone's going to end up sweeping, Jim. No one.

25:10Right now, it's going to be like using a credit card. Like at the beginning, when you started the web, you didn't want to give your credit card. Well, you didn't want to give an agency. But in the end, you're not going to keep any cash in those tents. You'll move it. Is the most important ticker to watch at the open here SK Hynix? I think absolutely, because that is the one that has the most predictive value to our market. When SK Hynix has been up, you'll find that there's only two cases where the market did not rally off of SK Hynix, which is why I keep saying that is the most important stock.

25:41And that one was, like I said, it was haltingly going up. It was not just exploding higher, no matter what they said on the call. But obviously the conclusion was the stock is incredibly undervalued. We're going to buy back a lot of stock, and it's for real, which is why I want to buy GE Vernot. I know that there's some number that somebody found. This is very typical. Right now we want to find the chink. We want to find the chink. You want to explain, David, a chink, and then sell. And I'm thinking that maybe today is the day because of SK Hynix. We overlook whatever change is going on. Well, I mean, GE Vranova in the pre-market was looking higher, and it has moved lower.

26:17We mentioned this, of course. And you have the stat. Well, we're looking through the call to just try to identify things in GE Vranova that may have impacted people's perception of the future. And if you're going to think about it, it probably has to do with some comments around contracted gas capacity, in which management kind of talked about 2027 quarterly profiles, which they said are more likely to feel like the third quarter and fourth quarter than they may have felt in the first quarter and second quarter. That would point to a slower pace than the first half's growth. Signing run rate, I guess is what we'd call it.

26:55But again, things are still growing, Jim. Nonetheless, maybe that's what you would look for as a sign that maybe people said no. will stay away for now. Well, I just still, I go back to what Scott was telling me, which is that the demand is, frankly, it's no let-up whatsoever, no cancellations. The backlog is incredibly long. The pricing is very, very strong. I don't know. I mean, what he told me does not jive with the stock. But again, if you decide you want to hit something negative, there's always going to be something negative. I mean, there's always something negative. There's always something to potentially focus on.

27:33You know, they also did this$9 billion deal. It is a private company, private equity-owned, a company called Trench Group. And they are talking about it, buying it at about 13 times. What they see is a 2028 EBITDA before synergies. They do expect to close it late next year. They're going to fund it with about$4.5 billion of new debt. their leverage ratio stays very low, below one times adjusted EBITDA. But yeah, Trench Group apparently spent more than 130 years as a company doing high-voltage grid technology and executing on that stuff that I don't understand, of course. Well, again, I want to get the ratio to be more of the rebuilding of the grid because of reshoring, and I do want to make it to be about the answer.

28:26Well, although Trench is big in Europe and Asia as well. It's not just a U.S. store. When I mentioned to Scott, I said, well, listen, how about the states that may be doing a ban? He said, how about the countries that are desperate for our product? Now, the stock was up very big. There are people who maybe want to take profits. And, you know, look, there's a lot of people who simply say, wait till the election. I think that this is a buy. I'm not, I just think it's a buy. I'm just thinking of the cadence of sequential guidance, Jim. I mean, G.I.V. Renova is one example. but the other day it was LRCX.

28:58Today it's NXP, right? NXP, a lot of auto. The Q4 guide's not. NXP, a lot of auto. And even you have said this idea of last good quarter. You brought up a couple times. Well, yeah, I mean, I think that when we look at what Barsch is going to say, I think you're going to say, you know what, it's going to make autos harder to buy. Autos, NXP, sell NXP. Because people are just making these guilt by association, of which, by the way, you don't get that if you pick Micron. Well, I mean, the good news out of SK Hynex was these long-term agreements for customers that are going to make up more than half of the capacity next year, the following year.

29:38We do want that stability in pricing, don't we? Yes, but I would tell you, Micron, when I spent a lot of time with Sanjay Marotra, his long-term agreements are far better, far superior than SK Hynex. And he's actually trying to keep some back because he genuinely believes he doesn't want to lock in what looked like low prices when it can be even higher. And he's going to have a lot more capacity. He's building the biggest plant in America, in Clay, New York. So if you like SK Hynex, you should love Micron. Okay? There it is. I'm giving you Micron. I'm calling it a blue plate special for you, David.

30:12Really? It's a blue plate special. Okay. You know, when I was at Goldman, there'd be something I really didn't like. I said, blue plate special. When I got there, I was really stupid. I said, oh, I'll put that one down. And then David Tepper would say, you know, you are a first-class idiot. And who are you? He seems like such a nice guy, Tepper. I love Tepper so much. I saw him the other night, last week. I mean, he didn't know me from anywhere, but I said hi. Well, that was nice. Very nice, very pleasant fellow. I went Saturday's table. I can't imagine him calling you an idiot. It's a Super Bowl with my friends.

30:44He says, what are you guys doing here? He goes, oh, I'm sorry, Jim.

30:49There's a few names in consumer, Jim. We got Brinker. We got Cake. Etsy. As we mentioned, J. Mike earlier. Yeah, J. Mike was, you know, I am first-class disappointed with J. Mike because you had your man who started, you know, did a great job at Wingstop, Charlie Morrison, and he really didn't deliver, whereas Kevin Hockman is a delivery machine. I mean, those of us who go to, you know, when you go to a Brinker property, shall we say? Yes. I'm sorry, the number wasn't that good. That's a nice rebound. Yeah. It really wasn't that good. Comps three-ish, I think. Revenue 10. I thought they could blow it away, but I think it's too soon.

31:30But that's a nice start. A lot of people felt the stock was overpriced. When it came public, right? By Blackstone, right? And Charlie didn't think that, but the stock has been not great. It's been not great stock. Put a Brinker's chart, a two-year Brinker chart. You're going to see what Kevin Hockman's done. And a lot of what he's done, by the way, has been about alcohol. He's got the best margies in the world for five smackers. And that three for me that he advertises, a lot of he switches advertisers and a lot from the NFL to these various socials. Five-dollar margaritas. Although, on a year to date, put Brinker up against Cheesecake Factory.

32:10Cheesecake, people don't realize it. 15 % cops. Cheesecake is not because of GOP-1 and people feel like they can eat more. Cheesecake has a natural and organic menu that people don't realize. They ought to change the name. Almost a double on the year. They ought to change it to Rotetta Tribe. Did you see the Rotetta 2? Did you see those numbers for the lily? Better than Mugovie? No, I didn't see the latest numbers from Lilly. It doesn't seem to be having any impact on the stock price, at least this morning, Jim. No, it doesn't. And that's surprising. But I guess people just say, listen, it's still one more that they beat.

32:46We're talking Lilly now. I'm trying to hit a lot of stocks. Say again? I'm trying to hit a lot of stocks. You are. I've not hit Wingstop yet. And we appreciate it, Jim. We really do. Well, it's a count. It's like a clock. Thank you. It's like a clock. Wingstop finally broke its downtrend. I'm glad to hear about that. Wait, we're moving from Lily to Wingstop. Cake to Lily to Wingstop. I'm trying to present our viewers with as many little tiny pieces of information as we possibly can. I'm only going to talk about Google from now on. Actually, I just want to sit here and talk about a company that's still not public, which is Anthropic.

33:22That's all I want to do the entire show. Between 9, 38, and 10 is Google. 10 is Anthropic. I could make an argument that a$4 trillion company deserves some time. Yeah. Four trillion. 3.9, to be fair. 3.92 trillion. How about that company that's backing YouTube videos? I thought that made a lot of sense. I'm sorry, which company? You can back YouTube videos. It was a company that ranked. Oh, the one yesterday. Yes. Yeah, where you could make, what was it? You could bet. Could you bet on them? Future revenue flow of content creators on YouTube. Yeah, it was kind of like when you could bet on double.

33:56They're all going to be extremely wealthy. Who came up with that? You can bet on players that are going to end up. Let's not start a show on YouTube. let's start a company that bets on other people's shows on YouTube. Yes, that's exactly right. I want to put that to Kieran Goodwin. That's fascinating. He introduced me to the idea. You know, Kieran, he introduced me to the idea of buying shares. People buy shares from players in the Dominican Republic. Yes, yes. We talked about this yesterday. I think it was Vernon Davis that's come to me who sold his shares of himself. Remember him, the tight end from the San Francisco 49ers?

34:23He's fantastic. Yeah, yeah. That was like a thing for a while. Did he buy himself back? He went public. Did he do a buyback? I don't know what happened. his future earnings. I don't know how Vernon's doing these days. I haven't checked in on them. How about Seagate? We haven't touched Seagate. No, let's do it. Momentary glitch in a moment. There was, on the conference call, there was a question about near-term pricing, and the company I felt was dismissive. And Dave Mosley's terrific, but I thought he was dismissed. The analyst didn't like that. There it is. By the way, this is a couple of weeks now below the 200-day, which it had not done all year long, obviously.

35:03I think people just want them to simply do nothing but stand there and buy back stock, and that's what they don't want to do. Meanwhile, GE Vranova is sinking like a stone, whereas, how about this? GE Healthcare, which has been just toxic, is up for today. You know, these various GE spinoffs, GE Aerospace is bad. Yes. GE Vranova is suddenly bad. Well, bad, I mean, let's not— No, I'm telling you, I want you to buy GE Vranova. In the totality of what was accomplished by Mr. Culp, it was amazing. But I'm trying to think back. When they did, when they split, what was considered the best of the three?

35:39GE Aerospace. Aerospace, for sure. And the one GE. And it still is considered many ways. Oh, yeah. I criticized Larry Culp. I said, you know what, that GE, that for Nova thing, that's never going to get a credit rating. Well, Nova was, I mean, that's like concludes all, it includes all, some remember that deal that ML did? that was just, what are you doing buying this French gas turbine company? It had offshore wind. GEV was the biggest surprise, and it's obviously been an enormous win because of the AI. But I just think, I think GE Vinova, I think we're going to look back and we're going to say, why did we sell that?

36:14And by the way, they saved the whales. You know, they're out of the... They're out of the wind. Did you think that the Rathacon were? I did, I did. Maybe the favorite of them. But it's not clear. that windmills impact whales. It's not unclear. They probably don't impact birds any more than many other things do, sadly. Scott Scherzinski knows that our president is not a problem. We don't like wind in this country. No. But I think, Chief or Nob, are you going to let it fall? Okay, I'm a buyer. I bought some for the trust at 820. I'll buy some more if I'm a liar. Yeah, so far you keep losing money because you've been buying it right from the beginning of the day.

36:50So, yeah. You're buying it higher than here. My basis is like 300. Oh, for the charitable trust. Yeah. Oh, good. I'm not allowed to earn any stocks. It's a great thing. I'm aware. It's a great thing. It's like a value. So you can add in profit to the charitable trust when it goes public in the next, let's call it, three weeks from now? I would love to. I think in profit is a great company. At what value? Two trillion. You'd buy it at two. I think the thing is just making a fortune. It's making a fortune. It's an amazing company. Detroit is an incredible company. I mean, look, I'd deviate. We're only two days removed from the dropping of the S1.

37:26It is still something that everybody is focused. What are you using right now? Are you using Claude right now? I use both. I use both Claude and chat. Would you buy with existing cash, or would you sell some stuff to fund it? I have 15 % cash, and I really want to put some of it to work. Okay, I'm going to mention the stock, and then I'm going to be delayed again. I want to try it for my annual meeting. I want to own SpaceX so badly. I think, you know, on the Corning call yesterday, and Corning had a great quarter, but the last question was asking about the problems, maybe, about rural, and will the Verizons and the ATT still need a lot of fiber because they're going to get smoked by Starlink.

38:05Yes. And they didn't have a good answer for that. No, and they may not, but that said, Jim, the real opportunity with SpaceX is not about them offering wireless connectivity on a terrestrial United States. 100%. But remember, if there's a chink, if there's a chink in any of these stories, people exploit the chink. They may. But I mean, the bigger, the$28.5 trillion TAM that they talked about in their S1, 22.5 of it was about enterprise AI. But maybe Verizon and ATT, which have gotten a lot of government money to be able to expand to rural, maybe they stop expanding. And that's because Starlink is so much more efficient.

38:42That may be true. Right. And that's going to hurt. That may be true. I'm a big believer in corny. I want to buy it. Again, I want to buy it for the trust. But the ultimate reward for SpaceX shareholders will come with orbital data centers. Obviously, he's going to put this thing together with Tesla. He's going to try. We know that. Which is, what, 50 bucks in a week or two? And then what that resulting company can actually do in terms of pursuing the broader opportunity that is far beyond just. I mean, that'll be part of the strategy. I totally agree. Somehow, you know, having a large portion, I guess, of the population also have connectivity with Starlink.

39:18But it's going to be a lot more than that. Well, one of the things that bothers me about Seagate going down, and really they weren't being arrogant, but they were saying, look, do you know that our main business is going to be robots? That robots are going to need, this is the same, like CPUs, robots are going to need so many disk drives. We're not even concerned about our business, what's the tone of it. Are we only going to buy U.S. robots? I wonder if it'll be the same as with Chinese cars. That we will not allow any to be important. Those are Manchurian candidates. Because the Chinese are the leaders in robotics.

39:49Go jump in a lake. I actually do enjoy jumping in lakes, as you will know. That was from the Manchurian candidates. It's an open-water swimmer. What are you talking about? Yeah, I love it. I wish I could. It's a little cold now, unfortunately. Angela Lansbury. Unless you put on a wetsuit. But I can't get out of a wetsuit anymore, Carl. I literally have to drive home in a wetsuit and have my wife pull it off of me. Did you want to wear one when you went to Exxon? Didn't they dip you in the water? He dipped me in the water. Meanwhile, I was with Chevron, and I was like, hey, man, this is the greatest place I've heard.

40:15They're like, whatever. You'll feel bigger than you've got through. I've brought the right stuff in Chevron. I had to go through a helicopter crash training. Chevron's like, whatever. Don't worry about him. You want to know who knows? Outdoors? Robbie? Mike or Sutton? Don't know. Maybe the greatest fly fisherman in America? You speak of experience. Rank number four, I think. Watch Bonds today. We're just a few hours removed from the Fed decision and the presser. Stocks hanging in there, though, going into what is expected to be a benign meeting. 7730. Don't go anywhere. I think the foundation underlying that more than anything is employment.

40:54You know, anyone in this country who wants a job for the most part has a job. And that strength of employment, despite consumer uncertainty, is delivering the strength that you're asking about and ultimately, I think, driving the strength in spending. You know, as I said, the uncertainty remains elevated, but in the context of strong employment, people have jobs, they have real wage growth, they are spending. And by the way, we see the resilience across, you know, the spending bands on our network. You know, so we've seen stability in that sense. But in terms of like how strong for how long and what the new normal is, I just think it's just too hard to tell.

41:37That's Visa's Ryan McInerney on the call last night. Stocks moving higher today a little bit. Sales up 13, volume up nine. There might have been a suggestion of some deceleration in October, Jim. Yeah. Look, if I were Kevin Warsh, I'd say, well, this is not what I want to hear. I want people to hold back a little bit because then prices come down. But what like Ryan said is totally in sync with Bank of Merck, which I think is the best data set. Mike, bring it back from MasterCard. We continue to hear it kind of across the board from those at least in the best position to assess where a consumer stands right now, which is they just keep spending.

42:14Well, it's totally in sync with job growth. But I think that there was a very good discussion with Andrew and Steve Leisman today about what Warsh would think about something like the Microsoft layoff, 60 ,000 people. Well, no, no, no. It's not 60 ,000. It's not layoffs. They gave buyout offers, and they're probably going to get hit on, I don't know what the percentage will end up being, 25%. And I think that, frankly, we're still not seeing real job loss from AI. But I do think that I understand that spending is connected with jobs, and you can get jobs aplenty for in the country. Yeah, well, the labor force is shrinking.

42:54A lot of retirements, attrition. A lot of retirements, but no immigration either. I always wanted to work at that. There's nobody coming into the country looking for a job. Say again? At one point, I was trying to work at Microsoft. You were? Yeah, first started. Okay, that's very nice. But as Steve Bomber told me, Jimmy, you have no skill set. I said, well, that's never stopped me. I tried to get a job at Slumberjit. You could have covered it. Remember, who covered Microsoft? Rick Sherland. Remember that? Oh, yes. This is Mark Sherland. He is smart. We will get Stop Trading with Jim in a minute.

43:24Let's get to Jim and Stop Trading. You know, when I see a CEO come in the open market and buy, I always take notice, especially because, like, I don't know if you remember Matt Murphy when he came in with Marvell, and he bought a ton at 70, and it was, like, the greatest trade in the world. Well, Julie Sweat bought a ton of Accenture, of her company,$3 million,$246 open market. And this company's Julie Sweet, I'm sorry. And it's made a very big comeback. And I think that this is one to watch because I think people are calling them again. You call Julie. Hey, by the way, Julie Sweet came on when things were bad.

43:59Comes on every quarter. She comes on every quarter. And that is to be applauded. And I think this company is doing well. I have service now on. I think they would argue that they're doing similar great things. Well, Accenture conceivably is seen now as a beneficiary of helping enterprises figure out how to diffuse AI in the organization. Right, and I think if I were worried about how many holes there are in patches, I would call George Kurtz, I would call Todd McKinnon, I'd call Julie Sweet, and I'd say, listen, I've got to know. So they went from being a company that I think people just said, maybe they're being limited to being one of the hottest companies there is.

44:31Congratulations to Julie Sweet for coming on when things were bad. It's had a great month, that stock, that's for sure. Well, it's great. Yeah, not an insignificant insider buy. What about tonight? Okay, so I have Bill McDermott, who, a legendary insider, buy about$50 below here. Canceled the sell program. Bought a lot of stock when it was allowed to. That was great. Scott Boatwright, I hope this is the term for Chipotle. It's obviously very hard to turn the restaurants right now. And Jim Fish, he didn't make the numbers. Well, guess why? Well, how about fuel costs? Fuel costs, they're running higher, maybe.

45:07Decent. I don't know if you knew that. That's a good group of guests you got tonight, Jim. Well, I work really hard. I know you do. Okay. I know you do. And I try to steal everything you have. Oh, you succeed. Well, free market. Take it all from me. It's free gambling. Yeah. All right. You're the best. Thank you. I would give you a kiss, but it's the same kind of thing. Yeah, it's kind of gross. Jim, we'll see you tonight, Mad Money, 6 p.m. Eastern Time. You've been listening to the opening bell on CNBC's Squawk on the Street. 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.

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