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tv   Closing Bell  CNBC  March 15, 2024 3:00pm-4:01pm EDT

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the s&p 500 aboutthe same. and the nasdaq composite down 128 points or .8%. >> surat, great to have you with us. thank you for being with us. we will see you again soon. >> thank you for watching "power lunch." >> and "closing bell" starts right now. welcome to "closing bell." i'm in for scott wapner. this make or break hour begins with stocks struggling to keep their ahead above water for the week against the undertow of a bond selloff. the s&p 500 on the way to the seventh down day in the last ten. you see it off about half a percent now. though without much damage done in all. the index off only fractionally for the week at this point. and less than 2% from its record high. the ten-year treasury yield near its high for the year as the street absorbs higher than homed inflation readings in recent days, and suspense builds over the federal reserve's meeting
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and message next week. you see the ten year there at 430. small cap, russell 2000, up slightly today. off 2% for the week. we have some soft guidance from adobe. that's weighing on the software sector. pulling down the nasdaq by almost 1%. while energy shows pep on a strong run for crowd prices this week -- crude prices this week, happening on a quarterly session featuring heavy index rebalancing at the close in less than an hour, as well. which takes us to our talk of the tape. is all this churn just about an overheated market cooling off a bit after a rapid spread higher, or is it the start of what would be the first notable broad pullback in some five months? we posed this question to cic wealth executive vice president and contributor, malcolm, welcome. >> good to be here. >> we're up 16 of 19 weeks in the s&p. haven't had a 2% pullback on a closing basis in one of the
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longest stretches in history. which leads you to say, okay, we're due for some chop. on the other hand, you know, there's the argument to be made that a little more payback maybe on a valuation front, maybe sentiment and even who knows what's happening with rates. so how are you viewing the market action recentli? >> yeah, i'm wondering if investors aren't starting to realize that it's not a foregone conclusion that powell is looking at june and saying that's where the magic happens, right? i think that maybe it's finally starting to sink in that when he says we're going to be patient here, we're going to stay higher for longer, we're maybe starting to see that filter through the markets a little bit. >> even if that were the case, i guess i could counter that by saying, well, in january people thoughts it was going to be march. he kicked that out from march into the spring or summer. market took it. it was fine. the economy looked like it's holding up, earns turned higher. in other words, how make or break is a june rate cut or one soon thereafter for the market
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at this point? >> i would say it's at least make or break for the small and mid caps. if you just consider the small cap index, the russell 2000 was down. it was roaring loudly the last couple of weeks. hearing the broadening is happening, iwm was getting bought up left and right. here we are, the stocks leading are five mega cap stocks, the russell nowhere to be found. >> we had this just this little bout of outperformance by the average stock where there's the equal index to the s&p or the russell 2000. then it rolled again -- that's been fitful. tough to have that take hold. we know that, and rates seem to matter for that. the other thing that seems to matter and i keep pointing this out, but super micro, this kind of moon shot tech hardware company that's big ai play all the sudden, was large holding in the russell 2000 for a while. really big relative to crypto play another one. super micro's going to the s&p,
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it closed. it doesn't come out of the russell 2000, but is the russell today what we thought it was in terms of its message? >> didn't think it was anything to be excited about yet simply because we don't know where we're going on rates. if you consider half the companies inside the russell aren't profitable, that means they really are impacted by interest rates, right? every quarter percent turn the fed has made in the last couple of years has really mattered to the small caps. and so to ignore that and say, you know, we can have a 50% run in small caps, for example, i think is just putting the cart way out too far in front of the horse. what we're seeing potentially is this reversion back to mega caps and also a reversion back to mega cap tech. we really have five companies that are leading the s&p right now today. >> we've got five and on a given day it's not always the same five. i think there's been a lot of different -- yesterday, microsoft up big. new high. today down a couple of percent. it just seems to be a lot of shuffling around of the deck.
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>> the two that matter, nvidia and meta, right? 80% up, 40% up, respectively. those two are half of the 8% return we've seen in the s&p. it's starting to be deja vu all over again. sounds exactly like last year where we came into 2024 saying a broadening is coming, things will change. >> yeah. we saw it in last summer, up into the june market high. and then of course in the fourth quarter until it gave way. let's bring in our contributor of nd private welt to join the conversation -- wealth to join the conversation. sha shannon, your thoughts on this? there's a case to be made that even though those handful of stocks have contributed an enormous amount to the overall index gain, it's not happening at the complete expense of everything else, right? we keep pointing out consumer cyclical's done okay until recently, industrials done okay. how as an investor are you thinking about the risk/reward outside the big ones? >> well, one of the things that
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we look at, mike, is that in this period over the course of the last several weeks we've been in a pretty much a vacuum in terms of micro data. admittedly we've had earnings reports, adobe notably reported today. when we shift from micro to macro, that's where people get a little bit anxious. and i think that when you're looking at it from the underlying earnings perspective, when you're thinking about the broadening out, the broadening out is really going to be driven by two things. it's by improving gross margins, which are going to improve the potential for earnings growth, and it's also going to be the potential for multiple expansion. unfortunately, you know, some of these stocks have the vulnerability, if you will, for multiple compression. we're not seeing that in this period because people are going back to mega cap tech over the course of the last couple of days because they're looking at the macro data and they're just not sure what it's telling them about the outlook. and so from my perspective, the way we look at it at new berger
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berman is looking back on the fundamentals, looking at the earnings potential, looking at the opportunity to potentially see earnings growth out of the broader part of the market, it doesn't mean that these technology companies can't grow their earnings and that they're not going to continue to. but is the premium that's been attributed to them justified from a multiple perspective, or are there ways that you can start to put some of that cash that you may have on the sidelines to work in the equity market and things that are modestly more attractive. >> i mean, i guess the question then, shannon, is do we have an economy that's going to underwrite so to speak the earnings growth expectations that are now getting baked? arguably, at least into neighborhood forecasts if not -- into forecasts if not valuations. >> it would appear we still have the support for that. at least if i look at the underlying and the way we're looking at things like pmi data. sure, we're not as strong as we could be. but i would say that if we were
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significantly stronger in terms of the go-forward outlook for the next six to nine months, that really could potentially take the fed off the table. and i do believe that the fed needsto move here. i think that despite the fact that when we look at financial conditions maybe they're not as restrictive as they should be given the increase in rates that we've had, but they are restrictive in parts of the economy. if that starts to spread, that restrictiveness in credit for small/medium-size businesses, the restrictiveness in the lower income consumer, that could derail this economic growth. so i think that if we were too hot we would take the fed off the table, and this really creates a scenario for them to stay in the game. >> so malcolm, if you think that maybe the broadening trade is not something you want to bet on in a big way and, you know, we narrow this sort of leadership, maybe you don't have the valuation support, do you think that you would want to become broadly defensive? do you feel like we have to get hedged out? is this rally on shakier ground than the charts would make it
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seem? >> i'm concerned that this is similar again to last year where we didn't think the market was going to perform nearly as well as it did. chatgpt shows up and changes things little bit. nvidia is going in a similar direction. it's taken the market by storm in a way that's making me say you don't necessarily want to be sitting out of this market waiting on it to start raining. so i think maybe it's the time to be looking at sectors of the market that you feel are strong and dare i say maybe even recession proof like potentially cybersecurity, that's one that i love, that i feel like cybersecurity spending for at least large enterprises and government agencies is nondiscretionary at this point, right. so maybe we got a little bit of conflicting data out of palo alto and crowd strike, one having the time of their lives and the other telling us to prepare for a storm. i think cybersecurity is a place that you could go that irrespective of what direction the market decides to move, by the end of this year it's probably going to hold up pretty well. >> not specifically cybersecurity, but software in
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general is under a lot of pressure today. that adobe softer guidance has been an issue. you are seeing things like service now and other software companies suffer, as well. you own adobe, do you think it's a change in the story? they're now getting recast in a way as a company that might be not quite positioned well for the ai world. >> yeah. i wish that i had waited a little bit to buy it, frankly. i thought i was buying the dip when i initially got into it. i would love to step in and buy it now. i think it's probably going to fall a little bit more simply because the news is going to continue to shake out there. i think to your point the concerns over their text-to-image competitors from openai, for example, i think are a little bit overblown, right. adobe has a pretty decent moat if you consider the fact that their tools are proprietary. all of the images that they use, their cache of images, are proprietary to them. they've stepped out and said we're going to indemnify any of our large enterprise clients
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against lawsuits over copyright infringement and such. i think that it's probably a little bit overblown, but am i willing to be patient if i want to deploy new capital today and go into adobe? maybe not. >> yeah. well, it's interesting how at some point down the road we might be dealing with these companies that are saying, look, ai tools need not be a free for all. you don't want to necessarily kind of throw open with whatever open source thing you have. shannon, just give a little bit of the last word here as to whether you think you would look -- be looking to either build cash or just wait to do some buying, or in terms of waiting for some kind of a pullback broadly in the market, or is it kind of business as usual ? >> for our perspective, we believe that investors are sitting on probably outsized positions in cash, mike. i think there's this argument, you and i discussed this previously, whether this goes into longer duration bonds or whether it goes into the equity market. i think you just need to look at
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longer term allocations. and many investors are positioned less aggressively than they were, say, you know, 12 or 18 months ago because cash is an option. our belief is that cash rates are going to come down. we believe the fed is going to hike. and you know, if you wait until that second rate hike, cut, excuse me, second rate cut, then you likely missed some of the move there. i thinking about prescriptive and thinking about where to add exposure based on your long-term view is really what you should be thinking about right now. >> all right. shannon, malcolm, appreciate it. have a great weekend. all right, as investors look ahead to next week's fed decision, let's bring in seth carpenter, chief global economist at morgan stanley. good to see you. i'd love to hear your playbook going into the fed meeting. did the inflation numbers this week or, you know, this month change the picture? powell has said things don't have to get much better on inflation, but they can't get much worse if we're going to get a rate cut. >> absolutely. i think inflation numbers are clearly what everyone's talking about. i think it's worth remembering
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that, yeah, the last two prints probably above what most people were forecasting. before that, though, to the low side, and the fed famously tries to look through some of that noise to see where things are going. and i think it's also important to remember that the print for february was lower than the print for january. so it's not as though we got this signal that all the sudden inflation is turning back up and it's going to start running up. it's that there's noise. we've been saying for a while that the inflation data would be bumpy. what does jay powell try to do at the upcoming meeting? boy, i really think he -- if he had his druthers he would try to leave basically everything exactly where it is now. retain that optionality that the market seems to have, could be three, could be four cuts this year. he did say they're getting close, but he said, you know, we're not quite there yet. so i think he really does want to just stall a little while longer to make sure that things are not, in fact, going back up. >> is there a -- i assume there
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is a faction of the committee that still is not convinced that you don't have to suppress labor demand, you don't have to slow the economy more in order to be sure that inflation is heading to target. there's been a lot of talk about whether the dot plot might change as a result of some of that thinking. i guess how much might that matter if at all? >> so it's funny, i completely agree with the premise that there's a wide range of views. in fact, during the 15 years that i was at the fed, at one point i had a boss who was fond of saying that the fomc are 19 people that don't agree on the color of an orange. so it's a wide range, wide range of views. but how much does it really matter? i actually think right now it doesn't matter. one thing has become clear to me over the past couple of years, this is jay powell's fed. i think he is very effectively leading the committee through time to get to the decisions that he thinks are right. and it is also an uncertain time, so things are being made on a meeting-by-meeting basis as
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the data come in. and so if next week we have one or two or three fomc participants write down a dot plot that has four, five, six, seven rate cuts in it and we've got another couple fomc members that have one with no rate cuts in it i'm not sure that any of that matters. inthe chair will be effective -- i think the chair will be effective at corralling people to the outcome that he wants. >> he has been on the record even just last week in congress saying that they now view the risks as balance, that's their way of saying they're -- they're as attentive to risk to the economic growth picture as they are to a flare-up in inflation. where are you on the underlying strength of the economy at this point? you have seen labor market indicators roll over a little bit. and i guess the only reason you'd really worry if the fed were going to continue to be patient is if you thought it was going to make them too late to get in front of economic weakness.
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>> i completely agree with that last part. that would be the real risk. and i don't think that risk is especially big right now. i will say if we go back, you know, the past two years or whatever, the whole rate hiking cycle, it's funny to think about when the debate was hard landing versus soft landing. we were always at morgan studently in the soft land -- stanley in the soft landing category and got to the upside when it got to how last year turned out. as well, what's super remarkable, new data coming in, the census bureau, the cbo with their forecast about how big a deal immigration might be for the economy driving some of those labor markets outcomes. so the question is, you know, is something like 175, 200,000 the new normal in terms of what the economy can sustain relative to where they were before. so i think the economy's in pretty good shape. we do think things are slowing, but by no means crashing. and we saw some of that slowing in the retail sales report, for example. i think you can look to
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different corners to see places where things are slowing. but as long as we've got a solid labor market, which all the indicators are we do, it's super hard for me to see things crashing. >> is the fed focused for any particular reason do you think on how long the treasury yield curve has been inverted? it's a record for two versus ten year. it obviously hasn't been a timely recession signal. probably means next move is down on short rates. is that something that would filter into their sense that they want to get going on rate cuts? >> yeah, so i personally don't think so. i can imagine five years for now or whatever when the transcripts of the meeting come out, maybe it's this one, maybe the previous one. you'll see one, maybe two voices that reference the yield curve and sort of what it means. but my experience while i was there, my experience knowing the current set of policymakers, the yield curve isn't for them sort of a super important indicator for where things are going. there's so much about the current environment that is different than other cycles
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we've seen. i don't know why they would put much weight on the yield curve right now. >> all right. yeah. probably good news if that's the case. seth, great to get your thoughts. appreciate it. >> thank you. >> all right. seth carpenter. let's head over to christina for a look at the biggest names moving into the close. >> hi, mike. wreck it ben keyser shares are under pressure after a jury ordered the consumer goods company to pay $60 million in damages to an illinois mother. the verdict found that the company's enfamil baby formula led to the death of the woman's premature infant after failing to warn of the intestinal disease. it's not a good sign for abbott labs, sinking down over 4%. there's more lawsuits claiming abbott labs' formula also failed to warn customers of that exact same risk. reckitt down 14%. and tumbling after the quarterly revenue came out below what wall street was expecting for jabil.
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coates sounded optimistic saying this year is transitional and that revenue headwinds will be short term. so in other words, don't worry, but shares are down 18%. >> pretty big bite out of that one. thanks very much. we are just getting started. up next, doubling down on the bull case. tom lee is back. he will tell us why he's betting on the rally and one part he's especially excited about. we're live from the new york stock exchange. you're watching "closing bell."
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ceo in recent times. what can wang say in this setting that will i guess maybe properly set expectations at a time when they've just been roaring ahead? and what specifically do you expect to hear about the durability of demand? >> great questions. thanks for having me. we titled our note that we put out aipalooza. and yeah, this is the first time i think in a 25-year career of covering the space that we're going to see a tech ceo give a keynote speech in a hockey stadium. highly anticipated. what can he say? i angel lot of discussion -- i think a lot of discussion around the product roadmap. nvidia has increased the kayens at which they're bringing new products to market. that's interesting. i think there's going to be a discussion around the ecosystem that's building around their ai offerings. so it's not just about hardware. we're not considering nvidia a chip company anymore. a systems company, a software company, a networking company. so i think there's going to be a
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lot of discussion around, again the concept of an ai ecosystem that nvidia has been busy building, and we're looking forward to the roadmap ahead. >> and what's your sense of what, you know, the buy side, what professional investors are most attuned to in terms of feeling like the move in the stock has been justified? as many have said, it's become less expensive as it's roared ahead because the earnings estimates are up so much. but it would seem as if you still need reassurance here that that trajectory is going to continue. >> yeah, i think it's going to be about that ecosystem. as revenues have gone up, so have margins, right? there's a lot of software going into the, you know, kind of the sales that nvidia has been doing, they're establishing cloud services, they're establishing concepts like ai factories which include hardware and software. and so i think buy side professional investors will be listening closely to kind of what's next for the ecosystem
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and how nvidia plans to participate and sort of a very rapidly growing tab. if you think about it on compute, nvidia likes to sort of characterize that as the trillion dollar tam opportunity with general purpose compute which historically has been serviced by standard general purpose processors, now moving to their gtus and other forms of accelerated compute. and then you know, sorts of moving beyond that to this ai software ecosystem that they've been building. i think those areas are going to be likely the most important for investors. >> yeah. that kind of gets at something that -- i got -- i get asked here and there, if these potential revenue numbers, you know, total addressable market are what people who are enthusiastic about nvidia say they are, where's it coming from? so who is the net loser or, you know, ceder of market share in this environment? >> well, for right now if you look at general purpose compute
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company, you've got intel obviously as the market share leader in processors. and certainly intel's been working hard on revamping its own strategy to participate in ai. and i think they're, you know, having a lot of discussions internally on roadmaps and otherwise, not just for the server space but for ai pcs and elsewhere. if you think about that migration away for general purpose compute, that's one that comes to mind. and then you know, if you think about more classic networking companies, nvidia has taken some shared to o their own clusters of gtus. certainly got other companies that have been participating in networking hardware and otherwise. so i think it will be interesting to see how nvidia ambulance to expand in those -- plans to expand in those areas, networking being an important area as well with a large tam associated with it. >> before we go, you have a $910 price target on nvidia with a buy. that's only 3% upside or something from here. is that just a matter of how far the stock has run, or you having
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trouble refreshing for higher price targets at this level? >> look at the model, and you know, we raised the price target quite a bit. sort of into and out of earnings which, you know, we're a couple of weeks to go. stocks up around 80% this year. it's been moving quickly on us. if you look from a longer term perspective, there's a big tam opportunity out there. and you know, we'll let the model and the price targets play out as that opportunity is realized. >> all right. i'll see you next week. ruben, appreciate the time. >> great. thanks. all right. next, fundstrat's tom lee is back. where he says it is time to buy the dip. plus, home builder stocks moving higher. we'll tell you why and what it might mean for the housing market in the months aide ahead -- ahead. > ll t "os>>foowhecling bell" podcast.
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welcome back. tech selling off again today, and dragging the s&p 500 and nasdaq lower for a third straight day. our next guest still sees a strong case to buy the dip. let's bring in fundstrat's tom lee. it's good to catch up with you here. obviously it's a bull market, buying the didn't generally tend to make sense. it's certainly been rewarded in the last several months. but it's almost like we haven't hardly had much of a dip to speak of. you know, you had little wobbles loafer, another one -- lower, another one right now. are you confident that they're going to stay so shallow?
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>> that's a great question, michael. i think one of the reasons these dips have been shallow is that measures of investor leverage, whether it's margin debt which is still below july, 2023, levels or cash on the sidelines which hit a record $6.1 trillion this past week shows that investors are still uncomfortably under invested, and therefore these dips are opportunities to add. i've been traveling in latin america for the past week meeting with a lot of pension funds, and we're getting the sense that these investors are waiting for a dip. so as soon as you get some sort of wobble like today, i think these are quickly met by buying. >> yeah. it's certainly been the case. although how do you i guess jive that with the fact that you have seen some of the other indicators of positioning and investor sentiment, whether invest advisers or retail investors or call option volumes, seeming like at least things have gotten extended? >> yeah, to the extent those are
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extended because, you know, prime brokerage data captures the tmt hedge fund positions which does look -- positioning which does look extended. and aaii reflects bullish s sentiment but not positioning which we can tell by margin debt is still quite low. other measures don't necessarily capture what private bank and wealthy individuals and households are doing, which you know when we hear from our wealth managers, still have a very conservative bias for their clients. i think that we're not in -- we're not really as exhausted in terms of positioning or sentiment as we were in october, 2021. >> i know, tom, that you feel as if there's a potentially long lasting outperformance cycle possible in smaller stocks. been a lot of false starts in this direction. been some pressure on the russell 2000 and other small cap measures with rates going higher. what sets the scene for you to say that small caps will start
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to work on a relative basis? >> well, it is a group of factors coming together for a first time. we're emerging from a terrible inflation cycle that was crushing for smaller companies, especially their ability to raise prices compared to larger companies. it's coming when the fed is about to make an abrupt mood to being supportive of the business cycle instead of fire-fighting inflation. and on a valuation -- fighting inflation. and on a valuation side they're trading 44% of price to book to large caps. that's exactly where we were in 1999, and that was the launch point for 12 years of outperformance. when investors start to allocate the stocks and the fed starts to be visibly cutting, i think the fed is not clear when they start, but when they start i think it's going to be a big tailwind for small caps. >> now you know, the relative valuation you mentioned going back to 1999 or thereabouts, absolutely seems to be the case. the length of underperformance has been something similar.
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but if i look back at that period, you know, after 2000 the peak in the market a lot of that outperformance by small caps came because large cap growth just imploded. i mean, you did -- you did see devastation in some of the larger stocks. obviously small caps held up better and then went up after the market low in the early 2000s. i assume you're not suggesting that's what we're in for. >> that's right. i think one of the differences, principal differences that it's the starting point. you know, the s&p large cap is roughly 15 times x the mag seven. the russell 2000 have multiples more like 12 times. the nonprofitable small caps in the russell have leverage. either to economic growth or to risk premium declines. so you have like sort of the double recipe within the small cap index of quality companies having multiple expansion, but also sort of risk appetite growing and allows whether it's the bioteches or some of the
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regional banks which will have future growth but don't earn money right now. >> we'll see if all that can coalesce. tom, appreciate the time today. thank you. >> thank you. >> all right. and don't miss tom lee at the cnbc financial adviser summit at may 22 where he and rl others will share what the rest of the year will have in store. scan the code to register or go to cnbcevent.com/fa. ahead, christina standing by. >> from a car to a nasdaq booth we got you covered. disappointing outlooks pushing software and a beauty provider lower. i'll have the details after this short break.
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coming up on 20 minutes to the closing bell. the s&p down about two third of 1%. back to kristina for the key stocks to watch. >> thanks. we have a disappointing guide weighing on shares of software provider pager duty. shares over 8%. wall street's mixed on whether ai will boost it. pagerduties's cfo warning that they're seeing headwinds from smaller businesses, and shares down 24% in the laugh year. ulta also disappointing investors with its margin forecast even though the revenue
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beat expectations. they said they see opportunities for international expansion into markets like mexico which they plan to open up a store next year. and shares are down over 4%. mike? >> thanks. we're keeping an eye on the housing sector after a key move from the national association of realtors. diana olich here with the details. >> reporter: hey, the national association of realtors has agreed to pay $418 million in damages to settle class action antitrust lawsuits over broker commissions. that money will go first to pay the plaintiffs' lawyer fees and go to the class. the settlement makes it clear that nar is denying any wrongdoing. the lawsuits argue that nar with its more than one million brokerage members violated antitrust laws by setting requirements that led to a standard commission. the settlement bans the nar from making any set rules that would let a seller's agent set compensation for a buyer's agent. that had led to this norm commission of about 5% to 6%. although the nar in a call today
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vehemently denied that there are any set commissions saying they're always negotiable. but what this means is that the agent market will now get much more competitive which could lower commission, and that's why we're seeing stocks like zillow and compass taking a massive hit today. this is likely going to have a big impact on the agent industry itself, and it comes during a time where there's a serious lack of homes for sale. so it's been pretty tough on agents already. >> for sure, diana. i mean, this is one of those things that for how many years have people wondered why there was such stickiness in the level of these commissions. so is there any way to handicap how competitive things will get? i suppose it's going to really vary quite a bit if things really do loosen up. >> reporter: yeah. it's going to depend both on the market and the agent. and any agent will tell you that commissions had always been negotiable. it's just a question of where did they start from. they generally started at 6%, then the agent would say i'd scud my fee.
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the question was why were they starting at 6% to begin with. redfin has a lower standard commission, and that's how they market themselves. glen kelly man, the ceo of redfin, said he thought this was great because they had always argued for lower commissions. again it becomes the issue of the buyer's agent. if they're not being paid by the seller's agent, would a buyer opt ton use a buyer's agent and that can be hard for first-time bayers or veterans -- buyers or veterans or people who don't have a lot of money to negotiate with. they might need the buyer's agent but don't want to pay for it. >> that is interesting, the permu permutations. reminds me of the underwritings fees for going forward and you only take your company public once, you want to nickel and dime? i don't know. we'll see in that aplieds to houses, as well. thank you so much. ahead, the energy sector wrapping up a strong week. keel drill down that pop and a big move in crude oil coming up. as we head out, a quick
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up next, a big shopping shakeup. amazon making a major push to up its social shopping presence. we'll break down the company's new strategy and how a tiktok ban might impact the future of that space. that and much more when we take you inside the market zone. at pgim, finding opportunity in fixed income today, helps secure tomorrow. our time-tested fixed income suite, backed by over 145 years of risk experience, helps investors meet their goals. pgim investments. shaping tomorrow today.
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we are now in the closing bell market zone with the s&p 500 down two-thirds of 1%. barely down for the week, as well. we have leslie picker sharing comments from goldman sachs, ceo, and the company's outlook. kate rooney on how tiktok's loss could be amazon's gain. and pippa stephens wraps a big week for energy. leslie, david solomon addressing the troops as well as the shareholders. what did he have to say? >> yeah, so basically it's a turning point for the firm according to solomon. he calls 2023 a, quote, year of execution for goldman sachs while saying he's optimistic about 2024. remember, in 2023 goldman was backing off from its consumer expansion and taking write-downs from that as well as exposure to commercial real estate all while m&a particular activity dropped to a ten-year low. it's a new year.
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one that they will focus on global banking and markets as well as asset and wealth management. in the letter, solomon said that the firm, quote, stands to benefit as capital markets rebound. he also said the firm increased its share in banking and markets in 2023 by nearly 350 basis points since 2019. on the asset and wealth management side, goldman surpassed its alternatives fundraising goal a year early. since 2019 the firm raised $250 billion toward that goal. mike? >> you know, so the message, you know, seems to be it's a bit of a cleaner story here. there's a lot of the portfolio reshuffling that goldman felt it had to do, lot of that is done or under way. the stock has outperformed morgan stanley over the last year or so. it seems goldman is no longer being penalized for not having as big a wealth management than the rest. >> even in 2023 about -- i
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believe it was like 66%, 65% of their revenue was tied to global banking and markets. that's investment banking, underwriting on the equity side and the debt side, as well as trading. so they're very tilted toward kind of the capital markets reopening. so i think if you're an investor and look at what's going on with the economy it we're able to avert a hard landing, if there is a soft landing scenario, if the fed cuts interest rates at the end of the year, tall all of those macro considerations, it would suggest that the environment is better for things like ipos and m&a. there was a morgan stanley report actually a week or two ago which said they predict m&a to skyrocket 50% this year. just kind of based on all of those factors. we get a key test with reddit next week of the imo market. we'll see how things go. but all of that put together is really important for goldman's business. i think investors are somewhat optimistic that we could see a rebound in that activity after
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years of not the best, not the best environment for m&a. >> the missing piece of the overall bull market environment. we will see if that kicks in. thank you so much. kate, amazon wants us to shop by phone more. >> yeah, they do. it's really been beefing up its social media presence. amazon really had a lot of this happen last year. teamed one pinterest, facebook, instagram, snapchat, allwithin a year to embed these products into social media feeds. and then let users link their amazon accounts to make purchases. the e-commerce giant has also been taking a page from reelz and tiktok, if you ever use those. on its mobile app t launched inspire last year come looks a lot like reelz. but these are amazon products being promoted by influencers. part of this is defensive. social shopping becomes a bigger slice of e-commerce overall. insider intelligence estimates it's going to grow into a $100 billion market by next year. that would be up from $67 billion last year.
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there is possible gain for amazon if tiktok gets banned. as we're told, it could be an incremental positive, means more opportunity for amazon around some of those shopping partnerships. mike? >> yeah. maybe won't surprise you to know i really haven't done anything with reelz or tiktok. but -- >> you know, mike, that's where you shop -- >> i'm aware that they exist. my daughters text themto me sometimes. i do wonder is there any way that amazon's much bigger presence in advertising can also be enhanced here by this effort? >> that's a great point. part of it is sales and just overall e-commerce. part of it is advertising. so they've got these sponsored products which makes up a bulk of their advertising revenue. so they -- one of the big opportunities on that does absolutely come down to sponsored products which is part of the advertising which is really part of the -- what some say is an undervalued bull case for amazon. and potentially as much as $5 billion, $6 billion in upside depending who you ask. >> without a doubt become very
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important to the story. thank you so much, kate. for more on the tiktok ban, by the way, don't miss an exclusive interview with managing director keith rabois coming up in "overtime" today. we'll look at the energy markets. firming up $80 wti? >> that's right. energy stocks were the best not only today but also on the week amid a 4% jump in oil prices with wti above that $81 level. now the market is on edge as ukraine carries out its series of drone attacks on russian infrastructure. facilities have been targeted according to data from rbc with three of them seeing a significant drop in output. so we are seeing gasoline futures outperforming oil this week with pvm saying these latest attacks have, quote, sent shivers down spines of product bears. on the back of oil's move, energy stocks are the best group with refiners yet again leading the way. that's valero, marathon
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petroleum, and phillips 66 at record highs. one notable underperformer is eqt as gas prices drop. we are in shoulder season with elevated storage. so some weakness there for eqt, mike. >> yeah. for sure. nothing seems to get out of natural gas' way lower. when it comes to wti, every one of these rally attempts in the last year or so has been, you know, swamped eventually by the kind of constant heavy supply. so is there a reason to think that's going to change? >> i think one reason we didn't see all that much of a price response going back to october was that we never actually saw supply come off line, and no infrastructure was targeted. so that's what's a little different this time around. the ukraine drone attacks are focused on russian refineries. so that could lead to a drop in their product exports which might actually lead to a drop in oil prices, as well, if they have more oil hitting the market. but there is a chance that what if ukraine as rbc noted, moves to targeting their exports facility.
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i think that's the key difference this time around. time will tell if we can support these levels. there's certainly a lot of spare capacity that could come on line. the key thing is if we see more infrastructure attacks, that could move the needle. >> yeah. definitely being alert for that. thank you so much. have a great weekend. as we do head into the close in about one minute, remember we do have the big s&p 500 index reshuffling, a lot of the sector efts will match up on the close. you have super micro going into the s&p 500. s&p down .7%. and just barely below the flat line for the week. we had 16 of 19 weeks higher. last week we just slightly lower, but still s&p only 1.4% off its record high despite this churn we have seen this week. bond have been a good part of the story. 4.31 on the ten-year treasury yield in response to inflation readings this week. we have the fed coming up next week, as well. and it does appear as if the s&p 500 will just barely miss being
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flat for the week under the weight of some of that tech stock selling that we did see in anticipation of the nvidia keynote on monday. nvidia itself managed to -- [ bell ] >> that's going to do it for "closing bell." have a good weekend. over to "overtime." [ applause ] wow, a down day, stocks slumping to close out the week. that is the scorecard on wall street. the action just getting started. welcome to "closing bell overtime." >> dow is falling for a second straight day while the s&p and nasdaq extend their losing streaks to a third day. tech the biggest drag on the market because of weakness in software stocks after adobe's disappointing guidance that you heard about first here in "overtime" yesterday. coming up, an exclusive interview with keith rabois. he promised to cut off funding
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