on the markets. right now, on the back of some of that news, by the way, on both housing and jobless claims. you're looking at the dow off about 18, 19 points this morning, nasdaq up about 80, s&p 500, up about 15. >> it's up a lot more -- the nasdaq was up a lot more earlier, i guess, andrew. now the dow is down. it's reversed. it won't last. >> all right. we will see where things end today. we'll see you in the morning. join us tomorrow. "squawk on the street" begins right now. ♪ good thursday morning, welcome to "squawk on the street," i'm carl quintanilla with melissa lee, mike santoli here at post nine of the new york stock exchange. cramer and faber have the morning off. stocks do look to resume their climb after wednesday's holiday. central banks continue to ease this morning. it's the swiss, qqq's closing in on a 20% total return for the year so far. our road map begins with the number one and rising nvidia,

now the most valuable listed company, and shares set to climb again at the open. plus, shares of accenture rallying following results, the company saying generative a.i. new bookings have totaled so far this year. and watching the strength of the consumer, kroger and darden rallying as quarterly results come in better than expected. let's kick things off this morning with nvidia. it is the new market cap king, of course, topping microsoft and apple, in terms of valuation. not only that, mike, but you could look at the entire uk market or various forces around the world. >> yes. $3 trillion is real money, no matter how you slice it, 3-plus trillion. multiple things can be true at once, i think. it can be mostly fundamentally based, mostly following earnings momentum. it can be about this story that's obviously getting to the bottom line of nvidia faster than anywhere else, and it could also be about pure momentum and an overshoot and complete kind of blowoff-type action. so, no way to know where one stops and the other begins, but

the way it's piling on market cap, i think the big question is, everyone's telling themselves, but you know, the multiple was higher a year ago, but you know it was higher -- not really. back then, earnings estimates were way too low based on what we know that they reported. so, the fabulous profitability of this company definitely gives it a buffer and a reason for people to get excited, but you also probably have to start believing that subsequent, like, looking out from here over the next two years, those estimates, as published now, are vastly too low to really get excited about it. >> and the growth, the pace of growth, should continue, i mean, should, meaning, in order to sustain this sort of run. i mean, the argument has been, we've seen this before where there has been such excitement, such momentum behind one stock seen as the number one winner, and a huge secular trend, like the internet, we saw that with cisco, and what's happened with cisco? it didn't see a quarter-on-quarter decline. it just saw the growth slowing.

>> yeah. >> and what happened? we saw significant drawdowns during cisco's reign as sort of the backbone of the internet. >> you had a lost decade-plus. i was looking back in terms of the actual profitability of cisco. it was unremarkable, actually. it was mostly about sales growth and how everyone assumed the internet was so far from getting fully built out, and they had this head start. so, i was looking back, you know, in 2000. cisco earns $2.6 billion on $19 billion in revenue. >> that's a rounding error. >> in terms of margins. whereas nvidia, it's like 54% net margins on $160 billion expected revenue this year. when apple first got to the net income number that nvidia is expected to get to this year, it was, like, four years ago, apple had more than twice the revenue. so, that's your question. can they somehow sustain that outsize share of a.i.-related hardware profit? >> you're referring to this "journal" piece earlier in the

week looking at the similarities between nvidia and cisco. they actually talked to john chambers about this very analog. he says the speed of change is different. the size of the market is different. the stage when the most valuable company was reached is different. >> says john chambers, vc investor in a.i. projects. >> and the former chief of cisco. >> yes, of course. >> that is true. i think, you know, i don't know enough to say, but people who do know enough to say will tell you nvidia's technological advantage seems as if it's so distinct that they can continue to maintain this kind of lead. but again, who knows? >> even take a look at amd. amd was seen as the closest competitor to nvidia for a long time. it's really fallen by the wayside, and now, year to date, only up 4%. it's doing worse than the retailers at this point. it's fallen off a cliff as people are really seeing nvidia as the beneficiary, the winner there. it really seems to be pulling out in front. >> we continue to look for how big the halo can get.

dell, of course, talking to sara earlier in the week, about their efforts in a.i. accenture today is going to open up eight. a lot of that is on their guidance behind selling gen a.i. services, even though the quarter itself wasn't that hot. >> and we have the tweet from musk saying that dell is going to be one of the providers of the sort of huge server factory. it's going to be an insane factory, super factory for a.i. it's going to be very exciting. dell is up 4% on it. >> you know, i still think it's a relatively tight circle of conviction about who the beneficiaries are. i know that there's various different bafskets of, you know a.i. potential beneficiaries, and they've been mixed in terms of how they've performed. bespoke has been doing great, depending on how you put nvidia in there. others were really slow to basically say the people investing in these datacenters, in these technologies are going to get quick payback. aside from microsoft where, guess what, today, they're getting paid for it.

that's the difference right now. maybe that's a bull case for this spreading at some point, but again, it comes down to how much -- what share of the overall pool of profits is nvidia going to continue to hang on to? and also, no matter what you think about that, if you just look at the fevered level of daily trading activity in the stock, in the leveraged instruments around it, in the call options, it just sort of shows you it's a fever for now, and that could be on top of a legitimate basis, but you got to know kind of what the bets being laid today are in terms of houf aggressive you have to be in your assumptions. >> and a lot of bets are passive. that could really make this sort of phenomenon last a little bit longer than we all think, the amount of passive funds, etfs, that have nvidia as a top holding. you have to. >> here's the thing. here's what i don't really -- i try to get my head around the math there. >> you're going to piooh-pooh this. >> why would the biggest, most followed, most beloved company in the index be a disproportionate beneficiary of

passive flows relative to the ones that are forgotten, who each gets a dollar in proportion to their market capsize? there's a small effect if active investors are underweight the biggest stocks, which in general they are, then you're kind of buying it -- the passives are buying it from somebody else. but what we have today is massive differentiation within the index. you have the median s&p stock, i just looked this morning, on a quarter to date basis, down. that's how much the market cap weighted index is up on a quarter to date basis. >> spw is underperforming spx by double digit, and if it does it again, it will be two years in a row. we've never done that. >> the compounding at the top is kind of taking on a bit of a life of its own, and that's why i feel there's just no sellers in those stocks. it becomes a matter of, if i'm an active manager, and i love the story, am i going to have

6.5% each in nvidia, apple, and microsoft? in an active portfolio? probably not. >> no. >> you're probably going to own 20, 30 stocks, so therefore, you're always going to feel like you're behind, and so there's not a lot of net selling on the way up. >> yeah. in the meantime, watching broadcom in today's session. not that i want to -- but within the sort of chip, a.i. sort of ecosystem here, on tuesday, i had very interesting market action. it actually touched a high and then reversed lower on very, very heavy volume, and this one is one that's primed for stock split, but it's just something to watch. when you see sort of these patterns showing potential weakness, it's definitely on the radar. >> weakness because of a split, which is -- >> no, it should be. it should have even more momentum. we've seen that with the split stories, right? >> that's what's made it so interesting. >> with cmg. cmg has been trading on extremely heavy volume into its split higher. but broadcom is one where traded extremely heavy volume. i'm talking like three, four

times average daily volume on tuesday, touched a high, and then reversed lower down a few percent. so, that was notable. >> it's always been a little bit of a tricky question in terms of how much -- because, you know, it's only a minority of broadcom's business that really is levered to this trend. we're only like a year and a half since it was, like, oh, this is just a cash cow business. they bought computer associates. what are we doing here? it's a buyback story. >> we haven't thought about that in to while. >> now all of a sudden, it's like, we're going to give it the valuation like it's an a.i. play. >> meantime, we're beginning to look ahead into july where the qqqs are up ten of the past ten years. mike, average return, almost 5%. are we going to count on that again? >> i mean, 5% feels like not that much of a hurdle, but i don't know how much the seasonal stuff is really informative at this point. i was mentioning the past week or so. guess what? late june is supposed to be bad for the market. >> this has been your point lately. are we stealing forward from july? >> we're not stealing but like,

if it's just kind of not following that rhythm that we got used to. i will say, when seasonality doesn't work, when the market goes in the other direction, it can often mean that's the trend. in other words, if it's outperforming what's supposed to be weak seasonals, it might show you that it just kind of wants higher, but it's so beholden to these few names and just exactly how much -- and just whether it gets unstable up at the highs. i did find monday, tuesday, you actually had modest broadening out action. you had what i call the jv stocks starting to work a little bit better, not at all turning the tide of this mega cap outperformance, but there's at least a possibility you could cool off in terms of the overheated names at the top of the index and have the rest of them not be so -- not be so hurt by that process. super overbought at the index level, and yet, the average stock has been wallowing, so it's not. >> meantime, on the economic front, weekly jobless claims

down. meantime, housing starts falling unexpectedly in may by 5.5%. building permits declining as well, and we're looking, although we're fully priced for november rate cut, and that's sort of the base case scenario of the markets at this point in time. so, i don't know how much this economic data blends into the picture in terms of trading on a day-to-day basis. >> it is intersecesting. the market has been sensitive to softer data. swiss national bank cutting again today, slightly unexpected, didn't want the swiss franc to get too strong. it just seems to feed into this narrative that central banks are leaning in that direction. they'll take the excuse if they get one to ease. i guess for housing, the question is -- and i don't know this -- what the ten-year treasury yield does in response to a cut? have we already kind of had whatever relaxation of yields on the ten-year that drives mortgage rates, you know, before the cut happens? >> right. >> if we resteepen and all that. that, to me, and the part,

where, when it comes to hougs itself, unless it really does encourage banks to led a little more aggressively, and on the commercial real estate side, it matters a lot, fed funds rate getting cut. >> kbh going to open a little higher here. 166% versus the s&p's 49. thanks to yardeni for pointing out how much these home builders have done in this age of scarce inventory. lennar said the magic number is probably 6.75 where you start to see some things open up. >> it seems not too far off. we are under 7% at this point once again, so going in the right direction, at least for now. but to your point, the fed controls the short end, so, you know, there's only so much they can do. the bright side is that there has been demand for the longer data treesasurys, and the auctis have been doing well. rick santelli gave the auction

an a-plus. >> that was 20s. >> which is an odd ball it have t . >> the new kid on the block. >> it shows you there is demand. there might be external factors for that. what's going on in europe could feed demand for the safety of treeshz as well but that is going to help. >> meantime, it was interesting to see on tuesday this initial comment on monetary policy from alberto, the new fed official. not a voter, but did say that the fed should cut -- only cut after months, if not quarters, likely quarters of falling inflation, which people began to wonder, are we moving the goal posts a bit? >> they seem very comfortable just to underscore their patience. they see the cost of waiting as being very low. on the other hand, the data are what they are, and the market seems more fixated on that than what they're saying. >> yeah. >> when we come back, the message from china's central bank on rates.

also ahead, sara eisen's interview with the ceos of pfizer and palantir, who are speaking out about the middle east crisis. meta has news, darden, kroger, paramount, mcdonald's, paypal. when we return. is it me... or is work not working? at least, not the way it could work. your people are buried in busy work. and you might be thinking... can ai make it all work? it can. on the servicenow platform, ai transforms your entire business. because when your people work better, everything works better. so, let's get to work. idris elba works here? mm-hmm. ya, he's super nice. we invent them,

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- the first step on our new journey. you coming? reach out to a friend about their mental health. seize the awkward. it's totally worth it. china keeping its benchmark rates unchanged. let's get to eunice yoon in beijing with some takeaways. hi, eunice. >> hey, carl. the central bank didn't act, but it did leave open the possibility that it could. no moves for the reference for most household and corporate loans. that is the one-year loan prime rate, as well as the five-year, which influences mortgage rates, but a central bank newspaper also hinted that the people bank of china had room to cut. in addition, the bank governor had repeated that the monetary policy was going to maintain an accommodative stance. this was at a financial forum on

wednesday. now, investors here see two key takeaways from the governor's speech. one, that china is done with the whole credit boon thing. he told the industry players that that would be -- it would be difficult to maintain an overall credit growth of over 10% as seen in the past. now, this is exactly how the chinese government was able to stimulate during the 2008 financial crisis and one of the reasons people here see the rising debt, as well as the bloated property sector, it's as for the takeaway two, china is experimenting with different forums of monetary policy. he said that china would gradually "include purchase and sale of chinese government bonds on the secondary market in its tool kit." a lot of people think that that sounds like qe, but the governor actually mentioned that, saying that this does not mean kw quantitative easing. the move is still undefined but it is still an indication that the bank is looking for other

ways that are not really so traditional to stimulate the economy, guys. >> eunice, why would that be? why wouldn't they just go ahead and cut to bolster? why are they departing from the traditional ways they've used in the past? >> well, it looks as though they don't want to have a credit expansion here. they don't want to have even more because of the associated risks, so it looks as though they're trying to find other ways in order to stimulate the economy. >> and eunice, how does the -- how does the currency calculus fit into this, if at all? >> well, the concern, of course, here is that the currency is going to continue to weaken, and so that's one of the reasons why you're seeing the government here really take steps -- kind of smaller steps as opposed to anything that's massive. there's been a lot of questions that the government here should be taking up some other major

stimulus, and the hope is that we would get some clarity as to whether or not they're going to make any bigger moves or if they're going to continue with this approach later this summer, in july. that's when the government here is going to hold what's called the third plenum, and people are really watching this because they think that it could eventually lead to some announcement of a long-term economic strategy. that's traditionally where we've seen this kind of discussion. >> eunice, thank you. great to see you. eunice yoon. still to come, piper st sandler's chief strategist 134r explains why he's pulled away from setting targets on the s&p 500. dow looking to open. nasdaq up by 61. more "squawk on the street" when we come right back. ng. think about it. boring is the unsung catalyst for bold. what straps bold to a rocket and hurtles it into space? boring does. boring makes vacations happen,

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keep your eyes peeled on the nasdaq 100 gainers. plenty in there within tech. nvidia is going to up almost three. micron, the same. we'll cawatch dell. opening bell is coming up in a few minutes, and you can catch us any time, anywhere. just listen to and follow the

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it was late last year dealbook when elon musk told advertisers abandoning his x platform to "go bleep yourself." the ceo asked him about that comment, and this was musk's response. >> it wasn't to the advertisers as a whole. it was with respect to freedom of speech, i think it is important to have a global free speech platform where people from a wide range of opinions can voice their views. and in some cases, there were advertisers who were insisting on censorship, and at the end of the day, if there is censorship, if we have to make a choice between censorship and money, censorship and money or free speech and losing money, we're going to pick the second. advertisers have a right to appear next to content that they find compatible with their

brands. that's totally fine. i think that is -- that's, again, a choice of an advertiser to appear next to content that they think fits with their brand. that's totally cool. but what is not cool is insisting that there can be no content that they disagree with on the platform. >> of course, advertisers do that all the time, placing ads next to content that they either find appropriate or not on any medium. on a related note, this bit about, in the "journal," looking at instagram and the way in which algorithms are recommending quite inappropriate videos for young teenagers is getting some attention today. ahead of -- after the surgeon general talked aboutthis warning for social media on those as well. >> they ran their own experiments. they, you know, ran through themselves, the algorithm, along with an academic researcher, and that's what they found, that it still happens. meta was quick to say, you know, that was sort of a contained study. that's not fair. it doesn't reflect the real

world results, but it certainly underscores the continuing concern out there about the ability to actually control that and to actually, you know, not have a negative influence on you. >> yeah. and i mean, i think meta just keeps trading on the fact that we have the better targeting tools, you're able to essentially, you know, kind of deboost the stuff that you don't want to see, and i just, today, had another price target raise on meta, because its platform just is -- has this gravitational pull for ad dollars, and i think it's worth remembering, even before musk owned twitter, it was a marginal kind of like nice to have advertising venue for most companies. and so, it wasn't as if anybody ever liked to interact with news-heavy, you know, kind of somewhat chaotic type flow that was always on twitter. >> except for journalists, of course. >> exactly. >> which is probably why we -- >> we're not paying to be there. >> exactly. >> let's get the opening bell

here at the cnbc realtime exchange. at the big board, it's the maker of water heaters celebrating 150 years. at the nasdaq, the executive leadership council seeking to increase the number of black executives, something to contemplate after juneteenth, a holiday yesterday. so, we're here on some levels, mike, as there's been chatter about tom lee's 5,500 june target, which is not far off. >> 5,500 is right here. i think it is notable that the highest stated sell-side target right now at 6,000 is less than a 10% gain from here. 10% in six months is pretty good but it's not some kind of rip-roaring, you know, huge upside. i do think that a lot of the focus, though, is nasdaq 100 coming into today, up seven days straight. in those seven days, only one day was there more new 52-week highs than lows. it's just one of these things

where just exactly how many kind of turns of the wheel in this concentrated mega cap-led move can we have? you know, before it either just takes a break or becomes unstable somehow. most stocks just sell off hard. that was something that happened near the peak in '99-2000 where everything but the anointed stocks were really, really suffering bad. now it's just more stagnation than outright sales. >> yeah. as you mentioned before, in terms of premarket action, we're seeing that play out with the markets open now, you know, strength in semiconductors, the philadelphia semiconductor index up by a percent and take a look at nvidia. wow. it just keeps going. it's up so far in today's session. really holding on to the mantle of the world's most valuable company at this point. but you know, looking outside of technology, can you imagine where looking outside of technology in nvidia? but boeing, dave calhoun was just on the hill, and yesterday,

the doj received a letter from the lawyers representing family members of the two fatal crashes saying that boeing should pay about $25 billion, and they're urging the doj to prosecute under a violation of -- the alleged violation of the deferred prosecution act agreement, i should say, and so we're seeing pressure on shares of boeing as the company continues to struggle with these same sort of concerns, another whistle-blower coming out and saying it's misplaced hundreds of parts. the news doesn't get better. >> it's not a surprise, "the journal" piece suggesting that the people who have been approaches have no interest in taking the top job. they remain under very tight clamp of regulators in terms of production and when that ceiling's going to be lifted. you know, we need to get to a point where the government's confident that their safety protocols are appropriate. >> now, it just seems as if almost nobody with oversight or any other type power has an incentive to sort of say, okay, that's enough, it's over, we

figured out everything we need to figure out, we've held people responsible. i don't know how you really invest in the story, aside from just saying it's down a lot. >> the duopoly. >> there's only two of them. it needs to continue to exist in some form, and obviously has, you know, this massive install base, and people, you know -- a really good aerospace cycle, should be anyway, so i guess you could just make that call to say, you know, based on so much bad news already being out there. >> it is amazing, though, you know, time and time again, we have analysts on who still have buy ratings on the stock. we have investors on who say -- we just talked to the head of the gabelli aerospace etf on tuesday on the exchange, and he said he just added to boeing because it's a dupoly, because it's got all those things, the bull case is intact, and in the long-term, the theory is, in the long-term, boeing will be able to resolve these issues. but at one point, you have to say, well, i have to manage for the short-term too, and right

now, it's not looking better. >> the other tension is that, you know, if you go way before, you know, all the crashes and crises, the whole story about boeing was massive free cash flow, the management was focused on just harvesting as much as possible, and you just kind of milk that service revenue and everything else. if you wonder if it could ever get back to that spot -- one of the critiques now was they were way too focused on shareholder metrics and not enough on manufacturing or innovation. >> watching gilead this morning, huge pop in the stock. it's up by almost 5%. it had a surprise interim readout on data for a drug which is for hiv prevention. it showed 100% efficacy as a twice-yearly drug, and the stock is really getting some credit here for that surprise readout. the interim data. the full data is expected later on this year, but there's a real surge within health care in particular within biotech and pharma for names outside of

glp-1s. we talk about a.i. is sucking all the oxygen. in health care, it is glp-1s and weight loss sucking all the oxygen out of the room. at this point, are you going to invest in lilly and novo? you have to, to some extent, but you want to look elsewhere. gilead has not been doing well. >> meantime, lilly is warning about fake compounds, big story on "good morning america" today just looking at issuing warnings to consumers. on a related note, we're starting to get some real chases in the value front in quick service restaurants. mcdonald's is going to launch this marketing blitz on june 25th in which they're going to highlight their $5 value meal. i mean, the one thing we've been looking for is some relief in dining out, and this will be one way to get to it. >> we saw consumers already in the retail sales data really pushing back. i mean, a decline of 0.4%, the

beggest decline since january, so people are really paring back. the summer of value is what mcdonald's is calling this $5 menu and they're not the only ones. even starbucks is joining in on this $5 menu. you can get a hot tea. it's like a continental breakfast. a hot tea and a buttered croissant for $5. it's a bargain. you can't get a coffee for $5 alone right now. >> yeah, no, and i remember -- i always remember in the '90s, the bear case was, who's going to pay two bucks for a cup of coffee? literally, every value investor said that. it is interesting, macro-wise, the gap between quick service and casual got so close that it's now pressuring both sides in a sense. >> that's why darden's another story today. $265 does beat $261 revenue. comps, roughly flat overall, i think. olive garden was up a touch.

long horn, up a little bit better than that. they really got squeezed by that sandwich of -- as quick service -- >> the guidance was sort of, you know, sort of within the consensus but kind of skewing a little bit below on almost all the metrics. they did include about a 3% inflation assumption in their guidance into next year, so see if they can push that through. but at this point, it is much more about, you know, traffic and getting people in the door. >> yep. yep. apple is one to watch. there's an interesting "journal" article today, which highlighted, i think, what we all knew, and that is in china, where apple is number three in terms of handset market share, it doesn't have an a.i. offering, and it will not. if you're thinking about apple being this great a.i. play, that's not going to happen in china. china has to approve every single a.i. project in the country, and it has not so far approved any brought to it by a foreign developer, which would

include apple, of course, and so they're going to be behind the 8 ball there, especially when other handsets are offering a.i. offerings on their handsets already. the question is, is that in the stock? or was it assumed that they would follow in one of its fastest growing markets with a.i.? >> i wonder how much, in terms of real detailed extrapolation of an upgrade cycle, was in the stock. it had this huge move. it broke out to a new high, had been capped at 198-ish for a while. i don't know if anybody really, in a detailed way, revised their numbers in terms of volumes for the next -- it was just more of a general sense of, they're on it. they're going to participate here. and maybe in the rest of the world, you know, it will accelerate a little bit of upgrade activity, but it is an interesting one, and it basically now is pushed back to 30 times forward earnings. it's back up to near its highs in terms of valuation. >> there's also this story, the information alleging that the company's not going to chase a next gen version of the vision pro, and instead, might just focus on a lower-cost version to

come out in 2025. but i don't know. we'll see. we'll chase that. always got to watch stories about leaks within apple, because it's a difficult supply chain to monitor from the outside. jim's been very bullish on the product, though. it will be interesting to see if the emphasis has lessened a bit. >> yeah. the supply -- i love all the apple supply chain reports. it's like, according to supply chains, we're going to get a thinner phone, which was the report on tuesday or monday. coming out of apple. it's going to be much thinner, and that's going to really spur the upgrade cycle. i would rather get a thinner phone. i don't care about the a.i. as much. >> yeah. >> but a thinner phone. >> a thinner phone. >> really? >> because this is -- it's too fat, carl. it's too heavy. >> they're heavier. >> how thin is thin enough? >> like paper. >> you want a paper thin phone? okay. fyi, tim. meantime, our next guest does remain bullish overall, does believe large caps will continue higher, describing the

current backdrop as softy-locks. joining us here is piper sandler chief investment strategist, michael. great to have you back. when is softy m-locks? it's the cousin of goldilocks. goldilocks is slower growth, longer inflation, softy-locks is slower growth and moderating inflation. so, things that we typically look for in a slowdown, but when everyone's worried about inflation, there's good news from softer economic activity. >> how do you ride that rail and avoid growth scares? >> that's the concern, i think, especially in the last two months as the unemployment rate has reached 4%. you're starting to see a shift, just like the fed is talking about a shift of the risks being more balanced, inflation's not out of control anymore. unemployment is rising but still very low. i think we have to observe the data, all of the labor market, watch how earnings evolves, and

we're in a sweet spot right now. we're enjoying the benefits of disinflation. >> it sounds like you think nvidia is going to rule the markets until after the fed cuts several times. you don't think there's going to be a broadening until the fed has cut many times. >> i think, to the extent we're going to get a broadening, we got it. it was last november and december. small cap valuations, the s&p 600 went from 12 to about 15.5, where they are now, so they're no longer cheap. to really get true sustainable broadening, it's always about one thing, and it's always about earnings broadening, and it's difficult to get that without the fed cutting rates after a tightening cycle. >> your work keeps bringing you back to this quality theme. quality companies. it seems as if that is what the market has been wanting for a while and has capitalized at a pretty high rate. at what price do you keep wanting to bid for quality? >> i don't think it's so much about valuation. investors are buying quality companies for all the right reasons, better balance sheets, better income statements, better

cash flow statements. so, i think it becomes at what catalyst does that -- does that shift? so, either broadening out of earnings or, if we get a broadening out of weaker economic activity, then equities broadly will get hit. but in that backdrop, companies with better fundamentals are typically still outperforming. >> and i guess the question -- i know you do it more on a equal sector weighted basis, right? that's what you prefer to approach it. it seems as if a lot of the quality approach would sort of ratify just by the same handful of names. all the megacaps have, all the earnings momentum, the best balance sheets, and all the price momentum. >> yeah. if you look at one of our favorite etfs, a way to express that would be qual, which is about 50% tech. so, there is obviously sectors with better fundamentals, but when we're talking to institutional clients who are in small cap world, mid cap, large cap, even value investors, it's the same themes that are working in all of these groups.

larger companies are working within small caps relatively. more profitable, faster-growing companies are working better within mid caps and within value. you can't only own six or seven stocks, but you want to own those same attributes that those companies that are leading have. >> i would imagine those folks you're talking to in terms of the value and the growth sort of portfolio managers, investors, there's a lot of overlap these days, is that right? i mean, that the value folks are also in nvidia. they're also in those handful of stocks. that sort of speaks to the momentum behind this trade. i mean, do you see that overlap as propelling this trade higher or making it more dangerous? >> yeah, in a sense, you know, the weaker parts of the market have been kind of pure value and pure growth, which are kind of the riskiest parts of value and growth, and so quality, exactly, brings value and growth investors kind of in the middle, looking for profitable value, profitable growth, and a lot of those larger cap names are in both indexes. >> some of your work looks at various silos of inflation or disinflation. you look at motor vehicles.

do you have a call on when insurance and shelter kind of play game? >> well, we've seen the month-on-month oer rent continue to slide lower. our economics team thinks that's going to continue, that perhaps last month's cpi report was the end of the acceleration in some of these insurance-related items, and that's really the only thing holding things up. >> i mean, people talk about there's two things. shelter and insurance and the thinking was that shelter -- insurance is beginning to crack. you don't have a problem with that one? >> no, i think that's right. and if this continues, what we saw last month, it's going to be really hard to print a core inflation month on month level more than 0.2 going forward. so, i'm not saying it's going to persist every month to this magnitude, but when the unemployment rate is rising, it's time to start looking beyond inflation. >> and do you think that those dynamics with the unemployment rate rising -- i mean, people are starting to raise some alarms that it's going to get away from us or the fed's going

to get too cute and wait too long. >> no, that's the concern i've been hearing now for about two months, and it is true that typically the unemployment rate goes up slowly and then quickly. if you look at the last eight recessions, back to 1960, i think we can look at each one of those and say, what was going on that perhaps tipped the economy or really, what broke and led to that acceleration? there's, of course, always risks today. but oneof the things that's not present, which has been present in most of those, is a big spike in oil prices. oil is very well behaved today. and then we have, you know, a flexible labor market. we have this fiscal spending that's helped offsetting the impact of higher rates, so softy-locks is also a slow slowdown or a -- not a recession but a slowed, you know, softening. >> sure, sure. >> as long as that continues at this moderate pace, i think it maintains a good backdrop for equities. >> how do clients express their interest or concern about election uncertainty, either here or uk or france?

and geopolitics? >> well, it's on the wall of worry. you know, this definitely -- we've seen a lot of volatility now in europe because of these elections and emerging markets, and of course, we've got an election coming up. i think there are so many other things that are -- especially for u.s. markets -- that matter imminently. what's the data going to be tomorrow? what's the fed going to do next? what's the unemployment rate going to be at the beginning of the month? i think that's going to become more in focus as we get past -- closer to labor day, but it's becoming a growing concern, but still, something that's -- should be played at the idiosyncratic level rather than the market level. >> right. we'll get there when we get there. really good stuff. thanks so much. >> thanks, guys. as we go to break, watch bonds today. we will get a little fed speak out of kaskari this morning. barkin, later on today. daley, tonight. watching the ten-year, about 4.28% now, pretty much the highs of the morning. as we got s&p record high, 5,500. stay with us.

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a group of corporate america's top ceos met with u.s. senators this week to discuss support for israel in the war against hamas and a push for the release of hostages. our sara eisen sat down with the ceos of palantir and pfizer pfi discuss the meeting and how they're advocating for corporate america to speak out against anti-semitism. >> in america, leaders, especially people leading interesting businesses, have a neek role in shaping the way peek think and what they do. this is an issue where to speak up is going to require absorbing inbound. and that's how you know you're doing something important. >> more from sara's interview coming up next hour. stay with us. see that? that's like the gap in my health insurance. gap in your health insurance? yeah, it didn't cover everything when i got hurt. good thing i had aflac.

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intelligence. >> reporter: now we asked how much this transition will cost amazon, and he wouldn't say exactly only some plastic bags are less expensive than paper bags. the technology simplifying the process and right-sizing and automating the package allows amazon to bring down that cost differential. guys, i got to say, i still like the popping, you know. >> my kids love the popping. they're going to miss that, diana. you mentioned before that they tested this amongst so many parties involved in this whole supply chain. what were they testing? i would think this is an easy swap. >> well, test to see if the products were damaged or not. they wanted to see if the plastic bubbles were better or worse than the paper and what they found was that paper is softer and when packed right and the boxes are right-sized with the products that the paper actually protects your stuff better thapts plastic which is surprising because you think that pillow would be more protective, but all that testing they found they weren't.

>> diana, appreciate that. great look at a thing that moves the needle in terms of manufacturing and distribution in this country. diana olick today. meantime we would mention 5500 record high s&p, record high qqq. mike, record high nvidia. i guess are we looking for volume to ratify this? >> it's a pretty common story. not necessarily. we may be getting the benefit of having three quasi summer holiday days this week in terms of the way that market trades and usually they do have this little bit of an upside bias. a selective market still. up versus down stocks, still like 50-50. better than 50-50 right now. so it continues to be one where the biggest are driving things and, you know, it's just the growth story has people pretty enamored of just waking up every day and discounting the same good news. >> you mentioned nvidia new high. lilly same category. >> if you want to look other

sectors, costco looks like lilly. >> all these momentum trades. yep. >> we'll take braeg and when we return sara's exclusive with the chiefs of pfizer and palantir on the middle east crisis. stay with us.

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good thursday morning. welcome to another hour of "squawk on the street." i'm carl quintanilla with melissa lee and mike santoli live at post nine of the new york stock exchange. we will hear from sara later this hour with her exclusive pfizer's chief albert bourla and alex karp about their meeting with senators in d.c. on the israel-hamas war and rising tide of anti-semitism. that exclusive coming up this hour. record highs for stocks. s&p 5502. dow up 100 with a couple swings here so far in the open. 10-year right around 4.27.

>> 30 minutes into the trading session. starting with accenture shares surging getting a boost after posting more than $900 million of generative ai books. we'll discuss with the ceo. olive garden's parent company rising. same-store sales were flat for the quarter dragged down by weaker than expected sales at olive garden and fine dining restaurants. that stock up just slightly. and shares of trump media continue to plunge after the company said it had been clear to resell certain shares and warrants. that stock is down just about 30% this week. this week. there was a holiday yesterday. >> meantime, nvidia is the big stock story of the day. shares continue to rally as we said, the chip giant becoming the most valuable company surpassing microsoft and apple. joining us bernstein regional managing director and semiconductor analyst, has an outperform and target of 130, below the current price, stacy,

and we've seen some 150s, some rosenblat said 200, are you staying put? >> look, we had this conversation before and don't change the target price every other day. the stock has had a good run, especially recently. what drives it. earnings and multiples. it's probably mid-40s now, not that bad, not bad at all given the growth it's had. it was mid-60s before the run started a year ago. you know, but, you know, if you look at the trajectory of where they are and the numbers are going, like it's not surprising that the stock has had the run it's had. we'll revisit the target in good time depending on how things go. >> yeah. there's no doubt. >> don't take it too seriously. don't take the sell side target too seriously at any given point in time. >> it's been hard to keep up with nvidia in general, but i do want to --

>> it's a good problem to have for sure. >> yeah. if you've been recommending no doubt about it. i did want to drill in a little bit on sort of the valuation where it has been before. because i've been trying to make the point it was at a higher forward p/e when the forward stirmtsz way, way too low. >> okay. >> the last four quarters below by 50% or actually 100%. a year ago 22 times the earnings we got, not 45 or 50. i wonder where that sits now in terms of whether you think the earnings outlook on a consensus basis has caught up with what reality is likely to be. >> i think the buy side, my clients, their expectations are above where the sell side is. not an atypical sort of thing, frankly. but, yeah, i think the sell side system for next year are probably mid-30s eps. i'm sure the buy side is well $40 plus for next year. >> you talking pre -- i think

you're talking presplit numbers. >> presplit. >> yeah. >> you get the point, right. >> yeah. >> that's the reason why the stock has been running. it's because of that. this is -- i always say like the numbers that are really important, it's not my numbers or my colleagues' numbers it's my clients' numbers. where the buyside expectations. stocks sometimes will go up on bad prints or down on good prints sometimes if you don't meet those buy side predictions. i don't think the buy side expectations are nuts either. they're very plausible given the -- given the trajectory they've been on, the product cycles they have. they're launching a brand new cycle into this year, they'll have all of next year to sell it, higher content and frankly higher demand like the demand showing no signs of slowing at this point. >> a lot of revenues this year. stacy,wondering how you think about how much share of the

market of the ai spend is going to nvidia versus competitors what we've seen in amd a real drop off and where you see that sort of rivalry, if you could call it that at this point? >> the most relevant second source is not the other merchants of suppliers like amd and intel. it's like broadcom who aring may chips for the hyper scalers doing their own chips for their internal workloads. broadcom their ai revenue guide for this year is $11 billion or more and i bet of that $11 billion, 7 or 8 is what they call the custom chips they're making for google and that sort of thing. amd, they've said, quote, unquote, more than $4 billion. i suspect investor expectations closer to 5 or 6, don't want to knock amd too much, it was 0 a year ago, 0 to 4 is a lot. intel said they will do $500 million it's a drop in the

bucket. nvidia probably going to do $100 billion. you can see where the dollars are flowing. that's sof a breakdown of where share is today. nvidia has the lion's share and they will keep it. >> i wonder if you are moved by commentary out of nvidia about various business silos, whether that's their mention of driving and tesla on the call, or appearance with antonio neri and discussions about hpe. do any of those make you think difrp about their customer base? >> i think it's clear their customer base is broadening out. they still have a lot of concentration at the large hyper scalers, the guys with the big wallets. i think they said, i can't remember the exact numbers, low or mid-40s percentage was large cloud vendors and consumer and internet companies. you've got more enterprise adoption as well. they did mention you have hp, you've got like other companies like health care companies doing drug discovery and things like

that. so there is a wider span of customers with more workload, more enterprise kinds of things. this is important because over the long term, there is a lot of money that's getting spent. over the long term business models have to get built on top of this that are driving returns, that are driving revenues or driving efficiencies and saving costs or ideally both and along those, you want to see more enterprise adoption and see those guys building business models. it's still early clearly but we're starting to see signs of that. i think that's a good thing. >> nice piece in the "times" about ai driving drug discovery to your point. stacy, always good to check in with you, even though the story kind of remains the same. talk soon. >> you bet. any time. >> all right. nvidia one of the stocks pushing this market higher. in fact, accounting for most of the s&p's upside. s&p and nasdaq hitting new record highs this morning. the fed and its rate cut plan

still a big focus for investors. joining us at post nine rbc capital markets head of u.s. equity strategy laurie capseena and chief economist diane swan with us. great to have you both. if we could set the scene broadly here. we did get the rate cut from the swiss national bank, bank of glands holding off leaning that way. there's a broad i guess positive thesis that the economy is normalizing along the lines of inflation, perhaps growth rates, and central bank policy. can it be that good? are we going to pull it off? >> i certainly hope so, although i think we're in the sort of watchful waiting period where it's not whether or not central banks cut this year or the bank of england much more dovish than even expected on their statement leaning in that direction for august, hopefully, but the federal reserve also sort of wanting to make sure that they hit the landing and don't overshoot, although i think the risk is still high they do overshoot, given some of the

softening in economic data and that's important. you know, we've seen the fed sort of push out their patience here to the extreme and i think it's going to take an awful lot of good data for them to actually ease by september. we'll get more from the fed today in terms of talk. i think it's all going to be very noncommittal and patience, although mary daly, watch her comments for her concerns about nonlinearity. when things go south, they tend to go south rapidly. many people forget that the soft landing that was 1994 and 95 cycle there actually was two negative red ink reports on employment that were later revised away that prompted the fed to actually cut during that cycle. it wasn't as clear-cut of a soft landing as it was made out to be. >> oh, yeah. it's always much more obvious in retrospect. got towards stall speed in '95, at least we thought so. lori, when it comes to how the

market is digesting all of this stuff, it doesn't seem like it's very disturbed by the macro at the moment in terms of last 21 days that volatility of the market has been incredibly low. driven bythis growth trade. also supported by the earnings outlook. >> i think that's fair if you're looking at it from an s&p 500 lens. we're in this weird part of the market where the things making us nervous, whether the squishy consumer, people getting optimistic about the fed timeline and pushing people into the more defensive parts of the market which happen to be the big weights in the s&p 500 and we'ring may new highs. you want to get scared take my old job and look at the russell 2000 while powell was speaking, russell relative to s&p, and you basically had this big pop on the cpi data. you gave almost all of it back and small caps had made new lows relative to the s&p. we've seen that nervousness expressed. however it's not being he

extrapolated to the broader market because of the defensive undertones. >> do you defer to the market's conclusion we have a risk below the surface? or do you say that's an opportunity for smaller stocks? >> i do think -- opportunity is there down the road. i worry and i do hear some people, not a ton, but hear some people trying to make bullish arguments on small cap because the cuts are coming and i just feel like we immediate to wait and see. it's almost like listening to children who aren't listening to their parents and just determined to hear what they want to hear from the fed. i think there's going to be disappointment on that timeline. our camp at rbc is looking for a december, not september cut. when i hear september skups discussions i feel for this year we may be setting up for disappointment. >> you're at 5300. >> we're a little bit above our target in terms of where the market is. i loved the discussion we heard earlier about sort of price targets and markets move. i think the worst thing you can do is when the market kind of

moves above your target is rush to judgment. i think you need to listen to what market is telling you. one thing we said was to get a number above 5300 we thought markets needed to start baking in a positive view of 2025. i think what has ended up happening is the undercurrent of nervousness. we frankly seen better earnings results from the bigger companies. you have all the international stuff which is spooking people in europe again and driving people back into the u.s. as a safe haven. is that going to be enough to sustain us? ultimately you have to have that 2025 view come in and really kind of bolster some of the optimism. >> relatively speaking 2025 the view is more positive than 2024. 2025 we know that rate cuts are coming down the pike. right. there's certain things we know very uncertain in 2024. >> that's fair from an interest rate perspective. our house only has two cuts baste baked near. the gdp forecast, a thing i've

had a hard time getting past in my analysis, the gdp 1.7%, material slowdown from the 2.4% anticipated for this year. if you look 0 to 2, lousy environment for stocks. 2 to 4, great ep environment for stocks. that's what i'm struggling with right now. >> and diane, i guess that is the question as to whether we can sort of decelerate in an orderly way and still essentially have corporate profits do well and all the rest of it. how do you think things develop through the end of this year? . >> one of the processes we're seeing is ceos in our own surveys are saying we're more worried about our own profits than the overall economy and consumers saying we're worried about the overall economy than our finances. however, ceos are having to deal with the push back that they're seeing from consumers now in terms of price hikes. at the same time, costs are

elevated. especially in the small and mid sized market where their a much more sensitive to the higher rates and reprising of their debt at those higher rates there should be margin compression. our view is for december cut as well, but that does include some pain with below potential growth. the annual figures on growth, ours is 2.25, but masks a very major slowdown in fourth quarter growth in 2024 and that's important as well because that slowdown is one of the reasons why unemployment is higher already. >> yeah. if inflation is coming down nominal growth is that much slower and what companies are feeding off of in a sense. diane and lori, thanks so much. as we go to break take a look at the road map for the hour. shares of accenture soaring on the back of its latest earnings. one of the biggest s&p gainers. the company's ceo will join us. >> crypto companies making

moves. a closer look at what's at stake for the industry and investors. >> interviews with the ceo of pfizer and palantir speaking out on the israel-hamas war following their meetings with senators this week. >> these are leaders, personal people, and i think that everyone who has humanieny insie him or her should speak about it. this is a human tragedy that needs to end. mi uo not miss the big interview congp. "squawk on the street" will be right back.

welcome back to "squawk on the street." >> a big tax ruling from the supreme court. the case moore versus us united states. the ruling is 7-2 and the ruling upholds here a section of the 2017 trump tax law. that section was called the mandatory repatriation tax on foreign holdings. it's a one-time tax and it was being challenged in the supreme court under the grounds that court -- that u.s. constitution did not give the u.s. government the ability to tax overseas holdings on gains that had not been realized. a court today saying, in fact, that law is constitutional, that tax will be allowed to stay in place, and the significance of

this, carl, is two fold. one is the potential for any future congress to enact a wealth tax as elizabeth warren and others on capitol hill have been arguing for. if this ruling had not gone this way this morning, that effort would have been weakened. as it is now this will not stand as a roadblock for potential future wealth tax that congress might contemplate. the other question here was simply congress' taxing authority more broadly if the supreme court were to undermine this particular element of tax law, there was some questions about how much that would cost the united states and how many other elements of tax law under this precedent would then be subject to challenges of their own and how much lost revenue at a time of soaring deficits for the united states that would result in. one estimate here, carl, said if this had not been in place, it could cost the u.s. government $340 billion over the next decade. just on this one particular element of the 2017 tax law.

so clearly huge amounts of money at stake in this case. the supreme court here now deciding that the tax law is constitutional and people will have to pay those taxes. back to you. >> thank you. eamon javers in d.c. for us. accenture shares are soaring. one of the best performers in the san jose san jose. the company missing earnings estimates but the stock getting a boost on growing ai sales which hit a milestone. raising its outlook. joining us is accenture ceo julie sweet. great to have you with us. >> thank you. great to be here. >> the stock is up 6.4%. how much are you positioning accenture as an ai company at this point? >> well, our -- first of all we did have $21 billion in bookings overall, which is super exciting and we hit two major milestones. we hit $2 billion in generative a.i. bookings year to date and

as compared to the entire fiscal year 23. last year we had $300 million in boogsings and $100 million in revenue. great to see our momentum in this very important technology and overall $21 billion in bookings which demonstrates our resilience and relevance to our clients. >> how do you see the spend on ai, julie, amongst your clients? are they pairing back in others areas to deploy more ai? give us the sense of how companies are spending their budget which, of course, is limited. >> so a lot of the spending on gen ai today does feel like it's more about prioritizing spending, but if you take a step back on really what's happening, clients are focused on transforming using technology data and ai, so a lot of what's driving our sales is getting

ready for ai. you have to build a digital corep we're seeing a lot of modern platforms being put in place because if you can't access your data, you're not going to be able to take advantage of ai. we're seeing a lot of data foundations now. when we do gen ai every other gen ai project comes with it a data project because clients understand they have to be able to access their data. i would more characterize the focus now on transformation, using tech data and ai, and eventually then that is going to enable companies who don't yet have that strong digital core to be able to get the value from gen ai, . >> you mentioned your bookings numbers and they are hitting, gen generative ai is roughly what percent of your new? i'm wondering what you see in terms of the growth there in

terms of percentage? how much are we going to expect from accenture in terms of new bookings for ai? >> well, we continue to expect that gen ai is going to have a lot of momentum, but, of course, it's a small portion today of our bookings if you think about, you know, where the spend is. that's really about where the clients need to spend. so let's give an example. if you think about national australia bank they're leading in the use of gen ai and doing significant use cases around it. but they're also building out their cognitive ai data platform. we're seeing this over and over again. you've got to do a lot of spending on getting the foundation right, take something like jaguar land rover where they've invested a lot working with accenture in building out their digital technologies, their website, so now we're

working with them if you -- to use gen ai to make those beautiful pictures online of imagining the defender, you know, and how your buying it to do that in days instead of months. so you really have a continuum around clients and for accenture the opportunity is not specifically the gen ai opportunity. gen ai is a catalyst for our clients to build their digital core and then reinvent. the way you get value is not simply you have technology. it's you're doing something entirely different. i love the jaguar land rover nvidia example because we're producing -- they're producing these beautiful pictures and experience completely differently. and that's where accenture plays such ap impn important role not the technology but understand the industry, the process, the change, so you can get real value. and that's where i think it is

driving our business and our leading position is we have all of those capabilities. >> thank you for joining us. julie sweet. accenture. >> thank you. still to come this morning, how crypto companies are hoping to get an edge as we head into the presidential elections. ceos weighing in on the israel-hamas war and the rise in antisemitism. an exclusive with the ceos of pfizer and palantir and the push to release hostages in that conflict when we're back in two. ga, the advanced form of dry age-related macular degeneration, can irreversibly damage your vision. it can progress faster than you think. when ga threatens your eyes, take a stand. slow ga with syfovre. syfovre is an eye injection that was proven to slow damaging lesion growth over 2 years with increasing effect over time. it's the only fda-approved treatment to slow ga

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welcome back to "squawk on the street." crypto companies have poured millions into washington ahead of this year's election. emily joins us now with the details behind the industry's new push for legislation. good morning, emily. >> good morning. crypto backed pack has raised $160 million by the end of may that makes it one of the largest groups playing in the 2024 election when you look at the amount raised. they got donations from coinbase, ripple, anderson horowitz, to this pack in the

last month, but don't expect them to play in the presidential, despite donald trump's recently overtures to the industry. instead they plan to focus on house and senate, very critical because either chamber could flip. they're in play for both parties. bear shake is aiming to keep their approach bipartisan. the ceo said crypto is at a defining moment in d.c. where companies have a chance to show an organized and cohesive message. >> this is an industry that has been behind in washington, and really been on the defensive from some i think uneducated and sometimes intentionally or not, i'm not sure, really those who are trying to kill crypto in the united states at a time when we want the u.s. to be one of the financial centers of this next generation technology. >> they have mostly played in primary races, to affiliate groups have spent $37 million on

the races so far, and most recently bought a $2 million ad. this doesn't mention crypto but bowman has voted against a number of key bills the crypto industry was advocating for and it will be very interesting to see as we get out of the primary season into the general season exactly where they decide to start spending. melissa. >> emily, thank you. emily wilkins in d.c. after the break a major interview with the ceos of palantir and pfizer meeting with d.c. officials this week speaking out on the israel-hamas lee and advocating for the reasof hostages taken by hamas. we'll be right back. stay with us. [crowd chanting] they ignored your potential, and mocked your ambition. but it's not the critic who counts. with every swing and block, your game plan never changed. ♪♪ some still call it luck. let them. because you know what it's always been. inevitable.

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welcome back. i'm silvana henao with your cnbc news update. the first named storm of the season tropical storm alberto made landfall this morning in mexico bringing heavy rain and

flooding to the gulf coast and texas. the national hurricane center says the storm has maximum sustained winds of 45 miles per hour and that moderate coastal flooding is still likely this morning. the philippine military chief demanding china return several rifles and equipment seized by the chinese coast guard this week. philippine officials says chinese personnel on eight motor boats repeatedly rammed and boarded two of the country's navy inflatable boats on monday to prevent the transfer of food and supplies to a philippine territorial outpost. china is blaming the philippines for the controptation. travis scott was arrested this morning in miami beach just eight days before he is set to start his european tour. the rapper has been charged with disorderly intoxication as well as trespassing a property after warning. that's according to bookings records which also show he has posted a $650 bond.

carl, back to you. >> sylvania, thanks. a group of top ceos from oracle, pfizer, palantir, and others met with senators on both sides of the aisle this week to press for the release of hostages taken by hamas. advocate for israel and fight anti-semitism. sara eisen spoke with a few of them, the ceos of pfizer, albert bourla and alex karp of palantir and the mother of american and israeli hostage herb goldberg and asked why they were in d.c. and what they hope to accomplish. >> obviously, lots of things we're trying to accomplish, but in my humble opinion the rise in anti-semitism which is often linked with being anti-israel and quite frankly being anti-west, arises because we do not have public unity around values that most of us support and i think the most poignant, obvious example is we have eight

americans being abused probably including sexually abused in a dungeon and we have to i think most americans want to know that america will act quickly when americans are kidnapped, abused, murdered, and i think one of the reasons why you see people excusing this, celebrating this, often mask terrorizing people including people talking about the events on october 7th because they're dancing on a party of our disunity when most americans believe what happened october 7th, especially what happened to americans, should trigger an automatic response that is punishing for people that dare to touch americans imprison, torture and rape american citizens and getting a bipartisan group of politicians, senators, in today's landscape is unusual, getting business

leaders to speak up was basically historic. i'm proud to be part of this and, obviously, you know, i don't have the same role as somebody whose son is in a dungeon now, but i'm doing my best we're doing our best to show that there's a lot of unity, especially among the corporate elite. >> how rachel, did you get hooked up with the business leaders and what was your primary message today? >> well, i actually have the privilege back in january of being invited to the world economic forum in davos through actually alex and palantir, and there was an event that they had one night where they opened a forum for hostage families to talk to influential and powerful ceos of companies all over the

world. and that is where i met albert and many others. and so this came about sort of springing forth from that initial meeting back in january. and i -- when i went today, i didn't know what to expect and it was such a pleasant surprise to see the unity of this bipartisan flavor in the room of people coming together. this is not a right or left issue. this is not a democratic or republican issue. this is a human issue. >> i was at that event in davos. you are a force and you have been delivering this message far and wide. it's so interesting because corporate america has not led on this. i am just wondering what has compelled you, albert, to speak out to this interview? . go ahead. sure. take it. >> look, i can't speak. i'm not representing corporate america. i'm representing myself.

and i speak as a human being that cares deeply about what is going on over there. since the day i met rachel, i have nightmares thinking about her because the story came inside my heart. in such a profound way. i'm not going to stop speaking until all 120 are free. >> alex, go ahead. >> you know it's a fairly legitimate critique. i think for two long the best version of it is, is corporate america assumed we could outsource moral discussions and leadership unless it was an easy question. it's an easy question and you can have a platitude where people clap and you can go back to business. people love that. it's a free ride. but on issues where leadership does mean you're going to have difficult, hard conversations

with people and you may lose a couple friends and get disinvited from the family wedding, but in america, leaders, especially people who are leading interesting businesses, have a unique role in shaping the way in which people think and what they do. this is an issue where to speak up is going to require absorbing inbound and that's how you know you're doing something important. >> what do you want to see the u.s. government do? >>. >> luckily for the world no one is putting me in charge of the u.s. government. were i in charge i would have a policy that any american that is in any way abused, including especially including murder, assault and kidnapping, you would know that you and the people involved would pay a high price and i would begin to

persecute that across the globe, and use this as an example and make it clear to adversaries, you can scream and abuse the u.n. nnited nations and undermie rule of law and these rules on icc are ridiculous, but if you touch our citizens, including citizens i don't like, don't agree with, do not support me or palantir, we will exact a price from you and we will free them. >> rachel, what's your message to corporate america watching right now? >> well, first of all i think it takes tremendous courage to stand up and do the right thing and i think people who are powerful and influential, who are in corporate america, have to look themselves in the mirror at night before they go to bed and they know the right thing to do. they know the ethical moral

things to do. i know it's compli dated because people have interests and people have equities and you have to worry about what you're going to say to your board members and what are going to be the gains but at the end of the day you have to be able to know that you are actually answering to your inner self. are you being brave? are you doing the right thing? are you saying the right thing? and i would like to encourage you to have that strength and find that conviction, to do what will make you proud to be who you are. >> how big of a problem do you think anti-semitism is in america right now, albert? >> i think it's very big. ooingz it's rising. i don't say that it is what defines america right now, but i'm speaking to so many people. they are jewish or non-jewish and they have never seen sp

something like that in their lives before. what can you say about the killer of hostages outside an event that speaks about -- a music festival. it's unbelievable right now. >> my question is what can companies like yours do to fight this both internally and externally? we've seen so many companies rally around social issues in the past few years. what about this one? >> look, i don't know how many companies are going to publicly rally around the issue of fighting against anti-jewish bias, but i am committed to speaking publicly to cajole people into doing it. i would say, you know, jews are a 0.2% of the world population and a much larger percentage of

people doing interesting things, and so there's a lot of vulnerability. people -- what i would say jou wish americans and israel stands for as different -- are different but are you allowed to be exceptional? are you going to be punished for being exceptional? is our society going to allow constitutions to be exceptional and the people in those snoougss to grow based on their talents and integrity. i see it is being very important to get corporate leaders to speak out about the general issue because anti-semitism is a negation of, you know, do we believe that there will be accomplishment. is accomplishment going to be fair if somebody is disproportionately accomplished do they persecuted? we need to get everybody who is doing things that are important, not just corporate america, building, arts, people involved

in all sectors of life, who are pro accomplishment, to speak out against this regressive movement. i'm a little more optimistic than i was in the past because i can tell you in private, nearly everyone doing anything is aghast at anti-semitism and wants nothing to do with anti-semites. can you get people to go in public. that's what we're working on. >> more from the conversation including the threat of anti-semitism and what business can do to fight it. that's coming up in the next hour. >> we're going to take a quick break here as markets set new highs here on the s&p as well as the dow. s&p 500 5495 with new ghhis by nvidia and eli lilly to name a couple. we're back in three.

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restaurants. joining us is ever core is david palmer to give us a gut-check here on restaurants, fast casual and whether or not you're buying the notion that consumer is beginning to fold in some areas. >> well, the under 50,000 income cohort is soft. that's a third of the restaurant consumers out there and that group has been bowing out in the fast food segment which was not obvious in the beginning of the year you would see that weakness particularly within fast food. a lot of big brands out there have a value image problem. you're going to see responses in july from mcdonald's and the like. within casual dining it's actually held up pretty well out there with share gainers that have shown the value gaining a tremendous amount of share and a little bit of the expense of darden playing its every day low price gain, but it's -- they're losing share to other low priced options like texas roadhouse and

chili's coming in hot with more value promoted value on tv. >> and then we get comments from the likes of kroeger who we're going to talk to them in the 11:00 a.m. hour but they did say even some of the lower cohorts are beginning to show a little more positivemomentum. i guess nothing's linear in this case, right? >> it's a funky situation we are we have. the low-end consumer is weak but there's also this legacy coming out of covid where people are having behavior shifts. one thing we're seeing is fast casual is gaining share from that low income consumer cohort. you're seeing people literally trading up from traditional fast food to what we see as a better value at a little bit of a premium, say, chipotle is gaining tremendous amount of share, outpacing mcdonald's by own ten points in comp. there are some very interesting sort of subsegment themes going

on. for example, it looks like people learned how to cook during covid. we're seeing ray's sauce is up 10% in supermarkets while olive garden is not gaining what you think they would gain. so people are trading to home in certain cohorts. >> are the values going to help the likes of mcdonald's, and even the $5 promotion that starbucks is offering? >> $5 is an important emotional price point. it may help that image of the $12 combo meal we've heard stories about and social media picks up. to some degree what people are reflecting on is the outrage of prices of restaurants outpacing wage growth over covid of 20%. restaurants closer to 30 prps so they're really reacting to something that's real, they can't afford it as much. restaurants are trying to make a reaction to that. it could help a bit. value menu wars would be good for their image. it's not like mcdonald's itself

is bringing a gun to a night fight. they're just joining the $5. everybody else is there already. we're very curious to see how july works out for fast food. >> we'll definitely check in with you in the coming weeks, given the marketing dollars that will be at play out of mcdonald's. david, thanks, as always. good to see you. david palmer. >> thanks, carl. coming up next hour on "money movers," don't miss the ceo of hpe on their new partnership with nvidia. plus, the uk government opening a probe into the company's acquisition of juniper. that's coming up at 11:00 a.m. eastern time in just a few minutes.

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we're watching broadcom down about 2% right now. we mentioned some peculiar pricing action on tuesday with the stock on heavy volume hitting a new high and then backing off that. continuing its weakness today. enphase energy, solaredge down about 6% following price cuts at jpmorgan. 75 million americans are under excessive heat warnings as temperatures tip into record territory and as people crank their ac units, one group of companies could stand to benefit. pippa stevens has the details.

>> we're talking about utilities. it's hot across much of the country and during times of excessive heat, utilities sell more power as people turn up their air conditioners, which is positive for revenue and utilities earnings power, although there are some caveats. one group that could do well is the independent power producers, like constellation energy, energy and talon, which operate in restructured markets. simply, they own generation assets and sell into competitive markets. when demand rises and power prices are higher, they make money. and while extreme heat may not have an impact on regulated utilities, longer term it's another strain on the grid which helps the utilities' case when asking regulators. over more than two decades in the space, the fundamentals behind utilities have never been more positive. utilities second best group

today. carl? >>. >> appreciate that. pippa stevens. crude oil, highest since april 30. we have come off the session highs, but still holding awfully close to 5500. vix getting closer to 13. a lot to watch on this thursday. stay with us. it's time to feed the dogs real food in the right amount. a healthy weight can help dogs live a longer and happier life. the farmer's dog makes weight management easy with fresh food pre-portioned for your dog's needs. it's an idea whose time has come.

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good thursday morning. welcome to "money movers." i'm carl quintanilla. leslie picker is in at post 9 of the stock exchange. marc lipschultz is here on opportunities to target equity. and antonio neri joins us on his a.i. partnership with nvidia and how hp fits into the a.i. ecosystem. rodney mcmullen talking about the state of the consumer, get an update on food inflation. the stock really did move during the call today. >> absolutely. and all three major indexes solidly in the green today. treasury yields also the ten-year, you've got that at 4.28% currently. we're on watch for treasuries to kind of erase some of those losses for the year-to-date. we'll keep a