costs mean that you need more money at home. >> and finally, at what age do people make their best financial decisions? the age is 53 or 54 according to a new survey. that's the age when you accumulated enough knowledge and experience about financial matters but before losing any key analytical and cognitive skills. i'm past my sell by date. >> i have something to look forward to. >> keeps getting worse and worse and worse. thank you for watching "power lunch.." welcome to "closing bell." i'm scott wapner at the new york stock exchange. this make or break hour begins with the markets new found momentum and two big questions about it. is it real and can it last? it comes with stocks on the rise again, just as a tough month about to end. here is your score card with 60 minutes to go in regulation. green across the board. good gains too. the dow getting a big boost today from the likes of verizon and intel, goldman sachs as well. apple higher.

speaking of apple, tech outperforming today with several of the biggest names in the index seeing nice gains. meta and microsoft, alphabet and nvidia higher and how about another big jump for tesla. look at that. almost 7%. interest rates, good part of today's story too. a couple of key reads on the economy came in a little lighter than expected and that pushed yields lower almost across the board, ten-year at 412. the talk of the tape. is the correction over? was that it? our stocks now poised to buck the historical trend and get back to gains as we turn the calendar to september. let's ask cameron dawson, chief investment officer for new edge wealth here with me at post nine. welcome back. how about that? >> yeah. >> are we finding our momentum again? >> i think that it is very healthy sign to see this broad-based participation in the upside of the market. it is remaining to be seen if we can get through september unscathed. our base case is that this will be in that shortened shallow

category, meaning it wasn't the start of something more n nefarious as we looked at august. >> you mean the correction? >> we weren't expecting it to look like 2022 for example, the beginning of something. it wasn't about growth. it was about interest rates. it was about valuations and positioning. so that would say that seasonality likely means during this sideways chop, does it mean we return to that up into the market of may, june and july, maybe not. but that's very different than expecting a big deep drawdown. >> i think you were looking for a little bit more of a drawdown than we probably got, though, from our last conversations. once we started to look a little edgy in the market, it appears it may be momentum was lost, rates were going up, that we may have a little bit of a problem, even if we, to your point, you know, still weren't predicting a big decline. >> yeah. and we never really saw breadth wash out either. we saw some movement in the participation of things like number of names under the 50-day moving average, but never got to

the place of being fully washed out. it would suggest we have seen markets bounce back, we have not made a new high, not surpassed that 4600 level. it will be interesting to see how we interplay with that level. if we get past it with momentum, it is a different story than if we bump up against it, roll over, maybe still stuck in a churn digestion. >> why have we hung in there? what is the determining factor why this correction that we started a month thinking a lot about and the month thinking well, okay, maybe that was it? >> earnings, earnings, earnings. earnings expectations and revisions have gone higher over the last three weeks, not lower. you started the month at $218 a share for 2023. now we're at $222 a share. you've seen a similar move higher in 2024 earnings. a lot of that is because economic data is coming in better than expected. look at economic surprises strong over the last three months. that has started to roll over, roll over more today with the weaker jolts data.

as long as earnings hold up and you see this continued revision cycle upward, the market can remain supported. >> the risk is that you -- once you get into september, you get downward revisions on earnings. that's what i hear more people talking about. maybe it doesn't come to fruition. how about yields? >> yields did back off today. i think that explains the leadership we had, tech and growth doing better than the rest of the market. i think the trend in yields for the ten-year is still higher. that is one of the few areas of the market that has a very resolute uptrend at this point. i don't know how much i would count on a drop in yields in the very near term to be the ultimate boost in driver for this market. the thing that is so interesting about '23 is high yields have not mattered for valuations or the market. how much will they matter if they move in the other direction. >> why would they start moving in the other direction? what do you make of the move lower today? just 433, 431, here we are 412, couple of days.

>> it does speak to how positioning is very one sided within the bond market, meaning we have these very short futures positionings. some of that can be offset by positioning in other places. but what we have is an environment where yields are very sensitive to incoming data. today was immaculate in the jobs data. this idea you could see job openings continue to come down and not have it yet show up in real job activity, not initial jobless claims popping higher. that will remain to be seen on friday. we think the most important thing to watch is average hourly earnings. if that remains elevated, that will reverse the bets where the bond market started pricing in less interest rate hikes by the fed, you'll have that upward pressure again and maybe this yield move continues to drift higher. >> we need the data to be good. we can't have it be too good in a sense. that's what the jolts number was today. it was a little light, it still showed you got a good labor market. >> the big question for jolts going forward is that is it

still a leading indicator. jolts and quits are seen as leading indicators for payroll and unemployment. we have seen jolts and quits come down a lot. they normalized back to toward prepandemic levels. do they continue to fall? or do we have this perfect scenario where we can see an easing in the jobs market, but no actual increase in unemployment? which is what the fed wants. >> what about tech? before we turn the conversation and bring in two people who really are in their wheel house when we talk about tech what about your view of a trade that was looking really dicey and i don't know. now it feels like it is trying to get its momentum back. >> we saw tech underperform from mid-july to mid-august and now outperforming since mid-august and i think that we do have to ask the question of can tech valuations move that much higher from here? they are back near their 2021 highs.

that puts the onus on earnings to drive the upside in tech. just because how much can you move tech that much higher above 2021, increndibly elevated multiples without the benefit of earnings growth. >> multiples have come in across the board for the megacaps since the beginning of august to today. you're going to get that when you have a little bit of the upset in the performance. valuations have started to ease off a little bit. let's expand the conversation. bring in cnbc contributors malcolm etheridge of cic wealth and lo tony. good to have you here today. malcolm, a look at the notes. sounds like you want to run for the hills. investors should be looking for opportunities to derisk. why? >> today is giving investors that. my thesis since q2 earnings season started in early august, investors were going to be shrugging off any positive news we got out of earnings, even

with revisions being slightly positive for some of the tech names that we wanted to hear from. if you just look at nvidia, for example, the day after they reported, blew it out of the water as far as earnings were concerned. decent guidance going forward as well and the market responded still at the s&p specifically with the sell-off. so up half a percent when the market opened, down 1.5% and because until we get some clarity, following the next cpi report in the middle of this month an whatever the fed tells us in september, the market is going to continue to trade sideways looking for that specific guidance from the fed of whether the end is here or they're not ready to declare mission accomplished. >> nvidia has gotten almost all of it back. and if anything the stock was up 50% in three months going into the number. i would think you would think a bit of a cooldown, if this even was one, was good.

>> nvidia was supposed to take the entire market with it, though, as far as a rally is concerned following such a bangup earnings report and it didn't. the market has been pretty flat in response to nvidia coming out with what should be celebrated and be the next leg of a bull market if the bulls are in fact correct that the wave is still continuing and those people like myself who are saying it is time to, you know, look for the exit ramp, derisk a little bit here and kind of cool your heels a little bit, i'm supposed to be -- the market is trying to confirm that thesis. >> lo, what do you think? >> it is interesting. i agree with a couple points made by my other panelist. in particular, the market without question was priced to perfection. we're starting to get back to that point now. i do think we need to pause because, look, the fed has to come back and make sure they maintain credibility looking ahead. so, even though the market seems

to be responding favorably so far to the jobs report. i think also just thinking about this thesis around a soft landing, the ability to be able to kind of still have the jobs pull back in terms of not adding heat to the market, and we have one and a half jobs available for every unemployed person. the fed signaled that more cuts, if more cuts are necessary, they will take that action. so i think the market just needs to see where the fed is going to move and to the comment just made, we do need to see performance to justify a lot of these valuations. >> let's take nvidia, lo. the beginning of this month, nvidia traded 48 times forward. today it is 34. a lot of people talk about bloated valuations for stocks like that, so expensive, the ten-year average for nvidia is

34.5. we're right back to the historical ten-year average for a name like that. >> so that poses the question was it overvalued to begin with. i'm a big bull on nvidia, the magnificent seven. i believe all the hype we're seeing around a.i., which is largely driving nvidia, i think in hindsight if we look ahead five, ten years, we might see we had underhyped where we will land in the future, but for the moment, it is fine to be able to continue to see the performance we expect, continue to understand these macro conditions and how the fed will make moves as a result of them. >> malcolm, you have a lot of these stocks. you say derisk, would you derisk from these? >> as you might recall, i was actually selling a -- trimming my positions over the last couple of months as we were getting these higher highs and notching these record prices. i've been taking chips off the table preparing for the

opportunity to scoop these names back up at a bit of a discount whenever the inevitable downturn does come. i'm still in the camp that believes that the yield curve inverting is an ominous sign that just has yet to be proven true. and i also believe that the fed is going to say something at some point that lets folks know that they are dead serious about tightening until something breaks. i believe that september will probably find out that there is another rate hike in the cards for us, if it doesn't happen in september, definitely november. those things together are going to provide folks like me who love these tech names an opportunity to come in and scoop them up at a bit of a discount compared to what i have to pay to own them now. >> you had the discount, right? they were on sale by some respects, right? they had corrected. you don't think you missed that great opportunity because here we go talking about the nasdaq once again as the outperformer. >> the one i will give you i missed flat out is palo alto net

works. i wanted to scoop that one up when it got closer to 208, 207 and i got greedy on it waiting to 203 and missed the trade. i think the magnificent seven are directly linked to what is happening with the price of bitcoin. if you look at how bitcoin has been trading the last five or six days and compare that against the nasdaq, traders are buying both of those simultaneously. we're getting an artificial pop in bitcoin because of the good news on the court rule and you can make a direct correlation between retail trader buying that name as well as nvidia as well as tesla. >> i'm not even talking about just today. nasdaq is up 3.25% over the last week. cameron, to you, can this market take that next leap forward and avoid a historically bad month of september without tech?

>> no, i think tech is really important, not just because of its size, but for the psychology of the market. so having tech participate in the upside would be very, very important for the market to break into new highs. it does not mean that we have the narrow market that we had going into this year. it is good to see the broadening out, so things like industrials participating, energy doing better, that's more supportive of the market having a sustained move higher. >> the other thing, malcolm, i couldn't help but think about when i was thinking about alphabet today, i think we all remember, i think it happened on this show, after the microsoft and open a.i. investment, you were unhappy alphabet shareholder and you said i'm thinking about selling this name, they dropped the ball, they gave up the lead, yada, yada, yada. you know where i'm going with that.

i looked back. alphabet, since the chatgpt day is up 37%, microsoft since the chatgpt day is up 36.5%. year to date, alphabet up 52%. microsoft up 36%. the death of alphabet's a.i. aspirations were greatly exaggerated, malcolm. >> i can't believe it took you this long to beat me up on that one. >> i haven't seen you in a minute. i was on vacation. >> i'm glad to see you were thinking about me on your vacation. what i will say is i did at least take the gains from selling out of that alphabet position which i will readily admit i got completely wrong at least i could say i was too early. i still believe there is no way they can compete there without cannibalizing their one true business. but, at least i got the next trade right, which was to buy schwab and shares of sofi with the proceeds of that trade.

i will concede to you i was way too early with that one making that declaration when i did. >> did we write off alphabet too soon in the whole arms race, which it is. they weren't just going to step aside and let microsoft take everything, were they? >> not at all. i know how competitive that environment is. even though they might have misstepped and not taken advantage as early as they should have, when the jolts happen from a competitor or with the tech shift, they always seem to be able to come back. i think to that point around their core business, we have been waiting to see how these other bets will play out. i think the good news is when we look at the shift that we're seeing with a.i., i think there is still enough upside in alphabet's core business to take some of the pressure off and let the new bets begin to ripen and develop as well. >> do you feel like, lo, we're at a turning point in getting back to some semblance of public offering market again? we'll see ipos.

you heard of some, arm and others and what that means for your space. >> this portends something very serious so we can understand how well the market will accept this new environment. we're no longer in the days of 2021 when snowflake could get to market. we're seeing a much more measured approach taken in terms of instacart with the additions to the senior executive team, they were able to kind of pull back and take a year to get the numbers into a really good price so it looks really promising. we'll need to watch for some of the other names. we're a holder of reddit in the private market. that's one we anticipate coming. everyone is looking for stripe that will also be somewhat of a bellwether. and with regard to arm, who knows how that plays out. but i think what we might see is that nvidia acquisition that looks pretty good right about now. >> how are you looking at capital markets, the improvement

there and what that tells us about the overall environment for investing? >> it is really important. it shows you risk appetite. what we saw this year is one of the reasons why ipos are starting to come to market is because the ipo index is up about 40%. that gives people who are issuing new stock the comfort they can come to market and it will be well received. we want to see beta doing better if we brought in this risk taking. look at the high beta etf. that has been underperforming the market over the past month and a half or so. it would be really important to see that turn higher as well to give us a sense there is a broad risk taking appetite in this market that could support multimonths of ipos coming back versus a flash in the pan. >> that means the fed has to be done or close to done. doesn't seem like you're convinced they are. and i'll let you maybe the last comment here for our conversation about how much that matters to your perspective and what you need to see to change your overall perspective, which

sounds pretty negative to me. >> yeah. i'm negative as long as jerome powell is leaving it out there we're going to remain data dependent, data dependent, data dependent. as the saying goes among poker players, you can play the man or the cards on the table. i'm inclined to believe him completely when he says getting to 2% is paramount and i believe he is a student of history and is determined to prove he's way more vogueler than he is burns. he has to stay foot on the gas, take the swings and arrows and twist until something breaks. >> all right, that was -- the fed was a part of that story of why perhaps we haven't had a larger market problem in that cycle as well. thank you, everybody. malcolm, talk to you soon. lo, you as well, of course. and cameron, see you back on the

desk one day soon. we want to know will tech resume its rally and outperform in september? head to "closing bell" to vote. a check on some top stocks to watch as we head into the close. kristina partsinevelos is here with that. >> pdd holdings jumping today. executives said they saw a positive shift in consumer sentiment which fueled a rise across several product sectors for the company. they saw a boost from price conscious condition assumers. the company have been investing heavily in discounting and coupons to lure customers. shares are up 15%, 16% at the moment. to citi. citi seems to think the tides could be turning for verizon and at&t, upgrading both to buy. they say the wireless environment is starting to stabilize which helps operating margins. both stocks getting a bump today.

verizon still trading near its lowest level in over a decade. at&t hit its lowest level just this -- the lowest level since the '90s, and it is not too far off, $14.73. scott? >> we're just getting started on "closing bell." coming up, capital welt planning seven simpson breaking down his latest moves. we'll reveal how he's putting his money to work as the summer comes to a close. we're live at the new york stock exchange. you're watching "closing bell" on cnbc.

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all right, session highs for stocks right now with about 35 minutes to go. dow right now is good for 260. we're green across the board. a tough august, though. getting better and the month is not over. nasdaq surging, tech is leading the way, still on track for its worst month since december. here to share his five-star playbook heading into september, capital wealth planning cio. it's been a tough month. i don't know. it just doesn't -- it seems to be getting better by the day. i won't suggest to you that a certain number of stocks didn't have a pretty tough go of it for a period of time. but the calls, kevin, that, oh this is the start of a big correction and we're going down at least 10% and if not further, what happened to that? >> i think the fundamental story

still remains in tact. if you look at the labor market, the resiliency of the u.s. labor market, the resiliency of the u.s. consumer, it is hard to call for a big turn around when anyone that wants a job can find it. we were talking about the consumer and the strength of spending throughout the summer, we nailed it, spot on. same thing with back to school. i have to imagine the holiday spending season is going to be just as resilient. hard to call for an economic turn around when you have this kind of labor market. >> last week, really, really good example of how narratives around this market change. nvidia knocks the cover off the ball, stock doesn't do anything in the aftermath and then the bears say, you see, i told you, the market is tired. this is the sign. if the market doesn't respond to great earnings, that's a problem. it was powell. he was more hawkish than we

thought. yields go up, markets have a big problem. here we are today, neither one of those things have come to fruition. >> i can't comment on nvidia. i wish we owned it. what a story. but the comments from jackson hole, chairman powell specifically, i don't think they were that hawkish. i don't think there was any surprise there. the problem is you're talking about the bear anywhenarrative, they going to continue to raise rates and face this inflationary problem and this labor problem? and they might. they might have another 25 basis point rate hike in the fall. that's not the problem. the problem is anything they're doing is pushing back rate cuts. which is where we can build a thesis for another strong bull market to begin. and on thursday of last week, the derivatives market priced in the first rate cut for may. now, after the jackson hole speech, that got pushed back to the end of the summer, probably around this time. we're talking about a year out before we can have the conversation about rate cuts.

we'll probably have the conversation every day, between now and then, but the expectation for rate cuts happening next year, it makes this higher for longer narrative put in place and that causes the challenge. you could have economic contraction, a recession, you can have a hard landing, all those things become a greater probability the longer you keep rates higher. the bear case doesn't have a lot of legs to stand on when you look at how resilient this consumer is and how resilient the labor market is. >> we'll keep our eye on that s&p 500 too over this last 30 minute stretch. see if we can get that 4500 back too. interested to see as the market ramps up a little bit. what are you doing, then, kevin in the market? >> it has been the doldrums of august. we have been doing some finesse trading. we talked about adding to the apple position, the past few sessions, the only thing we have been able to pull the trigger on have been some covered call

writing. even though the vix has no pulse in certain segments with certain stocks there is enough news around them you can get some premium. apple because it is a tech stock. u.p.s., the teamster contract and that kind of settling in and merck because of the ten stocks that -- the ten drugs that we saw today with respect to the medicare negotiation. so, we had some volatility around those. we didn't sell out of any of the positions. but we wrote calls out of the money and we're bringing in option premiums that are annualizing out at 9% to 10%. even if we're seeing a stock market that is not moving, where we're owning stocks that aren't moving and most of the value names, we're trying to fight for every penny, even in a market where you're not seeing a lot of movement and there is a lot of people on vacation it is still august. but back to business. we got a lot of data this week,

september starts on monday. time to get back to work, right? >> let's talk about apple, a stock moving up about 2.5% today. almost 185. you added a little bit to your position if not buy it back. what are we thinking about it here? we got the announcement today of the new iphone event in a couple of weeks. what is your thought? >> i think the stock is fairly valued. we went and wrote a covered call for 185. there is a possibility we'll have to take some action there. i don't think i would let the position get called away. we had been selling it all year into the strength. we did buy it back, the iphone events are super exciting, maybe the new iphone 15 will have some revolutionary things, though i'm not sure i'm expecting that much out of this phone. but at these levels, you start to get a little bit concerns about the multiples, you've done a great job all week talking

about multiples and as the earnings appreciated these tech stocks don't look as overpriced as they have as recently as two months ago. i think over 30 on that pe with apple makes me a little bit uncomfortable. if we see a stock that rallies, we'll have to make a decision. either roll that call up or let the position go. it is a good problem to have. i like it when a stock we own is moving in the gray. >> the one megacap name that still trades at a pretty elevated level above its ten-year historical average of its pe as well, so even as it has come down a couple of points, it is still rather elevated above what has been around 18, historically. yeah, over the past 11 years, we have seen this elevation in the pe, we sold the stock. completely outright. i have been out of it completely eight times over the past 11 years. and that knocks against that

ceiling right here. i like this stock. i just love what they're doing in terms of every aspect of the business model, the share buybacks, the free cash they have on hand, it is a special company. if we sell it at 185, there would be the probability, the possibility that the stock came back down again that we have an opportunity to re-enter the position. that happened quite frequently and we'll see where it goes. we'll be talking in two weeks to get a sense on apple. up next, we're tracking the biggest movers as we head to the close. kristina partsinevelos is standing by for that. >> best buy is dealing with a more cautious consumer, shares are jumping. can you guess why? i'll explain next.

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highs of the day. >> we are. i'll start with a positive name, that will be best buy. after earnings and revenues topped estimates there is some red flags there. the big box retailer trimmed the higher end of its full year sales outlook with ceo -- the ceo saying the company expects this year to be the low point in tech demand. on the earnings call, executives said the back to school season has been better than expected. optimistic that sales trends will continue improving, so that optimism helped push up the stock price 4% right now. shares, here is the downer news, nio under pressure after the evmaker reported a wider than expected loss and revenue miss, a broader economic slowdown in china, hitting so many chinese names and the company's transition to a new vehicle platform where part of the reason losses more than doubled from a year ago. shares are off the worst levels of the session, but still down 2% at $10.81. >> kristina, thank you very much. up next, stocks rallying as

we head into the final days of august. truist keith lerner is back with his forecast for stocks. how he's playing the recent volatility. dow good for 270. the s&p 500 as well, looks to be back above 4500. back on "closing bell" after t this. from big cities, to small towns, and on main streets across the us, you'll find pnc bank. helping businesses both large and small, communities and the people who live and work there grow and thrive. we're proud to call these places home too.

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we're back. today's rally eating into some of august's losses. our next guest says the risk/reward is in fact improving. not enough, though, to play offense just yet. let's bring in keith lerner, co-cio and chief market strategist at truist wealth. what are we waiting for? >> great to be back with you, scott. so we put out a note last week during the correction that said we saw the move down as a healthy reset. our advice to our clients last week was if you're underweight equities, use that as an opportunity to increase equities towards targets. markets went from the most overbought we have seen this year to the most oversold since march. the good news is it is responding. does it respond and we're seeing that and we have seen valuations come in, we're seeing earning

trends, forward earning estimates at 52-week high and so altogether that's positive. i think there is some challenges that lay ahead. i think that things got overdone and as far as the overall market, you have to respect the underlying trend is still somewhat higher so that's how we're looking at things today. >> there was a point, i don't know, a couple of weeks ago, where it felt like the trend was broken and we were going lower. now that the market is back up, now we're hearing these calls that, well, the trend is still up. a different story not two weeks ago. >> yeah, if we put that note from last week when the market was going down, we said that was an opportunity. our title was this is a healthy reset. coming into august you had high expectations. the economy surprised to the upside, inflation has been better than expected. so what you saw swas a lot of optimism and the bar became too

high. august has been challenging. in two weeks, before this rally that we're seeing the last couple of days, we saw all of that reset, healthy reset and that's why we think things are overall fine. i still think it is a choppy move forward, but in a higher range. and you think about equities overall, still relative opportunities, still seeing communication services today looking at a new fresh relative high to the overall market. seeing discretionary act somewhat better. so still opportunities. one other thing outside of the equity market, that's where we focus a lot, just this week, we added to longer term bonds as yields got to 4.25. >> of all the things that have surprised to the upside, which you mentioned, the other thing and maybe the most important thing in why the market had a bit of an issue, rates, right? rates surprised to the upside. maybe not so much in moving up, but in the magnitude and speed in which they did, and that was upsetting to the market for a

bit. >> that's right. in terms of stability and the rally today, we have the jolts number which comes in weaker than expected. consumer confidence a little weaker. they're looking at that as the fed can ease off a bit and the ten-year is coming down. look at the two-year treasury, the most sensitive rate to the fed funds future. i think that's why we're seeing this overall rally as well. but, again, the picture right now is i think modestly positive. we have inflation that has come down somewhat, valuation has corrected a little bit. sentiment has come in. from a technical basis, what you're seeing across the s&p and technology stocks and nasdaq, you're breaking above the 50-day moving average. i think we make a run closer to the 4600 level which was where we peaked out, you know, a few weeks ago. >> right at the doorstep of 4500. we'll see. keith, thank you. keith lerner of truist. last chance to weigh in on our question of the day. will tech resume its rally and

outperform in september? the results after the break.

the results of our question of the day, we asked will tech resume its rally and outperform in september and the majority of you said, yes. it will. two-thirds as a matter of fact. speaking of tech, alphabet shares rallying, we'll tell you what has the tech giant soaring and what it coulme fd anor rest of that sector, that and much more when we take you inside the market zone.

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this is the closing bell market zone. cnbc's senior markets commentator mike santoli here, plus deirdre bosa on the rally in alphabet shares, kay rooney on the court ruling that sparked a bitcoin surge today. michael, i turn to you first, on the doorstep again of 4500 on the s&p and we're just off the highs of the day overall. >> reinforces the observation along the way, all month, we were in mostly routine pullback zone. until further notice it was probably mostly just a little bit of a retrenchment on the valuation positioning technical front. now, we are only at a two-week

high in the s&p 500. you haven't necessarily set aside all the challenges, but the sensitivity to bond yields was underscored again today, which shows you the main thing we were afraid of, i think, is yields going runaway on the upside, choking off growth, or forcing the fed's hand because inflation was going to be the main story. i don't really think we should be wishing for a run of softer than expected economic numbers. we got the sort of loosening of the labor market evidence today. that was comforting. that takes a little bit of the pressure off the fed side. i don't think we want the fed to start cutting. fed starts cutting, then you're on recession watch historically. you can cut and still orchestrate a soft landing. i think we're okay where we are. we never got super quwashed out though. i'm not sure we pulled the slingshot back that far where we shoot higher in the market right from here. you knocked over some of those

roadblocks head of us. we got above the downtrend line, the 50-day. >> i'm looking at alphabet up near 3%, all that chatter, we remember it well, they lost the race today to a.i. and it is microsoft and nvidia's game and everybody is playing for third and after. alphabet had a better year than microsoft from a stock point year to date and from the data that gpt announcement. >> and we also thought that maybe the a.i. hype cycle would calm down a little bit. but it is still in tact. as part of the next event here in san francisco today, google had a suite of a.i. announcements including pricing for a.i. tools, same as microsoft's co-pilot, which when it was announced in july, sent its shares to fresh highs. after microsoft later tempered expectations, you might think that markets would like to see some more uptick first. google shares are higher on that pricing as well as expanded or

new partnerships with nvidia, gm, suggesting this enthusiasm over a.i. has the ability to drive markets and the smaller names as well. how long this lasts, scott, that's anyone's guess. investors want to know how all of this computing, all of these nvidia chips lead to actual application. for now, markets seem happy to trade on the future. you put it well, scott. >> mike's here as well. it feels like it is quiet move that alphabet has made because it was all about microsoft and then it has been really all about nvidia. and that stock has done awfully well. >> sure. i also think that alphabet is a stock that is priced and valued in such a way that it doesn't require you to make heroic assumptions about how grand the

a.i. a.i. opportunity is. it is barely now back to a premium above meta. there is a lot going on in the here and now in terms of earnings support where this can be an accelerant or kicker down the road. this also argues against the we were in some kind of an a.i. bubble a couple of months ago. yes, a lot of enthusiasm, maybe some stuff got mispriced. but didn't see an ipo rush yet. and stocks like alphabet and microsoft, yeah, sure, getting a little bit of a tailwind from it. but not as if they got to silly levels in terms of valuation. >> important interview coming up, exclusive with google cloud's ceo, that's a few minutes away. kay rooney, to you. i'm looking at gray scale bitcoin up with the battle with the s.e.c. >> gray scale is the company at

the center of this. they have this gbtc, the first publicly traded vehicle for bitcoin. it was trading at a huge premium to bitcoin in the last year or so it has been trading at a discount. you see that catching up to the price of bitcoin. that's the dynamic there. to set the stage there, gray scale had multiple attempts to convert that $20 billion bitcoin trust into an etf. it sued the s.e.c. this d.c. court of appeals siding with gray scale in that lawsuit against the s.e.c. the judge saying that the s.e.c.'s decision was hypocritical. they called it capricious, arbitrary, said the commission failed to adequately explain why they approved the listing of two bitcoin futures products. but they wouldn't approve the gray scale proposed bitcoin etf. that was unlawful. so this etf approval, scott, mostly about objects here. seen as the final step to getting crypto into mainstream finance, into the world's

largest asset managers on board, black rock and fidelity among those in line still for bitcoin etf as well and seen as this way to really broaden out thecrypto investor base. fidelity now offers it and so does coinbase, but seen as a way to really broaden it there. and then lastly, the spot coin is more accurate in terms of tracking underline prices. a lot of excitement around that. you see it in bitcoin prices. >> kay rooney, thank you on that. i want to talk about as we hit the two-minute warning, and now under that, the one sector green for the month, slightly, energy. i keep hearing more calls like this is primed, a lot of stocks are above their 250 day moving averages. they're primed for a bump here. >> people love the charts. for decent reason. energy mostly held on to the big

year it had last year. 60% gain. continues to outperform crude. it feels like this mix of obviously good charts, but also a cyclical element and if nothing else the oil and gas staying range bound keeps you comfortable with the cash flow figures. i think more broadly, one thing during this little pullback we had in the broad market is you didn't see cyclicals buckle. it wasn't about worries about earnings growth and worries about the macro economic cycle. if anything, the opposite. that's one of those things in favor of this was just mostly a decent little pullback to get valuations and sentiment off the board. not sure if it is fully accomplished, but that has been the case. credit markets ratified that point of view. it also -- you have the broadening of the rally, also in place. yesterday and today, could be back-to-back, 80% upside volume for the stock exchange.

some people say that's a pretty good sign of demand. overall volumes are lower. you haven't seen a momentum stampede into the markets just yet. >> big events to still come this week. jobs report, a pretty resilient market. now out near 300 in the green, s&p bumping up against 4500. the story continues in "overtime" with morgan and jon. >> a high score today and got your score card on wall street, welcome to "closing bell: overtime." coming up on today's show, a rare and exclusive interview with google cloud ceo thomas kuran fresh off the event today in san francisco. we'll talk about the company's latest push into a.i. and a whole lot more. >> a busy afternoon for late august earnings. results this hour from hp, hpe,