dividend and going to see tapestry come back and talk to what's left of capri and decide what they want to own and that's the beginning of the cycle. there will be other areas for m&a because interest rates are likely to come down. >> that's the end of the show on the last day of the new year for "power lunch." thank you jan kniffen. >> "closing bell" starts now. welcome to "closing bell." i'm mike santoli in for scott wapner. this make or break hour begins with investors ringing the register before they ring in the new year. continuing to take profits in the megacap winners and driving a multiday slide at the end of an otherwise stellar 2024. and dubai is ringing in the new year. take a look here. we're going to start to see the fireworks at the world's tallest building pretty impressive display right there, one of many to come. with 60 minutes left in the

trading year here in new york, the s&p 500 under a bit of pressure. it is now down about a third of 1%. it's been down slightly more than that a bit earlier but definitely to the downside. year-to-date winners such as nvidia, apple, tesla, all of them backing off. there's a little bit of sell the winners and buy the laggards effect inside of the index today. still, more stocks are up than down for the day and for the year the index is sets for its second straight annual gain above 23%. this was a year when the world political and policy landscape was scrambled and jpmorgan research will be here to talk about the economy and 2025. our talk of the tape with the indexes climbing to the finish, limping to the finish really after a two-year run, can stocks overcome elevated valuations, higher for longer bond yields in the future? let's ask charles cantor joins me at post nine. >> thanks for having me.

happy new year. >> what is your read on -- i guess the most recent market action as it punctuates the year. is the market having a little bit ofmaybe the policy outlook? are we not able to absorb easily the 4.5% 10-year yields or straight profit taking? >> i think probably the mostly straight profit taking. i think the last month has been tricky and the value stocks are been under tremendous pressure and the growth stocks have continued to perform and so to some degree the last month has looked like the whole year to some degree the last month has looked like the last two years. >> sure. >> a little surprising i would say post the election results, you didn't see the flip of more -- of better value stocks versus growth stocks, and i say that certainly one of the surprises as we finish off what's been, as you say, you know, a remarkable two years in the stock market, a remarkable year in the market this year. it was very difficult to lose

money almost every asset class you made money in and some new asset classes you made money in as well. it was a year where diversification didn't help you, it hurt you. >> yeah. >> risk -- it was a risk environment and the more risk you took ultimately the more reward you got and i would say very surprisingly against very volatile geopolitical environment you had very low volatility in the market and there's probably a warning there that on any one-year basis it's very difficult to predict the outcome of stock returns. >> the maximum decline in the s&p was 8.5%, there for about a minute and we rebounded off of that. as somebody who picks individual stocks, evaluates individual businesses, tries to get returns outside or beyond what the index is offering it's been a tough go in terms of relative returns, but looking ahead, what do you expect in terms of the

environment? >> look, it has been difficult because diversification hasn't worked and many of the indices have become less diversified and the differences between the equal weighted indices and the market cap weighted indices are simply astonishing and yong folks will believe the numbers -- i don't think folks will believe the numbers when they look back 15 years from today. as you look at 2025 we hope it's much less about the macro and more about the underlying companies and their business strategies and their ability to take price and get price and [ inaudible ] back into return on capital type projects and management execution and less about what's going on with interest rates, where are we in the covid conversation. we finally flew covid headwinds and tailwinds, from a business planning perspective, executives can model next year off this year without trying to guess anomalies and the like.

and you are not going to have any cover from, you know, the ability to take price because simply you have inflation. i think we hope it's much more about the micro at the company level and much less about the macros that relates to covid and oil prices and interest rates and the like. >> a year ago i think you would say the economic consensus there was seen as a 40% risk of recession in 2024, so there really was a high wall of worry to climb for the markets, for investors in general. we don't really seem to be there right now. you say maybe it's less about the macro because you think macro is just stable and the fed is not going to do much? >> look, i think it's helpful to look back to 2024 and i mean i think one year returns are always a function of how good c. i think against a backdrop where the market cap indices are up close to 60% on a two-year basis the setup is much more

challenging. but i think it's going to come back to earnings and earnings growth. the big earnings drivers this year were the magnificent seven. we can talk about the reasons behind that. you would hope that there's more earnings diversification across subsectors and companies. i tell you the other surprise about 2024 is the market at this time pricing in seven fed cuts. i think we only got three and despite that, you had a very strong market capitalized weighted return, but i think the truth of how companies feel about their stock price i think is revealing in the equal weighted indexes where on average, you know, those things are up 10 or 11% and by the way, on average, they've had less earnings growth in the 11% and actually more multiple expansion even though on an absolute basis the multiples today are say 10% cheaper than the large company indices. >> that's right. it's interesting because a year ago if you said oh, we're going to invest in the equal weight or

the russell 2000 even or the value index of the s&p and you have 10% on all those you proba havegh it's been dusted by the big caps. >> look, i'm an absolute return guy. >> yeah. >> you go to the bank with more money this year than last year, you may not go with as much if you invested somewhere else. reasonable return, 10% gets it done. look the other part of what we're not talking about is the consumer, right. the consumer balance sheets are up $14 trillion. they are the folks that own all the stocks. i've always believed folks spend their balance sheet and their prospects on how they feel about their current income. their current incomes today are growing faster than inflation. they want value still and convenience. convenience has been redefined relative to me and you shopping at home versus what convenience used to feel like 15 or 20 years

ago when we're still doing this. and then i think it's worth talking about, i don't think you can wish away the magnificent seven. >> yeah. >> i think when we think about the magnificent seven, i think folks say well, they're magnificent stocks. when you look at them, there is nuance across the seven and it's important to understand the nuance in some of them you've just got paid a huge amount of return with no actual earnings growth. in others you've had a lot of earnings growth with return. but these, most of them are magnificent companies and the reason they're magnificent companies, mike, because on average they are spending 15% of their revenues on r&d, think of that as future optionality on creating the next amazing thing, and while they are doing that they're spending 10% of their revenues on capital. they're building these generally incredible motes, future return opportunity, the -- does the investment in r&d or capital

produce anything and doing that without taking on any financial leverage. when i started 25 years ago, someone said go model that without financial leverage. if that was the test i would have failed. so there's reasons why they are so strong, but i think at the end of the day, we are quite hopeful that the micro will matter even if it's the micro within a google or an amazon or a microsoft. >> sure. >> or nvidia for that matter. >> yeah. i mean they're putting hundreds of billions of dollars in motion out of basically their cash and cash flow and it's going to other companies and, obviously, it's probably not all misspent. >> it's been spent, remember, the 15% on r&d has been spent in the earnings statement. >> that's right. >> and so there's -- you can -- and you can -- there's an argument there that the earnings on balance are under reported versus overreported. for folks to understand the magnitude of that, these seven companies have spent close to

$250 billion on r&d. think of that as an investment for the future. that is 1.5 times more than the entire health care and biotech sectors combined. >> wow. >> we used to think about that as the comparison because those companies used to invest in r&d because their patents run out and they have to create new optionality with the research and development they do. >> truly remarkable. we'll see how that themes plays. let's bring in anne from all spring global investments and citi's scott cronin. great to have you both here to finish out the year anne, we would love you to weigh in terms of this moment looking into 2025 whether the recently choppiness in the market has been telling us anything worrisome about the macro setup or if you feel as if it's noise in the short term? >> i think it's noise in the short term and maybe some setting up for the new year. investors are looking a little bit more broadly, which i think is kind of a wise move. the stock market has been led,

as you've talked well about, by a very concentrated number of names, and i do think diversification and a better mix as we go into '26 is really the theme that's going to play out for 2025. so i think some investors might be signing up for that, but also, some of these stocks have had a really amazing run since the election results came out and letting off some steam from those types of returns that we saw over the last week is not surprising to me at all. >> and, scott, i think you've been focused on -- i guess what you might characterize as a little bit of a challenging starting point for returns in the last couple months, whether it is valuations, what the market expected out of future cash flow growth and sentiment, things like that. where does it sit right now after we have had this modest reset in the last few weeks? >> yeah. mike, so happy new year to you. this is really important, so going into the election, our view was you want to be prepared

to fade a trump bump. we targeted plus 5% post-election return. we targeted 6100 as our line in the sand. and, you know, a lot of the premise for that, mike, was really that we expected, as we went into the first quarter, we'd see more initiatives unfold as per trains to the trump policy promise, and what -- but with that, would also come some policy risk, whether it be tariffs, whether it be some noise around some of the appointees and the vetting process, getting into the deficit situation as well. so our premise to sell into a post-election rally was basically centered on this issue as we go into q1, we're going to face a little bit more noise relative to the euphoria of the past several months. we're getting that pulled forward now to your point. we pulled back what, roughly 3% off the highs and we do think

this essentially is what we'd expected in q1 happening a little bit more realtime. not a big surprise given the way the market has been -- of the bias you price in things pretty aggressively in a shorter amount of time. >> yeah. i mean just for i guess mental benchmarking safety, s&p is trading about mid-october highs, so essentially you had this bump and we've given most of it back. spending a lot of time in this area, and anne, you mention you do expect performance to broaden out to a fair degree. we've had some false starts along those lines. some folks have said if yields come down, if the fed starts to cut, maybe you see some kind of acceleration in the economic surprise indicators. i guess none of that has happened in a sustained way. do you still think i think, perhaps, the evidence of earnings growth becoming a little bit more democratic next year is going to be enough? >> i do think that's what it's going to be. it's going to be earnings driven and micro led.

what we're seeing is earnings expected to decelerate, still good earnings growth in those big cap names, but deceleration in that growth. while you're going to see the opposite in some of the other areas like profitable small and mid cap companies that earnings is expected to accelerate and in certain areas where we haven't seen that. i believe that is going to happen. it's going to be led by a lot of different things, including lower line of base interest rates. now, even though we believe that there is likely only to be two cuts, maybe even less than that, we do think it's good you have for the earnings acceleration. we think m&a is going to be a big theme in 2025, and that really does help highlight the valuations within the small and mid cap space as well. it will drive the breadth of the market. >> i guess that is one point,

charles, in that one source of returns for small and mid cap stocks is they get acquired. >> the acquisition story is incredible because i think when i started in this industry almost a quarter of a century ago there were 14,000 publicly traded securities and now there's less than 5,000, so we've lived through this period where private equity has got institutionalized and the cost of capital is cheaper illiquid than where it's liquid is remarkable to me. i think a change in administration will help m&a, and i think private equity and strategic rationale will drive continued, you know, consolidation, and i'm hopeful that the ipo market returns in a broader way as well. but it's challenged there too because the pockets of capital available in the private markets are so very, very large. >> scott, i guess the idea that

we're pulling forward some of this unease with, you know, the policy outlook and, perhaps, just some of this deferred profit taking, it all does make sense, but is there a point at which you'd have to say there is a little bit more of a worrisome message being sent by this market handicapping a policy mistake or if yields stay up here we can't unclog the housing market or something like that? >> there are many issues. a path of 5% to 10-year is not a great backdrop next year. we don't see that but we have to be prepared for that risk. sentiment continues euphoric on our measures and we have to be aware that anything on the policy or fundamental front that comes -- begins to cloud that is going to a point of risk. ultimately under the surface if i was to sum it up, i mean '24 has been a year of show me the growth, and you got the growth out of the mag seven, nvidia in particular. the other 493 not so much.

expectations has been falling all year long and haven't shown signs of bottom. we don't think we get that until we get into the q4 reporting period. you have dynamic where we're looking for an earnings broadening on this thesis which we think will unfold next year that should set up for earnings growth rate convergence which leads to the broadening in small mid cap, value and other like kind positioning views on this. the salient point is we're watching policy and rates but at the same time we need to see a little bit more confidence come into the rest of the market that the other 493 earnings growth expectations for 2025 are starting to stabilize and turn north. we haven't seen that yet. the pmi data we're looking at throws a little bit on that. i'm not overly concerned about the consumer at this point. lots of tailwinds there in our view, but under the surface we need to see the earnings growth traction kick in to play to this

broadening thesis which so much of next year is already being priced around. >> yeah. >> i think 2024 was supposed to be a broadening thesis and it didn't happen that way, and i would just be sure folks understand that i'm very sympathetic to the 493 need to catch up, but where they can catch up is in the amount of real dollars the large seven companies have spent in r&d and capital which gives them much more pricing flexibility and much more optionality versus the other 493 and oh, by the way, the seven are still going to grow double the rate of the other 493, even though the rate of change of -- on a year-over-year basis inflects positive for the others. i think it's going to come down to the companies, mike, and the large ones have built flexibility in their business and the small ones that will win will be driven by companies that have pricing power and attractive rates of return, which is always the story. >> quickly before we go, particular parts of the market

that you feel as if would be particular beneficiary sector wise of this type of move? >> yeah. we do think there are some. health care is one area. we also, if i had to pick a dark horse going into '25 i would also look at emerging markets. it's an area where investors have really not had a strong allocation toward, and it is an area that we believe could start to see improvement if we see any weakness in the dollar, and we do expect volatility, not just within the dollar, but within the economy for all the reasons that scott pointed out earlier. it is likely to be a volatile year for investors who are willing to stay invested. there's going to be many opportunities to take advantage of those opportunities. i would say look for those opportunities within certain sectors like health care, but also certain regions like emerging markets.

>> yeah. em seems nonconsensus. we'll see how it goes. thank you very much and happy new year. appreciate it. >> let's send it over to kristina partsinevelos for a look at the biggest names moving into the close. >> hi mike. let's talk about warren buffet's warner brothers discovery making waves. registry names like dotcom as well as dot-net. shares hit a 52-week high. today about over here you can see about three bucks off or so just since then. this is after berkshire hathaway increased its stake over the last three trading days of the company. the buying spree seen here is a sign of confidence in the near term growth of the company especially when berkshire hathaway gets in. that's why i have to say shares are up but still up half a percent because of low volume. shares of u.s. steel jumping about 9% right now. 13% on a "washington post" report that nippon steel would be willing to give the u.s. government a veto over any

decrease in u.s. steel's production capacity. all of this is in an attempt to secure approval for the acquisition of u.s. steele. the u.s. government last week said they were concerned the acquisition would lead to a decline in american steel output. the stock, though, you can see it's trading at 35.28 right now. still about 15 bucks, almost or 13 bucks away from its 52-week high hit all the way january 24th, 2024. you can see it's a little bit off from there. mike? >> yeah. a little more of that buying the laggards on the last day of the year. thank you. we are just getting started. up next why one fund manager is betting one of 2024's biggest winners will see even more upside in the new year. that is after this quick break. we're live from the new york stock exchange. you're watching "closing bell" on cnbc. (♪♪)

(♪♪) what took you so long? i'm sorry, there was a long line at the thai place. you get the sauce i like? of course! you're the man! i wish. the future isn't scary. not investing in it is. nasdaq-100 innovators. one etf. before investing, carefully read and consider fund investment objectives, risks, charges, expenses and more in prospectus at invesco.com ichi, ni, san, shi... (1,2,3,4 . . ) ruri never thought she would live out her dream. then one day, she did. you were made to chase your passions. we were made to put them in a package.

tons of sweet dentists on zocdoc. dr. stafford's a real beauty. and people say he's passionate about dentistry! dr. taylor's on thirty-third street... we could practically skate there! booked it! sweet! you've got options. book now. ♪♪ carl: what's up, carl nation! it's your #1 broker with the best full-service wealth management skills in the biz. tech asst: actually i'm seeing something from schwab. (uh-oh) producer : yeah, schwab lets you invest and trade on your own. and if you want they can even manage it for you. not to mention, schwab has a team of specialists for taxes, insurance, and estate planning. both producers: all with low fees. carl: we're experiencing technical difficulties... uh, carl... schwab! schwab. a modern approach to wealth management.

welcome back. tech stocks dominating 2024 heading for a second straight year with double-digit gains and our next guest is betting on even more upside for some of the group's biggest winners. joining me baker avenue chief strategist king liven. great to have you on here. i have to tell you, though, it's been a parade of investors coming on here and saying, you know, big tech has had its moment. it's really time for money to rotate into other themes, smaller stocks, things that aren't so popular. it seems like you're not on board with that idea? >> yeah, mike. it's great to be with you. we'll take the other side of that trade, and the reason why is, let's say the recent weakness we've seen in the tech sector we think a lot has to do with rebalancing. we see it as more technical in nature. we think cash would go back to these winners simply because that's where the earnings growth is in 2025. if you look at the tech sector,

it's still looking to be the highest sector for earnings growth with over 20% expected in 2025. >> right. although i guess the argument the rest of the argument is going to have a catch up move in earnings. i guess maybe it's true this is mostly technical or repositioning and nothing much has changed but once you get these very large stocks up to 32, 35 times forward earnings, maybe that's enough reason for people to reassess? >> it could be. we're not bearish on the other call it 493 names either. we're expecting them to deliver somewhere around 13% earnings growth in 2025, but that's still, you know, going to be below that of what the tech sector is expected to deliver. >> yeah. >> having said that, we don't think valuation out of line. in fact, if you look at the call it the magnificent seven stocks their valuations are within one standard deviation of their historical norms in the last ten years. it's hard to say that they're at

levels that are ot sustainable. in fact, if you go back to a lot of these companies going back to their ipos it's not unusual to see these companies deliver hull i.t. year strong gains. simply because that's where the earnings growth is. >> there's no doubt about it. almost across any time period, just the nasdaq 100 has been remarkable source of returns. most interested in some of your specific plays, especially ones where you're doubling down on an already great year like a broadcom. feels like that was a story everybody embraced recently. had a huge gain in market cap. why can it keep working? >> first of all, it's a wonderful company, managed extremely well by mr. hock tan. i think broadcom is an interesting name because it does something nvidia doesn't do, which is custom ai chips for their customers. this segment is growing as fast as nvidia is, and the company

itself has a lower multiple than nvidia. companies like palantir look interesting to us. it's controversial because it sells at a high multiple. we recognize that. the company just became profitable just two years ago, but it's been cash flow positive. we think it's uniquely positioned in the incoming administration. peter thiel was a founder of palantir, a connection of elon musk there, and with the d.o.g.e. efforts that are coming in to reduce government expenditures, we think palantir is really uniquely positioned. >> i mean, clearly that is the collective conclusion of the market, that palantir is in some kind of privileged position and it's gone vertical since the election. you mentioned the valuation issues that made it to above 50 times revenue at this point. there's been lots of top insider selling shares into this ramp. i mean, why doesn't any of that give you pause at this point? >> you know, we'll be hesitant

in terms of being buyers. if it pulls back to the mid-60s it would be more attractive to us. but given how volatile these stocks can trade we think the opportunity is there for investors to participate in a name that's going to be in our view a big winner going forward. also keep in mind if you look at past winners in terms of multibaggers, if you would, a lot of these names have sold at tremendous high p/es before they had their big runs, so i think sometimes the market yawn estimates the earnings growth of what these companies can potentially reward investors with. >> yeah. clearly that's what a buyer around these levels would be betting on. talk a little bit about nvidia. you mentioned why, you know, broadcom might have certain advantages, but nvidia has been a very fascinating case because it built up massive gains in the first half of this year and it's basically held on to those levels but it has not been able

to make further progress. what do you think is behind that? >> a think a lot of that is about expectations. if you look at multiple, nvidia sells at average forward p/es over the last ten years. investors are looking, waiting and seeing how the next earnings report will look like. we expect the company to continue to grow, just not at the rate we've seen the last two years. i think investors are in this wait-and-see period for nvidia. >> yeah. been waiting for a few months. we'll see if there are catalysts on the way. king, great to catch up with you. appreciate it. up next, jpmorgan's joyce chang is breaking out her global market playbook and where she's seeing strength in the future and the headwinds she's watching. follow the "closing bell" podcast on your favorite podcast app. we'll be right back.

the s&p is less than 30 minutes away from its best two-year return since the late 1990s, but as more market volatility on the way in 2025 with global policy understand on the rise? let's ask joyce chang chair of global research at jpmorgan. it's great to see you. really glad you could weigh in here. i'm thinking back to 12 months ago when one of the talking points looking into 2024 was

some huge majority of the world would be going to the polls and the possibility of these kind of sweeping policy reorgs around the world. i guess we've gotten a lot of that. i wonder what you think now the implications are of all of it? >> it's great to be with you. happy new year. well, i think it's still a story of u.s. exceptionalism and what we're seeing is greater uncertainty in europe and that we still have elections that are coming up there at the national level, votes of no confidence. we've had the surprises that have come out in korea as well recently. but, you know, the geopolitics haven't changed the dynamics on the macro side. the u.s. remains the global engine for growth. there's still a lot of reasons why the s&p 500 is going to be favored over other markets. even though we're seeing a less certain and more cautious fed here. so we've seen the electoral

uncertainty some which will persist in other countries but many fewer elections going into next year. i think the focus will be on the u.s. market and particularly just what types of regulatory actions might be taken that would facilitate more market activity as well as [ inaudible ] discussion also on the fiscal outlook as we get further into the year and that remains a source of uncertainty. >> yeah. i guess aside from, you know, the newly elected overnment, you do mention that the fed may be keeping rates a little bit steadier than we thought a little while ago, maybe only a couple cuts and could create the possibility of divergence with central banks around the world. we have a strong dollar. we don't know what the implications of tighter trade policies might be. does this go into the category of things to keep on your screen, but not trade off of? or do you think that they have direct investment implications?

>> well, i think you're going to see some direct investment implications. look, we do see that the fed will pause in january and continue in march but other central banks are going to have to move rates lower, maybe ecb we see policy rates going to 1.75%. you could see euro/dollar cross parody in the first quarter of the year. stronger dollar, weaker emerging markets, fx. euro/dollar crossing parody as well. there are clear implications. i don't think you're going to see as much policy rate cuts in the u.s. as some had anticipated, and we've been of the camp that thinks it is higher for longer is something here to stay and that probably inflation is stickier here as well. so i wouldn't just say it's about the fed's path. it's also about the growth outlook and we've seen such solid u.s. growth compared to other parts of the world. >> is there any room, do you think, for playing some kind of a catch up trade in terms of

areas of the global markets that have been either under performing or under exploited or essentially where you might see some kind of converge sentence i guess what i'm getting at is, you mentioned all the reasons for continued u.s. exceptionalism and it feels like the markets have been positioned for that scenario for a while, and i wonder if it pays to bet against it on any level? >> i think it still pays to be diversified. we remain and had a call to remain overweight in japan where we think they're going through structural transformation here. we do see the boj hiking rates in january. you have the governance reforms going on, exit from deflation, and consumer and wage growth. i think the uk is going to do better than the eurozone and you have the fiscal stimulus program in place that means growth should hold in better here. emerging markets, you have to be very selective here, but some of

the markets that do stand out, turkey and argentina, two markets that have stood out. there's been more caution on brazil and on china and the focus is going to continue to be on tariffs. just going back to the u.s., i think there has to be much more selectivity within the sectors as well next year . we think mag seven will do well but be more diversified at greater dispersion across sectors and countries and across themes next year. >> does china, its economy and markets, does it remain on the defensive going into next year because of all those factors or, again, is there room to feel as if they might be able to kind of fet get the policy mix right? >> our base scenario we have an increase in tariffs to 60%. that is a meaningful decline in china's growth from the 5% target they have. we have growth just under 4% in china right now. i think that china will continue to [ inaudible ] some monetary

and fiscal measures in place. the structural problems related to the property sector and also consumer demand remain there. you do see a strong export performance right now, but i still think this is going to be a difficult year for china and emerging markets more broadly where you could continue to see outflows just given the u.s. exceptionalism, you know, that still high rates that are going to attract capital and the threat from tariffs as well. >> you mentioned the high rates in the u.s. on a relative basis and perhaps that's attractive to global capital flows. do you see that at all being in question if there are more questions about the fiscal situation in the u.s.? do you feel as if that's going to be supportive of current, you know, sustained deficits here? >> well, i think you're going to see more capital market activity, but the concerns about the deficits are not going to go away. you could see some signs of that as well. you see the debt ceiling debate

is going to heat up. we've seen the government shutdown they're going to have to make some difficult choices. market expectations could be getting ahead of themselves with respect to what really can occur with deregulation and with tax reform. i think that is going to be more of an issue when we get towards the middle of the year. but for right now, the growth story is still one that is really differentiated in the u.s. compared to the rest of the world, particularly when you look at the strength of consumer spending in the fourth quarter of the year that was still around 3% and some of the investment flows that are coming in and reshoring flows that continue to come back to the united states compared to other countries. >> yeah. absolutely. some momentum in that direction. joyce, great to talk to you. thanks so much. happy new year. >> happy new year. all right. up next we're tracking the biggest movers as we head into the close. kristina is standing by. >> we have one big buyer of bitcoin pulling back on its spending, still spdienng but a

little bit less. we'll discuss why after this short break.

since starting the farmer's dog, bogart has lost so much weight. and he has so much more energy. he's like a puppy again. ♪ (banjo playing) ♪ c,mon bo! this is a before picture of bogart. such a big boy. pre-portioned packs makes it really easy to keep him lean and healthy. and look at him now. he's like a show dog. [silence] bogue, can you give daddy a break here? he's having a hard enough time.

15 minutes until the close be bell. back to kristina for key stocks to watch. >> we have to talk about microstrategy usually seen as a proxy for bitcoin. it owns about 446,000 coins, but its weekly purchases which are released on mondays through the sec have actually declined from the week prior which is why shares are down about 5%. that headline keep in mind is on thin volume and you're seeing a larger reaction. just over the last little while there has been a divergence starting from mid-december see both going here, a little bit bigger of a gap in between both because microstrategy did announce plans earlier this

month to issue new shares to fund its purchases of bitcoin and that is causing a little bit of a divergence. you see bitcoin only down about 4% on the month. microstrategy 26%. switching gears let's talk about ralph lauren. shares are down to the negative. about half a percent after getting some love from analysts at argus. they're suggesting investors should buy this name with a price target of 250 bucks on a 12-month range. you can see it's about $19 away from that. they say there's a bullish pattern with this stock. reason being over the last year or so, there's been some higher highs and some higher lows since september 2022. and you can just see on this chart over here climbing higher. bullish sign the company's margins improving and, of course, catering itself to the younger demographic with their latest collection happening share. >> quite a move. thank you. >> thanks. still ahead, utility stocks were far from boring this year. we'll look at what could power those stocks higher in 25.02 that's coming up on "closing bell."

do you have a life insurance policy you no longer need? now a term policy - for an immediate we had planned carefully for our retirement. but we quickly realized we needed a way to supplement our income. our friend sold their policy to help pay their medical bills, and that got me thinking. maybe selling our policy could help with our retirement. i'm skeptical, so i did some research and called coventry direct. they explained life insurance is a valuable asset that can be sold. we learned we could sell all of our policy, or keep part of it with no future payments. who knew? we sold our policy. now we can relax and enjoy our retirement as we had planned. if you have $100,000 or more of life insurance, you may qualify to sell your policy. don't cancel or let your policy

lapse without finding out what it's worth. visit coventrydirect.com to find out if your policy qualifies. or call the number on your screen. coventry direct, redefining insurance.

so sick. are you okay? i'm incredible! so many in-network docs on zocdoc. this one never rushes appointments. and that one makes patients feel heard. booked! sick! you've got options. book now.

i up next it's been a big year for apple but the tech giant is facing two key issues in the ar aadyehe. we'll discuss that and much more when we take you inside the market zone.

♪♪ well would you look at that? jerry, you've got to see this. i've seen it. trust me, after 15 walks, it gets a little old. ugh. i really should be retired by now. wish i'd invested when i had the chance... to the moon! unbelievable. stop waiting. start investing. e*trade ® from morgan stanley.

♪ we are now in the "closing bell" market zone. apple approaching a pivotal moment in the new year. steve kovach shares why. diana olick on what the latest read on housing prices means for the group and pippa stevens on this year's big moves in the power and utility stocks. steve, pretty strong finish for apple in 2024, but what's the road ahead look like? >> yeah, mike. apple is down today but looks like it's going to close the year up about 30% or so. despite this week's selloff it had a really killer december so far. apple started the year without an ai story to tell, but it all turned around in june with the debut of apple intelligence. still waiting to see if the features are driving iphone sales but they are top of mind for tim cook. he needs to launch apple intelligence in china dodging

president-elect trump's tariffs. trump comes into office promising blanket tariffs up to 60% on goods imported from china. cook managed to skirt tariffs during trump's first term developing a cozy relationship with the president as his peers jeff bezos took antagonistic stances. keep an eye out for announcements related to apple with job creation or manufacturing in the u.s. as an offer for trump to get tariff relief. talk about china, apple needs to get government approval for apple intelligence so it can launch on iphones in the country and fend off rivals like huawei. mike? >> all right. steve, thanks very much. diana, a bit of a tricky period for housing data of all sorts. what are the latest price numbers telling us? >> yeah. tricky to say the least, mike. the much watched s&p case-shiller national home price index hit its 17th consecutive all-time high in october according to the report out today. the gain was 3.6%, down from the

3.9% annual return in september, so prices are still higher than they were a year ago but the comparisons are shrinking little by little. prices are, of course, not expected to go negative nationally next year due to still low supply and high demand. supply is much higher than it was a year ago but much of that is because homes are sitting on the market going, quote, stale according to a report from redfin this week. this is for existing homes. i want to take a look at stocks like zillow and compass that outperformed despite changes in rules for real estate agents as did home improvement retailers like home depot and lowe's and jim cramer named h.d. his favorite housing related stock citing increased housing turnover for 2025. mike, happy new year. >> happy new year to you, diana. all those charts look okay, but pull backs in december have been the rule. we'll see how that goes into january. pippa, somewhat unexpected source of strength this year, talk about that.

>> yeah, mike, power stocks became interesting fueled by the ai trade with the utility sector up nearly 20% on the year. to put that in perspective going back 30 years the average annual return is 4.9%. although the sector is roughly 8% below its november all-time high. within the sector the winner by a long shot is vistra which has tripled followed by constellation and nrg. all are independent power producers and have direct exposure to higher power demand selling into competitive markets. performance for regulated utilities has been more modest. american electric power, southern company duke and dominion showing low single digit it gains. looking forward, mizuho is not optimistic on the space saying they think 2025 will be one of under performance as load growth optimism is over shadowed by macro headwinds. on the flip side jeffries said to focus on mid cap utilities where data centers can move the needle pointing to ppl, and ni

source names as names to watch. >> interesting call to suggest maybe people have gotten a bit over enthusiastic in the area where the new capacity and power is coming on. maybe they won't be able to exploit its much. to me the big picture question is, are all the assumptions of runway power demand as far as the eye can see from the ai applications can we actually trust them? >> i think we're going to see some of those estimates start to come down especially since nobody wants to be paying so much for power and so you can imagine that these applications will become that much more efficient. however, the ai trade is only one part of the demand growth when it comes to power. we've got electrification as well as reshoring and there's no doubt that we will see power growth looking forward. but i think to your point, the utility industry is a slow moving one and so, you know, you can have all of that forward looking demand but then when push comes to shove getting these projects off the ground is a whole other story. think about the backlog in pjm is five years, it's great to say

we will have these data centers and see the gas demand grow, but on the ground a little bit harder to get these off up and running. one interesting thing is we are seeing down in texas some bitcoin mining rigs are being reconverted to data centerses because they have that power hookup and, of course, when it does come to data centers the time to power is the most important thing. >> yeah. that is fascinating, actually. we already had a little bit of this huge insatiable demand for bitcoin mining and president-elect trump saying he wants it all to happen domestically. who knows if that will go through. thank you very much and happy new year as we approach the final few seconds of trading in 2024, s&p 500 on a one-day basis down about 40 basis points, 0.4%. russell it,000 up a little bit. there has been mean reversion trade going on all day. strong market breadth more stocks up than down, lot of the laggards for the year are working. we're going out at approximately a 23% year-to-date gain. little more than that for the

s&p 500. the second straight year of approximately that gain and a total return basis of dividends looking at 25%. so a great year. almost anyway you slice it. december has been rough, especially for cyclicals, industrials and banks. down 7 8% in december. that is go to do it for "closing bell." "overtime." >> well, that bell marks the last trades of 2024, the family of art cashin at the closing exchange. stocks limping to the finish line with another session in the red closing out what has been a very strong 2024 for the bulls. that is the scorecard on wall street, but winners stay late. welcome to "closing bell overtime." julian emmanuel brings his 2025 playbook and where