i loved learning history, my own history as well but are we approaching it wrong from a political media point of view? >> i think the media, a lot of times, is uninformed about history and they take the most egregious examples and really blow them up. in the case of jim and i, jim is a guy who decided that he wanted to do this research with me and we did it together and that's the powerful part of the story. charles: wow. >> we can't change the past but we have control over the present and the future and you're not responsi for father 's sins but what do you do to change? charles: amazing stuff. you can listen to lee on this new podcast. what happened in alabama, right now and his new book is "i'm bes released in january. another great friend, liz claman , over to you. liz: lee is a great journalist. charles: he really is. liz: long time "wall street journal" guy. thank you so much for bringing us that story charles.

breaking news folks this is a particularly important final hour of trade, because we're in the throws of historic trading action. right now, the s&p and the nasdaq are on pace to close at all-time records. reminding investors once again who have chosen to stay on the sidelines that that position has been a mistake, and at least one top research outfit at this hour does not want to be on the wrong end of it, so evercore isi busting a move, the firm's top equity strategist julianne emmanuel hoisting his year-end target from worst to first bringing it from 4,750 the lowest on the street to 6,000, now the highest on the street right now we're at 5,480. looking at a gain of 48 points or just under 1% and then the nasdaq continues its blistering record run at this hour. even a fraction of one point added to the board today will bring the index to its sixth all-time peak in a row, and if

you had gotten in a month ago, you be up about 6%. january of this year, if you got in then, up 19%. just last october, the nasdaq was at 12, 800 and since gained 30% and is at 17, 904 on the move here, but look at the 216 point gain right now, which brings us to the sector leaders, consumer staples, industrials and yes, tech providing the red bull for the bulls. the xlk tech etf, which has been around since 1999 is trading at an all-time hyatt this hour, 231 at the moment we've got it up 1.6% with just about every major semiconductor company in the basket but it's also got auto desk as a holding. the software maker, a favorite with architects, contractors even broadway set designers is leading the nasdaq 100 right now up 7% to $241 and change after

activist funds starboard sent autodesk a letter, that's never good if you're the ceo because then you know these guys want something, informing the company it holds a stake worth more than $500 million. year-to-date autodesk is flat compared with a 14% jump in the s&p. starboard demanding that auto desk stop making acquisition s until it can execute with excellence and that stock repurchases are the best use of capital right now. would paying a dividend keep activists at bay? well, tech names both big and small from nvidia to garmin pay dividends now. meta announced its first dividend and cloud company net app with a smaller market cap than autodesk just upped its defer denned. coming up, the ceo of net app joins us live on the fast- growing trend of tech growth companies paying investors to hold the stock. speaking of getting paid to sit on an investment the 10-year

yield rising again 5.5 basis points at the moment to 4.279 as the markets wait on the federal reserve to ease interest rates and on some key economic data this week, so let's get to the floor show. joining me now, blackrock's global co-head of ishares fixed income effort etf and kenny polcari. kenny, minneapolis fed president neil kashkari gave a point on the calendar for how long he thinks investors will have to wait. he told cbs face the nation that if we get even just one cut this year it's going to be december because the fed can afford to wait. well, let's just say that's true what can't investors afford to do if that is the case? >> so listen. i don't think investors could afford to wait but they haven't been able to afford to wait. look what this market has done this year certainly over the last three or four weeks but what's really interesting is neil kashkari has been on both sides of the fence very cautious , more hawkish, slowdown

, not yet, we're not in a rush, we got to be careful and then on face the nation yesterday, he came out and kind of flipped the story suddenly saying, you know, we're going to get one and it's probably december kind of now putting that to rest so stop the speculation about july. stop the speculation about september. here is what it looks like. here is what we'll do and that just often clarity and you know me. you know the market. the market likes clarity. whatever it is, good or bad. it just wants more clarity and i think that's kind of what we're seeing today. tomorrow you'll get five more fed heads speaking. let's see if they support it. liz: five? five. oh, my gosh, yeah, that leaves us looking like we're at a tennis match. so steve, one thing we know about treasuries is they have been like weebles, that toy, and the yield sometimes wobbles, the price of the bond wobbles but continuing to move higher look at the two-year up 6.6 basis points to 4.772%. what does this tell you about

the investment opportunity within treasuries still? >> yeah, liz, look. i think to your point, we've been all over the place. we went to 5% last year. we went as low as 380 at some point over the last six months and started edging back up again and now we've retraced so i think where we are right now in this market is going to be very hard to call the peak. so we believe there's a ton of opportunity right now across the board in fixed income. your yields that are higher than they were 20 years ago. if you go back to 2004 we're sed that are higher than that, so we think regardless of what you do, there's a great opportunity here to put cash to work, and now is the time to do it. it's going to be really hard to finesse all this timing on when the first cut actually is, et cetera. liz: you talk about which part of the yield curve. i mean right now you've got the six-month yielding 5.36% but blackrock just announced the first of its kind etf. it's a bond etf. it has 20 and 30-year treasury

defined maturities in it. i'm looking right now. the 30-year is at 4.41%. you've got the 20-year at 4.52%. why go into those right now? >> well, this is part of a longer term laddering strategy so again, investors could have a view that we're about to see a change in policy. i mean, whether that comes in september or december or some combination of both, what our research has shown is that the market does start moving ahead of those cuts, so for an investor whose worried that maybe the economy may slow a little bit more than what the markets pricing in, longer term treasuries be one way to potentially hedge against that and so you could do that through something like tlt or do that through one of these longer- dated i-bonds as we call them. liz: kenny, the market and the economy will slow. that's just a fact of life, because trees don't grow to the sky, correct? but does this tech rally, i mean

we look at the sox index doing incredibly well over the past several months and that of course has all of the semiconductors in it. i'm looking at it hitting an all-time high i think 256 at the moment, so you can't afford not to be in this market; however, that said, there's always that warning sign down the road that okay, trees don't grow to the sky so how do you square that? >> well, so you square it by saying look, to your point, you can't afford not to be in this sector and if you're in this sector you've been enjoying the benefits of the run that we've had. i would not be chasing tech because to your point, we're kissing all-time highs now, even beyond all-time highs. liz: people said that four months ago. don't chase it and then they miss out on even bigger returns. >> well, but are they missing out or look, i haven't been chasing it. i'm still participating as it goes up. i haven't bought any more because i'm not chasing it. i put money to work in other places so i have certainly not missed it, so if you're in it, you're okay.

what you're saying is to get yourself even longer and here is the issue with get yourself even longer. if you do it here at the top and then the market suddenly turns, and we get this back off that we're looking everyone will scream and yell and say i got holes because i bought it at the top. slow down and have a plan. that's what you should really do you shouldn't be chasing at the top but you're invested so you are enjoying the ride as you go along. liz: although some have not been invested. they got nervous. let me jump to steve because steve you talk about people who kept saying oh, i should park some of my cash in treasuries. are most investors under weight fixed income right now and what's the best place to put it? would you go into corporates here? >> yeah, liz, look. i think investors are into rate fixed income. our research shows that investors probably have around a 20% allocation to fixed income and if you think of that in the context of, you know, the classic 60/40 not that everybody looks like that but you be fairly under weight so

again it's going to depend on the scenario so let's assume you're in the soft landing camp. you can go into broad high yield to lock in this great income that you're seeing right now. you probably also want treasur ies in there to provide some balance. high-quality investment grade as well. again, if you think you're going potentially into a larger slow down you wouldn't want to skew much more towards quality, so you'd want to be in treasuries longer duration treasuries potentially, higher-quality investment grade, defensive investment grade like igeb, and then, you know, that allows you to kind of pick your journey, but you do have to have somewhat of a view here. either way though we do think it's time to move back into fixed income. you should have a view on what that looks like but it's time to start moving back in. liz: steve, kenny, thank you so very much. we are nine minutes past the top of the hour. there's perhaps a more pressing issue for investors in deciding whether to buy or sell nvidia or get in on fixed income. russian warships and a nuclear

submarine just off the coast of florida, are vladimir putin's latest attempt to pushback on the new security pact america signed with ukraine at the g-7 summit. richard haas is the president em eritus of the counsel on foreign relations first here on fox business to tell us what putin means for the us, nato, ukraine, and all of us. biden now allowing ukraine to use american-made weapons to be used in russian territory. part of what is enraged putin. defense names rtx, boeing, lockheed martin, top holdings in the ishares us aerospace and defense etf which has gained 14.8% of the last 52 weeks talking about all of this with richard haas when the "clayman countdown" returns.

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liz: fox business alert in just a few minutes president joe biden will meet with nato sebaceous at the white house. the question is will they even be able to hear each other over the rattling of russia's war sab ers. russian president vladimir putin is heading to north korea for a two-day visit starting tomorrow. the trip will reportedly focus on expanding military cooperation between the two rogue nations. as north korea continues to build its missile program, russian warships and a nuclear submarine armed with hypersonic missiles have been idling off the coast of cuba since thursday , while they have reportedly just left havana bay today, what does their presence, just 90 miles from miami, florida, say about the future? joining us, counsel on foreign relations president emeritus richard haas. which is the bigger security threat to the west, what's happening tomorrow in north

korea with vladimir putin or the situation that is right in our backyard in a way? >> even though cuba's much closer north korea is the bigger security threat, liz because think about it. it's medium power that could start a major war on the ean peninsula, plus north korea is well on its way to developing a global reach, with nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles by the way reportedly in their small part because of russia's help. russia is reportedly helping north korea advance its nuclear arsenal in exchange for some ammunition or weapons that russia could bring to bear in this war against ukraine. liz: and kim jong-un, the leader , is completely crazy. i mean, we're just being honest here. he's the one who has shot relatives out of canons just to send a message to say that i'm the one in charge. how dangerous could he and putin together really be? >> well i think in part his motivation is to tell china that he is an alternative to them.

historically china's been north korea's biggest benefactor, that's where the territory essentially all of the trade, so this in some ways is a shot against beijing as much as us. he and putin -- liz: really? >> yeah, i think north korea likes a little bit of independence. they recent their big brother in china for leaning on them too much, but again, putin wants to be a player and likes the fact that he and north korea are moving closer together. liz: okay, moving a bit further away, supposedly is this floati lla of russian, you know, boats. there's this nuclear submarine. one of them is armed with hypersonic missiles which are terrifying in many ways, shape, and form. supposedly moving away from the us right now and putin and his team had said oh, this was just an on-schedule exercise. was it? the timing is weird. >> i'm not privy to the schedule of russian ship movements. i would say, the cuban economy really in terrible shape.

it's sinking and contracting still. they never recovered from covid so partially there's probably russian support there and russia is always a provider of fuel. second of all yeah, i expect vladimir putin doesn't mind pok ing a finger in our eye essentially saying look, you americans are helping ukraine, you just sent them more arms plus you freed ukraine up to start using some of the us and western supply at arms against russia targets and territory near eastern ukraine so this is his way of saying two can tango. liz: look at some of those territories with a mass p here, karkiv, russia controls this right now, this is very worrisome because he obviously looks at that as a big poke in the eye from the west, so the us is allowing american-made weapon s to be used there, in limited fashion. certainly not on mother russia territory but on top of it -- >> well it is now. we've given the green light to ukraine to go over the border and to those parts of russia next to some of those provinces

you just pointed out. liz: so you're saying they own that now? the russians have controlled that and they will keep it forever? >> no. i'm saying they are at the moment in control of much of it. not all of it. they would like to establish permanent control. i believe we should deny them that and we should continue to arm ukraine towards that and plus we don't want to force ukraine. ukraine doesn't want to agree to giving up territory that's been acquired by force. that would send a terrible message to the world, so yeah, it's a longer conversation, but i think we should continue helping ukraine. we've got to protect the core of the country. i think that's militarily a totally achievable mission. will ukraine be able to roll russia out of the east, out of crimea? no. that'll be the subject of negotiations, but we should continue helping ukraine to survive as an independent viable country. liz: of course. as we finish up i do have to get your thoughts on gaza, the situation there. you have benjamin netanyahu, the prime minister of israel dissolving the -- >> war cabinet.

liz: basically the war cab nit. will his advisors help speed up a peace process? >> zero chance. he's not going to reestablish the war cabinet. this way he can pick and choose. he's not going to give a big job to the extreme people. the israelis opened up a corridor, but i think what this is saying is this war is going to continue. the israelis established a basis where they can continue going after hamas, fighters and leader s, however they choose in a discrete way. they can supply humanitarian aid so there's not massive civilian suffering. liz: may i just interrupt? israel says it has just killed m ustafa mohammed who is a huge hezbollah operative, a terrorist and it's like we're bringing hezbollah into the picture. >> look, the goal is in gaza to continue to wage the war but on a more discrete way but to lower the temperature, increasingly shift its emphasis to the north can which israel faces a much larger security threat. as bad as october 7 was,

hezbollah threatens most of israel. tel aviv is in its range of its missiles so right now, the israeli government wants to dial down, not get out but dial down gaza and if need be dial up their confrontation with hezbollah in the north. liz: doesn't sound like peace is close. >> not at hand. liz: i would want to say thank you to you, but i don't like the message. >> sorry. liz: we appreciate you being here. richard haass. one aviation company is lowering the boom on traditional slow as molasis air travel. we'll take you live to greensbor o, north carolina where boom supersonic is cutting the ribbon on its first supersonic airline factory and will make planes that fly twice the speed of the commercial airline jet. when do we get to go on these things? kind of looks like the old, yeah , the old fast ones that we used to know and love. the united airlines was the first us carrier to sign an aircraft purchase agreement with boom supersonic. it has gained 22% year-to-date.

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liz: once upon a time, there used to be the fastest commercial plane in the world called the concord. it retired 21 years ago but now, united, american, and japan airlines, are the first to place orders for the long-awaited overture plane produced by boom

supersonic. so the overture is expected to be the world's fastest commercial jet cruising at moch 1.7 roughly twice the speed of today's subsonic planes and this morning boom supersonic opened the first factory in north carolina, the same state, yes, where the wright brothers took flight in 1903 so we said get grady trimble there and he joins us with more on boom's big day. reporter: this morning the ceo joked with the governor here for the ribbon cutting they need to change their license plate in north carolina. if i can get the paper to open, to say, first in supersonic flight, at least here in the us. they expect planes to start rolling out of this factory in about three years or so and faster planes, of course, means drastically cutting down flight times on overseas routes. as an example you'll be able to get from say new york to london in just about three hours and 45

minutes. right now, boom supersonic is still testing a smaller prototype plane but here's what its commercial supersonic planes that'll be made at this factory will look like. boom ceo says newer materials, engines, and tech will allow the company to bring the cost-to -fly way down compar ed to the concord to around the price of a business class ticket on a regular commercial flight today. >> i deeply believe the next generation of airliners are going to be supersonic and we need to build those here in the us and we're going to do it right here in greensboro to insure continued american leadership and manufacturing. reporter: and boom says this factory will be a boom to the local economy, bringing with it 2,400 jobs creating an impact of more than $32 billion and potentially taking on commercial aviation giants like boeing. >> when ceo's are talking to me about where they want to come, it's workforce, workforce,

workforce. we have the best community college system in the country. we have one of the greatest arrays of public and private universities in the country, and i believe that these companies know that and want to leverage off of it. reporter: so if everything goes according to plan, boom says you could be flying in one of its overture planes by 2029, liz, there are some skeptics out there but as you noted off the top there's always buy-in from some major airlines here in the united states including united and american and overseas at japan airlines, so they believe in it, and we hope they can make it happen. liz: i can't believe its been 21 years since the concord which by the way for those who were too young to know, new york, london, two hours 52 minutes so what's been happening this whole time? we have the technology. it's incredible. go on the overture. let's wait and see. reporter: it's the cost. they gotta bring the cost down so that it's feasible to fly these routes, and boom says

they're going to be able to do it. liz: we'll be waiting. thank you, grady, very much. fox business alert after technical difficulties last week , gamestop investors finally got to hear from the ceo, but they did not like his message as you see from the stock, which is falling 9.5%. ryan cohen telling investors the video game retailer will be focusing on profitability by cutting costs and operating a smaller network of stores selling higher-priced items. cohen gave no indication of how gamestop will use its $4 billion in cash after it raised 2 billion following a share sale earlier this month. charlie gasparino is coming up in just a minute. he's got a follow-up on what this means for meme investors beyond today. investors are guzzling up shares of primo water up about 1.5% after the company behind mountain valley water announced it'll be merging with blue tri ton brands which houses deer park and ozarka.

the merger is an all-stock deal expected to generate a combined 6.5 billion in net revenue for the 12-month period which ended on march 31. water shareholders will own 43% of the company while blue triton shareholders are expected to own 57%. drink it up. investors showing disney love up 1.5% after the pixar parents premier of inside out 2 became the first film of 2024 to gross over $100 million in domestic sales during the opening weekend at the us box office, the animated sequal scored 155 million and 295 million worldwide. it's the biggest debut since last summer's smash hit barbie and the second-best opening weekend for any pixar movie ever after incredibles 2 in 2018. not finding nemo? that was my favorite. mcdonald's shares let's flip it over to those. they are flat to slightly lower

the fast food giant said it is removing the a.i. ordering assistant from drive-thru at 100 restaurants after the system confused and messed up customer meals and then that issue went viral. mcdonald's collaborated with ibm to develop and deploy the a.i. tech in 2021 to improve workflow the fast food chain says it's re evaluating automated order tech but will continue to work with ibm on a variety of other projects. ibm flat. it's a tiny bit higher, barely, at this hour. some of the nations biggest tech companies now disrupting another area of the financial world. alphabet, meta and salesforce recently announced their first- ever dividend payouts, and now, net app is jacking up its dividend. the ceo is here in a fox business exclusive on the digital dividend divide. a.i., the cloud, and so much more. and it was the unrealized dream of becoming a rock star that led joel simon down the path of

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liz: apple shares have been up most of the session here. right now up two and one-third percent after it announced it is discontinuing apple pay later in the us users across the globe will be able to access installment loans offered through credit and debit cards as well as lenders when checking out with apple pay. the tech giant had announced it last week's worldwide developer 's conference 2024 user s would also be able to access loans through third-party app, affirm, through apple pay. we've got apple as you see , about 217 and change, a firm is up a quarter percent to $30.97. speaking of apple. from 1995 to 2012 apple, which was sitting on an oases us of cash, was a dividend dessert even as the company innovated like crazy creating the ipod, a phone, ipad. shareholders got no dividend love. microsoft, which ipo'd in 1986

another tech giant that held off on paying a dividend for nearly three decades but since the a.i. revolution set tech stocks on fire, tech companies are falling over each other to pay a dividend. in fact, this year, meta and alphabet issued their first-ever dividends making amazon and tesla the only ones in the magnificent seven, not to offer a payout, but other widely -held companies from salesforce and booking holdings not waiting around for tesla and amazon to do it they too launch ed dividends for the first time this year and while net app has had a dividend of some kind since 2013 the american data infrastructure and cloud-based solutions company just announced it's boosting its quarterly dividend starting july 24 to $ 0.52 taking the forward yield to 1.7% so let's bring in ceo george kurian, joining me now live in a fox business exclusive let's get right to it. you guys have been giving a dividend way earlier than some of the larger market cap companies.

why? >> dividends are one way of returning cash to shareholders. share buybacks are another. we've had a policy of returning a part of our free cash flow for many years to our shareholders through a balanced combination of dividends and buybacks, and the reason we raised our quarterly dividend by $0.02 a share was the confidence we had in our cash generation capabilities moving forward. liz: i look at your company and you've got about a $26 billion market cap, which is dwarfed by meta. meta just started giving its dividend. do you see this as a trend and what do you think is really behind it? >> i think that it's a way for shareholders to participate in the cash generation possibilities of a business and i think that different leaders have different positions on it. in our case, we've had many years of record margins. this is the third year of record

operating margins and we just finished a year where we generated $1.7 billion of cash flow from operations and we thought it be a good thing for us to return some of that to shareholders through dividends. liz: well i'm sure shareholders really like that. i find it so interesting. you guys are at 1.7%. nvidia is giving a dividend of .03%. let's talk about the business and how it's doing. netapp has a more supportive infrastructure for a.i. than a lot of other cloud companies. what are you doing to build upon that? >> we see that a.i. is powered by data and data runs on netapp. we hold and protect most of the world's most important unstructured data, meaning documents and videos and text of various types that's used to power a.i. applications and what we're doing is enabling our

customers to easily use generative ai tools like large language models with their data securely in a high-performance way and in a responsible way. liz: you've been partnering with nvidia on a.i. data what? more than five years. what's the next step in that partnership? >> we started with nvidia many years ago well-before the advent of generative ai where customers saw bringing nvidia's kind of processor technology with the data management capabilities that we bring, enabled predicted ever analytics. predictive a.i. so that you could make better decisions using your data. that partnership has now broadened to encompass not only nvidia and netapp for large language models and generative ai but also some of our mutual partners like cisco and lenovo.

liz: well the business is doing well. quarter-to-date you're up 20%. year-over-year i believe you're up something like 70% so it's not just oh, hey buy us for the dividend. that's dangerous, is it not? when people just look at it because dividends can come but also go away in times of trouble where that can be suspended, like disney suspended its dividend during the pandemic, right? >> listen. we have real confidence in our business. i think we would not take the step to increase our dividend if we did not see that there be substantial cash generation growth going forward, and so our belief is that the dividends are the first call on capital, to returns to shareholders and then we typically reduced our share count by about 1-2%. we recently concluded our investor conference successfully in new york, and we shared with our shareholders this kind of disciplined approach to returning cash to shareholders.

liz: well, george, i'm sure shareholders like it. thank you very much. it's good to see you. >> thank you, liz. thanks for having me. good to see you again. liz: george kurian of netapp. all that glitters is not gold but today's $4.3 trillion countdown closer says he's got the midas touch and reveals his chemical formula for golden tech returns. the "clayman countdown" is coming right back. ♪ i have type 2 diabetes, but i manage it well. ♪ ♪ jardiance! -it's a little pill with a ♪ ♪ big story to tell. ♪ ♪ i take once-daily jardiance ♪ ♪ at each day's staaart. ♪ ♪ as time went on it was easy to seeee, ♪

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. . her uncle's unhappy. i'm sensing an underlying issue. it's t-mobile. it started when we tried to get him under a new plan. but they they unexpectedly unraveled their “price lock” guarantee. which has made him, a bit... unruly. you called yourself the “un-carrier”. you sing about “price lock” on those commercials. “the price lock, the price lock...” so, if you could change the price, change the name! it's not a lock, i know a lock.

so how can we undo the damage? we could all unsubscribe and switch to xfinity. their connection is unreal. and we could all un-experience this whole session. okay, that's uncalled for.

liz: so we already showed you gamestop shares falling 10% today but still quarter to date they are up 104%. how long can that last after shareholders were disappointed today by ceo ryan cohen whose messaging at the videogame retailer this morning was short on details. charlie? >> not just details. the real problem with this, it was short on growth, a growth plan. i will quote jack welch, the legendary ceo of ge who once have said to remarked, anymore ron can cut jobs and raise prices. i'm not calling ryan cohen a moron, in fact i know he is not. you get what i'm saying. if your strategy to survive and

to grow is simply cut stuff which seems like, based on everything he said at the shareholder meeting. there was no growth plan. talking about need to cut, you got a real problem with your is about. we should point out that, again he failed to deliver a growth plan. it is a very problematic company. it sells video games in malls. think about that. the people, people don't go to malls a lot, people don't generally buy these videogames at these retailers. they buy them on this thing. again, he didn't, he didn't have much, talking about job cuts, not good. we should point out that this is a company that just announced losses. and it has been pumped up by a combination of irrational exuberance surrounding roaring kitty back into the, into the mix. liz: the meme investor. >> the meme investor buying more stock and, and stock pumpers on

social media. it really is a company that, you know, you scratch your head, you're like, are we still talking about this this. liz: let's get to the details. he said he is going to cut the number of stores, will cut jobs. they're sitting on 4 billion in cash. >> that he raised from shareholders. liz: they better not increase compensation at same time. >> that is whole other story. think brit, how are they raising money. not like they're generating cash. they're literally diluting shareholders every chance they get. so you know, again, i say with this, this is a problematic company. it's not that much different in many respects from amc of, a name but, not a great business for growth and if you throw your money at this stuff be prepared to be disappointed as you have been in the past. by the way that number, $4.89 is really 48 cents.

liz: that is amc. >> after reverse slip. gme has a better track record but it is off its mice. but before the roaring kitty thing this thing was trading take a look at the chart, $12, $13 a share? it was down this year, quite significantly, 20, 30%. so again, you go there, it's on you but remember, this is, you know, i tell people, like, if you, you ask me about trading and gambling, yeah you can do that, it's fun, but if you're betting your life on this, a lot of people think these are get rich quick schemes, they often lose their shirt and they have been losing their short for a while. i would just also, one of the things he didn't do was take questions, i think two relevant questions, one is what you brought up. what's the compensation? are you going to take money out of this company? i don't know if he is taking compensation out of it. that would be one i would ask.

he didn't answer. didn't take questions for, god knows why. usually you take questions if you're looking to hide the football a little bit. number two, are you going to dilute shareholders more? i think, you know these are things when companies don't take questions, you got to, remember paramount didn't take questions. liz: i'm glad you're bringing up paramount. both paramount and warner brothers/discovery are hitting 52-week lows, could be longer than that. $7 and a penny, low of the session for warner brothers/discovery. paramount, i could check it, $9.85. >> i wrote a column this weekend, which kind of laid out why, you know, what's going on, how bad of a situation paramount is. warner brothers is a different story. they sign the nba rights. they didn't spend the money. if they don't have the money for

that -- liz: seven dollars? >> maybe it is a buying opportunity, i am telling you why people are trading it down. they don't have the financial situation to be honest situation that paramount has. paramount has a lot of debt on it its balance sheet. it has two classes of stock. rich greenfield had a interesting summary, tweet this weekend, he said something, netflix has a market cap of $222 billion, which is several billion dollars higher than the next four largest media companies. in that mix was, fox was in that mix as well, but so was warner brothers/discovery, so was paramount. who is the other one? i can't remember the other one, it was the four largest. so we do have an issue here in media. liz: right. >> shari has the weakest hand of all those we should point out, shari redstone. liz: charlie, thank you very much. the closing bell, we are four minutes away. the bulls are barreling toward the closing bell.

the s&p and nasdaq both on their way as i told you at the top of the hour to fresh record closes for the nasdaq. it would be the 19th record for the year and the 30th for the s&p 500. markets on fire. meanwhile the dow is on track to snap a four session losing streak with that 192 point gain. if you're looking for more precise way of investing in technology which has driven so much of this rally, versus just buying the nasdaq 100 or a.i. etf, today's "countdown closer" says got a name for you and it is hitting a record too today. $4.3 trillion of assets undermanagement, main street advisor, michael aroni. do i want to buy whatever you say it is at a 52-week high? >> liz, i think this is a momentum market and technology continues to be the momentum. so a.i. was a $92 billion business in 2023, 142 billion

today. it is likely to be a $1.3 trillion business by 2030. the growth is incredible. across industries and sectors, people are investing. it is the next growth phase of the market and i want to be exposed to those companies and this is a way to do it. equally weighted new york stock exchange technology index. so we'll move beyond just the "magnificent seven" and we're going to spread the wealth a little bit more. you're seeing something like a broadcom today participating. we think you will see more of that as a.i. continues its exponential growth have nvidia for its part, down half a percent. i've been watching broadcom all day, another all-time high. can you speak to the viewers what equal weighted means. we don't want to throw these terms around assuming some people don't know. >> so absolutely. essentially once a year, in the third week of december this index weights 35 leading technology companies equally. each position has the same

weight. then ultimately from there as winners and losers change they move up and down in terms of their weighting in the index. i think it is an interesting way. for example, in december certainly nvidia would have been pretty high, tesla and the others would have been pretty high. they get equally weight. now nvidia is growing, broad come is growing. tesla with difficult here is falling in weight. it is a way to get broader, more equal exposure. for us the thesis is the following, a.i. is a game changer. it is here to stay and we think it will move beyond the early winners, the nvidias, microsofts of the world and ultimately include more tech companies with high growth rate. this is a way to do that, while still maintaining equal weight exposure to other nvidias and microsofts as well. a little bit of best of both worlds. >> we have 25 seconds here. we're getting retail sales tomorrow, michael. the overall economy, how does it look to you?

>> so you teed this section up, we're short on time the alchemist, to me the perfect formula here is tech stocks, t-bills and gold. we talked about tech, from my perspective t-bills give you ability to earn interest free income above inflation, should something go wrong i can buy bargains. gold is my insurance, if things go worse than i'm anticipating it will ultimately maintain its value better than traditional stocks and bonds. that is the magic formula you teed up our segment for. liz: that was gold, gld, not gilead. michael, thank you very much. here we go, the closing bell, records for the s&p and nasdaq. apple, microsoft broadcom. [closing bell rings] nice moves today. kudlow is next. ♪. larry: hello, folks, welcome to "kudlow," i'm larry kudlow.