CNBCfix - Fast Money Review

[CNBCfix Fast Money/Halftime Archive — November 2024]

Joe sees $100,000 bitcoin

Wednesday's (11/27) pre-holiday Halftime Report, guest-hosted by Frank Holland, was sort of a curious production. It's always a quiet trading day, and we didn't hear much excitement; on the other hand, Frank and the team put together a good, crisp, watchable show.

The most interesting comment we heard came on Fast Money, when car-buying expert Yossi Levi said "the deals are just getting better," because the car supply has "ballooned."

We don't think Levi addressed car insurance. Talk about something that's really ballooning.

Also on Fast, Grandpa Guy Adami said he "won't be watching" the Black Friday NFL game on Amazon. (Too bad, he missed a great game.) (This review was posted Saturday 11/30.) But he suggested "analysts are offsides" on DIS and said there could be a "bearish-to-bullish reversal" with a close above 123½. (It almost might be just that the analysts underestimated "Moana 2.")

Speaking of the streaming space, on the Halftime Report, Steve Weiss said he's sticking with NFLX and even though he has a pretty large position, he might add on a pullback. (This writer is long NFLX.) Frank asked about the Tyson-Paul fight. "That was more of a variety show than a fight," Weiss explained.

Bill Baruch admitted some disappointments with the DELL report; he said he may add if it holds 115.

Frank asked Joe Terranova about CRWD. (This writer is long CRWD.) Joe said the report shows "less evidence" of CRWD regaining momentum, but he's not "discouraged enough" to sell, and "I think that theme is still intact," citing CRWD, PANW and FTNT as the leaders.

In Final Trades, Joe predicted $100,000 for bitcoin "in the next couple of days."

Judge and Mel haven’t shared with viewers what Mark Lazarus told the CNBC crew

Judge on Tuesday's (11/26) Halftime Report said Savita is predicting a "cyclical inferno (snicker)."

Judge said Savita established a 2025 target of 6,666; "thank God she added the extra 6 (snicker)," Judge said, adding Savita advises buying stock, "not the index," and being overweight financials and discretionary, materials and real estate.

Josh Brown said "Savita is among my favorites," which is the setup for saying, as he did, that he doesn't really find her forecast that relevant. "I don't really allocate portfolios based on chief strategists' notes in November/December for the year ahead," Brown said.

Bill Baruch joined remotely to say he was buying GS before the election and wanted to add more. Bill said he took a new position in ICE; Bill mentioned that "they own the New York Stock Exchange, where the show is."

"That's right," Judge confirmed.

If housing a TV studio for a SpinCo channel is a reason to buy a stock, then there have to be some interesting plays out there.

Bill said he sold CB, which was a "rotation within the financial space." Judge noted the stock is "good enough for Berkshire."

Panelists at one point had a conversation about bank stocks and book value (Zzzzzzzzz).

Tanaya Macheel joined the Post 9 crew to discuss bitcoin getting to the cusp of $100,000 and what its slippage means for ethereum. Jim Lebenthal said that reflecting on evaluating cryptocurrency isn't really his thing; he'd rather talk about small caps (snicker) as the "place to be" for speculative investments.

Kari Firestone said AMGN was sliding because of "side effects" with its obesity drug.

On Fast Money, Grandpa Guy Adami claimed "The market's gotten itself extraordinarily expensive in a short period of time" and asserted that Warren Buffett is "clearly looking at something."

Mel agreed with Dan Nathan that she's been called "Michelle" about "a hundred times ... whatever."

Judge and Mel aired advertisements during their programs; the proceeds of which are surely going to Peacock and theme parks.

Jim reflects on stock gains

Judge opened Tuesday's (11/26) Halftime Report declaring he'd start with "potential tariffs," and he used that terminology "because that's what they are right now!"

Judge said Jim Lebenthal sold GM on "news of possible tariffs." Jim said Judge phrased it "very carefully," and Jim agreed it's "not certain."

However, Jim recalls it being "very unpleasant" owning GM the last time we went through Trump tariffs.

Judge said "some" are wondering if it's just the "opening salvo," and Judge questioned Jim, "Why isn't today a buy?"

"I simply can't ignore this news," said Jim, explaining he has to "reflect (snicker) on the large gain that I've had so far in it."

Josh Brown said of Donald Trump, "He'll probably do something, um, but I think most of what's probably going to happen is talking and negotiating." Brown said in The Art of the Deal, it says Trump's negotiating strategy is, "You walk into the room, and you punch the other person in the mouth. Metaphorically."

Josh relayed how Chinese buying of U.S. ag products plunged in 2019, so the White House "turned around and did a $28 billion multiyear subsidy to U.S. farmers in order to not lose that vote."

Brown concluded: "Yes, take it seriously. No, don't take it literally."

Judge pointed out that Donald Trump campaigned on tariffs.

Judge says tariffs are meant as a ‘negotiating tool’ (a/k/a Steve identifies the next Fed chair)

Probably the most notable trade mentioned on Monday's (11/25) Halftime Report was Steve Weiss' declaration that he's adding to bitcoin.

"I actually bought more this morning," Weiss said, while admitting, "The use case is what I'm doing with it, which is trading."

Also, Bryn Talkington said this is a "great time" to sell some TSLA calls; "I do think it's a little bit higher than it should be." Josh Brown said he doesn't understand what TSLA trades on "other than, the vibes around, like, whatever Elon's working on."

Joe Terranova said the market anticipates "regulatory relief" from Scott Bessent, but the question is whether the market broadening continues.

Weiss suggested Bessent has the "right balance" to do what needs to be done. (On Fast Money, Steve Grasso asserted that Bessent is "gonna be the shadow Fed chair," which Steve clarified for Tim Seymour, means "he's eventually gonna be the Fed chair.")

Weiss said the market will keep going because it's "seasonally in a great period."

Judge said, for year-end 2025, Deutche Bank went to 7,000 while Lori Calvasina is at 6,600. Josh noted that 7,000 is "only 16½ percent away from where the market is now."

Josh said the 10-year, at 4.30, has backed off from 4.45 on 11/13, and there's "an inversion again in the 10-year/2-year."

Touting Joe Terranova's investment vehicle, Judge actually told the panel, "I've got 3 (sic) letters for ya, it's called the JOET, OK." Weiss said the performance has been "amazing."

Moments later, Judge said, "I'm no genius, all right, but it's been pointed out to me that JOET is actually 4 letters, not 3, as I might've suggested." Weiss said, "I didn't wanna embarrass you on a Monday."

Judge said Adam Parker says now is the time to buy semis and sell software.

At one point, Judge opted to opine on politics, stating, "It's not like tariffs are going into effect immediately on certain things. They're used as a negotiating tool." Weiss said, "I agree."

Joe said he actually thinks "the worst has passed" for UBER and now it's an "approaching 80 stock."

Bryn sold DVN, a stock that never got us excited; "you can make money in energy, but it hasn't been in this stock," Bryn said. Weiss sold the remainder of the TDG that he still had, citing the possibility that the government actually gets serious about cutting costs (snicker).

Contessa stuns in Courtney’s earrings

Well into Friday's (11/22) Halftime Report, guest host Courtney Reagan welcomed Contessa Brewer to discuss one of Contessa's beats, casinos.

Court said it's a busy weekend in Vegas; "Adele's final residency concerts; I won't sing but I kinda want to," and immediately the ears perked up around CNBCfix HQ.

Contessa said, "You could start with at least 'Hello,' right, because everybody knows the words to that one." (Well, maybe not everybody.) Courtney said, "I was thinking of Take It Easy On Me." (Actually, our Research Department thinks the title is "Easy On Me.")

Contessa mentioned all the happenings in Vegas and stated, "Apparently the Broncos are really good."

That's an overstatement. They are probably slightly above average, overachieving and having a better season than anticipated. But "really good" is not accurate.

Anyway, at the end of the segment, Courtney said Contessa's earrings are "on fire."

We couldn't agree more. Court was on fire too, as always, at Post 9.

Contessa revealed, "That's because they're- Courtney lent me the earrings. Their hers. She's complimenting herself."

Jim Lebenthal, as always, rain or shine, trumpeted WYNN.

On Closing Bell Overtime, Pippa Stevens referred to "Patrick Mahomies (sic pronunciation)." If it's OK to say, That. Was. Supercute.

Jim ‘giddy’

"I'm kinda giddy right now," Jim Lebenthal admitted near the top of Friday's (11/22) Halftime Report, adding that no one wants to sell in this market.

Jim said this isn't the time to buy laggards; "don't bottom fish." Grandpa Rob Sechan actually agreed with Jim, though Rob cautioned YOU'LL HAVE TO PAY TAXES ON EVERY GAIN!!!!!" "I think selectivity's gonna matter."

Kevin Simpson said his shop was going to sell its WMT position on Friday. He mentioned all the great things about the stock but claimed a forward multiple of 34 (which, as always, could differ from whatever the CNBC screen graphic shows) and said the stock is "a little pricey," which matches with what Karen Finerman was saying the other night on Fast Money about how cheap TGT is compared with WMT. Rob Sechan chuckled that valuation is "not the best timing tool."

Jim gushed about ONON and said the On hiking shoes he bought are "literally my dresss shoes."

Stephanie Link said she bought CRWD when "it fell 41% from its highs" and it's "still down about 8% from its highs," maybe the most popular metric on CNBC. (This writer is long CRWD.) On Fast Money, Tim Seymour said "I think it goes higher" and Julie Biel said it's "quite well-positioned." Guy Adami though said he'd buy PANW on the pullback instead.

For a while, we've been wondering around CNBCfix HQ why we've been seeing either a commercial or reference to this "Wicked" movie about every 90 seconds, or as often as we have to hear those idiots yelling "EVEN A TERM POLICY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" on that obnoxious company's sell-your-life-insurance-policy commercials that are somehow permitted to raise the volume by the FCC.

Later Friday on CNBC, we think on Closing Bell Overtime but aren't sure, we heard Julia Boorstin explain that "'Wicked''s massive marketing blitz is the new playbook to turn movies into cultural touchstones. 'Wicked' has over 400 partnerships," which Julia said includes "skits on 'SNL' (which may not be permissible to say in the near future if SpinCo manages to license CNBC content to non-NBCUni outlets)." We honestly can't fathom why a movie — if it's supposedly good — needs even 10% of as many advertisements as this one has purchased.

Expert would advise SpinCo chief Mark Lazarus NOT to change CNBC’s name

As Judge remains oblivious to the fact his company is being spun off (with a dubious corporate-parent name), Kelly Evans on Thursday (11/21) took up the "SpinCo" spinoff on The Exchange.

Mark Douglas said "the deal itself kinda feels like it was constructed by the finance team at Comcast rather than the business team."

Another guest, Jessica Reif Ehrlich, said, "The only surprise was that it was Comcast as the first one to announce this," as opposed to Warner Bros. or someone else.

"It seems pretty clear there will be a roll-up of cable networks, uh, mostly for cost reasons," Reif Ehrlich said, adding, "It frees the rest of Comcast to do other things."

Reif Ehrlich said NBC and Peacock are the "really important, um, assets," that's why NBCU is keeping them.

Douglas gushed about NFLX (this writer is long NFLX) and said Reif Ehrlich's $1,000 price target is a "conservative" price target; Jessica said, "I actually totally agree." (Yes, Jessica mentioned the "2 NFL games on Christmas Day.")

One thing not covered in this interview is that Reif Ehrlich told the Associated Press that she wouldn't mess with CNBC’s or MSNBC’s name. "Those are pretty big brand names. I would not advise them to change." So your golf shirts and jackets and caps should be good for the long run.

Dee Bosa says Silicon Valley insiders are betting that the Trump-Musk honeymoon won’t last beyond midterms

Judge on Thursday's (11/21) Halftime was still in San Francisco, this time with Brad Gerstner, who's a fine voice and otherwise a fine guest; the only issue we have with Brad's commentary is that The Board Challenge basically got quickly forgotten it basically always comes down to little more than which components of the Mag 7 does Brad think are in season, and which ones does Brad think are out of season.

"The world runs on Nvidia," Brad said, claiming the earnings report was a "blockbuster quarter." Brad said NVDA is his No. 2 position (or, basically "in season").

Josh Brown, who wasn't in San Francisco, praised NVDA for being "very artful" in keeping enthusiasm high while they did not "ratchet up the excitement too much."

Liz Young Thomas asserted that we're in the "infancy of this AI theme."

Judge said he was "shocked" (snicker) to learn that Brad has sold UBER. Brad said Dara "has been an incredible CEO." Brad said he loves the company, "and it's inexpensive." However, he's been "rotating into Tesla" (see what we mean by the in season/out of season thing?), and "I think the year of 2025 is gonna be about robotaxi."

Judge asked Josh about UBER and again said he was "shocked" at Brad's move. Brown said we're in this "kinda gray area moment" as far as how this space plays out. Josh made an elongated point about how Silicon Valley investors have done great things but have a "blind spot," they often think "things are gonna happen tomorrow that may not happen for 10 years." Josh explained, "Here in New York, we think more immediate." Ultimately, Josh predicted UBER will remain the "central demand aggregator" for getting a ride (apparently as opposed to that newfangled idea called a city bus).

Brad said that was "brilliant framing" and that he was a backer of UBER from 15 to 80 and, of course, "We sold the stock much higher than the stock is at today." He just thinks "the optics were gonna be really challenging."

Brad mentioned the "East Coast fascination that Elon is somehow mischievously hurting all Big Tech"; Brad said that's "way off base." Brad also mentioned his META shares going from $90 to $550.

Brad said he bought GOOGL on the DOJ news about Chrome. Josh though said the issue is whether Alphabet can navigate this "gap period" and transition from providing search results to providing answers.

Brad said he's into bitcoin on a "personal level."

Brad said in the last couple of quarters, SNOW felt to him like "META in the fall of '22." Brad crowed about people who, Brad claims, supposedly declared "Snowflake is dead" and said the sentiment was a "zero out of 10." Stephanie Link joined and said SNOW was having a great day but is "still down 16% year to date."

Josh Brown bought SQ and mentioned bitcoin as a catalyst.

Dee Bosa joined the San Francisco set late to discuss politics in Silicon Valley and said some founders and VCs "are skeptical of how long the Trump-Musk honeymoon will actually last." Dee said bets were taken at a dinner, and the longest bet was "midterms."

On Closing Bell, Judge asked Joe Terranova (who was at Post 9 with Adam Parker) if Joe was going to make a move in UBER like Brad did. Joe told Judge, "I already made my move in the name; I sold it personally at 73.50." Joe agreed with "the concerns that Brad is citing."

The new CNBC spinoff company is being called ‘SpinCo’ (a/k/a Oh joy, catch Closing Bell Overtime on Paramount+)

On Wednesday's (11/20) Halftime Report, Judge was basically oblivious to the news that Comcast is spinning off CNBC.

But on Fast Money, right after the A Block, Missy Lee invited Julia Boorstin to delve into the news; they had an excellent, thorough conversation, and Mel noted "this is a big story, uh, you know, out there and also internally."

Julia said "one source (um, or maybe 'cheerleader') told me" that this "isn't the end but rather the beginning." Julia said the spinoff includes CNBC, "which is where- what we're on right now," along with MSNBC, USA and the Golf Channel and others.

Julia explained that consolidating can provide "more scale" (snicker) (#SpinCospin) to "better negotiate higher retransmission fees" and could license content to other streamers besides just Peacock.

OK. Theoretically, that's true. We all know, in reality, there's a very limited market, and if any of these properties were producing must-have content, Comcast would already be milking the heck out of it. Maybe some streamer would pay a little bit to provide Squawk Box in real time. Are they also going to pay for Power Lunch and Closing Bell Overtime?

Mel questioned, under this arrangement, "Where does Peacock get its content?" Julia didn't adequately answer the question but said all the media companies are "frenemies" who compete and license content with each other, and the cable companies may have "more flexibility" (snicker) to license content now. (Translation: Peacock needs to keep buying NFL games at a loss.)

In her last question, Mel got to the point: "Playing the role of skeptic, Julia ... are we just staving off the inevitable in terms of cable companies combining in order to gain some leverage over retransmission fees. I mean the way of the world is going away from cable. That is the ultimate problem."

Julia admitted "it's true" and that the reason for spinning out cable channels is so that studio and theme parks are "not gonna be weighed down by the challenges of the linear TV system." Which is 100% true and should've been the first thing that Julia said.

But Julia suggested that Brian Roberts being a controlling shareholder of SpinCo "indicates that he has some confidence in this." (No, it means if he had no stake, no one would think it's worth anything.) Julia said they could've immediately sold these assets to private equity, though that's "definitely an option" down the line.

OK. The honest truth is that the spinoff is just the "way station," and they opted against immediately selling these channels to private equity because the price would be alarmingly low.

This page, as always, is rooting for CNBC. Nobody wants Squawk Box stars to wake up and find that instead of GE or CMCSA, their company is owned by either Penske Media or whoever overpaid for Business Insider.

But some long-standing stark facts need to be mentioned here ...

1. There are far too many cable channels as it is. Subscribing to cable television is like ordering one item at a restaurant and having the entire menu brought to your table. Skeptics have every right to wonder why in the world there are 3 business channels on most cable systems. Basically the old Bruce Springsteen tune "57 Channels and Nothin' On" is something everyone has agreed on for the last 20 years. CNBC is operating in a bloated market.

2. In 30 years-plus, CNBC has basically never solved its problem of nighttime viewership. Years ago, the decision was made to syndicate "Shark Tank" to fill in any and all gaps, along with Undercover Boss, American Greed, Jay Leno's Garage and "Dateline" reruns. Those are/were all fine programs. They can run on any channel or service.

3. CNBC has demonstrated almost zero inspiration toward its business day programming where "dead pockets" (we all know they exist) tend to occur. Where. Are. The. Ideas. A big new concept amounts to turning the ticker into hard rectangles instead of softer shapes. They've launched about 1 or 2 (if that) bona fide "new" shows in the last 15 years. Networks can put money into news because they come up with "American Idol" or "NCIS" or invest in football. Where do we see evidence of CNBC developing programming ideas?

Anyway. Mel on Wednesday said "the optimistic take on this" is that, for CMCSA shareholders, the company is demonstrating it wants to focus on growth.

Guy Adami said John Malone was recently pointing out that NFLX has big earnings on $40 billion in revenue while Warner Bros. Discovery "will lose money" on that kind of revenue. (That may be true, but that's a different problem than CNBC has historically had.)

Karen Finerman said of the success of SpinCo (snicker), "So much of it depends upon the structure," and Karen suggested that without too much debt, SpinCo could be a "cash-flow machine."

Karen pointed out that some people thought AT&T would be "going to zero," and "that didn't happen." Karen said she's "not as maybe pessimistic" as Mel sounds, though it's like "Mom and Dad are getting divorced."

Here's the real "optimistic take" that Melissa didn't mention: Legacy media products — think newspapers and others — have supporters. Someone will keep funding CNBC. A long time.

Dan Ives has been warming up the cliché machine

Much of Wednesday's (11/20) Halftime Report was bound to be devoted to an NVDA preview (Zzzzz).

Joe Terranova offered, "I actually think they probably need to do $40 billion to get the excitement, uh, in the stock."

At one point, Kari Firestone pointed to Joe's beat number of "40" and said it feels like that number's going up "every single day," so the company has a "pretty high bar."

"I don't expect a big beat. I don't expect a big miss," said Steve Weiss, rather, he's keying on "what demand is."

Judge said Dan Ives is expecting another "drop the mic performance" from NVDA and estimates that "for every $1 spent on an Nvidia GPU, there's a (sic) 8 to 10-dollar multiplier across the tech sector" (whatever that means), and Ives expects, according to Judge, a "rising tide that will continue to lift all boats." Joe said he's "somewhat skeptical" because he's not sure we've seen that effect.

Josh Brown dialed in to say the "No. 1 potential negative might be" what the answers are to the reports of overheated racks.

All of the inflation fears we hear are kind of like when Nouriel Roubini, Kyle Bass and Meredith Whitney kept predicting another 2008 from about 2009 to 2014

After Joe Terranova's audio tripped out during Wednesday's (11/20) Halftime Report, Judge suggested to Kari Firestone that maybe "the coast is clear" for stocks until Inauguration Day.

Kari said she'd play "devil's advocate" and suggested there are "many obstacles," including possibly inflation (snicker) growing and even things like "whether China bombs Taiwan or there's a nuclear event in Europe."

Judge said TGT stock on Wednesday is "unraveling, that's for sure." Stephanie Link asserted it's "certainly a Target-specific issue." On Fast Money, Karen Finerman said she's "intrigued" by the "magnitude" of TGT's slide, "it is getting very inexpensive," Karen said, and she could see a pairs trade with WMT based on multiples, though she doesn't want to violate the "3-day rule."

Judge interrupted Stephanie to report that Michelle Bowman is throwing cold water on rate-slashing anticipation, expressing as "hawkish a view" as we've heard from a Fed figure "in some time."

Kari trimmed BX and said "the right move" was to trim and "sell high." Judge and Kari had a devil of a time managing the satellite delay, as Judge was in San Francisco.

Steve "There's So Much Uncertainty!" Weiss bought more VRT and LDOS. He suggested the Pentagon's civilian employees will be first to go under whatever DOGE does.

Joe said he doesn't disagree with Oppenheimer's JPM downgrade but he's not selling. Weiss said David Solomon "tells it as it is."

Meanwhile, Judge was at San Francisco for Schwab's conference and spoke with Jeff Kleintop; Jeff thinks international markets could outperform the U.S. in 2025, in particular that Europe has more potential for multiple expansion.

Judge was later joined by Schwab's Jon Beatty to discuss wealth management. Of course, he said AI is "definitely a tool" for the RIA community, rather than a disruptive force.

Weiss' Final Trade was, "Bitcoin's got a hundred written all over it."

Courtney is guest host, fortunately doesn’t have to hear Weiss say THERE’S SO MUCH UNCERTAINTY IN THIS MARKET, EVEN TEPPER DOESN’T KNOW!!!!

Kate Rooney, in San Francisco, had the day's star guests on Tuesday's (11/19) Halftime Report, Vlad Tenev and Robb Baldwin, to discuss the Robinhood-TradePMR deal. Maybe the most interesting comment was Tenev's observation that RIAs have this "constant fear that their custodian is gonna try to take their account."

Meanwhile, Jason Snipe said "clearly" there's been a Trump trade that's done well, though it's "waned some" in the past week.

Jim Lebenthal shrugged off the last week's worth of trading that has been rather choppy. "This is just the pause that refreshes," Jim stated.

Jim said it's "uncomfortable" to say, but "Russia vs. Ukraine is not the story" of the financial markets.

Jim said "FOMO applies again."

Josh Brown gave a speech about earnings growth, for some reason. "Interest rates are coming down, earnings are rising, you want to be in stocks," Josh concluded.

Josh said APD has an "unbelievable" chart and advised viewers, "Don't bottom fish."

Josh, whose mike wasn't always screwed in tightly enough, brought up the old saw about how you have to take Donald Trump "seriously" but not "literally."

On Fast Money, Karen Finerman revealed she watched the women's boxing undercard on the Mike Tyson fight and found it "kinda crazy." (This writer is long NFLX.) Karen said, "I'm long Netflix, I sold some calls against it, which turned out to be a terrible sale ... The valuation is very stretched, but I love their competitive position."

Steve Grasso said, "The biggest takeaway for me is they didn't charge you for the fight." Steve then said something this page has said for months or more: "This is becoming your cable."

Joe tells his friend to keep holding a stock that Joe doesn’t want to own

Judge on Monday's (11/18) Halftime Report said TSLA is up "something like" 37% since Election Day, which Judge called "just unbelievable."

Judge said Monday's news is that the new administration "wants to relax self-driving car rules." Judge noted UBER is down and asked Brian Belski about the stock. Belski referenced UBER being in the "industrials" sector (that's something people on the show like to mention) and he'd be looking to add because "this too shall pass."

Joe Terranova, though, claimed that what to do with UBER is a "hard conversation to have" (snicker) because maybe viewers can't be as "tactical" as pros (snicker) can be.

Joe related that he owned UBER "since the mid-30s" and sold at "73.50." Joe said "a personal friend of mine" who's not in finance texted him at the time, "omigod, you sold Tesla (sic meant Uber; Judge didn't correct)"; Joe said he told the friend, "You stay in it," because long-term investors should be "anchored" (snicker) in the name.

But Joe said "you can be tactical" and trade it; he said he's not ready to buy it back yet.

Quick, name the current HHS secretary

Initially, during Monday's (11/18) Halftime Report, we dreaded the thought of Steve Weiss reprising his ridiculous omigod-market-uncertainty-just-because-of-RFK-Jr. argument of last week and were prepared to tune out.

Fortunately, Monday's version never got that bad, though Belski did get dragged into it.

Judge opened by noting what markets did right after the election and the fact that "last week it sorta turned around"; Judge wonders "what that means" (snicker).

Joe Terranova said we could point "automatically" to Powell commentary, but the market seeemed "due" for "corrective type behavior."

Joe stressed that semis are one of the areas "down the most since the election." Judge said Tony Pasquariello says there's "gas in the tank" for the market.

Weiss said he was talking with Brian Belski, and Weiss actually claimed with a straight face, "There's more uncertainty in the market now than we could ever recall in our careers (snicker)."

As for why there's supposedly all this uncertainty, Weiss cited "taking costs out of the government" and Lina Khan's "legacy" (snicker).

Belski affirmed he's "very bullish" into year-end and his 6,100 target, and he's already "talking about a 6,700 target" next year.

Belski said we haven't had "normalization" since 2007; Judge wondered, "What if we're not going back to what you think is, is normalization." Belski responded by defining "high quality" and stated, "I'm not going to let politics take over what I'm saying from an investment strategy standpoint. I never have. And I never will." Good for Belski.

Belski actually claimed with a straight face that his market outlook would "probably not" be different even if the election had a different outcome; rather, Belski claimed "the train has left the station" in terms of monetary policy becoming "more loose."

Shannon Saccocia said that if people expected stocks to take "kind of a straight line to the top," then that's "a bit naive."

Judge said Josh Brown (who wasn't on Monday's show) "put it well" when he suggested Donald Trump cares most about the 2 scorecards for golf and stock markets. Grandpa Weiss claimed, "I disagree with that by the way. He glommed onto the stock market one because it was working. If the stock market were down, he'd blame somebody else and say 'that doesn't matter.'"

Judge protested, "He cares about what the markets do ... c'mon."

Weiss said, "My point is, is that that's not gonna be his focus ... we don't have to get into that."

Josh is more right than Weiss — the stock market definitely is a Trump scorecard. But Weiss is correct that if the market stank for a couple years, you'd never hear a word about it from Donald Trump.

Moments later, Joe suggested "the regulatory environment" is a factor in market outlook; Belski admitted, "I don't disagree with that."

The use case for bitcoin apparently is ‘people putting money into it, pulling money out of it’

On Monday's (11/18) Halftime Report, Joe Terranova called NFLX's Mike Tyson event a "fight"; Judge questioned if that's the right term. (This writer is long NFLX.)

Joe also mentioned, as everyone is doing these days, the Christmas Day football games. Judge asked how much is already in the stock. Joe said, "I think the- what's not in the stock is the continued opportunity for Neflix to continue (sic double 'continue') to participate in live events."

Steve Weiss said NFLX has "such pricing power" and "scarcity." Weiss said it's "very reasonably priced."

Weiss also claimed crypto is actually "one of the safest areas to invest in under Trump."

Joe shrugged off the PLTR pullback, "it was added to the ETF in the teens for us." Joe conceded it's "overbought on a technical basis."

GLD chieftain George Milling Stanley told Bob Pisani that when the GLD was launched 20 years ago, "investment was about 10% of final end-user demand, with jewelry a full 80%." Now, he said, jewelry is down to "about 50%, maybe even less," and investment is 10-25, 30, even 45% nowadays.

Judge said the JOET is 4 years old as of Monday; "Happy birthday to the JOET," Judge said.

Twice in a week, Judge claims a panelist said something that they didn’t actually say

Hoo boy.

Generally when Judge pushes back against a panelist's call on the Halftime Report, we side with Judge, because in general, the calls deserve pushback if not outright fact-checking, and too often, Judge takes a pass.

But transcribing Judge's conversation with Steve Weiss on Friday (11/15) took us literally days, and even though Judge was mostly right, by the end, we were kind of wishing Judge had taken a pass again.

Weiss wondered about market uncertainty over the new administration. "What if Lina Khan stays" and said we have to "read his mind; I- I can't," Weiss admitted.

Judge asserted that "there's no reason to read his mind," just "Read the- read the room! Read the room!" Judge continued, "The room is that there is going to be, animal spirits are going to be unleashed. particularly when it comes to M&A and the ability of companies to do deals again."

"I'm reading the room. And I don't know what room you're reading," Weiss countered.

"What are you talkin' about? What are you talkin' about?" Judge demanded.

"What do you mean, what am I talking about? Do you think anything's clear about what's going to happen in the future? I don't," Weiss said, adding, "You've got a guy who won on a populist record, not on a big company record, right?"

"He won on the same things that he won the last time on," Judge said.

"That's absolutely not true. That's not true," Weiss said, explaining, "What he won on is saying, your individual lifes (sic that's how he pronounced it) will be better. It will cost you less. It doesn't cost you less if you merge companies. Do you think anybody's paying less for an airline ticket than they paid 20 years ago?"

"You think that there's like the chance of less M&A under, under Trump than there was under Biden?? Really???" Judge asked.

"Yeah!" Weiss said, as Judge actually chortled.

"You can laugh, and that's fine ... I'll be serious," Weiss said, arguing we don't know "where are rates going."

"There's so much pent-up demand to do deals, it's inevitable," Judge said.

"They still have to make economic sense!" Weiss countered, arguing "Rates aren't gonna stay where they are."

Judge said Weiss has made the argument "for as long as we've known each other on this program" that "rates and stocks can go up together."

Honestly, we were scratching our heads at that one and wondering what show Judge has been watching. Some people have regularly made that statement — we think Josh Brown being the most common — and probably everyone has said it at one point. It's certainly not a regular Weiss slogan from the time he started on the program. (He's got other slogans that are worse, but that's for another time.)

Weiss told Judge, "I think you're thinking of a different person."

"No, I'm thinking of you. I'm thinking of you," Judge somehow insisted.

"They can on occasion, but that's not law," Weiss said.

Judge eventually sighed, "That's fine, just stay with the argument that you made — there's gonna be fewer deals under Trump than there was under Biden."

"I didn't say that — you said that," Weiss said.

"You did! No, I posed you the question, and you said yes!," Judge wrongly claimed; Weiss said yes there's a "chance" of fewer deals, not that there's definitely "gonna be."

"And I'm saying, I don't know!" Weiss continued.

Judge said investors of a "certain level" and "every senior banking executive that I've spoken with is beyond optimistic about dealmaking."

Weiss insisted that's "dated" information; "it was before he nominated Kennedy" and the chief of the "D.O.D."

Josh Brown shrugged off Cabinet picks as a factor in investing, stating, "We had these bouts with uncertainty about appointees on- in the first Trump administration ... these Cabinet appointments can be musical chairs."

Brown added, "There's only 2 scores Trump cares about — his golf score, and the stock market. He's fixated on the stock market."

Weiss, though, continued, "It is different than last time," explaining that last time, Trump based picks on "competency" (snicker), and now it's "purely" about "loyalty."

"These are not Supreme Court justices Steve!" Brown cut in.

"Do you call the secretary of Health and Human Services before you buy the company?" Judge demanded of Weiss.

"No. But, I don't understand the question. What's the question? What's the question?" Weiss asked.

"Whatever," Judge sighed.

"What's the question?" Weiss persisted.

Judge said he doesn't want to "belabor this any more" and moved on to NVDA. Josh said he thinks you're probably OK in NVDA but "even with good news," the stock occasionally has had "really short, really sharp drawdowns that can shake people." Weiss said he doesn't care about NVDA's earnings, the stock is "one to own," but the ride will be "rocky."

Weiss admitted that despite his concerns about the administration, "I'm hedged quite a bit but I'm not selling."

So, basically ... sigh ... trying to do a scorecard here ... Judge was certainly right to challenge Weiss' ridiculous argument that maybe there should be the opposite of animal spirits regarding the new administration once the RFK Jr. appointment was announced, but Judge's misquoting of Weiss on dealmaking, like his bungled claim (also this week, see below) of Jim Lebenthal supposedly stating there are and aren't monoliths when Jim didn't say the former, suggests Judge should be paying a little more attention to what his panelists are actually saying.

Judge seems to think Jenny’s health-care positioning doesn’t match her rhetoric about Donald Trump’s Cabinet

Yet another presidential Cabinet scrap took place on Friday's (11/15) Halftime Report that began when Jenny Harrington suggested that when she's "reading the room," she's seeing that "chaos (snicker) is coming."

Seconds later, Jenny said rates may be rising because people think "chaos is coming."

Judge correctly cut in, "If people thought that chaos was coming to the United States, people would be buying Treasurys and rates would be moving in the opposite direction."

A little later, Jenny stated of the new government, "I think we're all expecting the same, personality conflicts, arguments, like, petty, you know, petty beefs."

That got the attention of Judge, who asked Jenny, "You're making your investment decisions based on petty arguments and personality clashes?"

Jenny demanded a chance to answer and said, "No! But it's going to create opportunities."

Moments later, after some unrelated discussion, Jenny said she originally bought AXP for $123. (If that helps people now.) Judge told Jenny it's "interesting" that AXP is up 80% this year and Jenny trimmed it, while PFE and GSK are down and Jenny has "genuine concerns" about the Department of Health and Human Services but "you'll stick with those."

Jenny wondered, "Are we allowed to talk about genuine concerns about Health and Human Services now, you wanna go there?"

Judge said he finds it "curious" that she trimmed the winner but is hanging on to the doormats.

"I didn't say that I had genuine concerns with Health and Human Services. What I said is that there's gonna be a lot of volatility in the perception around what's going on there," Jenny said, adding, "Who knows" if RFK Jr. is confirmed, but the stocks got "slapped," so "why would I sell those today?"

Judge said Jenny was talking about "all the chaos that was going to ensue."

Kevin Simpson makes a bad trade sound like a simple 5th-grade math assignment

Judge on Friday's (11/15) Halftime Report brought up the Mike Tyson fight set for later Friday on NFLX. (This writer is long NFLX.)

Steve Weiss said he was going to watch the fight. Weiss said he would "definitely buy" the stock, if he didn't have a significant position, even at Friday's level, and would keep some dry powder to buy more if it goes lower.

Josh Brown said "this is really the final frontier for Netflix," though Brown was not expecting "a great boxing match" but more of a "spectacle." (It sounds like the spectacle was the quality of the streaming, actually.) (This review was posted Saturday 11/16; the fight wasn't shown at CNBCfix HQ.)

Brown suggested NFLX is "the most profitable utility in the United States. Nobody turns it off."

Meanwhile, Kevin Simpson joined remotely to say he sold MPWR (Judge likes talking about anything that's a "Monolith" these days). Kevin said he's "implementing a stop loss" but "wound up losing about 30% on the name" but said there's "no emotion" (snicker) to the trade and "it's just a math equation." (We're not quite sure how it qualifies as an "equation," but whatever.)

Kevin said he added COIN at 280.

Steve Weiss said bitcoin is actually his "favorite investment" right now because he knows what the "fundamentals will be and can be."

"The chips look like a mess right now," Josh said at the top of the show.

Santoli said Berkshire added DPZ and POOL while selling ULTA. Judge wondered whether the moves are being "led by the lieutenants."

Josh claims the use case for bitcoin is ‘people putting money into it, pulling money out of it’

On Thursday's (11/4) Halftime Report, Steve Weiss revealed he bought bitcoin and GBTC and again said these trades are not what he thinks about it (which is that it's useless), "it's what the administration believes."

Judge asked for the "use case" for bitcoin. Josh Brown offered, "It's people putting money into it, pulling money out of it, using it to buy other coins. ... That's it (snicker)."

Weiss said "that's being very liberal with the term 'use case.' There is no use case."

Jim and Josh claim DIS is ‘out of the woods’ on streaming profitability without mentioning NFLX is worth twice as much

Jim Lebenthal, who wasn't on Thursday's (11/14) Halftime Report panel, dialed in to say DIS had a "great quarter." (If we remember right, DIS had a remarkably great quarter just before the Nelson Peltz vote too.)

Jim said "I think it's going higher from here (sic last 2 words redundant)," and honestly, has Jim ever NOT predicted, in a dozen years on the Halftime Report, that DIS will go higher?

Jim actually claimed streaming is a "high, high margin (snicker) business" and got no pushback from Judge. If streaming is so high margin, why is everyone getting out of it?

Josh Brown first called Disney's streaming the "direct to consumer segment (snicker)" and explained that "we were hearing everywhere last year, streaming's a bad business, it's a bad business. But, turns out it's not so bad when you have some consolidation and you have some companies basically give up."

Perhaps. It doesn't mean that DIS has created any show that people are dying to see, that will prompt people to pay more than the 3-months-free-then-$6.99 rate that Disney and others hook people with when they buy totally unrelated products and then boast about their subscriber "growth."

Josh and Jim somehow agreed DIS is "out of the woods" on streaming profitability.

Jim claimed "it doesn't cost them more as they add 4 million subscribers." How is that a growth argument. The same is true for movie theaters, airlines, cruise ships and hotels.

Judge doesn’t ask Jim about stock ‘monoliths’ this time

Josh Brown on Thursday's (11/14) Halftime Report said if he had to choose, stocks are more likely to go higher than lower into year-end. However, Brown pointed to how RSI works and stated, "A lot of stocks have already done the year-end melt-up; they've just pulled it forward," Brown conceded.

Grandpa Steve Weiss said today's market is different "than what we grew up with."

(Grandpa Weiss didn't mention, as Guy Adami did on Fast Money, that MRNA hit a 52-week low.)

Josh said stocks like APP are in its "own world."

Josh touted ODFL as a "stock that hasn't been discovered yet."

Josh said TEAM is in a breakout.

AMZN hit a record intraday high; Josh Brown gave a speech about AMZN playing "offense." Jason Snipe pointed out that there was a "top-line miss" in the previous earnings report, which seems "2 years ago."

Jim Lebenthal, who wasn't on the panel but dialed in for DIS, said "profit taking" was behind the CSCO selloff. (And every time one of Jim's stocks sells off on earnings, it's always some kind of overreaction and the stock's still a buy.)

Judge went to Phil LeBeau on breaking news about the Trump administration perhaps getting rid of the $7,500 EV buyer's credit. Phil stressed that TSLA is eyeing robotaxis more than its annual EV sales. (Honestly, we're not sure why they would ... but whatever.)

Steve Weiss pointed out that Waymo is "charging the same fees as Uber drivers" even though Waymo has to pay for insurance, gas, etc.

Weiss predicted Lina is "not going to be" in the same FTC role in the Trump administration, though it was acknowledged that there's a populist tone to the Trump campaign.

Judge’s complaint that Jim is having it both ways on monoliths makes no sense

Shortly into Wednesday's (11/13) Halftime Report, Judge chuckled that MSFT looks "weak" being up only 2% since the election (which was barely a week ago).

Jim Lebenthal said he trimmed MSFT and said the Mag 7 isn't leading, and, in a comment that for whatever strange reason resonated with Judge (who repeated it wrongly), also said that the Mag 7 "should no longer be looked at as a monolith that moves together."

Jim suggested that for MSFT, the AI angle is "all priced in."

Judge then claimed that while Jim said the Mag 7 is not a "monolith," Jim "spoke of them as the monolith when you say 'Well, AI's all priced in.' ... Maybe it's priced in for Microsoft, but there are many suggestions that it's not priced in even to Nvidia. ... So you can't have it both ways. If it's not gonna trade like a monolith, then don't refer to everything as a monolith in terms of what's priced in and what's not."

Well, um ... Jim didn't refer to everything as a monolith; he said exactly the opposite. All he said about MSFT/AI was that he thinks the AI upside for MSFT is indeed priced in. He never said anything about NVDA's upside.

"Let me be clear — I don't think they're a monolith," Jim told Judge. Judge eventually demanded, "Let's talk apples and apples (snicker)" (first let's make a better argument). Jim said he's not trimming NVDA nor Alphabet (this writer is long GOOGL).

Later on in the show, in the theme of the day, Joe Terranova mentioned Monolithic Power (snicker).

Laura Martin: ‘I would love Netflix to buy Disney’

Joe Terranova opened Wednesday's (11/13) Halftime Report stating "Momentum is absolutely in control of this market."

Judge said financials are up "low to mid-double-digit percentage points since Election Day" and asked Jim Lebenthal if people should keep buying these monolithic names them.

Jim said, "Yes," then said he "detected a tone of 'trees don't grow to the sky'" from Judge's question. Jim continued that it's true trees don't grow to the sky, however, Jim thinks the financial sector still "has a lot of momentum."

Jim said ADBE's recovery is "just beginning."

Joe talked about how much ZM is up recently. Joe talked up BILL and mentioned buying TWLO again. Joe said he bought 95 calls in TWLO and already sold at a profit.

Joe advised not chasing SPOT. Jim said of CSCO, "If they miss, this thing's comin' down hard," though he doesn't expect a miss.

Jim noted that DIS has been creeping upward recently. Judge suggested that "there has been talk this week" that maybe they're "closer" than expected to naming a successor. Jim said Josh "D'Amaturo" (sic that's how he pronounced it, and he said "I may have mispronounced his name"), the head of experiences/theme parks, is the "odds-on favorite" and the market "would be disappointed if he is not named."

OK. So the market would be disappointed if some guy whose name Jim doesn't even know is not chosen to "succeed" (i.e., keep the seat warm for a couple years) Iger.

That was very interesting, because Jim didn't say anything about whether they need to hire a new CEO who will sell the company. Shortly after Halftime, Laura Martin told Kelly Evans that AAPL and AMZN could be potential buyers of DIS. Laura said of DIS, "We like it better as part of something else. I would love Netflix to buy Disney, so it had all that IP it could develop." Laura noted DIS is "half the size of Netflix now" in market cap; it's true.

Steve Grasso: Trump’s comments on China are ‘all posturing’

Great-Grandpa Rob Sechan (but he's "fully invested") was on the Post 9 set for Tuesday's (11/12) Halftime Report and said we're "pulling forward" some 2025 gains and repeated his dubious claim of a day earlier, that the post-election rally in 2016 was "fleeting" into 2017, because the leadership "faded" (snicker) in the following year.

Joe Terranova wasn't on hand this time to shoot it down, so Stephanie Link did the honors, stating that back in 2016, from election eve to March 2017, the S&P rallied 15%. And by the end of 2017, "you were up 25%."

Bryn Talkington said, "There's a tremendous amount of FOMO."

Discussing CRWD and other cybersecurity names (this writer is long CRWD), Stephanie said the sector is "bigger than AI."

On Fast Money, Steve Grasso suggested Marco Rubio is just as much a hawk on Russia as China. "Trump is actually a strategic hawk on China ... I don't think he's as hawkish as we think he really is. What he says he's going to do and what he's going to do — 2 different things. I think it's all posturing."

Rob seems to claim that 2017 was a bad or weak year for stocks

Rob Sechan, unlike his fellow Halftime Report panelists (and virtually everyone else in the world), is somehow jaw-droppingly skeptical of the late-2024 stock market.

So skeptical, he's even claiming 2017 was a bad year.

Rob on Monday's (11/11) show admitted early, "We are still tilting towards caution (snicker)."

Then he brought up maybe his favorite subject: "We're hoping that a lot of the gains we have this year can be pushed into next year so we don't brutalize our clients from a tax standpoint."

We're still scratching our heads over how Rob appears to dread taxes more than he likes stocks; we can't figure out why he doesn't work in the muni bond business instead where he can skip the taxes altogether.

Rob claimed "we are not chasing performance" because the rally only "increases risk in 2025," and "this has all been based on valuation Scott."

Joe Terranova took issue with that last comment, stating there are "fundamental tailwinds" now in an already strong market that include deregulation and the "overall environment" including increased M&A.

Rob conceded that's true, but "tariffs could happen quickly" and immigration moves "could also disrupt the labor supply" so you have to "stay disciplined."

Rob must've been planning lunch at Burger King, because then he dropped this Whopper: claiming the election boost from 2016 "lasted about 2 months" and "the moves all faded as soon as '17 began."

Joe said, "Rob, I'll take 2017 any day. It was one of the lowest volatility years, the VIX never got above 20, the VIX traded to 8, and we had a 17-plus% return on the S&P. '17 in totality was a great year."

"You also started from an entirely different base Joe," Rob countered. "Interest rates were 1.8%."

Joe said, "Rob, no one knows how high is high."

Joe said, as for tariffs, the semis have "begun to price in" the tariffs.

Rob claimed he's "fully invested" and the conversation is "quite comical," and "if you're not paying attention to the risk, you're whistlin' through the graveyard, buddy."

So what does that mean ... he's fully invested ... but everyone else who is fully invested is closing their eyes and "whistlin' through the graveyard, buddy?"

Jim Lebenthal said he's not going to "slam" Rob's points, but "there's a couple of things that are wildly different than 8 years ago." One is that the Fed is cutting, and now we've got China stimulating.

Jim predicted "at least 4 or 5 more months ... before the chicken comes home to roost."

Jim suggests making money at this time in stocks may be as simple as throwing a dart at a board

A lot of times, we tend to think Halftime Report panelists stress caution in such a way that it almost sounds like they think everyone is throwing darts at a board, but we were even a little surprised by Jim Lebenthal's effusiveness on Monday's (11/11) program.

Jim said the rally has "nothing to do with valuation," but it's a "chase to (sic) performance" and "FOMO."

Then Jim suggested it even may be "throw a dart at a board."

Jim also mentioned the Treasury "drawdown" into year-end and credited Dan Clifton for "pounding the table" on this subject.

Judge said Oppenheimer went to 6,200 (snicker). Joe Terranova said it's a "chase for performance."

Joe actually claimed, "That October flush (snicker) really shook a lot of people out of the equities market." Joe sees "plenty of runway ahead."

Anastasia Amoroso said there's a "sense of exuberance" that's "justified."

‘Some dude’ asks Judge about stocks

Monday's (11/11) Halftime Report included several nice tributes to Jim Lebenthal and all veterans. Jim, as always, was very gracious about this subject.

As for the markets, Judge said he was out of town over the weekend, "Some dude comes up to me, and he starts talkin' about Applovin," which Judge said is replacing DLTR in the Nasdaq 100.

"They are in the ad tech business," Joe Terranova said. "If you're a mobile app developer, you need them." Joe also mentioned "AI." Joe cautioned it's "highly volatile," but he does think it can get to $400 in "coming years" (Zzzzzzz).

And if "some dude" had mentioned this stock to Judge a few months ago, then "some dude" would be the front-runner for Halftime Report Call of the Year.

MacKenzie Sigalos joined the crew to say crypto is surging on 4 promises made by Donald Trump.

Jim bought more ABBV, in his personal account, on the big pullback on the schizophrenia drug, saying it's "too much to the downside." Jim said "management knows what they're doing" despite buying this drug developer for $8 billion.

Kate Rogers reported breaking news that Scott Boatright is permanent CEO at CMG. Joe reminded viewers "I wanted this in August" and suggested its "only challenge" might be the "reawakening" of SBUX and the possible movement of investment dollars from CMG into SBUX.

Jim said DIS is "definitely a hold" (snicker) and you can "probably add to it here." JIm claimed, "There's a lot of things that can go right here (snicker)."

On Monday's Fast Money, Guy Adami pointed out what GEO did around election time in 2016 and what happened in 2017 and predicted the same now. "This is happening exactly like it did 8 or so years ago," Guy said.

Bryn attended Memorial High School, also attended by Reid Gettys and sons of Roger Clemens

Bryn Talkington on Friday's (11/8) Halftime Report said she bought DELL and said Michael Dell is a "Houston-based guy," prompting chuckles from Judge and the panel.

Moments later, Judge said "geographical experts" (apparently one person who sent him an email) were telling him that Michael Dell is based in "actually Austin." (Judge evidently reads emails while panelists talk.)

Bryn said "we went to the same high school" and that he went to "UT" and started DELL in Austin.

Judge said "We've got fact-checkers all over the place (sic) (not actually true), um, thank you very little, uh, for- for the email, you know- you know who you are (it wasn't this page)."

Bryn says NVDA trade has ‘another few quarters’ to go

Bryn Talkington on Friday's (11/8) Halftime Report said "you feel animal spirits in the market already" (actually it seems like they've been felt since Aug. 5).

Bryn predicted there will be continued broadening and "different spots that do well next year."

Brian Belski said he was "very lucky enough" (snicker) to change his S&P target to 6,100 when he did. (Um, what exactly did he achieve from this target? A prize?)

Santoli said he doesn't think 6,000 has a "ton of significance" except it means the market is up 25% on the year.

Of the Fed, Kevin Simpson said he was "pleased, thrilled and just, uh, enjoying a very boring meeting yesterday."

Of NVDA, Bryn said, "I think this trade is gonna last at least another few quarters."

Judge in the 9th minute was once again talking about Elon's "access." Bryn suggested TSLA is "pretty toppy" and said she'd be selling calls.

Bryn said she bought UBER last week "really at like 73," then sold January 80 calls.

Judge apparently gives ‘squirrelly’ looks to panelists when they mention dubious trades

Kevin Simpson on Friday's (11/8) Halftime Report trimmed TPL, which he bought recently when it was up 100% (apparently on the year); Kevin said Judge "looked at me squirrelly when we bought this," but Kevin made "40% profit in a couple weeks." (That's the Joe Terranova buy high/sell higher theory.)

Kevin bought more CME and touted again the special dividend.

Kevin sold covered calls in AAPL and WMT.

Josh Brown wasn't on the panel but joined remotely and celebrated long-term stock gains, stating "risk is rewarded over long stretches of time." Brown said he sold SG despite a "good report." He touted the gains in TOST.

Bryn blamed BHP's slide on "China, China, China" and said "I think we're probably gonna use this as a tax loss this year."

In a BAC discussion, Belski actually said, "I'd be really happy if we never talk about price to tangible book again." Belski said the "theme" of "scale" is finally working in big banks.

Jeffrey Gundlach suggests (potential) GOP sweep driven by ‘crazy lawsuits’

Jeffrey Gundlach on Thursday's (11/7) Closing Bell told Judge that the election was "very very consequential" and that most people were surprised at "how widespread the strength was" for Republicans.

Jeffrey suggested it might be related to "crazy lawsuits" being filed a year ago. He said "Trump's authenticity, uh, is- is something that attracts people," but "he's always been a debt guy."

Earlier on the Halftime Report, Jenny Harrington admitted, "What I really, really didn't expect was a red sweep." Jenny said that will bring a "full extension of the tax cuts." (Note: This page weeks ago reported that the market was trading like a red sweep, a day before Santoli spoke of the same in his Midday Word.)

Josh Brown said at the top of the show that it's "really important" to stress that the market rally was "already underway" well before Election Day. Liz Young Thomas said it's "the best post-Election Day rally in history" and "there's probably still more room for this to go."

Jim Lebenthal claimed, "There's a very esoteric thing (snicker) that's gonna go on in the 1st quarter of this year (sic, either meant 4th quarter of this year or 1st quarter next year), which is the debt ceiling is gonna be reached on December 31st."

Jim said by that point, the Treasury will spend down its general account, which "puts money into the commercial banking system." So Jim thinks the market will go higher for 2 months and then "continue."

Judge said we "may" (he stressed "may" 5 times) get "a further reduction in the corporate rate," but it's "unlikely" to get to 15%.

Some CNBCers apparently already have Christmas trees set up

Judge on Thursday's (11/7) Halftime Report said Barry Bannister is warning, "The train is approaching Crazy Town," and that there's only upside to the low 6,000s and downside to 5,250.

Hoo boy ... this page is going to be referencing "Crazy Town" for a long time.

Josh Brown harkened back to Ed Yardeni's prediction of the "Roaring 2020s" (we'd already forgotten that one) (a lot of people by mid-2020 were saying that) and "everyone mocked him," but "This looks and feels like we're going into a robber baron age."

("Robber baron age" ... that's another one we're going to be referencing for a long time.)

Josh said, "Crazy Town could get- become Crazier Town."

Josh knocked Baird's call to take profits in JPM and pointed out how long it's been a great stock. Jim Lebenthal said that past performance doesn't mean anything (check that, he didn't say that this time) said that to sell JPM, "you have to be negative on the financial sector."

Jim said "about a year ago," UBS "actually recommended shorting Nvidia." Jim suggested that was probably the "CS First Boston folks that they brought on board."

Jim said Baird's call is "not the way to be provocative; this is a way to get carried out feet first."

Josh downplayed Judge's suggestion that Elon Musk's association with Donald Trump is weighing on UBER, noting LYFT's gain Thursday. Judge stressed that Elon has gone from "somebody who couldn't get invited to the White House for an EV summit to somebody who can pull up a chair to the desk in the Oval Office."

Judge said he's "surprised" nobody's mentioned buying TSLA.

Jenny Harrington said that if Elon gets a Cabinet position, he can sell his stock "tax-free." Josh Brown also said or agreed with "tax-free." We haven't heard about that subject for a long time (Hank "sharp elbows (according to CNBC)" Paulson was the one who got a lot of attention about that) and, after a tiny bit of research, it appears the benefit is "tax-deferred," although, from what we could determine from a couple articles, it sounds like it can be a permanent benefit; keep in mind we can barely figure out the square root of 25.

Judge was about 4 years old
during Rick Barry’s heyday

Judge bluntly told Tom Lee during Thursday's (11/7) Halftime Report, "Yesterday was, you know, felt euphoric."

Tom said "animal spirits could be unleashed" and suggested "5-10% upside into year-end."

Judge said Fundstrat is launching an ETF called "Granny Shots" (GRNY) (snicker). Tom said it consists of stocks closely tied to 7 investment themes and explained, "Granny Shots is named after Hall of Famer Rick Barry's way of shooting free throws."

"Some of us do remember that," Judge said. "We definitely do."

Rob Sechan dialed in to trumpet VST.

After the A Block, Judge tried to talk about energy-sector strategies (Zzzzzzz).

Jim Lebenthal said people may be buying ONON on the pullback (rather than Judge's suggestion of riding Under Armour's coattails).

Jenny Harrington said DIS is on "solid footing" (snicker).

Josh retrumpeted RDDT. He said he should've bought more than a "tiny bit" in his original stake.

Santoli said it's "early" to talk about "Crazy Town."

Tim Seymour: ‘A lot of people are offsides,’ predicts ‘squeeze into year-end’

On Wednesday's (11/6) Fast Money, which was far more spirited than the Halftime Report, where people hardly seemed to know there's just been a presidential election, Guy Adami said there were maybe some signs Wednesday of "a little bit of what we call a blowoff top," but it's "hard to argue" with a market marching steadily upward.

The strongest opinion though came from Tim Seymour. Discussing Warren Buffett, Tim said, "In the short run ... I think a lot of people are offsides. I think there's a squeeze into year-end. I think there's a lot of people that are panicking."

Karen Finerman said the "magnitude in so many areas" of the market's strong day surprised her.

Tim Seymour pointed to around 7:30 or 8 p.m. Tuesday when Florida gave a "window" into what might be happening in numerous states.

Weiss hangs a $100,000 on bitcoin

On Wednesday's (11/6) Halftime Report, Steve Weiss said of crypto, "I'm sad I don't own it," but he thinks you can "buy more for a trade." Weiss suggested $100,000 is "probably the next stop" for bitcoin.

Taking a stab at political analysis, Weiss declared, "A good part of what got Trump reelected is playing to the populist person- to the person on the street."

Judge said Tom Lee is "still sticking with his massive run" prediction (snicker) for small caps.

Joe Terranova said of the big rally Wednesday, people call it a "reflation trade" and "we're basically inflating equities right now."

Kari Firestone said megacap tech have performed in a "restrictive" environment and now are looking at "less regulation."

Judge said "I find it very interesting" that META is down. Weiss said the market is "lifting all boats," but that's just "today," and "that's going to change over time."

Weiss said one of the "quick fixes" of the Trump administration will be removing Lina Khan, who "never should've been in the position."

Steve Kovach pointed out that some tech investigations began under the Trump administration.

Judge argued with Weiss' contention that Elon Musk's companies won't suffer as Musk spends more of his time involved with government.

Steve Liesman offered, "I think we're probably on track for 2 more cuts this year."

Jason Snipe bought FI. Weiss bought CRH (Zzzzzzzz). Like virtually every position he's got, "it's not a big position yet."

Joe felt compelled to "keep repeating" that people should not buy SMCI.

The 2 panelists who semi-regularly talk about ISM and PMI were on the show Tuesday (and one of them actually mentioned ISM in the 1st minute of the show)

Jenny Harrington on Tuesday's (11/5) Halftime Report described the presidential election this way: "It's binary, right. One wins or the other wins."

Can't really argue with that.

Judge said Tony Pasquariello says "any semblance of a clean outcome (snicker) — is implied volatility gets hit, hard and fast."

Judge said Adam Parker said a day ago on Closing Bell, "The bull case is intact unless we get a policy change (snicker)."

In the category of Is This November 2007, Rob Sechan claimed with a straight face that momentum, breadth and forward earnings estimates are "deteriorating."

Bill Baruch, apparently referring just to a "split Congress," stated, "If we get an answer there tonight, I expect the market to be higher tomorrow." Bill said he thinks the S&P gets to 6,200, "depending on who wins the presidential election."

(Actually, this page has previously stated (see below) that, given the rally in September-October, the outcome of the election might actually be a blowoff top.)

Joe Terranova wasn't on Tuesday's panel but joined remotely (from his pandemic-era office with the 3 numbers on the wall) to take a victory lap on PLTR and bash the analyst ratings. Joe said $40 has gone from the "ceiling" to the "floor."

Bill said he "definitely missed" PLTR. Joe ended the segment talking up TWLO again.

Judge for the 2nd day in a row brought up MAR (see below), citing a neutral (snicker) call at Mizuho.

Jim Lebenthal said he wants to "stick around" in WYNN. Judge called the stock a "stinker" (snicker).

Jim stated, "I don't actually believe that the prior past performance of the stock is indicative of the future."

Judge wondered if the fundamentals are so good, "Why isn't the stock reflecting that?"

"Sometimes that happens, Scott," Jim explained.

There are 2 panelists who semi-regularly mention ISMs and PMIs; neither was on Monday’s show

Discussing MAR on Monday's (11/4) Halftime Report, Josh Brown scoffed at "ISMs and PMIs and all this other stuff from the 1970s that no longer predicts anything" and suggested "if you just walk outside your house" and take note of business and consumer travel, you'll see the "absolute bonanza" for MAR.

"This thing could go green for all we know," Brown said of MAR's day. (It didn't, actually.) (This review was posted overnight Monday-Tuesday.)

Josh claims RDDT reminds him of Facebook 2013

Early into Monday's (11/4) Halftime Report, Josh Brown explained why he bought RDDT, admitting he "did not buy this stock cheap," but he's trying to "build a position," somewhere "closer to 100," so he took a "very small position."

Josh said the market didn't fully appreciate Reddit's recent quarter, and "a lot about the situation reminds me of Facebook in late 2012, early 2013" (snicker).

Josh said "active user growth year over year was 47%," and that "40% of the traffic is originating from Google. When you search for almost anything now in Google, you're getting Reddit as a top 1, 2 or 3 result." (Which means you're getting about 10% useful references and 90% gibberish.)

Josh even suggested an AI angle for Reddit that "opens up an international audience" that Josh claimed could somehow lead to Reddit "doubling and tripling its revenue."

Josh's comments came after Judge had opened by asking Shannon Saccocia NOT who will win the election, but "what's on your mind" (snicker).

Still not sure what PLTR is doing month to date (cont’d)

On Monday's (11/4) Halftime Report, viewers learned the JOET sold GOOGL and AAPL. (Zzzzzzzzz)

Joe Terranova again gave the tired spiel about "strip out the human emotion" and claimed there are "so many exhibits" (snicker) of how the rules-based approach works but said if he personally had to make the call, he's not sure he would've sold GOOGL. Josh Brown noted GOOGL is below where it was heading into earnings.

Joe marveled at how the PLTR "analyst community" only has a $28 12-month price target on the stock.

Josh is touting a breakout in DAL. Sarat Sethi said he could go on and on about DAL because "it is one of my favorite stocks." Joe said the JOET bought DAL and UAL.

Sarat agrees with Evercore's $400 target on CRM. Of course, the JOET bought it too.

Josh’s blast from the past

In the 36th minute of Friday's (11/1) Halftime Report, Josh Brown actually mentioned "Doug Kass" (apparently that's OK now), recalling a debate 10 years ago when BRK-B was 50 and whether it would go to 40 or 60.

Jim Lebenthal cited the "spinout of Banamex" as a catalyst for ... C (snicker).

As Judge recapped panelists' "contrarian" picks from the start of the year, basically all of them said they were just picking beaten-down sectors and weren't in or committed to those trades.

Steve Weiss declared at one point, "The best energy traders we all know have the toughest time making money in energy."

Josh hung a $300 on MAR. Judge and Weiss chuckled about Jim's cliches while discussing WYNN, even though (other than "the cherry on top") we didn't really hear that many bona fide cliches from Jim.

Judge said PLTR is the "6th best S&P stock month to date," then acknowledged that Friday is only the first day of the month and he didn't know whether it was year to date or something else (at least he didn't try to tell us the forward P.E.).

Josh’s commitment to PYPL spanned a whole $13

On Friday's (1/1) Halftime Report, Steve Weiss said of the MSFT and META selloffs a day earlier, "Who cares ... That's nothing."

Weiss and Bryn Talkington both indicated that AI as an investment thesis is still good to go.

Josh Brown noted that GOOGL has "given back the entire pop" it got from earnings.

Judge again mentioned "monolith," this time in the 5th minute suggesting megacap tech is NOT monolithic. Jim Lebenthal agreed there are "some that will be bigger winners than others." But Jim said that absolutely none of the market is monolithic, and it's a "stock picker's market" (snicker).

Judge and Weiss haggled again over what AAPL's prospects actually are.

Josh said he sold PYPL. "I bought it at 70; I sold it at 83 on Tuesday when the earnings came out," Brown said. (Those numbers are stock prices, not forward P.E. ratios.) (As far as we know.)

Brown said he bought BKR (we would swear the symbol used to be BHI), for the same old reason, it's in a "breakout," and of course, at some point, "there really aren't any sellers." Bryn Talkington backed the trade and used the term "sector writ large."

Jim and Judge offer up some P.E. ratios for MSFT

On Thursday's (10/31) Halftime Report, Jim Lebenthal said he trimmed MSFT, saying "this has had a terrible chart for quite some time" and it's "simply overpriced."

Judge sounded a little skeptical, saying "I get it" about the short-term chart, but that the P.E. is "29 and a half" (snicker) and on July 5, "it was 35."

And invoking his new metric, Judge said the 5-year average MSFT multiple is also 29.5, and 25.2 for 10 years.

Judge said "it seems to me" that some people are actually "more excited" to own the shares now.

Jim claimed a "small detail," that FactSet (snicker) says the forward multiple (snicker) is "31." Judge apparently conceded but said "down from 35."

Joe Terranova said a megacap quarter like that of MSFT "begins to dent the overall prevailing bullish trend that we have right now."

Josh Brown, meanwhile, who wasn't at Post 9, said the reax to UBER earnings is "sort of bizarre." He said it just reported one of its best quarters ever, though a "fly in the ointment" was gross bookings.

Joe said he sold UBER in his personal account. Joe cited the gross bookings.

Jim claims BAC regulatory issues could turn out like WFC, knocks those making ‘wry smiles’

Bill Baruch beamed in during Thursday's (10/31) Halftime Report to say he bought GS and sold BAC.

Jim Lebenthal said there are "some regulatory inquiries" at BAC. Jim said those issues could go "either of 2 ways," one of them being like Wells Fargo, and as Jim said that, he told Stephanie Link, "I think I see a wry smile on your face."

"No way. This is not Wells Fargo. No way," Stephanie said. Jim protested, "Wells Fargo actually sailed through this."

Judge said that Jim maybe would "suggest" that the Wells Fargo situation was "a little idiosyncratic." Jim said what he'd suggest is, "Don't take it lightly."

Judge said, "OK, we will not. Thank you for the heads up."

Jim said where it "should not have been taken lightly was Citigroup ... I know what I'm talking about." Jim said he thought he saw "3 wry smiles" while he was talking.

Meanwhile, Joe Terranova said that regardless of how the JOET handles it, don't buy SMCI. Joe said it's not in the "penalty box" (one of Joe's longtime favorite expressions), but it's a stock that "basically gets suspended for the season."

Stephanie Link called EL, which is still having a mind-bogglingly nasty couple of years, a "no touch for now." (This writer is long EL.)

On Fast Money, guest host Sully mentioned the Rubber Ducky character in the dreadful 1978 movie "Convoy." (Sully didn't say it's dreadful. That's what this page is saying.)

If the ‘closing arguments’ were Sunday and Tuesday, why are the candidates still campaigning?

Wednesday's (10/30) Halftime Report crew had nothing better to do than evaluate the Alphabet earnings. (This writer is long GOOGL.)

Steve Weiss claimed, "AI has helped them actually."

Joe Terranova shrugged that Alphabet just needed to top a "low bar."

Jason Snipe said it was a "great quarter on all ends" and that Google Cloud has come "a long way."

Weiss said the group's commentary was a little "understated," that Alphabet did more than "clear a low bar."

On the other hand, "I thought it was a home run call," said Bryn Talkington, adding that previous calls were kind of "blasé."

Weiss actually brought up the old days of Halftime when people (basically Pete Najarian) used to clamor for Facebook to do something in MOBILE!!!!!!

Joe said of AMD, "I don't view it as broken just yet." Bryn said "Dr. Lisa Su" is "amazing," and Bryn would "never discount her."

Weiss pointed out that AMD entered the quarter "at 80 times trailing P.E." (Judge never fact-checked that number), almost a "third higher" than NVDA (Judge never fact-checked that number either). "What were people thinking? This is purely a momentum trade," Weiss concluded, saying it was "asinine to own this stock at that valuation," one of his 2 "asinine" references on the day.

Joe suggested you don't want to touch SMCI.

Weiss actually claims that LLY has ‘echoes’ of MRNA

During Wednesday's (10/30) Halftime Report, the subject of LLY's earnings came up.

Steve Weiss claimed LLY has "echoes" of MRNA.

"I was involved, as everybody will remind me I'm sure, in Moderna," Weiss said, but actually Judge never mentions it; it's only this site that bothers to point out that Weiss in 2020 and 2021 regularly trumpeted how great MRNA was regardless of whether it was trading in the 300s or 400s. (Weiss has made some great calls, including this one — for a while — but his continuation of this call was a disaster.)

Weiss claimed Wednesday that we're seeing a "commoditization" of weight-loss drugs. He said it's "asinine to own a pharma company at 55 times EBITDA."

Judge suggested the growth is strong; Weiss said it's not "sustainable."

Weiss, LDOS CEO said ‘Hi’

On Wednesday's (10/30) Halftime Report, Judge said Wingstop has commercials "all over, uh, Sunday football games."

Joe Terranova said SHAK is cooking on margins. Joe said there's "disappointment" in CMG having a little higher expenses and not opening as many stores as previously thought. Joe pronounced it "Chipulte" (sic) at one point.

Steve Weiss made the "1 times book" (Zzzzzzz) and "great CEO" argument for BAC.

Judge said he wouldn't necessarily call the big banks a "monolith" but "there really is not much differentiation between the gains in the stocks."

Joe said there's "broken momentum" in energy. "For sure," Jason Snipe agreed.

Judge told Bryn Talkington that RBLX "has now become a pretty controversial name."

"Well the stock hasn't traded very controversial," Bryn said.

Joe said GRMN is in the "sweet spot for consumer products."

Judge said Weiss "front-ran" his own Final Trade of LDOS; Weiss said he was at the HQ a day ago and "briefly said 'Hi' to the CEO." Judge wondered, "Did the CEO say 'Hi' back?" "Uh, yeah, he did, he did," Weiss revealed.

Judge actually cites (what he claims is) GOOGL’s 5-year average multiple

Tuesday's (10/29) Halftime Report opened with panelists previewing Alphabet's earnings and its AI issues (Zzzzzzzzzz) (not nearly as exciting as a day ago when Judge actually said "bar fight" on-air). Jim Lebenthal mentioned the multiple (Zzzzzzzz) and Judge even claimed to know the 5-year average GOOGL multiple (snicker).

Jim Lebenthal complained that the rally isn't broader and said "I hate this" and said he's "really disappointed," and conceded of the market, "Once again, this quarter, it's relying on the Mag 7."

Apparently Tony Pasquariello touted mid caps on Monday's Closing Bell; Judge re-aired the clip on Tuesday's Halftime. Jim lumped in mid caps with small caps as having potential; "You can do research that the rest of the world doesn't know," but Jim conceded that the stocks may not go up right away.

Sarat Sethi joined remotely to say he bought CRM. Sarat sold USB (citing how much it's up over 12 months) and RBLX. Kevin Simpson sold TXN and cited all kinds of stats (Zzzzzzz). He put the proceeds into ORCL. Jim predicted a "crescendo into year-end" for ORCL.

Jim said he doesn't see homebuilders as a buy. Jim said there's "no reason" to own F over GM, though he did call Jim Farley a "very dynamic CEO (snicker)."

Jenny Harrington questioned JBLU's excuse of the November elections. "I'm kinda like, why would anyone not travel because of elections?" That's a great point.

Kevin Simpson said MCD is neither a buy nor sell.

On Tuesday's Fast Money, Mel gave Steve Kornacki plenty of time to outline the current polling in the presidential and Senate and House races. Despite the details offered by Kornacki, not one panelist on Fast Money opined on the presidential election.

If Donald Trump had won in 2020, there’d be no Jan. 6, he wouldn’t be on the ballot now and we’d be talking about Gretchen Whitmer vs. Mike Pence

Monday's (10/28) sleepy Halftime Report opened with Josh Brown trimming Alphabet (Zzzzzzzz). (This writer is long GOOGL.)

Steve Weiss basically argued that Alphabet could surprise in a good way. Then Josh haggled with CNBC's gorgeous Dee Bosa over whether Google could lose its status as the entry point of most people into the internet and whatever AI brings. It wasn't until the 10th minute when Judge got into Brad Gerstner's year(s)-old gripes (Zzzzzzzz) (snicker) about Google losing the AI race.

Bryn Talkington contended that Google's "moat" has "cracks" and will change.

Judge said D.A. Davidson, apparently invoking "Road House" (above), is even calling data-center buildout by tech giants a "drunken bar fight."

Rich Saperstein said he's not about to call for a "reversion" to small caps; "we've heard that for years."

Stephen Tusa joined remotely to make the bull case for MMM and even quoted Judge Smails: "The world needs ditch diggers, too." (That offers a 2nd famous movie photo.)

Steve Liesman hasn’t heard a ‘good response’ from Harris team about inflation or immigration

Late into Thursday's (10/28) Closing Bell, Steve Liesman reported on findings from the CNBC All-America Economic Survey, and in the process made several thoughtful observations about the presidential race.

Thoughtful, for sure, because Steve is one of the most objective voices on CNBC and does not traffic in political punditry (not that there's anything wrong with that).

Steve said the survey shows, "Americans largely believe they're losing ground to these price increases."

He continued, "There's very little that former President Trump has said that leads me or other economists to believe he would have a positive effect on inflation. He has this notion that he's spoken about, which is driving down energy prices, as if the American energy industry needs much lower prices now. Uh, and, and Harris, she seems to be more in line with paying for her spending, even though that's a promise not necessarily always kept."

Steve said the "story" to him is, "We had inflation during the Biden/Harris, uh, time period ... so therefore, we blame Biden/Harris, and anybody else in this situation is going to be better."

Steve added, "I will say this, Scott: After I listened to the 2 debates and have been following the campaigns, I do not hear a good response from the Harris team about the inflation issue. I don't hear a good response about the immigration issue. Those are 2 really important issues, and I have not heard a response- to say the Inflation Reduction Act is really something that does not appear to resonate with the American people."

Judge actually opens two separate shows with HSBC’s mid-level S&P target

Judge opened Thursday's (10/24) Halftime Report saying HSBC raised its target to a whole ... 5,900.

Josh Brown suggested that if the housing market can finally get going, it would be a big boost to the economy. Liz Young Thomas conceded, "Yes new home sales were healthy, however, existing home sales earlier this week were not."

Jenny Harrington said the market is "just kinda frothy." Jenny also warned about the national debt (snicker) and rising rates. Josh pointed out, "There's other theories besides the bond vigilantes that I've been hearing about for 25 years."

A few hours later, at the top of Closing Bell, Judge again started off with HSBC's 5,900 target (snicker) (slow news day). Joe Terranova, who was on Closing Bell, said that target is "probably a little bit light."

Joe also pointed out, "There has not been one pullback today in Tesla."

Jenny’s excited about VZ

VZ surfaced in a debate (snicker) (slow news day) on Thursday's (10/24) Halftime Report.

Jenny Harrington said KeyBanc is "not wrong" about its downgrade of VZ, but Jenny looks at it as "kind of a bond equivalent" and touted the dividend.

Josh Brown questioned what the VZ CEO is paying himself; "where are the activists?" Brown added, "This stock literally is like watching paint dry."

Josh demanded of Jenny, what would change to make the VZ dividend yield 3% instead of 6% because the stock doubles. "I don't need that," Jenny claimed. Josh suggested, "Buy a bond."

Meanwhile, Josh said it was "stupid" for people to sell UBER in August on the TSLA announcements. "I think autonomous, uh, taxis (otherwise known as a 'bus') are the future," Brown said.

Jason Snipe dialed in to say he continues to like NOW. Josh Brown touted the "technical opportunity" of ZM but didn't sound too enthusiastic about it from an "investing perspective."

Josh said he sold half of his LYV position in June, "so today I feel like a schmuck on wheels" (presumably autonomous driving wheels).

Joe twice says markets are thinking about a Republican sweep

Steve Weiss qualified and equivocated at the top of Wednesday's (10/23) Halftime Report before finally concluding, "Hold on to what you have, and wait this out," as if the October market has been an ordeal to wait out.

Joe Terranova said Santoli said Monday that "yields are rising for non-fundamental reasons." Joe explained, "We've got right now speculation surrounding not just President Trump winning, but an actual Republican sweep, which means an extension of the tax cuts and deregulation."

Judge cautioned that it might be a slow process. "November 5th is the beginning, not the end," Judge sighed, suggesting the possibility of a "prolonged" season of counting votes (presumably meaning houses of Congress as well as the presidency).

In the show's 51st minute, Joe again referenced election overhang; "I also think a lot of what's going on with the semis does relate to the possibility of a Trump and Republican sweep," Joe said.

Judge said Piper Sandler hiked its target to 6,100, matching Belski.

Judge pretends Weiss’ joke about Josh wasn’t a good one

Judge on Wednesday's (10/23) Halftime Report invited Rob Sechan by phone to talk about MCD. Rob first said Hi to everyone, prompting Judge to cut in, "What are your thoughts, Rob?" Rob said it's a "small position" with "huge embedded gains," so "we are not selling."

Rob referred to "Chipulte" (sic pronunciation).

Joe Terranova seemed to indicate that SBUX is going to rally faster than MCD will.

Steve Weiss joked that the producer, Kevin, should "send a wellness check out to Josh based on the McDonald's news." Judge sighed, "Let's go."

Weiss said that if you sold CMG during its E. coli problems, "you've had nothing but regrets," and "people aren't gonna make the same wholesale mistake" with MCD, and "This is definitely not a reason to sell it."

Joe tells people not to ignore a news report; Judge takes it personally

During a news alert on an analyst's outlook for iPhone orders on Wednesday's (10/23) Halftime Report, Joe Terranova said not to "dismiss" it (Judge said no one's dismissing it) and insisted on making a point about importance of the analyst's outlook and happened to mention it's "actual numbers."

Judge said "They're not actual numbers. You just said they're actual numbers. They're not actual numbers."

"I wouldn't ignore it. That's the point," Joe concluded.

"No, which is why we sorta discussed it the way we did with Steve Kovach. Uh, but thank you very much," Judge said.

Judge mocks Weiss’ supposed ‘deep preparation’ for the program (even though Weiss generally is better prepared than most panelists)

Judge on Wednesday's (10/23) Halftime Report, trying to press Brenda Vingiello into making a call on Elon, called Musk "the most highly polarizing CEO arguably in America at this point."

Brenda said a "ton" of people hate Elon, but, "3 out of almost every 4 cars on the road is a Tesla in some parts of the Bay Area." Brenda sorta painted a possible role for Elon in the government as a "positive" for TSLA; Steve Weiss sounded incredulous.

Brenda Vingiello was asked to opine on Needham reiterating a buy (snicker) on DIS. Brenda said, "We still think that there's opportunity here, um, so we're sticking with it."

Bill Baruch joined remotely to say he bought more MSFT, stating it's at "the lowest level relative to the Q's since February of 2023."

Weiss said he thinks the order book concerns for VRT are "misplaced." Weiss said he didn't hear the earnings call because it started at 11 a.m. Eastern and "coming on the show, I didn't have time." Judge joked about Weiss' "deep preparation" and for some reason couldn't stop chuckling.

Joe Terranova suggested cybersecurity names have been hurt recently by the "rise in yields." (This writer is long CRWD.)

Joe's JOET owns NTRS; he said he was "skeptical" when it was added, but the "biggest catalyst" for it now is the "skepticism that's still in place right now, today (sic last word redundant)."

Santoli says markets in ‘2016’ mode

Shortly into Tuesday's (10/22) Halftime, Judge was rereading Dan Loeb's letter anticipating a Republican victory. Judge also aired a clip of Sorkin hearing the same from Paul Tudor Jones on Squawk Box, with Jones saying, "primarily because I see the polling numbers have clearly moved in this direction."

The thing we noticed about that clip is that Sorkin hardly had to pull teeth for that comment; Jones was more than happy to offer it.

Meanwhile, Judge reported that David Einhorn, pointing to Warren Buffett, suggests "right now is not a great time to have a lot of equity exposure."

Joe Terranova, one of the day's panelists, decided, "A lot of what this week is, is really noise," though Joe conceded there are "overall strong tailwinds that exist."

Joe at one point claimed, "Yes the market is clearly broadening out."

Judge actually thought it was worth a minute or 2 to discuss Krinsky's call on utilities.

Santoli suggested the markets might be envisioning "the 2016 trade again" (this page made that point a day ago), though he's not sure markets want that kind of reflation "medicine" this time around.

So were they building this much junk in the past, and people just happened to catch it?

On Tuesday's (10/22) sleepy Halftime Report, Joe Terranova again cited "hurricane disruptions" as a PHM headwind, saying those disruptions are "pausing building specifically in Florida."

We're not meteorologists or anything, but we can't figure out why hurricanes would sway people from buying PHM stock given that presumably there's going to be more building — if not right away, then soon — than there otherwise would've been.

Phil LeBeau did a great Halftime interview with Boeing Machinists president Jon Holden in which Phil asked about BA quality-control issues. "It's a lot of Machinists who are on the line. ... How do you explain this drop in quality?"

Holden responded, "You know there was a lot of changes in the quality management system that we have been sounding the alarm on for over 5 years. In fact, the company wouldn't listen. ... we went to the FAA, and thankfully the FAA did restore tens of thousands of quality inspections that should've never been removed."

But in a follow-up, Holden admitted, "I think we've got a long way to go."

On Fast Money, Phil predicted a "close vote" on the new contract deal.

Brenda Vingiello bought WYNN. Brenda trimmed V, citing government overhang.

Rob Sechan said MMM is up "roughly 40% since we bought it." Congrats.

BTIG gave DECK a downgrade; Joe basically just said the company will just have to do better.

Joe said the COST chart looks "really good." Judge said it trades at "52 times." Who knows if it really does. (See below, numerous entries.)

On Fast Money, which devoted much of its time to MCD, Guy Adami said he doesn't think anyone died from the CMG E. Coli problem years ago, but someone has died from MCD's problem.

James Gorman’s list: Barack Obama, Barack Obama, Barack Obama, Jensen Huang, Brian Niccol, Jamie Dimon, Mary Barra, Harry Shari Redstone, Nelson

Judge on Monday's (10/21) Halftime Report mentioned always one of our favorite stocks, DIS. (This writer has no position in DIS.)

Judge said DIS is going to announce Iger's successor in "early '26." (So after working on this 5 years ago, and working again on it for the last 2 years, they hope to arrive at a decision in a year and a half.) (#bob'slifetimecontract)

Amy Raskin claimed, "From a long-term (snicker) perspective, we think Iger turns the ship around (snicker)."

Brian Belski actually said, "We love Iger ... if you think about Disney, it's really done a great job on the streaming side, relative to the other, let's say, the big box, uh, streamers."

Really. What exactly has DIS done "great" in streaming? And who are all these "big box" streamers? The only "great job" DIS could've done in streaming is licensing the content to NFLX for gobs of found money from content that was paid for decades ago and then skipping the churn and burn of recruiting their own subscribers with all kinds of $3 intro gimmicks. (This writer is long NFLX.)

On Fast Money, Steve Grasso bluntly stated, "Disney's going to have to decide, are they committed to streaming going forward. ... They're gonna have to decide, are they a streaming company, or a parks company?"

(Well, given that DIS/NFL hung fans out to dry Monday by making the Chargers-Cardinals game watchable only on their ridiculous ESPN+ streamer (even for people who already pay CNBC's parent to have a bunch of ESPN channels), we're guessing the short-term answer to Steve's question is a half-hearted yes.)

Guy Adami suggested DIS is trading at "19 times, 19 and a half times." (Do we know that's the right number?)

Tim Seymour said there's "very little I think to get excited about" at DIS. Carter Worth said "presumptive lows are in" with DIS, though he admitted it could be a "value trap."

We didn't hear any mention of Arnold Palmer on Fast Money, which is kinda surprising.

Brian Belski predicts the exhaustive buying will take place after Election Day

Brian "6,100" Belski curiously claimed in the opening minutes of Monday's (10/21) Halftime Report, "I believe we're gonna have some sort of a buying exhaustion, uh, after the election, no matter who wins. People wanna put money to work. Because they believe in the stock market."

"Buying exhaustion."

We think, based on the entirety of the comment, that Belski meant that people will buy until they're exhausted after Nov. 5.

That's curious, because it seems here like the markets in September started pricing in a November 2016 election outcome and decided to get ahead of Carl Icahn jumping into the overnight futures at 3 a.m. on the first Wednesday of November.

Or put another way, the guess here is that the election will be sell the news — not exhaustive buying.

On Monday, Joe Terranova said rising 10-year rates are pressuring small caps and real estate.

Amy Raskin said, "If yields are up because people are concerned about the fiscal policies (snicker) of the candidates, that's a problem." Judge said, "Yeah."

Jim Lebenthal said the fact mid caps are doing well "bodes well for the small cap sector (snicker)."

Amy called fiscal policy "actually a really big deal" (snicker).

How do we know the market multiple is 22?

Jim Lebenthal on Monday's (10/21) Halftime Report claimed the stock market is "past fair value at roughly 22 times next year's earnings."

And we couldn't help but wonder, does everyone (including CNBC graphics crew) agree that it's a 22 forward multiple.

Regardless, Jim won't worry about it until January. "Who wants to sell right now," Jim wondered.

Amy Raskin touted IONQ and stated, "We were in Nvidia very early," apparently implying this could do the same thing.

Brian Belski complained, "Everyone's a technician, they all got it all figured out, but no one's, no one's- doing implicit fundamental stock-picking."

Belski said, "You just couldn't wait to jab me, could ya."

Joe Terranova asserted that "a large majority of the activity and volume chases price. It just does."

Amy Raskin trimmed CDNS. Joe spent about 3 minutes saying the technicals don't look as good as the company actually is.

Amy suggested SLB will be great long term, if not the short term.

GM reportedly at 5 times

Brian Belski on Monday's (10/21) Halftime Report admitted he actually owns GM, "for contrarian reasons" (aren't they about due for another strike).

Jim Lenbethal said "it makes me feel good" that Belski owns it. Jim said it's at "5 times earnings" (do we know that for sure?) and can "easily" go to 6 times. Judge didn't take a poll of everyone on the panel including CNBC's graphics crew to determine if others have a different P.E. ratio for GE.

Belski gushed about PHM and said "it's up 455% since we owned it" in 2018. But Joe Terranova cautioned that much of PHM's success has come from Florida, and hurricanes and inventory may pose headwinds. (Honestly we're not really sure how hurricanes would hurt a homebuilder; presumably they would have places that would require rebuilding.)

Once again, there are different forward P.E. numbers mentioned for the same stock on the Halftime Report

Judge on Friday's (10/18) Halftime Report told Jason Snipe that there was talk going into earnings that we had "peak Netflix." (This writer is long NFLX.)

Jason said NFLX just reported its "most profitable quarter ever." Jason said Netflix management can be "balanced in their approach" and "the content library is very rich" and they're making a "foray into live sports."

Jason said that given all the levers at NFLX, "I start to feel like this is not a stock that is expensive." Jason and Judge first said NFLX is trading at 32 times, without saying "forward." Then Judge said it's 36, as did the screen text, and the screen text said "forward." (Honestly, if you're expecting the Halftime Report to provide clarity on what a stock's forward multiple is, you're better off changing the channel.) (By the end of the show, it was probably down to 33.)

Kevin Simpson predicted advertising is the "next catalyst" for NFLX. Stephanie Link admitted "I totally missed it" but wonders, "How come Disney can't get it together." (Well, there's a lengthy answer to that one, but suffice it to say that DIS shouldn't even bother with streaming churn and should've just licensed its content that was made decades ago to NFLX and collect checks while NFLX deals with all the subscriber/marketing stuff.)

Yet another forward P.E. (cont’d)

Judge on Friday's (10/18) Halftime Report said Torsten Slok claims stocks are "overvalued" and says a forward P.E. (snicker) of 22 "implies a 3% annualized return over the coming three years."

That's quite a formula. Nobody on Friday's panel seemed too scared about this call, perhaps because no one at CNBC seems to know what any forward P.E. multiples are; they just grab numbers out of thin air to satisfy whatever comment they're making.

"You've gotta be in cyclicals," Jason Snipe offered.

Judge said Scott Devitt sees attractive risk/reward in AMZN. Jason Snipe said there's a "reacceleration" at AWS. Kevin Simpson said he sold an AMZN 195 call a week ago on Monday and bought it back on Tuesday, and also sold a 192.

Jason Snipe said "it's hard to fight" NVDA. Kevin Simpson predicted this AAPL quarter will be a "sell the news quarter."

Kevin Simpson explained that volatility is higher as the election nears, which is why he's writing a lot of covered calls.

Regarding CVS, "There's some problems there," Jason Snipe said, in a bit of an understatement.

Judge said Tom Lee is touting homebuilders, which he says are entering a "golden 6 months." Stephanie Link said homebuilders are in a "decadelong theme."

Kevin Simpson bought TPL; he said it's a "royalty play on commodities" and "not for the faint of heart." Kevin revealed, "I bought it at 950 just the other day."

Steve Grasso: It’s time for NFLX stock to ‘roll over’

On Thursday's (10/17) Fast Money, Karen Finerman got first crack at NFLX's report. (This writer is long NFLX.)

"Everything to like about this — except the price of the stock," Karen stated, adding, "I wouldn't add here."

Steve Grasso observed that, "Every 4 months, you get a bottoming effect" in NFLX. Steve concluded, "I would be selling this right now."

Guy Adami said NFLX "back and filled" on Thursday back to the 2021 high, a chart that others on CNBC (as well as this page) have noted several times this year. He said, "I would actually buy this strength."

At the end of the discussion, Grasso said of the stock price, "I think it's time for it to roll over."

On UBER/EXPE, Grasso said he doesn't think a deal would be "wasting money," but he doesn't think Dara needs to do it. Dan Nathan though said "this makes a lot of sense." Guy Adami said he's "sort of with Dan on this one."

During the Halftime Report, in anticipation of NFLX earnings, Julia Boorstin mentioned NFLX having "2 games on Christmas Day." Josh Brown said there's a "deceleration" in NFLX subs but said it's "not negative," because counting subs isn't the right metric and skipping it is the right move; "Apple did it 10 years ago."

A target of 6,270

In a bullish gush-fest on Thursday's (10/17) Halftime Report, Judge said Goldman's Scott Rubner hiked his target to 6,270 (snicker).

Judge said "the fact of the matter is, there's still a lot of pent-up demand, it feels like, for stocks." Judge said Todd Boehly (his guest Tuesday in Beverly Hills) "rarely sits down to do an interview" but sees pent-up demand "in a lot of places."

Josh Brown said this is a "classic bull market" that will remove a lot of uncertainty in 3 weeks. In the meantime, tons of things are working, according to Brown.

"England is on fire, ladies and gentlemen," Brown said, also pointing to bitcoin and gold.

Jim Lebenthal questioned why anyone would sell regardless of election uncertainty. "I have no idea how the election's gonna turn out," Jim said, but he said "frankly," even if he knew the outcome now, he'd "defy anyone" to explain how to trade it. (Seriously?)

Josh Brown offered that 3 weeks ago, the reason to sell would be that Kamala Harris raises capital gains taxes at the end of 2025 and maybe they would "make it retroactive for all of 2025." Jim said that's a good point but to get that kind of capital gains hike would require a "Democratic sweep," which Brown said is "not gonna happen." Judge said "the market clearly is not voting in that direction."

Judge said Stan Druckenmiller says it was a "big mistake" to sell all of his NVDA from 800-950.

Gerald Levin saw synergies too

Josh Brown on Thursday's (10/17) Halftime Report praised Dara for exploring a bid for EXPE and said Dara learned from Barry Diller, who Josh said back in the '90s said that internet companies needed to combine and find synergies instead of being stand-alone entities.

Judge said Dan Ives raised his CRWD target to $330. (This writer is long CRWD.) Josh said, "The way that they have overcome this, uh, this issue really should be studied."

Jim Lebenthal and Judge seemed to quibble over whether LNG is "the" top pick at B of A as Jim indicated; Judge said they "probably have a list of top picks that they've probably added it to." Jim said regardless, "it's a great company."

Josh said MMM may be getting a little extended, but he's "willing to stick with it."

Judge said Krinsky is touting a "secondary entry point" into the KWEB. Josh explained that Krinsky is making a "tactical," not "investment," call. Josh said the KWEB moves "drastically" based on news flow. Josh said he's not sure about the investment side, but tactically, Krinsky "has something here." Judge said Tepper is "as tactical as anybody too."

Judge and Josh revisited Josh's recent recommendation of EBAY to Al Michaels; Judge said it's "up 10% since." Josh mentioned holiday shopping and said "I think you can stay with it." After the commercial break, Judge said Al reports "he's still in the name."

Jim actually made DIS his Final Trade.

So far, Sully seems to be getting a fair shake

For a long time now, this page has led the league in calling Brian Sullivan "CNBC's Funniest Anchor."

Over time, we've started to wonder if Sully isn't even CNBC's best anchor.

But here's the problem — Sully doesn't even have his own show. He most recently helmed Last Call (yes, if you questioned why CNBC was doing yet another regular news program at 7 p.m. Eastern, you are among 12 million people), which was canceled in July. At the time, Variety reported that Sully was "expected to stay" at CNBC (except Variety spelled it "Sulliivan" (spellcheck should flag that one)).

On the plus side, Sully has been pinch-hitting everywhere for months, including on the Halftime Report and Fast Money, so viewers at various hours (especially those who could never watch Last Call) are occasionally benefiting from the juice Sully brings to the production.

On the other hand, 1) it's hard to fashion a TV-host career as a utility man, 2) the hours from Worldwide Exchange to Fast Money are killer, and 3) this gentleman deserves a position of stature at this channel.

Back in the day, we used to be more plugged in to decision-making at Englewood Cliffs and could sometimes report a scoop. Nowadays, we honestly don't know what talks have occurred between Sullivan & Sullivan (presumably no relation) (that's Sully and CNBC chieftain KC) as to Sully's future.

We're not asking that anyone be elbowed aside. We just wanna keep seeing Sully on the air.

It seems like, as of now, he's getting some opportunities.

Jenny and Joe argue about whether they’re arguing

Jenny "Multiple" Harrington claimed on Wednesday's (10/16) Halftime Report that DIS is a "pretty nice place to hide out."

Joe Terranova added this comment to Jenny's statement: "I gotta give you this statistic: In the last 10 years, price performance for Disney, up 13.9%, 10 years. ... That's unbelievable."

Jenny then suggested Joe was making an "argument." Joe said, "I'm not making any arguments, I'm just- it's a stat."

Jenny insisted, "This is where you and I always argue-"

Joe protested, "I don't argue! I never argue!"

"No no no, on this, we do," Jenny said, explaining that she recommends buy low, sell high, while Joe recommends buy high, sell higher.

"Debating is different than arguing," Joe concluded the segment.

Here's the deal ... Joe claims he's only providing a "stat." But his point obviously is that DIS has done little in 10 years. What that point overlooks is that the stock was around $190 in 2021, presumably benefiting from the stay-at-home/COVID trade.

That doesn't change Joe's "stat." But it's also a stat that those who bought DIS 10 years ago could well have doubled their money had they simply sold in 2021. It's the suckers who bought in 2021 who should be wondering what they're going to hear first — a turnaround plan from Mr. Iger, or another contract extension.

Weiss calls the ASML report ‘murder-suicide in reverse order’

Steve Weiss in the 7th minute of Wednesday's (10/16) Halftime Report mentioned ASML (snicker), his recent buy.

But it wasn't until the 21st minute that guest host Sully asked Weiss about the stock.

Weiss explained that he said on Monday he started an "initial position" and stressed that he doesn't take full positions "anywhere near" an earnings report.

Citing the early release and order book guidance, Weiss said of ASML, "This was like a murder-suicide in reverse order." Sully questioned why, if Weiss liked it Monday, he didn't buy more on the early-release earnings report. Weiss said it's "more expensive now."

On fact-check patrol, we rewatched Monday's (10/14) show and indeed heard Weiss say his ASML stake is "not" a large position. He said he has "lots of room to build on it, however."

Weiss on Wednesday said Jensen is "almost as overexposed as Snoop Dogg."

Jenny perhaps underestimates how many people are reading IT’S NOT AN OPTION!!!!

In the 13th minute of Wednesday's (10/16) Halftime Report, guest host Sully brought up Barry Bannister (Barry hasn't been mentioned on the show in a long time), saying Barry made a "fascinating call."

Sully said Barry's call is that the market goes up another 8-10%, then will "crash 25% from there next year."

Jenny "Multiple" Harrington said Barry's call is "absolute plausible," though she questions how much of a crash there could be given that the "strongest supports of the market remain intact."

Steve Weiss contended that Barry is "generally always bearish." Weiss said Barry used to be a "machinery analyst" and maybe following a group that trades at 10-12 times affects Barry's assessment of the entire market. Weiss said he agrees with Jenny that maybe a crash could occur, but "the catalyst isn't there."

Sully called the 50-basis-point Fed cut "bizarre"; Weiss said it wasn't bizarre, it was "justified."

Joe Terranova questioned what Stifel clients, or anyone else actually, does with Barry's info.

Sully questioned why not buy long-dated puts as a hedge for Barry's call. Jenny said, "Most people out there, it's not really that easy to buy long-dated puts ... us professionals know how to do that, I betcha over half or 75% of the people out there can't just do that easily."

According to Stifel's website, Barry's title is Managing Director and Chief Equity Strategist, Macro & Portfolio Strategy.

Joe had opened the show saying "we're waiting on the Russell to come out of its earnings recession."

Jenny said, "There's a really high chance that inflation picks up. I just don't think it's in the short term." Jenny cited "seriously huge national- national debt levels (snicker)."

Apparently RIO can’t go down

Guest host Sully on Wednesday's (10/16) Halftime Report said Loop raised its NFLX target to 800. (This writer is long NFLX.)

Steve Weiss said he trimmed his NFLX stake to right-size his position, which is maybe his favorite hobby within the investing space.

Weiss correctly said it seems like "every day," someone is raising their NFLX target. Joe Terranova said NFLX can keep raising prices for a while (he and Weiss agreed that at some point, that won't be true, but we're not near that point yet) so that's why the outlook is good but cautioned "it's a volatile stock" that can easily go up or down 5-10%.

Joe cautioned that IBKR could dip to the 50-day; if so, Joe said, "it's nothing more than a pause."

Jenny Harrington said "worst case scenario" for RIO is "stay flattish" and collect the 6% dividend.

Kari Firestone said ADSK has some activists involved and is being pressured to improve margins but has "been on a tear lately."

Bob Pisani reported that buybacks are booming. Sully wondered if there's always going to be a "Big Tech Buyback Put" under the stocks.

Sully wondered if Todd Boehly was going to be in New York on Wednesday night for the Dodger game.

Judge says nothing about Weiss’ ASML bungle

Judge opened Tuesday's (10/15) Halftime Report saying he was at the "CAIS Alternative Investments Summit."

Judge's questions from Beverly Hills, including in his on-site interview with Baird Vice Chair John Taft on the 60/40 Portfolio, were plagued by the background racket of all the CAIS Summiteers that sounded like Judge was broadcasting from just outside the doors of The Scorpions playing "Rock You Like A Hurricane." #acoustics

Judge was joined by Michele Trogni of Zinnia and Todd Boehly of Eldridge and had the same situation. Things improved a lot in the 2nd half of the show when most of the lobby cleared out and Boehly told Judge, "I think we're in a process of having lots of M&A get started."

Judge told Boehly that it seems like "you can't either turn on the TV these days" or open a financial newspaper "and not have the question asked, 'Is private credit a bubble?'" Boehly said, "If you're not a practitioner, it's hard to sit here and kind of suggest that something's a bubble."

Judge asked Boehly about ownership of sports teams. The billionaire class is growing, and "the number of teams isn't gonna continue to expand," Boehly explained.

Judge said a Yankees-Dodgers World Series "hasn't happened since I think 1981." Boehly claimed "there's pretty much nothing like a Dodgers-Yankees World Series." Judge never explained why Bowie Kuhn decided to let in the Dodgers and not the Cincinnati Reds that year.

From the panelist crew that was 3,000 miles from Beverly Hills, Joe Terranova said David Solomon was "countering some of the pessimism that we've heard from Jamie Dimon."

Josh Brown said people expected "election chaos right now," but "it's not the case," and, "You're probably gonna get a divided government." Judge, perhaps because of the din at the CAIS summit, didn't question whether we really might get a divided government.

Josh said SHAK is "probably in the 2nd or 3rd inning" in terms of global potential.

Joe pointed out the low point of NFLX's chart over the last 4 years but touted how the company can focus on growth while rivals have to worry about profits. (This writer is long NFLX.)

Judge got the first TV interview ever with Ian Charles of Arctos.

‘I hate to agree with Weiss’

Monday's (10/14) Halftime Report featured guest host Sully at Englewood Cliffs with Bill Baruch; other panelists were remote.

Bill said he's seeing a "real formidable breakout" in the market.

Bill said "my bet" for the next couple months is that "the Mag 7, the tech stocks, are going to rally from here and outperform."

Grandpa Steve Weiss said he doesn't think the state of the economy "necessarily supports where the broad market is" but said there's upside in "individiual stocks."

Weiss took a dig at CLF (time frame unclear), saying it's "down, probably about 50% or so." Weiss' sound went out during the end of his remarks (as he was talking about Lina Khan), prompting Sully to hilariously cringe.

Weiss took out a new position in ASML. Weiss made some kind of extended valuation argument.

Bryn Talkington said, "In theory, we should have that year-end rally," but she's noticed the 10-year has risen from 3.60 to "4.13 today."

Sarat Sethi, who had a quiet show, said, "I hate to agree with Weiss, but bottom's up is, uh, where you gotta be."

Sully complained about the officiating in the Virginia Tech-Miami game.

Bill disclosed he bought the EEM. Sully explained, "I don't like the name, because I don't view it as an emerging markets ETF at all," and asked Bill "is this a China play for you?" Bill said "yeah, absolutely." Bill also bought AS, "it did break out above its, its IPO price." Bill referenced DECK as a stock he liked that never gave him a pullback opportunity.

Bryn said if she wants to play China, she'd do it through commodities rather than single stocks such as ALB.

On Fast Money, Karen Finerman made the same prosperity-is-just-around-the-corner argument for C that Jim Lebenthal was recently making (and has made for years); Karen said C has been slow to get out from under government decrees, "but eventually that will happen." Guy Adami made a good joke about Kensho and noted how, according to Guy, GS typically sells off upon earnings.

Judge actually declares an important market truth (that some of us declare all the time) (a/k/a Both Jim and Weiss are wrong about C/JPM P.E. ratios, according to CNBC’s graphic)

We didn't think during a humdrum conversation about Citigroup stock that Judge would be making a major pronouncement.

But that's what occurred on Friday's (10/11) Halftime Report when Judge carped at Jim Lebenthal's comment that C is trading at 9 times forward.

Judge said he's heard "for years" the argument about banks trading below tangible book. "That in and of itself is not an accelerator necessarily for what a stock price is gonna do," Judge said.

Ah. Judge gets it. (He actually softened it a bit too much with "necessarily.") P.E. ratio/tangible book/any other metric does not predict where a stock price goes. We wish some of these panelists (such as Jim/Citi) would show proof that C's P.E. ratio or tangible book has ever signaled where the stock is going.

Jim's explanation is that C trading below tangible book is just an "inanity" that will be "corrected" (snicker).

Judge said he's been hearing "at minimum for 5 years" the argument about trading below tangible book, but that argument is "not necessarily good enough." Ya think?

Steve Weiss claimed the P.E. for C is the same as the P.E. for JPM even though JPM is at 2 times tangible book. Jim said "actually no," it's "12 vs. 9." Weiss said "that's not what I show" and it's "pretty close." Jim wondered what it will take to get Weiss to buy C; Weiss suggested Jim "would probably have to sell it."

Vehicles that drive paying passengers around town — they’re called ‘buses’ (cont’d)

During Friday's (10/11) Halftime Report, Judge said analysts seemed to agree there was "little substance" in Tesla's robotaxi rollout the night before.

Judge asked Bryn Talkington, who wasn't on the panel but joined remotely, for an opinion. Bryn pointed out how the stock surged in the summer on "no real fundamental news," so there apparently was "so much hype" going into this event that's responsible for the stock selloff.

Bryn said we'll get "details" about this project during the Oct. 23 earnings call. Josh Brown, who wasn't on the show at all, apparently messaged Judge and crowed about UBER being the big winner from Thursday night's presentation. He's correct, the TSLA event lifted an overhang on UBER. (This writer has no position in UBER, used to own UBER until it kept yo-yo'ing in the 60s/70s.)

Steve Weiss expressed skepticism of the TSLA project, saying Waymo doesn't make money and it's unclear when it will and it's the leader in the space.

A couple hours later on Closing Bell, Dan Ives joined Judge and defended TSLA's big reveal: "In terms of the next few years, I believe it's a game-changer to the broader story."

Judge said, "You saw what might be. Not what is."

Genie Out Of The Bottle Alert: Larry Summers is warning about inflation

Steve Weiss at the top of Friday's (10/11) Halftime Report said the PPI changes "any thought" of 50 points at the next meeting to 25.

Weiss admitted, "Everything seems to be working nicely," but he questioned whether even a great earnings season will be "muted" by concerns about the election.

Weiss said, "Everybody wants to see a divided Congress."

"Right," Judge agreed.

Jim Lebenthal said, "It's hard to find a reason to sell here." Jim said those who cited "valuation" as a reason to sell are "flat-out wrong," it's not that valuation doesn't matter, Jim said, it's just that "it doesn't matter in the 4th quarter of this year."

Well, that's another interesting way of putting it. Jim thinks valuation matters at least some of the time ... but not in Q4 2024.

Judge mentioned Ed Yardeni's "outlier view" of a day ago on Closing Bell (see below) of "one and done" by the Fed.

Jenny Harrington of course tried to pour cold water on things; "what we know is we know the pendulum always swings too far," Jenny said, citing "capital flows" to the stock market.

Judge reported on Ricky Sandler's tweet from a day earlier in which Ricky suggested buying the "vast array of below mega cap companies that have interesting equity stories." Weiss said of Sandler, "he's not positioned in those names" and that "reasonable people disagree."

But Jim said he thinks Ricky is "dead on."

A couple hours later on Closing Bell, Judge told Loretta Mester (in what was an excellent interview) that Lawrence Summers is tweeting about how the Fed shouldn't cut too fast.

Tom Lee has the funky psychedelic backdrop going again

Judge on Friday's (10/11) Halftime Report said some pros have told him that they're buying Russell calls for "early next year." (We've been hearing about how great this trade is gonna be for what, oh, 3 years running?)

Steve Weiss said he's thought about doing that but hasn't "pulled the trigger yet."

Jenny Harrington curiously asked Jim Lebenthal what he's telling clients what to do with new bonus money in January. Jim said "I'm not gonna worry about January just yet" but that "normally," in a year like this, the Q4 rally "crescendoes into the first part of the new year." (Translation: Jim's not telling anyone to sell for a while.) (But unclear what they should buy with that bonus money.)

Judge said Guggenheim pinned an 810 target on NFLX. (This writer is long NFLX.) Weiss said he's still got an "uncomfortably large position" but the company still has "great flexbility" in ability to raise prices. Judge said someone made a negative call about a week ago at 700. (What Judge didn't say was that 700 was around the previous high in late 2021, and observers (at least if you watch Fast Money) had been split as to whether 700 would be a double top, or a breakthrough support level.)

On Closing Bell, Judge's star guest was Tom Lee (ah, wait a minute, maybe it was Loretta Mester) (ah, maybe it was Dan Ives), who said he's a little cautious right now because "I think investors wanna see how- who ends up becoming president after Election Day."

Kevin: NFLX can charge ‘whatever they want’

Liz Young Thomas suggested early on Thursday's (10/10) Halftime Report that "the market is confused today."

Josh Brown chided those who called for "50 and then 50 and then 50" after an August "weather event in Texas." Kevin Simpson sort of chuckled at Goldman dropping its MSFT target from 515 all the way to ... 506. He said he'd be "very happy" if it gets there.

Judge said Morgan Stanley lifted NFLX to 820 and Oppenheimer is up to $775. (This writer is long NFLX.) Kevin said he thinks it'll go higher; "They can charge us whatever we- whatever they want, and we're gonna pay for it."

That's exactly right. This page will not necessarily agree that NFLX can charge "whatever," but it can definitely charge more than it's charging.

Judge said CRWD is up 100% since the October 2022 low. (This writer is long CRWD.) Josh gushed about the "reputational comeback" from the outage.

People buying NVDA calls; who knew

Josh Brown said on Thursday's (10/10) Halftime Report that it's almost a "horse race" between the Mag 7 and the S&P 493, "and you're making money with both trades."

Judge said NVDA is up 8% on the week and claimed "there's a tremendous amount of bullish options activity around Nvidia going out into the spring of 2025." Josh said there's been "monster, monster call-buying at the March, uh, strikes from like 150 all the way up to 189."

Kevin Simpson articulated how much NVDA needs to rise (basically to $163-$164) just to break even on a $150 option that costs $13-$14. Judge said Fast Money's Dan Nathan reports that NVDA call volume is 2x the put volume.

Josh said META is staking out a "battleground" vs. AAPL over the next portal to the internet, which Zuck apparently thinks can be AR (snicker).

AMD was giving CNBC interviews Thursday and announcing a bunch of things; Josh said that "the best thing that could happen for Nvidia, honestly, is for AMD to stay in the fight, so they're not fighting an antitrust battle a year from now."

Josh suggested, "I think ultimately, Tesla probably ends up doing a deal with Uber."

Judge says he won’t discuss 10 reasons for buying a stock

Joe Terranova wasn't on the Halftime Report Thursday (10/10) but he was on Closing Bell, and he sounded incredulous at guest Ed Yardeni's suggestion that the Fed might not do any more cuts this year.

"There would have to be something very troubling in the inflation numbers for them to sit on their hands for the rest of the year," Joe said.

On the Halftime Report, Judge chuckled that Piper Sandler was giving "10 reasons" to buy CRM and ADBE.

Judge told Josh that Morgan Stanley reiterated underweight at MMM. "The problem with Morgan Stanley is they just don't know what time it is. Like, they're focused on the past," Brown said. "It's not overvalued by any stretch."

Josh said PYPL is "barely down" on Bernstein's cut to neutral.

Kevin Simpson sold WMT October 82 covered calls and MRK October 110 covered calls that expire Oct. 18.

Kevin said he's not sure he agrees with Stephen Tusa that HON's spinoff is dilutive and said he'll buy it on pullbacks.

Kevin said PEP is "the 13th-largest name in the Q's."

Judge said at PFE (snicker), a couple former execs who supported Jeff Smith are now backing current management. Josh contended, "Pfizer's problems are large but fixable."

Josh's Final Trade was IOT; he said it's a "mike-drop chart."

Guest-hosting Thursday's Fast Money, Kelly Evans called Mike Khouw "Mike Cow" and seemed to immediately sense a mistake.

Jim somehow gets a 2nd straight day to talk up GM

The Post 9 panel of Joe Terranova, Shannon Saccocia, Jason Snipe and Jim Lebenthal on Wednesday (10/9) all basically endorsed the stock market. Jim bluntly stated, "Is anyone really going to sell getting into the 4th quarter here?"

Jason Snipe brought up Jensen's use of the word "insane" and echoed Jim, "Why would you wanna get out of this market at this stage?"

Joe said MSFT is "not trading well," neither is Alphabet, and AMZN is down 5% in 12 days, so this is "idiosyncratic" as to what's working/not working.

Judge somehow asked Jim to repeat his GM spiel on Wednesday, pegged to the hook of the JPMorgan price target hike. Jim said "they gave enough" at Investor Day.

Joe said he disagrees with Wolfe's call to take profits in insurance stocks.

On Fast Money, Guy Adami quoted "Wall Street" in a discussion about Alphabet: "The breakup value is higher."

Judge & Josh’s assessment of GM was doing great, until ...

Normally, GM conversations on the Halftime Report aren't exactly must-see TV, but Judge and Josh Brown did make things interesting Tuesday (10/8).

Jim Lebenthal spoke of what he wants to hear on GM's Investor Day. What he doesn't want to hear is any "near-term issues" with profitability like Stellantis revealed.

Judge questioned, what if the "most exciting thing they're doing" is buying back stock.

Jim said "that's the bear argument." Judge said the bear argument is that "they got a lot of cars sittin' around" and pointed to Sarat Sethi saying on the show recently that he sold the stock and "called it a terrible investment."

Jim protested that he wasn't on the show with Sarat and insisted, a couple of times, "it isn't a terrible investment."

Jim protested to both Judge and Josh Brown that GM's multiple is so low because some people think the numbers "are gonna fall off a cliff," and Jim doesn't think the numbers will fall off the cliff.

Josh said GM is selling at a 5 times multiple "because people understand that in the future, this is just not gonna be the same business that it has been for the last hundred years."

Hmmmmm.

Josh, who said, "The year is 2040, Taylor Swift is president (snicker)," continued that cars sit idle 96% of the day. Josh said entrepreneurs such as Dara and Elon are taking these "idle hours ... and they have these cars moving, circulating, through the towns, through the cities ... taking people on rides when they need those rides."

Josh added, "That is what's depressing the multiple. ... It's a reality that I think hasn't yet dawned on people."

Well, this page will disagree with Brown. The multiple is not low because of a ride-share fantasy. The multiple is low because this company never makes a product that everyone starts gushing about.

Brown's supposed 2040 automotive scene misses some key facts: 1) Regardless of who owns the cars, they're going to be sitting around 96% of the time from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. Everyone wants them on the roads around 8 a.m., 5 p.m. and after the ballgame ends. Why would all the cars that take people to work at 8 p.m. still be "circulating" around with no riders at 10 a.m.? (And there would be fewer people riding in cars in general given that the marginal cost of renting a ride is far higher than the marginal cost of driving the same distance with a car a person already owns.) 2) Most people will find it more cost-effective to own their own car that they can drive any time rather than constantly pay to go everywhere.

Josh downplayed "the only bear case" for UBER, which is that Elon will launch the "Uber killer."

Bryn gives RBLX short case a fair shake, says company should refute many of the claims

Judge on Tuesday's (10/8) Halftime Report asked Bryn Talkington about Hindenburg's short position in RBLX.

Bryn offered a lot of thoughtful commentary, suggesting the company can probably shoot down some of the assertions but should heed others.

Bryn said it's a "very long report," and "I would think the stock would be down more with all of the accusations." Bryn said "one of the big ones is that they're saying that Roblox is conflating people with daily active users." Bryn said that sounds "easily refutable" by the company if the allegation is "not true."

Bryn said she's holding the stock but apparently wants to see the company do more about protecting kids. Judge and Bryn noted the company's statement, but Bryn said, "They need to refute these claims. They're not willy-nilly."

Rick Rieder ‘uncomfortable’ with market multiples, but ...

Star guest Rick Rieder on Tuesday's (10/8) Halftime Report stated, "I feel uncomfortable at these multiples being long, but there's so much cash on the sideline."

Judge asked Rick to articulate why he's not high on small caps (snicker). Rick said it's a "fair" argument about the multiple but that "bigger companies continue to grow the moat."

Jim Lebenthal said the argument he keeps hearing against small caps is "this is not the place in the cycle." Jim said he sees small caps as a "ripe case for another pattern to be broken."

Rick said he agrees with that cycle argument, at least as far as easing rates to come out of a downturn, except that right now, "the funds rate is still restrictive," and they're just bringing it into alignment with inflation.

Rick told Judge, "I don't really understand the hard landing/soft landing thing," rather, "I actually think the U.S. is a service-related economy; I know I call it the satellite economy all the time. Satellites tend to- they don't really land, they just get tired over time."

Jim suggested rates are staying higher "because the economy is a heckuva lot stronger than people expect."

Bryn Talkington pointed out that "going into October of an election year, very normal to trade down, especially the first half of October."

Judge noticed at the beginning of the show that it sounded like Josh Brown was speaking from a cavern in his opening remarks.

Jim said "the one thing" that would worry him about QCOM is that they "do something stupid like buy Intel."

Josh noted in Final Trades that PYPL has an "8 handle."

Belski insists those in the business 15 years or less don’t know how to stock-pick

On Monday's (10/7) Halftime Report, Judge said Piper (he called it "Piper Jaffray" before correcting himself; "I've been here a long time" (snicker)) raised its NFLX target to $800 from 650, while Barclays dropped its target to 550. (This writer is long NFLX.)

Brian Belski, long NFLX, insisted "this is a thousand-dollar stock."

Judge said there's a noticeable "delta" between the Piper and Barclays price targets that's "remarkable." Joe Terranova said it's about the valuation. Joe questioned "rhetorically" if NFLX is losing market share to other streamers; he concluded that the others are focused on trying to be profitable while NFLX is free to focus on growth.

Meanwhile, Belski claimed, "The majority of Wall Street uh has- has been in the business 10 to 15 years. So all they've done is chase indices or looked at ETFs."

Judge scoffed to Bryan, "Oh, but your- your- but your 30 years give you a, a, a richer, uh, uh, a richness that they don't have. Are we goin' there again? Please tell me we're not goin' there again."

"We're not goin' there again," Belski promised, explaining that institutional clients "don't actually know what stock-picking is" because "all they've done is chase things."

Bill Baruch bought a January 135/150 XOM call spread. Joe said he expects XOM to be a trillion-dollar company.

Do we hear 6,200?

In a setting that brought back tired memories of the pandemic era, Judge for Monday's (10/7) Halftime Report was parked at Englewood Cliffs on Monday, with only Joe Terranova at the desk; everyone else was remote.

Joe advised, "You stay with the trend."

Judge said Tony Pasquariello says to "stick with the primary trend in the best stuff." Judge said David Kostin upped his 5,600 to 6,000, "so you've got some chasers."

Bill Baruch, stationed at a different part of HQ, said he agrees that Brian Belski's (who was also on the show) 6,100 is "very doable," and getting there "could be a bit of a trader's paradise" as it could be a "bumpy path" through the election.

Judge said B of A in fact predicts a "stock-picker's paradise (snicker)."

Joe claimed Tony's note advised "staying with the winners." Judge clarified that Tony is saying "stay with the best stuff."

Joe said the Fed cut was a "sell the news moment" because the Russell peaked on the afternoon of the announcement, and yields bottomed the day before. Joe said he's "not in love" with cyclicals; he wants to stick with "what has worked in 2024."

Belski trimmed HD and MCD in his value portfolio because he added LULU, which has been "crushed." Belski also bought SO. He sold AMP and ALLY to fund it, even though he hailed how AMP "did not even take TARP money."

Belski said PFE still has a "COVID hangover." Joe Terranoa said PFE has had "significant managerial missteps." Bill Baruch talked up ABBV.

Anastasia Amoroso barely got a chance.

A little later on Power Lunch, star guest Tom Lee admitted small caps have been "disappointing" despite being "within a few percentage points of an all-time high," but Tom thinks it's "just a matter of time" before they rally.

Stan Druckenmiller emailed Bloomberg

Judge on Friday's (10/4) Halftime Report aired the clip from the morning of Savita saying "This is Goldilocks."

Rob Sechan offered, "it's Goldilocks on steroids." Jason Snipe said he's not sure it's Goldilocks; "I think we are priced for perfection." Jim Lebenthal stated, "I really think we're gonna crescendo into year-end."

Steve Liesman introduced the idea of no cut in November, which he said is only a "very slight probability."

Judge said Stan Druckenmiller has "made some comments, um, to another outlet (snicker) via email," in which Stan hopes the Fed isn't "trapped by forward guidance the way they were in 2021." Steve said he partly agrees with Stan's comments but said the Fed has said it's "recalibrating" to match inflation, which has come down and "justifies the Fed's rate cuts."

Judge jabbed with Jim over Jim's head-scratching contention that "some of these" earnings forecasts are baking in "recessionary outcomes." Judge correctly said "Not really," and then tangled up "inflationary" when he meant "recessionary" (corrected himself a few seconds later).

Judge said VST is "up 75& in a month," and even repeated that information. Rob Sechan's got it. Rob noted it's a "very attractive" name but is "no longer cheap," and he wouldn't be surprised to see it "consolidate a little bit."

A $130 target on a $240 stock

In the category of head-scratchers, Judge didn't ask panelists for "Megalopolis" reviews (see below) on Thursday's (10/3) Halftime Report said JPMorgan raised its TSLA target from 115 (snicker) to 130 (snicker) but reiterated "underweight" (snicker).

Bryn Talkington said, "I don't know what JPMorgan's talkin' about."

Josh Brown opened the program saying how "Mr. Partridge" would just say that this is just a bull market.

Bryn said there's "animal spirits around AI" and advised, "Don't fight the Fed," plus there's "China stimulus." (Judge didn't bring up the fact Stan Druckenmiller is not impressed by China's stimulus.)

Josh said that with Jensen talking about "insane" demand, you have to stick with NVDA. Bryn said Jensen is the "ultimate salesperson" who "delivers the goods" and later made NVDA her Final Trade. Kevin Simpson said of NVDA, "At some point, this trade will burn out like they all do, but I don't think that the runway's any time in the near future."

Kate Rooney joined to recap what Judge praised as her "big interview" earlier with Sarah Friar.

Dee Bosa reported on ways that Google's cooking up to get ads in AI search.

Josh Brown offered a bunch of reasons for and against owning GOOGL; he decided it's "a little bit of a tough trade" and maybe a "better investment than a trade."

Kevin Simpson said he "absolutely" would buy AMZN on weakness. Josh said if it falls Thursday, it would be the 8th straight losing day, the longest streak since 2019. (On Fast Money, they said Thursday was only 7 straight down days.) The 2nd-longest was 9 days in 2009, Brown said.

On AAPL, Bryn said, "There's no one sleeping in tents outside of the iPhone store like we saw in the first half of the decade," but "I do think though the China stimulus, uh, could be very good though."

Excitement over a 1-3 team

Late in Thursday's (10/3) Halftime Report, Michael Ozanian was back (that's CNBC's new sports-reporting initiative) to talk about the Miami Dolphins' sale of a minority stake to private equity, which (ding-ding-ding) probably allows Mike to upgrade his NFL team market value calculations.

Judge said this would be the first NFL-P.E. deal that we're "likely to see a lot more of." Josh Brown said the P.E. crowd is "practically based" in Miami, so it's sort of "emblematic" for the Dolphins to be the first P.E. team.

Honestly, we can't figure out why Judge is more interested in this sleepy subject that affects maybe 75 individuals in the entire country than in the NFL games themselves, but whatever. (Ah, we get it — it's a current topic just as CNBC's sports-reporting upgrade went live.)

Kevin Simpson bought CME, citing recent history of a special dividend in December.

Kevin also bought VNOM, a stock that's been championed by Bryn Talkington.

Josh Brown wasn't sold on the Chicken Big Mac.

Josh Brown said Berkshire's selling of BAC doesn't seem like a sign that Berkshire sees "something wrong, per se, with the banking sector."

Judge should ask Weiss to review ‘Megalopolis’

As everyone on CNBC's Halftime Report basically treads water in terms of stock market recommendations ("Wait for the Fed!" "No, Wait for earnings!" "No, wait for the next CPI!...."), it suddenly occurred to us that it would be awesome for Judge to devote part of the show to a review of Francis Coppola's "Megalopolis."

Then again, Judge had so much difficulty Wednesday (10/2) digesting Steve Weiss' very simple Humana trade, which Judge somehow found "too confusing," we're not sure that Judge would give "Megalopolis" more than about 30 seconds. (That's 30 seconds of watching it in the theater, not 30 seconds of discussing it on the show, though we'd be surprised if it actually got that much.)

(If Jim Lebenthal watched "Megalopolis," he'd surely be gesturing at the screen, "The economy is. NOT. THAT. BAD!!!!")

In the latter half of the show, Judge noted HUM's bad day and said Weiss bought it. "I bought it on the news. So it's actually been a good little trade. I'm only gonna be in it for a trade," Weiss explained.

Judge said, "Here's my problem (snicker)," he wants as much "context" as Weiss can give so they don't give viewers "the impression (snicker) that this is some thing that's gonna be around for a while."

Weiss said he bought it when the stock was down $60 in the morning; it was down $45 as he spoke. Weiss did impressively lay out the issues the stock faces and concluded that if it moves up to the point where it's only down $40, "I'm gone."

OK. We get it completely. Weiss is playing the knee-jerk reaction, which often softens later in the day, making early-in-the-day buyers the smart buyers. (Not always, but often.)

Weiss clearly isn't interested in waiting this out for weeks. And he presumably cashed out shortly after the program, as HUM finished the day down only $32.

Anyway, back to the $40 drop ... Judge said that's only a "4 buck difference" from where the stock was currently at. Jenny Harrington questioned putting on a trade "for 2%," meaning 2% more than where it was at that moment. Weiss said that with a sizable trade, it's still money.

"You see," Weiss told Jenny, "You use a benchmark of what the S&P do (sic grammar) (we think); I use a benchmark of how much money am I making."

Judge concluded, "Next time, we're not even gonna mention it," because it's "too confusing for the viewers." Weiss said he didn't "lobby" for talking about his HUM trade.

Weiss calls Jenny ‘baby’

Judge opened Wednesday's (10/2) Halftime Report with a scoop, saying sources tell him OpenAI's funding round "has now closed," and it raised "a little more than 6½ billion."

Judge asserted, "This is a big deal."

Steve Weiss said he "passed on it," because "it's in the hype stage" and it's "too difficult to pick the winners and losers."

Weiss predicted "continued volatility" through the presidential election. Weiss said the dockworkers union hasn't endorsed either presidential candidate.

Weiss said it's likely Israel will make a "statement" by "going after" Iran.

Judge first assured he wasn't downplaying the impact on human beings' lives of the Middle East conflict, but, "The market has generally viewed that kind of thing as noise."

Joe Terranova said he finds the $70 oil price "somewhat astonishing."

In a lengthy conversation about NKE, Joe said he'd probably buy LULU before NKE. Jenny Harrington said, "My husband refers to my Hokas as my orthopedic sneakers."

Weiss made his usual sneaker commentary, prompting Judge to scoff that nobody should turn to Weiss for fashion insight and prompting Jenny to ask Weiss what shoes he's wearing.

"Stan Smiths, baby," Weiss told Jenny.

Joe claimed that because the JOET has owned MELI since April 2023 and has a "54% gain," the ETF has "time on our side." (Translation: Joe's OK if it loses money from here because he can always say he made a profit on it.) That's a curious way of assessing whether a stock is going higher or lower. He said MELI might be taking a "pause" that refreshes.

Joe said there's "very strong tailwinds" for APO and other asset managers. Joe praised Blue Owl and its owners "who just closed on the Tampa Bay Lightning yesterday" for $1.8 billion.

Judge said Stan Druckenmiller has "no interest" in China as long as Xi Jinping is in charge. Weiss said he doesn't expect Tepper to be in the China trade on a "long-term basis," and that Druckenmiller is "right from a longer-term basis," and Jeff DeGraaf, who says to buy China, is "purely technical," so all 3 positions make sense. Judge stammered through explaining that Tepper and Druckenmiller think very highly of each other's strategy, so it's curious that they're on opposite sides of this. Weiss pointed out Tepper "could be out at any time." Judge concluded, "2 Pittsburgh guys."

‘Everybody needs to hear’ Jim: ‘I really don’t care’ what GM has done for the last 5 years

Jim Lebenthal on Tuesday's (10/1) Halftime Report speculated on why Sarat Sethi (who wasn't on Tuesday's show) may have sold GM (see below), perhaps because it finally went up this year.

Then Jim said to Judge, "I have to tell you just straight up, and everybody needs to hear me on this: I really don't care what it's done over the last 1, 5 or 10 years."

"You don't care what it's done for the last 1, 5 or 10 years?????" Judge asked, incredulously.

"I don't. It tells me nothing about where it's going forward," Jim said.

"What do you own it for, the enjoyment of saying you own it- Gen- you own General Motors stock?" Judge heckled.

"It tells me nothing about where it's going forward," Jim insisted.

Judge’s crew apparently not terribly concerned about port strike

On Tuesday's (10/1) Halftime Report, Jim Lebenthal said the market's got rate cuts, inflation easing and employment hanging in there, "all of which bodes well for retail."

Judge chuckled, "Sorry, but, I have a hard time believing that- that- the- the Fed cuts interest rates by 50 basis points and maybe they go 25, again, and then the people who were having a hard time dealing with the rise in inflation and had already been tapped out are all of a sudden gonna say, 'Hey, you know what, let's go to the mall, because Jay Powell just cut 50 basis points.'"

Jim said, "Your point is well made, but it's not just that."

Jim provided the latest from the Atlanta Fed, as he often does; "2 and a half percent today."

Josh Brown said "the average stock is trouncing the index," that 328 stocks beat the S&P, "by a lot," in Q3.

Josh lamented getting stopped out of SN despite being "right all along" on the stock.

Kari Firestone admitted KMX "has not been a great stock" but said there's been "improvement" in the last quarter.

Judge said the 60/40 Portfolio has reportedly been having a big year, but Barron's is saying it's "flashing a warning."

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