Squawk on the Street

Nvidia Rally Effect, Inflation Watch, WBD's New Deal With Charter, Norfolk Southern Ousts CEO 9/12/24

Carl Quintanilla, Jim Cramer and David Faber led off the show with Nvidia’s hot run: Shares of the chip giant up double-digits so far this week, after sparking Wednesday's tech surge that resulted in the biggest one-day comeback for the broader market in two years. Faber Report: Warner Bros. Discovery and Charter Communications reached a new carriage agreement that includes integrating linear video and streaming services. Also in focus: August PPI inflation data, Norfolk Southern fires CEO Alan Shaw for allegedly having an improper relationship with the company's top attorney, what Republican VP nominee JD Vance told CNBC about censorship and regulating big tech, Kroger rises on Q2 results and defends its planned merger with Albertsons. Squawk on the Street Disclaimer

Duration:: 46m
Broadcast on:: 12 Sep 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

Squawk on the Street Disclaimer

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ECB cuts rates for the second time in three months. PPI prints in line, claims are steady, adobe tonight. Our roadmap begins with those Fed expectations, though. Wholesale inflation slowing again last month. Keeps investor hopes the live the Fed will start cutting rates next week. Plus, the Nvidia effect is back. Shares bounced again ahead of the open. They're bouncing after helping fuel. That big comeback yesterday was, in fact, the biggest we've seen for stocks in two years. Norfolk Southern fires its CEO, Alan Shaw, this after, and alleged affair with the company's top ranking lawyer. Let's begin with the markets, PPI, and, of course, yesterday's volatile session. Jim, up more than 2% from the intraday lows. Yeah, look, I think that when you time the 2%, 2% yes indeed, it does have to do with Jensen Wong, CEO of Nvidia, talking about what the truth is versus what people thought it was. After they reported that quarter, really emphasizing demand to the point where you start realizing the level of demand is kind of unprecedented. This is for the Blackwell Supercomputer, David Knopf for the chip. He made that clear no longer chip. It's an infrastructure, but what really made that stood out was the, without any name calling, the collapse of Intel as a company basically. I'm going to put it like that because he's saying there's two components. There's the GPU, all right, with accelerate computing. And then there's the wonderful Genre of AI. And the accelerated computing business, Moore's loss did. That's Gordon Moore who founded Intel with other people. And that it's time to recognize that if you have CPUs in your data center, you got to roll out and put in GPUs. So it was, to me, it was not just talking about Nvidia, but it was also saying that what does this actually mean is the implications for the likes of Intel, which obviously made its way into data center of PCP. And it's not to mention, of course, computers. Exactly. Now there's a lot of knuckleheads, David, who come in early in the morning and take Nvidia up for no reason. It was up at 118 and 50 cents at one point today. And I want to know what those people do. And why don't they just go back to sleep? The action yesterday was interesting, though, in that, Jim, those comments, I mean, we had them, we featured them, they didn't seem to resonate in some way for quite some period of time. Yeah. And I wonder whether, really, we are attributing properly the fact or we're just, who knows what it really was. Well, I'd like most likely as anything, but who knows? I'd like Santoli, my Santoli's explanation, which was, which was that rates started going up, and that people actually liked that now because they're worried about a recession. Now, we could also argue, it's pinned the tail on whatever you want, Carl. We're all struggling to figure out why I'm working, you can turn it into a day. But this is not unusual behavior ahead of a rate cut, where there's always people who doubt it, and always people who want more of a rate cut, and there's people who just don't know what they're doing. So they just trade like Banshees, and you shouldn't. Sit in your hands. Don't buy Nvidia at 1.18 and a half, and then sell it at 1.16. Have some common sense, there's nothing really going on. Nvidia now at 13 for the week. Of course, it comes on the heels of the data center discussion over at Oracle, and we do have an analyst meeting with Oracle today. Well, this is where I expect them to raise numbers, perhaps substantially. The Oracle narrative of 162 data centers going into 1,000 to 2,000 was the beginning of this move to be able to return to a group of stocks that had been tethered suddenly pariahs. We have someone on our air talking about the bear market in Nvidia. How am I in Nvidia? It's up the most in the S&P this year, but holy cow, what a terrible, wow. Oof, rough. It's been rough for... I mean, you're Jensen. Okay, you're Jensen one. And Jensen's sitting there saying, "Okay. On the one hand, people say, "I'm getting a letter. I've gotten a letter from the government, from the Justice Department." Which is like, "I don't know, can you get the letter from the Justice Department?" Not good. Dave, some optimal when you get the Justice Department letter. Yeah. Then he didn't get the letter, but then it turns out if he didn't get the letter, then maybe he's not powerful. Well, if he's not powerful, maybe numbers are too high. I mean, who thinks of this stuff? People, I mean, you know, come up when you watch linear TV. Oh, just a... I've read the piece of upgrading Roku, and no one watches linear TV. I withdraw my attention. We know they do. I've said that before, and then they all tell me, "No, we still watch." No. No, they watch Roku. How do you watch Roku? I remember my father used to call up and he says, "Could you come down and fix my Roku?" I'm 37 times he came down and says, "Fix my father's Roku. What is that about?" Well, we got 67 million watching the debate, so somewhere people are watching television. Oh, they're watching. They're watching it on YouTube. By the way, I watch it on lots of ways. I watch it on YouTube and I watch it on New YorkTimes.com. YouTube was about 60 seconds behind New YorkTimes.com. You know, it's funny. I'm seeing Trump's response. Since you've transitioned us into this whole world of linear and streaming, I'm going to share some news this morning that is just hitting, but it's important. What? It involves two companies that we follow closely. One of those being Warner Brothers Discovery, the other being Charter Communications, of course, operates under the Spectrum brand in both cable and wireless broadband. They have a new carriage agreement, just hitting the wires. And it is interesting because it fulfills the ambitions of both companies. Of course, you've got Warner Brothers Discovery, the stock in which has just been getting crushed lately, in part because of the loss of the NBA, remember, or at least the seeming loss of the NBA. They're in court or they're trying to litigate to actually get part of the package back and say that it was falsely or unjustly awarded to Amazon. The value of TNT has been at the center of that, and many have been saying, those who are negative on the company, of course, and overall on what we were just talking about, the decline of linear networks, saying, "Hey, when you re-up this thing, you're not going to get paid at all." Well, they did a deal with Charter a year earlier than they had to because their current deal would not expire for roughly another year. And get this, they're getting the same amount for TNT. Now, they don't put the number in there. I hear it's around three bucks. Don't forget, when you are the cable operator, you're just getting one big number. You're paying one big number to Warner Brothers Discovery, to the programmer. That number is going up under this new deal. Now, how they apportioned at Warner Brothers Discovery is up to them, but what I am hearing is that it's flat for TNT, up for everything else, and therefore this is a revenue accelerator. Revenue is growing under the new deal done a year early with Charter. What does Charter get? Well, this expands on this strategy that has been embraced by its CEO, Chris Winfrey, to offer its subscribers as many of the streaming services you can, all in one place. And so now, if you are a spectrum TV select customer, you're going to get ad-supported max. And by the way, you already get ad-supported Disney. You get ad-supported Paramount+, you get AMC, and you get the idea here. They're trying to say, hey, it's all here in one place. You can take your Zoomo box, your streaming box, and it becomes a seamless experience. And this is the strategy being pursued by Chris Winfrey at Charter. It aligned with, of course, what was the desire on the part of David Zazlav, who runs Warner Brothers Discovery, to get an endorsement/affirmation for the value of his networks. And he seemingly has done that, and it's perhaps going to turn around Warner Brothers Discovery, at least for a day for a stock that really has been just getting crushed away. David, this is actually shocking to me. I thought for sure that David Zaz would take a hit on this. Many people did, many people did, and I think they're quite happy, in fact. And by the way, he will be presenting at Communicopia later this morning, or I think our afternoon. Communicopia, you're plus. Like Disney Plus. The Goldman Sachs Conference, it's still going on, and I'm sure he'll be discussing that. By the way, I'm also hearing when it comes to Warner Brothers Discovery, you know, they did, what, three plus million last quarter in 3.6 million? I think it was in sub ads at max. But I'm hearing they're running well above that. He may share that as well. Perhaps as high as six or more million subs being added for the third quarter. It all goes back to a conversation we've had at this desk for many years, of course. It's not as though the linear networks are not still in decline, but everybody trying to figure out a way to stand that decline to a certain extent, and Charter has its way through Spectrum in terms of offering all the streaming services in one place, or as many as they can, as supported. They, by the way, also will market the max non ads to all of their broadband customers. You also get Discovery Plus as part of this deal as well for the Spectrum TV Select. They say, "Hey, you know what, we're offering you Spectrum customers now? About $60 a month of retail direct to consumer value." So, yeah, your number may look pretty high in what we're charging you, but, in fact, within that is going to be $60 if you were to go outside of our ecosystem and pay for these things directly. So, that's kind of what's going on there. Takeaway Disney, takeaway Comcast. What do you mean by that? Well, I mean, this is-- Well, I mean, from the Discovery perspective, it says to Comcast, "Hey, listen, we're not getting lower fees, so you're most favored nation. What have you come up? They're going to still have to pay us." I'd have a content site, or it just doesn't matter. I think it's helpful. But Disney's constructive. Disney was the first to do this deal if you remember with Charter a year ago. Remember, they blacked out for a while. They had their dispute, and then they resolved it by offering Disney Plus ads supported on the two spectrum customers. And so, this is yet under that same template, the latest iteration of that deal. Remember when you killed one of Brothers in Discovery? Now, you've brought it back to life. Well, I'm not sure I'm bringing it back to life. There are a lot of continued questions about the company. There are any number of those who continue to be sure at the stock, looking at obviously their leverage. As our viewers well know, it's linear cable networks, despite their decline that produce pretty much all of the cash flow at the company because of the content spend that has gone into promoting and making Macs a very viable property. That said, Macs is moving towards profitability. And this is the back and forth we've talked about for years here. In terms of these streaming properties, Carl, becoming profitable, and therefore starting to take the lead as your linear cable network's declared. Now, we're starting to get some discounts. Discovery Plus, new subs starting today. 80% discount. 99 cents a month for three months. This is a separate story. And then there's Disney 2 today, 199 for three months. That's going to be through December. Are they front loading the idea that maybe there's a price increase you got to get in now, all that kind of thing? Might be. I'm not kidding. No, it might be. I mean, why not, right? And try and get those sub numbers up as much as you can. Obviously, the number for charter in terms of the ad supported Macs subs that they're going to be able to offer now is not, it's a wholesale number you've got to imagine. Why would you do the deal and move it forward a year if you weren't getting something out of it? So you can see charter shares just wanted quite nicely to this. And we still got Disney and DirecTV and a dispute, of course, as well. Right. But did want to share that. And of course, share some of the background behind it because I think the context here becomes very important for shareholders to understand. You know, one of those discovery, it's been a rough road. Now, there are any number of investors who claim, well, split the company. Everything I hear indicates that while you can put a team of lawyers on it and figure out all the ways they might do it. They don't want to take the risk because they don't think they can. Well, you mentioned something that I think our viewers have to know at home. You said in the short position. I don't speak to a lot of people who are long in. No. They do believe that it's fish in a barrel. There's no such thing as fish in a barrel when you're up against Davis' ass. Clara. Yeah. Yeah. And this deal, obviously, you know, he's somebody who's done his share. In fact, that's how he started. I remember him 30 plus 30 years ago when I was starting out and he was here doing our retransmission deals at CNBC. He looks younger than you. I don't think that's true. Well, let's talk about what's real. I don't think that's true. He had the turnaround hat at the US Open. That makes everybody look. That was young. Never get. You tell your kids to never put your hat around. And then he shows up in the open with his hat. Yeah. He's gotten a little bit of tea. He's just working it. Yeah. It doesn't make you cooler. It doesn't make you cooler. Let me tell you that. When we come back, we'll get a closer look at Norfolk Southern. It's a decision to oust CEO Alan Shaw. Of course, Scott News out of Cygnet, Kroger, Moderna, Lily, and a lot more. Take a look at the pre-market trying to build on yesterday's reversal, as we said. Squawking the streets back in a moment. At EverNorth Health Services, we believe costs shouldn't get in the way of life-changing care. And we're doing everything in our power to make it possible. Behavioral health solutions that also keep your projections at their best. It's possible. Pharmacy benefits that benefit your bottom line. It's possible. Complex specialty care that cares about your ROI. It's possible. Because we're already doing it. All while saving businesses billions. That's wonder made possible. 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Imagine your future differently at Capella.edu. Railroad operator Norfolk Southern announcing Alan Shaw is out as CEO. He's been replaced by CFO Mark George. Company says the change comes in connection with some of these preliminary findings from the ongoing investigation that determined that Shaw violated company policies by engaging in a consensual relationship with the company's chief legal officer. Jim shares down about 1% pre-market. They put in someone who is a non-offerator. Now obviously they want to repeat this. They didn't know this was coming so they weren't ready. But railroads are such that there's such a hot button. And David I've been waiting for you to tell the story about the three activists, you know, actors put three people on the board. They did. Angkora put three people on the board. I think what the company would love you to know and they put it right at the top of the release is that the independent directors, including all three of them, three that were going to buy Angkora, voted unanimously to elevate Mr. George to the CEO role. So, you know, this was a company that was preparing for another proxy fight potentially. And now maybe, well, I don't know, Jim. I don't know the Angkora guys, what their thoughts are. But I would note that the independent directors elected by, of course, shareholders that they had presented did vote in favor of this elevation. Well, it shows on my show. And he was considered beyond East Palestine, apparently did a good job. Then there were people who say, listen, it's not really classroom precision as being the way to be able to run a railroad. I felt his numbers were very good. But obviously I also think that there's no room for the usual. They did reiterate guidance as well. Yeah. Well, it's good. Union Pacific has been weaker. You know, Carl, I think that there's this perception again. You get something stronger that shows that, you know, claims being stronger. And then you get railroad car loads and they're not that good. And again, I keep coming back to stop trading minutiae. The Fed is cutting, stop analyzing every single piece of data about it. Jay Powell is not sitting there saying, well, look at that. They revised down, but so-and-so. He's got a view that's time to be able to be less constrained. I mean, we're taking these monthly inflation prints out three decimals, Jim. Of course, we're trading minutiae. We're just, we're pathetic parodies of a human mind. Just look at what's going on. Understand that there's some sick little companies that are doing very poorly. Anything related with autos doing poorly. We had, you know, autos are really at the, I think at the epicenter of what's weakened. Well, we're going to get to the Jonas note maybe after the bell. I will note though, speaking of transports and rails, Alaska air raising guidance on the heels of jet blues guidance. Yeah. That's going to open up four. I'm always suspicious of ever recommending an airline since, as David knows, they've always been tragic and recommended. They don't end, it rarely ends well. Right. But there was, you know, their cost to capital. They never, yeah, they're never able to sort of get past it. But the calls were happening. I saw at this point, I came here and I was looking at the table. They said Alaska air doing well. Well, I mean, jeez, jet blew Alaska air. Next is going to be what that allegiance thing? Yeah. Yeah. You ever said, I'm under the, I'm under the neon sign of the allegiance. Maybe some branoff will come back. I thought that was a little branoff. Maybe some branoff back. Branoff. Branoff. Eastern. Why Eastern? Why Eastern? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How about the light bulbs, TWA bonds? Remember that? Yes, I kind of do. Maybe Jim will cover it in his mad dash. We'll get that at, in the opening bell after a short break. Don't go anywhere. Imagine earning a degree that prepares you with real skills for the real world. Capella University's programs teach skills relevant to your career so you can apply what you learn right away. Learn how Capella can make a difference in your life at Capella.edu. Have you met all modern? All modern brings you the best of modern furniture and decor. And from September 16th to 23rd, you'll save up to 50% during their fall sale. Relax and recharge with plush sofas and cozy rugs. Or set your space for hosting with durable dining tables. All on sale at all modern. And then get them delivered for free in days. You heard that right. Days. That's modern made simple. Shop up to 50% off during all modern's fall sale. September 16th through 23rd at allmodern.com. All right, let's get to a mad dash. Got a good one today. You know, normally, Jim, you give us research that you think is of interest. Today, you're talking Nike. And a little lulu. And a little lulu. And it's, this is Kramer. Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, look, I could just, I could just mow what happened to communicopia plus, right? Or the lagoon of industrial commerce. I don't go there. Listen, partner, I got this morning in my Ollie's Flyer. Every week I get my Ollie's Flyer. That's an Ollie's bargain. Yeah. And it was, it made me shake. Not rattle and roll. Just shake. Ollie's Flyer has an active wear blowout. Puma hoodie. Unisex jacket. And microfleece pullover. 1499 versus theirs. 6799. Puma and Adidas fleece joggers and men's Tyro pants. I don't know. 1299 versus theirs. 45. David theirs is a combination of Nike and Lulu. And so you think what people will trade down? That the power of the brand is not going to be enough to power sale? Adidas trade down. Adidas is hotter right now than Nike. You didn't say it. You said Puma. Puma, well, they're both, they're both, their stuff is both on sale at Ollie's. But what matters, David, just to step back for a second, is that what's happening is that the erosion of Nike matches the erosion of intel. These are companies that right now don't. They've lost their way. What are you? What? That's rough, man. That is rough. You need to miss enough to satisfy you. It's not good. Snicker satisfies me. It's not good. No, you're not good. You put on Nike a lot lately. I'm one major franchise. You do not like Nike. Okay. Listen to me, partner. I did not like Starbucks, but they did a couple of changes. I love Starbucks. All right. Hey, Nick, go back and what are the changes that Nike needs to do? I have no idea. Go meet the first two quarters of Ryan Nickel. He said, listen, I really, look, I love the food, but there's some things that are going to be changed. There's service. The restaurants. The way that we do things are supply chains. But I love the food. Ha. I love the coffee and everything else. Let's do some work. Okay. Nike's clearly got work to do. David, ask them where blowout at Ollie's. When you saw the flyer, what did you say? Yeah. You know, I read those flyers every morning. You didn't get it? No. I'll say, I'll, for my quicker account, won't you? Try not to buy anything. At this point, I should be good. From here on, I don't need anything. Just let me sail on into the future. It's kind of apocalyptic. I got plenty. Okay. All right. We got an opening belt coming up, though. And by the way, you can catch us anytime and anywhere by listening to and following the Squawk on the Street Opening Belt podcast. We're back. Friends. All these guys recognize that when you have companies like Facebook and Google censoring American citizens, making it harder for Americans to speak in their own political process, that is a major problem. And yeah, I do think that there should be an antitrust solution to it. Look, I do think that not all mergers and acquisitions are bad. And sometimes in the technology space, in the private equity space, you need to let some companies buy other companies. That's how investors get capital returns. That's how you promote capital formation. Republican VP nominee, JD Vance, earlier on Squawk today, who has his own debate coming up with walls in the coming weeks. Yeah. Look, I think that these have always been hot buttons. What's censored and what's not. I also think that, well, I'm always surprised that people don't have to reckon. Don't start talking about TikTok and the influence that it has on politics. There's just a, it's a free-for-all in Digital Carl. I mean, you can get anything. I don't buy the idea that their censorship. I don't buy the idea. You have to do this. I think you have to just take everything with the grain of salt that's on social. Interesting hearing him talk about antitrust policy as well. Obviously a key consideration as well for any number of the supporters in the business community of Vice President Harris, who I understand have been pressuring her as well, that if, in fact, she were to win the election that she would get rid of. I mean, a car? Yes. That's what they would like. So head of the handbag? Litication conclusion? Yeah. But there's frustration. It was interesting hearing bands talk about the antitrust side, at least saying somebody else should be allowed to happen. Obviously they do. Look, I look at a lot of social media. When you look at meta-AIs, that's the one by meta, but we're always afraid that it's too influenced by social media, and therefore not as accurate as you'd like. Let's see. The election means the dynamic structure is even out. That's a big word. Today it's Palmer Square Capital Management, celebrating the launch of two new ETFs at the NASDAQ. It's Chinese EV charging company X Charge, celebrating a recent IPO. By the way, we mentioned airlines a moment ago. Now Delta, A.K., Q3 will be at the high end. It's the X-I-T outage. I'm going to hand it to these airlines. They came out and said, "We're going to cut back in August, and it's going to be really good, and it is good." So good for them there. It's exercise in discipline. You know, it's not exercise in discipline. Some of the semiconductor companies, there's a piece today by BNP Parabot XA, and I usually don't refer to their stuff. It's a double downgrade. It goes from micron. It goes from a buy to sell, talking about too much of a good thing, and you're seeing micron is the reason why we're getting this sudden shift in all the semiconductor's going down. I think there's excess capacity in cell phone, the cell phone kind of semiconductor, but not in high bandwidth memory, which is what we should be concerned about because high bandwidth memory is AI. So let micron come down, but I got to tell you, I question how bad things really are there, but this piece says they're not so hot, and it's causing all these stocks to go lower. These were the darlings of the second half of yesterday, Carl. So we're now in this minutiae. The stocks at rally between 11, 47, and 325, boom, taking a shot at that. Expectations for Adobe tonight? You know, I was listening this morning. I was listening to Dom talking of worldwide exchange. There was someone talking about the idea that Adobe's doing incredibly well, but my problem is that they still have to outline a strategy on the low end, and I revere these guys. I revere these guys. I think that they do at Chantanu Narayan as a fabulous operator. And their product, heaven forbid people don't even, they have a product called Firefly. I wasn't talking about enough. It is so electric, and it is doing so much for small business. People for more than the $50,000 tax credit you would get from Vice President Harris. Which you're not a believer in? Well, because you argue it is so hard to start a small business. It is so hard that if they just said, "Listen, we'll give you $1,000 to be able to make it so you can have an LLC and hire an accountant," that would be better than giving $50,000 for when you eventually pay off, since there is no pay off for the vast majority of small businesses. This does not make them want to, you don't start a business because one day you get a $50,000 tax credit. You start a business because it is something you really want to do in your heart, but you tend not to have enough money, and that is why they fail. Right. So, taxes are meant to sort of encourage or discourage behavior of all kinds. Well, rich people who start small businesses are going to do quite well with that, but I don't think that was their intent. But if you're really rich in your smart and small business, maybe you want a tax credit, but is that their intent? Who's intent? Vice President Harris. Oh, I don't know. I don't know. It's really thought this one through. Give me some time, okay? Sure. I think it through when it actually becomes reality. GM shares are up. We began this week with BMW having a significant earnings warning. The stock got hit. Yes. Tim and I talked about it a lot. I think that was Monday, or it wasn't Monday, it was Tuesday. China demand, of course, part of that. GM got hit as well. Significantly, you can see if you take a look at a one week, what happened. Up today, a bit. The journal reporting story saying that they're exploring a joint card development deal with Hyundai that would help them cut costs by teaming up on new models. That's a journal story, but that may be one reason why this stock is rebounding a bit. But you can see the decline I'm talking about in particular on Tuesday after that BMW news hit in terms of weakening demand from China. Now, is that just because there's so many EVs to choose from in the Chinese market that are domestically manufactured, or is it just because the China consumer is particularly weak right now? There's that charging station company that just didn't IPO. This would ring the bell. I keep coming back if we had more charging stations and everything would change. In this country? Yes. It's really important. I think the range anxiety turns out to be what hurt hurts. There was a piece today about Avis saying that they're not as bad trouble. Hurts put all the electric parts. Hurts put a lot of Teslas and it didn't work out well at all. But you know what? People kept getting an accidents with them too. They don't know when to hit the brakes. Right. The whole thing. But I would point out, Carl, you've referenced this. Adam Jonas, affordability versus probably auto's entering warning season. Well, I mean, this is about credit. We'd across GM and I've got to tell you, GM and Ford, this piece made me feel very uncertain about yours. I mean, he says basically, margins are not sustainable. Delinquencies are up. Inventories are up. And remember, when you couldn't get a car, at least not the kind with the specs you wanted. And what's happened is, is that, again, I'm a broken record on this. This is what happens before a rate cut. You can't go in a rate cut with things great. That's one of the things people don't seem to understand. See, when things are great, you don't cut rates. When things aren't great, like with auto's, you cut rates. Why do people continue to think that, well, I want everything to be great, and why does it, why does it do 50 basis points? Well, you can't have your cake. You can't. Let them eat gato. How about your cake? How about yogurt? Maybe a yogurt. David, you don't talk nearly enough about the food M&A. It's happening left and right where are you? Where are you on this? I'm sitting here reading a press release, what do you want from me? It's divestitures. And there isn't that much M&A, although divestitures are certainly an important part of it. Kelanova was the big deal, yes. Huge deal. Yes. But where's the rest of the M&A? Actually, I'm taking a look here, because I did call up a couple of my dealmaker friends. And here you go, things are percolating. Rates coming down, valuations are peaked, a lot of strategically. A lot of strategically sort of thinking about stuff. Again, this is sort of kind of a number of people I spoke to, including, of course, divestitures. We got one today, General Mills selling yogurt. That's why I mentioned it to you. But that was just the North American yogurt play. Yes. Yes. The North American yogurt. 2.1 billion. The American, North American yogurt business. They're selling it to Lactalis and so dial to leading French dairy companies. Well, it's just in France. They got a lot of yogurt there. Oh, really? It's like the yogurt capital? You know, maybe have something to do with it? I've got a lot more than that. I have a lot of yogurt choice. Now they'll be even more. True. I bore last night. You said that he liked my brian, the French. No. This is made in Italy. Okay? This is not French. David, look at this. 200. This is worth more than you want to weigh in here on General Mills, which continues to sort of shrink to grow, so to speak. We've turned over nearly 30% of our net sales base since fiscal 2018, says General Mills, by efficiently managing our portfolio, sharpening our focus on our global platforms and local gem brands that have stronger growth prospects. And that blue buff, David, are you on chewy getting the blue buff? That's a service that brings the food to your house. Yeah? I don't have it. No. Thank you. Okay. Meantime. Kroger, we're going to talk to Rodney McMullen, but they guide in line with the slight miss on sales. McDonald's going to extend $5 value meal. How about that $2 fried chicken sandwich for those who are club members? I'm telling you, if I'm still reeling from the $7 at Egg McMuffen, I've not been able to deal with that. But the $5 sandwich, that's what you need. Don't forget, it's wingstop that's winning this war because they never raised press. Wings stop. You mentioned that yesterday after you had the CEO on it. Well, yeah, I was trying to, you know, amortize. They have money over squawk in the street. Yeah, I noticed you do that. Yeah. Look at that McDonald's chart. You know, that's the same chart as General Mills. Look at these recession stocks. Look at General Mills overlaying on McDonald's. There's like, no, there's no daylight. Okay. Does that keep going? No, it's just that there's a lot of people who still think there's going to be a hard landing, which I am sick of, by the way. But look at that. David, that's hard landing. That's nonsense the hard landing theory. That's people who are Jay Pal haters. Secret Jay Pal haters. You don't think we got a recession? I'm worried about an expansion. Are you worried about what Jamie's worried about that we get a reemergence of inflation? I have a book. I put that on the cell list. I don't want to hear about it because of the comments yesterday. Daniel Pinto. All right. I apologize. No, I apologize for that. I don't apologize for my interpretation of everything you said, which made me feel like, you know what? Let me take a look at Bank of America as more Buffett shells every day. Holy cow. Right? How much has he sold this week? There's not a lot back in America at Berkshire. That's true. Invidious making the comeback. That's all that really matters. Certainly the commentary out of David Solomon with the Watmer yesterday was pretty constructive. Fantastic. And that's where I came up with that hard landing, soft landing thing. He said he's not in the hard landing camp. That was some great interview. I mean, if you understand, like that defined, that also was an interview that turned into a record. That's true. He said base case, I think, is 25 base points. But there could be a case for 50. JP Morgan said the same thing yesterday. And then Solomon also talked about the banking environment. Take a listen to that one. Environment's actually okay, I would say, you know, for bank activity in our business. There are places where it's been accelerating. I think we've seen a real acceleration in debt capital markets activity, some meaningful improvement in equity capital markets and M&A activity. Then you've got this journal piece on Banker's Hours and how they're trying to be more cautious of over working young bankers together. What the heck? I mean, come on. You go to Wall Street to make a lot of money, so you have to work hard. I spoke to Mark soon today. My coffee got for the last 25 years. People don't even come to work. 80 hours. They're in come to work. And by the way, when they're working at home, David, they're working at home. They're snacking. They come every day at places like Goldman and Blackstone. And you're on call. Yeah. And Bank of America. Doctors are on call too. You've got a lot of heat. And you know, you can get up to 80 to 100 hours in a week. What's the matter with that? Nothing. What's the matter? That's a lot. For you, that's like a week where the days have been lost. I saw it so hard today. He said, "People tell me that you're in when I come in and you're out. When the next shift leaves, I said, "Well, I'm trying to do 100 hours." Don't you aspire to anything? Smart call to your hours. That's true. Yeah. By the way, really helped one back. No longer here is going to be that I didn't work enough, Jim. But it's going to be on my two feet. But thankfully, you won't have to say that. You wish he worked harder. Yes. Yes. If there were only more hours in the day than I could have worked. Now you're talking. Hey, Rodney McMullen, you guys have him this morning? He's crushing it today. He doesn't need no stink and deal with Albertsons. Well, he's not going to get it, is he? No, he's not going to. No, he's a dreamer on that. I mean, I love the guy. He's like, "Please." But it's kind of like how I feel about solar. It's really horrible, but I love it. The government's case against Kroger's purchase of Albertsons is going to conclude early next week, I believe. Yeah. So, Rodney's a winner in a way. And then we'll get a decision not long after that, probably in October. I haven't read the transcripts lately, so... It'll also do with how they screwed up in a previous case. It reminds me when they let all the airlines merge. Then they felt really bad about it. Now they block all the murders. These guys have a heart. They're like the Tin Man, but they really have something. They have TC. It's like the Tin Man. I don't know what this had to do with the Wizard of Oz, but yes, your point is that when they allowed the deal, where Safeway was purchased, and then the divested stores, it didn't work out at all. Because of Hagen. Not Hagen, but Hagen. Which went bankrupt soon after. And one of the key considerations. In this case, as we pointed out many times in CNS, which is going to acquire many of these numbers that will be divested and the government's contention that it will not represent a true competitor. You summarize that so perfectly. I don't have anything more to say. I'm speechless. That'll last for ten seconds. What are you talking about? There you go. If they work more hours, they would realize how bad that deal is going to be. What kind of lawyers and bankers advise them? Guys who work sixty hours a week, that's who advise them. Had they spent another forty hours, they would realize this deal is never going to be done. It has to do with hours built. It was taking a shot. As you pointed out many times, Albertson's Kroger believes it's competitors are Walmart and Costco. And they've been in trouble. Actually, their contention is lower prices. They need to have more scale. I ordered something that's one of four o'clock when Amazon. They said it'd be delivered. And I did it between nine thirty and ten today. How's that possible? And there is Rodney Mone. You got him later as well, right? He's on in the eleven AM hour. He is so pleasant and smart. And I really like him. Who are close up a couple today? We'll see that analyst meetings at one. Our protocol is up again. What's the most? Safra, come on. Safra and the lowest companies approaching $450 billion. $450 billion, 41.5% of that is Larry Ellison. He doesn't stop talking about how rich Ellison is. Why would I? It's incredible. A man is in Ireland. I've been telling you Simon and Garfor go wrong. But one of the things that is absolutely true, Larry doesn't watch the show. No. Why would he? You know why? Because he's working. How many hours? He's working. It's early in Hawaii. He's working. You don't get to be worth over $200 billion by not working. Here's to the hardest one for us. Even at 80 years old. I focus in part on it because I do think it's funny. I spend so much time on Paramount. Obviously, he's contributing $6 billion to the purchase of Paramount, the merger with Skydance as well, which he controls along with his son and Kate Carr and Redbird. $6 billion. The guy literally made twice that in a day. What does he make on the interest each day? Yeah, exactly. Less than what the dividend payments are to the Wal-Mart heirs on a monthly basis. Can I offer him an open invitation to come here and sit in Mike's secret seat? Larry Ellison. The Dan Ives. The Dan Ives chair? I know you. He doesn't care about you. He never thinks about you. And I just want you to know that. I love doing that. I'm sorry. I feel like an eating dog. Oh. In Springfield, Ohio? I had never been there. Neither. I think I may have. Jim Moderna, a band cell on Squatcher over today. Oh, geez. R&D day today. They are going to be cutting some costs. How could they have made all that money and not done anything with it? Because the cancer vaccine is not here. I mean, it was all about the cancer vaccine from day one. You know, I did some work when my daughter had melanoma. It's kind of known. And I was trying to find out what was the possibility of a cancer vaccine melanoma. That was the one that was most readily available. There are nowhere. Nobody's anywhere on this stuff. And that's just the real tragedy. By the way, you know who's going to solve this? The vaccine cancer vaccine? Chancellor, he's spending a lot of time on health care and creating individualized health care because they can do millions of permutations. They can do it in an hour. It used to take years. I always get confused when you talk about things like this because I think of NVIDIA as a company that sells hardware and software. But the chips to others who figure those things out. He likes to invest in a lot of these companies. That's why. Okay. He invests in companies. So NVIDIA is not working on that? No, he's funding companies that can use these super accelerated computing to be able to make it so something that might have taken years to examine. Well, cancer can be done in hours and days. This is our total putting a terrific article that was in science. Nature covers a lot of this. People don't understand that it's taken so long to come up with data but not with NVIDIA so you can just batch data. Remember when the airline used to batch them over? Are you forever saying that? He's thinking about this stuff in a big way. He thinks health care, kind of like Tim Cook at Apple, is the next frontier because we're so far behind where we should be. We are. Where we should be? Cancer in particular. Oh, yeah. We don't know. We made a lot of advances though. We disappeared a time when there was nothing being done and the latest drugs were just iterations of previous drugs a little bit better. In the last 10, 15 years, think about Keytruda and what that's been able to accomplish. Keytruda is amazing. And in combination with other therapies. Even melanoma as well. No, I know. What's been able to be done there from immunotherapy. There's a lot that's gone on. There are specific cancers that can be targeted specifically to your genome. If you don't catch melanoma early, the hope is once it's in the lymph nodes that they've got something for you but you just got to catch it early. You didn't even mention Lily putting another $2 billion into Ireland. In Ireland and two different plants and you think the amount of money they're spending in the last like years equal to whole biking therapeutics. Which is why I prefer biking the cruise line to breaking the therapeutics as stocks. Even as I wish biking therapeutics well. Travel names are doing well today. Like the airlines and cruise lines helping out. Although the Dow is down a bit here down 123. Watch bonds today. We mentioned the ECB cutting 25 basis points as expected. That's the second time in a few months and they keep their 2024 inflation forecast intact. 10 year 366. We'll take a short break. Be back after this. Watch Cygnus today opening up 15% at 125 beats 111. Comp's down but not quite as bad as the street feared. Guidance unchanged. I think Jim's going to talk to them tonight. And I'm so glad. Yeah, I always root for them. Budgeting process has done such an amazing turnaround point. It was really just kind of a pawn shop. Well, get stopped trading with Jim in just a minute. Time for Jim and stop trading. Okay, so down came out today and basically pre-announced. Looks like they're going to miss the revenue numbers by about a half a billion. Now the problem here is that they have an outage. So it's really not just certainly anything about pricing. But in Europe, they are having input cost problems and margin compression, offset by the US doing quite well. But this is, again, as an industrial that if it were at 60, then you wouldn't be thinking the Fed shouldn't cut. If it's below 50, then you think, you know what? The Fed, I hope they're aware that Dow, which is a gigantic chemical company, is not going to hit the numbers. I will watch that down almost 2% in a relatively flat tape. How about tonight? Yeah, okay. Singing it is incredibly important because this is Jared's K, and it's going into the holiday season. And then Kava, Brett Shulman, this is the best performing restaurant chain this year. And Kava, which is right down the block, is universally loved. It's got the Mediterranean food. It's doing better than sweet green, which is incredible. Both of them are terrific. They're horses. I was going to compare Kava and Wang for the year to date. Well, that's an interesting idea. It's not close. Now, I will tell you that if you look at Chipotle, my nickel was at $6 when it took over. $6. Look at that appreciation from 2018 in March of 2018. So that's what you're looking for when you get a CEO. Meantime, you got a big thing coming up at noon. Okay, noon, I've got my monthly meeting for the club. Thank you for mentioning it. I think people should join. I'm going to talk about why the Mag 7 actually live. And how all this nonsense about why they should be sold? No. No. No. Not only that, I'm going to talk about what the secret weapon is of Nvidia. Something we don't know yet, or we haven't discussed. It's something that actually disagrees with my friend, Michael Semblis. The best strategist in the world from JP Morgan. Actually, he's in favor of Nvidia, but that's through with the hyperscale. I'm telling the truth about the hyperscale is a 12 club. Ooh. Yeah. Wow. That's a tease. It is kidding. Sign up for the event. Yeah. Thank you. It's the Besting Club. Oh, sorry. The Besting Club. I apologize. Okay. All right. Club. Busy day ahead. By the way, it's not dog. No, it's Dan. Dan. Dan. Dan. Dan, but I'm cutting numbers again, Jake. I just really don't like this book. No, I don't even know. But Solomon disagreed everything. Many different ways from Pinto, but that doesn't mean anything. Jim, we'll see you in two hours. Yeah. The Besting Club. Okay. In the meantime, Dowsdown 130. We're back after a short break. You've been listening to the opening hour of CNBC's Squawk on the Street. 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