Yahoo Finance

Welcome to the latest episode of Opening Bid. I'm Yahoo Finance executive editor, Brian Sozzi. Now, let's make some money and get a lot smarter. Joining now is the returning Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance, Ben Worshkol. Ben, good to see you. I I'm now learning every time you pop up onto opening bid, something probably happened in the world of poli.

I know, something dramatic really happened.

Yeah, well, so talk about something dramatic. Of course, President Biden, uh, really, I would say stunning the world. I mean, not a lot of people have seen this before, saying he will not seek reelection. And know you are here, my friend, with three hot takeaways.

Yeah, yeah. So a lot a lot to go through over the last 16 hours since since he made his announcement. First takeaway for you is that you're seeing a lot of headlines in terms of the Democratic Party consolidating behind by behind Kamala Harris. That's also true of the donor community. That's, I think an important point to make for our audience. Reed Hoffman, Biden's biggest donor so far this campaign immediately all in for Harris. Alex Soros, George Soros's son, another one who's got a lot of attention. I was in touch with, uh, another another well-connected guy in the community who is who was all in for Biden staying in the race, who immediately emailed me to say he's all in for Harris now. So I think you're seeing that consolidation happen across the party but importantly in the donor community. Um, Democrats raised $46 million in eight hours after after this happened. So that sort of shows where how much energy is happening at least in that early stage and how much it's consolidating around Harris. So that's takeaway number one. Number two on the issues. Broadly speaking, you know, for investors who are trying to see if if if a if a Harris administration would be a lot different from a Biden administration, the answer is not is no. There's not a ton of daylight between the two of them. One issue in particular is taxes. That's going to be a giant issue for the president next year, um, with with the tax bill it has to get done and and there's a lot of sense that they're going to be very similar on. We just launched a to do a little cross podcast promotion. Uh, we've launched a new Yahoo Finance podcast, capital gains, and we talked to Henrietta Trey of Veda Partners last week, and she made the point that Democrats are really consolidated on their approach to taxes and Biden and Harris are not going to be different on that. Third takeaway for you, um, this is personal for me, as someone whose last name is often mispronounced. Here's how you say

And I've mispronounced it.

It's it's you're the you're about the millionth person, for sure. Um, so for her, the way to say her name, her first name is to think of the punctuation mark, Kamala, Kamala Harris. Um, it's she's been vice president for three and a half years. She was a senator before that, but it's still something you see mixed. So here's a here's a little visual aid for people if they need it. Kamala Harris. So that's my third takeaway. Well, you're really bringing the fire.

Hey, Ben, were you able to, uh, confirm if if George Soros, uh, doesn't fact own the world? I mean, where what what are your sources saying about George Soros? Come on.

He's, yeah, he's, yeah, it's going to his son, or his son. His son's inheriting, for sure, yeah.

Yeah, two masters of the universe. They are essentially controlling the world. All right. I have three takeaways of my own, uh, really more trader oriented, because that's just where my mind goes to after an event like this. One, does the Trump trade unwind? Keep in mind what we have seen after President Joe Biden's really tough on the eyes to CNN debate. We've seen a rotation into Trump friendly stocks or perceived Trump friendly stocks. Names like Exxon Mobile because the former president will love to drill, baby, drill. So Exxon Mobile has risen. Uh, Lockheed Martin, of course, a key defense name has also caught a bid, uh, because Trump started to, uh, lead in the polls. Bitcoin, uh, as well, started to catch a little bit of a bid approaching 70,000 as Trump is now, uh, perceived to be favorable to the Bitcoin community. Uh, and various other defense names, uh, of course, uh, catching a bid as well. But now you have to wonder, does that market psychology around the Trump Trump 2.0 trade is, uh, I've been calling it, does that start to unwind? Do we see a rotation if, uh, Kamala Harris, hope I got the name right there, uh, Ben, I think I did. If

You got it.

Yeah, okay, cool. If she starts to rise in the polls, do you see a rotation into more solar names, uh, EV names, more progressive plays? I will put a TBD on that or to be determined. I have no clue, but it's something I'm indeed watching on. Also would watch, uh, some global names. Let's keep in mind with the former president has put forth here, a potential 10% universal tariff, which if that went into play, that would really suck for global multinationals. Something to watch there as well. Number two thing I'm watching, AI and the tech trade. Now, of course, uh, Kamala Harris, uh, her home state was, uh, California, the senator there. Uh, she has a lot of, uh, I would say close contacts in the tech community, uh, has, um, I would say a solid relationship with Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. Now, interesting, Ben, of course, as you know, a lot of these tech elite have thrown their, of course, Elon Musk have thrown their support behind President Trump. I will be very interested to see if she's able to garner or tap back into a Rolex of those tech elite and maybe gain some of them back. Uh, going back, I I spent some time looking at, uh, Kamala's history or the vice president's history, uh, on tech companies. I think she can come out pretty tough on AI regulation. So it'll be unclear if the AI trade starts to get hit if she gets just catches some wind in the polls. Uh, I will say this, though, it's hard to imagine Nvidia is going to sell off too big if she is leading the polls, because you need Nvidia's chips to support the AI movement, and it's going to be hard to sell Nvidia shares, uh, into the next earnings report. And then last, but not least, Ben, what has been really interesting is that this general market calm, uh, since the debate, uh, really over the past few months into this, uh, really, uh, election cycle, the VIX still under 20, you know, anything over 20 is seen as a start to a pickup in broader market volatility. VIX is up about 23% in the past month according to Yahoo Finance data. Nonetheless, it is about 16, so below that 20 mark, uh, so no real volatility explosion. And then what happens, uh, you know, as I mentioned, to the dollar, what happens to yields? We've seen some big moves here, uh, after that, um, President Biden, uh, disastrous showing in the debate. So a lot of focus there. Uh, I think, Ben, those are like 90 takeaways, but I wrapped them all into three for you.

Yeah, I I want to underline the AI one you mentioned. I think that's a really important one. That's the one I'm trying to do a story about today. She was, you know, people have called her Biden's AI Zar. You mentioned her her um, living in her her rising in politics in San Francisco, which overlapped with Big Tech. This is a big area for her and she's she's had a lot of work in terms of creating safe AI and government regulations. She's also had a lot of interaction with CEOs on this that I think we'll learn more about. Nvidia's one of them. She she helped kind of shepherd Nvidia as kind of one of the early adopters of kind of voluntary regulation. So, so there's a lot there's definitely a lot to explore there. And it's also worth, I think, keeping in mind, Ben too. The Biden administration has been very out in front of putting capital to work or investing dollars to work in the semiconductor industry. I look at, uh, Pat Gelsinger over at Intel, uh, really friend of our show. Um, looking at all the investment dollars he's got under this administration. It'd be hard to believe that a President Kamala Harris wouldn't continue that.

Yeah, and one of the one of the little details that we've seen in the last few hours is that in terms of her vice presidential picks, there's a bunch of names floating out. One that caught my eye is Mark Kelly, the senator from Arizona. He he basically shepherded through that that bill, the chips and science act through. I can tell you I've I've interviewed Kelly in the past and reported on him. He's very close with Harris. I have no inside knowledge if he's going to do it, but he'd be a really intriguing choice for the business community specifically, just because he's had so much interaction with semiconductors and the others. Um, again, this is early in this, but she has to pick a vice president as well.

All right, let's keep it moving here. Uh, that's it for this latest episode of Opening Bid. Uh, Ben Worshkol, uh, I hope I got your name right. I think I did. Uh, really the co-host of the new Capital Gains podcast on Yahoo Finance. I'm excited to listen to it. The world should be excited to listen to it. Listen to it on all major podcast platforms. Capital Gains, Ben Worshkol. We'll see you later.