Yahoo Finance

We are looking at Newsmax, DJT, and Visa. First up, Newsmax pulling back after soaring in its public debut on the NYSE earlier this week. The conservative cable news channel opening at $14 per share on Monday, closing at $233 per share on Tuesday, pushing the market cap of the company above $20 billion. Let's get you a check on the percentage move here. This was a 2,230% surge. Now we are seeing Newsmax moving to the downside, but after a surge like that, it's expected to see a little bit of, I mean, I would think.

I I I think everybody's shocked at the size of that. I mean, look, I'm all for the IPO market opening, it's going to be good for some of the invest investment banks, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, but a deal like that where it just rockets out of nowhere. That's that's very surprising. Fantastic for the people who got in on the deal and were able to trade it, but yeah, it's got to give some back.

And is it a sign that there maybe is a little bit of leftover froth in this market, or is that reading a little bit too much into a one-off meme stock?

I think it's a one-off, and I I think the fact that the Trump administration kind of rejiggered what news outlets were allowed in the White House and then the press briefing room, and the fact that they're one of them and they might benefit from that. I think that's more what we're seeing here, but overdone, no matter what.

Right, not not necessarily a fundamental story.

Uh, as a fundamental person, I could say no. Yeah.

Yeah, definitely not. All right, well, another story that we are monitoring this morning, DJT, President Trump's social media company, Truth Social, filing papers with the SEC that would allow Trump's trust to sell almost 115 million shares of the stock. That is the entirety of the trust holdings. As of Tuesday's close, Trump's shares would be worth $2.3 billion. You can see the stock down nearly 8%. And I mean, I guess when you do talk about the fundamentals, this has been a risk, a fundamental risk to DJT, the entirety of its existence.

100%. I mean, but I mean, I I even step back and I think about, you know, they're moving to ETFs. And I'm just asking myself, okay, so like what do they bring? What is different this time around? And whether it's, you know, rebuilding America, you know, related themes, or even as they just recently filed for crypto. And and yet, you see the president warming up to crypto. Uh, it's a little hinky if you ask me.

And they were they were teaming up with crypto.com to your point to launch those ETFs. I think part of that was also backed by Charles Schwab. So there are some partnerships that I think people were potentially excited about with DJT, they were pairing up with non-meme stock related companies. Was that a sign of of this becoming a legitimate investor?

Yes, yes. Uh, little little still, we'll say a little more real, but again, you have to look at the competitive landscape in ETFs. It's it's fierce, right? And there's a lot, you know, a handful of firms that have significant assets. So you got to ask yourself, how are they going to differentiate? That's the question.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely, a key question, I think for any investment as well, to to be fair. Well, finally, Visa reportedly offering Apple $100 million to take over the company's credit card, according to the Wall Street Journal. Visa is looking to beat out American Express and unseat MasterCard, offering the large upfront payment that's normally reserved for the biggest card programs. We were talking about this earlier, Chris had some great thoughts just on where this makes sense for these companies moving forward. What are you thinking?

Well, I mean, look, this has been telegraphed by Goldman that they're going to get out of this. So, you know, people have been speculating, could it go to Synchrony, could it go here? The fact that Visa is willing to pay up $100 million to bring it off the Mastercard network is pretty interesting, but from a brand loyalty perspective, a benefit perspective, I think American Express is a much, much better fit. It kind of fits with the customer service angle that Apple is known for that, you know, meshes extremely well with the MX culture. And and I will say, uh, we do own American Express in the Street Pro portfolio.

And then let me ask while we're talking about it, how are you thinking about financials right now, just given the run-up that we've seen, and obviously a little bit of a flight to safety? Do you think there's still more room to run there?

Well, you know, the way I think about it is financials is a lot like technology, right? It's a wide basket. So you really have to be careful what you're talking about. Um, you know, we recently sold out of Mastercard because we were con so concerned about the um, issues that the consumer is facing. You know, when when Synchrony come out comes out like they did last week and they say that, oh, we're seeing consumers really pull back, it's impacting our volumes, you have to be a little concerned. But on the flip side, you know, the core weave IPO seems to be working out. We're seeing others file. So from that, I I'm still a little more uh bullish, if you will, on Morgan Stanley, potentially Bank of America. Um, we're also seeing M&A activity start to percolate. And the outlook for the second half of the year, if we get deregulation, could be even better. So that's kind of how I'm playing it.

All right, makes a lot of sense. Chris, thank you so much for giving us that context. Really appreciate it.