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We haven't seen anything passed by Congress. All we've seen is a handful of we'll kick the can down the road. We saw a plan from the UK that is not a model for anybody else, but I think what markets did like was they were hurt, and the concern coming into April was Donald Trump wasn't going to listen to the stock market, he wasn't going to listen to the bond market, and he wasn't going to listen to his own his own cabinet. But we learned that he will, which was a good thing, but we've yet to really see anything permanent.We think there's going to be some upward pressure from the tariffs, but critically, uh, if these numbers were well behaved going into the tariff storm, I think that'll give the Federal Reserve a lot more confidence that in the event that they need to support the economy with a lower policy rate, they'll be able to do so.Everyday low prices is what we stand for,

and we're gonna keep prices as low as we can as long as we can, but when you look at the magnitude of some of the the cost increases on certain categories of items that are imported, uh, it's more than what retailers can bear it's more than what suppliers can bear and so we'll work hard to try to keep prices low, but it's it's unavoidable that you're gonna see some prices go up on certain items.We got one hour to go until the market closes. We're taking a look at the major averages. Maybe they need a little zip today, a little espresso, maybe, because we're seeing a mixed picture here. Not it feels like a bit of a quiet day, but of a lull, despite the fact that we got a lot of economic data this morning. But the Dow is up about 255 points. You're 6.01%. The S&P 500 up about 31%, but the Nasdaq is down 0.25%. We've sort of been muddlingalong.

Yeah, muddling. We did get to your point here.A rush of economic data we got this morning. There was a lot to sift through. We got, you know, April retail sales slowed. You saw PPI came in much softer than expected. Home builder sentiment not good. It it was a lot of data to sift through. Um, I think maybe investors though probably looked at a lot of it and it and it was helpful and insightful, but it's also backward looking and probably a lot of folks thought, you know, it is still just too soon to try to really judge, to try to really.Gauge what the impact is that the tariff impact could still be in front of us,

right? And the changing tariff impact, of course, because we saw a change over the course of the month. I'm taking a look at bonds as well because we are seeing a little bit of a pullback in yields down about 7 basis points on the tenure, relatively significant there. So that's that read from the economic data, maybe a little bit more clear here, the assumption that rates are going to go down as a result of the, the.Economic picture that we're getting here and then if you look at sectors also seeing some interesting action here, utilities in the driver's seat and a little bit later we're going to talk to an analyst about the best performing stock in the S&P 500 this year, which is in that ETS. So interesting

and maybe just looking at utilities, looking at tech, and maybe just that that same degree of maybe caution a little bit in the background, I think is what you're pickingup

there. Yeah, I think that's right. And then let's check on big cop tech while we are here and there we see.Mixed picture as well. So most of the mag 7 is down today with the exception of Microsoft up just a smidge.smidge.

All right. Well, for more on the latest market moves, let's welcome in now Zachary Hill, Horizon Investment's head of portfolio strategy. Zach, it's good to see you. So just talking there, Julie about that kind of that rush of economic data we got this morning. Zach, I'm interested to, you know, what you make of it, but more importantly, more broadly, Zach, just what's the high level trend that you see in the economy now and ahead?

Yeah, well, thanks for having me this afternoon, and it has been a little bit of a listless day in the markets, but, you know, kind of, we take that, you know, zoom out a little bit and say where we are and where we're going. Um, you know, we do think we've seen a lot of relaxation of uncertainty over the last month or or 5 or so weeks. Um, but from here, you know, it's, it's still very unclear how things develop. And so, you know, our high level, um, kind of observation is the economy is still strong, we're still humming along.Uh, it's really hard to get exactly a read on where we are though, because that economic data has been so distorted by the run up into tariffs, uh, by some of the weather that we saw, um, in the first quarter. And now, you know, you've got the tariff distortion coming the other way. And so our main read is to watch the soft sentiment data, which it has been kind of unreliable over the last few years, but it's sort of the best we got at the moment. And, and our, our, our bet is that it's gonna lead, um, the evolution of the, of the hardy.Economic data has led us on the way down and we're going to see now if this this uh rebound is going to feed into an upside move.

Yeah,I mean, it's really suspenseful I guess you could say, you know, because we also now have this anticipation now that the attention is kind of shifting from tariffs, shifting back towards what many investors were looking forward to in the Trump agenda things like tax cuts. Is that going to feed through into consumer sentiment and then into spending also though?

Yeah, I mean, you know, potentially, I mean, the, the, I think what we've seen so far, um, you know, in the house is, is a bigger, um, expansion of, of stimulus than we had expected. And I think that's part of the reason that, you know, even though the 10-year yield is down today, um, you know, it is a lot higher than, uh, I think Scott Besson and, um, the rest of the Treasury would, would, would like. And so that's something I think that we're gonna be watching in the next couple of weeks because it's not really on the market radar. We spent a little bit of time doing the bond vigilante.thing in January and early February before growth woes took over. And so, you know, we do have a potential risk appetite is pretty high in the stock market right now. And so that's something that we're going to be watching that I don't think is on very many investors' radar at the moment.

Given, given the economic data you're watching, Zach, you know, even today, you know, April retail sales slowed. PPI though, much softer than expected. I'm just curious, how does that inform what you think the Fed's moves in 2025 are going to look like?

Yeah, I mean, I think the short answer is, is it really doesn't, um, you know, the Fed is just as confused as the rest of us. They're seeing all this noise in the data, um, and they don't know what to do. They don't want to make a move and have to have to change it based on, you know, a tweet or a change in policy that happens at the, at, you know, the drop of a hat. And so they're just gonna sit tight, um, if they see.Meaningful, um, you know, slow down in the labor market, then they'll act and they have room to act and I think that's helpful. But for right now, I mean, it's just a wait and see thing and we could be in a wait and see all summer long. We got Jackson Hole in August and, you know, maybe the earliest they're gonna set something up is in September. So that's a pretty long time um to wait on that rate channel.

Um, so when it comes to positioning, as we talked about, we're seeing a little bit of a defensive lead, at least in today's session. Is that how you're positioning as well, or do you, are you sort of striking a different balance?

Yeah, I mean today's a defensive day in the markets for sure, you know, utilities and staples are, are doing really, really well, but actually yesterday was the polar opposite of that. And so we think that, you know, the, the difficulty for market leadership is gonna persist. I mean at a high level though, um, with the amount of uncertainty that we still have and the uh how quickly things can change from an outlook perspect.Um, you know, we think it makes sense to, you know, lower your overall, um, you know, size of the, of the exposures in the portfolio and look for some places that are a little bit lower risk than the market to hang out, um, and so for, you know, on the global equity side of things we like international stocks more than we have, um, since the AI craze took off in early 2023.You got the dollar, um, you know, tailwinds there finally starting to weaken after being, you know, really persistently strong for the last few years. And just generally speaking, those stocks tend to trade with a little bit lower risk profile. So we do think that's um an attractive place to be, butYou know, at the same time, like we, we don't think we're going into a recession based on the policy mix we have at the moment um on offer. We're just seeing a growth slowdown. So, you know, we're not fully embracing that defensive trade that you're seeing today in the market, but rather be kind of in the middle, um, places like quality dividends and those types of exposures that can kind of weather through this noise and volatility that we expect.

Let's say, Zach, I I do want to play offense though in the equity market. What would you suggest?

Yeah, I mean, our number one, place to play offense, I mean we do think it has a lot of deregulatory tailwinds is in, um, banks in the US, so domestic banks, um, whether that's the large cap banks or a little further down the, the, um, you know, the cap spectrum can be a little riskier, uh, in the regional bank space. We think that's the number one place that has, you know, really nice tailwinds and they've traded really, really well, actually kind of matched the, um,You know, the rebound that we saw in the Mag 7, over this last, uh, you know, from the market bottom to here. And so that's an area that we like to play offense in. You'd also start to dip your toe a little bit into some of the, into the tech names, um, you know, maybe not to go overweight, the, the top of the market because we think that's, there's a lot of.Risk in that part of the market, but you know some of the software and cloud services providers, um, you know, that's, that's an area that you can also take a little bit of risk if you want to be offensive at the moment.

Final question for uh fixed income investors listening right now, you're guide and Zach, you're in, what would you suggest to those folks?

Yeah, I mean, you know, fixed income is tough. We did a round trip in in credit spreads, and we're actually tighter, um, now on high yield spreads than we were, um, you know, pre-liberation Day, which, which is quite frankly, pretty amazing. Um, and so, you know, we're not looking to add, um, to high yield exposure at the moment, but we do think, you know, in this kind of muddle.Through slowing economy, um, you know, some investment grade credit and some structure credit opportunities. Uh, if you pair that with, you know, some kind of intermediate term duration can be a pretty nice profile because if we do hit a, a, a bigger growth, um, slowdown than we're expecting, you know, we will get some of those hedge benefits from that, the belly of the curve. And so that's kind of how we like to like to position on the fixed income side admittedly, it's not very exciting, but, you know, we, we deal with what we're, we, we play the cards that we're dealt and so that's what we got on, on the table at the moment.

Zach, thanks so much, appreciate it.

Thank you.

We're just getting started here on market domination. Coming up, retail sales sharply slowing in April. We'll speak to Mastercard's chief economist on the other side for a check in on the consumer. Plus, UnitedHealth stock cratering hitting a 5 year low as negative headlines for the insurance giant continue to add up. We'll check in on those shares later in the hour. Plus, after the closing bell, the CEO of Euro joins the program live from the NASDAQ to discuss the company's IPO, what comes next after going public. Stick around, more market domination still to come.Retail sales falling in April, so slowing definitely from their gains. And if you exclude gas, then you do see a slowdown, and this all as President Trump's levies go into effect, the spending environment growing more challenging for consumers as retailers like Walmart single price hikes due to the tariffs.It's unavoidable that you're gonna see some prices go up on certain items and so we'll work to try to keep that as low as we can and, and certainly look to try to gain share and be aggressive and play offense in this environment, uh, to keep prices lower than others. But, uh, given that you've got 30% tariffs on certain categories of items that are gonna be imported, you're likely gonna see some price increases go up there.For a closer look into the state of the consumer, let's bring in Mastercard Economics Institute chief economist Michelle Meyer. Michelle, it's great to see you. Thanks for being here. Of course, my pleasure. You guys also did a recent study on travel which we're gonna get to in a moment, but first I just want to get to the broad consumer. If Walmart's raising prices, presumably other companies are retailers are also raising prices, and I keep hearing like differing opinions on this either that we're still spend, spend, spend, everything is fine, or that.It is gonna take a hit. So what are you seeing?

Well, I think it's a little bit about the present versus the future. So in the present, what we're seeing in the data is that it is consumer spending largely on trend. We haven't seen real shifts in behavior just yet, and it makes sense because you can see from the CPI report inflation really hasn't passed on yet in terms of tariffs. There hasn't there's been a lot of headlines, but there hasn't been that much change in terms of consumers day to day or the hard economic data as a lot of people like to talk about.But then there's a forecast of where we're going, and that's where it's been this cloud of uncertainty and really hard to navigate.Because the headlines are changing rapidly, we're now entering an environment where things look like we're moving in a positive way towards more manageable tariffs, which maybe businesses will be able to navigate a bit more, but probably not entirely. So for certain items, certain goods, we are likely to see an increase in prices, and the question is how do companies deal with them and how do consumers navigate that? And that is still very much up in the air in my opinion.

show there was in that April.Retail sales report this morning there was one data point I saw some economists um emphasizing which was they pointed out this continued strength in restaurant receipts and I saw some economists saying that was really interesting to them because maybe they were telling their clients that suggests that consumers are actually in more of a spending mode than the sentiment measures would be signaling and I was just interesting what what you made of

that. 0, 100% the sentiment versus the reality.Um, there's a big gap. The surveys have been showing that consumers are worried. They're talking about concern over business conditions in the next year being weaker. They're concerned about higher inflation in the future.Um, but those are all concerns because again of partly the market volatility, the headlines, the uncertainty that has overwhelmed the economic narrative in the last several weeks, but what are they seeing? They're still seeing a labor market that is robust. They're still seeing paychecks come in. They're still seeing support from a purchasing power perspective, so they're spending, and I think as we look forward one of the things that we're gonna be focusing.And a lot at at the Economics Institute, given the breadth of data that we that we that we focus on and we look at is whether or not there's gonna be basket shifts in response to tariffs and price increases. So if it becomes difficult to get an item because of supply chain distortions or if it just becomes too expensive to consumers to the extent that they can shift into other types of purchasing where restaurants can get really interesting or the experience economy.which is not as directly impacted by tariffs could end up seeing some advantage.

Haveyou all seen any shifts in your in your data, um, as of yet, whether it's because of that and those kinds of shifts or any kinds of shifts this year that would indicate any kind of change? It,

it looks usual. The shifts that we're seeing are typical seasonality, um, the typical movements that you would see in terms of the consumer in the first quarter.There aren't indications that the economy is moving decisively in one direction or the other.Um, so that's where this disconnects between the dramatic moves in the surveys versus nuanced moves in the hard data comes into play.

And so, so there's still spending. I'm curious, how would you characterize the financial health of consumers? How would you characterize that? How would you describe that? So

when you break down the drivers of spending, there's income creation, and then there's the balance sheet, the household balance sheet, which is both wealth and debt.From an income creation perspective it's a function of the labor market. So if you look at a measure of um aggregate wages, which takes into account the total amount of jobs created and how much on average people are getting paid, it's still quite strong. It's still running pretty much the rate that we had seen in the second half of last year where we had what we all know is a robust economy with a strong consumer during the holiday season.Um, so we're gonna monitor that, right? The weekly jobless claims numbers like we got this morning are gonna be important. So far no movement on jobless claims. You're not seeing an increase in people filing for unemployment insurance, um, and then you have the balance sheet and that's where I think there was a lot of focus on the volatility in the market with the sell off that felt painful at times in the stock market, creating what could have been a negative wealth effect, but that has since popped back as we all know.And the wealth effect is not what happens in the equity market over a 3 week period. It's what happens over a 3 year period. So consumers are responding to changes in net worth over that period of time, which has largely still been positive.

So let's get to the travel part of the equation, and I know you guys are looking at trends, but I would ask first of all about the overall trend in the beginning.And you talked about what's happening now and what's going to happen. Travel is one of those things where you look forward to doing it, right? You are booking travel out, however, 36 months, even 12 months out. Are those trends still holding up?

Yeah, so exactly right. We looked at both what we're seeing now in terms of cross border spending and activity and certainly has beenWell known there's been some shifts or reduction in terms of cross border spending into the US, um, uh, for a variety of reasons, but as you think about where people are going into the future, we looked at some really interesting bookings data what's being booked now for travel in the summer.And you are still seeing a really positive trends develop, particularly for places in Japan. So Tokyo is the number one trending destination going into the summer remained strong last year but even stronger this year. Um, Osaka is high up on the list, um, particularly for the US and Canada you're seeing still strong travel to San Juan to Maui.Hawaii, um, Paris high on the list as well so consumers seem to still be booking trips and wanting to explore. I don't think that has changed, but I do think they're being mindful of what they pick, right? So from a value perspective, potentially part of the reason Japan has been high on the list is because of currency changes. The dollar had appreciated a lot of versus the yen, um, that could play a role.

And what about you referred to cross border, how much visibility do you all have into incoming travel?

Um, so, yeah, so we, we, we have a, a good picture of understanding, um, tourism spending and in general the health of the travel economy by understanding.Um, how people are spending, um, so it's, it's quite robust now, obviously for the forward looking we're gonna be relying on bookings that and other information to understand where people will be going based off of what they're booking today.

Last question, so that's the consumer. Any line of sight into corporate travel and trends and themes you're seeing there?

Yeah, so one of the things that we explored just in the last several years if corporate travel has shifted in terms of how people travel, and it was an interesting observation across a lot of countries, not everywhere.But a lot of countries corporate business travelers are staying at destination longer than they would have otherwise, so maybe the frequency of trips are a little bit smaller, but the duration is higher, particularly for international travel, and that seems to be a trend that is sticking a bit at the moment.

interesting, Michelle, great to see you. Thanks for coming in, of course.Well, shares of UnitedHealth Group, they're sinking today, and that's after a report from The Wall Street Journal saying that the company is under criminal investigation for possible Medicare fraud. For more we've got our Yahoo Finance senior health reporter Angeli Kamlani. So Angeli, what's the story here? Yeah,

well, on that note from the Wall Street Journal story, United Health Group has already denied that report, saying in the statement today that they have not been notified by the Department of Justice of the supposed criminal investigation.Reported and they call it the Wall Street Journal for without attribution in that story yesterday, and this is just the latest development in what has been a really rough past 1.5 years for the healthcare giant. If you rewind all the way back to December 2023, it was riding high. The company was boasting having 10% of the country's physicians, or almost 90,000 physicians, as part of its optim health business, and analysts were speculating about it becoming the 1st $1 trillion healthcare company.But since then, almost like the Titanic hitting the iceberg, there's been one hit after another, and this company has really been taking on water. First, the cyber attack in February 2024 changed healthcare subsidiary. It got massively attacked. The company initially underestimated the impact of that.And it just appeared to be on the path of recovery soon after that, and then they just suffered another setback, the tragic killing of insurance CEO Brian Thompson, and that really unleashed unprecedented backlash, making UnitedHealth basically the face of the frustrations against the health insurance industry from the general public.The company was actually recently sued by investors for allegedly concealing how much of an impact that has had on the company. Then you pile on to that the company's first quarter earnings miss in large due to increased Medicare costs. And then there was the surprise CEO shakeup earlier this week. So all of this put together begs the question, is this vertically integrated giant suffering a culmination of.Management failures or has this been a series of unfortunate events and that's something that Wall Street that Wall Street is looking at. They seem to be losing faith in the stock you saw on your screen just down about 12%. It's been teetering between 12 and 13 all day. It's lost more than 5 years' worth of gains in the past one month alone and is responsible for actually dragging down the Dow since November 2024 when youHealth traded at an all-time high. Its stock has declined and accounted for 80% of the Dow's decline since that date, which is down more than 2500 points. It's also heavily weighted stock in the S&P, con contributing to the health care subsector, and that has become the worst performing subsector in the S&P year to date, down more than 5.5%. It's why Jared.Holes Ms Hoss send a note to clients today that this could kick United Health out of the Dow, and he said that there's some risk in the name being removed from the Dow at some point, especially because they lost market cap from $600 billion down to $300 billion in the last month. And until there's, you know, evidence of greater consistency.There's just a question of what this company is going to be doing. So how is this newly appointed legendary CEO Stephen Hemsley, who is credited with building United into the behemoth it is today, going to right size the ship? That's something the street has to contend with, and we'll all be waiting to find out, but clearly the street is sending a signal today that they are not happy with some of these changes and maybe aren't going to be waiting around to find out.

All right, thank you, Ange, appreciate it. Coming up, we are checking in on some of today's top trending tickers, including the latest on the deal between Dick Sporting Goods and Foot Locker. Stick around. What more market domination still to come.

Breaking news. Meta is delaying the rollout of its flagship AI model. That's according to the Wall Street Journal. Facebook's parent company has issued some internal concerns about the direction of its multi-billion dollar AI investments. Company engineers reportedly struggling, struggling to significantly improve the capabilities of its behemoth large language model. Uh, shares taking a leg lower on this because obviously.Meta and many of these other companies have poured enormous resources into this. In particular, Mehta is planting $72 billion in Capex this year, a large chunk of that on data center build out and resources devoted to AI. And Josh, there is sort of this seeming AI arms race, right? The likes of Apple have gotten dinged because they haven't been.You know, sort of as fast enough with the, the sort of AI capabilities as people wanted, Meta has gotten high marks for its its progress so far. So this feels like a setback.

Yeah, I mean, we've had a number of meta bulls have come on and it's often a point they make is they often have high praise for Zuckerberg and Medden and the way they've kind of positioned the company in this broader AI market. They've spent a lot of money to do that, as you know, 72 billion capex this year to kind of.Make good on Zuckerberg's hopes and dreams and ambitions for the company just per the journal which has this story, um, they're saying Zuckerberg and other medical execs haven't public committed to a timeline for Behemoth that the company they say could ultimately decide to release Behemoth sooner than expected and we'll see. It doesn't sound like at this point the the company is commenting. Yes,

we'll see what ends up happening.Well, NRG Energy at the top of the leaderboard is the best performer in the S&P 500 so far this year. The Texas energy giant up about 73% year to date, and the company recently announced a $12 billion deal to acquire power generation assets from LS Power. Here with more on this data center play, let's get to Jeffrey's managing director Julian Dumoulin Smith. He'sJoining us now to discuss, uh, Julian, and it's funny we were just talking about meta because obviously one of the things that has driven NRG and a lot of other power plays has been this thirst for power to fuel, uh, data centers, but energy has overtaken them this year. What in your, um, view has been the big catalyst or catalyst for that outperformance?

Yeah, um, and, and thank you so much for the time. Look, I think in summary, if I were to put it in a nutshell, you've got 3 or 4 factors, but really it's the data center factor that's driving the outperformance here. Look, I use NRG as a tortoise versus hair, right? I mean, you've got a lot of other power companies, utility companies that worked very well 2024, very much in vogue. This company has been very nimble in articulating its plans with respect to data centers. It's really started to bore some fruit, uh, just so far this year. So when you think of.Out the expectations, the update that was announced even just earlier this week. It wasn't just the ES Power acquisition. It was also a slew of different data points about how the company's positioned around data centers, for their progress, delineating milestones through the course of the year. So I think it was half a reaction to an accretive transaction, but also equally so a very favorable update on some of the data center activities that they're looking to do in partnership with new construction with G Renova on building out several new power plants through the decade.

Can I just ask you the, the move in this stock is remarkable. I mean, palanttier-like, right? It's, it's up nearly 75% this year already, but I know you, when you talk to your clients, you say this one is still a buy here. So you obviously would argue valuation still very attractive.

Yeah, I mean, look, I use the tortoise with hair. People wanted to go for, you know, much more financially and operationally geared companies. Last year this company didn't get as many as much of people's attention. They were perceived as a non-power company. They had, they've got some diversification in other segments such that really this was not the go to data center stock that many people had perceived it to be up until the last few months. I mean, I remember when we upgraded the stock back in the fall.People thought we were a little off in terms of why, why would you get involved with this thing for data center construction, yet they have some of the soonest CODs and in services for some of their gas plant construction out there, um, relative to their IPP peers. A and then B, look, I think just when you look at estimates and estimate revisions, this company has probably some of the most tangible potential out there, especially relative to some of these other power companies, right? If you want exposure to.The sector, you know, they just said they're at a 14+% EPS. That guidance is going to head higher. Our numbers are at 16% plus EPS growth through the decade. You don't get that with many other stocks, not to mention that this valuation. I mean, you know, up until the last few days, the stock was at a significant discount relative to this kind of growth rate. And more to the point, street numbers have been obviously too low for a while and I I still think, you know, even today as people internalize.This transaction numbers are going to continue to head higher. Management, I think as soon as 2Q could be talking about revising up their full year 25 guidance. As soon as 3Q we could be talking about revising the long term guidance even further. They left some clues on the last call. Look, I don't think this is just the one trick pony like data centers and more to the point, you own the stock for a flurry of different data points that are gonna materialize almost with the specific quarterly cadence to the entire year.

Julian, I'm curious, when it comes to the data centers, we have had sort of a, a trickle of deals, not yet a flood of deals between some of these power operators and large tech. And of course, the most high profile one, Microsoft and the, the restarted reactor plan.for Three Mile Island. So do we expect those kinds of what they call front of the meter deals, the unregulated deals, um, with a company like NRG and, and Big Technologies sort of what, like we've been kind of waiting for more of those to come, right?

Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, I think we still are. I mean, we're waiting across both the power companies and utility companies through the course of this year to see some of those data points transpire. This summer is going to be a crucial moment. Look, we've seen a steady slew of them, admittedly perhaps not in the exact permutation, as you allude to, that I think the street's been very keen to, right, and perhaps not as concentrated with select counterparties as the street's keen to see. Rather, we've seen a little bit more of a diversification, perhaps more so in some of the regulated markets than even with the power companies, but this company in particular,You know, I think expectations have been very low up until very much of late, and that's what's sort of interesting for this company. This has been a sort of a dark horse, if you will, and that's, that's why I think there's been such an acute move higher in the stock. This is something of a catch up. That's why I don't turn my head and I'm like, look, don't, you know, don't, don't, don't be too nervous here. This is just following the leader of the other companies that clearly reflect even more pro forma data center expectations than this stock does after its latest run. That's what's important to keep in mind here.

Um, I also want to ask about Vivit. Vivit is a smart home tech company that NRG, um, closed on it bought earlier this year. Where do, kind of explain for people who might be interested in investing in this thing, where does that fit in?

Yeah, look, I mean, Vivin is just one of, you know, the, the, the litany of different businesses. If you think about this company, you got roughly call it a good, the majority's power, but that being said, you've got to direct the consumer retail business and you have a direct to the consumer security and home engagement business called Vivid. And really that the marrying up of of controlling home energy and home security all in a single package is really the future consumer vision.This company in many respects. So again, I say it's not a one trick pony on data centers, but also, look, you got to take two steps back. This company acquired Vivid through a spack acquisition. I think people hear the word spack. They want to puke. They want to take back and say, look, I, I had a bad experience on that front. Um, look, can this company actually deliver on the pro forma metrics they talked about a few years ago? Not only are they, which is remarkable in and of itself, but the fact that they're actually poised to.Here raise expectations on both their retail segment and the vivid piece and also start to collapse some of the offerings. That's what's so intriguing and tantalizing here. This is a consumer experience where admittedly they're in some respects competing with tech companies out there and frankly actually doing just fine at it. And importantly, I think through this consumer cycle, you're going to see them really see an ability to prove up that business model.Um, through the course this year. OK,

so finally, Julianne, I, I'm curious to sort of zoom out here and look at this bigger group. I mean, you're still seeing stocks that did well over the past couple of years like a constellation still hold up. So do you think also not just energy, but do you still see legs for this whole sort of data center, um, power need trade, or do you think it's, it's now getting sort of more diversified?

Look, let me put it this way, I'm not gonna sit here and pitch the entire space per se, right? Do I expect there to be a handful of data center announcements in the next couple of months or next few months? Surely, right? But I'm not going to sit here and claim that everything's got good value at this point. I think energy is distinct and unique. I mean, you look at some of the cash yield metrics, you want to get paid a return on capital here. You've got a teams cash yield on this company still that is appealing, even ex buybacks. You throw in some buybacks, you're into the mid teens on a free cash yield. That's.Compelling some of this other stuff, the risk award doesn't necessarily make sense. So look, the answer to the question directly, we're expecting a number of transactions both across our utility businesses as well as our power coverage. We could see a lot of different permutations, whether it's gas or renewable, etc. But again, the core, the core point is, are you finding attractive investments that are going to give you good ROI? That's the key piece that I emphasize with NRG. This is a much higher cash flow yield proposition than almost everything else out there still, and that's the key point.

If you had a table in front of you, I think you'd be pounding it, Julian, thank you so much really interesting stuff on NRG I appreciate it.Appreciate it so much.YeahNow time for some of today's training Tiger sponsored by Tasty Trade. We're checking in on the big deal today between Dick's and Foot Locker, as well as earnings reaction to deer and Corwi. First up, let's talk about Dick's sporting goods. It is buying Foot Locker in a $2.4 billion deal aimed at expanding international reach and boosting Foot Locker's digital presence. The deal has shares of Foot Locker soaring today. Dick's going down by quite a lot here. Now you tend to see an acquirer dinged, but there are a lot of questions from analysts about.This deal and whether it was the right one for Dix. Foot Locker has been struggling to some extent. Some analysts saying Dick has been on good footing, and they're really questioning whether this is the time to make this deal. Yeah,

I saw, I think it was Citi here saying Dick is a proven operator. They do say Foot Locker has opportunity to be run better, says they could have more buying power with key brands combined have around, looks here around 30% of Nike's wholesale business. Also saw analyst at Bloomberg weighing in.Foot Locker is in the midst they say of a challenging turnaround. It needs the buyout from Dicks versus the other way around. Validated, they say, by week preliminary Q1 results for Foot Locker, a contrast, they say to Dick

speed. Yeah, I also thought it was interesting. Jonathan Comp over at Baird saying that this deal is a levered bet on Nike's turnaround. As we've talked about in the past. Foot Locker is very overindexed to the likes of a Nike, and that relationship has sort of been hot and cold over the past couple of years as Nike sort of went with a more direct.To consumer strategy then came back around to using Foot Locker as a channel. So it's gonna be real interesting, and we're going to talk more about this with Sam Poser, who longtime footwear analyst, later in this

is the man to talk to

on this story.

Shares of deer hitting an all-time high. It's after topping earnings expectations. The earnings beat comes even as profits fell 22 22% compared to the same period last year. So, uh, beat estimates, net income did drop 22% from the earlier to 664 shares.But the street expected 557, so that's good enough. They did trim their profit outlook for the year. They're now looking for between 4.75% and 5.5 billion.

Yeah, basically, the shares are trading at a record. Did you say that already? Forgive me if you did. The shares are repeating the shares are in a record, and it seems like there's a lot of optimism about the farm cycle sort of inflecting higher from here. um over at Jeffrey's, there was an analyst there who said we see nothing in today's results that calls into question the thesis that 2.25 should mark a bottom in the ag cycle. So it's as much about today as it is about that sort of view that things are going to get betterfrom here.

And I see analysts at Cityside as saying less dire than feared tariff impacted outlook, so less dire. That's good enough.

Yeah, and the shares up about 20% this year. Coreweave getting a boost today after regulatory filing showed an additional agreement with OpenAI in which the Chat GB team maker has committed to pay Coreweave up to $4 billion.through April 2029. It also comes after the company issued its first earnings report since going public via an IPO in March. Now the shares initially fell, then this filing came out. They went up. It looks like they're back down again. I don't know if we've got that intraday chart to show that sort of back and forth that we've been singing the shares today. There it is. So you saw the shares initially down, then up, then down again. I mean there was this optimism around this deal. There was already an existing agreement here core we've had um.Already signed with OpenAI a 5 year contract worth about $12 billion so this is then an additional $4 billion on top of that. But the company's operating income, um, forecast was below estimates.

Uh, sounds like core we've disclosed the deal on the earnings call, but yesterday, but then didn't name the parties. So now, now we know, uh, by the way, uh, Brent Taylor Jeffries telling his clients, we know Brent, friend of the show, longtime smart analyst, he says we see no sign of AI compute tailwinds easing up soon.And see Co Reve as a multi-year winner. He took his target to, it looks like 80.

Well, but then on the flip side of that, we got DA Davidson cutting it to underperform from neutral. It's that, is that I'm not sure if it's as I'm reading this, I'm not, I'm not sure if it's G, but the price is 36. We are fans, so who do choose your fighter?

I think it's Brent and Gay on

whoever I'm gonna check it, but whoever said it says they can it confirms our concern that Coor weave is not a business worth scaling.So all right,

good market debate.

Coming up we're breaking down the best ways to be positioned within the big box with retail names in today's investor playbook. Stay tuned, more market domination still to come.Coinbase confirming today that the Securities and Exchange Commission has been investigating the company about its user metrics. For more we're bringing in Yahoo Finance's Jennifer Schonberger. Hi Jen.

Hey Julie, that's right. Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating whether Coinbase misstated its user numbers and past disclosures. This even after the company, the agency, dropped its lawsuit accusing the world's largest crypto exchange for not registering with the commission to market alleged securities. Paul Greywald, chief legal officer for Coinbase,Yahoo Finance in a statement that this is a holdover investigation from the prior administration about a metric we stopped reporting 2.5 years ago which was fully disclosed to the public. He went on to say while we strongly believe this investigation should not continue, we remain committed to working with the SEC to bring this matter to a close. Now Graywall said the company has explained.that a measure known as the verified users Me includes anyone who verified their email address or phone number with the company and thus may overstate the number of unique customers. He also said Coinbase disclosed and continues to disclose the more relevant measure of monthly transacting users. That's the number of people who actually use Coinbase's platform in a given.When Coinbase filed with the SEC to become a public company, it disclosed in its S1 form in February of 2021 the difference between verified users, a broader, more encompassing measure that included those registered on the platform, along with those who have simply verified their email or phone number versus the monthly transacting users or.Those who transact in one or more products at least once a month. Now in 2023, Coinbase disclosed to the SEC in a 10K filing that they no longer believed the more all-encompassing verified users metric was an accurate yardstick and said it did not plan to report the number of verified users in future filings beginning in March 2023.Now the SEC did not immediately respond for comment. Separately today we learned from Coinbase that the company had been hacked by cyber attackers who stole sensitive private customer information, threatening to disclose that publicly unless they were given $20 million.In ransom, a request that Coinbase has denied. Meanwhile, Bloomberg reporting just moments ago that Coinbase's system has actually been open to hackers since January. I reached out to Coinbase for comment, but they did not immediately respond.

Guys, all right, thank you, Jen.Well, Walmart reporting 1st quarter earnings this morning and the CFO talking to Yahoo Finance earlier today warning of higher prices ahead due to tariffs.

Given that you've got 30% tariffs on certain categories of items that are gonna be imported, you're likely gonna see some price increases go up there.

With Walmart setting the tone for other big box earnings in the coming weeks, we're navigating how to play the retail sector with the Yahoo Finance playbook, and joining us now is David Bellinger, director and senior analyst at Mizuho Americas. David, it is good to see you. I, I do want your take on the Walmart results, David. Uh, you know, mixed results, but it's, it's the talk of tariffs and price hikes getting, getting attention there. I'm curious just to get your take. What what do you make of the report and commentary from the company?

Yeah, thanks for having me back on. We looked at this as a very solid Q1 print that the stock was all over the place this morning. It was up pre-market, it was down 5% at the open. We've clawed back most of those losses are almost flat, but itIt looked like the demand picture was getting overlooked here. So sales picked up each and every month of Q1. I thought the commentary on the start to Q2 is pretty constructive, but what's happening here is that Walmart did not provide Q2 operating income or earnings per share.Uh, guidance for, for the quarter and it, it looks like you might have some of these wild swings because of the price increases, so they don't know and it seems like the, the ranges implied are very wide. So that uncertainty is what led to this, this downdraft in shares today. And then also just entering the print, you've had a big run up.Stocks up almost 20% off the April lows, so we think this was a sort of a sell the news event, but the demand picture we thought we thought was pretty good in general.

David, um, Walmart obviously doesn't raise its prices that often or that by that much, right? That's one of the reasons that it has remained popular with shoppers. When it does, what tends to be the effect and what do you expect to happen this time?

Or for any retailer when you raise prices, you usually see volumes slow down this elasticity of demand type impact and demand destruction. So what Walmart's doing here is raising prices. I mean, you, you essentially have to with 145% tariff goods even at 30% it's hard to absorb all of those costs. So prices have to go up across the board, across retail. But what Walmart has here, which is pretty unique to them.So we see this optionality to not raise prices as quickly, you keep those spreads versus your competitors pretty wide, and they're even taking some prices down, which we think is the more interesting piece here. It should drive volume and why, why they can do this is they've got this second P&L, right? They've got advertising, marketplace, membership. So those are really high margin businesses and they are growing incredibly fast and that's basically funding.Any type of gross margin hit they might have, they'll have an offset with those businesses and just, just a small example here the advertising business, almost a $5 billion annual run rate business that's bigger than Pinterest, growing faster than Pinterest. So it, it's it's a very interesting dynamic here and very unique to Walmart that they've got these creative drivers in the background.

David, so that's Walmart. Let's spin, spin ahead to next week because the earnings, they keep coming. We got Home Depot reporting next week. Lowe's is reporting next week. David, uh, I know you cover both, you like both. How come?

Yeah, they, they've both got so much torque into this recovery and you can argue we've been waiting for this for 23 years now. It's been slow. We think the Q1 numbers are actuallyProbably gonna come in somewhat weak here. We didn't have a spring season, so a lot of that activity just didn't happen. It seems like it's beginning to come and that this last week we actually had pretty good weather throughout the Northeast, and most of the country. So you might have some comments on the start to Q2 being better, but this is another tariff impacted industry. They've got pretty good pricing power though we're estimating something like 10 to 20% China exposure for.Home Depot and Lowe's each, we think a lot of that does get passed on. It's more of a question of what is the demand destruction look like we think they're for now they're pretty safe.

So if we're looking, the three examples we've given thus far are companies that you think are gonna still perform pretty well even in this environment. Which of the big box retailers do you think is more vulnerable either because of tariffs or more broadly because of the macroeconomic environment?

Yeah, the, the one that stands out here is Target, so about half of their business comes from outside the US, the product source outside the US. So they're gonna have a tough time passing all those price increases through considering that a lot of their makeup of sales leans more discretionary. So you don't have the big food exposure that Walmart or Costco have, so that those guys are in a much better spot.And some of the data for Target has looked very weak throughout Q1, even into the early part of Q2. We, we think some of this is company specific with some of these boycotts that are taking place, but it, it seems like uh the price increases will be harder to push through for Target versus others.

David, great to have you on the show today. I appreciate your, your time in those picks. Thank you, sir.

Great, thank you.

And while we wrapping up today's market domination, don't go anywhere. We've got you covered with all the actions following the closing bell, safe for market domination over time.