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00:00And right now we are two minutes away from the end of the trading day.
00:04Romain Bostic alongside Katie Greifeld here to take you through to the closing bell with a global simulcast.
00:09We're joined now by Carol Masser and Tim Stenevich in the radio room.
00:13Welcome to our audiences across all of our Bloomberg platforms as we parse the most crucial moments going on in the world of finance.
00:20But we do want to start off the simulcast here with a note here about the world of politics.
00:26We're now learning, based on a headline crossing the Bloomberg terminal, that some of the Epstein files have been posted on the Justice Department's website.
00:35Here is what we know right now.
00:36The president, of course, last month signed a law, a bipartisan law, requiring the release of files related to financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
00:46We are talking thousands, hundreds of thousands of files.
00:49This is a significant amount of data.
00:51So we are having our team parse through all of this as we speak.
00:54And as soon as we get details and, more importantly, a deeper understanding of what's in this report and the implications, we will bring it to you and break it down for you live on air.
01:04But right now, some of those files now being posted to the U.S. Justice Department's website.
01:10Carol?
01:10All right.
01:11Good to know, Romain.
01:12And obviously, we'll continue to monitor that.
01:14In the meantime, we've been monitoring the last Friday full trading week of 2025.
01:20There's more trading to go, of course, but we are seeing a rally underway.
01:24Right now, we're looking at stocks kind of hovering near their best levels of the session still, up eight-tenths of a percent, almost nine-tenths of a percent on the S&P 500, 68.34.
01:34For NASDAQ 100, a gain of more than 320 points, Tim, up 1.3 percent.
01:39We get the closing bells here in New York on this Friday afternoon.
01:44And it has been quite a week here.
01:45I do want to start with the S&P 500 because it's up right now roughly about 58, 59 points as we wait for these numbers to settle.
01:52That's going to be about a nine-tenths of a percent gain on the day, 68.34 and change.
01:56Looks like where it's going to settle.
01:58And if it holds that, that means that we'll have effectively erased all of the losses from the first three days of the week, providing a weekly gain for the S&P, only of about a tenth of a percent.
02:08But that is a big turnaround from where we were earlier in the week.
02:10The Dow Jones Industrial Average adding about 182 points on the day, or four-tenths of one percent, is still going to finish the week in the red.
02:17The Nasdaq, though, inching into the green on the day and on the week, a 1.3 percent gain for the day, similar gain for the Nasdaq 100.
02:24And the Russell 2000 on the day adding about 22 points, or about nine-tenths of one percent.
02:29All right.
02:30And going back to the S&P 500, if I may, 284 names to the upside, 217 to the downside.
02:36Despite that overall index move, you are seeing, Katie, kind of a split in the winners and losers here.
02:41Let's take a look at the sector breakdown as well.
02:44Certainly informative today.
02:45You can see visually represented a lot more green than red.
02:48That's because a lot of the biggest sectors outperformed today, as measured by tech.
02:53That sector higher by more than two percent.
02:55A big rally underway in terms of NVIDIA today.
02:57But also financials, industrials, health care getting in on the action as well.
03:01So some breadth there.
03:03In terms of what didn't perform on this Friday, on this final trading day of 2025, consumer discretionary.
03:09Final trading day of 2025?
03:11Of the last week of 2025.
03:12Oh, OK.
03:13You had me scared there.
03:14No, no.
03:14Don't worry.
03:15We still have plenty of time left together.
03:17Anyway, utilities, all the time, 1.3%.
03:20Is that a threat?
03:21Consumer staples down about half a percent, Carol.
03:24Real estate also getting hit today.
03:26I gotcha.
03:27I gotcha.
03:27All right.
03:28Let's get to some of the individual gainers, if we may.
03:31Carnival.
03:31This was definitely an outperformer.
03:33Number one gainer in the S&P 500, folks.
03:35Just finishing off its highs of the session.
03:36Still good enough for a gain of about 9.8%.
03:39The company giving a better-than-expected profit outlook for next year.
03:43Reinstated dividend payments.
03:44The company expects adjusted net income to rise about 12% next year.
03:49That's higher than the average analyst estimate of an 8.7% increase.
03:53So that's quite some outperformance there.
03:55As we mentioned, they also announced that quarterly dividend, 15 cents a share after payouts were discontinued back in 2020.
04:02The company also said trends are poised to continue to next year and higher prices in booking.
04:08So that lifting the cruise group on this Friday.
04:12Got to go over to Oracle, which has had a little bit of a tough go as it questions some of its moves and investments into AI and the debt that it's been taking on as a result.
04:21Actually getting a kick to the upside, up 6.9% in today's session.
04:25And this happening on a Bloomberg exclusive, TikTok being bought by a group of buyers led by Oracle, which will own 15% of the entity as well.
04:35Silver Lake and MGX, that's an Abu Dhabi-based investment company.
04:39Oracle and ByteDance signing binding agreements to create a U.S. joint ventures.
04:45And so it will be an independent entity controlling data protection, content moderation, and algorithm security with a new seven-member majority American board of directors.
04:57So that was some interesting performance there for Oracle.
05:00And this one, for something different, I like to kind of go there.
05:03A small market cap, about $617 million.
05:06Ticker is W-Y-F-I, white fiber.
05:09It was spun out this year from its parent company, BitDigital, which is a crypto firm, which spun it off to focus on AI infrastructure.
05:17White fiber provides AI data centers with what's known as biological white fibers for quick power and fast computing needed by AI and machine learning tasks.
05:27And what happened is some news today.
05:28It announced a 10-year, 40-megawatt co-location agreement between its subsidiary, Endovem, data centers and N-Scale Global Holdings.
05:36There's a lot of stuff in here, but basically a new megawatt data center.
05:41What's interesting is it takes kind of existing facilities and makes it ready for high-performance data center compute, if you will, that's needed for AI, machine learning, and all that good stuff.
05:51So I'd just like to throw that out.
05:52It's a stock that is down about 5%, though, since its IPO back in August.
05:57Okay, that one, I have a less complicated one, Carol.
06:01Sorry.
06:02I'm going to start with that.
06:02Bring it on, Tim.
06:03Everybody knows what Nike does.
06:05Down 10.5% today, this after the company warned that sales will decline this quarter.
06:09Persistent weakness in China.
06:11And then the Converse brand also seeing weakness, too.
06:14The company does expect revenue to be down in the low single digits in the three months that started on December 1st, with Converse sales plunging and greater China sales down.
06:22Nike shares today down by 10.54%, kind of where they were throughout the session.
06:28Also, Lamb Weston.
06:30Oh.
06:31Wow, what happened?
06:31Frozen potato french fries.
06:33Frozen potatoes are french fries.
06:34As opposed to non-potato french fries?
06:37You could have some sweet potato french fries.
06:39You could have sweet potato fries.
06:40Yes, very valid point.
06:41You know.
06:42Those aren't real fries, but thank you.
06:43Okay.
06:44Down 26% today.
06:45This is all I'm willing to die on.
06:45This is now trading at the lowest going back to March of 2020.
06:50The company came out and maintained their full-year guidance despite beating second-quarter expectations.
06:54The company noted, though, in their press release that the price mix declined 8% in North America due to ongoing support of customers through price and trade.
07:02So, essentially, a profit warning about discounting and rising manufacturing costs.
07:06And, finally, looking at home builders, specifically KB Homes today, this after a week where Lennar reported results that disappointed markets, too.
07:14KB Homes shares fell down 8.5% at one point, down the most intraday since 2020.
07:20This after the company posted fiscal fourth-quarter profit that missed analyst estimates.
07:24The midpoint of the outlook range for fiscal 2026 housing revenue also lagged expectations.
07:29KB Homes down 8.5%.
07:31Well, let's take a quick check in yields, the entire curve shifting higher on the day.
07:35But we should point out pretty much every key point along that curve is lower on the week, including your two-year yield, which is higher on the day, but is now dropped for two straight weeks as a lot of people continue to bet on continued Fed rate cuts into 2026.
07:49Yeah, and that's going to be our big thing.
07:51You know, what's interesting is we've been talking a lot here, Tim and I, and I'm sure you guys have, too, about some of the inflows that we've seen into U.S.-based assets and U.S. stocks in particular.
08:00We ended last year wondering whether U.S. exceptionalists would continue exceptionalism.
08:05It did in the beginning of the year.
08:07That changed then with Liberation Day and the tariffs by President Trump.
08:11But we've seen investors coming back into the U.S. market in a big way, and I think that's interesting.
08:15Does it hold in 2026?
08:17Who knows?
08:17But as we spoke about with Eric Wiener a little earlier in our program, the U.S. performance kind of pales in comparison to some of the performance that we've seen elsewhere in the world.
08:27Europe as a whole outperforming some countries there.
08:32Lithuania, Tunisia, Jordan, Slovenia up 50 percent.
08:35Venezuela's stock market up more than 1,200 percent this year.
08:39We're not at the end of the year yet, but we're seeing where the U.S. fell in this year's trade.
08:43It is really fascinating to take stock of some of those stats because I remember having this conversation in January, February, that fledgling outperformance you were seeing from the rest of the world.
08:53A lot of folks said it was basically a false dom that we've been in this movie before, and it tends to be fleeting.
08:59But, I don't know, performance is proof, and it's been a solid year of this.
09:04So it is going to be interesting to see whether that momentum does continue next year.
09:08And what is the catalyst?
09:09Well, it's also interesting, too.
09:10I mean, we can't really talk about that outperformance without talking about the massive drop that we saw on the dollar this year, at least if you measured by the Bloomberg dollar spot index down.
09:18I think we're at about 8 percent or so, which is kind of the worst year, at least since 2017.
09:23And it's a complete flip-flop from what we saw last year when we saw the dollar actually appreciate by about 8 percent relative, at least to the biggest peers.
09:30So that's going to be a big factor, Carol and Tim, as to whether that continues.
09:34All right, so I'm looking, let's see, the next Fed meeting in 2026 is January 28th.
09:39Are we going to be close to a government shutdown by then?
09:42That's the question, too.
09:43Wow.
09:44And then you've got J.P. Morgan earnings on January 13th.
09:46So I just feel like those are our next focal points.
09:48Oh, OK.
09:49You're going deep there.
09:50OK.
09:51All right.
09:51Christmas is next week, by the way.
09:53Merry Christmas.
09:54Always thinking about what's coming.
09:55All right.
09:55Merry Christmas, everybody.
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