00:00And right now we are two minutes away from the end of the trading day. Romain Bostic here with Katie
00:05Greifeld, taking you through to that closing bell. It's a global simulcast. We're joined now by Carol Masser and Tim
00:10Stenevich. Welcome to our audiences across all of our Bloomberg platforms, television, radio, and our partnership with YouTube here on
00:17the seventh day of a rally in the S&P 500. And the biggest gainer, this will be music to
00:23your ears, Carol Masser, is an alcohol and wine company, Brown Foreman, leading the charge.
00:27Maybe that's one of her gainers today. Congratulations, Carol. You're keeping this market alive. You're very welcome. Actually, I'm not
00:33really a hard liquor kind of. I'm more like a nice, you know, red wine, nice French red wine. But
00:37having said that, I know occasionally I am. Hey, looking at those major equity averages, folks, we're just, you know,
00:45kind of hovering near our best levels of the session.
00:46So it's interesting to see we've got one more day of trading as this kind of back and forth that
00:50there's a little bit more, it feels like, folks thinking that maybe we are getting closer to the end of
00:56this war to see these gains as we get ready to wrap up the trade.
01:00I don't know. Oil is still high. WTI.
01:02Off its highs, though.
01:03Still up more than 5 percent. Almost $100 a barrel, above $99 a barrel. Brandt up to $97 a barrel.
01:10That's another, today, Katie, 2.7 percent increase.
01:13But like Carol said, off the highs of the day. Well, it's interesting. I mean, we heard from Bob Michael
01:18of J.P. Morgan earlier on Bloomberg Television saying that this market can live with $100 per barrel on oil
01:25for a while here.
01:26And who knows? That might get tested in the weeks ahead.
01:30Absolutely. And we should point out the weeks ahead also includes a slew of earnings. Earnings season really gets into
01:36swing next week with the big banks starting to record.
01:38And, of course, it's not just about what happened in the past three months, but how confident these companies are
01:42going to be with regards to providing commentary going forward, given the uncertainty that's still out there on the table.
01:48But for right now, it is a time to clap and it is a time to cheer a seventh day
01:52of gains for the Benchmark Index here in the United States of America.
01:55The S&P 500 adding more than 40 points or six-tenths of one percent. The Dow adding about six
02:00-tenths of a percent on the day.
02:01The Nasdaq composite is up about eight-tenths of a percent. And the Russell 2000 adding about 16 points or
02:08six-tenths of one percent.
02:09All right. Green across the screen. Back to the S&P 500. I go about 293 names in the big
02:15cap index.
02:16Katie, higher on this Thursday. 209 losing some ground. One unchanged.
02:21All right. You take a look at the sector level. A lot of green, a little bit of red.
02:26Consumer discretionary was your winner when it comes to a percentage gain higher by about two and a half percent
02:32right here in second place.
02:33Industrials higher by one percent. Once again, your biggest loser was energy.
02:38It's a pretty small chunk of the index overall, but you can see that it was down by one point
02:43two percent today.
02:44Health care also slight losses, Carol, down by about two-tenths of a percent.
02:48All right. So let me get to some of the individual gainers, if I may.
02:51Let's bring up CoreWeave and Meta Platforms together.
02:55Three and a half percent to the upside for CoreWeave, 2.6 percent higher for Meta Platforms.
03:00CoreWeave, though, rallying specifically as the company struck another much larger $21 billion deal to supply computing power to Meta
03:07Platforms through 2013.
03:08So deepening its business with Meta that's trying to catch up in the race to build more powerful AI models.
03:14CoreWeave will provide AI cloud capacity to Meta from multiple data centers powered in part by NVIDIA's Rubin Systems of
03:21Chips.
03:21CoreWeave, by the way, guys, now holds $35 billion in contracts with Meta.
03:26So that circular financing seems to continue, it feels like.
03:30Moving on over to Intel, this was some outperformance there as well.
03:34This one up 4.7 percent by the close.
03:37Company trying to promote the use of its technology and data centers said Alphabet's Google has committed to using future
03:43generations of its Xenon processors and other chips.
03:47It's a multi-year agreement, and this is really part of a push by Intel to better capitalize on the
03:52build-out of AI infrastructure and getting a bigger slice of data centers.
03:57And they're spending critical to a comeback bid under the company's CEO, Liputon.
04:02By the way, Intel, man, it's like at its highest in five years.
04:05It's up about more than 60 percent year to date.
04:08And thank you, Romaine, for setting me up there.
04:11Constellation Brands and Brown Forman, just going to throw those up together, 8.5 percent higher on Constellation.
04:17Brown Forman up almost 13 percent.
04:19First of all, Constellation, you know, the maker of Corona and Modelo.
04:24Especial, excuse me, top gainer in the S&P 500.
04:28Don't make fun of me.
04:29Jumping the most in a year.
04:31Earnings last night, investors pinning hopes that the initially disappointing guidance proves conservative.
04:36Execs pointing out fiscal 2026 ended on a positive note, with momentum continuing into March.
04:42And then, as Romaine said, Brown Forman rallying on a report in the Wall Street Journal that Sazerac has recently
04:49approached Brown Forman,
04:50the maker of Jack Daniels, about a potential deal, according to folks familiar.
04:54Keep in mind, Brown Forman has been talking with Francis Pernod Ricard.
04:59The bell of the ball.
05:00Which one?
05:01Brown Forman, maybe.
05:02Must be nice.
05:03Bottoms up, everybody.
05:04Okay, let's get to decliners.
05:06Remember we used to talk about, all the time, we talked about software under threat from AI.
05:12Well, that's back in the news now with the iShares expanded tech software sector.
05:15ETF down 3.9%.
05:18We're talking about companies like Microsoft Palantir making up a good portion of this ETF.
05:24They fell on Thursday amid concerns about disruption from AI services.
05:28Keeping an eye on that back in the news again.
05:31Also, a couple of companies on our radar today include Flutter Entertainment and DraftKings.
05:37Flutter, the parent company of FanDuel.
05:39Both of these companies fell today.
05:41The sports betting stocks, as lawmakers in Ohio, considered legislation that they would limit which kinds of sports wagers could
05:48be placed and eliminate mobile betting entirely.
05:50That's according to multiple media sources, including NBC4.
05:53Flutter fell by 3.9%.
05:55DraftKings fell by 7%.
05:58Under the proposed legislation, Ohioans would not be allowed to place prop bets, in-game bets, or parlays.
06:05That's according to NBC4.
06:07And the worst performer in the S&P 500 saw some late selling today.
06:10Texas Pacific Land Corp shares down on the day by more than 15%, round that up to 16%.
06:17This after the death of Murray Stahl, the CEO of its largest shareholder, Horizon Kinetics Holding Corp, was announced today.
06:25Horizon Kinetics owns close to 15% of Texas Pacific Land Corp, held shares since the 1980s.
06:30Stahl argued the company's business model would increase the stock's value over time.
06:34Texas Pacific Land Corp has about 900,000 acres in West Texas.
06:38They use the land for different projects, including Bitcoin mining, renewable power projects.
06:44Companies like Alphabet and Amazon have expressed interest in the land as well.
06:47All right, let's take a quick look at yields.
06:48This is one of those days where what you see on your screen really doesn't tell the whole story.
06:52Modest moves to the downside in yields on the shorter end of the curve.
06:56Modest moves to the upside on the longer end of the curve.
06:59But there was a ton of volatility, and it was really because of a wide range of issues.
07:03You had a Treasury auction today that moved yields around.
07:05You had a lot of comments coming out about the situation going on in the Middle East,
07:09specifically with regards to Israel and Lebanon.
07:12That bounce yields around as well.
07:14Right now you have a bit of stasis here.
07:16A little bit different, a much different story than what we're seeing in the equity market,
07:19where we continue to see that rally going in the bond market.
07:22A bit of indecisiveness as a lot of people still trying to assess what comes next in the situation in
07:27the Middle East.
07:28Well, yeah, exactly.
07:29And they'll certainly be watching what comes out in the morning, right?
07:32That inflation print.
07:33So that'll be important, too.
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