Morning Call 7/2/26

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 Good morning as we close in on a holiday weekend, July 4th and America's 250th.
 This will be the last trading day of the week.
 Also, a special good morning to Remi, my daughter who's tuning in this morning as well.
 Let's get a check on U.S. stock futures which have turned positive, or at least we'll
 say mixed here this morning in the last couple of minutes.
 For the S&P points to open up a mirror, 4 or 5 points, the Dow, 115 and the Nasek.
 Now basically just below the flat line down 8 points.
 This after a down day for the major averages yesterday, although the Dow did hit a new record
 high and basically closed the flat line similar situation for the Russell 2000.
 Speaking of the Russell 2000, those small cap futures, if we get a check there right
 now, Russell 2000 E-minis, basically trading flat.
 Well, Treasuries ahead of today's jobs report, if we get a check there as well, after you
 did see the front end of the curve, the yields pop yesterday.
 You can see there on your screen higher yields across the curve this morning, U.S. to your
 Treasury yielding 4.17%, 10-year Treasury yielding 4.49%.
 Getting a check on the Dollar index too, the dollar is largely unchanged this morning
 against other major currencies, one is weaker against the Dollar Korean one.
 But the yen is a bit stronger and you can see the dollar index right now, trading around
 $194.
 And if we turn to Energy 2, you got oil on pace to cap a 4 week losing streak, and you
 can see that's continuing here in early trading as well.
 WTI is down 1% trading just below $68 a barrel, and Brent Crude is also down 1% trading
 just below $71 a barrel.
 Well, we've got red arrows across Asia, which hit names getting hit hard in South Korea
 as Europe looks to bounce back.
 Elaine U is standing by in Hong Kong, Ben Boulos has the early trade in London.
 Elaine, let's kick it off with you.
 Good morning, Morgan.
 It's a sea of red across Asia's chip sector as the semiconductor route spills over from
 Wall Street.
 South Korea's cost-be plunge nearly 7.9% weight down by Meta's plan to sell excess computing
 power, which triggered fears about AI demand slowing.
 Fans on electronics lit 9% while SK high next sank over 14%.
 A strategist at Franklin Templeton Institute says that South Korea remains one of Asia's
 most compelling equity markets, but it is no longer simply a quote by the index story.
 Japan's Nikkei 225 fell nearly 2.5% direct down by chip and tech names.
 Advantage fell nearly 10% and Kyoko says down, more than 13% an electron Tokyo electron
 lost over 7%.
 The South Bank group is up 3.25% after a reportedly renewed toss with lenders for a $10 billion
 loan backed by its stake in open AI, according to Reuters.
 And South Bank is offering to guarantee repayment the loan if its open AI collateral loses
 value.
 And Chinese chip makers are also hit hard with Huahong, SMIC and Kemrakon all down.
 And that's it for now.
 Some big moves on the screen, Elaine.
 Thank you.
 Let's get to the early action in Europe.
 We got big news for one US tech giant as well.
 Ben Boulos is London with all of it, Ben.
 Good morning to you.
 European equity is edging higher here this morning looking to shake off a rather negative
 start to the second half.
 However, we are seeing tech stocks in the red mirroring that sell off state side and
 in Asia, which is just hearing from Elaine.
 Shares of Dutch chip makers in particular coming under heavy pressure in early trade.
 On the upside, food and beverage stocks are leading the gains.
 This is the picture across the regional bosses.
 All of them in positive territory this morning reversing some of the earlier losses at the
 opening of the trade.
 Another story we're closely watching this morning is Google, which has lost a court fight
 against a record $4.7 billion dollar fine that was imposed by antitrust regulators in
 the European Union.
 Shares of Alphabet are under pressure ahead of the opening bell on Wall Street after
 a court upheld the fine that was handed out eight years ago.
 This was over Google blocking rivals via its Android mobile operating system.
 Morgan.
 Ben Boulos, thank you.
 Let's get back to Wall Street.
 A number of names here that we're watching ahead of the open starting with Apple.
 Reportedly preparing to launch at least five new iPhone models through early next year
 that's according to Nikke Asia.
 The company is also asking suppliers to prepare to manufacture about 10 million foldable
 iPhones this year that's up from an earlier forecast of seven to eight million units.
 You can see those shares are up about one percent pre-market.
 We're also watching Meta Platforms after a more than 11 percent jump yesterday in trading
 on plans to monetize its massive AI spend in building out a new cloud business.
 So looking to sell some of that excess cloud compute capacity to customers, which would
 put an indirect competition with AWS, Azure, and also some of the Neo clouds, including,
 by the way, SpaceX these days, Meta's gain though is core weave's pain, fears of reduced
 spending on its services by one of its largest clients.
 And you could see core weave even this morning is down another one percent pre-market.
 We're down about 12 and a half percent on the week so far for core weave.
 Supermicro meantime says two employees at its Taiwan unit have been detained and two others
 released on bail as its investigation into illegal server sales to China ramps up.
 The servers made by Supermicro contain in video chips, which are, of course, subject to
 US export controls prohibiting sales to China.
 Those shares are unchanged right now.
 We're also watching Robinhood though.
 Big move yesterday in that name and also up fractionally again this morning closed at
 more than 8 percent yesterday, company announcing an aggressive global push to take tokenized
 stocks to more than 120 countries, also unveiling crypto trading in the UK, expanded perpetual
 futures trading across Europe as well.
 And AI bots for its trading platform here in the US, agentic AI, we're going to get into
 more of that in just a little bit.
 But investors preparing meantime for the monthly jobs report as well.
 That is do do a day early due to the fourth of July holiday and the fact that trading
 will not be happening here in the US instead of jobs Friday, we got jobs Thursday.
 Expectations 115,000 jobs added last month down from the 172,000 that were added in May.
 The unemployment rate expected to remain unchanged at 4.3%.
 The forecast largely in line with expectations on Kalshi was 73% of users expecting a reading
 above 100,000 and 58% excuse me, expecting over 125,000 jobs added.
 So for more, let's bring in Mark Sandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, Mark,
 it's great to have you on.
 What are you watching for this report today?
 Well, the top line job number Morgan, 100K is kind of right down the strike zone.
 You know, half of that is probably related to the world cup, a lot of hiring related to
 that.
 There's some technical factors.
 I think underlying job growth is probably what I mean underlying, I mean, abstracting
 from the vagaries of the data and these one on factors is probably still pretty saw,
 probably around 50K.
 So to see if that's confirmed in the report, and also, you know, the household numbers
 have been doing something very different than the payroll number since the beginning of
 the year.
 Parallel employment numbers, the ones that were focused on have been stronger, the household
 employment numbers much weaker, hard to square those two things.
 I think the reality is probably somewhere in between, but be very interested in seeing
 how the household survey numbers look as well.
 How often do we see a divergence like that?
 What does it usually signal at least historically?
 It happens.
 You know, these are two different, very different surveys.
 One, the payroll is based on the survey businesses, the other, the household based
 on the survey of households.
 So they do vary.
 You know, we generally put more weight on the payroll survey because it's a bigger survey.
 So month to month, there's probably less noise.
 There's lots of noise in all the data, but less than in the household survey.
 But so it does happen, but it's very unusual, it's very atypical and it doesn't never
 continue.
 So at some point it converges.
 So we'll have to see which one's more right here is the payroll survey or the household
 survey.
 Again, my sense is it's probably somewhere in between, which would mean that some underlying
 job growth is probably soft, probably around 50K per month.
 At a time where we continue to see inflation has accelerated here in the last couple of
 months, and it's certainly sticky expectation that it stays sticky here.
 How do you square that against wage growth as well and how to think about that picture with
 a central bank here that has a new chair at the helm?
 Yeah, I think ultimately inflation will go to where wage growth is, and as you point out,
 wage growth is on the soft side, consistent with the soft labor market of the 50K.
 I mean, it's okay, but it's on the soft side, and I think that's the way to characterize
 the labor market.
 Unemployment has been kind of drifted in sort of higher participation rates have been kind
 of sort of drifted lower, and wage growth has been very modest and continues to decelerate
 and is now obviously well below inflation.
 So if I'm right, and inflation migrates back down to something more consistent with that
 weaker wage growth, and I think it will over time, that would be an argument for the
 Fed not to raise interest rates.
 It's not an argument for not cutting, that's not an argument for that, but it's an argument
 for not raising interest rates.
 So my sense is obviously going to be pretty tricky here, but my sense is that the Fed
 will get away without having to change policy at all, at least for the foreseeable future.
 Yeah, I mean, along those lines, I did want to get your thoughts on Kevin Worsh's remarks
 yesterday at Central.
 I think market largely feeling that they were fairly uneventful, but that being said,
 he did vow to, quote, disappoint anyone who thinks he will tolerate inflation above
 2%.
 Well, you know, I think it's probably doing the right thing as early Fed chair to establish
 his credentials with regard to inflation.
 Yeah, I take a lot of solace in it, and that does show that there is independence there
 with the executive branch, and obviously that's really critical to well-functioning Fed
 and functioning financial markets and economy.
 So I think he's doing the right thing by talking really tough, and it's worked, you know?
 Inflation expectations, what bond investors think inflation is going to be in the future,
 that's come all the way back in.
 I mean, if you look at like the five year or 10 year break even, that's looking at
 pressure inflation protected securities versus the five in 10 year treasury yields.
 That's back to where it was before the Iran War.
 So his tough talk has reaped benefit on lots of different levels, and probably the right
 strategy early on as Fed chair.
 Okay.
 And of course, we're starting to get some of those appointees to the various tasks for
 us.
 The task force is including former BOE head-murving king.
 So we'll continue to watch that space too, Mark Zandee, great to have you on to start
 off the hour.
 Thank you.
 Take care.
 A lot more to come here.
 I'm warning call, including watch out SpaceX, the latest from Amazon, it's pushed to build
 out a Starlink rival, taking 29 small steps forward today, plus borrowing the Intel
 Playbook.
 Reports OpenAI is looking to the White House for a possible new stake, and later speaking
 of stakes, different type of stake.
 Why rising beef prices and thinning cattle herds are doing little to dent U.S. demand
 up for ribbys, T-bones, and more.
 We've got a bit very busy hours still ahead, one morning call returns.
 Thursday, July 16th, CNBC Sport and Boardroom joined Fanatics Fest for Game Plan.
 Groundbreaking ideas shaping the future of sports and entertainment.
 Request your invited CNBCEvents.com slash game plan.
 Welcome back.
 A developing story, United Launch Alliance sending another batch of 29 Amazon Leo Internet
 satellites into low-worth orbit earlier this morning from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space
 Force Station, ULA, which is the joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing, saying
 all of the satellites were successfully deployed, as planned, about 70 minutes after liftoff.
 Amazon's Leo program will eventually consist of about 3,200 satellites, and compete directly
 with SpaceX's Starlink.
 About 400 Amazon Leo craft have reached orbit across 15 missions to date.
 On a week like this, we're seeing telecom stocks sell off in part because of concerns
 around disruption from connectivity plays like Starlink, the entire ecosystem, case
 and point here with the video seeing on your screen, is building out and changing the
 dynamics, so something to watch.
 The largest U.S. power grid, meantime, is warning of massive congestion, as it braces
 for record breaking demand driven by the heat waves sweeping across much of the central
 and eastern part of the country.
 The big test for KJM, which serves 67 million people in 13 states and Washington, D.C.,
 will come this evening when demand is expected to be 166.3 gigawatts.
 That would break the all-time record set 20 years ago.
 Joining me now, Bill Perkins, CEO and head trader at Skylar Capital Management, an energy
 hedge fund.
 The firm is launching this week a new ETF that offers direct exposure to U.S. electricity
 futures contracts and the physical power grid.
 It's up 13% since the launch on Monday, and Bill, it's great to have you on the show.
 What timing to be launching an ETF like this?
 Yeah, I think there's a lot of things going on.
 Obviously, the heat wave in the Northeast is producing some volatility.
 I think tomorrow's today's price has got up to $550.
 It's backed off to $475.
 You know, we're in the information age, moving into the intelligence age, that's a very
 power-hungry direction.
 I think people want some exposure to electricity prices in the future growth of the United
 States of America.
 So in light of that, what does exposure look like?
 How did you structure the ETF?
 We made them 12-month strips in order to provide the most liquidity, so you have exposure
 to the front and the full curve, and we split them between PGM and IRCOT.
 Each very important region for future GDP growth, industrial growth, electricity growth,
 there's a data center story, there's the against data storage story, there's the renewable
 story mainly in Texas and IRCOT, solar and wind, sort of offsetting that demand growth,
 and then PGM where there's less solar and less renewables in lots of growth.
 And so in general, you know, if power prices go to zero, we're living in Shangri-La, right?
 We're having a great time.
 So it's an excellent hedge against inflation, it's an excellent exposure for those who
 people want the primary ingredient to the intelligence age.
 I think it's something that people are looking for, and we designed it so that you can get
 exposure to the front price and the full strip.
 Okay.
 You just mentioned PGM, I just mentioned PGM.
 What are your expectations amid this heat dome for the power grid, whether it's PGM
 or others?
 You know, power is a tail product, a tail event product, and particularly in PGM where
 you're not getting as much infrastructure in terms of the supply side and gas-powered
 power plants, you just become constrained, and prices need to go to rationing off demand,
 whenever there's a heat wave or whenever there's an event.
 And that seems to be tight for the next couple of years in PGM particularly.
 And so you tell me what the weather is, and I'll tell you what's going to happen with
 prices.
 But generally, we are going to have heat waves, we are going to have demand growth, and
 I think that we are going to be seeing spikes for the next couple of years in the PGM
 grid.
 Are you surprised to see Nat gas under a bit of pressure here in the last couple of
 days?
 I never doubt the American producer, they're ingenious, they're brilliant.
 They tend to find gas, you know, pulling it out of rocks, right?
 You know, we're no longer looking for big pockets of gas, we're pulling them out of
 rocks via shell.
 And so the Permian, the Permian is very prolific, we have some very mature developing play, lots
 of pipelines coming in, so the base fuel gas is pretty plentiful.
 And so they will respond to any demand signal, there's been a demand signal with the rise
 of LNG.
 And so therefore, we have lots of supply in natural gas.
 Yeah, I'm going to ask you about oil too, and just more broadly what we've seen across
 the energy complex, obviously, we're in the midst of a ceasefire, the US, in Iran, although
 it seems tenuous, depending on the headline day to day here, have you been surprised
 to see the level of volatility we have with the price action, whether it's crude or elsewhere?
 I was pretty shocked that we didn't see higher prices, but you know, the world had a demand
 response that was pretty coordinated.
 We lost lots of flights out of that region, which muted jet fuel demand.
 We had the release of SPR China drawing down its stocks.
 We had a coordinated effort to deal with these prices, and now, you know, we don't have
 sanctions on Venezuela, so that crew is starting to flow.
 We are now in a world where we don't have sanctions on Iran, I mean, you know, as long as
 I've been alive, I've never seen a sanctions of a regime come off in terms of oil, and
 now we're starting to see that.
 And it's not like the SPR is like, oh, we're not going to withdraw anymore now that we're
 in a ceasefire.
 And so oil is under a lot of pressure, mainly from the demand response, and also the
 coordinated response of China, the US, the sanctions relief in order to keep prices down.
 I think Americans are not happy when the energy prices are rallying.
 The administration is very conscious of that, and they've done a pretty good job of
 either talking it down and taking steps to make sure it doesn't rock it too high.
 If you were to told me, or at least before the war, I thought, oh, no way, this could
 not happen this way.
 And here we are.
 Yeah.
 I mean, it's been pretty incredible first half of the year.
 That's for sure.
 Bill Perkins, it's always great to have you on.
 You've got the power.
 Great to have you, and this guy wants to say, good to see you.
 Hello.
 Happy Fourth of July to both of you.
 Love this.
 It's a family affair this morning.
 Straight ahead.
 Love that.
 Leaving scooters in the dust.
 The IPO not named Lyme, seeing shares have surged nearly 40% in their debut straight ahead.
 But first, a check on shares of Adobe, HSBC, upgrading the stock to hold, to buy from
 hold, and raising its price target to $308.
 It says, fears that AI is disrupting Adobe's business are overdone, pointing to strong
 second quarter revenue growth in signs that customers are adopting Adobe's AI and
 able to products.
 I can see the shares are up 2% right now.
 We're back after this.
 Thursday, July 16th, CNBC Sport and Boardroom joined Fanatics Fest for Game Plan.
 Groundbreaking ideas shaping the future of sports and entertainment.
 Request your invited CNBC events.com slash game plan.
 Welcome back.
 Let's get a check on some of the morning's latest headlines.
 Opening AI has discussed giving the US government a 5% stake that's according to the financial
 times, which adds open AI has suggested that other US AI companies hand over similar
 stakes.
 Open AI and the White House haven't responded to requests for comment, but the FT also
 reporting that the Trump administration is in advance talks to create voluntary standards
 for the release of new AI models with an announcement potentially coming as soon as next week.
 The government has tightened oversight amid concerns advanced AI could be misused by
 military intelligence in China, Russia, or in other places.
 And the US Treasury is announcing the investment fund lined up for the new Trump accounts as
 well, which launched on July 4th.
 They include ETFs from State Street, BlackRock, and Vanguard under the program.
 The government will deposit $1,000 as seed money into an investment account for any child
 with a valid social security number born between 2025 and 2028, although you can sign
 up your kids if they're under the age of 18 in general.
 We're going to hear more from the president when he sits down exclusively with our Joe
 Kernen tonight, 5 p.m. eastern time.
 And Nvidia is rolling out a revenue sharing program aimed at AI startups that don't have
 the capital to build a rent compute capacity.
 Under the deal, Nvidia will supply hardware in exchange for a share of the cloud service revenue,
 the firms generate from the resulting infrastructure that it helps to build out and fund.
 Well, World Cup fans are suing StubHub, accusing the platform of failing to deliver expensive
 tickets.
 They bought on the secondary market.
 StubHub says its primary goal is to get fans into events.
 And if anything goes wrong, its fan protect guarantee offers replacement tickets or a full
 refund.
 Meantime Team USA is on the round, onto round of 16 in the World Cup after beating Bosnia
 in Herzegovina, to nothing last night, what a game, first win in the knockout round for
 the men's team since 2002.
 They had to play the final 30 minutes, down a man, just 10 men on the field.
 After Bologan got a red card, he will miss the next game, which is against Belgium on
 Monday.
 So that is going to be a crazy one to watch.
 Still on deck, Robin Hood CEO of Ladteno, talking European expansion crypto, petrol futures,
 and more.
 But first, Market Flash on SAP.
 New report that the firm is trimming its hiring and travel plans to save costs, shifting
 more of its capital focus to AI adoption and development.
 The report says SAP will quote exclusively focus new hiring on selected profiles only,
 mainly core AI rules and pause any travel and internal events not related to AI.
 You can see, well, those shares are basically flat right now.
 They popped a little bit earlier, we're back after this.
 Hi, I'm Morgan Brown, and welcome back to morning call.
 Let's get a check on US stock futures this morning, which are mixed.
 The S&P poised to open up five points, the Dow 12627 points, and as deck under a bit
 of pressure, again, this morning, poised to open lower by 20 points.
 This, of course, after all the major averages finished lower yesterday.
 The Dow, though, during the trading session did hit a record high, so did the Russell 2000
 before reversing course.
 If we take a look at treasuries ahead of today's key economic report, the jobs report for
 June, you can see treasuries yields are higher across the curve.
 US 10-year treasurer yielding 4.49% right now, infested sensitive to your treasurer yielding
 4.17%.
 Energy under a bit of pressure, again, this morning, oil and paste to cap off a four-week
 losing streak, and you can see WTI's down about 1.5% right now trading around 67, 50,
 a barrel, and Brent's down a similar amount trading around $70.50 a barrel.
 If we check on global markets, a mixed session in Asia with sizeable losses in South Korea,
 the cost to be shedding nearly 8%, as chip stocks were hit hard there.
 That, of course, after the trading we saw in chip stocks here as semis fell, take a look
 at the early trade in Europe, meantime, though, because you could see there's some green
 on the screen with the major borses there, the German decks, for example, of about half
 a percent.
 We're watching Robinhood shares, meantime, after closing up more than 8% yesterday.
 And if you take a look at shares this morning, pre-market, we're up another 1.7% Robinhood
 announcing an aggressive global push to take tokenized stocks in more than 120 countries,
 also unveiling crypto trading in the UK, expanded perpetrating across Europe.
 Our Karen Show joins us from London with a very special guest, Karen.
 Morgan, thank you very much.
 Yes, I'm joined by Vlad Tenov, who is the chairman and CEO of Robinhood.
 To me, Robinhood has been subtly repositioning itself in recent times, leaning into prediction
 markets.
 But the big news flow you had yesterday was about expansion into international markets,
 but also creating infrastructure and an ecosystem for the future of finance with Robinhood
 change.
 Just explain what you're up to.
 Yeah, I mean, at the highest level, Robinhood stands for ownership.
 So we believe that a world that's owned by a small number of people is inherently fragile.
 So Robinhood wants to make everyone an owner, and we believe that broad ownership of equities
 of real world assets is essential to having a stable, free, and prosperous society.
 And if you think about our announcements last night in particular, Robinhood chain,
 which is built to be the best layer to blockchain for real world assets, and we launched with
 tokenized stock tokens, which gives exposure to US stocks to over 120 countries around
 the world.
 And it's really about, can we actually do what we've done for stocks in the US, made
 them really easy for people to invest in, and just distribute that to the long tail
 of eventually every country in the world.
 Everyone with a smartphone should be able to easily get US stock exposure.
 So you own the infrastructure, then you make more revenue on the back of it.
 But when it comes to the international announcement, so I thought this was fascinating too, in Europe
 launching perpetual futures, so futures contracts with no expiration date.
 This is in commodities, ETFs, FX, and leverage up to 10 times around the clock trading.
 And also you flag some crypto trading here.
 It feels as though you're trying to capitalize on the wave of retail trading interest
 at the moment.
 Is that the right lens to view it in?
 Well, Karen, perpetual futures are an innovative new product, unlike a traditional future
 where there's expiration date, and there's this additional overhead and cost associated
 to rolling the futures contracts, perpetual futures never expire.
 And so for certain types of trades, for our active traders, if you want to make a directional
 capital efficient longer or short trade, it's a very simple product.
 I mean, it's obviously a complex product, not for everyone, but it's like purpose built
 for what it does.
 And we're at the frontier here, through our acquisition of BitStamp.
 We own the exchange layer, and of course, the customer facing app.
 And we're also making big strides on DeFi, the decentralized perpetual futures offerings,
 which through our Robinhood wallet interface and the Robinhood chain, I think we're building
 a first-class experience there.
 So we just want to be on the frontier for anything that a trader can do.
 If you're a trader, you should be at a disadvantage using anything other than Robinhood, and that's
 really the goal.
 Glad Morgan's going to jump in.
 Hi, Vlad.
 It's great to see you.
 And speak with you.
 I'm here in New York.
 I keep finding myself having these conversations about this convergence, this moment of convergence
 we're in between AI and blockchain.
 So I know you're also launching these AI agents for crypto trading.
 But will that enable, and how will that be different than some of the other products
 we're seeing roll out from Coinbase and Cracken and others?
 Yeah, thank you, Morgan.
 Really the idea behind agentic trading.
 This is a new category.
 We think of it as every capability that a human can do will be available to an AI agent.
 And now I started my career in high-frequency trading.
 I was doing programmatic trading as an institutional player before starting Robinhood.
 And what you don't realize is a large portion of trades are already automated and AI-powered.
 But that type of intelligence and complexity has been out of reach from everyday people.
 And I think the end state of agentic trading at Robinhood is to give the everyday person
 access to the same tools, the same computation, the same power that institutional investors
 and high-frequency trading firms have been enjoying for several decades.
 And speaking of everyday access for more people, I got to ask about these Trump accounts.
 Since you're a partner, we get the official launch coming into July 4th here.
 But what is your expectation in terms of sign-ons, momentum?
 What does this not only near-term but long-term mean or enable?
 What's the value here for Robinhood?
 I mean, the value is the opportunity to get equity ownership, which has been roughly at
 around 65% in the U.S. up to the 90s.
 So we want to make everyone an owner, and the Trump accounts enable that from age zero.
 So there will be $1,000 for newborns, seated by treasury, we're proud to serve as the
 sole initial broker and trustee in partnership with BNY, which is America's oldest and most
 storied bank.
 And you should expect that you'll have the safety and stability of financial infrastructure
 along with the innovation that you should expect from Robinhood.
 And the goal is to make this the best consumer product that the government's ever been associated
 with.
 We've been excited to see over 5.5 million children signed up already, 60 million are
 eligible, and this is a long game.
 I think over time, as more people find out about it, as there's more philanthropic activity,
 as the donations start hitting accounts, there's a big one by Michael and Susan Dell Foundation.
 I think it'll get bigger and bigger.
 So it's just the beginnings July 4th, but that's only the beginning.
 Vlad, as we talk about interest in trading, interest in crypto has declined.
 At the very same time, that interest in DRAM stocks, using leverage has accelerated.
 What is wrong with the crypto market?
 Why do you think it's under so much pressure this year?
 Well, I mean, for a very long time, and when we had our event in the South of France,
 where we launched our tokenization products a year ago, I believe that the future of crypto
 is in real world assets.
 So I think it's less interesting to think of crypto and to really devote a lot of resources
 in meme coins and meme coin-like things, even though I have nothing against meme coins
 for sure.
 But if an asset is not tied to underlying utility, if it's not a productive asset, what's
 the benefit of making another million different meme coins?
 Are you calling it enduring crypto, winter then?
 Are you saying that we've now seen the best of it in the crypto space?
 No, what I'm saying is there's an evolution.
 There's an evolution where crypto is becoming infrastructure that powers financial markets
 and in particular, real world assets.
 So tokenized stocks, you'll have tokenized futures, tokenized privates, which is an area
 that we're also very deep into.
 Everything that is running on traditional rails will eventually become on chain tokenized.
 It's like a freight train that can't be stopped.
 So I think increasingly crypto and traditional finance will merge, and not to say that Bitcoin
 is going to become less important or meaningful.
 But I think what drives crypto growth will be real assets with fundamental utility, utilizing
 crypto technology.
 So the nature of this changing, Vlad, thank you so much for joining Morgan, myself.
 We do appreciate it.
 Always a pleasure.
 Glad to have with us, the chairman and CEO of Robin Hood back to you, Morgan.
 All right, Karen Cho.
 Thank you so much.
 And our thanks to Vlad Tenip, who was, we had to break, we're checking on shares of
 Lyme.
 Bending spoons as well, on the back of their trading debuts, Lyme closing up 4% in its first
 days of public company, while Bending spoons, which owns AOL, Vimeo and a number of others,
 surging 40%.
 You can see both of those names are under pressure this morning, we're back after this.
 Americans heading to the grocery store to load up for their 4th of July celebrations, facing
 a plenty of sticker shock, especially true if you plan on throwing some burgers or steaks
 on the grill.
 Brandon Gomez is here, on set with more on where's the beef?
 Yes, I wish I had good news in terms of pricing, but the good news we'll get to.
 So the cost of firing up the grill this summer hasn't been cheap.
 The US cattle herd has fallen to its smallest size in decades after years of drought, high
 feed costs in herd liquidation, leaving less beef available and pushing prices higher.
 Now, the average price of ground beef reached $6.75 a pound in May, up nearly 13% from a
 year ago.
 Steak also climbing to $12.90 per pound, up 16% in near records, yet despite the sticker
 shock demand, and here's the good news, demand is holding up.
 Kroger told me it continues to see strong demand for steaks, including premium and organic
 options, particularly around the holidays.
 And according to Neilson IQ, beef has generated the largest dollar sales increase of any food
 category heading into the 4th, sales up $352 million year over year.
 Now, that's because many consumers still view steak as a quote affordable luxury, something
 worth splurging even if they're cutting back elsewhere.
 And I saw that trend in my reporting across the industry.
 Omaha steaks told me sales of its USDA certified tender tops Sirloin Filet, a new value premium
 cut, rose 25% in the week's heading into Father's Day compared to last year.
 A restaurants are benefiting too.
 Darden restaurants, the parent company of Longhorn Steakhouse, said last quarter that
 high grocery beef prices have made the chain's steak offerings look like a better value
 to diners.
 Now, for investors, the big question is how long it lasts.
 Rebuilding those herds is a multi-year process, meaning supplies are likely to remain tight
 and prices elevated for some time.
 But Morgan, if the holiday weekend is any indication, Americans want their beef.
 They want to celebrate America 250 with a slice of steak on the grill.
 Yeah, it makes sense.
 Especially when you think about just the huge push towards protein overall, which I
 know you've been reporting out in general.
 So how does this set us up?
 Okay, maybe steak prices and beef prices are elevated.
 But how does the rest of the picture look if you're going to be barbecuing this weekend?
 Yeah, folks, I mean, are cutting back elsewhere, right?
 So they're seeing higher costs for drinks, perhaps, right?
 So maybe they get fewer drinks.
 So they have folks BYOB over the weekend.
 There are some categories though that aren't rising as dramatically.
 Chicken, eggs, you mentioned the proteins, folks are turning to those commodities for the
 grill as well.
 So you may see the consumer making different choices, or we've heard this too, folks are
 going private label.
 They're not looking for the brand names that have the higher prices and the higher sticker
 shock.
 They're going to the Walmart, the Costco, the Kirklands, the Sam's Clubs.
 All right.
 Brandon Gomez, great to have you here.
 Thank you.
 Thanks.
 Well, straight ahead.
 The morning call crew team up the trading day ahead.
 We're back in just a moment.
 Time for your call sheet where we look at the topics driving the trading day ahead.
 Crew members today, David Zervis, the Jeffries, also CNBC contributor, Steve Sausnik of Interactive
 Brokers and Alec McNight, Allen McNight of Regents at Wealth Management.
 We got a busy day on tap, even though we're going to do a long holiday weekend.
 So let's kick it off right there.
 David, I'm going to start this with you.
 Jobs report.
 What are you watching?
 I'm actually watching the unemployment rate more again.
 I think we've been misled for many times over the last three or four years on the actual
 jobs number.
 And I think I just think the unemployment rate's been a better long term indicator.
 So I'm not going to get too excited about a big drop or a big rise.
 And it's been steady for a while, but the important point is over the long run, Morgan.
 It's been rising for the last three and change years.
 And I think sometimes, Fed officials forget that in the beginning of 2023, we were three
 and a half.
 Today, we're at 4.3, we're almost a full percentage point above where we were.
 And we've been steadily rising each year, 24, 25.
 This year, we've flatlined here a bit, but I'm actually not thinking the market's going
 to keep too much off of the data.
 It's going to be more of a long-term grind with the market data.
 Yeah.
 Alan, how do you see it?
 Especially given the fact that there is this expectation that we're going to have some
 hiring noise, if you will, around a world cup.
 I think that's exactly it.
 When you look at the numbers coming into the summer, they're a little lackluster, then
 we get this surge for the world cup for hospitality.
 People are going to the beach.
 They're having the fourth of July celebrations.
 So I think we're going to get a real firm number until we see August, September timeframe.
 And until that point, we're really going to be treading water.
 And particularly when you think about it from the FOMC perspective and how they are looking
 at the data.
 Yeah.
 And we're talking about jobs, but Steve, I mean, the other piece of this, we're going into
 a holiday weekend.
 Gas prices, while still elevated versus a year ago, have come off quite a bit here in
 the last couple of weeks.
 Yes, Morgan.
 And that actually is a key driver of individual's perceptions of inflation.
 I've published this a few different times.
 If you correlate the University of Michigan's one-year inflation expectations with the price
 of gasoline at the pump, it correlates extraordinarily well, which is why for the better
 or worse, we saw a decrease in inflation expectations.
 So I do think that helps people out in terms of their perceptions, because just overall,
 all it takes is a little bit of a lower price at the pump to get people feeling better
 about inflation going forward.
 Yeah.
 Which takes us to Portugal and Central David, I do want to get your thoughts on what we
 heard from our new Fed chair, Kevin Warsh yesterday, as well as a number of other central
 bankers here.
 I mean, he basically said that he's vows to disappoint anyone who thinks he will tolerate
 inflation above 2%.
 Also arguably, it was very bullish with his tone on AI here.
 But in general, I don't think he gave markets too much, perhaps as to be expected, to work
 with.
 No.
 Morgan, I think he gave us a little bit to chew.
 He talked a lot about how the expectations for inflation as you were just speaking about
 have come down in the intermeeting period.
 So I think he was, you know, that was a big deal.
 And I think he said, and he said inflation itself looks like it's peaked in coming down
 with the oil price.
 I mean, oil prices are back to almost exactly where they were in the first week of March
 when this began in Iran.
 So then we're probably headed lower than that pretty soon.
 It feels like a decent move with momentum behind it.
 So I think he was quite optimistic on the outlook for inflation.
 And yes, he's going to talk the central bank talk, which is where committed, where committed.
 But remember, there's a lot of long-run variables that go into that commitment.
 They're not going to freak out because they're running a few tenths higher than normal.
 And for him, policy has some restrictive sides, particularly on the housing market, which
 he's mentioned in his speeches.
 So I don't think we got a lot new, but I think the bigger picture was he sees inflation
 coming down.
 And he sees it having come down a lot over the intermeeting period.
 So I think it really takes this crazy July notion off the table.
 Okay.
 Alan, he wasn't the only central banker to signal something along those lines.
 A little guard from ECB also said, upside risks to inflation have eased as of late.
 How does all this speak more broadly to the picture for markets as we move through the
 second half of the year or start the second half of the year?
 Exactly.
 So if you think about what it means for markets, we're thinking about the market trifect, if
 you will, which is earnings growth, which looks to be strong.
 We'll hear more in the next couple of weeks.
 But what we've seen of the trend of the last couple of months is continued.
 It's a positive two on the expectation side, which we've already discussed around prices
 are going to remain sticky.
 They're coming down, but it's going to be a slow slog down.
 It's not going to be a quick drop back to what the expectations should be.
 And then finally, it's on efficiency, which is can AI and productivity start to support
 gains that will keep margins up because we're at operating margins that we haven't seen in
 a couple of decades.
 So can companies continue that path that I think those all sort of coalesce around where
 markets can go over the next couple of months?
 Yeah.
 And Steve, it's been interesting, right?
 I mean, you got a Dow basically at record highs, Russell 2000, Smallcaps had been the
 big out performer for the first half of the year here as well.
 We've been talking about this great rotation and whether it has legs.
 But even if you look under the hood within tech, I mean, just stark bifurcation right
 now.
 Yeah.
 That's been one of my themes, Morgan, is what I would call the makers versus the takers.
 And basically what's going on for a while, we were favoring the hyperscalers, the people
 who were who needed to buy immense amounts of stuff to build their data centers.
 Now what we're finding is the real beneficiary's been the semiconductor stocks and other and
 other plays that involve things that go into the data centers.
 And they're like corning, for example.
 And those are what I call the makers.
 And that's really been exacerbated by the fact that we are, we as an industry have become
 momentum monsters.
 And so the momentum has gotten very firmly behind the makers, the semis, et cetera.
 And that's the underperformance of the Mag 7.
 The problem with momentum over time is if it's an easy strategy to implement, you're just
 chasing, you're following price, you're following price trends, you can even have,
 you know, from like I was you're going to have AI help you help you build a momentum strategy.
 But you know, the problem is if everybody's involved with momentum, they're only looking
 at price, they're not looking at fundamentals.
 And so momentum trades can get divorced from fundamentals.
 And that's, that to me is the big worry as we go into earning season.
 Have we pushed the bar so high?
 All right.
 Gentlemen, thank you to our morning call crew.
 Happy Fourth of July to all of you and to our viewers.
 Happy 250th birthday to America.