Today on Taking Stock | NYSE Composite Rises on Tech Strength as Small Caps Lead

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:01:31]Hi, I'm Troy McGuire, co-founder of Fintech TV, and taking stock starts now.

[00:01:39]Bye.

[00:01:42]We got two minutes to go here into the closing bell on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange. And why not?

[00:01:46]We're getting used to saying it a lot these days. Another round of all-time highs for the Dow 30 components. Uh the small cavs are very close. Five points away from an all-time high and the S&P may have started the morning session in negative territory. That's not the tale of the tape. The Einstein of Wall Street, the one and only Peter Tuckman joins us. What' you see? Cuz look, I mean, fascinating. We started the morning 10:00 hour. Maybe sellers a little bit louder. Not the way we're finishing.

[00:02:10]>> I know. But we did have economic data, right? Unemployment staying at 4.3. Some other we created 119,000 jobs. I don't know what we were supposed to get. I don't I'm not sure what the morning was about. Maybe a little apprehension about rumor stuff about the war not escalating with Israel and stuff like that. May have been, but my gut was that we were in buy mode and sure enough it turned on it. And I think this is more what the market sentiment is about. We had over a billion to buy all afternoon, right? And so even though it's very uh rangebound, 7,600 on the S&P 500, I mean, who would have ever thought we'd get to that level, right? Next top 7,700, next top 8,000. I mean there there's money being put into this market. It's real. Also, think about it. New allocations in the beginning of a month always happen.

[00:02:53]That's a key indicator there. So, it may they may have waited for the morning to see what direction was going and then they swept in and put in the >> Yeah, it's a really good kicking off the third month of Q2.

[00:03:05]>> Correct. And June's a huge month.

[00:03:07]Massive rebalance at the end of the month. A Russell reconstitution. It's all good. Thanks for being here.

[00:03:36]And there you have it. the team from Victoria's Secret down here on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange for another history setting day here on Wall Street. Welcome to the broadcast one and all. You're watching Taking Stock. I'm your host today, JD Durkin. The crowd here certainly very fired up with what they see on buyers across Wall Street's tape today. How could you not be your final tale of the tape? The S&P 500 up.13%.

[00:03:59]The Dow 30 up, let's call it half a percent. The New York Stock Exchange Composite Index also moving higher. Uh, let's see. 23 just short of its all-time high, but not very far off in a comparable story for the Russell 2000.

[00:04:12]The small caps, the best of the bunch, up 9/10en of a percent on the day.

[00:04:16]Utilities, energy, and materials, your strongest performing sectors in the S&P today. And your lagards, telecom, healthcare, and consumer discretionary stocks. We'll talk a lot more about Dollar General. What they are seeing in terms of consumer discretionary spend coming up here in just a few minutes.

[00:04:31]Uh, also catching a bid for the tape today here on Wall Street. The big banks, oil and energy stocks, not a big surprise with West Texas and Brent both up uh, at least a few dollars. The home builders in positive territory. Most of the semiconductors including Marll up about 30% off those comments from Jensen Wong. Most quantum and memory stocks up as well. Let's bring in our first guest of the broadcast. Say hello to Ryan Kelly. He is the CIO at Legato Financial Group. My man, nice to see you here today.

[00:04:58]>> Nice to see you. Thank you. So, as you and I are sitting here, it's another day of all-time highs. What is your kind of consensus view as you look to the second half of 2026? Are you bullish for this momentum to to continue?

[00:05:09]>> Well, I am. And, you know, we saw a really big pop today in HPE. So, we've got another server name really kind of the next leg of the AI trade uh after we saw Dell last week really do the same thing. Now, HPE is almost doubled uh in the past month. So we continue to see that if you can produce earnings through AI and through this whole data center trade, uh you're able to really move up very very quickly. So uh I still think that we've got some positive signs coming down in the market, but we're really not seeing earnings yet from people using AI. Everything is earnings on going into building our data centers, chips, infrastructure, whatever else.

[00:05:50]But where are the profits for people that are actually using AI to monetize themselves?

[00:05:54]>> Yeah, we're going to talk a little bit more about Hila Packard here on the show in just a bit. So, I appreciate that teaser there for the audience because what a day it was a few days after that big session from Dell at the end of last week. You said earnings, not necessarily the lofty valuations. That's going to be what continues to drive this market forward. How are you seeing through the separation of both those parts of the conversation?

[00:06:12]>> Yeah, I think you're going to have to continue to see the earnings. I mean, we're we're absolutely seeing some stocks that are rallying very hard without earnings just kind of on the hope of being that next uh leg of the AI trade. Uh but I'm I'm very encouraged by really seeing earnings being a driver.

[00:06:29]Again, you've got uh the announcements of the earnings, the announcements of the positivity coming out before a lot of these names are popping. Certainly there there's some exceptions to that.

[00:06:37]Um, but you know, even with a name like Micron, which has absolutely blown it out of the water, one of our favorite holdings, looking at that name from a uh more traditional valuation metrics kind of system, we're still seeing that as being fairly cheap. So, I think that there's some still still some good possibility.

[00:06:53]>> You see a lot of eagerness though, people jumping in. I mean, shares of Marll today, right?

[00:06:58]>> And you and I are taking a look here. Up 32.57%.

[00:07:01]That's really all because Jensen Wong says, "Hey, this could be the next $1 trillion company. It has nothing to do with fundamentals. Nothing changed. The story didn't change overnight, but that kind of shows you the ways that perception can drive reality. Is that still what you're following for a lot of these high-flying stocks?

[00:07:16]>> Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think fear of missing out is is huge right now. I mean, your friends and neighbors may be telling you about the stock that they bought a couple of weeks ago that's up 4x, 5x, whatever it is. Uh, everybody wants to be in on those trades. Uh, obviously, you don't have to hit every one, but if you hit a couple of them, uh, you can make a very nice return for yourself. So, Uh there are plenty of stocks that are rallying too much on the rumors. Not saying that I disagree necessarily on Marvel. Um but um certainly I think you're going to see some separation. There are going to be some companies that have tremendous earnings going forward and then there are going to be some that start to lag and just don't produce those earnings.

[00:07:51]>> I got about 30 seconds with you left.

[00:07:53]Everyone knows Nvidia. How about New Core? A few of these other names I know you're tracking closely.

[00:07:57]>> Yeah, New Core is one that I especially like. They're doing a lot on the AI data center side and providing steel to building those things. But we're also looking at stocks that that although they have a AI connection uh they have some other things going for them. Newor for instance producing steel uh cheaply at least relatively cheaply in the US so that steel can be used in infrastructure projects. Uh so it's it's a great AI story potentially but it's also a solid company that has some good earnings and some other things going on.

[00:08:24]>> Speaking of solid you are a solid guest my man. Come back anytime. Way to kick off the broadcast. Ryan Kelly. Good to see you.

[00:08:29]>> All right. Thank you very much.

[00:08:30]>> Grab your mic. Todd you and I will head this way. hear a few of the top analyst calls you may have missed that move the tape this morning here on Wall Street.

[00:08:36]First up, making sure I don't walk into anything. Wed Bush analyst upgrading Trip Adviser to outperform, saying the stock is underappreciated at these particular levels. Shares down 17% on the year, but up five days in a row.

[00:08:48]Next up, UBS downgrading. There it is. I walked into something, Todd. Dow component Sherwin Williams to neutral from buy saying it has concerns about the housing market shares hitting a new multi-year low. Finally, Deutsche Bank reiterating GE Aerospace as a buy, lifting the price target to 380 on higher estimates for earnings per share guidance. Shares up 5% so far here in 2026. We talked about consumer discretionary earlier. Let's take a look at Dollar General because they're giving us some warnings about their core constituency. Shares down about 3% on the day. A miss on revenue for the quarter, but a nice beat on earnings.

[00:09:23]The company saying our core customer continues to be financially constrained.

[00:09:28]could give us a little bit of an indication for what we could see at a five and below. We get those numbers this time tomorrow after the bail. Uh finally, we'll take a look at we were talking HPE with Ryan here a moment ago.

[00:09:39]Hula Packard. Yeah, that's 19.47%.

[00:09:43]It's been parabolic to last month. Why not add another 19% on top? Company lifting its fullear guidance and beating on expectations. The AI boom clearly still driving demand higher. shares were already up coming into today 93%. Do not adjust your monitors. That's another 19.4% today alone. All this week here on taking stock, we are bringing you full coverage of Money2020 Europe in Amsterdam. And earlier today, Fintech TV's very own Anastasia Kinsky sat down with Sebastian Seamia. He's the CEO of Plara. Take a look.

[00:10:21]Scarlett Sber here, chief strategy growth officer for money 2020 and I have the one, the only Sebastian Seamovsky.

[00:10:28]>> Nice.

[00:10:28]>> The CEO of CLA, but really for me the proud Swede. That's what we're doing here. So, let's just get right to it.

[00:10:34]Sebastian, you and I just got off the main stage with Takis Georgia, the co-president of Fiserve. Lots of great things that are happening here. I'm curious. You were a pioneer in the the fintech space uh on the continent of Europe. And when you started, buy now pay later was viewed as disruptive alternative payment method. We've come a long way from there. Are are we done?

[00:10:53]Where are we where are we going from here? Uh well we're in an extremely exciting phase right now because we have finally reached a place where our partners like Stripe Aden and all of these and JP Morgan Chase and so forth are adding us not only as an alternative payment method but as default we're now like part of the package together with Visa and Mastercard and that's is now being rolled out and this has accelerated growth of number of merchants and allows us to bring payment methods for both kind of pay everyday purchases for like the charge card equivalent of buy and big ticket spend.

[00:11:23]So it I think it's yeah we've come far but there's amazing opportunity ahead >> there there definitely is and as commerce enters the agentic era we can't stop talking about you know agents how and the way that we pay changes do you see short-term lending becoming more embedded in everyday experiences just talk about the the view of lending >> well I think the charge card equivalent product of buying calculator is so healthier to consumers uh you know it doesn't try to make you revolve big a big balance it's fixedterm installments paying for 0% interest it is genuinely ly a better option for consumers and in a world with lower information asymmetries where things can easily be compared. I think consumers are more and more consumers are waking up and seeing the benefit of these compared to credit cards. So that is definitely going to continue.

[00:12:06]>> So you listed on the New York Stock Exchange obviously we talked about the Swedish connection. When you think about the European landscape and the US landscape, what what are you most excited about both? Where do you see the contrasts? I think it's fantastic that we have built this business originally in the Europe. Uh thanks to the fact that we can passport our bank license across all of the European markets. Uh we now basically have one tech platform, one offering for you know a huge audience. In total we have over 120 million consumers but the largest market today is the US and this the fastest growing one which also excites us a lot and I think to some degree even the fact that we are coming from a more frugal market where interchange is regulated uh means that to us you look at the US market with like 200 basis points for credit card price looks very attractive because we're used to operating at very very different uh revenue lines right so it just shows tremendous opportunity to now grow and offer more affordable solutions for both consumers and merchants alike in the to us >> and you've really changed the game of of the continent and beyond for the last decade. Where does CLA go from here?

[00:13:07]>> I think we're just going to continue what I said which is like making sure we reach parity with Visa and Moscott as a network for for uh being available everywhere and then in addition to that continue our efforts to try to build a preferred brand for consumers that they prefer and you want to want to use for all of their everyday spending.

[00:13:24]>> Amazing. Well, that will do it for today taking stock. Thank you so much Sebastian Simikovski. Great to have you here.

[00:13:30]>> Thank you for having me.

[00:13:44]>> Welcome back to the broadcast. You are watching Taking Stock live from the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Longtime friend of mine and longtime friend of the show joins us now, John Har, managing director at Swan Bitcoin. My man, it's nice to see you here as always. So, let me get your take here on what's going on with Bitcoin retesting its March support level currently hovering right around 67,000 or so. John, what do you think has been pushing down Bitcoin the last few weeks?

[00:14:09]>> Yeah, good to see you JD. I would say the the real thing right now is that Bitcoin is in the back seat. And maybe that's even an understatement. The spotlight is on the AI related stocks that have gone up 100% 200% 300% in the past weeks and months. So investor attention, investor flows are just focused elsewhere right now. I don't think the Bitcoin thesis has changed at all long term, but in the short term, it's just not the darling. It's not in the spotlight right now. I think we've seen some large investors in Bitcoin exit. And I think we're seeing smaller people rotate into the hyped up se uh sectors right now, which is really anything AI related.

[00:14:52]>> Yeah. Memory stock, semiconductor, software certainly has its days in the sun. No shortage of shiny things. John, what needs to happen for Bitcoin to once again become that so-called shiny thing for investors to focus on at least a little bit more?

[00:15:06]>> Yeah, I think it's one of two things. I think the AI hype has to die down to some extent and that could happen in a multitude of ways. The valuations could keep getting stretched and then there's some sort of reversal. the earnings could not live up to the hype. Um that could cause a reversal. Number two would be some sort of big print um in in my opinion. Um that is really when Bitcoin shines. Think like the COVID stimulus.

[00:15:35]Um that was like the biggest advertisement for Bitcoin you could imagine. And big prints don't always have to look and feel exactly like that COVID era. But I think it's a pretty good bet that there will be another big print from a combination of the Fed and the Treasury at some point in the future. That is when the focus really um dials in on Bitcoin.

[00:15:58]>> Yeah, John, you and I have talked a lot about institutional adoption, the way that Bitcoin has kind of continued to trend lower despite that smart money adoption here on Wall Street. Uh is that kind of dichotomy still happening, that kind of divergence between those two realities?

[00:16:14]Yeah, I think institutional adoption is is still happening. Micro strategy is still buying. There's there's some headlines with them this week, but um institutional buying directly from Micro Strategy is happening. Uh institutional broader adoption is still happening.

[00:16:31]Whether it's the Morgan Stanley Bitcoin ETF or Charles Schwab uh announcing support for Bitcoin, they're thinking years and years down the road. So that I think that you know underscores the idea that the Bitcoin thesis over the long term has not changed but on a shorter term time horizon measured in a few months. Um it's it's harder to be positive about Bitcoin here. But um like look Morgan again just to underscore the point Morgan Stanley Schwab Micro Strategy they're thinking years and years down the road they're not turning away from Bitcoin.

[00:17:06]>> Okay. Okay. So, when he talks strategy, I'm glad he brought that up because it did make a lot of headlines and you know the way that people react to these headlines. John Sailor Strategy just sold its first Bitcoin since 2022. $2.5 million. Maybe a bit of a small amount all things considered. What do you think? What goes through your mind when you see those headlines?

[00:17:25]>> I think he did this just to show the market that the company could and would sell Bitcoin. uh to to the market to prove it to the market but also to prove it to rating agencies. I believe it was S&P, one of the big rating agencies, who specifically said that Micro Strategy, the company, uh would have to demonstrate an ability to sell Bitcoin, an ability and a willingness to sell Bitcoin. Because up until this moment, everything you've heard from the company and its uh you know, biggest voice, Michael Sailor, has been about you never sell, you never sell, you never sell.

[00:17:59]And if the main thing protected that that cons, you know, that balance sheet consists of is an asset you're never ever going to sell, the rating agency looked at that and said, "We don't really like that approach." So, I think they just sold a tiny bit. It's really a rounding error compared to the holdings they have just to prove and check that box for the rating agencies. So, I wouldn't read into it too much. Um, I think that's what's going on with strategy this week.

[00:18:26]My man, it's great to see you as always.

[00:18:27]Always grateful for your time. John Har, managing director at Swan Bitcoin. John, my best to you and your family. We'll do it again soon. Folks, don't go anywhere.

[00:18:35]A lot more taking stock coming up on this Tuesday afternoon edition of the show live from the big board.

[00:20:01]Heat. Heat.

[00:20:44]We are witnessing a seismic reallocation of global risk capital. Bitcoin sliding below the 69,000 mark, extending a brutal draw down that wiped out more than 40% of its value since the heady record highs above 126,000 last year.

[00:20:59]And even with President Trump repeating claims of the US becoming the crypto capital and pushing the Clarity Act that has failed to stoke a rally. Now instead digital assets are confronting the longest stretch of ETF redemptions on record led by a cash exodus from Black Rockck's Ahares Trust. And all of this liquidity is being siphoned into one of the greatest tech markets in history.

[00:21:20]The NASDAQ is up over 25% since the start of the second quarter driven by a searing 70% surge in semi stocks. Well, joining us now to examine this liquidity tugof-war is Jordi Vister, who's the founder of Vister Labs and also the creator of AI Macro Nexus Research for 2020 uh 22V research. Great to have you here, Jordy. Thank you so much for joining me.

[00:21:41]>> It's good to be here, Remy.

[00:21:42]>> Well, of course, we are looking at record highs for the major US stock averages we've seen this uh tech rally, but at the same time, we are looking at red for the crypto market. So, give us your take on what's happening. Is there an actual rotation?

[00:21:58]Well, there's definitely some sort of rotation. Um, digital assets used to be the king of parabolic moves. Um, and it's being dominated right now by the artificial intelligence trade. So, you know, my business is focused on the intersection of macro into AI and we've entered the agentic world and the infrastructure that's necessary for it has the attention. But over the course of the next year, we'll start transitioning into another phase, which will be how the agentic phase will start to become a consumer. And for a consumer, they're going to need the crypto guardrail. So, I think this is going to continue until people stop focusing on AM. We reach some kind of uh place where it stops going up parabolically, which will probably be sooner than people think.

[00:22:39]>> Yeah, Jordy. So, you mentioned a lot of moving parts there. We're paying attention to what's happening in artificial intelligence especially the mega cap names uh in tech and we're hearing about uh debt raising here right at the same time for Google as well as the other mag 7 companies. So given what we're seeing in AI and what you just mentioned from the macro perspective what are the implications here as we move forward when it comes to agent?

[00:23:07]Well, I I don't think based on what I hear a lot of people talk about, which is calling this a bubble, that people fully recognize how much the world changed in October of last year. Uh, beginning in November, we started to see the release of Opus 4.5, which was really the gateway to opening up the agentic world. Inference needs are probably underestimated by everyone still. We're only in the first or second inning of the capex buildout that is necessary for these agents to run freely. So I think most of the problem has been that people have underestimated how quickly the agent world came on.

[00:23:41]They may not even be noticing that this is happening. When you mentioned the mega cap names, this is really being driven by a breath of names that are necessary for the infrastructure buildout. Uh I don't think as of yet, believe it or not, that we have done enough to build in at least the next year's worth of earnings in these names.

[00:23:59]We will have bottlenecks. We will have shortages. I've been writing about that a lot lately. But I think people need to focus on the agentic world only started this year and that means we're in the very first inning of this buildout.

[00:24:10]>> Well, Jordy, hope to have you back on the show. So, thank you so much for your time this morning. I appreciate all of your insight.

[00:24:15]>> Thanks.

[00:24:15]>> Thank you.

[00:24:29]All right.

[00:26:21]Welcome. We are here at Money2020 Europe in in in Amsterdam and I am very pleased to be joined by Anthony Suhu, the CEO of Moneygram. Anthony, welcome.

[00:26:31]>> Thank you. Thanks for having me.

[00:26:32]>> So, you became CEO late 2024. We're just over a year in. Um, you were brought in with this real mission for sort of refounding the business. Um, what does transformation look like a year in?

[00:26:46]>> Yeah, maybe I should redefine or define what uh reounding means because typically you hear companies and executives and boards say they want their employees to think like owners of the business. Well, reounding is just a double click on that which is we want our employees to think like founders because in a world where right now we have AI kind of coming in and you also have this whole uh movement of digital currency. What does that mean for future payments? And when you have a chance to reound a company, I think all of us feel ownership inside the organization to rethink how we do business. And so that's the purpose of it. And so after a year, what I would say is that uh we now operate much quicker, much faster, and we've adopted a lot of new uh technologies, including the announcement that we made here where we launched MGUSD. And I could talk a little bit more about that if you want.

[00:27:32]>> Well, let's go straight into that because you opened up money 2020 with your keynote. I mean, it's a great three days ahead with so much great content, but how cool to be kicking it off. Tell us about this announcement.

[00:27:42]>> Yeah, so maybe the first thing I would want to say is that uh when you think about this announcement that we made for MGUSD, it was really 5 years in the making. It was not one of overnight successes because it uh the company had been thinking about how to apply uh uh you know blockchain to our network. And what I would say is that the very first thing we made a decision on is that we decided to rebuild our entire infrastructure on blockchain. And when we do that, what we wanted to do with it was then also launch uh MGUSD, which is a native US dollar stable coin. And a reason that matters is we're going to build every all products on our network on top of this framework foundation.

[00:28:24]MGUSD plays a very important part.

[00:28:27]>> Yeah. The final thing I would say is that when we built when we're think about MGSD, it is really not for traders and institutions, which is majority of what stable coin has been about. We're really focused on the end user consumer.

[00:28:41]And I think we're the first company to really do that. Yeah.

[00:28:43]>> And we're going to do it at scale. And so what that means is you're going to have a mother who wants to send funds back to her family in the Philippines who could do that over our rails on Standard Coin. And then we're going to allow a local business owner who might be living in a world where their local economy currency has gone down by 20% and they're going to have much more stability because they're going to have a stable dollar balance on MoneyGram and that's the key unlock.

[00:29:09]>> I think that's so fascinating because as you mentioned we've seen stable coins really make their way in the crypto trading space. Now clearly the institutional appetite for it lots of narrative about where the transformation is but this application is is slightly different and and certainly important for understanding the wide change across the landscape. I want to ask you a little bit about that change and about that focus. Um you spoken openly previously about uh be brought up in in immigrant households the importance of crossber payments. Mhm.

[00:29:41]>> talk a little bit about where the um pressure points are there in crossber and like what needs to be fixed why stable coins addresses those problems.

[00:29:50]>> Yeah. So if we take a step back, I think for any customer, but specifically for the remittance customer, what they want to make sure is that they can when they send uh funds to their family, they want to send it there uh in the quickest fashion possible because you're talking about typically helping pay rent or helping pay tuition. And so you want to when you send it, you want to be able to track it, but you also want to get it there as quick as possible. Yes. The second thing what you want to do is you want to be able to send these funds in the lowest cost way and so putting as much dollars in it as possible. Yeah, >> I would say that's also important. And then third is what you want to do is you want to do it within a framework where you feel like it's safe and secure and those are really the value propositions that we uh try to deliver on for our customers at MoneyGram. Having coming from a immigrant household where I personally saw my parents send monies back to their family, I think I have a deeper appreciation and empathy for the customers that we have. They're all hardworking people around the world and they move to where the work is. And when they have that opportunity to support and send funds, it's not a transaction in their mind. They're actually sending love or a signal or a note of I'm sending support out of my compassion and love. And as a company that supports this, we have to make sure we show that type of empathy and compassion as well.

[00:31:10]>> And we're very excited too. What what great things we can expect from MoneyGram and and the brand as a whole um as we move forward. It's fantastic.

[00:31:18]Thank you. And thank you for joining us.

[00:31:20]>> Thank you.

[00:31:27]>> Alltime highs for the major market indexes. Thank you for watching today's edition of Taking Stock. Have a good night. We'll see you again tomorrow.

[00:32:30]Fire.