Altimeter's Brad Gerstner on the Tech Takeoff 5/14/26

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**Scott Wapner** (1:01)
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Carl, thanks very much. Welcome to the Halftime Report. I'm Scott Wapner, front and center this hour. Techs continue to take off.
Nvidia hitting a new record high, the biggest IPO of the year coming to market today. We're trading it with the committee. Joining me for the hour, Josh Brown, Malcolm Etheridge, Bill Baruch, and also with us today at Post9. We're calling him a special committee member today. He's Brad Gerstner. He is here. He's the Altimeter Capital founder and CEO. He was an early investor in Cerebrus, which is going public today, and we're awaiting that first trade. I do want to show you what the markets are doing today. New highs for the S&P, new highs for the NASDAQ. The Dow has retaken 50,000 yet again. NASDAQ's on pace for its seventh positive week in a row. It is the first time it's done that since October of 2024 Let's begin with the tech trade for obvious reasons. Nvidia, for obvious reasons. That new record high today, you did have that Reuters report. The US has cleared the H200 chip sales to 10 firms. May not be entirely new, but we are learning names. And as Jensen Wong is in China, we're wondering what he might come back with.
Are they going to be able to sell those chips there as he wants? The street remains optimistic. UBS has taken the price target to 275, Canter goes to 350 So there is a lot of optimism for a stock that everybody here owns. You get the first shot at this because it's one of your largest positions. It's so good to have you in the house. That doesn't happen that often, if ever. So we're so happy to have you.
What should we make of what Nvidia is doing and what Jensen Wong could bring home on this trip?

**Brad Gerstner** (2:58)
Well, I mean, the most unusual thing is Nvidia didn't do anything for six months as the rest of the semiconductor trade really catapulted to new highs. So over six months, remember, Nvidia hit $210 a share about six and a half months ago, and it was flat over that period of time.
So it's our largest holding. It's almost 20% of our overall portfolio, but it's actually been a drag from a performance perspective up until recently. On the March 30th low, I think it hit 170 or 172 bucks a share. And so the catch up here really hasn't been about China at all, Scott. And by the way, China's de minimis at this point to Nvidia. They've announced a trillion dollars over the course of the next six to eight quarters of demand on Blackwells and now Vera Rubens. And so this is a little bit of icing on top of the cake to be able to sell their older H200s to China. I don't think that's what's moving the stock. They're going to report earnings next week. And I think what's moving the stock is everybody's looking at the entire complex and saying the most important company globally in AI, the best company executing today in AI is Nvidia. Why is it trading at 14 or 15 times fully tax gap earnings when the rest of the complex is trading much higher?

**Josh Brown** (4:08)
What's so crazy is this stock sat at 180 for six months. Anyone who wanted it could have had it.

**Brad Gerstner** (4:13)
For sure.

**Josh Brown** (4:14)
And it was at that price, the cheapest multiple on forward earnings you've been able to buy Nvidia since before, before Chad GPT. So it's just this astonishing thing where in plain sight, Amazon rallied, Alphabet rallied, AMD Broadcom one after another, they just took off. And this thing was just sit, look at, look at this.