Media Deal in Limbo, Bitcoin’s Bounce, and Football Firestorm 8/25/26

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You're listening to The Exchange. Here's today's show.

**Brian** (1:00)
And welcome to The Exchange, everybody. I am Brian once again in for Kelly. We have got a big hour ahead. Stocks higher across the board. The Nasdaq on pace for its best day in nearly two weeks. Tech outperforming and chips rebounding. Marvell, AMD, NVIDIA, all of them the top performers. NVIDIA, by the way, on pace to snap a seven day losing streak all ahead of its big earnings. Tomorrow night, that's sending yields down. That's also giving Tech a leg up today. We're going to bring you the results of the two year auction in a few minutes. That'll give you a window into the bond market. The dollar is down, but gold and Bitcoin, they are higher again. In fact, Bitcoin back above the 80,000 mark earlier today for the first time in three months, a little bit below that right now, but earlier was above it. Gold on pace for its biggest monthly gain since 1999 Somebody called Prince, but don't worry, Katie Stockton is going to give you her take on all of that and more, and oil. We got to look at oil, got some breaking news. Oil is down about 3.5% right now. The Abu Dhabi contract, which is the third biggest contract really in the world, third or fourth, whatever you want to do it, is down 8%.
Here's why, moments ago, the countries of Iran and the countries of Oman, who together share a lot of the border around the Strait of Hormuz announcing they have reached a tentative deal to establish more clear and open transit around the Strait of Hormuz. They both put out a statement in English. I'm going to read it, I'll apologize. The ministers discussed a phased framework that could provide a practical and viable basis for moving forward regarding the Strait of Hormuz. It includes the creation of what they call a temporary joint corridor, information exchange, traffic management and provision of relevant maritime and security services. We don't exactly know what any of that means, but the reality is this. Oman and Iran coming together saying they're trying to build some kind of framework. I'm just going to wildly speculate and guess that that might include some request for money or some kind of a toll through there. There is no also guarantee the US is going to buy into this, nor would Kuwait or Qatar or Bahrain or Iraq or Saudi Arabia or the UAE. Any country that actually transits oil through that straight, they may say no thanks, but the reality is that this announcement of a framework of a deal is impacting oil. Crude oil down 4% right now and that UAE contract known as Murban, you could see it there, is down 8%. We're going to get more with Amrita Sen, more with Alima Croft on Power Lunch. All this is happening real time. Welcome to live TV.
You also have this billionaire investor Stan Druckenmiller, who by the way is the former boss of both Treasury Secretary, Scott Besson and Fed Chair, Kevin Warsh.
Not bad. Druckenmiller says those two should do things different.
We'll get to that momentarily. Why don't we start right there? Kicking off your hour, Nancy Tangler, CEO of Laffer-Tangler Investments. Nancy, I wanted to start entirely with Druckenmiller and Warsh, whatever, but I do want to get your take on this oil announcement. I know you're not some oil guru, so I'm not going to go into the details about the horrible straight, but do you have a take on what might happen to equities or our markets overall if the price of oil were to continue to move down?

**Nancy Tangler** (4:32)
Yeah, Brian, I think it's going to be bullish in general. And I think the moves that we're seeing in Bitcoin, the risk on assets, are at least a leading indicator of what the market is anticipating. Earnings growth is kind of old news now. We had a great earnings season. Oil is the next big inflation buster. And so I think this would be very optimistic for equities as we go into the fall and the pre-midterm period.