Power Lunch 8/21/26

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**Brian Sullivan** (1:03)
Stocks are in the green right now, but the SMB and NASDAQ on pace, at least for now, to stop three-week wind streaks. Welcome to Power Lunch, everybody. I'm Brian with Contessa Brewer today, and we've got a big Friday show ahead first. Some straight talk on oil. The energy sector hitting new record highs, but questions growing over oil flows to the Strait of Hormuz. How much oil is actually getting through? For Texas, David Weck will join us with that.

**Contessa Brewer** (1:27)
Plus the Walmart markdown, that stock on pace for its worst week in more than four years. Evercore's Greg Mellick cuts his price target, but he says, still buy the stock. He'll tell us why. And has San Francisco lost its tech crown? A new report shows another city has overtaken the Bay Area as the nation's top market for tech talent. We'll reveal which city and how AI is driving that shift.

**Brian Sullivan** (1:51)
And by the way, we're also gonna show you the top-performing and the worst-performing cities in the stock market with our Power City indexes. And one of them is related to that Silicon Valley story. You know what they call that in TV?

**Contessa Brewer** (2:02)
What do they call it? A tease.

**Brian Sullivan** (2:05)
A deep tease.
Which means we're gonna get to it later. But we're gonna kick off this Friday with a closer look at what is under the market's hood. Now, based on returns the last couple of years, stocks certainly seem healthy, at least on the surface. But they may not be. JPMorgan Chase out saying warning signs are building. JPM's technical team saying stocks could, quote, be setting up for a period of weakness. After Labor Day, a seasonal trends turn negative, and maybe more ominously, the team also says that the action in AI hardware and hyperscalers is showing similarities to the run up in the March 2000 tech peak. So is the market heading for a fall this fall? Let's kick that out with our Friday panel. I'll be in Financial CIO, Jason Ware, and FedWatch Advisors Founder, Ben Emmons. And Ben, I want to start with you, and then I want to add on, I don't know if you saw this, Lloyd Blankfein, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, minutes ago, tweeting this out. I'm going to look down to read it. You'll forgive me.
Risk management 101 Every exposure should have a limit, even when you're sure nothing can go wrong. After all, the Titanic sank, and AAA mortgage bonds went to zero. I worry about the markets and the economy's unlimited appetite for exposure to the positive AI revenue story. Lloyd Blankfein, who doesn't tweet much, is out on the tape. Concerned, Ben, are you?

**Ben Emmons** (3:35)
Well, somewhat there, Brian. Like, you know, we've got to acknowledge that, you know, the economy is doing really well, but it's riskful overheating, I think, because the more we pump in this investment to the economy, yeah, the greater the chances is that we're going to get with GDP so red hot that inflation becomes just simply a significant more bigger risk than we're dealing with right now.
And as you said, like, you know, Hormuz, that's still not solved at all. We don't actually know what's really happening there. There's a huge uncertainty factor that's overhanging the market. So I would echo somewhat like risk management that Lloyd Blankfein is saying, like, it can't be fully exposed in this market. You gotta have some, let's say, dry powder on the sidelines to see what happens from here.

**Contessa Brewer** (4:18)
And then in the meantime, we're seeing a three and a half basis point rise in the 10 year right now. Just moving, as my colleague said, they're in the wrong way after a buyback announcement. Steve Leesman just sent around a note here at CNBC about it, saying that the 10 year is now higher by that much. Is that a warning sign to you? What do you think, Ben?