SpaceX Lockup Expiration, Occidental CEO Exclusive, Rise of Leveraged ETFs 8/6/26

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**Kelly Evans** (1:04)
A mixed session for the major averages, but a much tougher tape for two of the market's most important groups. Welcome to Power Lunch alongside Dominic Chu. I'm Kelly Evans. Today, Brian is still out. The market's engine of growth is stalling with Sandisk, Western Digital, Applovin, and Datadog all lower after their earnings, while the financials and industrials are hitting new record highs. A man at the center of it all is Jan Van Eck. He's the CEO of Van Eck Funds. Here he's sitting right over there. Way do you see his gorgeous outfit.

**Dominic Chu** (1:31)
I am sitting right next to it right now. Plus, we've got a powerful quarter for Occidental Petroleum, delivering a major earnings beat. Production topped the company's guidance and free cash flow reached $3 billion. It's highest level in nearly four years. The CEO, Richard Jackson, is here on Power Lunch exclusively, Kelly.

**Kelly Evans** (1:51)
Looking forward to that, but let's begin with some of Wall Street's favorite AI names. Shares of Sandisk and Western Digital are lower after their earnings reports. Both beat analysts' forecast, but wasn't quite enough to really dazzle investors. The latest reminder that the bar for these names has moved higher, and investors want blowout numbers, blowout guidance, has the AI trade reached the point where expectations are simply impossible to meet. Joining us for more is the aforementioned Jan Van Eck. Am I saying now Jan like Jan Hatzius or is it Jan like Janiffen? Jan, it's Jan, right?
Jan, Jan Van Eck.

**Jan Van Eck** (2:23)
Well, it's my first time here, Kelly.

**Kelly Evans** (2:25)
You say it 30 times and then you go, wait a minute, have I been saying, are you too polite to correct me? No, of course. What do you think is going on with this rotation, which our guest last hour said, this will be the year remembered for these kind of whipping rotations kind of from one place to the next. So what do you observe here?

**Jan Van Eck** (2:43)
I mean, look, a lot of the AI trade is a momentum trade, but I think long-term you have to look through how many SMH companies are going to be around in 5 or 10 years. And there are some, I would circle, that are on the weaker side of the ecosystem.
We sent about a month ago to clients, the memory companies are part of that generally, more of a commodity part of the chip stack. And in particular, like Sandisk and Western Digital are not part of SMH. SMH is our kind of large cap, semi play. And because the large caps have been the winners over time, Sandisk is up 30 times in the last 12 months. That's just, that's a sign that the weaker names went up higher and they've come down more. So that's how I put the Sandisk quarter in context. Because the memory space is super competitive. We saw a big Chinese company go public, right?
And so if you're not at the high bandwidth memory part of the kind of and have that competitive moat like a Samsung or SK Hynex, I think it's tough.

**Kelly Evans** (3:46)
Yeah, I know.

**Dominic Chu** (3:48)
I think overall, one of the things that Kelly mentioned was the kind of impossibility, if you will, of trying to top some of these expectations.
Where there's a will, there's a way. But in today's market, just how much more do some of these firms have to manage expectations better? In other words, how much do these CEOs and management teams have to now go forward and say, hey, you know what, we're expecting maybe something a little bit more tepid and then start to reset that kind of expectations bar so they can continue to beat expectations going forward.