Joby Aviation shares pop on Saudi Investment
CNBC's Phil LeBeau joins 'Money Movers' to discuss Joby's shares popping on news of its Saudi Investment.
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Business Insider
39 minutes ago
- Business Insider
The Trump-Musk feud could be one of the catalysts for a coming 10% stock correction, former JPMorgan strategist says
Former JPMorgan chief market strategist Marko Kolanovic sees a stock market pullback in the cards, and the Trump-Musk feud could be one of the triggers that sets off a decline. Speaking on CNBC on Thursday, Kolanovic predicted a coming correction of 5%-10% that could be set off by a drop in Tesla's stock price. "It's a little bit of a sideshow. It's important for certain companies, and it can spill over," Kolanovic said of the president's fallout with Musk. "Tesla is one of the biggest holdings of retail investors. There's a little ecosystem of stocks around it. I think it could be a little bit of a catalyst." In a post on X on Thursday, Kolanovic pointed to popular retail stocks such as Tesla, Palantir, and Super Micro as potential triggers of a momentum crash. Tesla stock plunged 14% on Thursday as Trump responded to Musk's criticisms of the big GOP tax and budget bill. Back in February (2/19) drop of $PLTR on dod spending cut started market wide momentum crash. Today, we have several crowded retail names $TSLA $PLTR $SMCI that could start a similar development ... — Marko Kolanovic (@markoinny) June 5, 2025 However, Kolanovic also noted that the Trump-Musk fight would be one possible catalyst for a market pullback among many. Uncertainty in the economy and the trade war are also looming problems. "We're close to all-time highs, but we still have all the problems," Kolanovic said. "We have a trade war, we have signs of an economic slowdown." Valuations are stretched, he said, with the Nasdaq close to record highs even as rates remain elevated, and Kolanovic sees warning signs in the bond market. The risk-reward tradeoff for stocks versus bonds looks unattractive, as the 10-year Treasury yield hovers around 4.4%. That means equity investors aren't getting a great return in excess of the risk-free rate. There's also the lingering concern about Fed independence, with Trump repeatedly pressuring Powell to cut interest rates. Macro risks are mounting as well. Kolanovic pointed to the weak ADP jobs report earlier this week, which reported 37,000 new jobs compared to economists' expectations of 110,000. While the May jobs report showed higher-than-expected job growth, April and March numbers saw significant downward revisions. A correction could present a potential buying opportunity, but that's only if recession risks dissipate, Kolanovic said.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
‘I just hope it resolves quickly': GOP prays for peace in the Trump-Musk war
Republicans are hoping for a détente between Donald Trump and Elon Musk after Thursday's blowup, warning that the fight between the two men could distract from the president's agenda and derail Congress' 'Big Beautiful Bill.' The battle between the president and the world's richest man escalated from a simmer to a full-on scorched-earth showdown over the course of the day on Thursday — starting with light criticism in the morning that escalated to Trump targeting Musk's pocket book and Musk saying the president was an associate of a notorious convicted sex criminal and suggesting he may need to be impeached. 'I just hope it resolves quickly, for the sake of the country,' Speaker Mike Johnson told CNBC's 'Squawk Box' on Friday morning. POLITICO reported Thursday night that White House aides were looking to broker a peace between the two men and were planning on scheduling a call between the two camps. 'Oh, it's OK,' Trump told POLITICO in a brief telephone call Thursday when asked about the very public breakup. 'It's going very well, never done better.' Trump went on to tout his favorability ratings saying, 'The numbers are through the roof, the highest polls I've ever had and I have to go.' A senior administration official and a person close to the White House — both granted anonymity to discuss the president's thinking around the blowup — said the president had been convinced Thursday night that continuing to engage with Musk would be counterproductive and a distraction from a host of good news the White House should be focused on, from his talks with Xi Jinping to negotiating a deal with Iran and ushering his 'big beautiful' reconciliation bill through Congress, which was the root cause of the blowup. But Trump has displayed some lingering frustration with his one-time benefactor. He told ABC News that Musk has "lost his mind" — and he is "not particularly" interested in talking to Musk. He also told CNN that 'the poor guy's got a problem.' Still, Republican legislators Friday are following Johnson's lead, keeping with the theme of deescalation in the fallout of the public fight. 'Both of them have paid a tremendous price personally for this country, and I think at the end of the day, they're both going to put the country first," said Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Texas). "And them working together is certainly far more better for the country.' Department of Government Efficiency caucus Chair Rep. Aaron Bean (R-Fla.) said Friday he was 'shocked and dismayed' to see his 'two friends fighting,' but remains an 'optimist' that the former allies can work it out. 'I believe there's a Diet Coke in their future, that they can settle it and cooler heads will prevail,' Bean said. 'We need them together. We need to be united, and we're stronger together. So I'm very optimistic that there will be a happy ending very soon.' But even as they seek to not escalate the fight, party faithfuls are still making clear where their allegiances lie. 'I don't tell my friend Elon how to — I don't argue with him about how to build rockets. And I wish he wouldn't argue with me about how to craft legislation and pass it,' Johnson told CNBC. He later told reporters on Capitol Hill that 'I hope they reconcile. I believe in redemption. … I think it's good for the party and the country if all this worked out. But I tell you what: do not doubt, do not second guess and don't ever challenge the president of the United States, Donald Trump.' Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) went a step further, saying he thinks 'Elon is getting too personal' in his attacks. 'It's getting out of control,' Nehls said Thursday. 'They got to stop it. I think it's, you know, it's not healthy. And some of the most recent comments, I think, Elon, you've lost your mind.' But Johnson — who was also targeted by Musk Thursday — largely on Friday kept his cool in responding to Musk, brushing off his claim that he landed Republicans their 2024 victory. 'Elon was a big contributor in the last election,' the speaker acknowledged to CNBC, 'but this was a whole team effort. I mean, President Trump is the most consequential political figure of his generation — of modern American history. He is the one responsible for that. But we all worked hard. We delivered the House majority." The speaker said he was with the president in the Oval Office for part of the showdown on X, a meeting reported earlier by POLITICO. Trump seemed 'disappointed' by Musk's attacks, the speaker said, reiterating that he is a 'huge fan and supporter of President Trump' for good measure. He told POLITICO Friday he hasn't spoken with Musk yet. The White House has sought to project an air of calm despite Musk's relentless attacks — but aides there remain wary of the Tesla CEO popping off two people close to the president said several Trump allies — including at least one White House official — tried to reach Musk by phone when he was on his rampage on X, but Musk was not taking calls for a time. The way Musk reacted to the president's comments made White House officials feel like they were dealing with an 'unhinged' situation, the senior administration official said Thursday — and that they had to just ignore what he was doing. Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent via press or personal contact information for his companies. 'Everybody is just like, 'OK, this is manic and crazy,'' the official said, 'and we're just gonna move along and pass the bill. And that's kind of the feeling of everyone right now.' Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.
CNBC
an hour ago
- CNBC
This uranium company wants to break the grip that foreign state corporations have on U.S. nuclear fuel
President Donald Trump's push to dramatically increase nuclear power in the U.S. will require a tremendous amount of fuel, but the country remains heavily dependent on foreign state-owned companies for its supplies, the CEO of the only publicly traded uranium enricher in the world told CNBC. "There's barely enough Western enrichment, if at all, to satisfy existing operating plants," Centrus Energy CEO Amir Vexler said in an interview. "If the nuclear industry is to add all this generation capacity, there will have to be a tremendous amount of enrichment capacity that's added." Trump issued a series of executive orders on nuclear power last month that set a target for the U.S. to quadruple the sector's capacity to 400 gigawatts by 2050. Nuclear energy is one of the few issues in deeply polarized Washington these days that enjoys some level of bipartisan support. Trump's push expands on former President Joe Biden's goal to triple nuclear power by midcentury. Most nuclear plants worldwide use low-enriched uranium, or LEU. The U.S. relied on foreign countries for around 70% of the fuel for its reactors in 2023, according to data from the Energy Information Administration. About 27% of U.S. fuel purchases came from Russia that year, one of the principle geopolitical foes of the U.S. But Russian uranium will be forced out of the U.S. supply chain by 2028 at the latest, after Biden signed legislation in 2024 to ban imports over Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The U.S. faces a looming nuclear fuel supply gap due to the loss of Russian uranium. Western enrichment capacity, meanwhile, is dominated by two players that are not American owned. They are France's Orano and a British-Dutch-German consortium called Urenco, according to the World Nuclear Association. The European enrichers are reliable partners and have done a good job supporting the market, Vexler told CNBC. But trade tensions threaten to disrupt global supply chains, he said on the Centrus first-quarter earnings call. "We don't have any domestic fuel cycle capacity, almost at all," Vexler told CNBC, referring to American-owned companies. "We don't mine anything, we don't convert anything. We don't enrich anything. We rely on others. And others are all state-owned enterprises, maybe with a few minor exceptions." The only commercial enrichment facility operating in the U.S. is owned by Urenco, the European consortium. It is located in Eunice, New Mexico. Centrus wants to break the stranglehold that state-owned corporations have over the U.S. nuclear fuel supply chain. "The circumstances in the market are such that we believe and we're staking everything we have on the fact that the market needs another enricher," Vexler said. "It needs competition." Trump directed federal agencies on May 23 to develop a plan to expand uranium enrichment capabilities in the U.S. to meet the needs of the civilian and defense sectors. The president's order is sparse on concrete details about how domestic enrichment will be stood up in the U.S. But Centrus' stock has gained 46% as of Thursday's close since Trump's announcement as Wall Street sees the company playing a key role in the effort. The company's shares have risen more than 7% this week as Meta's deal to buy nuclear power from Constellation Energy has reinforced the view that demand is increasing as the tech sector hunts for electricity for its data centers. Centrus is one of just two companies that are licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to produce low-enriched uranium in the U.S., the other being Urenco. Bethesda, Maryland-based Centrus is also the only company in the U.S. that has a license to produce a type of fuel that some next-generation nuclear plant designs, such as small modular reactors, are planning to use. The U.S. wasn't always dependent on foreign countries. It was the first country to enrich uranium for the commercial market and was a dominant player in the market through the 1980s. The federal government owned and operated the nation's enrichment facilities during that period. The U.S. sold its enrichment business through a company called the United States Enrichment Corp. in a public offering in 1998. USEC went bankrupt in 2014 as nuclear plants struggled to compete against cheap natural gas and support for the industry declined in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan. Centrus emerged from the reorganization of USEC later that year and is now profitable. "We were just not able to compete with other government, state-owned competitors," said Vexler, who took over the helm at Centrus in 2024. When times got tough for the industry, national governments in Europe and Russia would not allow their state-owned enrichers to fail, he said. Centrus operates an enrichment plant in Piketon, Ohio, about 95 miles east of Cincinnati that could one day supply a major portion of U.S. nuclear fuel needs. The Ohio facility has a footprint the size of the Pentagon and could produce enriched uranium equivalent to about 25% of the total purchased by U.S. power plants in 2023, according to Centrus. This is nearly equivalent to the amount of enriched uranium imported from Russia that year. "If that is not sufficient, if domestic requirements, national security requirements, export requirements exceed that, then obviously we have the capability to expand as well," Vexler said. The Ohio plant has not launched commercial operations yet. It is currently producing a small amount of the fuel that the developers of advanced reactor designs are banking on, called high-assay low-enriched uranium, or HALEU. The Department of Energy buys the fuel that Centrus produces. Centrus' main business right now is importing LEU for U.S. nuclear plants with contracts that run through 2040. It has a waiver to import Russian LEU through 2025 and has applied for waivers through 2027. Under U.S. law, exceptions that allow Russian imports will cease by 2028. Centrus plans to transition away from its trading business as it stands up its domestic enrichment capacity. The vast majority of the enriched uranium produced in Ohio will be sold on the commercial market and potentially for export, Vexler said. "I would certainly aim for us to not only backfill sort of the vacancy that the Russians are creating, but I also hope that we're going to gain market share, both in the LEU and in the HALEU market," Vexler said. But this will require some level of government support given the state-owned competition, he said. Congress has passed $3.4 billion to support domestic enrichment and reduce U.S. dependence particularly on Russia. Centrus is one of several companies competing for the funding. "We've always said that it has to be a public-private partnership," Vexler said. "We've been raising our own funds. We've been raising our own financing. We will contribute significantly to this, but we have to have government support." "There is a path here where we could have a prosperous, commercially competitive American industry," he said.
