US Equities Hit Records; Stock Soars on Moon Landing

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Good morning, I'm Nathan Hager and I'm Amy Morris. Here are the stories we're following today.

Wall Street's going to close out the trading week following a powerful rally that has seen all three major indexes in this country close at all time highs. It is an artificial intelligence fueled rally, as Chip, Darling and Nvidia added two hundred and seventy seven billion dollars to its market value on Thursday.

That is the most in stock market history.

Cole Smeed, portfolio manager at Smeed Capital Management, warns, though this rally may be overdone.

There's a lot of risk out there.

If you took the old tech right, you took consumer discretion and you pulled out the tech companies there and communication service. You pulled out the tech companies and you put back the old tech together. This is way worse than dot com bubble that was twenty eight percent of the S and P. This is forty five.

Investor Colesmith notes the S and P five hundred registered its twelfth record close of the year, putting it up nearly twenty four percent since late October.

The huge rally in Nvidia shares has catapulted chief executive officer Jensen Wong to new heights. He is on the verge of becoming one of the twenty richest people in the world. Huang's wealth jumped nine point six million to more than sixty nine billion dollars yesterday. It's again that Leip rogged him ahead of Charles Coke to twenty first place on the Bloomberg Billionaire's Index.

Well Amy.

The rally inequity markets comes despite more FED officials preaching patients. When it comes to rate cuts, Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker says now is not the appropriate time to cut.

Yes, I do believe that we may be in a position to see rates decrease this year, but I would caution anyone from looking for it right now and right away. We have time to get it right as we must.

Philadelphia Fed chief Patrick Harker does not vote on monetary policy this year, but FED Vice Chair Philip Jefferson and Governor Lisa Cook are also saying they want more evidence that inflation's headed back to the two percent target before lowering borrowing costs.

Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers is warning that financial markets are underestimating the risks of political and social turmoil around the world. He says many aren't taking populist policies, and they're downsides seriously.

Nationalist populist policy, both at home in terms of the rule of law, internationally in terms of protectionism and restrictions on flows of goods, flows of capital, flows of people. But they are very real risks and they seem to me to be insufficiently priced.

In Summer, who is a paid contributor to Bloomberg TV, has called becoming us election the most consequential vote since World War Two.

I mean, we're learning more this morning about that widespread service outage that affected tens of thousands of AT and T customers. The wireless carrier now says it was caused by its network improvement efforts.

We get the details now from Bloomberg's at Baxter.

AT and T is now saying that the outage was caused by work being done to expand the network coverage. It says incorrect processes were followed. It says not a cyber attack already in process, though investigations by a number of federal agencies. Henness spokesman John Kirby.

DHS and the FBI are looking into this as well, working with the tech industry and these network providers.

Tracking service website down Detector says more than one and a half million outage reports were made. ED Baxter Bloomberg Radio.

All right, thank you, Ed.

Meanwhile, the private space race has reached a new milestone today.

For the first time in more than a half century, the US has returned to the Moon today for the first time in the history of humanity. A commercial company, an American company, launched and led the voyage up there.

That was NASA administrator Bill Nelson. After the lunar lander owned by Intuitive Machines touched down on the lunar's surface, former NASA astrobiologist Keith Cohing says the lander, nicknamed Odysseus, still has a lot to tell us.

The most exciting thing will be the images of either the landing or from the lander. That's always the eye candy. That's because it's like universal, people say, yeah, oh, look at that.

Yeah.

Second of all, the importance of it will be the ability of it to survey the area around it and understand, you know again, waters, the regular other things like that.

Former NASA employee Keith Cohing says Odysseus will need to tick off all the boxes before lunar Landers send astronauts back to the moon. Intuitive machines stock is off like a rocket after that landing. It's up more than forty six percent in early trading.

All right, let's turn to geopolitics now, Amy Tomorrow marks two years since Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Today, the Biden administration will announce its biggest sanctions package yet against Vladimir Putin's war machine. The Treasury Department says more than five hundred people and entities will be on the sanctions list. President Biden met yesterday with the widow and daughter of Russian opposition leader Alexi Navani.

As you stated the obvious, he was a man of incredible courage and it's amazing how his wife and daughter, immy, I do that.

And the President spoke after that meeting in San Francisco. Today, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is leading a delegation to Ukraine. He wants to reassure President Vladimir Zelenski. More usaid is coming. That sixty billion dollar package remains stalled on Capitol Hill.

Turning back to the markets now, Reddit filed for an initial public offering, revealing the social media platform's shrinking losses and helping to propel a resurgence in US listings. The San Francisco based company and what is said to be one of the biggest listings of the US, filed with the SEZ more than two years after first submitting its plan confidentially.

In Asia, China's home price has declined at a slower pace for both new and existing units last month. Bloomberg day Break Asia anchor Brian Curtis has more on that from Hong Kong.

It's the first sign of improvement in ten months. New home prices in seventy cities dropped zero point three to seven percent last month from December. It was slightly better than a drop then of zero point four to five percent. The second head market also improved, with price declines narrowing to zero point six to eight percent. No one's breaking out the champagne here, but it may mean the worst is over in China's property crisis. In Okong, Brian Curtis Bloomberg.

Radio Time Now to take a look at some of the other stories making news in New York and around the world, and for that we are joined by Bloomberg's Michael Barr.

We made it to Friday, Michael.

Hooray, thank you. Nathan. New York State's attorney general says she is exploring all options against a Long Island count's executive order batting transgender athletes from competing in women's and girls' sports in county facilities. Nassau County Executive Bruce Blickman announced the new band, saying it will take effect immediately.

If a league or team and identifies themselves or advertises themselves to be a girls or women's league or team, then biological males should not be competing in those leagues.

Blakeman called it a form of bullying from people born as biological males, though he did not provide examples of it in Nassau County. Meanwhile, protesters demonstrated outside the county office building. They slammed the Nassau Republican's action as illegal and discriminatory. Katie Hawklin is with a Long Island Progressive Coalition.

I am floored and horrified by this executive order.

Protesters also accused the county executive of playing politics with lives of vulnerable transgender kids. The judge who has been presiding over Donald Trump's New York civil fraud trial is denying the former president's request for a month long delay of the penalty the judge set last week. Judge Arthur and Goren already ruled that Trump committed fraud and ordered him to pay three hundred and fifty five million dollars

I do not know what they do in Arizona, but I know that here in this county, New York County, we routinely seek and get remands.

She means, the person's in custody in our murder case.

Global News twenty four hours a day, whenever you want it with Bloomberg News Now. I'm Michael Barr. This is Bloomberg.

Nathan, Michael, thank you.

Time now for the bloom Sports update brought to you by Trice State. How do you hear's John stash.

Out, Thanks Nathan, good night for the inhabitants of Madison Square, Guard and Road wins to the Knickson Rangers. Knicks in Philadelphia won ten ninety six. They led by twenty six saw the league get cut to seven, but they held on to end of four game.

Moving straight.

The new nick boy on Bob Danovic took six three point shots and made them all eighteen points for both Josh Hart and Precious at Chua, they combined for twenty three rebounds. Tymee Maxi led Philly with thirty five six Ers are struggling without Joel mb They've lost ten of the last thirteen. Big game Tomorrow night at the guard of the Knicks and the league leading Celtics, who won in Chicago won twenty nine to one. Twelve Boston is forty four and twelve. Nets got blown out in Toronto

At New Jersey.

Pair of goals for Alexei la Frontier, three assists for our Timmy Paner and he's got forty six on the season. Thirty nine saves for Igor, assists Durk and he also assisted on a Ranger goal. If they win tomorrow afternoon in Philly, the Rangers will have tied the club record for longest winning streak ever. Islanders got shut out in Saint Louis. The Bruins lost in overtime at Calgary. The Capital's won at Tampa Bay.

Yankees had a.

Busy off season, bringing in Juan Soto, Alex Verdugo, Marcus Stroman. They may not be done, said to be talking to the still unsigned free agent pitcher Blake Snell. The Yankee owner is hal Steinbrenner.

I'm not going to get into free agents.

I'm just going to tell you that we continue to look at a lot of different options, and you know, given where we are payroll wise, any addition to the club is going to be a costly one. But I'm still willing to consider anything that comes my way. Anything cashing his team brings my way.

If the Yanks were to join Snell with Garrett Coley, will have both the cy young winners from last season. The Mets will start the season with code I Senga on the injured list. He would have been the likely opening day pitcher. Short dot Tim Anderson signed with Miami. Ex Yankee g R. Shell As signed with Detroit. The Pirates extend at Ash pitcher Mitch Keller, John Stashia.

We're Bloomberg Sports.

Okay, John, thanks, so maybe don't I get right back to this market now. We're going to be ending the week get all time highs for the S and P, the Dow, and the Nasdaq on the back of that magnificent outlook we got earlier this week from Nvidia. How much further can this renewed AI bowl run. Let's bring in Daniel Morris for some analysis, Chief market strategist at BNP Pariba.

Daniel, thank you for being with us.

We're watching a little bit of a pullback from the big time rally that we saw yesterday. When you have the S and P at end of your price targets. For many analysts already, I guess the question's got to be asked, is this an overshoot?

Well, I don't think anyone would dare to say they can accurately estimate whether it is.

I mean, we know where it's such a nascent stage even.

Now with AI.

Try to predict what the implications are going to be for corporate profits, I don't know if it really is, not to say, worth the effort, but I think we need to think about the long term potential here, which is what the market's pricing in. I mean, go back to when the Internet first became ubiquitous in the world. I mean, most economist estimate it took a decade for companies really to be able to leverage that.

So we're just at the beginning.

It may, in retrospect turn out that these estimates are too high, who knows, but for now, I don't think that's what the market is thinking about.

Well, we are really getting into this debate, though, aren't we about whether what the differences are between the dot com rally from the late nineties and this AI rally that we're seeing now. What kind of differences do you see? Is this different from what we saw back in the nineties.

We certainly, I think in some important ways.

I mean, hopefully investors did learn lessons from the dot com bubble and looking at revenues as opposed to sales, etc. But it certainly doesn't seem to be a worry here. I think in companies center for reporting, our reporting real numbers, so that.

Profitability is there and clearly is rising.

I think that the challenge is going to be and I think perhaps what we need to think about is perhaps to look beyond as everyone discusses maybe if since seven or even the tech sector, because arguably, in the long run, the impact of AI may well be felt more in non technology sectors, as it gives industrial companies and so indiscretionary stable companies the ability to increase our profitability, increase our sales without necessarily having to rely on what

That's a really long term view, isn't it. But is there a way that we can see this rally that we're under now start to get more breadth and what would that look like?

Well, if we want to think about breath, that we need to go back to what the outlook is for the FED, because behind all of this growth, not just some corporate profits, but the US in general, you know, is a worry about the outlook for inflation and then the response from the FED. So one of the key things over the last month or so, as the market has taken out the cuts that they had put in for the FED this year, the markets really have just shrugged that off because on the other hand, the growth

And to your point, we are hearing from a lot more FED officials preaching patients when it comes to the outlook for interest rate cuts. In our last thirty seconds here, do you have any concerns about the growth picture for this country and what that could mean for the policy path later on this year?

I think it's concerns about the outlook relative to expectations, because now expectations are so high we appreciate, you know, there's just a whole lot of good news that's in the market, so you see any disappointment, it seems more likely from here if there is a surprise, it's going to be a negative surprise that e growth turns out

This should be slowing growth.

It will eventually slow growth, and we don't want to dismiss that risk to the market.

This is Bloomberg day Break Today, your morning brief on the stories making news from Wall Street to Washington and beyond.

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I'm Nathan Hager.

And I'm Abe Morris. Join us again tomorrow morning for all the news you need to start your day right here on Bloomberg Daybreak