Inflation data, mid caps vs. small caps: Market Domination Overtime

Market Domination Overtime co-hosts Julie Hyman and Josh Lipton look back on the day's stock market moves after the closing bell.

Jill Carey Hall, senior US equity strategist at Bank of America Securities, comes on Market Domination Overtime to speak on the viability of mid cap stocks under tariffs.

Several Yahoo Finance reporters review the inflation data from April's Consumer Price Index (CPI) released this morning, and the various sectors inflation is still showing up in.

To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Domination Overtime here.

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There's the closing bell on Wall Street, and now it's market domination overtime sponsored by Tasty Trade. Jared Blick, are you going to be along in a moment to give us the details from today's session. I'll start with the major averages. The Dow, which was the loan decliner on the day of the three majors and actually falling to its lows by the end of the session here, seeing a leg down in the last, uh, really 15 minutes or so of trading. Now we saw a lot of headlines coming out of Saudi Arabia today.Where President Trump is, they're talking about some new investment announcements in the US. A lot of executives are there as well at a conference. So we've seen some announcements coming up, but not enough to help the Dow today, which, as we talked about, was pulled down in part by UnitedHealth and other healthcare companies. The S&P 500 still higher on the day, a little bit of a baby move down there at the end of the day as well, but not anywhere near the lows of the session, still up by about 0.75%.And the NASDAQ ditto here up by 1.6%. A lot of strength in large cap tech today. Jared's got a closer look at today's action. Hey

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Jared. Thank you, Julie. I'd like to sit in appreciation of the VIX right now, which has declined below the 18 level, and it's pretty much stayed there most of the day. And just check out the year today chart, see where we've come all the way up from 60 intraday down to below 20. So this is a positive improvement. Another thing that caught my eye today.Just did a rather long segment on the positivity, the bullishness of the 10-year T note yield and the dollar moving in tandem over the last few days, but today they're split. The note is up about 4 basis points, and we have the dollar moving down about 0.1%. Nevertheless, it has been risk gone today, so it hasn't made a difference today. But that's something I will be taking into consideration and looking out for in the near future. Here is healthcare.As you said, Julie, healthcare taking a dip. United Health leading the way down, but also seeing weakness in some of the other defensive sectors like staples and real estate and utilities over here. Matters are cyclical, but the other cyclical names largely in the green led by tech. And then after that you have energy discretionary communication Services. So the mag 7 group really flying high today. Tesla up almost 5%.So is Broadcom. Nvidia up over 5.5%. New orders from Saudi Arabia. Apple up 1%, and the list goes on. Also seeing some positive development in some of the names in the transports. Haven't talked about Uber in a while, but that has been hitting record highs, and that is up 52% year to date and that is the largest component in the transports which have a ways to catch up to the Dow. So in case you're interested in Dow theory, well, there you have it.

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Thank you, Jared. We are still watching our tariff policy is playing out when it comes to equities and markets. It's something our next guest spends a lot of time thinking about and strategizing about for clients. We're joined now by Jill Carey Hall, senior US equity strategist and head of US midcap strategy at Bank of America Securities. Jill, it is good to see you, so maybe dig right in, Jill, into your specialty and walk us through why you think midcaps still preferable to small caps here.

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Thanks for having me. Yeah, I mean, I think we've, we've obviously seen a bounce in, in the Russell 2000, but when you step back, I mean, the, the tariff agreement between the US and China is certainly a positive, but even before tariffs were in play, we were cautious in the Russell 2000 small cap index because, you know, these stocks have still been struggling to get out of the earnings recession that they.We've been in since 2023, um, tariffs, while there is less incremental risk, are, are still in play and, and there's still a lot of uncertainty and, and obviously there is still a 30%, uh, tariff rate in terms of China. So smaller companies have thinner margins, so they will get hit harder in terms of the earnings impact from tariffs. Um, so when you're within that, that's midcap size segment.Mid-caps are, you know, less impacted by by tariff risk. We've also seen, you know, cleaner balance sheets in the midcap size segment. If we're in an environment where the Fed stays on hold, which is what our economists are expecting for this year, um, smaller stocks have a lot more refinancing risks. So, uh, we, we've also seen trends this earnings season where, you know, corporate sentiment on earnings calls has still been much more negative for, for smaller stocks. So we do think midcaps offer a better risk reward.But, but I think we're in an environment where selectivity is key, you know, just buying or selling the Russell 2000 isn't maybe the best way to invest. We think there's still a lot of opportunities within small and mid caps, you know, on a selective basis given where valuations are, but, but focusing on the stocks that, you know, maybe have stronger margins given tariff risk, maybe that have stronger estimate revisions in an environment where estimates have been coming down, these are the areas we focus on.

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Um, and Jill, um, it's interesting that as we get these changing tariff rates, you guys have to redo your numbers on the effect that it's gonna have on earnings per share. So where do you stand now and compare and contrast what it's going to mean for S&P 500 earnings per share versus the smaller caps.

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Yeah, so if we, if we look at the, the latest agreement and the, the 30% on, on China and, and the, the, the 10%, uh, in terms of the reverse, then, you know, we, we think for the S&P 500, this should be about a 5 to 6% hit to operating earnings, um, so much less than than prior to the agreement, um, whereas for, for small caps, we, we think the impact could be, you know, about.Three times as much given that these stocks do have thinner margins so it is harder for them in terms of the tariff impact and a lot of small caps are, you know, less, less nimble than than some larger companies to be able to as easily, you know, shift um supply chains and

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sourcing. Joe, you know, we talk about tariffs, but tax policy, of course, front and center as well. How could that affect and influence and impact, Joe, the, the sectors you know so well?

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Well, I think, you know, I mean, a notable omission from, from the, the tax proposals this week was a lower corporate tax rate. So, you know, yet to be seen if that will be included in in future proposals, but that was something that many investors were bullish on earlier in the year. Um, the drop in the corporate tax rate was something that benefited, you know, small caps in particular last time around this time, you know, originally many, um, you know, news sources say.Be for domestic manufacturers only um so potentially a smaller benefit but but still a benefit, but that was left out of the uh the proposal this week um I think in terms of some of the other proposals that that we saw in terms of tax policy certainly some benefits for the for the lower income consumer um which could have implications for you know retailers in areas that that cater to, uh, you know, lower end consumption, um.You know, if we see an expiration or a phasing out of some of the, the clean energy, clean vehicle tax credits, uh, you know, more negative for, for some of the, the clean energy stocks, but, um, some of the, the other provisions could be positive for domestic manufacturers in the US. So, um, a lot of moving parts and a lot of puts and takes, but that's a reason we think this year is.Gonna be a year where you know stock selection is is important

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um, Jill among the stocks that people should be selecting, should it still be large cap technology right? we've seen, uh, what now that risk on sentiment has come back those stocks are definitely leading participating at the very least leading at at most, um, and so is that still an area that people should be looking at?

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Right. We, we actually like, you know, large cap value, some of the cyclical areas, some of the, um, dividend yielding areas. So, you know, we, we've been overweight utilities, for example, um, which has sort of been this, you know, steady return sector where, you know, the long-term return on the S&P utilities sector, when you look at total return has been pretty close to that of the NASDAQ, uh, you know, over time.And we've been, we've been underweight tech, um, you know, certainly there, there have been some shifts and, you know, positioning in certain sectors when we look at, um, you know, healthcare versus tech, for instance, you know, healthcare has grown rather extended in fund managers positioning relative to tech, um, but, but more broadly, you know, we're in an environment where a lot of the Magnificent Seven stocks, some of theTech stocks have been spending very heavily on capex, um, and, and the ones that aren't maybe necessarily able to to monetize, um, their investments right away may not be as rewarded. We've found in our quantitative work that that heavy capex spenders do tend to underperform over time so typically you wanna own the the capex beneficiaries rather than the stocks that are spending on capex.Um, so certainly some opportunities within tech. There have been stocks that have been able to become more value and dividend stocks a long time ago. Man never thought that some of these big tech stocks would pay dividends, and now they are, which make them more attractive to income investors. Um, but, but if we're in an environment of continued trade tensions, peak globalization, they'll certainly be some longer, uh, secular headwinds for tech.

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Jill, thanks so much, appreciate it.

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Thank you.

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The latest consumer inflation data revealing a surprise for new vehicle prices in April. For more, let's get to Yahoo Finance's Pras Subramanian. Surprise.

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Yes, the CPI data a little bit, a little bit a surprise for me in that, uh, prices in April were flat month over month and up only 0.0% year over year. I thought that we might see some tariff impact there with those prices, but it seems to me what happened was, and I think what the data shows is that.Inventory was dipped into we saw that these uh dealerships and automakers had had bulked up on their supply flooded the dealer lots with cars, sold off a lot of that, sold off some of that, uh, pre-tariff or non-tariff inventory, and basically what happened is, uh, uh, supply went from 70 days to 60 days or so thereabouts in that month, which is kind of a big move for one month and shows that they do have some padding, but then at some point when does that, you know, end up going.Way, uh, also spoke to saw a KBB actually saw that ATPs or average transaction prices at the dealer level were up 2.5% actually, and I asked them why do you think there's a disparity between what you guys are, are seeing what CPI is reporting, and they say that some of the CPI data is a trailing indicator and they have more different data sets, probably a bit more newer information at the lots. So they're saying that the trend is actually slightly uptick here in prices and that might, you know, that might actually.if we don't get any relief, I know we saw the UK trade deal with the British cars getting that little 10% tariff that helps. We'll see if that can extends to the Japanese car makers which we've seen them are suffering right now with that.

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Let's talk Honda for a second because that this number, I did a double take on this number this morning. I thought I was reading this wrong. Honda forecasts a nearly 60% profit decrease in the current financial year. What, what is going on there?

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So they're talking about how they might take a $4 billion hit to operating profit because of tariffs, right? And they can mitigate about a billion dollars of that, so about $3 billion but, but that, that winds up being half almost sorry, a 60% hit to operating profit overall for the year, uh, just from the tariff impact and, and some headwinds from, from, uh, currency. So that's a big problem for them. We've seen that with, you know, Toyota was gonna have $1.2 billion dollar hit in two months. Uh, these are companies that are importing.Not just from Japan but also Canada and Mexico, so they're getting almost a triple whammy there because they have, they do operations in America but not as much

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as on your point, Nissan for Reuters operating profit in the 12 months to March, a decline of nearly 90% from the previous year. You know,

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Nissan has their own other issues that they've been dealing with, you know, they've been trying to obviously merge with Honda. That was one of the big stories from last year or late early this year. It didn't didn't work out for them.They've had a lot of problems with older products, uh, managed and structure changed new CEO. That's all been happening on the backdrop of this, uh, potential, you know, whammy of tariffs for them too, um, so Nissan, yeah, that, that's a different story, but, but you're right, it's the Japanese automakers that are really struggling, and that's a big part of their backbone. The industrial backbone is auto in that country. So it's, it's even more, uh, crucial for them to get this right.

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Well, we'll see if they get any relief. Thank you so much press.Well, overall, apparel inflation saw a decline in April. Tariff impacts could show up in the coming months. Yahoo Finance's Brooke DiPalma joining us now with more.

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Hi Brooke. Hey, good afternoon to you both. Certainly tariffs have not been reflected when it comes to apparel and footwear within today's CPI prints. That's largely because we already had the inventory in store, both apparel and footwear. They saw their biggest decline since, well, only January, since 3 months ago and.are highly volatile, but if you take a closer look and you look at apparel, they declined 0.2% and actually in March it saw an increase. And what I'm hearing from experts over the course of today is that that increase back in March was likely caused by that pull forward that we saw ahead of those tariffs going into effect. And that's also seen within footwear. We saw a decline in prices for the month of April, down 0.5% in March we saw less.Of a decline of 0.1%. Now KPMG US sector leader told me, quote, We're selling inventory that's already in stock with prices that were pre-tariffs as we look further into the summer and maybe mostly fall, you're going to start seeing the impact of tariffs on those products that are going to come in later. Now another expert telling me that we could expect to see some peak strong prints during the summer.Core goods that's including vehicles could increase between 5.1 and even cent increase, and that's largely because we've been talking about this for months. It's this flow through it's first the fruits and vegetables, then it's the apparel, then you know, electronics and other, you know, bigger, bigger areas as well. And so apparel getting hit a bit later, not reflected today.

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So against this backdrop against this environment.What are analysts saying their top picks are? What are they telling clients? Yeah,

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right now top picks include companies like Crocs, even Abercrombie and Fitch. Others say that Nike is a strong buy here and the reason why is, get this one analyst saying Crocs actually they do have a lot of exposure to China, but they told me that because of the fact that they're just a rubber molded shoe and they don't have the complexities.Of a sneaker that they could actually benefit in this sort of environment, this high tariff environment. Abercrombie and Fitch and Nike have moved a lot of their exposure out of China, so that could bode well for them. In addition to that, uh, Nike is, is, is still the biggest sneaker company in the world and so many experts, many analysts in the street telling me what Nike does. Others will follow, and so that could be a good buying opportunity right now as well. All right,

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thank you, Brooke, appreciate it. Stick around, much more market domination over time still to come.

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Apple stock rallying after the US and China agreed to reduce tariffs for 90 days. Our next guest closely follows the interconnection between Apple and China. Joining us now is Patrick McGee, San Francisco correspondent at the Financial Times and author of Apple in China The Capture of the World's Greatest Company. Thanks for being here, Patrick. My pleasure. So it's a good time to talk to you. It's a good time for your book to come out because obviously there's a lot of focus on Apple in China right now. So, um, there has been.Talk about the company diversifying its supply chain more, particularly to India. Yeah. Do you think how, how far can thatgo?

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So it's basically a message that's being orchestrated by Apple that lacks substance. So what's moving to India is assembly. So if you think there's 1000 steps in making an iPhone, the final step will now be done in India from phones that are going to the US. So congratulations Apple. You, you will escape the tariffs that are on China. Have you de-risked from China in any sense? Not, not one iota.

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So Apple might push back Patrick and they might say hold on, we are, we're we're supplying from more than 50 different countries and we're sourcing products and or components from China and India but also Malaysia and Thailand and Vietnam and we just told the street we can fulfill.US iPhone demand from India, it does sound more global, more diversified though.

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No, that's basically nonsense. All roads lead through China. So if you think of how big the iPhone assembly is, right? I mean, we're talking about going from 5 million phones in 2007 to a quarter billion phones by 2015. Nobody in their right mind running a just in time.Production scheme is going to have parts coming in just in time from 50 countries so there's always this misleading graphics that have different suppliers maybe they're Korean, maybe they're Japanese, and it shows a little flag and says like, oh these components are coming from all these places. Those are mostly multinationals that are set up in China. So yeah, they get the little Korean flag, they get the little American flag, but by and large those are American or Korean companies that are doing things in China.

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So Patrick, if the, if China has avoided the worst of the tariff rates, if this deal sticks or if there is another deal that lowers the tariff rate.Why is it a problem for Apple to be so indexed to China? Yeah, so

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my concern is not that of a shareholder, it's that of a citizen.I should probably know I'm a Canadian citizen, but nevertheless, the point still stands, right? So the novel argument that I take in my book is that China didn't offer capabilities and tech competence to Apple. That is not why Apple went there. Um, they offered abundant cheap labor and tailor-made policies to lure in foreign capital. They did this for everybody, but Apple took advantage of what was possible better than anybody else, so they built the tech competence in China by literally.Sending, um, you know, plane loads of engineers, America's finest coming out of Caltech, Stanford, MIT for the last 25 years to train not dozens, hundreds of factories across China, not just Foxconn, we're talking 4 tiers down in the supply chain, OK, um, so China has become the BMF in manufacturing that it is because Apple's influence on the country has been like that of the Marshall Plan.

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But you could argue they couldn't have done that anywhere else.You might be able to arguebecause of sheer numbers,

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right? Well, in 2013, Apple has this political awakening period where Xi Jinping comes comes comes in power, and there's sort of a new sheriff in town, uh, mentality and Apple sort of learns to, uh, speak the local language and ingratiate itself with provincial and federal officials. It's also the same year that they decide to start buying back their shares and as viewers might know they buy about $100 billion worth of of their own shares each year, an absurd.Amount of money equivalent to the top 6 or 7 Wall Street banks in terms of how much they spend on buybacks. If Apple instead decided to build resiliency into their supply chain and was spending half of that figure on building resiliency in places like India, perhaps in places like Mexico, I mean you could have had the consolidation that they're claiming to do now into India 1213 years ago and actually Apple would be in a great position now. So this is where things get a little bit personal because.You know, if Tim Cook is the guy, the buck stops with him for building the world's most sophisticated supply chain. Great, I give Tim Cook all the credit for that. But if the problem is that all he put all his eggs in one basket and then continue to double down as that basket revealed itself to be an authoritarian surveillance state, the buck still stops with Tim Cook.

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If you'reaware of this issue, Patrick, and it was this kind of existential issue, then Cook would be aware of this issue.Um, and I was talking to an Apple analyst and I asked him why he's still bullish long term, and he said, you know, I agree there's this sort of issues and one of them in the supply chain he brought up, but I said, why are you still bullish then? And he said, because of the install base and I think they have an install base like know what they have fans all over the world, billions of devices, and they're loyal and they're locked in. His point being that Apple is unique in that sense in that cooking company have time.Years as he put it, to figure out some of these issues unlike other rivals and peers. What do you, what do you make of that argument?

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So first of all, I agree with all of that and where this story came from was that as a reporter I got uncomfortably bullish about Apple in 2022 because I was looking at the sort of steady accretion from Android to iOS and particularly generationally, like our generation is 50/50 Android to to uh iOS.The next generation in America is 9 out of 10 high schoolers have an iPhone, right? And the blue bubble lock in and everything like that is testament to how the company can continue growing. So in that sense I'm massively bullished.

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Did youwork with Apple on this? Did they participate?

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No, not at all. I'm, I'm very familiar on a first name basis with lots of Apple PR people. I would compare them to intelligence agents to a foreign country. They exist to extract information. They're not there to help.You they're there to pretend to help you and so I couldn't give them the window that you usually like as a reporter you give Apple 48 hours, you give them 72 hours you say here are the claims, no surprise policy this is what I'm gonna do. I submitted this manuscript before obviously some revisions last September. I could not give Apple 8 months to get their ducks in a row to respond, to build a smear campaign, whatever it is they're gonna do that it was just.Untenable, and I spoke to other authors who wrote Apple books and they said, you know, Apple stonewalls are not very helpful, and I didn't really need to be told that. I already knew that. Patrick,

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it's good to have you on the show and congrats on the book. Thank you so much.Time now for to watch Wednesday, May 14th, sponsored by Tasty Trade, starting off on the earnings front. We're getting some more reporting from names including Cisco and Core weave in the afternoon. Cisco announcing results for the third quarter after the markets closed. Analysts not expecting the tariff overhang to weigh down the company's quarter. They do see strong demand, especially for AI-related cloud services and data center equipment, to drive sales inQ3.

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And then there's Core weave, the AI cloud computing company, reporting first.Quarter earnings. It'll be the first time posting earnings since it became a public company back in March. Analysts will focus on Cory's near-term spending plans and demand for its AI infrastructure. Investors will also be listening for any commentary about how the company plans to grow beyond its heavy reliance on revenue from Microsoft.

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And finally, another round of Fed commentary that's coming throughout the day. That's coming after today's consumer price index did come in slightly cooler than expected and given an early glimpse at the tariff impact the economy.

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That'll do it for today's market domination over time. Be sure to come back tomorrow at 3 p.m. Eastern for all of your coverage leading up to and after the closing bell. But

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don'tgo anywhere on the other side of the break, it's asking for a trend. Got to come for the next half hour with the latest and greatest market looming stories so you can get ahead of the themes affecting your money. Stay tuned.