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Jensen Huang, chief executive officer of Nvidia Corp., during a Bloomberg Television interview at the Nvidia AI summit in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2025.

Kent Nishimura | Bloomberg | Getty Images

This is CNBC’s Morning Squawk newsletter. Subscribe here to receive future editions in your inbox.

Here are five key things investors need to know to start the trading day:

1. Hand over fist

Nvidia took center stage yesterday — literally and figuratively. In addition to inking deals with multiple well-known companies, CEO Jensen Huang made a major domestic production announcement during the chip titan’s technology conference.

Here’s the full rundown:

  • Nokia said Nvidia is taking a $1 billion stake in the company. U.S.-listed shares of the Finnish networking firm surged more than 22%, their best day since 2021, following the announcement.
  • Eli Lilly and Nvidia announced a partnership to build a supercomputer and artificial intelligence factory for the pharmaceutical industry aimed at speeding up drug discovery and development.
  • EV maker Lucid said it’s using Nvidia’s technology in its push to become the first automaker to provide highly advanced self-driving capabilities — what it calls “mind-off” driving — within the next couple of years.
  • Speaking at the company’s GTC conference in Washington, D.C., Huang said Nvidia’s fastest AI chips are now being manufactured in Arizona. The Blackwell GPUs were previously being made in Taiwan.
  • Shares of Nvidia jumped 5% yesterday, helping drive U.S. stocks to another day of all-time highs. The gains put the chipmaker — the largest company in the world by market cap — on course to become the first company to hit the $5 trillion valuation mark.
  • Follow live markets updates here.

2. Decision day

Jerome Powell, chairman of the US Federal Reserve, during the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank Fall meetings at the IMF headquarters in Washington, DC, US, on Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025.

Kent Nishimura | Bloomberg | Getty Images

The Federal Reserve will announce its penultimate interest rate decision for 2025 at 2 p.m. ET today, and traders see a cut as a foregone conclusion: Fed funds futures are pricing in a 99.9% chance of a 25 basis point cut, according to the CME’s FedWatch tool.

Still, investors will keep an eye on whether any Fed officials break with the majority, and whether Fed chair Jerome Powell’s post-announcement press conference provides any clues into the future path on monetary policy. Respondents to CNBC’s October Fed Survey also expressed concern about how the central bank is analyzing the economy with some data on hold thanks to the government shutdown.

3. What’s in a name?

Sam Altman, chief executive officer of OpenAI Inc., during a media tour of the Stargate AI data center in Abilene, Texas, US, on Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2025.

Kyle Grillot | Bloomberg | Getty Images

OpenAI officially wrapped up its restructuring into a nonprofit yesterday. The startup’s nonprofit, now named the OpenAI Foundation, has a controlling stake worth around $130 billion in OpenAI’s for-profit business, which is called OpenAI Group PBC. (PBC stands for public benefit corporation.)

The buzzy AI startup also confirmed that longtime backer Microsoft holds an investment in the for-profit arm that amounts to $135 billion. As CNBC’s Ashley Capoot notes, that’s equivalent to about 27% of the company on an as-converted diluted basis.

Microsoft is set to report earnings after the bell today, along with Big Tech peers Alphabet and Meta.

4. One month in

The U.S. Capitol building, weeks into the continuing U.S. government shutdown, in Washington on Oct. 27, 2025.

Kylie Cooper | Reuters

The federal government shutdown is officially one month old — and Washington is feeling the heat.

A group of more than two dozen states sued President Donald Trump’s administration yesterday to maintain benefits tied to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as SNAP, which provides food stamps. The Agriculture Department, which oversees SNAP, has said the benefits will end this weekend.

A federal judge yesterday also extended a temporary ban on firing federal workers during the shutdown. Air traffic controller union officials meanwhile said some of their members have picked up second jobs to bring in money while they work without pay.

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5. Flight status

A Boeing 777X sign in the Boeing Co. booth at the Aircraft Interiors Expo (AIX) in Hamburg, Germany, on Tuesday, April 8, 2025.

Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Shares of Boeing are slightly down in premarket trading this morning after the planemaker reported earnings for its third quarter. The company returned to cash-positive territory for the first time since 2023 but logged a $4.9 billion charge tied to delays of its 777X plane.

Boeing — which has been plagued by manufacturing and supply chain issues, as well as the fallout of two crashes — is on track for its most deliveries since 2018. CEO Kelly Ortberg, who took Boeing’s helm in 2024, said in a staff note that “there’s still more work to do to advance our development programs” but “we’re seeing positive signs across our business.”

The Daily Dividend

CNBC’s Kif Leswing, Annika Kim Constantino, Mike Wayland, Sean Conlon, Ashley Capoot, Jeff Cox, Kevin Breuninger, Dan Mangan and Leslie Josephs contributed to this report. Josephine Rozzelle edited this edition.

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Wall Street is too fixated on the high valuations of tech and speculative stocks, Cramer says

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Wall Street is too fixated on the high valuations of tech and speculative stocks, Cramer says

Some stocks deserve a higher premium, says Jim Cramer

CNBC’s Jim Cramer suggested Wall Street is too fixated the on large valuations of certain tech and speculative stocks, chalking up Tuesday’s market-wide decline in part to Palantir‘s nearly 8% loss despite strong earnings results.

“The larger issue is that we’re at the moment where money managers, when asked if the market’s too expensive, immediately think of the high-flying speculative stocks or those in the high-growth artificial intelligence column, and so they warn you away from the entire asset class,” he said. “These guys don’t think of the other 334 stocks in the S&P 500 that sell for less than 23 times earnings — those aren’t outrageous.”

Declines in Palantir and other artificial intelligence companies helped bring stocks down on Tuesday, with the S&P 500 losing 1.17%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average shedding 0.53% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite sinking 2.04%. Palantir managed to beat the estimates and offer solid guidance, citing growth in the artificial intelligence business. But investors worried broadly about the huge valuations of tech giants that have been leading the market to new heights.

Investors who saw Palantir as their “north star” were alarmed by its big pullback after a great quarter, according to Cramer. The fears triggered “a raft of selling” as these investors questioned the market as a whole, he continued.

Palantir can be a tough stock to classify, Cramer suggested, saying it straddles two different market segments — one centered around tech and artificial intelligence, and another focused on speculative stocks. He noted that the data-driven software company is very lucrative and fast growing, and it “defies easy description.” He listed off a number of its business arms — including its work as a defense contractor and as a consultant for companies looking to modernize and improve profitability.

To Cramer, it’s reasonable to consider that there’s nothing wrong with Palantir, and it just needs “to cool off in order to grow into its market capitalization.”

“Sure, there are indeed some stocks that are visibly overvalued, and when you pull them apart, many of these valuations can be justified, some can’t,” he said. “I think the Magnificent Seven can be justified on the pace of the growth that’s ahead of them. Same, ultimately, with Palantir.”

Nearly a million workers are unpaid during shutdown, Wall Street can't ignore it, says Jim Cramer

Jim Cramer’s Guide to Investing

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Bitcoin retail investor at ‘max desperation,’ says Bitwise CIO, but crypto winter not coming

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Bitcoin retail investor at 'max desperation,' says Bitwise CIO, but crypto winter not coming

'I think crypto market is close to a bottom': Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan

Bitcoin‘s fall below $100,000, its lowest level since June, has sparked fears that the worst is yet to come, another so-called crypto winter (a prolonged bear market in cryptocurrencies) that the market wrestles with every time digital currencies sell off hard in a short period of time.

But Bitwise chief investment officer Matt Hougan says that while the retail investor is in “max desperation” mode, he sees that as a reason to bet that a bottoming in crypto prices may materialize sooner rather than later. With Wall Street institutional investor and financial advisor support for bitcoin, and growth in crypto ETFs, he is even willing to go out on a limb and say that amid the heavy selling a new record high for bitcoin before the end of the year isn’t unreasonable.

“It’s almost a tale of two markets,” he said on CNBC’s “Crypto World” on Tuesday. “Crypto retail is in max desperation. We’ve seen leverage blowouts. … the market for sort of crypto native retail is just more depressed than I’ve ever seen it,” he said.

But Hougan believes more crypto trading will continue to shift into an institutionally driven market, “and interestingly, that market is still bullish,” he said.

“When I go out and speak to institutions or financial advisors, they’re still excited to allocate to an asset class that if you pan back and look over the course of a year, is still delivering very strong returns. So my view of the market is we have to get through this retail flush out. We have to hit bottom from a sentiment perspective. I think we’re very close to that,” he added.

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Price of bitcoin and ether over the past year.

The boom in crypto exchange-traded fund launches, including iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) and the Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC) and Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) is changing the investor composition, and while week-to-week flows into these ETFs have slowed since the second quarter of the year, “we continue to see strong inflows into bitcoin,” Hougan said.

He expects more support to materialize for crypto into the end of the year among financial advisors who will look past the current dip and see an “opportunity to show their clients that they understand where this market is going.”

Bitwise’s own Solana staking ETF (BSOL) brought in over $400 million in flows in its first week, he said, though it has sold off sharply in the recent crypto downturn, with a near 20% loss since its Oct. 28 debut.

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This chart is showing BSOL 5 days

Last week, Strategy CEO Michael Saylor told CNBC he thinks bitcoin could reach $150,000 by the end of the year, one among several recent bullish calls on crypto that for now at least look ill-timed. But Hougan said he doesn’t think it’s an outlandish call even as bitcoin hovers near a six-month low.

“I think bitcoin could easily end the year at new all-time highs,” Hougan said. “So that means getting north of about $125,000 up to $130,000. Whether we’ll get all the way to $150,000, we’ll have to see.”

“I do think the sellers are nearing exhaustion and the buyers are still relatively hungry. And when those two things sort of cross paths, again, I think we could end the year close to or at new all-time highs. And if we’re lucky, we’ll get to Saylor’s target as well,” he said.

Institutional investors, whom Hougan described as “more maybe even keeled about what’s going on at a fundamental level in crypto” will start to drive the market forward. “But we do have to finish this washout of retail sentiment … I think we’re closer to the end of that than the beginning, but … there always could be a little bit more downside.”

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Trump renominates Musk ally Jared Isaacman to run NASA months after withdrawal

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Trump renominates Musk ally Jared Isaacman to run NASA months after withdrawal

Jared Isaacman, U.S. President Donald Trump’s nominee to be administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) testifies during a Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 9, 2025.

Ken Cedeno | Reuters

President Donald Trump has renominated Jared Isaacman to run NASA after pulling his prior nomination months ago due to what the president called a “thorough review of prior associations.”

“Jared’s passion for Space, astronaut experience, and dedication to pushing the boundaries of exploration, unlocking the mysteries of the universe, and advancing the new Space economy, make him ideally suited to lead NASA into a bold new Era,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social on Tuesday.

Isaacman, who is friends with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, was originally picked to lead NASA in December, before Trump had even taken office. Isaacman is a billionaire who founded payments company Shift4 and has led two private spaceflights.

But Trump pulled the nomination in late May after a spat between the president and Musk, who had been leading a White House effort to slash the size of the federal government. Trump said at the time that he was withdrawing the pick because of Isaacman’s past associations, though he didn’t specify what those were. Some reports have suggested that it was a reference to Isaacman’s prior donations to Democrats.

Days after the withdrawal, Isaacman told Shift4 investors in a letter that his “brief stint in politics was a thrilling experience.” He also said that he was resigning as CEO of Shift4, which he founded in 1999 at age 16, and would assume the role of executive chairman. He had been planning to leave the company if his nomination was confirmed by the Senate. But it never got that far.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has been running NASA as interim head since July.

Isaacman still must go through the Senate confirmation process. The federal government has been shut down since the beginning of October, but the Senate is still able to confirm presidential nominees.

WATCH: Trump renominates Jared Isaacman to run NASA

Pres. Trump re-nominates fmr. Shift4 Payments CEO Jared Isaacman to be head of NASA

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