00:00 Speaker A

Now time for some of today's trending tickers. We're watching Google, BlackRock and State Street. First up, Google committing $25 billion to build out AI data centers across the largest US electrical grid, PJM. The tech giant also announcing a $3 billion deal with Brookfield Asset Management to modernize two hydropower plants in Pennsylvania. Uh Brook Depalma is still with me. And Brook, um this seems to be part of this bigger announcement that's taking place today in Pennsylvania, Carnegie Melon, uh where uh basically it it's a series of sort of public private partnerships, right? That are fostering this build out of more data centers and the power to support those data centers.

00:54 Brook Depalma

Yeah, Google's not the first company that we heard from that's making a major investment when it comes to data centers. We just heard from Meta's CEO that they're also going to invest, what they said was hundreds of billions of dollars into compute to build super intelligence, saying that they have the capital from their business to do this. And this really goes to show that everybody wants in on this AI race. They want in on the ramp up of what will be and what is this artificial intelligence revolution that is currently underway. And so between Google and meta, it's really become more pronounced that we're seeing these companies want in, they want a stake, they want to be a part of these major moves here as well.

02:00 Speaker A

Yeah, and we should note for viewers, we're going to be talking more about tech and the AI trade, how to invest in it with Doug Clinton from Intelligent Alpha. That's coming up in the 11:00 a.m. hour. Uh but let's talk about our next trending ticker, BlackRock. Its assets under management rising to a record 12 and a half trillion dollars for the quarter ending June 30th. That's up from 10.7 trillion a year earlier. Total flows into the company's funds hitting $68 billion. $46 billion went to its investment funds, but the shares are trading lower here this morning, Brook. Um BlackRock obviously one of the biggest um investment managers out here. So interesting to see it fall even as those assets climb.

03:04 Brook Depalma

Yeah, absolutely. Shares now down about 5.7% in early hours here. If you take a closer year to date, it's still up 2.3%. We've really seen this uh trade into technology. We've seen uh investors move out of banks perhaps. That's a bit here. Also worth noting that there's uh optimism when it comes to just that inflow that you had noted. They said that uh they rose to a record of 12.53 trillion dollars in the second quarter, and they said that was supported by high US stock prices. Once again, that's $68 billion of net client inflows. Also, some optimism when it comes to their private credit firm, HPS Investment. They acquired that. That deal closed on July 1st. Larry Fink saying quote, these are just the early days in our next phase of even stronger growth. Investors seem to be tempered about whether or not to jump in right now.

04:28 Speaker A

And even though those numbers were big in terms of how much we saw in inflows and how much assets under management, apparently some of the numbers were a little bit uh below some what some analysts had anticipated for BlackRock. Uh but also want to get to State Street here in the financial realm. Second quarter profits there down 2 and a half percent year over year. The bank reporting higher costs in the period. State Street costs up 11% in the quarter. The company credited those increased costs to workforce, including higher bonuses. Those shares down about 3% in today's trading. Um but if you, you know, we've seen pretty decent um performance from a lot of the financials here year to date, uh including State Street, which is up about 9%, Brook.

05:40 Brook Depalma

Yeah, absolutely. What uh I've read so far and what sources have said within their notes is that they really are taking a key part of this, and why you see stock moving lower this morning is because that second quarter profit fell despite higher revenue as increased costs really offset that jump in fee revenue. In addition to that, we also know that uh their uh their profit fell two and a half percent to 693 million. But largely when you take a closer look, let's also take a look at JP Morgan. They also reported out today. Their stock roughly flat. Also take a look at Wells Fargo. Their stock is also moving lower about 5%. And so really investors digesting what was a quite volatile quarter as we saw uh, you know, Liberation Day get underway as we saw a huge rise to record highs in the stock market. We saw all these different firms really take a bit of a different look whether or not to raise guidance, whether or not to keep their guidance as is, and investors certainly reacting based upon that news.

07:16 Speaker A

Brook, thanks a lot. And of course, you can always scan the QR code below to track the best and worst performing stocks with Yahoo Finances trending ticker page.