9AM HOUR: Stocks' Post-Midterms Rally, AMD CEO "First on CNBC", CVS CEO Exclusive on Breakup Plan 11/4/26

Carl Quintanilla opened with Democrats taking both the House and Senate in the midterms, alongside major Texas wins by James Tallarico and Gina Hinojosa. Jim Cramer argued that Hinojosa’s victory would not end Texas’s data-center industry, but could make financing and permitting much harder, especially for leveraged builders such as Hut 8, CoreWeave, and IREN. David Faber said Amazon could benefit because tighter construction would force it to slow spending while increasing the value of existing capacity. The anchors noted that 29 jurisdictions had approved data-center restrictions, often by large margins.

Cramer initially rejected pollution and electricity concerns as the main reason voters opposed data centers, arguing that communities feared AI would take jobs away and create a “job apocalypse.” Faber said opposition could also reflect anxiety about AI’s physical manifestation and uncertain employment effects. They agreed that Texas’s incoming administration might focus less on banning facilities than on removing tax breaks, charging sales tax on electricity, and slowing permits. Cramer said capital costs were already hurting marginal builders and that the election could be a “coup de grâce,” while incumbents with cash and capacity would benefit.

AMD CEO Lisa Su told the hosts that third-quarter results exceeded expectations, with data-center revenue up more than 40% year over year and sequential data-center growth guided at 50% for the fourth quarter. AMD had deployed its newest racks at Anthropic, OpenAI, Microsoft, Oracle, and Meta, and Su said the company expected more than 80% growth the following year—over twice its prior long-term model. She attributed the change to accelerating AI demand, stronger customer confidence in AMD products, and new agentic workloads emerging over the prior three to six months.

Su said most of AMD’s projected growth was already under contract with customers and supply-chain partners, although constraints extended across wafers, substrates, advanced packaging, memory, land, power, and data-center infrastructure rather than one bottleneck. She described AMD’s CPU and AI-accelerator position as strong, citing the Venice CPU, Helios, and MI455, plus leadership in memory bandwidth. Su maintained AMD’s roughly $1 trillion data-center total addressable market for 2030 despite political resistance to new facilities, saying the industry must explain its local value more clearly and work with communities. Gross margin was 56% in the third quarter and guided to 55% in the fourth.

After the AMD interview, Cramer called Arista Networks another “blowout,” praising CEO Jayshree Ullal and noting that revenue had risen 58.5%. He argued that Arista supplies the networking needed to scale data centers across and between nodes and GPUs, making the company a more fundamental infrastructure play than the headline-sensitive AMD trade. Cramer said this view did not necessarily imply a bad Cisco quarter; rather, both could perform well. He linked the opportunity to a future in which fewer data centers may have to handle more computing efficiently.

Tesla and SpaceX fell after Elon Musk spent nearly half a billion dollars supporting Republican campaigns that failed in the midterms. Musk posted on X that “data centers in space” looked appealing and joked that his “election interfering space lasers” had not worked. Cramer called the reaction a temporary zeitgeist effect and said investors do not vote on SpaceX; they buy the company. Faber agreed Musk’s political power may have diminished but said it was unclear how that would affect business deals. Cramer remained skeptical of space-based data centers, though he said he believed in the concept because it appeared in investor Jen-Hsun Huang’s numbers.

The Dow opened nearly 1,000 points higher, with the anchors attributing the rally to reduced uncertainty, the possibility of Congress reclaiming tariff authority, and expectations that tariffs would be less inflationary under divided government. Cramer called tariffs a disaster that changed neither the trade deficit nor the political mood, while Faber said the absence of a contested-election crisis helped markets. Oil was falling, raising hopes for lower inflation and interest rates. They also discussed whether Democrats’ larger margins would limit the influence of the party’s far-left members and reduce fears of immediate capital-gains or estate-tax increases.

The anchors connected Texas’s Democratic result to gains in HCA Healthcare, Molina, and Centene on expectations of expanded health-care coverage or funding. Home Depot rose sharply despite Cramer questioning whether the election could suddenly make housing affordable; he likewise called some tariff-related stock moves factious. Defense stocks such as RTX weakened on expectations that war and rearmament might be less likely, while Cramer preferred aerospace exposure through GE and Boeing. Clean-energy names including First Solar, Sunrun, Plug, and NextPower bounced from lows, with Cramer specifically recommending NXT as an earnings-driven trade.

Riot rose after signing a 15-year powered-land lease tied to its Versicana facility, reportedly worth $28 billion initially and up to $54 billion with two five-year extensions; the tenant was not disclosed, though the anchors suspected Anthropic. The deal could reduce Riot’s debt and capital-expenditure needs. Cramer said McDonald’s was encouraged by same-store sales of negative 1.5% versus a negative 1.35% expectation and signs that CEO Chris Kempczinski was regaining franchisee support. They also characterized Uber and Booking as evidence of a strong consumer benefiting from lower gasoline prices. Separately, Cramer said a PC glut could restrain DRAM pricing, helping explain strength in Apple.

CVS Health CEO David Joyner said the company would split into a health-care business containing Aetna and Caremark and a separately led CVS Pharmacy, with separation expected to take 15 to 18 months. He described the decision as one made from strength after improving Aetna’s Medicare performance and turning retail pharmacy guidance from a 5% decline two years earlier to a third consecutive year of growth. Third-quarter revenue was $108.4 billion, while operating cash flow reached $15.5 billion versus a prior minimum expectation of $11.5 billion. Joyner said the businesses would retain strong balance sheets and investment-grade characteristics.

Joyner said regulation was one factor in the separation, citing changing market conditions since CVS and Caremark combined in 2006 and Aetna joined eight years ago, as well as bipartisan proposals targeting pharmacy-benefit managers. Caremark will remain with the Aetna-led health-care company, while Prem Shah, a pharmacist and ten-year CVS veteran, will lead the pharmacy business. Joyner rejected the idea that Walmart or Amazon were taking share, saying CVS had gained share through stores, delivery, and drive-through service. He said bankers would not predict the eventual valuation multiples; CVS would have to prove both businesses’ strength during the next 15 to 18 months.