Thank you, Scott. That's the end of regulation. Third Street Music School ringing the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange. The Bowery Mission doing the honors at the NASDAQ. Stocks closing near session highs with solid gains for the NASDAQ and a decent bump for the S&P 500 as chip stocks get the boost.

That's a scorecard on Wall Street, but the action's just getting started.

Welcome to closing bell overtime.

I'm Leslie Picker with Mike Santoli.

John and Morgan are off today.

All right, coming up this hour, former Ford CEO, Mark Fields, joins us to talk about the official merger negotiations that were just announced between Nissan and Honda and what he expects from auto stocks broadly in the new year.

Plus, banks are about to wrap up a solid year of returns, but can they repeat their outperformance in 2025?

We'll talk about the names that should be at the top of your watch list for the new year.

Let's break down today's market action with Ariel Investments Vice Chairman Charlie Borbrinskoy and Henion and Walsh Asset Management President and CIO Kevin Mon.

Thank you both for being here.

Kevin, let's start with you.

So chips leading the way, very decent performance for the NASDAQ,

a lighter week, of course, with the holiday and so forth. But what's your read on today's

action? I think today's rally in chips should remind all investors that the AI revolution is a long

road. And there's going to be many ups and downs and many potholes along the way. And semiconductors

and chips will likely remain a critical component of the overall AI ecosystem,

but not the only component.

Let's not forget about energy, data centers, hardware, and software.

And then, of course, Nvidia is not the only semiconductor and chip opportunity that's out there.

Look at Broadcom, look at Advanced Micro,

look at even Intel.

All price pretty rich right now, but all have more growth ahead.

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