← CNBC's "Fast Money"
CNBC's "Fast Money"
Dollar Drops to 3-Year Lows … And AMD’s Latest AI Reveal 6/12/25
00:43:43
The U.S. dollar hit its lowest level since April 2022, as trade tensions sent investors out of the traditional safe-haven asset. What it means for the market and for demand in the U.S. Plus AMD revealing a slew of new products as it looks to capture some of Nvidia’s magic. Where the companies stand in the AI race. Fast Money Disclaimer
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- [00:01]
Tim Seymour
Fidelity Trading Dashboard brings live data, news.
- [00:03]
Karen Feiderman
And charts into one screen so you can build and place trades. Better start for free@fidelity.com trading dashboard.
- [00:11]
Tim Seymour
Investing involves risk, including risk of loss.
- [00:12]
Karen Feiderman
Fidelity Brokerage Services, LLC Member Nyse SIPC.
- [00:17]
Melissa Lee
On WhatsApp, your personal messages stay private between you and whoever you send them to. So things like the passport numbers for your honeymoon stay between you and your fiance. And that video call for your gran's 80th stays in the family. Even your streaming password stays between you and your college roommates, who still ask for it every week in your group chat. Because on WhatsApp, your personal messages are yours. No one else can see or hear them, not even us. WhatsApp message privately live from the NASDAQ markets in the heart of New York City's Times Square, this is fast money. Here's what's on tap tonight. Dollar doldrums, the greenback falling to more than three year lows as tensions with Iran flare up and a trade deal with China for remains on shaky ground. The implications for the economy and the markets and more troubles for Boeing. Shares of the aerospace giant dropping after the latest deadly crash in India. What does the reaction say about the state of the stock? Plus a pair of old school tech stocks hitting new highs. We're watching earnings from Adobe and RH and how AI is changing the ad tech game. We'll talk to the CEO of Taboola about the future of the space. I'm Melissa Lee, come to you live from studio Be at the nasdaq. On the desk tonight, Tim Seymour, Karen Feiderman, Dan Nathan and Steve Grasso. And we begin with that staggering drop in the dollar, the dol dollar index trading at its lowest level since April 2022, levels even more stark against the euro and the pound. The latest moves coming as uncertainty over trade policy leads foreign investors to reduce their exposure to the greenback. Treasuries following suit with the Yield on the 10 year at its lowest level in over a month. So what does this move away from the traditional safe haven asset tell you about where the market is heading, Tim?
- [01:57]
Tim Seymour
Well, if they're vacating treasury assets, you'd think yields would be higher. So I mean, I think some of that is somewhat conflicting. But I think the, the, the confluence of ECB last week, getting out there saying, hey, I think we're done in the short term, even though inflation is a little sticky, it's kind of not moving anywhere. And I think at this point their dovish ness relative to the Fed is, is yesterday's news I think post CPI this week here and some Fed commentary and some sense that the markets are pricing in at least now two cuts before now and the end of the year and possibly a bunch next year. You've got central bank differentials which are really I think putting the dollar in a place where the dollar could weaken that much more. And I think often that is really the number one driver for the Dixie which is that euro basket cross and then you have the yen. So I think it's a combination of that. I think some of it is trade tariffs in the US economy I think is growth, growth differentials between US and Europe that have, have contracted. In fact you can make an argument in Q1 GDP which is always backward looking but that actually the EU on a relative basis was stronger than the US I think what it means for markets is it actually could be very good. I think it's, it's not bad for US multinationals. We always talk about that number. I think it's certainly very good for industrials. I think it's great for commodities, especially industrial metals. And I think these are trades that we're kind of picking up steam anyway. And I don't think it really hurts technology because I think a lot of these technology companies are well insulated from the inflationary forces of a weaker dollar. So net net. I like it.
- [03:25]
Melissa Lee
Or should we, should we question, you know, doesn't it matter why the dollar is moving lower and at what point will that outweigh the dollar weakness being a good thing for multinationals?
- [03:35]
Dan Nathan
Well, I don't know. We were talking a little bit about this before that and to brought it up. It's a little perplexing to me that yields are lower. Right. Treasury stronger and the dollar lower. So I don't know, maybe it's not foreign outflow White.
- [03:49]
Tim Seymour
You know, I don't think it's. I think what you're saying is yeah.
- [03:52]
Melissa Lee
Treasuries as well and yields right.
- [03:54]
Dan Nathan
Higher and that would make more sense. So I'm not really sure as to you know, we. When the dollar was going the other way and you would have the multinationals have a hit when they talk about constant currency earnings. I always sort of dismissed it then and I'll dismiss it now that you know, he brings what who cares? Who cares that they made it on dollars.
- [04:16]
Tim Seymour
I thought maybe that's what you were saying because I don't typically that would.
- [04:20]
Karen Feiderman
Have been rude if he said it directly at you. Who cares.
- [04:23]
Tim Seymour
That's all right.
- [04:24]
Dan Nathan
No, I just, I don't really like that as, oh, our ear are better because the, you know, the effects was better.
- [04:30]
Steve Grasso
Yeah. I just think that Tim mentioned the, you know, growth differentials. We've seen this now twice in the last week and a half though. We saw OECD and we saw the World bank this, this year. And it's interesting when you think about the uncertainty here and if you talk about, you know, you know, foreign flight of our assets, I mean, you really are seeing pressure on our growth, at least the expectations of that relative to these other countries that we put these tariffs on and the idea that you might have a protracted trade situation. It really does. I mean, the idea of capital flight makes perfect sense. It's kind of the opposite of the carry trade that we've seen unwind here and there. Right. Like I think folks are looking for higher yielding places other than the U.S. especially if you think that growth is going to be weaker here than abroad. So I mean, to me, as far as the yield thing, you know, when you think about quantitative easing, what are they trying to do? Normally they're trying to get yields down and trying to get the dollar down. And I think that that discrepancy that we've seen over the last two months, maybe it's coming back more in vogue or more the way it should be doing. But if you do see that stuff going the opposite way, I don't know how you would kind of take what the equity market is doing, climbing back towards those prior highs and not be more concerned about what's going on the dollar and then that kind of disconnect. Because if you have a weak dollar and you have stronger yields and then you're starting to price in, you know, slower growth, that's just a, that's not favorable to equities. No matter what you think a good dollar or a soft dollar is for S and P earnings.
- [05:52]
Melissa Lee
Although the backdrop right now is we have a weaker dollar, we've got all time high yields and all time highs. And so. So the higher yield part is not really working out here. We manage to say in a range and, and we're lower today.
- [06:04]
Karen Feiderman
Yeah, I agree with how Tim laid it out. You have the market at all time highs. It's a tailwind for multinationals. There's zero correlation to dollar strength or weakness with the overall market based year.
- [06:16]
Melissa Lee
On just historical, historical.
- [06:18]
Karen Feiderman
And when you look at the dollar share as reserve currency, it was at 70% back in the 2000, so it's been dropping because there's a diversification away from the dollar. The Eurozone or the Euro will never overtake the dollar as reserve currency too fragmented. 20 different countries, 20 different central banks along with the ECB. No depth of market the way that we have here. So will it continue? And by the way, the last couple of years reserve currency of the Euro has moved sideways. We've been coming down because of diversification to all of them. So no one really sticks out. I think the Euro will rally a little more. The dollar might sell off more. Foreign holding of US debt is at all time highs in March 2025. So to Tim's point, no exodus from Treasuries, it was up 12% year over year. Foreign holding of US debt is at 9 trillion currently highest ever.
- [07:21]
Tim Seymour
I think, you know, ultimately I don't expect erosion of the US dollar reserve currency status anytime soon either. I feel like when you say never in the world.
- [07:30]
Karen Feiderman
No, I think it's one little snippet. I do believe the reserve currency will continue to fall the same way it fell from 70% back in 2000 because just these other economies have grown, the markets are growing. So there's diversification. I just don't ever think we will be the smallest or not the smallest, the second largest reserve currency. So that reserve currency could be 40% and the rest of the world could divvy up the other ones.
- [07:55]
Tim Seymour
Yeah, but I think if you look at where the dollar is, guess what, we're right back to where we were pre Covid. So if you remember after Covid we went down to about 88 on the Dixie and then we really went into this period where again the US central bank was extremely aggressive. It took a while, but ultimately that trend took us back to where we were and we know where we've come back from. So if you look at a 10 year range in the dollar or right back in the middle, if you want to look at a RA range where I think we start to move and this is always what we say is how quickly and how fast is the velocity of the move is when you should really be concerned. This has been a pretty quick move, but again I don't think the real level to be worried about isn't. I think it's all the way down at 88 on the Dixie. I do think it's a case where some of the themes we're talking about though, foreign investors and what they're doing with their money and how they view investing in the U.S. i think the most important thing as it relates to the dollar and why the Euro actually can have some strength if you are concerned. It's 20 nations that never see eye to eye is because they have a, it's a current account surplus currency. In other words, Europe has a current account. So we don't need to get too deep into this. But this is the whole story of, hey, the US should actually, it's a privilege to be running a big deficit because it means people are, you're, they're actually financing our economy, whereas in Europe they are current account and they're one of the best credits out there. Germany is actually the largest creditor to the world at this point. They just overtook Japan. So these things are all relevant. But back to markets. Yeah, I mean, I think you're right. You've had periods where the markets run really fast in a weak dollar. You've had periods where a strong dollar has been great for us. I think it really is the dynamics around here. But, but everything that's the backdrop of what's been going on with Trump tariff policy and whether foreign flows are coming in and out, I think is relevant. It's just not relevant tomorrow.
- [09:32]
Melissa Lee
All right, for more on dollar weakness, let's bring in Kathy Lean, head of strategy at BK Asset Management. Kathy, great to have you with us. What do you think is the number one driver of the dollar's move lower, Kathy, and what do you make of the seeming sort of discrepancy between the extreme dollar weakness that we've seen recently and the relative stability in the treasury market?
- [09:54]
Kathy Lean
So the question really should be what's the driver of the near term sell off in the dollar versus the sell off that we've seen over the past couple of months? Because I think that the longer term trend of the dollar and the factors that driving it lower have been both cyclical and structural changes, all of which Tim and Steve pointed out very, very well. Now, in terms of the very recent decline and acceleration in the weakness, that's completely driven by the unexpected softness of the inflation data. As we saw in the Fed fund futures, they shifted dramatically after the inflation report as people realized that, you know, we could get a minimum, well, probably a two and you know, a minimum of two and more aggressive easing in terms of rate cuts from the Federal Reserve next year. So I think, you know, there's a near term for force that's driving it lower. But, but the longer term factors, such as slowing growth, slowing inflation, the current account deficit that you just pointed out, along with, you know, reserve diversification, as small as it may be, is happening. And also, you know, there's a lot of talk and you just asked me, Melissa, about how you know this record bond holdings but you know we are actually seeing foreigners, sorry, Japanese investors sell the largest amount of foreign equities in the month of May since 2022. So know we are seeing reduction in demand across the globe, perhaps in different assets. So I think all of that is contributing to dollar weakness.
- [11:17]
Melissa Lee
Where do you see the dollar going, Kathy?
- [11:20]
Kathy Lean
So I think, you know, for now I think the dollar downtrend remains intact. You know, the latest move has been quite significant in terms of slope. So we could see a little bit of stabilization. But don't forget next week we have the US Retail sales report, we have the Federal Reserve rate decision, very important news events for the dollar and we're also going to possibly get the details on the unilateral tariffs from administration. So there's a lot of factors that can cause some sort of, some sort of near term safe haven bid in the dollar, particularly if the Fed resists rate cut calls. But I think the overall trend is still lower because it's inevitable that they're going to push the go button and rate cuts in Q4.
- [11:57]
Tim Seymour
Kathy, it's Tim. Thanks for joining us. Are we paying too much attention to the yen? You know, of all the central banks out there, BoJ seems to be the one that's been the most unpredictable and maybe unconventional. But yen volatility is something we talk about a lot. Are we paying too much attention?
- [12:13]
Kathy Lean
Well, it depends if you're a yen trader or not. Right. Trade yen and they pay a lot.
- [12:19]
Tim Seymour
Of times on TV sometimes it's on.
- [12:22]
Kathy Lean
It'S on the headlines because they had such a dramatic shift in their central bank policy this year. Part of it is because tariffs kind of force their hands in, not lower, not raising interest rates and change that dynamic. But I think, you know, there's a lot of very interesting trades in dollar yen and that volatility is a lot of opportunity for traders.
- [12:41]
Melissa Lee
All right, Kathy, we're going to leave it there. Thanks so much for your insights today Kathy. Lean BK Asset Management Obviously the weakness in the dollar has huge implications for mega and the like.
- [12:53]
Tim Seymour
Yes. And I think the mega trade has been alive and well and if you look at the MSCI All World EX US it was up about 180 basis points on a 5 day look back outperforming. And I do think that for the most part, especially if you look at more emerging economies, I think the dollar strength at times historically has been a really big, big deal. I think ultimately though, Miga is somewhat getting the Benefit from the, you know, the fact is that the Germans are cutting bilateral deals with the Chinese. The fact that it's country by country and I think people are figuring out ways around but I think mega trade as much as anything has been a 15 year underperformance that's now started to reverse. That's why I think you've got a lot of Runway here.
- [13:35]
Steve Grasso
Yeah, I just want to tell the viewer we're going to get back to the stock market really quickly. I haven't thought much.
- [13:39]
Melissa Lee
This.
- [13:43]
Steve Grasso
Lose you here people I'm going to say is that maybe it's really inflationary, the weak dollar men, yields coming down, that sort of thing, who knows. And you saw what crude oil has done and maybe there's some geopolitics to that but I definitely think it's something.
- [13:56]
Tim Seymour
You're talking stocks but we're going to.
- [13:59]
Steve Grasso
Go to the excellent. So, so Exxon and the excellent. They've been stuck in this range and I don't even know you. Okay, go ahead.
- [14:04]
Melissa Lee
We're going to talk stocks. I mean, okay, all this is really everything we do is related to the stock market. I take offense to that. The tech trade here going old school. Today we're switching gears. IBM and Oracle both hitting all time highs during the session. Big Blue ending the day slightly lower but still up more than 8% this month. Earlier this week it announced plans for a large scale fault tolerant quantum computer called Quantum Starling. Oracle meantime crushing earnings expectations after the bell last night saying it sees more than 70% growth in cloud infrastructure for fiscal year 2026. Like a built in. Would you rather hear Steve, IBM or Oracle?
- [14:40]
Karen Feiderman
Yeah, so IBM years ago when we did our secular shorts, that was my secular short and they never got enough credit. They were the original AI company with Watson. Now I think they're taking the bull by the horns. And if you look at Quantum, I think they're not going to miss out on this twice. For me I think I would go with Oracle over IBM on the. Would you rather I listened to the commercials? They offer twice as much storage for half the price on oci. So you know when you look at their competitors NWS or Microsoft, they out compete their competitors, user growth, enterprise growth, net income margins all through the roof with Oracle.
- [15:19]
Dan Nathan
I mean the call was very, very, very bullish. They don't figure. They do tend to have more positive calls. Right, right. But I mean the amount of demand there. So we've seen a few times now this sort of support for the ongoing story of AI and the development and all of the infrastructure demand and that was not even counting the Stargate, which who knows what will happen there. But so Oracle, impressive. Yeah, I hoped it would, I hoped Dell would do better off the heels of it, but it didn't.
- [15:47]
Steve Grasso
Be careful with Oracle here. You know Microsoft's been a huge customer, they've obviously been scurrying for capacity. When you think of these clouds, I mean this is not one that, you know, this is a distant 5 or 6 if you think about it to Azure and AWS and that sort of thing. So at some point demand for this excess capacity is going to come in and I like maybe as they build out their own data centers and this is what all of these hyperscalers are doing. I wouldn't want to be the fourth or fifth player who's actually kind of, you know, sopping up some of that extra demand in the period of this big build out. So to me like I look at a breakout like that to new all time highs and it seems a little unhealthy to me and it doesn't actually scream bullish to me.
- [16:25]
Tim Seymour
Well I think the breadth of the build out which again Karen's right, I mean they're very, very optimistic on these, on these calls and they have been and they've done that in the past and I think the market has responded until then. The market first of all runs out of gas on the charts. I mean it looks like it's broken through those all time highs decidedly and I heard Carter earlier in the week say that you know, more than three and a half percent through a resistance level is actually time to maybe be buying a breakout. I don't know but I do think that Oracle on a P E We talked about this yesterday in the after hours and the stocks obviously increased on the after hours move. It's not cheap, it's not cheap. But to to count Oracle out here for the last five years has been wrong. To count them out for the last two years has been almost could put you out of, out of a job.
- [17:12]
Melissa Lee
Coming up we've got a ton of after hours action to bring you including Adobe. We'll dig into the software giants results, see how it's faring in the age. But first AMD takes center stage at its own event. All the juicy announcements from today's big conference that's next.
- [17:28]
Karen Feiderman
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- [18:39]
Tim Seymour
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Karen Feiderman
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Tim Seymour
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Karen Feiderman
Welcome to the now it pays to Discover.
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Tim Seymour
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- [19:41]
Melissa Lee
Welcome back to Fast Money. Boeing shares dropping nearly 5% following the tragic crash of an Air India jet just after takeoff in Western India. The incident killing more than 200 passengers and crew members on the London bound plane as well as dozens of people on the ground. The exact causes of the crashes are still unkn. It marks the first involving a Boeing 787 Dreamliner. NBC News Matt Bodnar joins us now from London Gatwick Airport with the very latest. Matt.
- [20:09]
Karen Feiderman
Thank you. Well really an astonishingly positive development in this deeply tragic story. Indian media and our international partner Sky News have confirmed that there is one accounted for survivor at this time. He is a British national, a man. We believe that he's about 40 years old. The Hindustan Times meanwhile has spoken to a man of the same name, of the same age, who had a ticket in that name and quote him as saying, quote, 30 seconds after takeoff there was a loud noise and then the plane crashed. It all happened so quickly. The newspaper says that he is being treated now for injuries sustained to his chest, eyes and feet. Now, I think his account of what happened, of course, is going to be very important in the hours, days, weeks moving forward as the official investigation starts to look at what happened here today and share some of its findings. As things stand, we have heard nothing official from investigators, though aviation experts working with NBC News, as well as commenting elsewhere, have started to hone in potentially on signs leading to some speculation the flaps were not fully deployed, which could have led to this crash. Though it is important to emphasize there is no official information at this time suggesting any cause one way or another. Matt Bodnar, NBC News, London.
- [21:25]
Melissa Lee
All right, our thanks to Matt. And again, I just want to underscore the fact that we do not know what the cause of this crash is, but I think RBC put it very well in its note today on this incident. That is that this, you know, this brings in the uncertainty of this whole thing. It's an overhang on the stock. And you have to appreciate that when it comes to the stock, which had just seemed to be emerging from all of its difficulties, we were just talking about this earlier this week. The company was saying that production will be increased by the end of the week. The Paris Air show was going to come in. Things were looking up for this company. It's the B in your acronym. So.
- [21:55]
Dan Nathan
Yeah, I mean, of course, the tragedy of it is the most important thing. But, you know, you look, I saw it trading down a bunch this morning and I, you know, so we don't know the cause. What if you're Boeing, you have to hope that it's pilot error or some mechanical.
- [22:15]
Melissa Lee
Maintenance.
- [22:16]
Dan Nathan
A maintenance. Mechanical issue. If it is a structural issue, that is like a very bad case scenario for Boeing. So we just don't know at this point. I don't know how long it will take either. So I haven't done anything in the stock. I actually feel sort of bad trading around in the stock, you know, but it is, I'm sure, tremendously frustrating and obviously so sad for everyone. Related.
- [22:40]
Tim Seymour
Yeah, I actually nibbled on a little of the stock yesterday. I added to a position that felt really good. I think a horrible tragedy. I mean, just horrible tragedy. And I think related to just what this means for leaving aside sentiment for the stock and an overhang. I don't think this affects the production ramp unless there's something decidedly negative that's determined in the short to medium term. So I think you're a little worried about the feedback loop as it might affect the 777 certification. And I think that's something to think about. But, but right now I don't know that there's a fundamental impact on the company. And some of those deliveries and the order book and the things that were part of the bull story a week ago are still there. It just again, there's still so much unknown here and it's another tragedy.
- [23:34]
Melissa Lee
We should note too that this plane had been in the works, or not in the works, but working as a working plane for 10 years. So it's been in service for quite some time at this point. And this is the first ever fatal plane crash involving Dreamlighter. Specifically.
- [23:49]
Karen Feiderman
We don't know how it's been maintained. We don't know whose fault it is. We don't know any of this, any of these things. Boeing, when you look at it for five years has been in a trading range 130, 280, pretty much right in the middle of that trading range. So horrific accident. 40% of the revenues come from the US government. I think you're okay to nibble on the stock and we don't know what the cause of the accident was. Ultimately, this is not a terrible place to buy the stock.
- [24:18]
Melissa Lee
Coming up, Adobe and RH on the move after reporting earnings. The numbers behind the action next plus Chime Financial soaring in its debut, opening well above its IPO price. What to make of the action in this consumer finance name? You're watching Fast Money live from the NASDAQ markets. I did in Times Square back right after this.
- [24:41]
Tim Seymour
Are you still quoting 30 year old movies? Have you said cool beans in the past 90 days?
- [24:47]
Karen Feiderman
Do you think Discover isn't widely accepted? If this sounds like you, you're stuck in the past.
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Tim Seymour
Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide. And every time you make a purchase with your card, you automatically earn cash back.
- [25:01]
Karen Feiderman
Welcome to the now it pays to Discover.
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Tim Seymour
Learn more@discover.com credit card based on the.
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Karen Feiderman
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Steve Grasso
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Tim Seymour
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Melissa Lee
Of 45 for three month plan equivalent to 15 per month. Required new customer offer for first three months only. Speed slow after 35 gigabytes of networks busy taxes and fees extra. See mint mobile.com welcome back to Fast Money. We've got an earnings alert on Adobe. The stock is giving up early gains despite a beat on the top and the bottom line. CNBC's Pippa Stevens got details on the quarter. Pippa. Hey Melissa. So Adobe did see record revenue in the second quarter with digital media and digital experience revenue coming in ahead of expectations. Guidance also exceeding estimates with Adobe raising its full year revenue and EPS targets now uptake in monetization of Firefly. The company's AI technology was top of mind with the company staying on the call just now that the Firefly app is attracting new users to the Adobe franchise and that first time subscribers grew 30% quarter over quarter with paid subscriptions nearly doubling. The company added that combined monthly active users across Acrobat and Express climbed 25% year over year. Still Evercore ISI saying the guide likely keep shares in a range and that until there is a better sense that the new pricing structure and Firefly is driving incremental net new annual recurring revenue, most investors will remain in wait and see mode. Melissa. All right, Pippa, thank you Pippa Stevens. Dan, what do you think?
- [26:47]
Steve Grasso
Yeah, they're going to wait in wait and see mode because there's so much competing stuff coming out of there. These image generators and they're coming from everywhere. They're coming from open air, they're coming from Google, they're coming from Meta and you know, Meta has released you know, some products that they're just giving directly to brands. Right. To kind of get around some of those middlemen, that sort of thing on the advertising front. So, so this is one where you know that guidance and that result, they're just not good enough, you know. And so this is a company, she just mentioned Firefly. This was, you know, something that investors were really excited about two years ago and it's still down considerably from their all time highs. So this one to me I think it's kind of a no touch.
- [27:22]
Melissa Lee
The only saving grace is the valuation relative to Pierce.
- [27:26]
Tim Seymour
Great point. Yes. And on EV to free cash flow it trades I think 18, 19 times with peers at 28, 29 times. I think the bar was really low coming into this. So, so if you're, if you're a shareholder. I think it's disappointing this response and I do think it's a case where the chart it's been making lower lows in 25. It's hard to feel great about it even though this is a world class company. At some point I think it's going to catch a bit.
- [27:51]
Karen Feiderman
On a technical level. It bounced in April right where it bottomed in May of 2023. So the technical setup look great. But to Tim's point, still on a declining Trend line for 2025. It has to break out, I would say another $10 to the upside. It breaks that downtrend. I would wait for that.
- [28:09]
Melissa Lee
Coming up, AMD in the spotlight, the biggest headlines are the chip makers advancing AI event as it hopes to spark the semi stocks next leg. Higher, more fast money into missed a moment of fast.
- [28:22]
Tim Seymour
Catch us anytime on the go.
- [28:24]
Karen Feiderman
Follow the Fast Money podcast.
- [28:26]
Tim Seymour
We're back right after this.
- [28:36]
Melissa Lee
Welcome back to Fast Money Stocks finishing higher as Oracle's new all time high led tech stocks. The Dow gaining 101 points. The S&P jumping 23 points in the Nasdaq up a quarter percent. And Chime Financial surging in its debut here at the NASDAQ. The five time CNBC disruptor ending the day up 37% from its $27 IPO price. Meanwhile, nuclear stocks Oklo, Constellation Energy and Vistra seeing big action today. Oklahoma whipsawing on the back of a planned $400 million capital raise while the others posted solid gains. Gamestop locking in its worst day in just over a year. The Meme stock announcing late Wednesday it would offer $1.75 billion worth of convertible notes to institutional buyers. And last but not least, Novo Nordisk jumping 3% after announcing it would advance subcutaneous and oral Amacretin for weight loss to phase three clinical development. The stock is up 20% in just the last month. Tim, you've been a big fan also. You do too, Karen on Novo.
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Tim Seymour
Well, it's, it's, it's good that Karen. I take the other side of the Pfizer.
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Dan Nathan
Exactly something.
- [29:39]
Tim Seymour
I think it's a combination.
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Karen Feiderman
You look great.
- [29:43]
Tim Seymour
I don't need the oral, but I do think the oral, I think the oral headlines are part of it. I just think it's a, it's a reaffirmation of the strategy. The CEO change which was kind of a back to the future unexpected but in some level I think was reaffirming what's going on all along. I just think, you know, if you look at their position In GOP land, at least on a global nature, it's still the biggest player in the market and was not being treated as such. And I think the Data that was Ms. I think understood back in December in terms of, you know, what body mass that was lost relative to the competition was, was overdone. I think you buy it.
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Melissa Lee
The entry investor is pretty interesting activists, right?
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Dan Nathan
Yes. Although we talked about this little was the activist investor wanting to have the say in who the CEO is, influence.
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Melissa Lee
Who might be chose.
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Dan Nathan
Yeah, I think also. Well, there is that, but they had already agreed that they would make a change. Yeah. So. But the other thing was valuation. Right. If you look at the valuation differential between Lilly, which is sort of the undisputed leader, but however, the Novo franchise is, you know, serious number two without a number three at the moment. So at this point though, all along, actually I'd rather own Lilly than Novo here.
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Steve Grasso
What about XLV though, too. Right. If you think about the idiosyncratic risk that you have, let's say in any Eli Lilly, and I know that's a huge part of the xlv, but we saw what just happened to Novo and the underperformance over the last year or so. If some of these names of a unh comes back in the in the xlv, I think that folks are probably a little too bearish on some of those names. So you know, this one, it's a cheap if you look at the components of it and maybe you get some of these other names that kind of make some breakthroughs on the GLP1 front.
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Melissa Lee
To AMD shares falling 2% today, even after revealing a new crop of AI chips intended to compete with Nvidia as flagship processors. Christina Parts Neville joins us for the key readouts from AMD's Advancing AI event. Christina?
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Christina Parts Nevelis
Well, AMD really just threw down the gauntlet against Nvidia today with its Mi 400 AI chips which are set to ship next year. These chips are stacking to massive server rack called Helios think hundreds of processors that work as one giant brain. This matters because AI companies need exactly the same kind of hyperscale setup to train their large language models. AMD is betting it can also undercut Nvidia in terms of price as well as power consumption, with executives promising, quote, aggressive pricing, although they didn't share the actual numbers in terms of costs. The company also claims its new hardware beats in video on offerings for AI inference, which is the part where trained models actually answer questions and generate responses. CEO Lisa Su just spoke with our John Forward just within the last hour or so about the major partners on board. Listening.
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Melissa Lee
If you look Today, you know seven out of the top 10 model builders.
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Christina Parts Nevelis
And AI companies are using AMD products. You know, that includes Metta, Oracle, OpenAI.
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Melissa Lee
Sam Altman was here with us today. Metta and Oracle were here.
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Karen Feiderman
You know, X AI, Tesla to name a few.
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Christina Parts Nevelis
Despite that though, AMD's share price stock really hasn't gotten anywhere in the last year. What down almost 2% versus Nvidia up 5% year to date suggesting investors really aren't convinced so far that this David can take on the Goliath of AI chips. But with cloud providers and AI companies burning through billions of dollars on computing power, AMD's timing couldn't be better. The question is whether customers will be willing to risk switching from Nvidia's proven ecosystem for potential savings from Nvidia. Amd I should say Melissa, Christine, Lisa.
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Melissa Lee
Sue is also talking about an open system yielding the best innovation. And I guess that's sort of she's talking her book. She wants people to be out of the Nvidia ecosystem and be willing to use AMD chips and technology.
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Christina Parts Nevelis
So it's the seventh generation ROCM, that's their software platform that they also announced the seventh generation. That's an open ecosystem which differs from CUDA, Nvidia, Nvidia's closed system. But if you recall perhaps maybe just was it a month ago, not even Nvidia is finally opening up their closed ecosystem specifically with a product called NV Link. So without getting too technical, Nvidia is realizing that the future is open. You need to be able to take different parts from different companies even though both companies really just want to own the entire stack and have everybody just stuck on their products. But it seems like that's not going to be the future. People chips need to either work together or else you lose market share.
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Melissa Lee
All right, Christina. Thank you Christina. Parts Nevillis what do you make of amd?
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Karen Feiderman
Only because you asked me would I rather Nvidia or amd? Because I know that's what you're thinking, right?
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Melissa Lee
I was not either. No one you may answer the dollar.
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Karen Feiderman
Anyway amd, I would rather have amd. I think AMD is the wolf on the hill versus Nvidia is the wolf at the top of the hill. I think Nvidia has more to lose. AMD has more to gain.
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Melissa Lee
So many times you could have, right?
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Karen Feiderman
So AMD was in a declining trend line since March of 24. Convincingly broke out of that declining Trend line in May this year. So I would rather if I'm putting new money to work, I'd rather buy AMD Nvidia way ahead. But AMD is poised to be the biggest opportunity for them.
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Dan Nathan
Well, I don't want to take the other side of the birthday boy, but I'm going to anyway. So I'd rather the way I'm positioned is far more dollars than Nvidia than I was going to say no, but we were just talking about then amd. I do like Lisa Sue a lot but the valuation differential is not very big. Right. So that makes me far more interested in video over.
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Steve Grasso
Yeah, well I mentioned this. So the gross margins in Nvidia, this has been something we've all been tracking. The company guided them down and you know, since they did a couple of quarters ago, from the high 70s, kind of the low 70s, they said it's going to pick up back at the end of the year. The stock really stalled out. I mean it's really gone sideways. And you know, if you look at AMD and you talk about how they're going to continue compete with Nvidia, it's going to be on price. AMD has already this built in kind of ramp as far as margins are concerned over year over year. They went to 53% last year, 51 1/2% expected this year up to like 55. If they're going to be competing on price, that's not happening. So the stock you just mentioned valuation, it's probably too expensive and that's already embedded in the street consensus because it's Steve birthday.
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Tim Seymour
I'm not going to say anything about the wolf on top of the hill or the wolf on the hill or that he's crazy like a fox or all these other animals that are involved. Happy birthday, Steve.
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Melissa Lee
That's it.
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Karen Feiderman
Well done.
- [36:07]
Tim Seymour
So, all right, so I agree with Tim and is is the A in band. So I obviously. Enough said. Enough.
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Melissa Lee
Sorry. Okay.
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Tim Seymour
Boom.
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Melissa Lee
Coming up, ad tech firm Taboola introducing a brand new way to search the web with AI, what it means for publishers and how it challenges the incumbents. But first, RH on the move after reporting earnings with the high end furniture maker has to say about their consumers demand next. Welcome back to Fast Money. We've got another earnings alert on rh. The stock jumping after hours after posting a beat on earnings. But revenue came in short of expectations. CNBC's Melissa Repka has got more on this. Melissa. Hey, Melissa. So RH leaders are facing two major challenges when it comes to sales. A slow housing market and higher tariffs. Tariffs on the company's earnings call, CEO Gary Friedman laid out some steps that RH is taking to blunt the impact of tariffs. He said the luxury retailer is moving more production out of China and expects receipts from the country to drop from 16% in the first quarter to 2% in the fourth quarter. He said RH will delay the launch of a new concept until spring 2026 when it hopes to have more certainty about tariffs. But it's still opening stores in Paris and in London. RH stuck by its full year guidance saying it expects revenue to grow by 10 to 13%. But it's important to note that came in below Wall Street's expectations when it announced its forecast three months ago. RH's shares may be up today, but so far this year the company's stock is down almost 55%. All right, Melissa, thank you. Melissa Repco on RH, we should note that the short interest is high on this one, 21%. So that probably accounts for a lot of this huge surge in the after hour session. Karen, what do you make of this? The CEO has a lot of colorful comments to say on the conference call.
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Dan Nathan
Yes, usually, yes, some bleeped out was what happened last quarter during the Liberation Day was the date of their last earnings call and it just threw everything into upheaval. I think they had a lot of Vietnamese imports from Vietnam that they thought would protect them from having too much in China as we know, huge, you know, 47% I think was the number against Vietnam. So I mean it was better than feared. And I also think maybe the pulling back and waiting on the new concept is probably not a bad idea. But you what are you point out to what I think is the most important thing, short interest, 21%. That's a very big number.
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Tim Seymour
Yeah, I own RH, you know, somewhere in this vicinity and boy I probably could have traded it five times on these kinds of swings because if you look at over the last six months, I mean you've had first of all you've had a major down move on the tariff. So you know, but this is a company that over the last three years also has traded down from its Covid glory days. And I still think that the, the story around the margin profile of the company has been relatively preserved. I still think if you think about a world where demand on the housing side isn't great, but people staying in houses, people refurbishing, etc. I kind of like this one. I think they've done a decent job with maintaining the margin profile and not giving the house away on promotions, I think you stay there.
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Melissa Lee
There are some skepticism going into the quarter. I mean given obviously the macro uncertainty heavily weighs the the last conference call raised all sorts of questions. Also they, they announced a new promotion just over the past weekend and they said, you know, new promotion for members that would give you 30% off as opposed to 25% off, probably a sign of weakness as opposed to strength. So people didn't take that.
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Karen Feiderman
I mean, when you look, when you look upon it down 50 to 60%, this is where you want to buy a stock. If you believe that going forward the stock is going to pop, I think this is the opportunity. They're 95% reliant on the US buyer. And if tariffs even get incrementally better, I think with that short interest the stock could pop aggressively.
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Melissa Lee
Remember once upon a time on the conference call they talked about the stock market being the number one driver of sales or the correlation. The correlation. And where are we in the stock market?
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Tim Seymour
Pretty.
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Dan Nathan
Just one more thing about the short interest. The CEO owns about 18% of the company, so the short interest on the float is actually even higher. Right. Assuming he doesn't lend his stock.
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Melissa Lee
Coming up, a deep dive into a brand new way to search with AI courtesy of Taboola. CEO Adam Singolda will join us right after this. More fast Money into Welcome back to Fast Money. News sites are feeling the impact of AI. A report by the Wall Street Journal this week highlights how Google's new AI tools and other chat bots are replacing traditional searches. Getting rid of the need to click those blue links which refer users to new sites. Caus traffic to tank. Our next guest company just launched their own gen AI search engine that could help fight the AI Armageddon coming for these publishers. Taboola rolling out deeper dive which will surface links to relevant articles and provide additional context to bolster engagement. -- founder and CEO Adam Sangolda joins us now with more. Adam, great to see you.
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Adam Singolda
Thanks for having me.
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Melissa Lee
So how exactly does this work and how is it different from me typing something into Gemini?
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Adam Singolda
So I mean, you know, taking a step back, I think, I think there's like three main challenges that we're seeing. The first one is that when you go to a perplexity, or maybe we can call it simplexity, maybe it's too simple. You get this short summarization of my question and I think in many ways it's like a new generation of a chamberbox. We used to think of Social media as a concern for confusing consumers. But in many ways we've always had this vaccine in the back of our mind because we knew social media is social media perplexity. I actually think this is real. And they're not motivated to send me to a publisher's site to get more, to read more, to get educated. I think that's a risk. The second thing is that they're stealing content from publisher sites. They're not paying money, they're not sending traffic and you know, evil is a short term strategy. How long, how long can they take publishers content and just not compensate the industry for that? And the third one which is maybe the most exciting for me is that when I do go to a CNBC or USA Today, which is one of our launching partners today, I am yet to have an ability to have a conversation about something that I want to do. So if I want to have a conversation about a trip to Cancun with my kids and I know the travel section of USA Today is awesome today, I can't do it. But what if I can just have three kids? Seven, five and three, that's what my wife loves. What should they do? And I get the answer similar to perplexity, but I also get a deeper dive. It says you should also check this out. Here's something that some of our reporters wrote. Real people, real coverage. So I think the divide opportunity we have with deeper dive and open web is when you want to make decisions that matter. Financial services, travel, commerce, you need to go to open web and converse about things that you know there's someone behind.
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Melissa Lee
That decision who is a user for this. And is this the user who also uses perplexity?
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Adam Singolda
I think perplex. I think we're creating a new space. You know, you'll go to perplexity for things that you know. The short answer is good, but I think it's not enough. Much like today, you know that TikTok is not enough. It's entertaining. You get some of what you want to know. But you know that look, if I took my wife to a trip to travel and I've never reviewed where I'm going beforehand and I didn't go to a website to see some images and videos and comments, I may come back with a divorce.
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Tim Seymour
Sounds like that's happened to you before.
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Adam Singolda
I mean it's. My wife is Polish and she's very critical about my decisions, you know, But I'll tell you, it's just, it's simple, but it's maybe too simple. So I think there's there's a huge opportunity to get consumers to know that there's a huge world beyond those engines, those new walled garden engines you can get value from.
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Steve Grasso
Adam, did the publishers come to you looking for some sort of solution? Because there's obviously been a lot of criticism. There haven't been a lot of lawsuits from the publishers, as you think about it. I think the News Corp is one of them and there's been some cease and desist sort of orders. But is this a solution that they've come up with and you've built the engine, or is it the other way around?
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Adam Singolda
It's both. I mean, I've heard publishers, I've had dinner with publishers who told me we've had these engines come in for a meeting offering us $25,000 for 50 years of content. These people were, you know, kicked out of the office, sued and blocked. So I think we're going to see a lot of. We saw Disney announcements just yesterday. We're going to see a lot of publishers saying, enough is enough. We've seen it Also, you know, 10 years ago, if you remember, when Facebook had Instant Article and they hosted publishers content in the feed, at first it was a cool product for consumers and everyone did it. And then one day the New York Times said, I'm out. Enough is enough. We can't. We're not getting money, we're not getting traffic. I suspect history will repeat itself and publishers will eventually say, either pass or you send us traffic or you get lost.
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Melissa Lee
Right. How does this, though, solve for these engines scraping the data? Because if they could, if the New York Times could turn it off today, would it be in their best interest to turn it off today or would it not be? I mean, in this age where things are still growing and people, you know, I don't really know how they would play that.
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Adam Singolda
You know, it takes a lot of courage to be first, I think, to raise your hand and say, I'm going to do it. And some people have a lot more leverage than others. What I'm focusing on, I can tell you, is first, let's create value on this site where people are already coming in. Look, about 30 to 40% of traffic to the CNBC's of the world. And you know, the websites that really have a brand come from search, that traffic is at risk. Because if I no longer search, I go to perplexity and charge up. That is at risk. But 60, 70% of people come to my site from newsletters, homepage and other ways. How can I turn those consumers to super users. How can I get you? You know it's amazing. The Average person spends 90 seconds a session when they come to a publisher site. 90 seconds. Meanwhile they spend 50 minutes on TikTok every single day. What if we can turn those 90 seconds to 10 minutes to 15 minutes? We can converse with you so you never leave and no matter if over time you speak with me about I'm ESPN and you talk to me about the Knicks which I'm so upset about for so long. What if I can offer you sports betting? Subscription to NBA app? What if I can be your agent for commerce? So I think the future is bright because we've done very little as an industry adopting AI and with this can be a whole new beginning for the open web.
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Melissa Lee
Adam thank you. Great to see you.
- [46:19]
Adam Singolda
Thanks.
- [46:20]
Melissa Lee
Up next Final Trades Final trade time.
- [46:30]
Tim Seymour
Tim Happy Birthday Steve Constellation Energy Karen.
- [46:34]
Dan Nathan
Rates lower Letter Z Happy Birthday Steve.
- [46:36]
Steve Grasso
Dan Love Adam's passion Taboola's Worth a.
- [46:38]
Karen Feiderman
Look Steve Ge Verona Happy Birthday to.
- [46:41]
Melissa Lee
My twins and Happy Birthday to Steve. Happy Birthday three of you. Thanks for watching Fast Mad Money Jim Cramer starts right now. All opinions expressed by the Fast Money participants are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of CNBC, NBCUniversal, their parent company or affiliates, and may have been previously disseminated by them on television, radio, Internet or another medium. You should not treat any opinion expressed on this podcast as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of an opinion. Such opinions are based upon information the Fast Money participants consider reliable, but neither CNBC nor its affiliates and or subsidiaries warrant its completeness or accuracy and it should not be relied upon as such. To view the full Fast Money DISCLAIMER, please visit cnbc.com fastmoneydisclaimer I'm Cyndi Lauper. My psoriasis was all over, even on my scalp, which may mean four times.
- [47:39]
Karen Feiderman
The risk for psoriatic arthritis.
- [47:41]
Melissa Lee
But Cosentyx works on both.
- [47:45]
Karen Feiderman
Cosentix Secukinumab is prescribed for adults with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis 300 milligram dose and adults with active psoriatic arthritis 150 milligrams dose. Don't use if you're allergic to Cosentyx. Before starting, get checked for tuberculosis. An increased risk of infections and lowered ability to fight them may occur. Like tuberculosis, tuberculosis or other serious bacterial, fungal or viral infections, some are fatal. Tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms like fevers, sweats, chills, muscle aches or cough had a vaccine or planned to, or if inflammatory bowel.
- [48:15]
Tim Seymour
Disease symptoms develop or worsen, serious allergic.
- [48:18]
Karen Feiderman
Reactions and severe eczema like skin reactions may occur. Learn more@cosentyx.com or 1844 Cosentix. Ask your doctor about Cosentyx.