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CNBC's "Fast Money"
Growing AI Warnings… And Opportunities in Private Credit & Real Estate 2/24/26
00:43:29
Day 2 of Fast Money Live from Miami Beach for the iConnections Global Alts Conference. Melissa & the traders dig into a wall of worry surrounding the AI trade, as JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon weighs in on investor complacency. How markets are reacting to a potential bubble brewing in the space, and the stocks to watch as concerns pile up. Plus the opportunities in private credit as Blue Owl faces a potential liquidity crunch, and if the real estate sector can continue to climb after a strong start to the year. Fast Money Disclaimer
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- [00:00]
Melissa Lee
A rich life isn't a straight line to a destination on the horizon. Sometimes it takes an unexpected turn with detours, new possibilities and even another passenger or three. And with 100 years of navigating ups and downs, you can count on Edward Jones to help guide you through it all. Because life is a winding path made rich by the people you walk it with. Let's find your rich together. Edward Jones, Member SIPC the Jack Welch Management Institute at Strayer University helps you
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- [00:53]
Melissa Lee
Strayer University is certified to operate in Virginia by Chev and has many campuses including at 2121 15th Street north in Arlington, Virginia. Live in the Connections Global conference in Miami Beach. This is fast money. Here's what's on tap tonight. Markets rebounding after yesterday's sell off, but with some harsh realities for AI and a big warning from JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon come home to roost for the trade. And speaking of AI, Nvidia's on deck to report earnings tomorrow night. What we can expect from the semi giant and how it could impact the stock. Plus, another full slate of guests from Miami Beach. Big short traders Danny Moses and Vincent Daniel will tell us what they see for the market. Next, the latest read on private credit from Shakur Kaplan, Carrie Finlay and what's next for real estate Less Group, Maryland. Ben Jackson will join us with his thoughts on the property sector and where he sees the most opportunities. Right now. I'm Melissa Lee in Miami beach with Dan Nathan and Gaia Dam and we embark on another day of broadcasting from what has been a chilly Miami Beach. Dan, is that sweater on again? It's the same one, by the way. I know you guys are wondering at home, is that the same? We're going to put it out there right now and get it out. It's, it's out there all right. We start off with the growing worry for Wall street on the trade as investors warn of mounting risks. In a business update last night, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon suggesting investors are growing complacent about the buildout amid skyrocketing asset prices and spending. While Dimon steered clear of saying a bubble will cause the economy to crumble, he said that a couple of people doing, quote, dumb things like risky lending could lead to a meltdown. Credit Investors also seem to be growing anxious. A new survey from bank of America finding that the bubble is a top concern among investment grade debt investors. For the first time ever, 23% ranking at number one on their list of worries over the next 12 months. That is compared to just 9% in December. Still, stocks managed to look past the pessimism today. Major averages closed firmly higher with the tech heavy NASDAQ in the lead up 1%. So can markets recover from these worries well, or is there one more shoe to drop in? Just in the after hour session, we're looking at Workday down 9.2%. The software stocks could see some more pressure tomorrow. But what do you make of all these sort of cautious comments?
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Danny Moses
So obviously the most important banker of our lifetime, maybe of all time. And he's been cautious about a number of different things over the last couple of years. I think he'd be the first to tell you, don't take my cautiousness and be shorting the market or being out of the market because the market's done extraordinarily well. And as we sit here within a couple percent of an all time high. However, it doesn't mean his concerns are unwarranted and you shouldn't be paying attention. And I think to a certain extent, what we saw with Blue Al, what we're sort of seeing around the edges, the, the research that we're reading, some of these pieces, these thought pieces that have been out, I think people are starting to take notice now. Again, it doesn't mean to go out and sell everything, but the valuation cushion is not there for this market and you're seeing it manifest itself in a number of sectors right now.
- [03:47]
Vincent Daniel
Yeah, we talked about it last night. You know, I was fortunate enough to moderate a panel with Boaz Weinstein today from SAB Capital and he is the one who put in a bid for some of the assets from Blue Owl. And it was a big discount. We talked a little bit about it, but he said we're in the early innings of the wheels coming off the car. And I thought that was really interesting as it related to private credit. Now he's an activist. He's looking for opportunities and market dislocations, that sort of thing. But he has a track record doing it and doing it well. Now let's kind of go back to the AI trade for a second. When you think about the news today, Core Weave is up nearly 10%. They have an order from Metta, right, to provide compute. It's a $14 billion deal. They're looking to raise eight and a half billion dollars to fulfill that obligation. But here's the problem. This is not an investment grade company. Right. So they're talking about being backed by Metta, that order, which actually obviously has a very high credit rating. So it goes back to the financialization of this. It goes back to maybe that demand doesn't materialize. Right. And we've also known that has gone through some hoops to invest in a data center in Louisiana. Blue Owl is in the middle of this one, too. And so when you think about all of this stuff happening, you know, I just say to myself, we're probably in the early innings of a bubble that's bursting partially because it is attached to this private credit thing. And I'm going to listen to JP Morgan and Jamie Dimon because you know what? It's pretty smart.
- [05:14]
Danny Moses
What was that, what was that you said last night that sort of. I was in pain?
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Vincent Daniel
No, no. Guy wants me to quote it because you asked me about crack under the surface and I said it's a long way from the cracks to the break.
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Melissa Lee
Oh, yeah.
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Vincent Daniel
And that is. That is a. I didn't make it up. That's a lyric from Mumford. And so I love her, but I, you know, I just threw it out there.
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Danny Moses
Can I say something?
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Porter Collins
It's.
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Danny Moses
It's all over here. Right. What's that show from 9am that. That's the squawk on the street, right? Wonder.
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Vincent Daniel
A lot of squawks not on the street.
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Danny Moses
Well, but that's David Faber and Carl and Jim.
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Melissa Lee
Yes.
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Danny Moses
So today they interviewed Lisa Su of amd and David asked her what I thought was the right question in the form of warrants. With this Facebook metadeal, you're potentially giving away 20% of the company. People will say there's a reason why you're doing that is to then quid pro quo to have them buy your chips. And I'm sure there's some truth to that. She answered the question. But it all. I'm not saying these are bad actors at all, but it goes back to some of the circular nature. All the things we're talking about over the last couple days are absolutely connected.
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Vincent Daniel
All right. In October. Look, just pull a chart up. What do you say?
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Danny Moses
The crack staff back in ec?
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Vincent Daniel
They're back in ec. It's almost as cold here as it is up in ec. No, I just want to be really clear, though. You remember that huge gap that AMD had because OpenAI gave them a big order and they're Also going to get warrants and they're giving the company away. Like what's going on here just for business.
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Melissa Lee
Is that how we do it nowadays to insider selling?
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Vincent Daniel
Well, yeah, man. And it's dilutive. I mean, maybe the warrants are trying to help that.
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Danny Moses
Well, it's interesting because I would say that on the margins as well. But she talked about how it's accretive and actually works in their favor in terms of the valuation. The point is there's a lot of things happening that you could be very optimistic about. You could take the other side and say, hey, wait a second, we've sort of seen this before.
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Vincent Daniel
It works if they get the $100 billion. We also saw that in video with open. I remember this. And again, you know, go look at this chart. Today's move is like a blip. It didn't even fill in the gap from earnings. So if you're saying that that order is going to help the stock move into a valuation, well, it remains to be seen.
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Melissa Lee
All right, let's dig deeper into today's action with senior markets. Commentator Mike Santoli is back at the Nasdaq. We were talking about the market action today. A little bounce in software. Some of the concerns around the trade, at least for today, alleviated. But then you have workday getting crushed in the after hours session.
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Ben Jackson
Yeah, nothing is easy. Obviously, Melissa, you definitely have to kind of keep all these areas on a bit of a short lease. You did also get a bounce in the private credit exposed stock stocks, the ones that were at the epicenter. But I do think that the banks and the broader financials still demand your attention. So you're playing off what you guys were talking about. J.P. morgan Relative to the S&P 500 Banks ETF, which is kind of equal weight, a very broad bank etf. You see the lead that JP Morgan built up relative to other banks, it's now closing and it's closing mostly because JP Morgan is going down more quickly and to kind of going back in time more than the other banks are. Now this isn't necessarily an outright negative because sometimes JP Morgan is the defensive play within the banks. It's kind of the bulletproof one that's going to make it through hard times. In this instance though, it does seem as if maybe there's questions just around exactly how it's valued relative to what's happening with credit conditions and all the rest of it. The other observation I would make is look at JP Morgan relative to the Mag 7 and it looks like it's like in the Mag 9 or something like that because it's been the same chart for two years. So maybe what we're seeing is mega cap weakness. Money being distributed to the rest of the market is also coming out of the JP Morgan's which had the premium valuations. They were supposed to be the one decision stocks that people have decided to make a separate decision about.
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Melissa Lee
All right, thank you, Mike.
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Ben Jackson
Yep.
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Melissa Lee
See you back at NASDAQ. Meanwhile, BlackRock's Rick Reader sees a sluggish market ahead. Take a listen to what he had to say in closing Bell earlier today.
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Danny Moses
I still think you're going to have
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David Faber
a low double digit return year but
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Danny Moses
I think it'll be uneven. I think these valuations in some areas are high
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Melissa Lee
through the original big short traders join us now with their reaction. Danny Moses, Founder, Moses Ventures and host of the Danny Moses Show. Vince and Daniel as Seawolf Capital's co founder and partner. Why are you laughing?
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Ben Jackson
Because you see the horn.
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Danny Moses
Just as you said Candy, it was a horn.
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Melissa Lee
What do you think of what Rick Reeder had to say? Do you think it's going to be double digit returns?
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Ben Jackson
I'll take the on there on the double digit returns but you know if I was running BlackRock and 10 trillion dollars of assets I'd probably be a little bit more bullish than the average as well. I think it's going to be under double digit returns. There's too much, there's too much confusion, there's too much uncertainty to think that double digit returns this year after I think was it now two years, three years of straight. I'll take the under.
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Melissa Lee
We were talking just before you guys came on set how at the index level it's been very stable which is about 2% from highs. But you go under it and there's like a lot of volatility, a lot of uncertainty that many was talking about. How do you see that sort of what happens? How does that.
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Porter Collins
So I think you've seen a rotation which is good and it's healthy in other sectors which is great except most people own tech. And so when you see the broadening out I don't think everybody gets that benefit so to speak. So I think the wealth effect that we've seen in the market has contributed to the growth in the economy and the spending in the economy and so it better hold up the market because I think it could feed on itself to the downside.
- [10:40]
Vincent Daniel
Yeah. And from a tech perspective, I mean we know that NASDAQ has really made little progress if you look at the NASDAQ 100, it's trading exactly where it was in mid October. And we just talked about all these hundred billion dollar orders that are being swapped around between all of these companies. And the one thing to your point about the rotations, the equal weight S and P is up about 6% on the year. The Russell 2000 is up about 6% on the year. So there are places to make money and kind of avoid, I guess, the concentration in some of these big tech names.
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Melissa Lee
Right. As former big short traders, we have to ask you, do you see bubbles in this trade and are we seeing, you know, what's happening in terms of the value valuation compressions and software, for instance, are these bubbles bursting? I mean, do you see any sort of.
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Ben Jackson
I actually don't think the bubble is bursting. I actually think what the market is doing is rational. Right. So if you take AI to its conclusion and let's say it's successful, all of a sudden software companies are no longer going to be able to increase their revenues, increase their subscriber base. And so most of these software companies are based upon very high valuations where people are projecting double digit revenue growth and putting a terminal multiple a lot later on. So a lot of what we're seeing, I think is rational. It's just a downsizing of the valuations to probably where they should be.
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Danny Moses
Danny, over the last couple weeks, everybody's come a Blue Owl expert and when you hear, we talked about on the panel. We did. But when you hear Gates, your antenna go up and understand that they're able to sell $1.4 billion of those assets at basically par 99.7%. I mean, maybe, maybe it was a little hyperbolic, but the word was used. Does that get you thinking that maybe as to Jamie Dimon's point, maybe there's some other things to fall here.
- [12:18]
Porter Collins
Sure. Listen, I don't think that product is suitable for retail investors for the most part, given its mismatch in duration. So that's obviously going to be an issue. I think, to Vinnie's point, in what you just asked on the AI trade in general, like what impact that might have. I've never seen in my career this amount of private equity valued at this. There's huge companies that we know they're going public, a lot of companies are going public. So we're not getting a mark to market, speaking of private equity on these stocks. So as the stocks are coming down that are public and some of the tech names, we're not necessarily seeing that yet in the private. So again, retail investors are now getting the opportunity to buy private equity. They're getting opportunity to buy private credit. And I think as some of your guests like to say, which is brew guy potentially.
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Melissa Lee
So it sounds like you're saying retail investors are holding the bag at this point.
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Porter Collins
It normally ends up that way unfortunately. And I just think people need to do their work, carpe diem and you know, and do the works.
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Melissa Lee
Yeah, we've seen the displacement fear roll through sectors, sectors that you wouldn't necessarily think would be hit. The trucking sector, commercial real estate. How do you sort of look for the quote unquote AI proof investment?
- [13:24]
Ben Jackson
Well in our neck of the woods, our old neck of the woods, which is financials, I think it was a three day period where they just ripped through everything.
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Melissa Lee
Yeah.
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Ben Jackson
And the running joke Porter and I and Danny were saying it's like, well, I don't think is going to figure out how to mine gold in the ground. So I'm probably fairly certain there, I'm pretty certain that air is not going to be able to extract oil out of the ground. So. So there's a ton of sectors where you're just it just can't touch it. It might even enhance and increase the cost, improve the cost structure. But I think where we're sitting and we're residing, I feel like we're pretty AI proof. Although maybe three days from now I'll see the gold stocks go down 10, 15% because Cloud discovered something where they could dig to the core of the earth.
- [14:03]
Danny Moses
We'll say, you know, but it hasn't happened. And Danny, you know, historically if the market equity investors sniff out gold's going lower, they will sell the mining stocks hand over fist. And they've sold off a little bit, but nearly as much as the commodity did a couple of weeks ago. Gold trades alive and well as far as I'm concerned.
- [14:21]
Porter Collins
I don't think retail is really there. I think they do trade the ETFs to a degree. But if you look at the miners themselves, where gold is trading right now, if you were to take 5050, $200 gold here, these miners have a long way to go. You could drop to 4,000 and they would be earning. So you are seeing fundamental improvement in the miners. And Vinnie has done more work than I have in these names and some of these names, but I think they have a long way to go. So unless gold really goes off of a cliff here, the miners are a great place to.
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Melissa Lee
Is that your highest conviction Trade right now.
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Porter Collins
Long gold. Long gold and gold miners for sure. Yes.
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Vincent Daniel
All right, Vinnie, you and Porter, you guys are value investors. I hear it all the time. You find places where A are not playing. It's not sexy. I hear you say that again and again when you see a workday. Right now they guided this year's revenue. The consensus was 10.75 billion. They guided to 10.3 billion. It's down 11%. Here's a stock that has expected double digit earnings and sales growth. 80% gross margins. It's trading at 12 times earnings and
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Melissa Lee
it's already down 50% over the past 12 months.
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Vincent Daniel
60 with today, 60 from the all time highs. So are you guys starting to poke around on some of these names? I mean they basically said, all right, we're seeing large deals taking a little longer to close.
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Ben Jackson
Oh, we're definitely looking at them. But of course as value idiots that we are. What you said 12 times earnings. The first thing I do is that gap or adjusted earnings and so then I have to X out share based compensation and then from there it doesn't look as cheap as they are. But they have come down. It's clearly we have to look. I'm not a software guy so I have to actually do a lot more work to determine what is the disruption risk to these business models before I actually step in. But for the first time in ages I've got to look at software companies. I never thought I would ever be able to do that given where the multiples were. But yes, we are intrigued, but we haven't bit into anything really.
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Danny Moses
Last few months people have learned about ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips. I can rattle off a bunch of oih names.
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Porter Collins
Energy trade, same thing, kind of under followed under owned price oil correlating to the balance sheet. These companies, I think it was a 3% weighting or less in the S and P when we turned the calendar. It's probably only up to four at this point or maybe four and a half percent. So as MONEY was looking for a home from technology, this was a good place to go. And again, these companies have spent the last five years with the ESG environment fixing their own balance sheets. You're seeing M and A. I think that's going to continue and I think those stocks are cheap as well. If you tell me oil is going to stay above $60 here, I would own all of them.
- [16:49]
Melissa Lee
So your highest conviction trade right now, Brazil.
- [16:53]
Ben Jackson
I would own the ewz.
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Vincent Daniel
Now hold on a second.
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Melissa Lee
Are you going to trot out your Portuguese.
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Danny Moses
Speaking paltry. I speak Portuguese to the main, to the bone. I can go, but I don't want to.
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Vincent Daniel
That's about it, actually.
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Danny Moses
Not true. Last year at this conference, we asked the question about Brazil and Brazil, I think, was one of the best performing international ETFs. So the fact that you're building upon that gives me hope. Heavy mining, heavy financials.
- [17:19]
Ben Jackson
Correct. Now, keep in mind they have an election in October, so that is going to be very important. But if, if Lula loses, then you just really go all in. But now we, we are definitely intrigued. We love the valuations. It is heavy mining, heavy financials. The easiest way to play that is ewz. And then from there you could start doing work on other names.
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Melissa Lee
All right, great to talk to you guys, as always.
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Danny Moses
Hold on. Before we go.
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Melissa Lee
Yes.
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Danny Moses
The big short panel is historically.
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Melissa Lee
Yes.
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Danny Moses
Danny Moses.
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Melissa Lee
Right.
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Danny Moses
Vincent Daniel and Porter Collins. Porter Collins. What is he on some regatta? Where is he? No.
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Rick Heitzman
What does that mean?
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Danny Moses
You know where he is. All right.
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Vincent Daniel
No, Guy, where you're getting to is. They had to slum it this year because O was not the moderator. Guy Adami was the moderator.
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Rick Heitzman
That's all I'm saying.
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Ben Jackson
He's rowing somewhere.
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Porter Collins
We did have the great Maryland. He's rowing.
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Melissa Lee
I mean, he does so well.
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Danny Moses
I'm waving a poor.
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Melissa Lee
All right, good to see you guys. I mean, you've been on the gold train for a long time and it is non. I mean, there's no impact from AI.
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Danny Moses
I don't believe. Well, obviously there's not.
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Melissa Lee
But I mean, that goes to the hard assets you want to invest in.
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Danny Moses
And it also goes to, and I'll say this before we get out, the market's going to test Kevin Wash, if in fact it is Kevin Wash, which appears to be in ways that he will be prepared for, but they will. And the gold market is, I think, ground zero for that test.
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Melissa Lee
All right, we are getting more on Paramount's raised bid for Warner Brothers Discovery. David Faber has got all the details. He joins us on the fast line. David.
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David Faber
Hey, Melissa.
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Melissa Lee
Yeah.
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David Faber
Paramount's made a big step towards its long term goal here of acquiring Warner Brothers Discovery with the decision of the Warner Brothers board, which we learned about just a short time ago, to determine that the new proposal from Paramount could reasonably be expected to lead to a superior proposal. It's a big step for Paramount and it puts them in what I would argue is sort of the lead position at this point in terms of, again, their goal of acquiring Warner Brothers Discovery, they've obviously been on the outs as Netflix has a deal and still does has a deal to acquire the company for $27.75 in cash, that being the studio and stream parts of the company, the remainder of which would be spun off, namely the cable networks under the Netflix deal. But that deal has to be in question. Now my understanding, having spoken to people close to the situation is, you know, Paramount has answered the questions around certainty that the Warner Brothers board has had throughout this process and they have done that in a couple of different ways. But most importantly, well, they've raised their $5.8 billion reverse termination fee to 7 billion. So if in fact there was a regulatory determination that said the deal can happen, $7 billion now would be going to Warner Brothers. But beyond that, and most important the obligation that they now have to contribute additional equity funding to the extent needed, and I'm reading here from the release to support the solvency certificate required by the lending banks to Paramount, that answers a key concern of the Warner Brothers board with the overall what they called LBO structure here, meaning that if in fact Paramount's cable networks were to not perform well and they were to get close to close and say, you know what I mean, we want to back away, or the banks were to say we want to back away, that is no longer a concern because of this willingness to contribute additional equity to make sure that in fact Paramount was solvent. Now, that seems unlikely, but that was a concern of the Warner Brothers board, as was the fact that Warner Brothers own cable networks. If they in fact had significant declines that Paramount could try and call a material adverse effect. That also is no longer a part of, of any merger agreement the two companies would sign. So in many ways they've answered uncertainty. They're at $31 a share in terms of value with a ticking fee that goes up each quarter starting with, let's call it October 1st of this year. And the pressure now, guys, is on Netflix to see what it's going to do, even though I should point out the matching rates period of four days has yet to begin. That only begins when it actually has been deemed a superior proposal. So what has to happen between now and then to get to that point? Very little is my understanding. But they do still have to have some more discussions around interim operating agreements and things of that nature before it is deemed superior. And that four day matching rights sets in.
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Melissa Lee
All right, David, thanks so much for phoning in with the news. David Faber on the fast line for us. In reaction to this News, we are seeing Netflix shares tick higher. They're up by about a percent here, which is not entirely a surprise. But that goes to show how investors don't necessarily want Netflix to do this. Big deal.
- [22:10]
Vincent Daniel
Hollywood doesn't want them to do it. Nobody really wants them to do this. And by the way, Goat there, he wasn't dialed in. And you said he dialed in for that. You know, David, he's about Rushmore. All right, but here's the deal. That stock should be up a lot if they don't win or they pull. I mean, here's a company, I know a lot of people are worried about their growth, growth. But 20% expected earnings growth in Vinnie, you know, gap and adjusted. Okay. 13% expected revenue growth. And this is a company that's been growing margins. Five years ago, 41%. Gross margins expect to be 51 and a half. I think down 40%. I think you buy this thing even here, whether they get it or not.
- [22:47]
Danny Moses
Best day it's had in a while. I think certainty, regardless of outcome, is beneficial for Netflix the stock.
- [22:52]
Kerry Finley
Yeah.
- [22:53]
Melissa Lee
Coming up, we've got much more from the Iconnections global conference in Miami beach, including the next move for semis as all eyes turn to Nvidia Results results tomorrow, what our next guest expects from that report. Plus the fast movers catching our attention. Today's session, why Novos in the red again, the continued crypto crush and how Alphabet's Waymo is expanding its robo taxi reach. Don't go anywhere. Fast Money live from Miami beach is back into.
- [23:22]
Kerry Finley
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Melissa Lee
And listeners of this show will get
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Kerry Finley
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- [23:51]
Melissa Lee
Do it the right way with Indeed. Ugh. Could this vintage store be any cuter? Right. And the best part, they accept Discover. Accept Discovery in a little place like this? I don't think so, Jennifer. Oh, yeah.
- [24:03]
Porter Collins
Huh?
- [24:04]
Melissa Lee
Discover's accepted where I like to shop. Come on, baby. Get with the times. Right. So we shouldn't get the parachute pants? These are making a comeback, I think.
- [24:16]
Vincent Daniel
Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide, based on
- [24:21]
Melissa Lee
the February 2025 Nielsen report.
- [24:23]
Vincent Daniel
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- [24:52]
Melissa Lee
21/Welcome back to Fast Money live from Miami Beach. AMD popping almost 9% after inking a massive deal with Meta that could be worth more than $100 billion. This is investors. Aw, wait. Nvidia's Q4 earnings tomorrow after the bell. For more on all of this in the broader air space, let's bring in first Mark founder and managing partner Rick Heitzman. Rick, great to see you down.
- [25:12]
Rick Heitzman
Hey, good to see you on the road. This is awesome.
- [25:14]
Melissa Lee
What do you, what are you thinking in terms of Nvidia tomorrow?
- [25:17]
Rick Heitzman
I just think that you're seeing an unparalleled need for GPUs and people are still viewing GPUs and access to GPUs as currency. So whether that's Metta, the other hyperscalers, I think you're not going to see a letting up until something material happens.
- [25:34]
Melissa Lee
Is this going to be a catalyst, though, for the stock which has sort of been stuck?
- [25:38]
Rick Heitzman
I think the stock's been stuck. It's a matter of how much they have to exceed expectations to really create that catalyst. And I think they're going to exceed expectations. I'm just unsure what the whisper number is.
- [25:49]
Vincent Daniel
Rick, when you look in your portfolio and I know a bunch of your names, but like Synthesia is one and just raised at a big valuation. Here's a company, it's in the video avatars, but they do a ton of really interesting things that just didn't exist three years ago. What are you seeing as far as what are they using? Are they using, like you just said that the GPOs are currency. Like, are they heavy users of the hyperscalers? You know, they are.
- [26:10]
Rick Heitzman
They're using both, you know, the gcp, Google cloud. They're using, you know, traditional clouds, but they're also building a lot of their own GPUs because they're trying to optimize on that and everyone's trying to drive the cost of those down and the efficiency up. So even companies like Synthesia, which is the biggest player in the basically generative AI for video space, is still using a massive amount of compute.
- [26:34]
Danny Moses
I know you were busy doing something else you didn't hear the conversation we had but when you hear amd potentially giving away 20% of their company in the form of warrants to Facebook understanding, maybe there's a quid pro quo, maybe not. Is that concerning at all to you?
- [26:48]
Rick Heitzman
It is concerning all these sickler commerce deals where I'm promising and you're no one's really sure how much is a promise, how much is a commitment, when does this happen, how do these options earned? And just the lack of transparency is wildly concerning.
- [27:03]
Melissa Lee
That plus private credit's involvement in software and the crush that we're seeing in software because of AI displacement fears. Does all of this sort of come to a head at some point? I mean, how do you view this?
- [27:14]
Rick Heitzman
I view it back, going back and we've talked about before like 1999 with the circular commerce I'm going to give you, I'm going to loan you money so you could buy my stuff. And we're unsure how those deals work. And there's not a lot of transparency even for public companies. And you saw that, you know, Apollo just did the deal with X AI backed up by Nvidia to buy more Nvidia chips. And when that means when this all comes to a halt, this whole cycle bursts and everybody's left holding the bag. So I think private credit is probably being used to obfuscate a lot of the transparency.
- [27:44]
Melissa Lee
So in terms of when you are looking at potential investment, are you taking a second look at software companies? Given the markdowns that we've seen in
- [27:52]
Rick Heitzman
the public market, I think we're fortunately seeing the disruptors of those. So the legacy software companies that have a legacy software base that's doing something very simple. So I think that traditional workflow software is going to be incredibly disrupted by AI and it's incredibly expensive to build, maintain and build additional modules on. The software companies were back in the day are much more efficient in creating products and have much more sustainable competitive advantages in terms of data network effects and being able to do deeper things with systems of record.
- [28:25]
Vincent Daniel
All right, Rick, we first met you in 2013. You were talking about Pinterest going public. You remember that all the way back then consumer Internet is just getting killed in the public market. Pinterest is below its IPO price from 20 million. What do you do with these names? Because we look at them every day and we're looking like these are great services still and they're trading, I think
- [28:42]
Rick Heitzman
Pinterest is trading at single digit times earnings now and I don't know why People think they're being disrupted by AI. They're actually using AI and you're seeing what's going on there. I think you're also going to see a next wave of consumer services. I think people will be excited about, you know, a couple of names we've talked about before in discord in the communication and community space. It's very big, over 200 million unique weeks and approaching a billion dollars in revenue or something in digital health. And I know we've talked about RO before and they're incredible growth.
- [29:16]
Melissa Lee
Rick, great to see you. Wonderful seeing Rick Heitzman first Mark Capital. You mentioned Pinterest. So, I mean, there's a lot of babies being thrown out with the bathwater, I would assume.
- [29:25]
Vincent Daniel
Well, I think the way Rick thinks about it, I mean, like, Reddit's a great example. This was a really hot ipo. The stock, I think, doubled very quickly, quickly. And it's just been cut in half. And I think, you know, really for investors, you know, you got to think these things can happen. You know, like we talk about Nvidia and Netflix and Metta. You know, these stocks went down 70% from their highs in 21. And really think about, you know, what is a bubble because, you know, you can sell things when they're acting really well and you can look for opportunities like we're just talking about in software when they act really poorly.
- [29:56]
Melissa Lee
Coming at the private credit crunch, as Blue Owl's liquidity concerns grip the market, what are next guest thinks about the tumult and the biggest opportunities she thinks are being overlooked by the crowd. Fast when he's back from Miami Beach. Straight ahead, Thy ticket lady Jennifer of Coolidge. Well, many thanks, good sir. Here is my Discover card. They accept Discover at Renaissance Fair? Yeah, they do here. Discover is accepted at the places I love to shop. Get it with the times. With the times.
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Kerry Finley
You're playing the loot.
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Melissa Lee
Yeah, and it sounds pretty good, right?
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Vincent Daniel
Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide, based on
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Melissa Lee
the February 2025 Nielsen report.
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Danny Moses
Before we had AT&T business wireless coverage, our delivery GPS wasn't the most reliable.
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Vincent Daniel
Once our driver had to do a. A 14 point turn to get back on route. A 14 point turn. An influencer, even livestream the whole thing.
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Danny Moses
Not good for business.
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Vincent Daniel
Now with AT&T business, wireless routes are
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Danny Moses
updating on the fly and deliveries are on time.
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Vincent Daniel
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- [31:45]
Melissa Lee
21/Welcome back to Fast Money. Stocks bouncing back after yesterday's sell off. The Dow climbing 370 points, the S&P up three quarters of a percent and the tech heavy NASDAQ leading the gains jumping more than a percent. Shares of Novo Nordisk down nearly 3%. Today the company announcing it will cut prices for its wegovy Nozempic drugs by about 50% starting next year. That after a more than 16% drop yesterday in disappointing drug trial data. Alphabet's autonomous vehicle company, Waymo expanding its services. The Robotaxi service opening to the public in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Orlando, bringing Waymo's total 10 cities total to 10 cities nationwide. And crypto that is still under pressure. Bitcoin hovering around $64,000 on pace for its worst month since June of 2022. It's also tracking for a fifth consecutive monthly loss, the longest streak since 2018. And we have some after hours action tell you about HP topping earnings and revenue expectations. Kava and Workday heading in opposite directions after both companies beat top and bottom line estimates. And First Solar dropping at after posting disappointing full year revenue guidance.
- [32:52]
Danny Moses
I'll go to Bitcoin and Michael Saylor today announced I think they're up to 717,000 bitcoin on the balance sheet. An average price is $76,200. You see where it's trading now. So you know we had sort of posited that the market's going to test it. Well, it did. The fact that it doesn't bounce in a meaningful way is should be concerning and to me that's going to make itself into some of this tech trade at some point.
- [33:16]
Melissa Lee
Coming up, where next guest isn't letting recent private credit concerns stop her from finding opportunity in the space, the areas she says are being overlooked. More on that when FAST MONEY returns from Miami Beach. Welcome back to FAST MONEY live from Miami Beach. Private credit and alternative investment management companies rebounding today after fears over Blue Owl rattled the sector over the past. Our next guest still sees opportunities in the space. Kerry Finley joins us now. She's a CEO and CIO of Tecora Capital Management. Kerry, great to have you with us on the Show. And I know what you do is different from what Blue Owl does and not in a lot of the same sectors. But what kind of chill does that place on your sector, if any?
- [34:00]
Kerry Finley
I mean, I think from a perception perspective it places a chill. But in reality, we're still seeing demand for borrowing and demand for deals deals. And we're still seeing investors who like and are interested in the space. Tacora tries to do asset liability matching. And so we offer our investors terms that match the underlying liquidity of our deals. And because of that, we don't expect to have Blue Owl problems, but we're just reading the news like everyone else. And it definitely creates a perception issue.
- [34:29]
Melissa Lee
What is in your portfolio right now that is sort of, I don't want to say AI proof, but sort of, you know, not shaken by those fears of AI displacement.
- [34:39]
Kerry Finley
I mean, right now, insurance, we are seeing a lot of niche off the run insurance deals. Our favorite one is a company called SafePoint. They do insurance deals in kind of hurricane ridden areas. So think the Gulf coast and we're seeing them create really low loss ratios. And we, you know, we look at things as a bridge to bankability. So we lent them money before they were bankable and now they have bank debt that refinanced us out. And we expect them to be able to go public over the next year and show people their underwriting and show them their loss ratios.
- [35:16]
Vincent Daniel
Kerry, what do you think about when you hear Jamie Dimon say some of their competitors are doing dumb things? And that means on the lending front, right? And I remember seeing this headline maybe a week ago that Bank America is going to be 25 billion of their own capital looking to invest, you know, in private credit or make those sorts of loans. I mean, it really is an interesting bookend, I'm sure. I'm just curious where you kind of see that.
- [35:37]
Kerry Finley
I mean, there's always people doing really dumb things.
- [35:39]
Rick Heitzman
But right here, when you said that, I.
- [35:43]
Danny Moses
Okay, that's all right.
- [35:45]
Kerry Finley
But we're seeing megadeals on both sides. You know, we're seeing megadeals be incredibly what I would like to call rich, where it's just, you know, there's so much demand to put billions of dollars to work because investors are giving mega funds billions of dollars. And so it almost makes them do dumb things. They have to put the money out. They have to put the money out to raise their next fund. It's a, you know, kind of feed the beast kind of mentality. And you know, I don't know whether Jamie Dimon doing nothing or bank of America doing a lot is going to end up being the dumb thing in this case. But we are seeing, you know, mega funds have a lot of creep and have a lot of covenants that are a lot looser than they used to be.
- [36:24]
Danny Moses
Love that style creep. We spend a lot of time talking about the Federal Reserve, maybe too much time. Bond market has been pretty tepid recently. Not a lot of volatility. How important are interest rates to your business?
- [36:36]
Kerry Finley
I mean, interest rates are important to everything, including the growth of the economy. And rates coming down, I think would make the market think that there's going to be growth in the future. When they think there's growth in the future, people want to borrow and we want to be able to lend into that. But interest rates are central to everything that we do.
- [36:55]
Melissa Lee
What are some of the other areas that you're interested in right now besides insurance?
- [36:59]
Kerry Finley
We have a great deal that we've been focused on in the student lending space, helping students get out of debt and, you know, debt modification and helping them kind of defer payments and be able to make this sustainable for them. I mean, that's my other favorite space that we're in is, you know, helping people get out of the debt that they, you know, is probably more and more burdensome than they had originally thought.
- [37:22]
Melissa Lee
Kerry, great to speak with you. Thank you for coming by. Kerry, to Core Capital.
- [37:27]
Danny Moses
It's great. It's first time on. She was fantastic. Yeah, we have her back if she
- [37:32]
Melissa Lee
would like to come back.
- [37:33]
Danny Moses
Oh, would you like?
- [37:33]
Kerry Finley
I would love to come back.
- [37:35]
Danny Moses
I shouldn't take anything for granted.
- [37:37]
Vincent Daniel
Not least it's true.
- [37:38]
Melissa Lee
It's true. But you have to be careful. Private credit is a very big industry.
- [37:42]
Vincent Daniel
Well, you know, again, I'm going to go back to that panel with Boaz Weinstein and you know, he was talking about and Guy, you talk about this all the time. I mean like high yield debt has not moved. Like if you look at a lot of these indices and it's not saying what a lot of, you know, some of these other folks are saying about the credit markets right now and maybe that is the next shoe to drop. But you know, I mean, you've been talking about it for a while. I mean it's really tight.
- [38:05]
Danny Moses
Those things don't move until they, and I'm not trying to be clever here but you know, they don't move until they do. So it's one of those things you got to watch and when it starts to move, it happens fast.
- [38:13]
Melissa Lee
All right, coming up, a strong start for the year for real estate. But can the sector keep climbing? What our next guest sees working in the space and where he's putting money to work right now. Fast Money in Miami beach is back in two. Welcome back to Fast Money. Our next guest company is set to deploy more than $1 billion into real estate lending this year. Ben Jackson is Les Group managing director and he says there are several areas of opportunity in this market environment. Ben, great to have you with us.
- [38:48]
Ben Jackson
Great to be here.
- [38:49]
Melissa Lee
What is the best opportunity right now in your view?
- [38:52]
Ben Jackson
So our real estate business is diverse in the sense that we have specialized investment teams investing across acquisition, credit and development. And so we like all three of those verticals for different reasons. But in terms of where we're most active and where we see the greatest opportunity over the next two years is our net lease credit business. And so essentially two years ago we were fortunate to bring in a great professional from the net lease industry. His name is Joe Yu. Joe eats net lease for breakfast, lunch and dinner. And so he's just a phenomenal 25 year veteran of the net lease industry. He's deployed $10 billion.
- [39:29]
Melissa Lee
So what is that? Can you tell?
- [39:30]
Ben Jackson
So net lease, great question. So as you drive down the road and you look down the street, you see franchise concepts, quick service, restaurants, oil change shops, car washes. So in the retail space, these are single tenant properties in which the tenant is generally a franchise concept that signs a long term triple net lease and so pays rent. The triple net lease means that the tenant's responsible for property tax, insurance and maintenance. And so as the owner of that property, it's a very low impact. You really don't have. You collect the rent, that's the main point. And so we are providing construction financing for the development of these types of properties throughout the country. And so we're very active in the retail space, but also active in industrial and logistic as well. So mission critical manufacturing facilities for sometimes investment grade companies that are building 500,000 square foot properties throughout the U.S. we
- [40:27]
Danny Moses
talk a lot about the housing market on the network, single family, multifamily. Do you go down those roads as well?
- [40:32]
Ben Jackson
Absolutely. So outside of net lease, we're also active in the multi family lending space and single family. And so we're backed by institutional capital in those different verticals on the single family space. So we're originating on a monthly basis $100 million per month of something called RTLS. This is residential transition loans. So these are single family fix and flip Loans. So someone, you know, there's a developer out there that buys an existing single family property, it's old, it needs to be updated, they renovate it and then they sell that property. And so we're doing $100 million per month of those types of originations.
- [41:10]
Danny Moses
And then my follow up, follow up question is, are you able to gauge the health or the lack of health of the housing market based on your business?
- [41:17]
Ben Jackson
I can tell you that we look at it in terms of defaults or are we having issues across the portfolio and right now it's almost nil. And so we're not seeing any issues in terms of getting repaid on these 18 month senior mortgages for in the fix and flip space at all.
- [41:36]
Melissa Lee
How could you. The administration's proposal to ban institutional investors from owning more than 100 homes, single family homes, how could that impact your business?
- [41:46]
Ben Jackson
I would say most of the borrowers in our space, in the RTL space are generally owning kind of 30, 40, 50. I mean, there's a, it could be an impact. I mean, there could certainly be an impact on, you know, commercial businesses going out and buying single family homes. But we have a, we haven't totally evaluated the risk yet, but it's something that we're keeping an eye on.
- [42:07]
Melissa Lee
Is it concerning to you that the administration wants to, you know, that the administration wants to open up the housing market to households, to individuals. And how do you sort of factor that in? Because there's a real desire to do that on the part of the administration.
- [42:22]
Ben Jackson
So there's an amazing statistic that really blows my mind, which is today, in 2026, we're building the same number of, of homes as we were in 1960. The population in the United States has doubled. And we're still delivering on an annual basis, more or less the same number of housing units. And so to me, the solution, the answer for affordability is to build more housing in the United States. That's what's needed.
- [42:45]
Melissa Lee
Okay, Ben, great to speak with you. Thanks for stopping by.
- [42:47]
Ben Jackson
Thanks so much.
- [42:48]
Melissa Lee
Ben Jackson, his first time.
- [42:50]
Danny Moses
We have to have Ben back. We're two for two. Sandy booked as well.
- [42:54]
Melissa Lee
Yeah.
- [42:55]
Danny Moses
I mean, kudos to Sandy.
- [42:57]
Melissa Lee
Right?
- [42:57]
Danny Moses
Or Kavita. Maybe it's Kavita. Kavitha, well done.
- [43:00]
Melissa Lee
Yes, she's here as well.
- [43:01]
Danny Moses
Yelled at her.
- [43:02]
Melissa Lee
But in terms of housing, what do you think?
- [43:04]
Danny Moses
You know, it's all. In my world, it comes down to the employment picture, right. We talked, spent a lot of time talking about AI. Is AI going to disrupt? Are we going to be at 10% unemployment, which that piece out yesterday suggested. I mean, that is the crux of this whole thing. As much as about interest rates, it's more about the employment picture.
- [43:21]
Vincent Daniel
You know, there's a lot of jokes that can be made about this. You had Meredith Whitney on a panel earlier, earlier Today, she said one in five men, I mean, I guess in their 20s are living in their basements of their parents. I mean, like something like that. Yeah, it's really interesting. I mean, like, and maybe that is some disruption. So I don't know, maybe the single families become multifamily.
- [43:39]
Melissa Lee
Coming up, the prediction market pop. What investor John Arnold had to say about the betting boom and how the quickly changing landscape for the space is impacting the gaming industry. You got the details. And Fast Money live in Miami Beach. Return. Welcome back to Fast Money. Prediction markets have seen weekly volumes of over $5 billion early this year. I spoke to hedge fund legend and Arnold Ventures founder John Arnold about the explosion of platforms like Calcium Polymarket and the blurring of the lines between them and sports betting.
- [44:16]
Danny Moses
A lot of the states that legalized sports gambling did so with pretty limited guardrails. And many of the legislators who did that are now starting to rethink. But then we had the CFTC decision on prediction markets which was allowing, they're saying that prediction markets could allow sports betting and that that was under CFTC regulation, which then trumps in their mind all the state rules. And so as states generally had a minimum age of 21, they had a lot of rules on market design and kind of policy design and all that's now kind of swept away. And so there's kind of chaos in these markets today.
- [44:58]
Melissa Lee
I think that what we have to remember about John Arnold is that he is a hedge fund legend in terms of energy trading. He is a master risk taker. I mean, his funds in Taurus have north of 100% returns, compound annual returns over 10 years. So this is a guy who knows what he's talking about and he's saying these risks that are being taken, predictions, markets, sports gambling, they are not good and they are worth looking into.
- [45:21]
Danny Moses
He's somebody that rarely is out there. The fact that you talk to him is amazing. And we can hear from him and there is a lot of trepidation around it. I saw the interview the other day on Squawk Box where Becky and I think it was Andrew spoke to Tourette's from Kalshi and a lot of people are very apprehensive. Of course, the problem is you're not going to put that genie back in the bottle. So it's out there. I think the market just has to learn how to adapt to it.
- [45:43]
Melissa Lee
Right now it's frictionless. I mean that was his point. These vices are frictionless. It's so easy. Get on your phone, one app, you can do a sports bet and you could do a markets bet. So how do you put that grit into, you know.
- [45:56]
Vincent Daniel
Well, this was interesting. Also on Squawk and Friends with Andrew Chris Walkbox Squbox walk with Andrew Chris Christie, former governor of New Jersey and you know, he is working for I think the gaming, some sort of gaming industry. They obviously are not into the sports betting or the sports, you know, prediction markets and event contracts. And it was interesting because he was talking about states are regulating all of the actual sports, you know, fanduel and that sort of thing. And you know, like right now you can do the event contracts in 50 states. So he thinks that there's got to be some sort of level of the playing field there.
- [46:33]
Melissa Lee
Up next, final trades, Final trade time. Dan.
- [46:46]
Vincent Daniel
Yeah, Netflix. I think shareholders would love to see
- [46:48]
Danny Moses
them back out of the deal. Guys, now we had an on site crew of about 18 people that were amazing the last last couple days. They get a huge shout out.
- [46:55]
Melissa Lee
Absolutely.
- [46:56]
Danny Moses
Slb.
- [46:56]
Melissa Lee
Alright, thank you for watching Fast Money. All opinions expressed by the Fast Money participants are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of CNBC or its 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 Bubba Wallace here with Tyler Reddick.
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