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CNBC's "Fast Money"
Nvidia’s GTC Conference Underway… And Fed Decision On Deck 3/18/25
00:46:28
All eyes on Nvidia as the AI chip giant gets underway. What CEO Jensen Huang had to say about the next moves in its AI strategy, and if the stock can bounce back from its recent drop. Plus Another key Fed decision on deck, as investors await the central bank’s next rate move amid the market volatility. How one top market strategist sees tomorrow playing out, and where he’s finding opportunity these days. Fast Money Disclaimer
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- [00:00]
Melissa Lee
Say you've always wanted to take a.
- [00:02]
Tim Seymour
Spontaneous trip to the Caribbean. Here's the thing, if you get smart.
- [00:05]
Melissa Lee
With your money, you can do things like that.
- [00:07]
Tim Seymour
With Empower, you can start making the most out of your money so you can get out and live a little. Isn't that why we work so hard to have some fun with our money, like treating yourself to something special or spontaneously doing something extra for a loved one? So use Empower and get good at money so you can be a little bad. Join their 19 million customers today@empower.com not an empowered client, paid or sponsored. This episode is brought to you by aarp. Ten years from today, Lisa Schneider will trade in her office job to become the leader of a pack of dogs as the owner of her own dog rescue. That is a second act made possible by the reskilling courses Lisa's taking now with AARP to help make sure her income lives as long as she does. And she can finally run with the big dogs and the small dogs who just think they're big dogs. That's why the younger you are, the more you need AARP. Learn more at aarp.orgorg skills live in.
- [01:03]
Melissa Lee
The NASDAQ markets right in the heart of New York City's Times Square. This is fast money. Here's what's on tap tonight. Stocks in retreat after a recently rare two day rally. Major markets pulling back today. The S and P and Nasdaq both going negative for the week. What this all means ahead of tomorrow's Fed decision. We'll debate that. And a Mag 7 meltdown. Nvidia dropping on the first day of its GTC conference. Alphabet sinking as it inks its biggest deal ever. And now even Matter has given up its gains for the year. How the traders are eyeing the big tech stocks now. Plus more troubles for the travel trade. The latest group getting hit by decreased demand and gold maybe at a record high. But there's another metal that's outperforming this year. We'll tell you all about it and the traders burning chart questions, the stocks they are watching and what the chartmaster has to say about these trends. I'm Melissa Lee coming to you live from studio Be at the nasdaq. On the desk tonight, Tim Seymour, Dan Nathan, Guy Dami and Carter Braxton Worth. We start off with all the headlines out of Nvidia's GTC keynote. CEO Jensen Huang delivering a two hour address today. At the conference this afternoon he announced a new GM partnership and gave release timelines for the company's Blackwell Ultra and Vera Rubin chips. But shares of The Darling fell 3 1/2% during the session, now down nearly 25% from their record. Our Christina Parts Nevilles is at the event in San Jose. She's got all the headlines. Christina.
- [02:21]
Christina Parts Nevels
Well, the theme of this unscripted keynote for two hours was really about maintaining dominance in the face of increasing competition. Jensen Huang reiterating data centers are still $1 trillion market cap by 2028 they're and closer to it but that's a number we've heard before. As for the products you briefly mentioned Melissa, but we've got the expected Blackwell Ultra for this year, Vera Rubin for 2026, Vera Rubin Ultra for the back half of 2027. What you need to know is Jensen's fulfilling his promise and new chips every year. A question though still top of mind, is will the demand follow Jensen Huang reassuring the crowd that next generation I will need 100 times more compute than older models. So think of it as him telling the audience our customers will still need our chips for years to come with large language models like Deep Seek using less advanced computing hardware. Concerns still linger on the magnitude of that demand. Other announcements, new photonic switches to connect GPUs, inferencing software. A partnership where you mentioned with GM to make autonomous vehicles negatively possibly affecting mobileye which fell today. A new quantum computing office, the first customizable humanoid robot which can reason but those are revenue streams that should really have a minimal impact over the next five or so. This speech was highly technical as Jensen Huang detailed projects already previewed, many of them already previewed just over the last year or so. So I guess the big takeaway was no major surprises. Clearly catering to a technical audience rather than investors which may explain why the stock didn't really jump on all of these announcements. Melissa.
- [04:00]
Melissa Lee
Yeah, and Christine, as I understand it, there's a media call tomorrow so that Jensen his feet might be held to the fire a little bit more in terms of the question that has emerged since Deep Seek and that is are the hyperscalers really going to change? Has there been any sort of change at all in terms of expectation for the need for compute power which he did address in that two hour keynote.
- [04:22]
Christina Parts Nevels
Yeah, he did, but he addressed that same line in an interview on CNBC around earnings time as well. And to your point, the keynote, the Q and A with the press will be in the evening tomorrow, so you may not see as much of a stock reaction throughout the day. But be rest assured I'll be there. There'll Be others and will grill him with questions.
- [04:42]
Melissa Lee
All right Christina, thank you. Christina parks navalis down 3 1/2 percent. I guess they didn't answer that question. They did not answer that question in two hours. This is not granted for investors. This is not a meeting for investors. But still that is what has been dogging the stock.
- [04:57]
Guy Adami
Not a meeting for investors, but every investor is focused on the meeting. So. So it is a meeting for investors and I think you're right. Look Rubin looks like it's a second half 26 story. I think market probably knew that number one margins didn't come up. Robotics, you know, multitrillion dollar industry potentially. So he said all the things about the future and that are exciting. But you know, I don't think anything that's been concerning investors or traders, I don't think any of those concerns were swaged and I continue to think that, you know, they might talk about a reacceleration of margins in the second half. I just don't see it happening. So this move actually makes sense to me.
- [05:30]
Dan Nathan
And this was not a scripted speech my understanding. So this is a kind of a free flowing dynamic and to the extent that you could have just gotten a little bit more into where the new use cases, in other words moving away from data centers, moving into there's talk about collaboration with GM on AI, etc. Etc. So the trillion dollar addressable market isn't really new. I think if you look at the stock, you know, from that January 7th at least recent high it's been making lower lows. So I mean we're going to talk about some of the other big mega cap tech stocks but there's nothing on the charts to tell you that this, this company is in a safe spot and semis, you know, continue to look like they're vulnerable.
- [06:09]
Carter Braxton Worth
Tim playing hurt here guy.
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Guy Adami
Well that tie would suggest playing something.
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Carter Braxton Worth
What is that? So it's the boys get wider.
- [06:17]
Dan Nathan
As you told me, she loves this more often laughing as if that's not.
- [06:23]
Carter Braxton Worth
What say nay, nay. The fever is broken in this trade. Like let's just be clear here, right? So if this happened a year ago, whatever he said here with those throngs of people there who are really excited, the stock probably would have been up 5%. We were looking through the options market. The implied move between, between today, this morning and Friday's close was about 6% in either direction. Just think about that. Okay. So when you think about what's going on here, the expectations, I didn't think they were going to be Particularly high with the company just reported a few weeks ago. They obviously didn't say any real big news for this sort of event and they probably knew that. The one thing I'll just say there's like lots of headlines when guy talks about margins not going up in the second half of this year. The information has an article out this morning that Amazon Web Services, they're offering their own chip to cloud customers. Same performance as the H100 from India, but at 25% of the price. This is how any other semi company who's coming into the space, they're going to compete on price, especially if they have the same performance as the last gen sort of chips. So to me, listen, the story's great, okay? They're expected to grow earnings and sales this year, 50% trades at 25 times. Next year it's supposed to grow 25% expected, you know, trades at 20 times. So if you're a valuation person and you believe what they're saying, then the stock is cheap here. But if you think that the fever is broken all around, you think that the economy is going to get weaker, if you think their major customers are going to pull back in their capex at some point or diversify away from a single source, then the story is not that attractive right here.
- [07:49]
Melissa Lee
It doesn't really matter what Jensen Huang says. I mean to, to play the role of Ms. Silver Linings on this desk and somebody else is not doing that tonight. Sorry I missed the fact that there is no new guidance after three weeks after reporting earnings. Maybe that is a good thing considering how we have seen confidence drop off a cliff in so many other industries. For him to stick by that forecast, that wasn't enough. Still.
- [08:13]
Guy Adami
No, that's. I think you make a good point right there. Of every opportunity to back away. The economy is slowing. Maybe capex is not going to be as robust. I think you're right to point it out. But I also think the market's trying to get in front of a potential slowdown and the potential for capex not to be as robust as things, you know, as many of these stocks have priced in. I think that's sort of the rub right now.
- [08:33]
Melissa Lee
Carter Braxton Worth, how do you read the charts here? What do you think?
- [08:37]
Stacey Raskin
Well, I think, look, Nvidia was the holdout, right? We know that the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index peaked in July. Here we are March of the following year and Nvidia finally succumbed. So did a Vago Broadcom, of course, Avgo. But the point is that if you look at where we are in relation to 52 week highs, which is an important thing. The S and P down 10%, the tech sector down 1415, semiconductors as a group down 23 and the equal weight semiconductor index out of philly down some 30%. So the irony, or you pick the word, the single most loved area within the most loved sector. Technology semis are now of course the opposite side of all that love. Something's not right. The charts are not good and I would continue to reduce exposure.
- [09:28]
Melissa Lee
I mean if you are a believer that there is a recession or a slowdown in the offing, you cannot be invested in semiconductors. No semiconductors you can't have worked.
- [09:37]
Dan Nathan
You can't be invested in growth stocks, period. And that's, that's part of the story. And the market right now is not priced for recession, let's be clear. And I, you know what Carter's talking about in terms of that relative underperformance going all the way from July. And Nvidia really has been at least the leader of the pack, at least in that group. And it's funny because I actually think AMD is interesting on valuation. I don't know when that will really matter, but this is a company that I don't think has pegged their future all to AI. In fact, it's really question for you.
- [10:04]
Carter Braxton Worth
How much time does Lisa sue have? I mean think about this. If you missed a whole cycle, if you missed a whole cycle and they've been telling a story about the AI TAM and that they've been talking about a chip that they have and some reviews have said that it's actually performed well against the H100. This thing can't get out of its own way. And the only reason I say that is what did we just see from intel you've been talking about all week? It's had the biggest three day gain since 1987. I'm not saying that that company is out of the woods by any means, but here's a company that was neck and neck with Nvidia for two decades, right? And they have just fallen by the wayside. That's intel, obviously.
- [10:36]
Dan Nathan
And yeah, well I think the AMD story though really is more about how they've eaten Intel's lunch than it is that they've lagged in video. And I think it's been apples and oranges for a while. And as I like to say, you make the most money when things go from terrible to just bad. That's what's going on in intel right now. It's nothing to do cartwheels and you're not doing them. I hear you. I think it's a case where AMD has proven that there's a lot left to do. And what was once looking like a 1 1/2 horse race with infrastructure, AMD being the half. It's a one horse race and that's good for Nvidia.
- [11:07]
Melissa Lee
Or is it? Have we. Oh, we got breaking news.
- [11:10]
Guy Adami
Oh, breaking news.
- [11:11]
Melissa Lee
Breaking news on the ftc. Megan Cassell's got the details. Megan?
- [11:15]
Megan Casella
Melissa, we are just learning and I can cite this to a White House official and a second source that President Donald Trump has fired both Democratic commissioners on the ftc. That means that just two commissioners, two Republican commissioners are operating on the FTC at this point. We have no further details at this point. But the two Democratic commissioners, that's Rebecca Slaughter, who was appointed during President Trump's first term in 2018, and Alvara Bedoya, who was appointed during President Biden's term in 2021. Both of them are now out of a job. We will continue to watch this and we expect more background and more statements to come in shortly. For now, we know Trump has fired both of those officials, leaving just two commissioners. Melissa left on the FTC at the moment.
- [11:56]
Melissa Lee
How many are typically on the ftc? Is it five?
- [11:59]
Megan Casella
It's five total. No more than three can be from the same party. So they do need a majority. Republicans will now, of course, have the majority given that they have the major of the seats. It's unclear to me in this moment, having just learned this, what this means for the FTC functioning. But a third commissioner did just make it through a committee on the Hill, I believe it was last week. So more coming on the Republican side. We'll see what will have to happen next for the Democrats.
- [12:23]
Melissa Lee
All right, Megan, thank you. Megan Casella, we've been talking about, you know, the golden age for M and A under the Trump administration. For so long it looked like, I think the agendas of Biden and Trump sort of looked almost converging at some point. But here it is a major shakeup, major shake up.
- [12:40]
Guy Adami
But you know, again is the convergence might have have a bit of a divergence here, but I think a lot of people were betting on a robust M and A environment under this new administration. We talked about seemingly, you know, they were meeting somewhere in the middle. Maybe this pushes it a little bit out. So maybe on the margins this is a good thing for the banks. Remains to be seen. And I don't know what that concert was in the back. That was awful.
- [13:00]
Dan Nathan
A protest sound like someone wasn't happy about losing their job. But you, you've got a dynamic here where I think it's interesting because the, the agenda of the Trump administration in some cases is going to be very protectionist and there's, there's dynamics here where in terms of M and A and some deal flow that I, I think is going to be challenging. So this isn't a reason to sell banks by the way. I mean this whole thing that banks were rallying on an M and A environment I think is crazy. I think they are rallying on a steeper yield curve, deregulation, valuations that make sense capital give back. And I think that's more the issue. But yes, this is fascinating. Let's see where it goes.
- [13:36]
Carter Braxton Worth
Yeah, I can't imagine it's a huge surprise, but it does come a day after or the day of one of the biggest tech mergers in a long time or M and A, that is with Google buying this company whiz. And so when you think about this deal happened right now, it didn't happen back in the summer and there could be a whole host of other reasons, but we did see deal activity really slow down, especially as it relates to these mega cap tech stocks until they got better clarity with the new administration and what their posture was going to be. But to Tim's point, we really didn't see a whole heck of a lot of different messaging once the new administration came in.
- [14:07]
Melissa Lee
Yeah, we'll see how this shapes up. I should note that apparently the President has power to remove any FTC commissioner, but only for inefficiency and neglect of duty or malfeasance in office. So I'm sure that there will be some protests or you know, open to.
- [14:22]
Dan Nathan
Interpretation, by the way. Yeah, I mean those things are not very subjective. There's a lot of respect.
- [14:27]
Carter Braxton Worth
Those protesters had about a hundred other things to be protested. I don't think they jumped right out there because the FTC commissioners were fine.
- [14:33]
Guy Adami
Interesting language you just said quickly. I mean in terms of the Fed and Fed, you know, chairs, that's the same type of language. That's right.
- [14:42]
Melissa Lee
Subjective.
- [14:43]
Guy Adami
So, you know, maybe that's a precursor.
- [14:45]
Dan Nathan
But we know who the new Fed chair is going to be, right? I think it's Warsh. I mean there's no question to me that here's a guy that despite. And I think if you're looking for independence out of the central bank, I mean his history tells you that's what you're getting. It's not. If you're looking for it, you better have it. That's what makes this country one of the things that makes it great.
- [15:03]
Guy Adami
Which quickly is one of the reasons why he might not be because he is so independent. I mean, maybe it'd be somebody. Anyway, we're off on tape.
- [15:10]
Melissa Lee
All right, let's get back to Nvidia right now with Bernstein Research's Stacey Raskin. He's on the ground at Nvidia's conference. Stacy, great to have you with us. We are just, we are talking about Nvidia and how, you know, this is not necessarily the audience for. Jensen had a lot of technical things to talk about. But in terms of answering the burning question of investors and that is, is the Capex spend picture in place? Is that steady? Is it rock solid? Did you get anything from what he said today to answer that?
- [15:41]
Jeff Mills
Well, I mean at this point I don't see where we think that we're seeing any signs that, that it's at risk. If anything, you know, he gave us a view of the roadmap going forward for the next several years and the performance improvement and the total cost of ownership improvement for the future platforms. As you go from Blackwell to Blackwell Ultra to Rubin to Rubin Ultra. You even talked about Bindman in 2028. We're talking another, I think more, more than an order of magnitude improvements in performance and total cost of ownership over the next couple years. It is going to be a very NPV positive thing for customers to upgrade. So I don't think we heard anything that Jensen said that would suggest that capex budgets are getting ready to roll over and again, who knows, you know, we'll see when we get there. But at this point I thought it sounded great. I thought he did a great job.
- [16:32]
Melissa Lee
Yeah. There's still skepticism though. That's the thing with. Well, they're always, if you, if you are a believer that there is a growth scare, that there is a recession on the horizon, can you be bullish in video? I mean, I don't think that informs.
- [16:47]
Jeff Mills
I don't think that's an Nvidia question. Right. That, that's an everybody question. If we're going into a recession, I mean semis in general tend not to do well in recessions. Again, there are some secular drivers here. I think they hope can, can hope to offset some of that. Clearly the spending is happening. There are business models, cost reductions, revenue models that are starting to get built on this stuff. There's this whole like long term trend that he talks about as you move from sort of more traditional computing to accelerated computing, which is a massive cost saver. So there are other drivers. Again in a recession you want to save costs and dial back. And these are investments, I think they can pay off. But I mean if we go into like a significant like global or local recession, I don't think anything in semis does all that well, at least in video does have some of these structural drivers. And I've said this on the program before, but it's not even expensive. You know, it's like in the low twenties if the current numbers are low twenties price support earnings if the current numbers are anywhere close to being correct. And like there's a lot of other things out there that are much more expensive that are I think are likely to get hit just as bad or worse from a fundamental standpoint in a recessionary environment.
- [17:52]
Carter Braxton Worth
Yeah.
- [17:53]
Guy Adami
So price to earnings, you're right. But you know, Dan just mentioned the competition coming and obviously we saw acceleration. I mean you probably will listen to some of the things that Dan said. I mean we've heard from Alibaba, we heard a month and a half ago, but the deep sea things, I mean clearly people are going down that road. Whether or not they can catch up remains to be seen. But they will compete on price. So I guess my question is how concerned should we be about potential margin deterioration from here?
- [18:17]
Jeff Mills
Again, I don't think it's about price. Like the price of the chip is only one component of the purchase issues. What really matters is total cost of ownership. So that's the price of the chip and the power and the cooling and like everything else that goes into it over the lifetime of that chip's lifetime based on what kind of performance you can get out of it over that time frame. And I think in video, I mean even today, I mean you can see where the dollars are flowing. They have the lowest tco and if you look at again the roadmap and the improvement trajectory that they laid out today, I think it's going to be hard pressed for many of their or any of their competitors really to have a significant significantly better tco. And that even doesn't. That ignores the fact like everything else that they're doing are on software hardware around systems, hardware ecosystems. They talked about co packaged optics. Now that they're bringing into place networking. They're the only ones out there with a full stack hardware and software solution. Like nobody else has that. Like I'm not terribly worried about their ability to compete.
- [19:18]
Carter Braxton Worth
Stacy, you know it's interesting you just said what competition with a big question mark, maybe two question marks after that. And you know, when I look at the analysts, there's 76 that cover it. 70 have an outperform or buy on it. The Average price targets $172. The stocks trading at 115 is down 25% from its all time highs. So seriously there's, there's a disconnect between what investors think and what Wall street analysts think. And then when I hear a Wall street analysts be really skeptical about any competition. We've all been doing this a long time, that competition comes from the place that you don't expect it. So I really want to focus on the disconnect between what investors see and selling it and versus what the analyst thinks.
- [19:54]
Jeff Mills
Sure. So first of all it's not just Nvidia. Like there's been a broader degrowsing and it's not just a video that's come down. I do think that again there were some nervousness, there was the whole deep SEQ thing which by the way I think we've seen some deep sequence with infrastructure spending going up, not down in my view on Deep Seek. Again we may have talked about this. I thought Deep Seek was actually good news, not, not bad news. But it is what it is. You know, you can look at where the competition is driving there. There's, there's other merchant suppliers. You have AMD and I guess maybe intel still in there. And again I don't think amd, I mean I even question the need frankly. I mean in terms of second source, I really do think it's going to be the hyperscalers doing their own chips. These are Asics and Google does TPU's and everything. I think it's the wrong time to worry about it. I think the right question asked right now is not who's winning or losing between GPUs and ASICs. Is the opportunity in front of us still big or is it not? Because if it's still big then they can both thrive. If it's not, they're both screwed.
- [20:53]
Christina Parts Nevels
Right.
- [20:53]
Jeff Mills
So I think you have to believe that we're not on the saturated part of the S curve now. I don't think we are. My guess is the market. I think I said this right. It's Nvidia's game to lose. Like I think full stop at this point they're not showing any signs right now that they're losing.
- [21:07]
Melissa Lee
Stacey, great to see you. Thank you for phoning it. Appreciate it.
- [21:11]
Jeff Mills
He fought his corner.
- [21:12]
Dan Nathan
I like that.
- [21:13]
Melissa Lee
Stacey Raskin came out of his corner.
- [21:16]
Guy Adami
Fought in the middle of the ring anyway.
- [21:18]
Melissa Lee
Compelling Our own Jim Cramer speaking with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang live from this GTC conference tomorrow. That's at 10:15 Eastern on squawk in the street with more on Mad Money. Meantime, the last mag7 name holding onto gains this year has given up the Ghost meta, falling nearly 4% for its lowest close since November. It is now down about half a percent in 2025, officially in bear market territory. Alphabet, meantime, hitting its worst levels in more than six months as investors digest its largest acquisition ever, buying cloud security startup whiz for $32 billion. That's 9 billion more than it originally was going to pay for it last summer when talks fell through. Alphabet shares now down more than 16% this year. What does this mean, Carter, when the last Titans fall?
- [22:04]
Stacey Raskin
Well, I mean the real question is just because they've joined in or succumbed doesn't mean it necessarily is over for the team or thesis that the market which has been loved and rich and full is not finished selling off. My hunch is that some of these are down to levels where it's right to make a small bet for a bounce. But I wouldn't read in on on a sort of extremely bullish basis. Oh my gosh. This is the buying opportunity a lifetime. This is the kind of moment where after the amount of time and money that's been put into the market since the COVID low for caution.
- [22:43]
Dan Nathan
Carter, do you, do you then follow what was the essentially the correlation trade on the way up and therefore do you expect to see it into software, into security? You know, these names already pulled back to in fact they're higher beta names. But you know, just help me understand from your perspective how you look at these charts and where one chart leads you to another.
- [23:04]
Stacey Raskin
Yeah. So again, if you take the theme of what led the most, it gets us back to semis. Right. And then there are certain software companies that haven't had any struggle whatsoever and that are close to 52 week highs. At a moment like this, I'm not sure I have the answer to your overarching question, but it's almost always right to respect relative strength. And so in a period where equities and tech in particular has been selling off week after week after week, something that has resisted that it's not that it resisted, it is that it did not attract sellers, that people have been selling a lot of things but when they got around to that particular they said No, I want to hold it. That's what relative strength. And it means that there perhaps isn't a lot of selling to be had.
- [23:46]
Melissa Lee
Coming up. You've heard of gold surge this year, but another heavy metals cranking its rally up to 11. How Copper's Run is turning heads. But first, ripple effects in the travel trade. Airlines facing headwinds and cruise stocks hitting rough waters. And now it's coming for your wallet. The financial names, feeling the pain next. Don't go anywhere fast when he's back in two.
- [24:05]
Tim Seymour
Our state has changed a lot in.
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Megan Casella
The last 140 years.
- [24:09]
Tim Seymour
We know because Multicare has been here guided by a single purpose. Making our communities healthier.
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Megan Casella
That comes from making courageous decisions, partnering.
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Tim Seymour
With local communities to grow programs and services, and expanding healthcare access to those who need it most. Together, we're building a healthier future. Learn more at multicare.org@capella university. Learning the right skills could make a difference. That's why our business programs teach you relevant skills you can take from the course room to the workplace. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at capella. Edu.
- [24:52]
Melissa Lee
Oh my God.
- [24:53]
Megan Casella
It's the coolest thing ever.
- [24:55]
Melissa Lee
Hey guys, have you heard of Gold Belly?
- [24:57]
Megan Casella
Well, check this out. It's this amazing site where they ship the most iconic famous foods from restaurants.
- [25:02]
Melissa Lee
Across the country, anywhere nationwide.
- [25:05]
Megan Casella
I've never found a more perfect gift than food.
- [25:07]
Melissa Lee
They ship Chicago deep dish pizza, New York bagels, Maine lobster rolls and even Ina Garten's famous cakes.
- [25:13]
Megan Casella
Seriously.
- [25:14]
Melissa Lee
So if you're looking for a gift.
- [25:15]
Megan Casella
For the food lover in your Life.
- [25:17]
Melissa Lee
Head to goldbelly.com and get 20% off your first order with promo code gift. Welcome back to Fast Money. More cracks in the travel trade emerging today. Allegiant Travel, the latest deliver a warning saying they are seeing weak demand. Leisure demand specifically. That's sending shares of United, JetBlue, American Airlines and Delta falling as much as 3 1/2%. Cruise lines also getting battered. Royal Caribbean plunging more than 7% today. Norwegian and Carnival also sharply lower. And check out the ripple effects being felt in the travel card space. American express down nearly 13% this month. In terms of processors, Visa is down almost 8%. But when you look at from the highs just on March 3rd, visa is down like 30%. I mean it's been a real tumble here.
- [26:01]
Guy Adami
Haven't seen a move like that in a while. I mean, American Express is one that stands out to me because this is seemingly impervious to anything. But recently Obviously, it's rolled over. Throw the chart up and you'll see what we're looking at typically trades expensively. It basically is entitled to and deserves that valuation inflation. But something is going on and I think what's happening is below the surface. Delinquency rates have been ticking up. I think the market's sniffing it out. And I think there's further downside in these names.
- [26:25]
Melissa Lee
Visa, MasterCard, XP, Carter. How do they look?
- [26:29]
Stacey Raskin
Well, MasterCard and Visa, obviously these are what you call mature growth companies and each has sold off to levels where rebound potential is high. Like them both, amex, much more cyclical and not as desirable. But I mean, in terms of the group overall, this is important to say this. If you were to look at The S&P 500 Hotel Resort Hospitality Sub Industry Group, which has not only things like Marriott and Hilton, but it's got Airbnb and Expedia, it has the cruise ships. The relative performance of this highly discretionary area of the market to the entire S&P 500 consumer discretionary sector is still quite good.
- [27:07]
Dan Nathan
If you look at the airlines, you know, we've gotten first quarter updates from United, from Delta, from hand, handful of others. They haven't been good. In fact, they've talked about some slower revenue outlooks, slower rasm, that's revenue per available seat mile. And you know, it's a case where at the same time it's pretty interesting if, I guess if we're being a little snarky towards the analyst community tonight and we love the analyst community but you know, this is just when you were seeing the airlines getting upgraded by almost everybody after they had had a 40% move. So it is a case. Delta's down almost 28% on the month and the outlook and United guided to the lower end of their first quarter range. And I think you might have more of this coming.
- [27:45]
Melissa Lee
There's a lot more fast money to come. Here's what's coming up next.
- [27:49]
Tim Seymour
Copper coming in hot. It's not just gold glittering this year as Dr. Copper races past the yellow.
- [27:55]
Carter Braxton Worth
Metal, the outsized outperformance and whether this heavy metal surge can keep rocking higher.
- [28:02]
Tim Seymour
Plus a key Fed decision out tomorrow. Investors holding their for the central bank's.
- [28:08]
Carter Braxton Worth
Next rate move, how markets could react.
- [28:11]
Tim Seymour
And where our old friend the General is finding value amid the volatility.
- [28:16]
Carter Braxton Worth
You're watching Fast Money live from the.
- [28:19]
Tim Seymour
NASDAQ market site in Times Square.
- [28:21]
Carter Braxton Worth
We're back right after this.
- [28:25]
Tim Seymour
Is it time to reimagine your future? The right business skills may make a difference in your career. At Capella University, we offer a relevant education that's designed to focus on what you need to know in the business world. We'll teach professional skills to help you pursue your goals like business management, strategic planning and effective communication. And you can apply these skills right away. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at capella.edu Another pause from.
- [28:57]
Carter Braxton Worth
The Fed, how new tariffs could impact interest rates.
- [29:00]
Tim Seymour
Does the Fed confirm market expectations for cuts later this year? Fed Chair Powell's message to investors. Power lunch tomorrow, 2 Eastern, CNBC.
- [29:11]
Melissa Lee
Welcome back to Fast Money. Gold hitting yet another all time high today, now up 15% this year as trade war fears and geopolitical uncertainty sent investors flocking to the safe haven. But copper actually outperforming the precious metals so far this year, up nearly 25%, trading its highest level since last May. Tim brought this up on our call today.
- [29:33]
Carter Braxton Worth
Yeah.
- [29:33]
Dan Nathan
Dr. Copper. And if you look at all the history of copper and Peter Book Farm put this in his note this morning too. We tend to sometimes look at similar things. He said copper's at all time highs. And if you think about it's pretty extraordinary. Think of all those periods where we've had both the industrial growth, the weaker dollar, the global demand, the infrastructure buildout and now copper decides to have all time highs. What does it mean? And look at Freeport Mac, which at one point historically really was highly correlated to copper prices, is down about 12% in the last month, although has bounced in the last few days. I mean, I think there's a trade there. I think 74% of their revenues are copper. The rest are kind of gold. And Mali, I think it's a case where some of the other miners, southern copper looks interesting. And then you're seeing even some of the bulks iron ore and some of these coal names are starting to move. And that to me says you go out and you buy BHP and Rio Tinto, which are names that have been frustrating, including for me to hold onto them. And I think they're going higher.
- [30:23]
Melissa Lee
The copper doesn't make any sense to me.
- [30:24]
Guy Adami
Well, not if there's a global slowdown, not if the United States, United States is slowing down. So it's clearly something else is going on. And well, maybe it's a supply demand thing. Maybe there's some fear about these tariffs, maybe people trying to stockpile. I don't know what it is, but clearly something is happening. And if the Fed watches things like industrial metals, like Tim's Dr. Copper. They have to be scratching their head because through that lens only, they're not winning the inflation battle.
- [30:48]
Melissa Lee
Coming up, we are keying in on tomorrow's Fed decision, getting thoughts from our old friend the General, otherwise known as as Jeff Mills in the outside world.
- [30:55]
Dan Nathan
I named him.
- [30:56]
Melissa Lee
He's back to break down what exactly and where he's finding market opportunity right now. More Fast Money right after this. Welcome back to FAST money. Stocks pulling back from their recent bounce. The Dow dropping 260 points. The S and P down more than a percent. And the Nasdaq leading losses down 1.7%. And we're watching a pair of bank stocks, Morgan Stanley reportedly planning to cut about 2,000 jobs while Citigroup is slashing executive bonuses. This according to Bloomberg. Well, the next Fed decision due out tomorrow, the central bank widely expected to hold rates steady as White House policy uncertainty and growth concerns rattle markets. But we could get more clarity on where rates are heading for the rest of the year. For more fast money, friend investor trust chief investment strategist. Also the winner of the 2023 acronym game, Jeff Mills, welcome.
- [31:46]
Jim Cramer
I decided not to come on in 2024 because I wanted to give everyone else a shot.
- [31:51]
Dan Nathan
Yeah, I didn't take that shot too well, but thanks, Michael.
- [31:55]
Melissa Lee
Back. So what are we expecting? Steve Leesman made a bold prediction, I think it was today, that the Fed would sort of unveil what their expectations were, factoring in tariffs.
- [32:06]
Jim Cramer
Interesting. I don't know how much we're actually going to get of that tomorrow. I think sometimes the consensus is right. So probably nothing on rates. What the market wants to see is some assurance that they're willing to be flexible with policy. That's it. I think as long as they say that or if there's some adjustment in the dot plot, particularly looking out to December, then maybe the market gets what it wants. I think what we want to pay the most attention to is inflation expectations. That's going to be the key. If they remain anchored, then they can be flexible. Don't look at University of Michigan. I think that survey is not all that helpful. Very partizan. But look at tips rates. I think they've gone up a bit, but stable. And I think that the Fed probably communicates some willingness to be flexible given the potential for risk relative to tariffs and growth.
- [32:52]
Carter Braxton Worth
Yeah. So explain that a little bit because you said the market wants this. So in the last meeting it was, what do they call it, a hawkish pause. Is that what they were doing? So if we go back to September where they cut 50 basis points. They were worried about the jobs market. Right. So is there some someplace in between? Their weakness in the economy gives them more likelihood to cut rates and that's good for stocks.
- [33:12]
Jim Cramer
I think you get a dovish pause here. It's a very fine line. Right, Dan? I think if you end up getting four or five cuts this year, we have a major problem because they're reacting to something relative to growth. I would rather one or two cuts and the economy looks good and off we go. But I think the market is looking for some sort of put given the uncertainty. I mean massive spike in any uncertainty index. You can look at all time highs above Covid. I don't know that that makes a ton of sense to me, but I think the put from Trump is sort of off the table. So any reassurance from the Fed I think ends up being useful.
- [33:45]
Dan Nathan
It's funny because I think the Fed put is probably lower than the Trump put. But I'm curious your view on another one of these great acronyms, mega, which is make international great again. What are you doing on international? Because this is a case for, I'm sure a lot of your clients, they haven't been investing internationally in a long time and some of these fundamentals really have changed.
- [34:02]
Jim Cramer
Yeah, very true. I heard you guys talk about this a little bit last night. But you know, in terms of where we're allocating capital, I don't think this is the year where you just want S&P 500 beta, for example, we tend to hold a very heavy US overweight. We have adjusted that as we move through the first part of this year, particularly into Europe. So whether it's financials, kind of specifically in Germany, industrials, even a cybersecurity name here or there. So I don't want to be, you know, following the crowd too much. But to your point, I think folks are still generally under allocated in Europe and the policy uncertainty now between developed international and the US is just so wide. Until that gap starts to close, that trade has more to run.
- [34:41]
Guy Adami
I think, Jeff, for 28 and 10 year yields. Where they go from here in your opinion? I think higher. I'm not suggesting I'm right. What do you think?
- [34:48]
Jim Cramer
I think you're probably rangebound to be honest, and I know that's sort of a boring saying, safe answer, but I don't know that there's a major catalyst one way or the other. You know, I'm somewhat concerned about growth and that's why we're kind of reallocating capital a bit away from the U.S. i should say we still are very much overweight, the US but starting to look elsewhere. I think growth is more of a concern than runaway inflation. So I think that serves as some gravity on yields. And I do think the Fed ends up having the ability to cut maybe even more than the market is currently pricing in over the next number of meetings. So my guess would be flat to lower and I think that would be okay for markets.
- [35:21]
Melissa Lee
Jeff, it is great to see you. You're welcome back anytime.
- [35:25]
Guy Adami
Before we get out of here, Mr. And Mrs. Mills are watching and I'd like to say on behalf of the entire team, we've missed your son and we hope you're both doing well in Pennsylvania.
- [35:34]
Jim Cramer
They're big fans. They'll like that. Thanks, guys.
- [35:36]
Melissa Lee
We're fans of them as well, Jeff. Thank you, Jeff Mills. And a quick reminder, there is still time to register for the next Fast Money live event that's coming up June 5th in this turbulent market. You can join us for a unique in person experience right here at the Nasdaq. It's a chance to connect with these guys, the fast Money traders ask questions, get their perspectives on how to navigate your investments. You watch the show here at the Nasdaq, be part of a Q and a session with the traders and then share what is on your mind over a cocktail or two. It's an open bar. You'll also walk out with a six month subscription to CNBC Pro for new users. To register, scan the QR code on your screen or go to cnbc events.com cash fast money. All right, coming up. Well, there it is, the QR code. Oh yeah, Renaissance for the coal industry, how he wants to revive the sector and what it will mean for the energy space. That's next. Plus, our traders have questions and the chartmaster has answers. What Carter, we're seeing the technicals of the to the penny stock picks from the desk. Don't go anywhere. Fast Money's back into. Welcome back to Fast money. A winning day for coal stocks. Peabody Energy jumping more than 6% warrior. Also, the move coming after President Trump pledged a renaissance for U.S. coal production. CNBC's Pippa Stevens got the details. Pippa.
- [36:49]
Megan Casella
Hey, Melissa. Well, what this statement means for the way or the way that utilities respond remains unclear, although the administration has vowed to roll back regulations and cut red tape, including for power plants. Now, President Trump did take a similar approach during his first term, attempting to revitalize the coal sector to little effect. But the landscape is different this time around. Concerned with grid reliability concerns and higher power prices, which TD Cowan said might make resistance from regulators less robust. Now, US Coal use has been declining for years thanks to competition from cheaper renewables and gas, as well as environmental regulations, and now makes up about 16% of power generation, down from more than 50% at the turn of the century. Now, this year, electric generators plan to retire 12.3 gigawatts of capacity with 66% of that coal. The US does, though, export about 15% of our coal production, with India, Japan, the Netherlands and Brazil top destinations now. We did see a response in the coal stocks today, with Peabody gaining 6%. Core natural resources, created in January from the merger of Arch Resources and Console Energy, also in the green. You know, Melissa, one thing I keep hearing that's interesting is that the value of the coal plant itself is now growing because it has that interconnection. So we might see companies start to buy them up so that they can get power to the grid faster.
- [38:10]
Melissa Lee
You mean the interconnection from the plant itself to the grid?
- [38:14]
Megan Casella
Exactly. So we've seen, you know, huge lags in pgm. The interconnection queue request is now more than five years. So if you already have the asset hooked up to the grid, you can then repurpose it for something like a gas plant, maybe even nuclear or solar, and storage. And then once if you can cut that interconnection process, you get the power to market faster. And that is what's so valuable, especially for data centers.
- [38:34]
Melissa Lee
Pippa, I'm curious. I mean, is coal any cleaner or is there technology to make it a cleaner burn than there was at the turn of the century when coal is 50% of the power generated, essentially?
- [38:45]
Megan Casella
No, I mean, you can pair it with things like carbon capture, which President Trump has talked about, but ultimately it is dirty. And calling it clean is really misguided.
- [38:53]
Melissa Lee
All right, Pippa. Thank you, Pippa Stevens. That's exactly what Trump called a beautiful clean coal coal. Interestingly, he said that China has had a tremendous economic advantage because it opened up coal plants and we shut them down, which is they also have a huge pollution problem. I mean, that's, you know, part of this whole.
- [39:12]
Guy Adami
We had heard things like this in the prior administration, without question. We haven't probably talked about Peabody Energy in years. Rightly so, by the way. I mean, this was a stock, I think made its all time high seven years ago. But, you know, if there's any glimpse of hope here, I mean, this is not a ridiculous, ridiculously expensive stock. So closing here at 14. I mean, just with some tailwinds, you could see this thing in the mid-1819 level for sure.
- [39:34]
Melissa Lee
Carter, I don't think I've asked you to look at a coal chart in probably more than a decade, but here we are. All right. We're obviously having some audio issues, so we'll have to wait on that. Tim, what do you make of the gold trade?
- [39:52]
Dan Nathan
Well, if I was channeling my inner Carter, I would say that you've had a long period of basing some of these actually like a Peabody. That's an interesting chart. I think there's another element to all of what we're talking about is that it's inflationary. I mean, think about copper, think about copper inputs. Think about the dynamics with some of these coal and energy names and bulks and iron ore and by the way, cliffs as a company, which has been in the middle of a lot of different news flow on its lows.
- [40:16]
Melissa Lee
Carter's audio is back. So, Carter, coal, Coal charts.
- [40:21]
Jeff Mills
Yeah.
- [40:21]
Stacey Raskin
I mean, obviously a very small area. The market. Think of BTU is market cap 1.7 billion. You're talking about 45,000 people total United States employed in this area. And sometimes things change over time slowly and they end. Coal's percentage of electricity production will continue to decline. Could you trade these two? I like Warrior better, but I mean, this is not a long term investment of any kind.
- [40:48]
Melissa Lee
All right, coming up, grading the traders top charts, where the chartmaster sees their stock picks heading and whether the lines truly do draw themselves. That's next. And do not miss the special Mad Money out West. Jim is chatting exclusively with the CEOs of Snowflake Arm Holdings, Dell and American Express. All those interviews at the top of the hour on Mad Money. Meantime, more fast money in two. Welcome back to Fast Money. With all these big moves and stocks, we wondered what the charts, what charts the traders are most closely watching and what the chartmaster will make of the technicals. So, so we'll start off with your pick. What is your burning chart question?
- [41:24]
Dan Nathan
Yeah, Carter, because I'm making international.
- [41:26]
Carter Braxton Worth
Great.
- [41:26]
Dan Nathan
Again, I'm curious your view on the dax. We could take the ewg, which is the ETF that tracks. So it's essentially in dollars, but it implies the Eurodynamic. You could look at the DAX itself and obviously you could look at Spain and you could look at others, but the DAX has been outperforming massively.
- [41:43]
Stacey Raskin
Yeah, and Obviously the STOXX 600 in Europe as well, which is the biggest component being the dax. It's Important to note that the EWG is up some 23% year to date, whereas the DAX itself is up only 1617. But either way, this is a classic instance. Knowing who you are on a day to day basis, up 23% year to date. I would be trimming. If you have a long term view, what's not to like? It's just getting going like that.
- [42:09]
Carter Braxton Worth
Yeah.
- [42:09]
Melissa Lee
Dan, what is your question? Chartmaster.
- [42:12]
Carter Braxton Worth
So we spent a lot of time talking about the importance of Nvidia over the last three years. It feels like Taiwan Semi obviously is an equally important name if you think about it as they make a lot of those high end chips or 90% of them. What do you think of Taiwan Semi here? Because this is one that was making new all time highs not too long ago. You know, the Sox topped out what, a year ago or something like that. This one's really important to me outside of Nvidia.
- [42:33]
Stacey Raskin
That's right. And it's also international. But what we know here is that like in video, it was not succumbing when the whole area was succumbing. And now it is succumbing and joining Carter.
- [42:44]
Melissa Lee
Sorry. We've got some breaking news here on the Boeing Starliner. Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, the two crew members who spent the last nine months in space, just touching back down off the coast of Florida in a SpaceX capsule. The two were originally supposed to be at the International Space Station for a little over a week. Let's watch this moment, ensure that the Dragon spacecraft slows down even further. As we mentioned, Freedom will be traveling 16 miles per hour when it splashes down off the coast of Tallahassee, Florida here at 2:57pm Pacific Time this afternoon. And there we go. We have visual on 4 healthy main.
- [43:27]
Christina Parts Nevels
That view was from inside Freedom.
- [43:30]
Melissa Lee
Copy.
- [43:33]
Christina Parts Nevels
That view is from inside one of the buckets where the parachutes are located. So we see a great view there of the reefing on those parachutes and as those parachutes, those main parachutes begin to inflate fully. Four beautiful healthy names now awaiting visuals of splashdown. We'll start to hear Commander Nick Hague.
- [43:59]
Melissa Lee
Copy 1000.
- [44:01]
Christina Parts Nevels
As we heard right there, Commander Nick Haig will be calling out the altitude of the Dragon capsule from here on out. Landing in water is simpler and provides more margin against unlikely parachute issues. You can see those, those parachutes continuing to slow the Dragon capsule down. And if you're just joining us, you're.
- [44:25]
Melissa Lee
Looking at 800 meters.
- [44:27]
Christina Parts Nevels
A live view of Crew 9 just.
- [44:30]
Melissa Lee
Minutes away from Splashing down off the.
- [44:32]
Christina Parts Nevels
Coast of of Tallahassee, Florida.
- [44:34]
Melissa Lee
Splashdown two minutes from now at 2:57pm Pacific. We do have four healthy mains really doing the job there.
- [44:41]
Christina Parts Nevels
Just breathtaking views of a calm glass.
- [44:45]
Melissa Lee
Like ocean off the coast of Tallahassee, Florida. Crew 9 just minutes away from splashing down.
- [44:50]
Christina Parts Nevels
This is really such an incredible shot.
- [44:55]
Melissa Lee
That was copy 600.
- [44:58]
Christina Parts Nevels
That was a live view from our recovery vessel Megan which is stationed a couple miles away from the splashdown site. We can see the crew there using their restraints as resting places for their arms. They were just in space moments ago so their arms were able to float freely.
- [45:23]
Melissa Lee
400 meters.
- [45:27]
Christina Parts Nevels
This is a gorgeous bluebird day here that we have for the splashdown of Crew 9. It's incredible to think that the Dragon capsule just minutes ago was going over 17,000 miles per hour and now gently coasting to a soft splashdown.
- [45:49]
Melissa Lee
200 copy 200 meters. Brace for splashdown.
- [46:02]
Christina Parts Nevels
As you can see there on your screen, continuing to monitor progress of the Dragon spacecraft. And we're going to stand by for splashdown. Located in the Gulf of America off the coast of Tallahassee, Florida.
- [46:25]
Melissa Lee
And Splashdown Crew 9 back on Earth. Welcome back to those astronauts who were stranded in space for nine months. Back safely on earth with that splashdown just seconds ago. So that is quite a relief.
- [46:47]
Dan Nathan
Extraordinary.
- [46:48]
Melissa Lee
Wow.
- [46:48]
Dan Nathan
Really exciting.
- [46:49]
Melissa Lee
Imagine thinking that you're going to be in space for a week and then it turning into nine months.
- [46:53]
Dan Nathan
Heroic for sure.
- [46:54]
Melissa Lee
Plants good for pets, your family.
- [46:57]
Guy Adami
Imagine Tim stuck together.
- [46:59]
Dan Nathan
I would get tough. My arms would be more than just flattened out against my chest after that. We would have. Anyway, we have come to.
- [47:06]
Melissa Lee
We have like a minute. Carter, you want to finish up tsm?
- [47:12]
Stacey Raskin
Sure. So TSM is just starting to break trend, right. It was holding out and not succumbing just as all semis were. But it too is finally I think headed lower.
- [47:23]
Melissa Lee
Guy, we actually have time for your.
- [47:25]
Guy Adami
I would like to ask Carter as he sits on the top of the Pantheon Parthenon about gdx. It appears as though it might be finally breaking out.
- [47:35]
Stacey Raskin
Yeah, remarkably of course where we are just breaking out year to date, we might have a comparative chart to show that gdx, the gold miners have really trounced gold. And that's an important circumstance especially because there are still stocks and stocks are under pressure. You can see this comparative chart right here year to date. But in terms of just now breaking out, we have returned to a four and a half five year high. You'll see that next and The GDX is toying with the prospects of finally exceeding the highs of 2020. I'd be large long.
- [48:07]
Melissa Lee
All right, time for the final trade. Let's go around the horn. Tim.
- [48:11]
Dan Nathan
Total Energy again. International Energy's working. This is one of the names I think you need to own.
- [48:17]
Melissa Lee
Carter.
- [48:19]
Stacey Raskin
I'd go with GDX and gdxj. Small miners as well.
- [48:24]
Melissa Lee
Dan. Nathan.
- [48:25]
Carter Braxton Worth
Yeah. So after a pretty epic run in the 90s, 25 years ago today, I made my best final trade.
- [48:31]
Stacey Raskin
I married my wife, Sarah.
- [48:34]
Melissa Lee
That was your best trade? I don't know about that.
- [48:35]
Carter Braxton Worth
That's what I meant. Happy anniversary, fci.
- [48:40]
Guy Adami
That was sweet.
- [48:41]
Melissa Lee
Very sweet. Which is surprising, right?
- [48:43]
Carter Braxton Worth
What do you mean?
- [48:44]
Guy Adami
That's silver lining, Dan.
- [48:45]
Melissa Lee
Right now. Oh, my God.
- [48:47]
Guy Adami
It used to be called Coeur d'alene. It's just core mining now. Either way, it's cde. Melissa.
- [48:52]
Melissa Lee
Alright. Happy anniversary, Sarah. Dan. Thanks for watching.
- [48:56]
Tim Seymour
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@ Capella University, learning the right skills could make a difference. That's why our business programs teach you relevant skills you can take from the courseroom to the workplace. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at Capella Eduardo.