← CNBC's "Fast Money"
CNBC's "Fast Money"
Nvidia’s GTC Conference Underway… And When To Buy The Dip 3/16/26
00:43:26
All eyes on Nvidia, as the chip giant kicks off its GTC conference. The next-gen GPU’s investors are waiting to hear about, and what it means for the stock’s next move. Plus Stocks rallying to start the week, as oil pulls back on the latest developments out of Iran. What a top market strategist needs to see before buying the dip, and the areas of the market where he’d put new money to work. Fast Money Disclaimer
Loading summary
Transcript211 lines
- [00:01]
A
Oh.
- [00:01]
B
Could this vintage store be any cuter? Right.
- [00:04]
C
And the best part?
- [00:05]
B
They accept Discover. Except Discover in a little place like this? I don't think so, Jennifer. Oh, yeah. Huh?
- [00:11]
C
Discover is accepted where I like to shop.
- [00:13]
B
Come on, baby, get with the times. Right.
- [00:17]
C
So we shouldn't get the parachute pants. These are making a comeback, I think.
- [00:23]
D
Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide. Based on the February 2025 Nielsen report.
- [00:30]
B
Not every sale happens at the register before AT&T business Wireless checking out customers on our mobile POS systems took too long. Basically a staring contest where everyone loses. It's crazy what people will say during an awkward silence. Now transactions are done before the silence takes hold. That means I can focus on the task at hand and make an extra sale or two. Sometimes I do miss the bonding time.
- [00:54]
D
Sometimes AT&T business Wireless connecting changes everything.
- [01:03]
B
Live in the NASDAQ marketsite in the heart of New York City's Times Square. This is fast money. Here's what's on tap tonight. Nvidia in the spotlight. Shares ending the day higher as the semi giants GTC developers conference gets underway. All the headlines from Jensen Huang's keynote and how to trade the stock now in a big week for central banks. The Fed, ecb, Bank of England and Bank of Japan all holding meetings in the next few days. What stage will they set for the economy? And the markets will debate that. Plus meta melts up, but the Chartmaster says sell bitcoin bounces back toward a key level. And the lowdown on Lulu shares of the athleisure maker breaking their longest ever losing streak as it gets ready to report earnings. Well, tomorrow's numbers help the stock stretch higher.
- [01:43]
D
Oh boy.
- [01:44]
B
I'm Melissa Lee, come to you live from Cub at the nasdaq. On the desk tonight, Tim Seymour, Karen Feiderman, Dan Nathan and Gaia Dami. We start off with the latest out of Nvidia's gtc. The chip giants closely watch developers Conference. Shares ending the day higher by more than a percent and a half though had been up nearly 5% at the highs after CEO Jensen Huang said he expects Blackwell and Vera Rubin purchase orders to reach $1 trillion. At least $1 trillion to 2027. For all the key takeaways. Let's get to Christina Parts Nevilles who is on the ground in San Jose. Christina?
- [02:15]
C
Yeah, the CEO Jensen Huang speaking for
- [02:17]
B
two hours and 15 minutes straight. And markets liked what they initially heard. That's why you saw the stock pop 5% at first.
- [02:23]
C
But the CEO now saying he's certain
- [02:25]
B
demand will exceed $1 trillion through 2027.
- [02:28]
C
But shares actually gave back most of its initial jump.
- [02:32]
B
That number largely matched what buy side investors were already expecting. It didn't really show an acceleration in
- [02:38]
C
growth either for 2026 and 2027, I should say.
- [02:41]
B
On the products front, the Groq3, a new chip designed specifically to make AI
- [02:45]
C
faster at generating responses was announced built
- [02:48]
B
on technology Nvidia license from grok for
- [02:51]
C
roughly $20 billion just last year.
- [02:53]
B
They said it's going to ship in the second half of this year, probably Q3.
- [02:56]
C
Then they spoke about the. Or I should say the CEO spoke about Vera Rubin CPU built on ARM's architecture. Already a multibillion dollar business according to the CEO. And he admits that he didn't actually see it coming. You know, the demand for CPUs and
- [03:11]
B
that's why you saw ARM shares actually close 5% higher on that news. And then lastly on networking, he, he did say copper isn't going away, but
- [03:18]
C
that optical, which is using light as a source of speaking or allowing chips to speak to each other, is scaling in every direction. And then one last point too, in the software front, then he did talk about Nemo Tron, which is an open
- [03:32]
B
source AI model for autonomous enterprise agents. The reason that matters is Nvidia isn't
- [03:38]
C
just selling the chips anymore that run AI. It wants to own the models, the agents, the networking and the storage too. So essentially from silicon to software, Nvidia
- [03:48]
B
CEO is betting on the entire AIR
- [03:51]
C
stock will run specifically on Nvidia.
- [03:54]
B
Christina, thanks. Christina Parks Navalis in San Jose at gtc. The turnaround in the stock, granted it finished the day higher, was sort of dramatic in terms of the response.
- [04:05]
E
Think it's where I think that's exactly right. I mean we can talk about the numbers, it's a staggering number, clearly, but it's the way the market interpreted and then the subsequent price action. Initial spike made sense and now I think even in the after hours, I think we're trading a little bit lower. We'll see. I don't want to liken this to what we heard From Oracle on September 10th of last year and that that huge move higher and that subsequently was sort of a selling opportunity because the stock didn't move on the back of this. But it, it, it's somewhat like that, you know, this big announcement seemingly I want to say out of nowhere, because as Christina said, a lot of people are expecting this, but the price action is less than robust in my opinion.
- [04:38]
B
Well, the Forecast is for 2026 through 2020, $500 billion forever. So now they're saying a trillion through 2027, which implies another $500 billion in 2027, which is what kind of growth rate. Right, exactly. Right, exactly. Yes.
- [04:55]
C
But you know, Jensen is the, the master of under promise over deliver. And I think you know this. So that was a little bit disappointing for the street, though. Normally I don't pay such close attention to how something trades intraday, but this spiked up and within like 10 or 15 minutes, maybe 15 minutes, it was already back down. So I don't know whether that was, you know, algos that are just, you know, triggered and then. And it was straight up and then pretty much straight down. So I kind of ignore that. And I mean, he also said things are growing at an accelerating pace, which, you know, that's a very bullish thing, Right? Yes. But when you're trading in a multiple that they're trading at, and when you want to control as much of it as he does, I don't know, I think it's pretty compelling. Hanging on.
- [05:45]
D
So I'm glad you brought that up because I said I was going to say to you smart people, how do you go from a 500 million estimate for the end of 20 billion. Sorry, 5.
- [05:53]
A
Yes.
- [05:53]
D
500 billion at the end of 26 to a trillion at the end of 27. And feel that's a great number. And I think that's absolutely the turn now we need to hear more. In fact, I thought this was like really do like a fiscal year or something. Something. So it. No, but if you're telling me that 27 is adding 500 billion onto a growth story, I think the key here is grok and what we're actually getting in terms of inferencing and the opportunity that they feel they have there and maybe also the place where they have a lot of competition or they could have a lot of competition. So I think it's important to stress where they really feel like they're one step ahead. And that's been kind of the story for Nvidia. And also reinforcing the idea that they're selling systems, not chips. And that I think is very important as AI. And the different places where AI is actually evolving continue on for them.
- [06:43]
F
On the inference side, I mean, we keep hearing this, right? CPUs, clusters of CPUs, they're much cheaper than GPUs. Right. So you use the kind of, you know, the superpower GPU that takes a lot of energy that costs a lot of money to train up those models. And then if we're going into this agentic phase and you're going to see really the cost of this measurement tokens come down pretty dramatically. You're already starting to see that. And I guess that's a good thing if you're a user of that compute, right? Like you want to actually have access to it and build on top of that. So, you know, the story for Nvidia, it doesn't get easier from here. I mean, the stock is telling you that too. Investors are telling you that it's gone sideways from, you know, now what does it feel like? Six, seven months or something like that? Six or seven. And so what? And when I think about it, you know, do it.
- [07:26]
B
The six, seven.
- [07:27]
F
Yeah.
- [07:27]
E
Come on.
- [07:29]
F
What do your kids say? What do your kids say?
- [07:31]
B
7, 11.
- [07:31]
F
7, 11.
- [07:32]
A
Okay.
- [07:32]
F
I just want to give them that.
- [07:33]
E
Okay.
- [07:33]
D
Is that where it's at? Because I don't know. I mean, I've heard six, seven for
- [07:37]
F
six or seven months. The stock has basically gone sideways. And so I think investors are looking for other ways to express these views. But, you know, pull up Broadcom, you know, doesn't act that much better. And when you think about just kind of where folks are going to be running to, to kind of power that agentic build over the next couple of years, that's the takeaway when you hear Jensen talk about it, this inflection point for computing. And you go back to the Internet, right? It wasn't just the Internet that you made money on. It was the application layer. Right. And so that's the thing I think is going to be exciting, I think for enterprise, obviously for consumers too. I'm not sure Nvidia wins the way they have since early 2023 as far as that build out over the next couple of years.
- [08:15]
B
So you go to Broadcom because they are the one making the ones making the custom chips with various hyperscalers and then the memory layer. All of these chips require more memory per chip. And that's where you have the Micron story. Micron reporting, of course, on Wednesday. So that'll be a key for the
- [08:31]
E
markets on the 18th. Obviously, we traded to levels today that we last saw back in February. We spiked higher and did it on a decent volume day. I think it traded about 40 million shares. We typically trade about 30. So everything's okay, folks. Nothing broke. So we'll see what Micron has to say. Sandisk, Micron, Western Ditch, it's all the same world. Obviously they're telling their own story right now. They're seemingly the winners of this whole thing. But again, to Tim's point, the, the price action and the guide might not have been as robust as the market
- [08:59]
D
wanted to hear and seems like another loser here is int. Now I realize we already have seen their CPU business be eroded and it's certainly been AMD and but the reversal in intel too. I mean I'm not sure exactly what fundamentals intel trades on anymore, but at one point this stock was up 6%. So I mean I just think this general purpose CPU announcement out of Nvidia either they could be friend not foe, this could be a case where they've discussed a working relationship. But I do think you have to consider what this also means for intel and what they're able to do or what they're not able to do without really partnering up.
- [09:35]
C
For me, looking at Dell, right, we've talked before about how is memory going up so much but why is Dell going down? Because the cost inputs but the demand is there as well. So I like Dell here.
- [09:45]
B
So let's say that Nvidia's growth is challenged at this point.
- [09:49]
D
Are we about to find a game? I feel like you're leading into a game.
- [09:52]
E
Sounds like right on the verge of one.
- [09:54]
B
It's not a game like
- [09:57]
C
a game.
- [09:58]
B
This is real life. If we are at a point where Nvidia is slowing its growth because there's, you know, TPU's being used and developed elsewhere outside of the Nvidia ecosystem by hyperscalers themselves perhaps, then what should that multiple be?
- [10:16]
E
Well, the multiple is reasonable. I don't think, I don't know what that's.
- [10:19]
B
But that's my.
- [10:20]
E
But it's a march. If the margins contract, then the multiple which is reasonable now ceases to become reasonable. So that's the story here. The multiple has been fine for quite some time. Karen. Tim, even Dan points that out. Even it's very reasonable. What's not necessarily reasonable is the expectations that they enjoy 75% gross margins in perpetuity.
- [10:40]
B
So what does a multiple reflect then? Does it already reflect the. The world in which potentially it starts slowing its growth and loses to TPO TPU development by various hyperscalers?
- [10:53]
D
I don't, I don't think we can say it doesn't. I mean, how can you trade it 22 times forward without some sense with the kind of growth we still have here? Even in a less than extraordinary announcement about end of 27, you can't tell me what the stock has done. It's been, I think more about margin. We know how far out in front they are. We know also the deals they're cutting to be an AI infrastructure company, not just a chip company. So that sounds like business. By the way. That's not as high a margin. That to me is why you are trading where you are.
- [11:27]
F
You want to talk multiples. I mean Karen, you're Microsoft. It was on the COVID of Barron's. I mean that's amazing, right? But look at this thing has come in what, 30% or almost that sort of thing. It's trading at about, you know, 21 times next year, mid teens, earnings and sales growth expected. And you know, I mean Azure, okay, we get it, we get where it sits here and all that sort of stuff and we get the potential uptake of, you know, co pilots and stuff. I mean it seems like they have some interesting levers to pull. It goes back to what are investors. Why are they just not buying any of it? You know, it's just one of those things like you keep talking about bubble. Well, maybe the bubbles burst because the companies that actually had been spending hundreds of billions of dollars before, we just start to get this trillion dollar number out in video, maybe they've gotten to a point where the clouds are there, they're loaded with the models, right. They just need the customers to come in and use them. And that's the whole point about the agent move. So no one can put their finger on that. And it's not a consumer thing. It's not a consumer thing where people are paying for these chat bots $20 a month. It really has to come from enterprise. And until we see that, because I know we're going to talk about meta, you know, these companies are cutting jobs, not cutting jobs right now because they're anticipating all the productivity gains they're going to get from this. They don't know just yet. So I think the job cutting is really important to a lot of these stocks. They're acting very poorly. It seems like investors are speaking that they're waiting for this last bastion, which is the memory in the storage at some point that will peak out because it's all going to get to a point where we're just in a massive digestion phase. And I think at least most of this sort of ecosystem, at least in the stock market is telling you that right now.
- [12:57]
B
For more on Nvidia, let's bring in T. Rowe Price portfolio manager Tony Wong. He oversees the firm Science and Technology fund. Tony, great to have you with us. I trust you heard parts of our discussion here. And putting in context the move or the lack of movement in video stock over the past six months, did you hear anything from, from GTC today from Jensen Huang that makes you believe the stock deserves to break out of this range?
- [13:22]
A
Yeah, well I think that what I'm looking at is two things essentially. One is the demand and the supply and the platform improvements. And so even the demand part of it, I think what is really exciting is cloud and then also open client. Just this move to agent, it really is I think a profound change and I think that's what the market is trying to struggle with. They're seeing like huge amounts of growth but then at the same time they're just kind of worried about the terminal value of the company. And so what I look to that is just like the improvement in the Nvidia systems and you're seeing that the next platforms are improving token costs by 3 to 10x. And so to me that's why it's so important for the company and you know, the longevity of I would say growth here.
- [14:06]
B
Do you think that they can hold on to margins? I mean I think the last quarter's margins were 73% or somewhere, I mean somewhere high. And as the world moves towards inferencing and the emphasis on inferencing, can Nvidia keep up those margins?
- [14:21]
A
Yeah, absolutely. So I definitely think so. And why is because their gross margin essentially is a function of their token costs and their ROI for their customer. And so when they're pushing that frontier, they're the lowest cost provider and driving through the throughput of the token as well as the cost. I think that's what allows them to capture the superior gross margin. And at the same time you look at like what it takes to drive performance. It's more of this like, like scale massive scaled system rack solution and building more of the cluster in the data center. So to me I was really bullish after hearing what they're building.
- [15:00]
E
Tony, in your coverage universe, what name don't we talk about enough in your opinion or not just this show? The network in general.
- [15:08]
A
Well I think what's really interesting, you look at the roadmap for Nvidia essentially where the bottlenecks are developing essentially is memory and optical and Jensen talk about KB cash and the importance of storage and understand the context for these models improving. So I think there's areas like NAND for example that's gone from more with mines and now more strategic and then also optical. You guys Talked about a little bit here too, but just this idea that we need to have better connections, you know, using new technology. So I think like Momentum or Sienna for example are areas where you're going to see a lot of growth. The price shortage for the multi year here.
- [15:47]
C
Tony, it's Karen, thanks for being on. So when we think about the Nvidia story, if we were to look down the road a little bit and see them having a wider array of products with very, with different margins from the very high to somewhat lower, I mean you look at Oracle, it's different. Is a very cautionary tale of what happens when you add revenues at a very low margin that ultimately doesn't work out. But to me that doesn't seem to be the Nvidia story. How do you think it plays out that with them expanding what where they are?
- [16:15]
A
Yeah, definitely. I think Nvidia and Oracle are pretty different. I think Oracle, you know, there's questions around the balance sheet and roi, but in terms of Nvidia, I mean they have tremendous free cash flow. In addition, I think when you think about Nvidia's competitive advantage is all their domain expertise and vertical libraries and you're seeing that more and more of these agency solutions are building on Nvidia. And then also when you think about what's next, essentially it's agentic and then robotics, physical AI and you've heard, you know Nvidia, they're signing on byd, Uber and so people are building on Nvidia and all these new frontiers is what I'm really excited about. And you know, the custom stuff, there will be custom chips but you know, Nvidia is really pushing the frontier of where the next areas of I would say inflection are.
- [16:59]
D
Tony. So let's talk about optical, let's talk about memory places where I know you're bullish and yet we've struggled now with the concept of what has always been a very commoditized business. I realize it's not commoditized in the same way, but supply response and moats around the business of, you know, the names that you are bullish on help us get more comfortable with that and, or push back on those that say this is a bubble.
- [17:25]
A
Well look, first of all the industry is going to continue to be cyclical and so there's nothing that's just going to go up and right. We will see volatility. But if you look out over the multi year, I do think that this is a new TAM that you know, NAND has not really seen. And so it's just generally used to mobile and PCs and now we have these new LLMs that require a ton of NAN on their models. And so to me that's like an area where you just look at how much we need in terms of tokens and as a result it actually can consume a lot of the world's NAND capacity. In addition, there's not a lot of clean room space coming online so they have to build it. There's a lag there and so the cycle could be prolonged. And I think that what I'm looking for is agentic and physical AI because that's stuff that's not in people's bottles.
- [18:16]
B
Tony, great to speak to you. Thank you.
- [18:18]
A
Great, thanks.
- [18:19]
B
Tony Wong. And do not miss Jim Cramer's exclusive interview with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang that is tomorrow starting 10:10am Eastern time on Squawk in the Street. Can catch more from that interview tomorrow, 6pm on Mad Money. So that will be a great interview to listen to. The whole idea about memory and adding it sort of reminds me of GLP1. I don't know why, like the TAM is ever expanding. Everybody's going to want these drugs. It's going to take a long time to get the capacity on. And then capacity came and then the demand wasn't necessarily there as strongly.
- [18:50]
D
Well, these are fat valuations, Melissa.
- [18:53]
B
I mean it's completely different.
- [18:54]
F
We've been talking about this, it feels like for three years, right? So if you think about it, so the Nvidia chips and all the memory and the storage, they go into the server, right? The server goes into the rack, the rack goes into the data center. The data centers that all trains the models is. Well, most everything that we just talked about has pretty much rolled over, you know what I mean? And so I just think that at some point that's going to. I think I bet you my tip of my pinky on this.
- [19:15]
D
Your pinky ring that you wear?
- [19:17]
F
Yeah, you can have the ring, that's fine. You know one thing I think is really interesting, we don't talk about Apple anymore and I think Apple is going to be really interesting when we get to June to their developers conference because this is a company, we don't talk about their capex. If these other companies are spending 25, 30% of their revenue, Apple spends like 4%.
- [19:34]
D
So the silver lining is creeping in
- [19:35]
F
here, man, a little bit. I mean, I'm just saying I'd love to see this thing get creamed and like, you know, there we Go.
- [19:41]
D
They're told, I guess not.
- [19:43]
F
You know, I was out last night and some guy says to me, give me your phone. He's like, you got Claude? And I said, yeah, I got Claude. That's the one from Anthropic that you use, right? And he says, he goes, speak into it and say, what are the emails I need to respond to in my Gmail and what do I have on my calendar, you know, for tomorrow? So I do that. It's on my iPhone. It gives me the whole thing. Okay? Now, Siri has been on these iPhones for 15 years and they have not figured this out. And the app that I pay $20 a month, that does a lot of stuff for me, is doing that on an iPhone. It's going into my email and has
- [20:13]
B
access to your information.
- [20:15]
F
But that's the good thing for Apple, I just want to say that, because their whole thing is security, right? And it's going to be on the edge, that sort of thing. So to me, I think Apple is setting up because we have such low expectations for Siri and Apple intelligence. I think you'd be a winner this year here.
- [20:28]
B
That is a silver lining in the end. He wants somewhere nearby, but it was the silver lining in the end. All right, meantime, the conflict in the Middle east entering its third week. We'll get more on Iran in just a minute. But first, President Trump just a few minutes ago, confirming what Scott Bessen told her Brian Sullivan about his meeting with China, Xi Jinping. Amen. Javors has got the details on this. Amen.
- [20:49]
E
Yeah, Melissa, that's right. The President just wrapped up a lengthy session with reporters in the Oval Office. And he said in that conversation that he thinks the China meeting, which was scheduled for the end of this month, is going to have to be pushed off, he said, because of the war, he wants to be here, that is, in Washington, D.C. and not traveling to Beijing. So he said he'll push it off a little bit. Not clear what the makeup dates are. I've been trying to pin down some options from treasury and the White House throughout the day today. Not clear exactly how long this is going to be pushed off. But for those people in the market
- [21:22]
F
who've been looking for that meeting as
- [21:25]
E
an inflection point at the end of this month, looks like it's not going to happen.
- [21:30]
B
Amy Eamon, is there any indication that maybe the relationship has frayed a little bit because of what's going on in Iran?
- [21:40]
E
Well, look, I mean, it's clear that the Chinese are deeply impacted by what's going on in Iran. They are close to the Iranians. And it's also clear that this request by the president for the Chinese to send their navy into the Persian Gulf sort of upends decades of US diplomacy toward China. And I'm not sure the Chinese necessarily know what to make of it. You know, do they want to globalize their navy? The US has always said, you know, they don't want the Chinese taking their navy out of port and getting involved in conflicts around the world. Now the American president is asking them to do that. That's a very different situation than, you know, was sort of in the cards months ago when this meeting was agreed to. And so you can see why from the Chinese side, you know, they might want to back away from this and see where everything settles.
- [22:27]
B
Eamon, thank you. Eamon Javors from dc Interesting developments here, Tim.
- [22:32]
D
Yeah, I mean, I won't get around the politics of having Chinese battleships in the Middle east, but boy, you know, I played that game growing up and didn't go well. I just think you've, you've got a dynamic where what people want to believe is that the US is working with China to get oil around the world. That for people this is a strategic problem and that that's where the US is actually looking to help. This doesn't help that. And I, you know, I will just say I think we are escalating the conflict. And it's hard to believe that Iran is the country in the world that controls the energy market.
- [23:02]
E
Short positions in crude are going up. And before we go, this is important, you know, we have fans all over the place, as you know, around the world in fact. Yeah, and we have a lot of fans at the University of North Carolina, their women's soccer team, 23 time national championship. Our show has become like the show for their team, believe it or not. They're watching right now. I'm not even making this up.
- [23:22]
F
Really.
- [23:23]
B
I don't believe it.
- [23:25]
E
Shout out to UNC Women's soccer. Believe it.
- [23:29]
B
Coming up, matters ambitions, what the company's massive capex plans could mean for headcount and how its latest infrastructure deal is impacting the stock. Plus crypto climbing back. The next move for bitcoin as at near $75,000 and how it's faring against the broader market. Don't go anywhere. Fast money's back in two.
- [23:52]
F
Listen up. TrueTrade has revolutionized the trading industry with its AI driven technology. This isn't hype, this isn't theory. This is A smarter, modern way to engage the financial markets. Trutrade puts institutional grade trading technology in the hands of everyday Americans. Tools once reserved for the wealthy. No need to know what or when to trade. No trading experience. Doesn't matter. You purchase the platform, connect your trading account, download the mobile app and turn it on. It's that simple. And if that's not exciting enough, TrueTrade assists their clients in accessing tens of thousands of dollars in tradable funds, giving you the ability to participate without risking your capital. Join thousands worldwide who are already benefiting from TrueTrade's trading technology. Visit TrueTrade IO that's T R U T R A D E IO true trade where technology earns for you. Trading involves risk, including the possible loss of principal. See terms and conditions.
- [24:48]
B
Oh, could this vintage store be any cuter? Right?
- [24:51]
C
And the best part?
- [24:52]
B
They accept Discover. Accept Discover in a little place like this? I don't think so, Jennifer. Oh yeah, huh?
- [24:59]
C
Discover is accepted where I like to shop.
- [25:01]
B
Come on baby, get with the times. Right.
- [25:04]
C
So we shouldn't get the parachute pants. These are making a comeback, I think.
- [25:11]
D
Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide, based on the February 2025 Nielsen report.
- [25:17]
B
What do the steam engine, electricity and AI have in common? They don't just change how we work, they transform entire economies. Where the Internet Lives is an award winning podcast from Google about the unseen world of data centers. This season we're going inside the AI revolution. From farmers using AI to analyze soil data to researchers discovering new medicines, a new era of AI innovation is here. Listen to where the Internet Lives. Wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to fast money. Metashares jumping over 2% today after Reuters report that the Hyperscaler could lay off as much as 20% of its workforce to offset AI spending plans for spending plans that just grew by $27 billion. The company also inking an AI infrastructure deal with data and cloud services provider Nebbys, whose shares jumped 15% on the news. The deal includes $12 billion in upfront computing capacity spend across multiple data centers with the potential of up to $15 billion in additional compute. But it's the reports and we should say it's reports because Meta spokesperson said it's speculation. The reports of the layoffs that are really interesting. I think the last time they had layoffs was the year efficiency.
- [26:29]
C
The year of efficiency, right? Yes, I think that's clearly what the market liked. As to the Nevius part, I don't know if that's Included in the very significant 100 to 30 billion dollars that they've expecting to spend. I don't know, let's just say it's in there already. And all of this move today is on this expectation of 20%. I think it's, I think the street would like it. You know, these are people jobs, but I think it would trade well. I think it would also, you would also see extrapolation, people extrapolating to others as well. Right. Who else on the street would be, who else on the street could cut significantly like that which gets you then into that whole dynamic.
- [27:12]
B
Oh wow.
- [27:13]
C
What's going to happen to employment jobs? Yes, but for, I mean the dollars saved translates so quickly versus the dollar spent in capex are of not close unknown. Right. And when unknown how much and when.
- [27:27]
B
Right, right.
- [27:28]
D
Yeah, I was going to say, I mean if you start to do the math, the analyst community was hard at work doing that and said this could be 5 to 6 billion dollars of savings. You know, I think they get a lot. No, I think they put a lot more in terms of a market cap reaction.
- [27:42]
B
Right, right.
- [27:42]
D
That would be, that would be 10 times that or more if they just talked about efficiency. And you know, they also have the delay of their frontier model announced on Friday. I mean there's, there's different pieces of news flow here and of course people will also want to read this into the job market at a time when people are very concerned.
- [27:59]
F
Yeah, you want to get a market cap pop or market reaction is like get those models working.
- [28:04]
D
Right.
- [28:04]
F
And get them working outside the metal ecosystem, you know, Meta ecosystem. And you know, we saw that with Google last year with Gemini, you know, like, I mean obviously they have their cloud business and they've been spending more than Meta. But Met is picking up right now. I mean, you know, Gemini is across what, six or seven, you know, multibillion dollar platforms on Google. But it's also getting uptake outside of that they did the deal with Apple, who we know that we like a little bit maybe we think that could be a good one, Tim, you know, for this year, I mean so I mean listen, Meta's got to get those, they got to get those models working. You know, I mean it's that simple. And they've spent hundreds of millions of dollars hiding hiring talent to do it.
- [28:40]
C
One thing that Meta doesn't want this story hanging out there either way if it's true or it's not true.
- [28:44]
B
True.
- [28:44]
C
If it's true.
- [28:45]
A
Right.
- [28:45]
C
You got people scared.
- [28:46]
B
Whatever.
- [28:46]
C
You've got to just do it as quickly as possible instead of just leaving it out there.
- [28:50]
B
Yeah, good point there. We'll have much more on Meta later in the show. The chartmaster is digging into the technicals to tell us where he sees the stock going. There's a lot more fast money to come. Here's what's coming up next.
- [29:02]
F
Stocks rallying to start the week as investors await decisions from not one, not two, but four central banks. How our next guest is positioning now and what he needs to see before believing the bounce. But first, crypto shifting back into drive how Bitcoin is standing out amid the market volatility and whether the token can get back to six figures this year. You're watching Fast Money live from the NASDAQ market site in Times Square. We're back right after this. Listen up. TrueTrade has revolutionized the trading industry with its AI driven technology. This isn't hype, this isn't theory. This is a smarter, modern way to engage the financial markets. TrueTrade puts institutional grade trading technology in the hands of everyday Americans. Tools once reserved for the wealthy. No need to know what or when to trade. No trading experience doesn't matter. You purchase the platform, connect your trading account, download the mobile app and turn it on. It's that simple. And if that's not exciting enough, Trutrade assists their clients in accessing tens of thousands of dollars in tradable funds, giving you the ability to participate without risking your capital. Join thousands worldwide who are already benefiting from TruTrade's trading technology. Visit TrueTrade IO that's T R U T R A D E IO Trutrade where technology earns for you. Trading involves risk, including the possible loss of principal. See Terms and Conditions. This is a vacation with Chase Sapphire Reserve the butler the spa. This is the Edit, a collection of handpicked luxury hotels and a $500 edit credit chase Sapphire Reserve now even more rewarding.
- [30:43]
B
Learn more@chase.com Sapphire Reserve cards issued by
- [30:45]
F
JPMorgan Chase bank and a member FDIC subject to credit approval.
- [30:48]
B
What do the steam engine, electricity and AI have in common? These technologies not only change how we work, they can transform entire economies. I'm Stephanie Huang, host of where the Internet Lives, a podcast from Google and Latitude Studios about the unseen of data centers. Explore how data centers are unlocking growth in every sector of the economy. From agriculture to medicine to manufacturing, data centers are powering a new era of AI innovation. Listen to where the Internet lives wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to fast money. Bitcoin getting more than 3% today. Now up 7% over the past week. The token hitting its highest level since February 4th. Other cryptocurrencies seeing even bigger gains ether up more than 10%. And crypto proxies like Strategy and Coinbase also higher. Well, the markets were up.
- [31:36]
C
So although crypto really has some making up to do, especially when you look at what's happened to gold this in the last year. But I think, you know, expectations, the hope of clarity at some point and I don't know, oversold. That cycle now seems to be turning with strategy no longer. I don't know what you would call it. In distress.
- [31:58]
B
Right.
- [31:59]
E
They bought another 23,000 bitcoin. They just announced it today. So they're probably up to about 730,000 at an average price of a little probably 76,000 ish. So they continue to buy this level right here is where we fell that now a couple of times on the bounces from the mid-60s. Let's see what happens now.
- [32:16]
B
Coming up, holding off on buying the dip. What city Stu Kaiser needs to see in the market before putting more money to work and where he'd be buying amid any weakness. Do not go anywhere fast when he's back in two.
- [32:30]
F
As America celebrates its 250th anniversary, CNBC spotlights the companies that rose with the nation and continue to shape its future.
- [32:43]
E
I'm Bill Ford, executive chair of Ford Motor Company, a company that my great grandfather Henry ford founded in 1903. Through his innovations on the vehicle and most importantly the assembly line, he really helped create the middle class in America. And he gave the average American the freedom of mobility that they didn't have prior to the Model T. Most people never traveled more than 25 miles from home in their entire lifetime. I think what it did for America was allowed people to choose where they lived and where they played. Prior to the assembly line, cars were hand built and you could make just a few a day. And all of a sudden now you were making 20, 30, 40, 50 an hour. And that changed everything. It brought the price down. It made it so that the average American could actually own one. And it really changed the way all manufacturing in America was done. He also doubled the average wage of the day to $5 a day. And he began profit sharing so his own workers could then the vehicles that they were making. We were the arsenal of democracy in two world wars. Fast forward to when Covid hit. We transformed our plants to making PPE equipment once again. We've proved to the country that Our industrial know how is something that the country benefits from. What's made us a great company is we have so many multigenerational employees, dealers, suppliers that have been with us for our entire journey. And we want to continue that, you know, well into the future. If you look back at our last 250 years, it's been an amazing run for our country. And when I look ahead, that same opportunity is ahead of us. But we have to come together as people. And I believe if we do that, our future will be every bit as bright as our past.
- [34:46]
B
Welcome back to FAST money. Stocks rallying to start the week as oil prices pulled back. The dow jumping nearly 400 points. The S&P climbing 1%. The NASDAQ leading the gains up nearly one and a quarter percent. Crude settling more than 5% lower. Well, Citi isn't buying today's market strength and warns there's more trouble ahead. Stuart Kaiser is behind the call as the firm's head of equity trading strategy. Stu, great to have you with us.
- [35:07]
A
Good to be here.
- [35:08]
B
Nothing seems capitulatory, that's for sure. I mean, in terms of the action that we've seen so far. Is that why?
- [35:13]
A
Yeah, I think, I mean, you're in a situation where just, you know, oil price is driving the market right now and it's probably going to drive the market on a go forward basis. And what's going to get you more downside is if the front month move in oil or the short dated move in oil translates into something that looks like a little more long lasting. I think the good news here is the bar for bad news is very high. Right. If we'd given you the list of the headlines two weeks ago, you would have expected equity markets to be significantly lower. So it is a high bar. But you know that that tail risk is significant and we're just not comfortable owning equities with that tail risk hanging out there.
- [35:44]
B
Why do you think the markets have been so immune or resilient or maybe complacent about the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which has always been a black swan, I mean a known black swan event that's actually happened.
- [35:58]
A
I think number one, we're pretty well hedged going into this. Number two, we could debate the magnitude of the moves, but the relative order of performance I think makes a whole lot of sense. So you've got positioning, got attack and that was why your sort of memory stocks Korea traded off is why software has gotten covered and then the market's gone after. Anything that is really negatively exposed to higher shipping costs and higher energy costs. And that's going to be Japan, it's going to be Europe, it's going to be transports in the US it's going to be consumer durable, it's going to be emerging markets. So again, like the magnitudes might not be as big as you might expect at the S and P level, but a lot of those other markets are down 6, 8, 10%. So I think the market's done a pretty good job of shorting, sorting out winners and losers. Though to your point, it probably hasn't punished the S and P quite enough yet.
- [36:39]
D
And that's where I wanted to go because. Because you have had, if you look at Europe, they're down almost 10%, emerging down 7. S&P is down a couple. Nasdaq's actually outperform. But the fact that you have had a capitulation in sentiment, right. I mean 10 days ago people like this isn't that big a deal. Now they are worried sometimes, you know, that coupled with oversized moves to those trades that were rotations that did make sense. Does that mean even could those be nibbles? Because capitulation maybe has happened on sentiment and they've had oversized moves.
- [37:09]
A
It definitely could be. You know, we've seen a little bit of nibbling, a little bit on airlines, a little bit on tech, a little bit on Korea for instance. But it's been, it's been fairly limited I think if you ask me, like I'm not comfortable owning Europe as sort of a bounce back candidate. But I think Korea makes a lot of sense. I think materials in the US makes a lot of sense. I think some of your bottlenecks that we structurally like that have hold off have sold off make some sense. But again it's pretty limited and frankly the stuff you like just hasn't sold off enough. You look at the chart and it's like where's the dip? And I think that, I think that's kind of keeping people on the sidelines a little bit. Even though again the bar is extremely high. I mean it's crazy. The headlines we've seen in the market just kind of shrugs them off.
- [37:48]
C
So there's always black swans, whether or not we know they're there or you know, they're sort of known swans now, I guess. But so the vix hanging out here 23 and a half are you. You would be long vix there because you think there's more, more black swans to raise their heads.
- [38:03]
A
It's a great question. I mean The VIX and the V vix, which is basically the call VIX call option, are extremely, extremely high. Oil volatility is extremely, extremely high. And again, I think that's one of the reasons that's been a buffer for the market. I think that, that hedging was kind of already in place. Owning Vix here, 23, it's a little tough. It looks a little bit, it's expensive relative to how the market's behaving. It's probably a little cheap if you expect L risk. So I think you have to have a good amount of conviction that you're going to get, you know, another pullback here. You know, if I had to hedge, I'd probably do either VIX upside or actually maybe just S and P puts, because if this kind of goes sideways, the S and P is ultimately going to have to catch down, you know, some of these other assets. But it's tough. I mean, the cost of hedging is, I don't know, I don't want to call prohibitive, but it's, it's a sticker shock if you look at it right now.
- [38:46]
E
So Tim has brought this up. The strength of the dollar, is that a flight to quality or something more going on? Is it sustainable?
- [38:52]
A
I think it's a little bit of flight to quality and it's a little bit of positioning, probably. I mean, it's, it's the only quote unquote, safe haven that's worked. Right. Because gold was so heavily owned that that's come under positioning pressure. The same thing has happened to the bond market due to inflation risk. So it's kind of a hedge or safe haven of last resort. Is it sustainable? I look, I think if things calm down, you would expect some of the previous trends to kind of reestablish themselves. The caveat being that labor market report was ugly. And the question I think is if Iran calms down, do we go back to that cyclical trade or are people spooked enough by the labor market report that they don't? And if they're spooked by the labor market report, I think, you know, the dollar can kind of remain, remain pretty solid here. If it's just, you know, risk on, then the dollar is going to sell off, I think.
- [39:38]
B
Stu, great to see you. Thank you for coming by. Stuart Kaiser, what do you think? And what if we're three weeks in now, right? And President Trump has said four weeks, a few weeks, whatever. Let's say we're three more weeks from now. Oil prices are basically where they are. Does that cause the market to break? Like what, what truly breaks the market? That's only what, four plus percent from all time.
- [40:00]
F
We're going to be in earnings season pretty soon and I suspect a lot of the companies that drive a lot of the performance are just going to do fine. You know, we just, despite the labor market, despite, you know, some of the disruptions that we have in supply chains and the like. And, you know, I take it another way in the next week or so, if we had, you know, the administration basically saying we negotiated a cease fire, the Strait of Hormuz is open, we won. You know, I think the stock market, I think the S and p is at 7,000, probably on its way higher, you know, and, and again, because there's so much negative sentiment about so many of these groups underneath the hood, I just think you're going to see. What's the term you just use, Tim? Nibbling. Nibbling. I think it's going to go from nibbling. You did use it.
- [40:38]
D
No, I really, I don't remember. I'm sorry. Those trading terms that I do rattle off. Including nibbling.
- [40:45]
F
Yeah, I think it's going to be something more than that. I think it might be a gorging or something like that.
- [40:50]
C
Yeah, Well, I mean, look at Little Miss Sunshine.
- [40:53]
F
Well, I just, you know, I mean, just when you think about the Vix at 23, everyone's all hedged up. Stewart just told us that you take those hedges off and you're going to get a little upside action.
- [41:03]
C
I think so. I, I do. You know, we always talk about this administration who really looks at the stock market as a gauge of performance and they don't like to have performance. And certainly not going into a meeting with China.
- [41:16]
B
Oh, China's.
- [41:16]
C
Yeah, first and then midterms.
- [41:18]
D
But you can roll back tariffs, but you can't roll back, you know, well,
- [41:22]
B
igniting the party here actually involved in war. Right. There's another side. It's off. Coming up, we dug into the latest headlines. Moving matter, but are the technicals telling a different story? Where the Chartmaster sees the tech giant heading next when Fast Money returns. Welcome back to Fast money. Meta shares bouncing today, but the Chartmaster is not impressed. Carter Braxton Worth Worth Charting joins us on set here to chart the stock. Carter, what do you see?
- [41:55]
E
Sure, let's get right to it. So obviously the seventh biggest stock in the S&P, 2.3%. But let's look at the charts. We got six in a row. They're always identical. Time frame but just different ways to draw the lines. This has no lines. But what is quite, I think clear is the topping formation that's been in effect. The market makes a new high in January, February, so did the qs. But this hasn't made a high for six months now. Let's annotate it. Next chart. There's the sort of official. You'll see it here coming up. Head and shoulders and that's not great. Look at the next iteration. We also have this sort of minor formation. This picks up the lows associated with tariffs. We broke that level on Friday. That's not a good circumstance. If we were to extend this line back. Next chart. It goes all the way back to when the stock went from 100 to 800. Think about that. 100 to 800 and has been stalling and rolling ever since. Next iteration. If we keep that long term trend line in, put the head and shoulders top back in. And key here is the poor relative strength again. Market makes a new high in January. February stock does not QS make a new high. Stock does not. Final chart. Instead of using trend lines using the smoothing mechanism, the 150 day moving average. We know that a stock that bottoms is called a bearish to bullish reversal buy. A stock that tops is called a
- [43:21]
A
bullish reversible to bearish reversal sell.
- [43:23]
E
150 day moving average is turned over. We're sellers here and we think there's plenty of downside.
- [43:28]
B
Plenty of downside. Carter, thanks. Great to see you. Carter Braxton, Worth worth charting. Would you agree guy? Are you concerned about the plenty of downside?
- [43:35]
E
Yeah. Well, he makes a good point. The stock has not traded well now it's August. Now we had that bounce in November from 575 to 640. That was pretty robust. But since then it's been anemic. In a word, valuation is not the problem, but the head and shoulders formation into earnings when? April 29. Which is a ways away. That's got to be a little bit concerning.
- [43:54]
B
Coming up, Lulu getting out of its downward dog. Breaking a more than two week losing streak. But will tomorrow's earnings report keep the stock doing sun Salutations. And here's a sneak peek at the Kramer cam. Jim is chatting exclusively with Michael Dell. Catch a full interview. Top of the hour on Mad Money. More fast money into. Welcome back to Fast Money. Lululemon snapping its longest losing streak on record. The stock breaking out of an 11 day downward dog that chopped 15% off the stock price. This just in time for tomorrow's Earnings report the stock is down nearly 50% over the past year. Karen, what do you think? There's an activist involved here.
- [44:40]
C
Yeah, I'm not long but I would not be short. I mean this, this stock has not traded at this level. Granted a lot of things have gone wrong and there's intense competition but I just think the risk reward at this ratio at this level is. I'd much rather be long.
- [44:56]
D
I think you, you can run the risk of overtrading this one. By the way. Shout out. We did a shout out to the Carolina girls soccer women Shout out to Rick Morrison. My fantasy baseball league who over traded all the time.
- [45:08]
B
Is this a show of random shout outs?
- [45:10]
D
It felt like it was was the right time. I just think you have to be careful about Lulu pressing this short at these levels. Even though I think all of the peers are shorts Nike.
- [45:20]
F
This thing just fell off a cliff and it's getting back towards those April tariff lows. Obviously there are a lot of headwinds there but to me this one was like 80 down to 54. That looks kind of interesting. And by the way we have Ishmael here. Shout out to
- [45:33]
B
giving them away. We have a minute to the show.
- [45:36]
F
Huge fan of the show.
- [45:37]
B
Bitter.
- [45:38]
E
Call me Ishmael.
- [45:40]
B
Do you have anything intelligent to say about the athlete?
- [45:43]
D
St. Patrick's Day is tomorrow by the way.
- [45:45]
B
It is. Any shout outs?
- [45:47]
D
Pre green.
- [45:48]
F
He doesn't wear the concert tv.
- [45:50]
E
But you know why I wore this? You know why I wore this today? Because if you recall the last time that Tim and I were together he came at me. When was the last time you wore that shirt?
- [45:58]
A
Yesterday.
- [45:59]
E
Was that from your closet? From 1980s. So I figured I'd pull something else too.
- [46:04]
D
At least the 80s.
- [46:05]
B
I think it's still from the 80s though.
- [46:07]
E
No, this probably is from the 80s.
- [46:08]
D
That's a wide.
- [46:09]
E
Do you have anything interesting to say about Lululemon?
- [46:12]
F
Not really.
- [46:12]
E
Not really. But I'm glad Dan put up Nike and competition. But this is what I think you want to happen. They miss, they guide lower you gap lower and then you come in on the long side against an activist is going to make noise.
- [46:25]
B
Up next, final trades. Time for final trades and last shout outs.
- [46:42]
D
Tim by the way Rick spelled Rik is going to trick his way out of first place this year in fantasy
- [46:47]
C
going Karen and my daughter Kate a surprise visit even she's in school. Okay, shout out to Kate and a shout out to Citibank and Jane Bracer. I like Citibank Dan.
- [47:00]
F
Nike like it here 50 stop.
- [47:03]
B
To the downside, no shout out.
- [47:05]
A
Who gave a lot of shout outs? Who shouted?
- [47:07]
C
Guy, what's up?
- [47:08]
A
Huh?
- [47:09]
B
Do you have a trade?
- [47:10]
E
Yeah, I like SB Corp.
- [47:12]
F
But I mean, by the way, my mom is watching.
- [47:14]
B
Oh hello Nathan. My mom is watching too.
- [47:19]
D
Mr. And Mrs. Seymour, let's do this.
- [47:23]
B
All right. Thanks for watching Fast Money to all of you. Bad money starts right now. 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 many 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 this is a
- [48:01]
F
vacation with Chase Sapphire Reserve. The butler the spa. This is the edit a collection of handpicked luxury hotels and a $500 Edit credit Chase Sapphire Reserve now even more rewarding.
- [48:11]
B
Learn more@chase.com Sapphire Reserve cards issued by
- [48:13]
F
JP Morgan, Chase bank and a member FDIC, subject to credit approval.