← CNBC's "Fast Money"
CNBC's "Fast Money"
Tech Bounces Back… And SpaceX Joins the Nasdaq 100 on Fast Track 7/6/26
00:43:40
Stocks starting the week in the green as chip stocks rally and Apple notches its fourth straight day of gains. The Fast Money traders break down the rebound in semis and what it says about the broader market. Then, SpaceX joins the Nasdaq-100 in a historic fast-track inclusion. Niles Investment founder Dan Niles breaks down the index’s better-than-average performance and why he’s bullish on the diversified market until later this month. Plus, Dell surges after Trump’s endorsement, the backlash against tokenmaxxing, and how the World Cup is causing a prediction market surge. Fast Money Disclaimer
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- [00:01]
Steve Grasso
At Edward Jones, we believe rich is more than caring about the latest and greatest.
- [00:06]
Dan Nathan
It's also taking care of what gives your life meaning.
- [00:09]
Steve Grasso
That's why your dedicated financial advisor meets you where you are with personalized financial strategies that help protect what matters so you can preserve your progress while creating a path forward.
- [00:22]
Dan Niles
The key to being rich is knowing what counts.
- [00:25]
Steve Grasso
Let's find your rich together. Edward Jones, Member, SIPC Is your business
- [00:31]
Contessa Brewer
achieving its current strategic goals? Are operations as tight as they should be? Are finances in a realistic place for expansion? These are questions investors ask. That's why EY Parthenon brings an investor mindset to help executives reinvent business models for long term growth, reset strategic goals, optimize operations and get finances in order. Let us help you reimagine your enterprise EY Parthenon solutions that work in practice, not just on paper.
- [01:01]
Melissa Lee
Live in the NASDAQ markets in the heart of New York City's Times Square. This is fast money. Here's what's on tap tonight. The rotation on pause. Apple trading new records and semi soaring while defensive sectors sit on the sidelines. We'll break down what these moves say about the market and glittering gold. The precious metal continuing its rebound after a rough couple of months. Can the gains keep coming? We dove into the charts to find out. Plus Dell gets a boost thanks to President Trump. Valero marks a record close and a strategy shift. Michael Saylor's firm making another move away from Bitcoin while he's changing course and what it means for the crypto's next leg. I'm Melissa Lee, come to you live in studio. Be at the NASDAQ on the desk tonight. Steve Grasso, Dan Nathan Gai Adami and Carter Braxton Wirth. We start off with tech getting back in the driver's seat with the NASDAQ rising more than a percent to start the week and leaving the major averages higher. Much of today's strength coming from the rebound in semis. After notching two straight weeks in the red, the SMH added 2% while memory makers as measured by the DRAM ETF surged nearly 7%. Elsewhere in tech, one member of the so called MAG7 quietly approaching record levels. Apple putting in a fourth straight day of gains now trading within a percent of the closing high it hit on June 2nd. All this as recent rotation winners sit on the sidelines. Health care, utilities, consumer staples, each losing roughly 1%. Another indication that Tech's retaking its leadership. Mega caps helping the market cap weighted S&P 500 to far outpace the equal weighted index today. So is this proof of tech undergoing a factory reset and can the trade keep propelling broader markets to fresh highs? Look who's back.
- [02:35]
Guy Adami
Mr. We haven't seen each other in
- [02:38]
Melissa Lee
a while in a long time away.
- [02:41]
Guy Adami
So much to catch up on. Flight. It's great to be back. You get a week away and you get to sort of clear your head and met a lot of people over the week talking about the technology trade and here we are now in the second half of the year in July and that's when you start to see the chase. I mean, Steve can speak to this, but I think in a large part that's what's going on. So in the absence of bad news ahead of earnings, you're going to get this sort of re invigoration, I guess, if that's a word, back into this trade. So that part makes sense. What doesn't make sense to me is a Vix that's now below 16 and a Bond market that I think continues to deteriorate. Forget about Japan, we'll talk about that later maybe, but that's a powder keg waiting to happen. But right now in terms of the broader market, again, all systems go.
- [03:24]
Melissa Lee
Yeah. I mean on the precipice of earnings, earnings season, by the way.
- [03:27]
Dan Nathan
Yeah. And so the S and P down about 1% from its all time highs. NASDAQ down a little bit more. But you know, we know where that performance has been coming from. It's been those large mega cap names, despite the mag7 not trading particularly well over the last couple of months. You know, when I think about what could derail things and if you think about, you know, we had utilities, we had staples, we had, you know, pharma and stuff, not acting well, I think that's what you were alluding to at the top of the show. But you know, this week we have SK Hynix. They're at least a third of the memory market. That's DRAM and high bandwidth memory. We know what's happened to pricing there. We know what's happening happen to demand versus the capacity that is limited right now. And you say to yourself, okay, S.K. hynix come in public here in the U.S. and what could go wrong? Well, maybe there's just not a lot of demand for it. Maybe some of the reason that these stocks have been trading that way is because of scarcity. If they're going to bring a $28 billion deal, and we know this, we just saw big deals out of Space X and the like and it had a one day pop. But at some point it's just not that interesting if everybody's already involved and you have global investors that are in the local Korean sort of, you know, I guess the Kore issue. So what could go wrong? The unhealthy price action in that group of stocks. As far as everything else is concerned, it's fine. You know, like, you know, guys point like there's nothing right now that feels like it's going to derail it. We have a ten year right around four and a half and no one seems to care even with these rate increases built in for the balance of the year. So earnings better come in. I know that expectations after Q1, I think we're up more than 23% year over year. I know that that's probably not in the cards right now. But if it's good enough then the S and P kind of holds in here for a bit.
- [05:02]
Steve Grasso
I think earnings will be good enough. I think it's the guidance that people will worry about. If you think about it, money managers manage money. They have to put money to work. They have to always be managing money. So when you sit here and you look at where the sell offs can happen, they happen in between the print and the next earnings release. Those are the times when the stock is susceptible to actually pull back. So when people are looking for the return on invested capital, that's a problem because I don't think you're going to see it to the extent that we've seen it before. So you're going to question every dollar dollar goes out. Dollars got to come back in and is it fractions of a dollar that's coming back in. So I think the people who haven't spent the money, those are the ones that are going to reap the benefits. The apples of the world. Memory at peak. For me, you can't be buying memory at 80% multiples margins right now. This is not the time to be buying these certain handful of stocks where you're going to get the bargains. I think people are going to wait for earnings if they see earnings sort of disappoint in some way shape or form. I think the problem is they're going to rush right back into those Mag 7 names again and that's going to be a detriment to the investor community. So I think just sit on your hands. Seasonality works for July, works for August. September is a bad month for stocks. So just sit on your hands a little bit. Space X took a lot of air out of the balloon. The war is hopefully ending a lot of risk capital.
- [06:39]
Melissa Lee
I guess one question is, was the rotation that we saw last week, Carter, you know, when we saw health care on a streak, did we saw some of the other sectors come to life? Was that, was that the aberration or is that the pattern that has been established now and this tech resurgence today sort of just is a deviation?
- [07:01]
Carter Braxton Wirth
Well, I mean it's both ways depending on where you want to start the narrative. Right. To start the storyline, let's take within health care for instance, since obviously is a lot bigger and more important than let's say staples or utilities. I mean biotech has been fantastic. Yes. And there's something to say about idiosyncratic strength within a sector that's been defensive. But I mean today is yet another day where it's kind of a 5050, you know, the advanced decline, 220 issues advancing in the S&P, 280 declining. And it's ever thus. I mean think how popular software was and then it's not. Think about precious metals and then it's not. Think about oil and then it's not. And the whole sort of the. Where the center of the storm is the sk, Hynix is the Western digital, each of those, it's Qualcomm, they've all had 30 plus percent sell offs in a matter of days over the past week or so. And so does that mean that that's the beginning of a 50% sell off? I mean, or is it just another corrective moment that then sets up yet new highs? I think the important conclusion to make here is that being as overweight or as large in that space as one might have been over the past 6, 12, 18 months is probably ill advised.
- [08:12]
Melissa Lee
So where within technology, I mean I've heard in recent days rotation within technology to say the hyperscalers. Would you buy that?
- [08:21]
Guy Adami
You can make it. So you make a pretty cogent argument for if Google's the name you're talking about. I mean that's the one. I mean that to me is the one that stands out. Stock's been up and down. I think valuation is still compelling. Clearly the moat that everybody thought might not exist still exists in terms of their search business. So yeah, I think you can make a pretty good argument for Google and earnings. I'm looking to see when they report J.P. morgan's next Tuesday. So you probably have Google with the next two, two and a half weeks.
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Dan Nathan
Yeah. There's a problem though right now for the hyperscalers is that announcements that come out, they can either be taken as positive or negative. If it's like a cut in capex, you tell me is that going to be good or bad, right? I mean so, but think about this. So met his announcement last week that they're basically going to sell excess compute. Wait, there's excess compute? I didn't know, I didn't know. There's excess Compute. And that's why they're a huge customer of a core weave, you know, some of these neo clouds, because they're the ones who actually build out the commute and they sell it to the hyperscalers, right? So to me like that is a kind of difficult scenario. You have all these frenemy situations, right? And at some point the news is just going to be straight bad for all of them, right? Like it's just going to be that simple. And you could say, well these memory names, they just basically have two three year plans to build out fabs and build out this capacity, these long term contracts. Well, at some point maybe the push out of these data centers, there's all sorts of little things in the, in the, you know what I mean? Like these guys are going to be able to get out of a lot of these orders. So to me, I guess the point is, is that it could start to cascade. It could only take a couple of announcements from some of the big hyperscalers to see the whole space sort of pull back. And another name that we've been focused on now for a year and a half has been Oracle. This was a Johnny come lately to the hyperscaler space. OpenAI gave him this massive contract. What does that mean? That means everything down the stack is getting purchased by an all new customer. Well what is the stock telling you? And maybe they can push that back like two years. I mean this stock rallied nearly 100% off those recent lows and now it's given it all back. So this is an example of a name that actually might have reverberations if they were to kind of stumble a little bit. And there's no reason to believe that this company based on the execution over the last 10 years is not likely to stumble.
- [10:24]
Steve Grasso
The only thing I would be a buyer of honestly is Apple and it's for everything that Dan said, everything that we talk about on this desk. They've wasted so much money or I should say they've over spent money. It's been a circular spending. You have to spend this money because you don't want to fall behind to your competitors. So if you're not falling behind, are you falling behind to yourself? Apple doesn't suffer from that. Apple's the only one I think is holding the cards for itself. I'd be a buyer of Apple. That's it.
- [10:54]
Melissa Lee
We have seen a couple of nice sessions for Apple here. Is that, is that people saying, you know what, they're going to solve this memory problem? Well, maybe get Chinese chips or be able to use that as a leverage against some of the other memory makers. And by the way, they're not spending as much. And so their free cash flow, whatever they're making, they're not spending.
- [11:12]
Guy Adami
I think Steve touched on, I think, you know, they were being penalized for not being in the game, being behind the eight ball. Now the market's saying, wait a second, maybe not spending and sort of waiting for this whole thing to sort of shake out is the right way to be. And I think to a certain extent that we're seeing, you're also probably seeing money flows second half of the year in Apple. I mean, we've seen that historically. So that makes sense. People trying to get ahead of an earnings release. So it all makes sense. I will say, though, at these levels, Apple is certainly not cheap.
- [11:39]
Melissa Lee
All right, we have got a news alert here. President Trump making some comments about Wal Mart. Megan Cassell's got the details here. Megan,
- [11:47]
Contessa Brewer
Melissa.
- [11:48]
Megan Cassell
President Trump posting on Truth Social just a short time ago saying that Walmart will be lowering prices on ground beef and some other consumer food products in response to his administration's request. Here are some of the president's true social posts. He says, great news. I have just been informed that one of the biggest, best and smartest retailers in America, Walmart, will be lowering prices by a lot at my administration's request to celebrate our great country's 250th birthday. He says Walmart will in particular be dropping the price for a pound of ground beef by almost 15% among many other products. He goes on to say towards the end of this long post that just as he promised, he says oil prices are plummeting fast. Gas prices at the pump are dropping too, just like egg and prescription drug prices. He says Walmart is stepping up in a big and bold way and other retailers should follow the lead of these absolute patriots. And Melissa, just in the last few moments, Walmart appearing to confirm this news, putting out a press release saying that Wal Mart and Sam's Club lower prices to help customers make the most of summer items like ground beef, sodas, lay's chips, all on the list of things that will be reduced. Now, a couple of things to emphasize. This does reflect the White House concerned about consumer prices, keeping an eye on how these are impacting consumers. The president saying in this post that he's lowering prices in a way that the former administration could not do. We've already seen him pressure oil companies, for one. Now we're seeing him call on retailers to follow suit.
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Melissa Lee
Melissa Meghann, thank you. Megan Kinsella, I'm just reading through this press release. There's no mention of the Trump administration or Trump administration request to do so. But the fact of the matter is, is that Wal Mart is lowering prices that is good for the US Consumer and maybe that goes to this price war, especially when it comes to grocery items in the sector, whether it be with Target or with other grocery chains like Kroger, for instance.
- [13:32]
Dan Nathan
Yeah. And this is a, in an area that's been really difficult. Right. For the last six months or so. We know that Kroger came out, I think about a quarter ago and said they're going to lower their prices, they're going to compete better with Wal Mart. It's one thing if you're lowering your prices because you want to keep market share, you want to make sure your customers keep coming back. I mean, this sounds a lot like democratic socialism. I that's something that the administration has not been too hot about. But we keep seeing this again and again. And then we see the kind of state capitalism with the investments into a lot of these companies and you know what they're working out and this is working out for consumers. And so I don't mean to be kind of glib about it, but at some point it's going to be a little bit of a treacherous situation for let's say our free markets or capitalism in general. And you said, yeah, but you know, the other thing is, is like, you know, you got this guy, he's like a stock promoter online. He's telling you to buy a stock for no fundamental reason other than the guy who started the company, whose name is on the door standing behind him at the White House. You know what I mean? So again, I just think that, yes, this is a situation where it's good for everybody, but at the end of the day, this is really coming at, I think, the core of the way our markets are meant to work.
- [14:35]
Melissa Lee
You were talking about Dell and Michael Dell, of course, the event today and the other event announcing Trump accounts. Initially we did see Kroger shares move lower in the after hours session pretty distinctly down by 1¾ quarters of a percent. Maybe this is just coincidental. It's a win for Wal Mart in, in that it is a bid by the part of Wal Mart to maintain and grow share at a time when consumers are feeling distress. And also it's a time to win some political capital which does not hurt Wal Mart shareholders.
- [15:06]
Guy Adami
Doesn't. And so the line in the sand now is today, what is July six. This comes out Wal Mart down significantly off the all time high below the 200 day moving average for the first time in a while. Is this the day we come back to and say, okay, Wal Mart sort of did what they needed to do and now you're going to start to get a rebound in the stock? I think the answer is yes. And we can debate whether or not this is a good thing or bad thing. That's not what I'm here to do. What I will say though is Wal Mart, although expensive, this might be sort of that line of demarcation.
- [15:34]
Dan Nathan
Why would it be good for the stock? I mean this just means they're going to have lower margins. Right. And so you have to assume that Wal Mart did not lose a lot of market pushback.
- [15:41]
Guy Adami
Here's my pushback. And say it's just a matter of time before the administration champions Wal Mart as a stock. On the back of this acknowledgment, the price and you don't, and you don't
- [15:51]
Steve Grasso
know if the supplier actually eats that side of it as well. So there's going to be. Wal Mart is the biggest retailer in the country. Walmart very rarely eats. Eats that price.
- [16:01]
Melissa Lee
Yeah, and I get your point about is it good for the stock? If I said it was good for the stock, I didn't necessarily. I meant political capital for Walmart, the company company, which I think is a valuable thing in this world that we live in in general.
- [16:13]
Steve Grasso
And there's, there's a difference between telling someone to lower your prices and asking someone to lower your prices. So we asked them and this seems like it worked out.
- [16:21]
Melissa Lee
Carter, before we leave Wal Mart here, what does the chart look like?
- [16:26]
Carter Braxton Wirth
It's the definition of a long and protracted advance that now is showing all the signs of having come to an end. Meaning the recent price volume correlation is bearish. The uptrends in question, you have some dropping and gapping and it's not, it would appear, idiosyncratic. Kroger also under pressure. Costco under pressure. So whether it's just a defensive kind of thing, but yet Coke is Also same sector and is making new high. So I think it is idiosyncratic. I would be short these names.
- [16:53]
Melissa Lee
All right, let's turn back to the moves in big tech. Let's bring in hedge fund manager Dan Niles of Niles Investment Management. Dan was a semiconductor and computer hardware analyst during the dot com bubble. Very famous one in fact. Dan, great to have you with us.
- [17:06]
Dan Niles
Great to be on.
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Melissa Lee
Melissa, you do point out that there is a seasonality impact here, at least through the beginning part of July. But what are you anticipating as we go into earnings season? Do you expect that memory could come under pressure that maybe hyperscalers could resume some sort of an uptrend?
- [17:25]
Dan Niles
So a couple of things. We're probably going to get a pretty good hint tomorrow because Samsung is going to report tonight and they're obviously one of the big three. It's Samsung, Hynix and Micron and their profits should be up almost 18x year over year when they report. We'll see how the market responds to that tomorrow because the Korean stock market it's up 90% year to date and that's being driven by Samsung and Hynix, which are roughly half of that index. That's going to give you your first read into this. The second one is SK Hynix goes out with a massive IPO or listing in the US I should say not IPO on Friday. That will give you another data point of now you don't just have to own Micron, you can actually own Hynix as well. That's going to give you one more then along with SpaceX. How does that react to being finally this is the last ad for a while being added to the NASDAQ 100. You're asking longer term. I just go back to one simple thing. You've gone from token maxing in March to now people trying to control their AI bills. And there's a great post by Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase where then this was I think June 26th or so and he puts out this post showing how token usage at Coinbase continues to go up. But he's cut his AI spend by almost 50% 50 and a lot of companies are going through this and that includes meta, Microsoft, Uber, etc. Where they're trying to get their AI bills under control. So I'm wondering which of the three big hyperscalers ends up guiding below forecasts for September after reporting a huge June because of that. So when they start to report, that's when I'm going to go back to being, you know, pretty cautious on the guidance.
- [19:17]
Dan Nathan
Hey, Dan, Mel just called you a famous Internet analyst in the dot com boom. I was there. You were famous. But, but, you know, you made some big calls, you put your neck out and you know, when I look at what's going on in memory and I think about in market cap terms at how much these stocks are up and where, let's say the NASDAQ or Korea's index is, the Cosby is, I say to myself, well, Nvidia is a greater market cap than probably the top 10 names combined in the memory space. And you look at this sort of price action, it is driving a lot of sentiment as far as tech investors are concerned. Does that trouble you that you're seeing a pocket of these names globally? Okay. Relative to some of the names here in the US that are actually like driving, they're really driving the train. And I'm just curious, does that make sense to you? And I'm just curious how you're thinking about that.
- [20:04]
Dan Niles
Well, I look at Nvidia and I go there under assault from a bunch of different areas, right? You've got Google, Amazon. Matt, you had an announcement that Anthropic is looking at Samsung to produce their own chip. And so they're getting, you know, pushed around by all of that newsflow. Also, don't forget the big one with the gentic AI, which you could argue showed up in March with the start, January with the formalization of OpenClaw on January 30th. You move from eight GPUs to one CPU to something closer to four to one or one to one, which really benefits the legacy microprocessor vendors who are sort of left for dead up until very recently when that ratio switched back. So I think it's to your point, I think it's very company specific where you got to go through the names one by one and go, okay, these guys benefit in this regime shift. These guys don't. And the one thing with memory, don't forget, is that this new architecture coming out and Magentech, Vera, Rubin takes at a minimum like three and a half times more memory than the Blackwell generation did. Now that's just started to ramp. Obviously there's talk about that getting pushed back. And so those are all things I'm watching right now. And this is not a sell off. I mean, if you go back to 1995 or 97, you had 50% drawdowns in the Sox and it finished that whole climb from the end of 94 to March up 850%. Look, more recently, I think at the beginning of middle of 2025, the semiconductor index went down 40% for zero in a drawdown. So this is minor. That's why I'm very curious to see what how Samsung and the memory stocks trade tomorrow after Samsung reports tonight and then Hynix on Friday. What does that do to the space?
- [21:58]
Guy Adami
Real quick, Dan, you know Steve mentioned return on invested capital. When did the companies listen? We know what's going on with Microns, other companies, but the companies that are spending the lion's share, when do they need to start to show that return before people, the market starts to get concerned?
- [22:14]
Dan Niles
I think that's every quarter. It's a great comment, Steve. And that's why I kind of go back to what happens if Google, Amazon, Microsoft, they guide to less than expected growth for the September quarter. They're going to all have huge June numbers because that was token, token maximization. Now you've got Coinbase trying to cut
- [22:33]
Dan Nathan
their bill in half.
- [22:34]
Dan Niles
That's a very different environment. And so I think your point is the one that everybody's trying to get their arms around. And don't forget you've now got one competitor that's been added to this, which is SpaceX. Right. Don't forget they signed a $11 billion deal with Google, a $16 billion deal with Anthropic, a $4 billion deal with cursor. You could argue those are all deals that could have reflection AI, let's not forget that one that could have gone to other players potentially. And then obviously you have meta compute coming out at some point that won't affect demand near term. But it's something you have to think about when you're to your point looking at return on invested capital, which is ultimately the thing that matters along with cash flow.
- [23:18]
Melissa Lee
Dan, always great to speak with you. Thank you.
- [23:20]
Dan Niles
Thank you.
- [23:21]
Melissa Lee
Dan Niles. Coming up, High Energy trading shares of Valero Trading your records now that how that stock is bucking the trend of crumbling crude prices. Next. Plus the toll of token maxing, the growing backlash over climbing costs and how it could be fueling the recent software surge. Don't go anywhere. Fast money's back in two.
- [23:44]
Dan Nathan
Game day at my place is kind of a big deal. If I'm grilling, chilling and watching hoops, my outdoor patio setup better be ready to play. That's where Wayfair wins. From patio seating and umbrellas to grills and grilling accessories, Wayfair's got it all and it up fast. I'm talking championship level, fast and easy delivery. So level up your grill game and your outdoor chill game and head to Wayfair.com now to get your outdoor space ready for the season.
- [24:14]
Steve Grasso
Thursday, July 16 CNBC Sport and Boardroom Join Fanatics Fest for game plan groundbreaking ideas shaping the future of sports and entertainment. Request your invite at cnbc events.com/game plan.
- [24:31]
Melissa Lee
Welcome back to BEST Money. Shares of Valero Energy closing at a record rising a percent today, bringing its gains for the year to over 66%. It is the energy sector's best performing stock in that time frame. The move coming even as crude continues its recent slide. WTI down nearly 25% over the past month, settling at its lowest close since the Iran war started. What's your take on the slide?
- [24:51]
Steve Grasso
Yes. So when you look at a refiner, a refiner always makes bigger chunks of cash on the crack spread. What their cost of a product that they have coming in barrel of oil and then the refined product going out. Biggest spread is the refined products sticky in price. The price of oil very, very easily can go up and down very, very quickly. Large integrated names are priced on the barrel of oil refiners. Price on the crack spread red. If you're going to invest in energy, refiners are the place to do it. And it's a very direct play. Valero is probably the cleanest way to play this.
- [25:30]
Guy Adami
Other names as well. Valero Steve's talked about for sure, Marathon Petroleum, mpc. That's right around an all time high. So these downstream plays continue to work. So what we have said I think pretty consistently crude can do what it wants to do. But there's certain names are going to win in this environment. Those are a couple of them.
- [25:45]
Melissa Lee
Do the refiners look good in your book, Carter?
- [25:50]
Carter Braxton Wirth
I mean again they're, they're the equal and opposite of the big integrated and the cyclical names. The driller. So Phillips 66 PSX, Valero good versus the others. But here's the question, are they bad? Are they so bad they're good. And I think we've reached that point again. Just think how adored and loved and admired the energy stocks were. As recently as as May there were reports printed on letterheads of major investment banks and brokerage firms. That one, if we don't clear this up by or July oil's going at 200, 170 and now of course it's all been abandoned. I think you take the road less traveled here, hold one's nose and buy into the sell off in the big integrated and other energy related stocks.
- [26:33]
Melissa Lee
I love it when Carter says so bad. It's good because all the Carterism makes you think.
- [26:39]
Guy Adami
Well, every time Carter speaks I think. By the way, did you mention last week on the 4th of July, which was Saturday?
- [26:46]
Melissa Lee
Uh huh.
- [26:46]
Guy Adami
Carter. What's his middle name?
- [26:47]
Melissa Lee
Braxton.
- [26:48]
Guy Adami
Well, there was a gentleman named Carter Braxton, one of the 56 signators. What are the odds on the Declaration of Independence?
- [26:55]
Melissa Lee
I know. It's amazing.
- [26:56]
Guy Adami
It is amazing.
- [26:58]
Melissa Lee
And this is true.
- [27:00]
Dan Nathan
No, I'm not. Yes, it's true.
- [27:01]
Melissa Lee
Guy says lots of things like facts, you know, fun facts that may or may not so. And so is a big fan of the show. But this is actually something that's true.
- [27:09]
Carter Braxton Wirth
This is actually true.
- [27:11]
Melissa Lee
There's a lot more fast money to come. Here's what's coming up next.
- [27:13]
Steve Grasso
Next rising backlash against token maxing why CEOs are sounding off on the increasing costs and how the fallout could boost another part of the tech trade. Plus precious metal technicals where the Chartmaster sees gold heading next and when prices could get back to record highs. You're watching Fast MONEY live from the NASDAQ market site in Times Square. We're back right after the this.
- [27:45]
Guy Adami
It's Charles Barkley here with Wayfair. And let me tell you, game day is serious business at my house. If I'm grilling, chilling and watching hoops, my outdoor setup better be ready to play. That's where Wayfair wins. From patio seating and umbrellas to grills and grill accessories, Wayfair's got it all and it shows up fast. I'm talking fast and easy delivery. So level up your grill game and your outdoor chill game and head to Wayfarer.com to get your outdoor space ready for the season.
- [28:12]
Melissa Lee
Wayfair every style, every home.
- [28:15]
Steve Grasso
Buy the dip and save on CNBC PRO24.7 access to market moving news and interviews across three global live streams for 59.99@cnbc.com join CNBCPro. Terms and conditions apply.
- [28:33]
Melissa Lee
Welcome back to fast money. Palantir CEO Alex Karp calling out OpenAI and anthropic in an interview on CNBC last week criticizing token models as costs around. I continue to rise this as several companies seek to pivot to cheaper open source models. CNBC SIMA Modi's got more. Hey sima.
- [28:50]
Megan Cassell
Well, it was a pretty big interview, Melissa, with Alex Karp last week and yes, it sparked a heated debate around the cost of tokens that he says, quote created no value. Going as far as to say tokens impose a wealth tax on companies. He also criticized the big labs closed source models, saying they can essentially steal proprietary information and replicate businesses. Union Square Ventures partner Michael Magnano says Karp's comments adds even more fuel to the transition to an open source model that enables enterprises to both save money and control their own destiny. Altimeter Capital's Brad Gerstner this morning reiterating the urge the urgent need for an American built open source alternative, especially as China narrows the gap. The challenge of course is open source gives companies the ability to build their own model and protect their data. Yes, but it also means companies have to own the entire stack, including security. That seems to be the big concern.
- [29:47]
Melissa Lee
Melissa. All right, Seema, thank you. Sima Modi, I think this is interesting, especially as there are reports that Microsoft could use Deep Sea Core, a version of Deep Sea, to power its Copilot cowork.
- [29:59]
Dan Nathan
So I mean the copilot one is interesting. I mean it's very different than what the AP that Palantir offers, right. When you think about it, I mean Copilot is really to kind of help you, your, you know, your workflows and that sort of thing. When it comes to Palantir, the idea, the argument that they need an intermediary in some way, shape or form between the enterprise and then let's say the model maker for all the reasons that Sima just mentioned, that makes sense. And you know, when you talk about open source, you know, Jensen Huang had an opinion on this. If that surprises you guys earlier this year he said it's not going to be like one or the other, it's going to be both. And they're all going to do like sorts of different things. And I think the whole idea of token maxing really does play a big role in this. So at the end of the day, this is not going to be settled anytime soon. Matter is building an open source model. It doesn't seem to be getting a lot of steam. Although they use it internally. It will be interesting to see what these huge platforms end up using for what purposes.
- [30:52]
Guy Adami
Since we brought a Palantir, let's talk about Palantir. I mean if you Remember back in February 25, the stock was a straight line higher. They could trade it at 115 or so and a month and a half later was trading back down to $75 dollars. I mentioned that because we just traded down to that prior all time high almost in a straight line down 50% and seemingly have held. So they don't report until I think August 10th or something like that. But Palantir, if you're so inclined. Understanding valuations don't make sense. The sell off might have been enough.
- [31:19]
Melissa Lee
Nice chart work there.
- [31:20]
Guy Adami
Let's see what the chart master says.
- [31:25]
Carter Braxton Wirth
Carter well, the charts are open to all, but just as guys characterize it, this is a long and protracted decline. I mean the stock peaked above 200 in November and touching a low about 105 or thereabouts just last week. That's a major give back. That resets the table. I would say those lows are good lows and I would be playing on the long side.
- [31:47]
Steve Grasso
If you compare the two charts, go to Snowflake. Two totally different stories. Compare Snowflake to Palantir and if you go back a couple of months, I think Palantir could have the same spike that Snowflake did. So watch out.
- [32:02]
Melissa Lee
Watch that stock coming up, Heavy metal Technicals what the Chartmaster sees in store for gold prices as the safe haven trade tries to turn around A rough couple of months where we are going to be Penny when Fast Money returns.
- [32:17]
Steve Grasso
Missed a moment of fast. Catch us anytime on the Go Follow the Fast Money podcast. We're back right after the this.
- [32:30]
Melissa Lee
Welcome back to Fast Money Stocks starting the week in the green. The Dow jumping 156 points, closing at a fresh record in above 53,000 for the first time. The S and p up by 3/4 of a percent and the Nasdaq leading the gains climbing more than a percent. SpaceX with a small loss today closing above $160 a share. The stock officially being added to the NASDAQ 100 at today's close after being fast tracked into the index, mutual funds and ETFs including the triple cues will have to buy Space X stock to mirror the index's composition. Shares of revision dropping after hours. The EV maker filing to sell up to 75 million shares of Class A common stock. Meantime, is gold starting to shimmer again, the precious metal up more than 3% in the last week, but it's still down 20% since the start of the Iran war. So where does it go now?
- [33:16]
Contessa Brewer
Next?
- [33:16]
Melissa Lee
Who better to ask than the chartmaster, Carter Braxton? Carter, what do you see buyers here?
- [33:23]
Carter Braxton Wirth
Gold down 30% from its peak just as oil is and at this point I would characterize a mature intermediate decline. Let's go right to the charts. So the peak is January 29, 5600 an ounce and then five months later we touched a low at the end of the quarter. June 30th below 4,000. Let's annotate this. So second chart.
- [33:42]
Guy Adami
Chart.
- [33:42]
Carter Braxton Wirth
You can see well defined trend lines and we've responded to this uptrend line beautifully in a period where gold essentially tripled from 2000 to almost 6000 ounce. And so just to make that point the next iteration you'll see that we have responded to the penny. We have bounced off that uptrend line beautifully and we are sitting here in the converging trend lines apex. So whether you want to call it a symmetrical triangle, a flag, a wedge, it doesn't matter. It represents a period of equilibrium. Which way is it resolved? Many are betting down. 1 I think you bet up final chart. That arrow is a judgment. The final arrow. Others might put a red arrow. But again it is a mature intermediate decline. Five months in the making. 30% duration magnitude. And we're buyers here.
- [34:29]
Melissa Lee
How much of this has to do with the recent weakening we've seen in the dollar? Carter?
- [34:35]
Carter Braxton Wirth
Well, you wonder. I mean again the dollar over the last five years had a lot of of zigs and zags and gold was doing its own thing. Right. So sometimes there is a relationship between currency and commodity and sometimes not. I think this extreme move to the upside was on its own of course when we blew off up to 5600 the 30% sell off is on its own. And this day to day action is more technical than anything else and not much to do with the dollar.
- [35:03]
Melissa Lee
All right guy, what do you agree?
- [35:04]
Guy Adami
Hawkish Fed doesn't help. I'll say. I mentioned Japan earlier. I mean that the yen dollar yen north of 162 probably the highest level we've seen in quite some time. You couple that with the fact that their bond market continues to deteriorate. I think it all, all roads lead to gold. And if you look at GDX quickly we traded down to the November low 71-½-72. We're bouncing. I think you want to be long gold or GDX or both. But I think Carter spot on.
- [35:28]
Steve Grasso
Yeah, GDX usually outperforms up and down three to one the the gold and if you see the performance, it mirrors that. So if you think there's going to be a bounce bounce, you should be buying the miners.
- [35:38]
Melissa Lee
Is that a correct call Carter? GDX versus gold.
- [35:43]
Carter Braxton Wirth
No, I like them. But I think you're going to get a bounce in the underlying commodity and you'll get some beta. Of course what you do with the operating companies. Agnico, Eagle Am, the biggest or one of the biggest. Newmont or just do, of course.
- [35:58]
Melissa Lee
GDX Coming up, World cup wagering. Prediction markets getting a big boost as bettors take the feel the staggering numbers and the surge and who fans are putting their money on now. More fast money into. Welcome back to fast Money. We are just hours away from kickoff in Team USA's round of 16 World cup match against Belgium. According to Kalshee, odds of the Americans winning spiked notably on Sunday after a red card reversal. Superville allowed its top scorer to play tonight. It's just one example of the flurry of prediction market activity during this World Cup. Contessa Brewer is here with the details.
- [36:39]
Contessa Brewer
Contessa World cup has become like a soap opera. This is as the world turns. Kalshee has just posted its most lucrative market ever. Who will win the finals of the World cup has now surpassed $1 billion in trading volume. And Kalshee, with whom CNBC has a commercial relationship, did more than 5 billion bucks in trading volume this weekend, setting new records fueled by soccer mania. That's 45% higher than last month when, you know, we were in the midst of NBA finals. Fervor Polymarket up 24% over last month. And. And you know, that was just record after record after record. Sportsbooks now are also raking it in. Caesar says it set a trifecta of record records in the England vs Mexico match last night. Most unique visitors, most number of bets on soccer ever, and most soccer handle. That's the amount of money wagered. FanDuel says almost 90% of the World cup handle is coming in on USA. And when USA wins, guys, it makes the customer so very happy. And the sports books are like, oh, this is going to hurt to pay out. And. And we're going to see it if it affects their quarter. You know who is a real loser in all of this guy Adami Macao casinos. The. The June gross gaming revenue was down 12% over last year. And the analysts all say, yeah, that's because the discretionary gambling dollars are going to a World cup and not to baccarat.
- [38:11]
Melissa Lee
Interesting. How did the activity change on Kalshi when that red card reversal happened?
- [38:17]
Contessa Brewer
Yeah.
- [38:17]
Melissa Lee
So I would imagine like the.
- [38:19]
Contessa Brewer
Belgium. Belgium was the probable winner of the game. And then the announcement came out and then we saw this reversal where USA took the lead.
- [38:28]
Melissa Lee
Right.
- [38:29]
Contessa Brewer
I asked Caesars about this and Caesar said, yeah, what happened is we thought USA was going in without Baligan. And then we have to go back and revise the odds on all of these markets. They don't call them markets when it's sports books on all of the the propositions for the sports bettors because now they're playing with one of their leading strikers. He's already done three goals in World cup so far. So yeah, it changes things.
- [38:52]
Melissa Lee
I mean, I mean I'm wondering this Kalsh Kalshee stands to benefit because the US has greater odds is that Kalshee
- [39:00]
Contessa Brewer
is going to benefit just no matter what trading volume because they earn but the volume is up and the volume is way, way up. Just in general, whether you are we had money going in on Belgium or USA or whether you think France is going to walk away with it all. Cal, she's like we don't care, just keep breaking it in.
- [39:18]
Guy Adami
Love the football. Love Contessa breaking down the football.
- [39:21]
Melissa Lee
That most of all now all of
- [39:23]
Guy Adami
what she said is salient. But on the trading front, she brings up Macao correctly. Look at the move to the downside and win from 135 to where it's trading on 95 or so. Then a report till early August. I think you going to see at some point the roles reverse here. I think win is a buy at these levels.
- [39:39]
Melissa Lee
Do analysts expect it to reverse in terms of the discretionary gambling dollar?
- [39:44]
Contessa Brewer
It's not just that. There's also been a crackdown in Macao on currency. And so that combined with people's attention is going to soccer right now or football or I don't know what they call it in China. But. But in other words, that's World cup is finite. It's not going to last.
- [39:58]
Melissa Lee
Right.
- [39:58]
Contessa Brewer
But currency crackdowns have been a problem in Macau.
- [40:01]
Melissa Lee
So.
- [40:01]
Contessa Brewer
So look at it for Win for Melco MGM to a lesser degree and Las Vegas Sands of course.
- [40:07]
Melissa Lee
Interesting. And of course Kalsha doesn't actually pay. I mean it's between. Right. So they're the ultimate like they're, they're
- [40:14]
Contessa Brewer
going to facilitate the liquidity. They bring the money with the market makers. What's interesting though, there's been a lot of questions about whether Flutter and FanDuel or DraftKings are going to be cannibalized by prediction markets. Both now saying, well, we're going to be in the market making business. So if you have FanDuel going in and helping to create parlays for say Kalshee, they're going to make money either way too. They can make money on the B2B side of this.
- [40:42]
Melissa Lee
Contessa. Thank you, Contessa Brewer. You betting?
- [40:45]
Dan Nathan
No, but there's an. I'm enjoying it. I mean there's an argument. To me, this is not one off. Every time the US Wins and every time, you know, our fans and I, our citizens get to experience this sort of thing, I mean, they're going to start or continue to bet is one of the most bet on sports on the planet. And you know, the English Premier League guy, as you know, starts in August and all the European leagues do. But think about this, all of these, you know, stars from all of these countries, they go back and play on their team. So this is good for all of those companies doing this because us people, we're getting hooked on this stuff.
- [41:15]
Melissa Lee
Coming up, sticking with a new strategy. The company's latest bitcoin sale in the next move for the crypto trade next. And here's a sneak peek peek at the Kramer camp. Jim is chatting exclusively with the CEO of chemical company Solstice. Catch a full interview, top the hour on Mad Money. More fast Money into. Welcome back to FAST money. Bitcoin rebounding from early losses after President Trump said he has become a quote, big crypto guy. It had fallen more than 2% early in the session after strategy said in a regulatory filing that it had recently sold $216 million worth of Bitcoin. But again, you see, you see the Trump effect on any asset class which he touts. And there you go up to.
- [42:00]
Steve Grasso
Yeah. And I think the strategy effect is just the cloud over bitcoin right now. Where do you actually need these companies? We've all talked about it. If you want to own bitcoin, you own bitcoin. You don't have to own an a levered player or not. I almost think once they get out of the way, bitcoin is actually going to rally extremely aggressively. I guess if, if that's if that's the word I'm looking for. But right now the cloud over the whole sector are these types of companies. And bitcoin is crypto. Crypto is, is bitcoin.
- [42:37]
Guy Adami
Well, I mean the line in the sand clearly is about 60,000, which makes sense. We've traded down there a few times and have bounced. The president again, getting on the soapbox stocks clearly helps. What doesn't help in my opinion is a hawkish Fed and some of the other things that are going on. So I still think there's another leg low. I think Carter suggests the charts think that we'll see how it plays out.
- [42:56]
Melissa Lee
Yeah. Carter, what do you see? What are key levels to watch?
- [42:59]
Carter Braxton Wirth
Yeah, I mean it's been bouncing around here as all we'll know, trying to Find its footing. I don't think it's convincing. My hunch is lower. And the derivative names. Think MicroStrategy down some 85% from its peak BMNR bit money are down 90 me. It's not a good look. I'm not, I'm not a buyer here.
- [43:19]
Melissa Lee
I mean, think back to when all the digital asset treasury companies were going public. A lot of them buy a spac, but what they were out there with no other business premise other than raise capital. Buy crypto. Presumably crypto goes higher and in their stocks are, are higher too. And here it's a, it's broken at this point.
- [43:36]
Dan Nathan
Yeah, you got to be a big promoter if you're going to have one of these crypto companies or these leveraged crypto companies because, because you know, the only hope right now is like, yeah, you can stake all your crypto, but it's literally not going to cover the billions and billions of dollars that these companies are down. They may never ever get them back. So if you're the CEO or the chairman, you better come out with these, you know, 200, 300% targets for the underlying because otherwise if people lose confidence in the model and lose confidence in the underlying, these things are going to zero. Just like a lot of the spacs that are most of the Spacs did from 2021.
- [44:08]
Melissa Lee
Up next, final trades. Over the holiday weekend, we lost a longtime Fast Money fan, maybe one of its greatest fans. Tim seymour's father, Michael McDonough Seymour passed away on Friday. For almost our entire run on Fast Money, Tim Zad was a nightly viewer.
- [44:31]
Guy Adami
So, you know, obviously we all have our own families, but I think people have come to realize that we are family here. So when we lose somebody, we all lose a family member. So Mr. Seymour married to his beautiful wife Marilyn for almost 66 years, five children, 12 grandchildren, a life extraordinarily well lived. So with our deepest sympathies to the Seymour family for sure.
- [44:52]
Contessa Brewer
Yes.
- [44:53]
Melissa Lee
Time for the final trade. Carter Braxton.
- [44:56]
Carter Braxton Wirth
Worth Baxter. Classic value play was 95, hit a low of 16 now a textbook bearish to bullish reversal.
- [45:05]
Steve Grasso
Steve Tesla. Many investors are buying this one versus Space X, believe it or not, thinking it's a better valuation.
- [45:13]
Melissa Lee
Dan?
- [45:14]
Dan Nathan
Yeah, dram. So tomorrow morning we have Samsung reporting overnight and then we have the SK Hynix printing on Friday morning. I think you sell rallies in the dram. That is the ETF that tracks the space guy.
- [45:26]
Guy Adami
Brian Kelly came to visit us tonight, hopefully to get him back.
- [45:29]
Steve Grasso
We don't know Brian Kelly.
- [45:31]
Guy Adami
GDX Carter Braxton Wirth Trade known as
- [45:33]
Melissa Lee
Bitcoin Baller Tim Our thoughts are with you. Mad Money starts right now.
- [45:39]
Contessa Brewer
All opinions expressed by the Fast Money participants are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of CNBC or its parent company or affiliates and may have been previously disseminated by them on television, radio, Internet or another medium. You should not treat any opinion expressed on this podcast as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of an opinion. Such opinions are based upon information the Fast Money participants consider reliable, but neither CNBC nor its affiliates and or subsidiaries warrant its completeness or accuracy and it should not be relied upon as such. To view the full Fast Money disclaimer, please visit cnbc.com fastmoneydisclaimer Thursday, July 16
- [46:13]
Steve Grasso
CNBC Sport and Boardroom Join Fanatics Fest for Game Plan groundbreaking ideas shaping the future of sports and entertainment. Request your invite@cnbcevents.com gameplan.