AI Ripple Rally Boosts Copper Miners… And The Fed’s Next Move As Rally Rolls On 10/8/25

0:01Live from the NASDAQ market site right here in the heart of New York City's Times Square this is fast money here's what's on tap a AI ripple effects. Demand from data centers been sending copper prices soaring. And the miners are the big beneficiaries that trade today. How much higher can these names run? Gold prices hitting their 44th record of the year. But the chart master says glowing gains could be about to go dull. All that plus Eli Lilly gaining ground, hitting more than five months highs. We are getting ready to kick off earnings season with two big names reporting tomorrow and Zeta Global CEO David Steinberg will join us straight from his company's investor day.

0:42The big trends he is seeing now he is looking to shake up the ad business using AI. Hi, everybody. I am Brian Sullivan. And once again, for Melissa Lee, coming to you live from Studio B at the Nasdaq Market Site on your desk tonight, Steve Grasso, Karen Feinemann, Bono and Eisen, and Guy Adami. Everybody, welcome. Hello, Brian. Hello, Brian. All right, let's start now with the markets and your money. The NASDAQ and S &P, you guessed it, closing at new record highs today. If you are keeping score, and your money certainly is, the NASDAQ, now up nearly 20 % this year. It's been a heck of a run. And we're going to have more on the macro in moments.

1:22But let us start with a slightly different, less talked-about groove that's maybe getting an AI-adjacent lift. And that guy, Dami, is copper. Copper prices rising again. Demand from data centers and electricity pushing the need for copper wiring. All that helping the miners, you know, the ones that take this stuff out of the ground. Case in point, Freeport-McMoran jumping more than 5%. Southern Copper closing also at a record. And take a listen to what BHP CEO Mike Henry had to say about future growth. All of these data centers are very copper intensive. And so on the demand side of the equation, you've got the traditional drivers of growth, population growth, overall growth in the economy.

2:10But you add to that the energy transition data centers and we're seeing a compounding of copper demand growth. So we're expecting demand to grow by up to 70 percent by 2050. So, Guy Dami, can, will the AI trade continue to push demand for the copper miners? Well, it's not just AI and copper. But, yeah, Steve talked about this a couple weeks ago. Tim has been talking about it for a while. Freeport should actually be a lot higher. I think copper prices are up. What's today? October what? Eighth. 12 % already this month, I think, up 27 % for the year, back above$5 a pound. Yeah, copper is going higher.

2:45Now, we can talk about whether it's inflationary or not. It's probably the most important commodity, not named crude oil, but things are moving up. Now, how that moves the needle in terms of what the Fed's doing and inflation is anybody's guess. But I'll tell you, names like Freeport, which is still too cheap in southern copper, I think are going higher. The weird thing, Steve, is I'm trying to figure out what changed here because the AI demand story is not new. The electricity demand story is not new. And it's like the market suddenly kind of woke up and realized that demand for copper was going to go up.

3:15Where's the market been? Right. So you had tariffs. You had that headline back in August 1st. not the original tariff, Dave, the one with copper, the one with more commodities. But think about this. Data centers. Originally a data center. What do you think a data center for AI uses in copper more than originally a data center uses? Three to ten times the amount of copper. Wow. So I think people thought it was a copper play. They didn't realize to what magnitude a copper play is. Plus that mine with FCX, that's 3 % of the supply globally. Just the one mine. So you have demand going through the roof.

3:55You have supply going to the basement. Those two things are a recipe for higher prices. It can go on longer than people think because it's taken a while to get the trade going. Karen, are you a fan of Freeport, MacBram, BHP, or others? Well, the Freeport thing is sort of interesting. 3 % is offline. It is their 3%, which obviously you know. But so I understand, though, the supply dynamic is shrinking and, of course, prices. I'm wondering, Steve, you might have an answer to this. We've seen a bunch of these investments by the government in, you know, whether it's magnets, MP or lithium. Why would Freeport be a potential target for the U.S.

4:36government? Yeah, and that's why I've held on to my position, because I think eventually there is going to be some sort of a government stake within it, because it is 70 to 75 percent of free ports revenue is from copper. 30, 25, 25 to 30 percent is from gold. So you get both the things that are that are very strong. I think the government is going to look at them as a strategic stake. That's I know nothing. That's what I think. That's why I'm staying in there. But it's on trend. And I think Freeport gets a lot of the attention right now. But there are other players in the space for sure. BHP, Rio to boot.

5:13I think BHP, you're talking about kind of like the revenue segmentation. If you look at EBITDA, BHP, it's like 45 % of the EBITDA is driven from copper. And if you take Rio, if you want to kind of play the catch-up trade, which we're starting to see, that's really why this rally has sustained and had legs, because there has been this catch-up type of mechanism there. So if you want to play, you know, it's a higher beta play, a riskier play. but it's also a restructuring and post-litigation play. Rio actually looks pretty interesting there. I think it's kind of flying under the radar. It's not getting the attention.

5:42Clearly, FCX is probably like your highest leverage play to copper, and clearly that's going to drive the headline risk. But if you're looking for another way to play it, I would look at those other two. Well, I want to go back. Grass, I loved your hot take about the potential. And you're not saying there will be. We're having fun here. But the idea that the copper from Freeport-McMoran's mines are strategically important. It's a national security issue. like we saw the equity stake in Intel, like we've heard about from some other metals, some, by the way, incorrectly. I want to point that out because Southern Copper, a lot of people don't realize this, it's a Phoenix, Arizona company, but it's ostensibly a Peruvian company.

6:16It's in Peru. They've got a mine in Mexico as well. The technical headquarters are in Arizona. My point is you've got foreign government risk with some of the big competitors to FCX. Yeah, so that leads you to believe that eventually they would. I think Howard Lutkin, that's his name, right? Lutnik. That's why I checked it, because it felt wrong when it came out of my mouth. So, Barry, this is what I'm saying. So I think when you look at this, he said it's on brand. Bonowitz said it's on brand. I think really the stars do align for a government stake. I would think that Freeport would be the one, to your point, that they would do it in.

6:57No idea what the government's going to do. I mean, they're picking winners and losers all over the place. You mentioned Southern Copper. You're right to mention the fact that, although domiciled here, it's really not a U.S. company. But you want to see the difference? Pull up a longer-term SCCO chart and look at it against what Freeport has done. I mean, this has been lower left, upper right, and it's made itself almost a$110 billion company, seemingly over the last couple weeks. So the copper story is not going away anytime soon. Again, we've pointed out the national security risks around copper, having these industrial metals.

7:27And a lot of people listen, it's a land grab for a lot of different things. The Chinese have been way ahead on this one. We're starting to catch up with these stocks to go higher. But I love your SCCO for the uninitiated is Southern Copper. And to your point, a five year chart, 32 to 100. Yes, sir. And 32. But a company that's super quiet. I've reached out to him having her. By the way, Southern Copper, you're out there. Come on, CBC. Anytime. We'll talk about it. Kind of a quiet company. All it's done is print money. And I think, listen, valuation might be getting a little stretched here, but I think what the market is saying, you know what, valuation be damned, especially in names like this.

8:03I mean, look, finally, you have participation in the gold miners for the first time in a very long time. And I think in terms of these copper stocks, and we mentioned three of them, I don't think this is just the beginning, but I think we're definitely in the early innings of what I think is going to be a continued move higher. All right, let's stay on the metal. Let's stay on the digging stuff out of the ground for money theme. and turned to gold. Gold settling at a record the 44th time this year. Ate the hardware guy. Now solidly above the 4 ,000 level. The chart master, Carter Worth, calling for a breakout for gold back in July.

8:38Great call. Except now he says this precious metal might be a little bit too precious. Carter Worth of Worth Charting joining us now. It was a great call, Carter. Congrats to you. Anybody who listened to you, now what do you see? Well, for starters, very kind. I got duds around the world, but so far, so good. Good call, but now what, right? You're only as good as your last trade. Gold, this is the setup, right? Gold, converging trend lines worked into that symmetrical triangle. And then, of course, if you look at the next chart, we have this massive breakout since July. So the pattern is resolved.

9:14Now, there's something known as a measured move. And while it doesn't have to be as precise as this, it's a good price objective for when a pattern has concluded or taken place. So what that is, let's look at the third chart here, is you take the width of the range from the low and high point of that triangle and you project that higher. And the width of that range is about$550 an ounce. and that gets us to final chart almost exactly where we are today. So today's recommendation to clients was simply, hey, book some profits, take some off. And I would point out, of course, Brian, as you know, it's on the cover of every magazine, literally, the so-called magazine indicator, every article from the Wall Street Journal to New York Times, it goes on.

10:06It is as love now as it was abhorred or hated two, three years ago. Is this really, Carter, you think like the debasement of the dollar type trade, or is there something else going on here? Well, you know, there are gold bugs that make a living believing in gold or don't make a living. And some believe gold goes higher because of inflation, some deflation. But the debasement story has always been there 20, 30, 40 years. And so while it's a new moniker, it's not a new moniker. It's an old moniker, debasement of currency, fiat currency, and so forth. I'm not really in the why business, right? I'm in the what business, as you know.

10:45And what I see is just too steep, uncorrected, unsustainable. Guy, you are in the why business. In fact, there's a why in your name. Yes, there is. There's no why in Brian, though. You could name it. Those are incorrect. Those were misspelled Brians. Well, no, you know what? That's unfortunate because there are many Bryans with a Y that are watching right now. Hello, Brian, with a Y. I'll say this. It's not just retail that's driving this. It's central banks, and it's been going on for the last now four and a half years, almost five. China at the head of the class, but they're buying record amounts seemingly every year.

11:19Why? Well, it's the debasement trade. The dollar's having its worst year in 50 years. That's part of it. But I also think they're hedging the inevitable, the things that they created. They're sort of hedging against their ineptitude. So I think Carter's probably right. Gold RSI and monthly levels above 90 for the first time in history, which means it's ridiculously overbought. Gold will sell off, though, on the back of a market sell-off. We've seen it before. So if we were to see a dramatic sell-off in the equity market, gold will not be spared. Yeah, and I think that's the concern because I think gold is actually being used as a hedge to kind of give people a bit of safety as this market continues to expand.

11:56We continue to see PE expansion. We continue to see this rally continue with legs. And so I get it. Like, I like the trade right now out of gold into more industrial metals because, one, you have the supply demand shocks. But two, you actually have this industrial use. And if this data center AI theme is a continue, then you really have a use case there. I wouldn't get too far away from gold, though, and I would look at some of the miners because I do think there are still looming macroeconomic risk. And I do think that is the safest way to play that. I mean, the alternative that you might look at is like a Bitcoin.

12:29But I think historically and in terms of the allocations that one is able to make, depending on what your mandate is, you know, you're going to probably have some gold allocation within that. Because I'm old enough to remember last night where Karen Feinerman said, gold's fine, but I would much rather own Bitcoin. Right. I mean, it's all the macro story part of the same, right? Debasement of the currency and inflation that's going to go along with our deficits, all kinds of things. But also the digital gold aspect of it. Right. The new generation of investors that this is not their father's gold.

13:02This is digital gold. And then on top of that, layer in this administration. We've never seen an administration so crypto friendly. And so it's sort of opened the floodgates of institutional investors and others. And so I'm in Bitcoin, not gold. You have Bitcoin. You can't even compare the performance in Bitcoin to gold. Bitcoin eclipses gold's performance. And now the same people that have been buying gold will wind up buying cryptocurrencies. But if you go back from 1914 to now, the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar is down 97%. Are we going to print more money or less money going forward?

13:39You could buy the median priced house with a bar of gold in the early 1970s. and right now you can buy a median-priced house with a bar of gold, the value of gold hasn't changed. It's gone up, but it hasn't been debased like the U.S. dollar has. That's correct. And when you look at all the reasons that guy said why central banks are going to diversify away, geopolitical, printing money, and if rates are coming down, the cost of carry on gold is actually less than it was. So I agree with Carter. Maybe it takes some profits off the table, But I think ultimately gold goes back to that number or to the number$5 ,000.

14:14$5 ,000. I like it. Steve Grasso, thank you. All right. Carter Worth, thank you very much. Meantime, another beneficiary of the AI infrastructure boom, power companies. They moved higher. Qantas Services, they make power lines. Constellation, they make power. Vistra, GE Vranova, NRG. Steve Grasso, some of today's big winners. They're all kind of different to my point, but the world is waking up to what I know somebody's been talking about this for a few years. This demand for power trade isn't going away anytime soon. I agree. And you could throw a dart at that board and any one of them are going to be a recipient of more revenues.

14:57So we need more copper. We need more power. Everything that we're doing here and with crypto and with AI is going to need more power. All those companies should, in theory, trade higher. But I will warn people, not that it's my job to warn anybody, but I'm going to warn them through you. PSA, public service announcement. That's it. It's one to grow on, as they would say at NBC. Exactly. All those companies put the board back up. They're not created the same. Some of them have contracted energy out to utilities. That's regulated, so you can't raise prices too much. It's a board. Some of them you could sell to the highest bidder.

15:31That's where all this alpha sort of is coming from. But at some point, I think, Guy, there will be a breaking point where areas, people, even data centers might say there is a limit to what we can pay for power. We're not there. I mean, we're not there yet. I mean, you've brought up a number of times how inflationary this is and how energy costs are just going to go up. Well, utility costs are going to go up across the board in this country for people. And that's happening right before our eyes. You're right. Your point is well taken in terms of not all these companies are equal. Tim Seymour talks about it.

16:03Look at Constellation Energy, CEG. Look at the move that it's had today and the recent move. I mean, these companies are levered to exactly what you're talking about. And despite the fact that they seem rich, I think a CEG you can still own here as well. CEG, Constellation Energy. Is that a preview of your final pick? No, we don't do that here, Brian, because if I were to say that now, what good is that? And people might say, you know what, I've got to watch the rest of the show for. And he might not remember, quite frankly. At my age. It's 45 minutes away. Remember what? Huh? Exactly. Coming up, all the headlines from CNBC's big interview with NVIDIA CEO Jensen Wong.

16:37Right here in this building, what he had to say about AI demand and what he was surprised by. And AMD's recent big deal with OpenAI. Plus, packing on the pounds. Why Wall Street sees gains ad for Eli Lilly and how the weight loss drug maker can tip the scales. Don't go anywhere. Fast Money Back in 2.

17:04NVIDIA CEO Jensen Wong joining the Squawk Box crew this morning, weighing in on all things AI, including surging demand, and why he was surprised a bit by AMD's recent deal with OpenAI. Christina Partsenevel is joining us now with more on what we learned. Christina. Well, we know this is the most valuable company in the world, becoming the AI industry's preferred lender. The company plans to invest$2 billion in Elon Musk's XAI as part of a$20 billion funding round. $12.5 billion will be raised as debt through a special-purpose vehicle. That's important. That buys NVIDIA processors, this is according to Bloomberg, which XAI then rents out for another five years.

17:42NVIDIA's CEO told CNBC about the importance of investing in the AI ecosystem. Listen in. The only regret I have about XAI, we're an investor already. The only regret I have is I didn't give him more money. We've made some really terrific investments, and largely my only regret is that we didn't invest more. And that confidence, you can see, is backed by some serious capital between a$100 billion commitment to open AI, a$6.3 billion cloud service purchase from CoreWeave, where it already holds a 7 % stake, and venture bets on over 100, at least, AI startups. NVIDIA has amassed over$100 billion in exposure across the entire AI ecosystem.

18:18But there is somewhat of a pattern we talked about on CNBC. In the core deal alone, NVIDIA plays the role of supplier of chips, equity investor, financier, and customer. With XAI, NVIDIA is again both investor and supplier. Although NVIDIA spokespersons, and they've said this in the past, have said that the companies they invest in are not required to buy NVIDIA chips. The question is no longer whether NVIDIA dominates AI hardware. It's whether the company is using its huge cash hoard to prop up demand for its own products, especially in the near term. Is it? It's a question I would leave for our investors.

18:52She's a journalist. She's not going to answer that question. I was asking you. I was just looking at her. No, you looked right at her. Yeah, but it doesn't matter. Yeah, but I was talking to you, just looking at her. Of course, I mean, of course that's part of the game. I mean, listen, there's nothing illegal what they're doing. I want to be crystal clear. No, it's vendor financing, whatever you want to call it. I mean, vendor financing has been around a long time. But if you go to Twitter, to the extent that anybody looks at it anymore, there's a lot of these Venn diagrams or whatever you want to call it out there showing the circular nature of exactly what Christina just described.

19:20So it works, I guess, until it sort of doesn't work. And there are a lot of other people now out there talking about the return on invested capital one needs to get on the amount of money being spent on this CapEx stuff. And it's an astronomical number. Now, everybody's geeked up because the CapEx is there, and I get it. But if you were to see a slowdown, which is inevitable, CapEx will get cut. And this whole sort of built this system that's been built on each other starts to sort of fade away, I think. And what phase do they do? So if it's not illegal, which it's not, what phase does this normally happen in business?

19:54It's usually when you're a little over your skis and extended. And if you think about it, the the chips business was always a commodity based business. It was always a boom bust business. So when do we get the bust? So I think AI extended that. But it seems to me that NVIDIA is sort of extending their own lifespan. Here's the bottom line. Is that, Christina, tell me right or wrong. Open AI makes not a lot of money. About$12 billion, we think. Annual reoccurring revenue. Revenue. That's not even just revenue. They lose tens of billions. I mean, the company is losing billions of dollars every week, every month, whatever it might be.

20:31$11 billion is what the information was saying for just this year. For just this year. So the company loses huge money because they're building out. But NVIDIA, to your point there, the banker, they have the money. Do we know at which point OpenAI might start to make some of that money back? If we knew that, then we could just price out this entire market and determine, to Guy's point, when this bust will come or, you know, just keep riding high. Isn't that the whole point of the show? The whole point, too, is we have to reiterate, it takes several, it takes a while to build out this AI infrastructure, especially here in the United States.

21:05If we talk about immigration and how that has changed the game when we're talking about workers, you bring up power all the time. So I think that the question for a lot of these stocks is how long is every investor's patience? Because, yes, we're going to see a lot of buying in this next earnings cycle. Why? Because most of these deals with AMD are coming out in the second half of 2026, the opening. So that's going to be helping the next year or the next four to five quarters. But then what happens after that? Well, the pace, Bono, and I don't know, you may might know. Is the pace sustainable?

21:37Because as we talked about a little bit last night, how much of this is 10 years of earnings and investment being pulled forward to now? Like right now, we're buying 10 years, 20 years of earnings and revenue. 20 scenes. Maybe none. 20 scenes on the long end. I mean, the truth of the matter is like nobody knows. Otherwise, it would just be like a math problem. Right. You would have a close in form. You'd have a solution and you could go on about your business. What I will say is what gives me some confidence is that if you look back to ninety nine, two thousand, we were talking about this type of investment.

22:16Well, not this type of investment, but substantial investment being made in pre revenue companies. And I would argue that NVIDIA would be highly criticized if they stood pat and did nothing. They're in a position where they can widen out their customer base. How many times have we said, look at the customer concentration. It's only the hyperscalers. And we know that they're going to come out and compete. Now they're expanding that target-adjustable market. They're increasing that target-adjustable market. So for me, it makes sense. If you're in a position where you can do it and you're kind of taking a really – you're helping these companies, I would argue, particularly in the leasing, because now they don't have the capex spend.

22:52They don't have the depreciation. They're able to kind of operate a much more cost-efficient method. It's like General Motors helping car companies build roads or build it right in a way. You can't sell a car if there's no roads, so you help the road builders. Are you saying the risk is being pushed off to the neoclouds? They're renting out the GPUs. NVIDIA doesn't have to do it. They're relying on others to do so. And the same thing with Microsoft and Nebius. I think if you have a five - or ten-year lease, clearly you have that situation locked in. and the person who holds that obsolescence risk is the leasy.

23:21So then you are concerned about neoclouds then? More so than NVIDIA, for sure. Okay. Sounds like we have a discussion built for another night. Remember the movie when Paul Newman was building the road? That's a great cool hand Luke. Remember that scene? That is. Christina Parsnevelis. I mean, you don't even care. Thank you very much. You could have went neocloud or Paul Newman. We're bringing in the neoclouds into the show. Christina, thank you very much. You always have obscure references. I don't know. Cool hand Luke. Sorry, I know our viewers are going to be like, how dare she say that? It's actually one of the 10 or 20 most popular movies ever made.