Apple’s Record High… And Netflix Results On Deck 10/20/25

0:01Live from the NASDAQ market site right here in the heart of New York City's Times Square. This is Fast Money on your show tonight. Call it the other. Big Apple. Apple popping, closing back on them, being worth$4 trillion. But why? We've seen stranger things. Netflix also popping ahead of earnings. Industry vet Tom Rogers giving you his take on what Netflix is doing right, right now. Plus, all the details on one big regional bank's earnings. Gold keeps getting its groove on. And investors saying, A big thank you, Japan's Nikkei Powers, to more record highs. Hi, everybody. I am Brian, in for Melissa, coming to you live from Studio B at the NASDAQ.

0:46On your desk tonight, Tim Seymour, Dan Nathan, Guy Adami, and Mike Coe. Good to see you all, everybody. All right. There is a ton to do on this Monday. But let's start with Apple. Soaring, setting a new all-time high today. iPhone 17 demand proving stronger than some thought. And Wall Street responding. Loop Capital upgrading the stock, saying a long-awaited upgrade cycle looks like it's finally coming to fruition. And that is not all. Evercore ISI also adding Apple to its tactical outperform list. Apple valued again at nearly$4 trillion. For more on the story, let's bring in Steve Kovac to figure out exactly what the fundamental strength may be coming from.

1:33Steve. Yeah, Brian, and that all-time high at the close today, that is the first time Apple hit an all-time high since the day after Christmas last year. So look, the surge of optimism from analysts in the press today, you mentioned some of them. Evercore adding Apple to that tactical outperform list. Luke Capital saying the iPhone 17, quote, blows past all expectations. Financial Times headline, best iPhone cycle since COVID. And Bloomberg saying the iPhone 17 is outselling the 16 by double-digit percentage points in China, the second most important market outside the United States, and driving all that action.

2:09Well, let's talk about that base model, the entry-level iPhone 17. That is a hot item out there in China, in part because the government is subsidizing it and basically giving customers a discount. On top of that, last week, the iPhone Air went on sale after a delay of a few weeks. That is already selling out and showing that one is very popular in China. And then overall, you have the lead times for orders generally longer than they were a year ago, showing demand is higher. Now, we're getting earnings from Apple in 10 days from today. Evercore saying the guidance for the December quarter could surprise to the upside because of all this momentum behind the new iPhones.

2:47And overall, the picture that we're seeing here, Brian, is new hardware and designs are much better features and more enticing to drive demand than AI and software like we saw last year. That was a big miss for Apple in the iPhone 16 cycle, Brian. Yeah, it's really been a strong cycle so far. A lot of positive commentary coming from the street. Steve Kovach, thank you very much. All right, Guy Adami. I mean, Apple, we were talking on this program a couple months ago. Apple's having a tough year. Why isn't it kind of riding with the other Mag 7 and Big Tech? Boom. New record high for Apple. A couple things.

3:20Welcome. Thank you. Did you read? Was that in the prompter, that thank you that you read, or did you just add a little bit of that? I wrote that. You wrote it yourself? Yeah. On the fly. On the fly. Yeah. Welcome to Japanese. Mr. Roboto. I used to work for Mitsubishi Bank. Mr. Roboto. I believe so. Number three, Tim Seymour's been all over this now for quite some time. You know, he has pointed out that there are a number of reasons to dislike Apple, but there are more reasons to like it, and that a lot of what's happening now was not priced in. He's spot on. Now, the problem I've had incorrectly is valuation, and it's still a valuation problem at close to 33 times next year's numbers.

3:55But the iPhone sales in China surprised people clearly. I think year over year up by 14 percent, which is a good thing. Earnings are coming up, obviously, but you have to sort of wrap your head around valuation. I think Lou put a$350 price target on the tape that we're having that's not inconceivable to see, but you're paying up here, in my opinion. It's interesting because the thank you for the kind words, Guy. But, you know, I mean, look, it's not as if I've been screaming the bull. My view has been glass half full because I do think if you told me that Apple, given the three year run we've had, the three year bull market that we've had since October of 22, that Apple's flat to the S &P held serve in an environment where they've had nothing.

4:35They've had no AI. They've had no innovation. I'd say this is a great place to be for the stock. That's my bull thesis. And I think, you know, the fact that they also announced their M5 chip on Friday, which certainly helps in some of their products. It's four times the processing power, gets them in an AI space. The fact that Steve pointed out hardware really can be something that's still a driver, even if it doesn't change that much. I think if Tim... He's giving me the stiff arm. Do you see that? No, no, if Tim... Hold on, I want to back up. He said something important, as you always do. If Tim Cook was sitting here right now, and by the way, he's welcoming me, Tyler.

5:05No, he's a big fan of the show. He would push back on your lack of innovation comment because he would say M5 chip, thinner, better camera, better battery life. That's how he would push back. And I wonder, are consumers pushing back with this increased upgrade cycle? Well, push back as in saying push back on lack of innovation? The bears are wrong. It's clear. And it's at least clear or there's some type of a snag in the production in essentially the product manufacturing cycle, which I don't think is what it is. I believe Apple is which is flat on the ear. And at this point, also, people are looking for rotation.

5:42Some of this to me is part of everyone's going tactical today. I'll go tactical on this one, too, even though I would be fundamentally a long term owner of Apple and have been. I do think you have a case where people are under position in Apple, you know, an Amazon, which is down small near an Apple, which is flat on the air. Investors are looking for these stories. Well, it's interesting in a market like this, you're starting to look for stuff that might have the opportunity to break out, that might have the opportunity to play catch up. Tim just said this, that versus the S &P 500 has been flat for the last three years or so.

6:08I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that both of what these guys have said, it wasn't a growth story, but it was trading at a growth multiple. You know, it wasn't an innovator in AI. And a lot of those companies that had been were getting a multiple for that. So now you get to a point where you see some hardware cycle. Finally, you talk about, I think Kovac just said this, the fastest upgrade cycle since COVID. Well, a lot of these phones are on that third, fourth year. Sooner or later, you just have to upgrade. But the more important piece to me is that China growth. Right. If you think that we're coming out of what's going to be a contentious, contentious period with China, we're going to have a kick the can down the road situation with our trade.

6:47And you see the Chinese stimulating or subsidizing iPhones. That's certainly saying something to me. So, you know, at the end of the day, if Apple can kind of bridge this gap between they get this Siri, this new setup as it relates to Apple intelligence, then they are well set up, you know what I mean, to kind of take market share. And the whole point about the multiple, if you can continue pushing that hardware out, which doesn't have the multiple, but you get Apple intelligence, and then you start seeing services growth on top of that, that's how the story, I think, really starts to work in 2026.

7:17Last thing, looking at my fact set, of the top 10 X Tesla in the mega cap, this is the only one that has about 60 % of the analysts rate the stock a buy. Everyone else has about 85, 90, 95. So sentiment is not great on the street right now relative to this name. $253, I think, median price. Talking to analysts are kind of all over the board. Mike Coe, you look at stocks, but you also look at options. You kind of look at the idea of this market structure. Stocks tend to go up because there's more buying pressure than selling pressure. A lot of good fundamental reasons why Apple rising right now.

7:50But what are you seeing on the structure side? Anything? Are you surprised by Apple's strength? Well, I'm kind of with Tim on this and Dan too, in the sense that there was this lag and now there is a perception that the iPhone 17 actually has some meaningful improvements, gives people a reason for that upgrade. And you referenced that camera, it's not just the camera, it's the software inside that also makes a big difference for people who use it for photography and more importantly for videography. They've got ProRes RAW in there now, which is sort of important for anybody who uses this for video.

8:26The valuation question, I think it still remains 32.5 times forward. So it's trading at a premium to the S &P with S &P-like levels of top and bottom line growth. But really, I think the important thing to think about is whether or not they're going to start grabbing some market share. And that's what Dan was talking about with China. And the good news is for people who are interested in options, they're actually pretty cheap right here. Right now, the options market's implying a move of about 3.9 % when they report on the 30th. And just looking ahead 30, 60 days, Crazy options, again, are cheap.

8:55So I think call spreads, if you want to sort of press along here, would be a way to do it if you're a little bit nervous about the valuation, which I remain. Yeah, and Tim, the one thing I would say is that, as I referenced the median price target of analysts, 253. I'm not a math whiz guy, Domi. Stock's at 262. We're$9 above that average analyst price target. Do you care about that? It usually means upgrades are coming. I mean, they're lagging, and that's what's been going on here at the street. Also, I mean, they're not the only ones. Jeffries had a note out. J.P. Morgan had a note out. Everybody had a note out talking about demand.

9:28It sounds like an analyst community that's looking for the next great one. No doubt. But again, mid single digits revenue growth, maybe high single digits earnings growth. The company trading now 33 times next year's numbers. You're paying up. Meantime, one of Citigroup's top strategists says he is not looking to be some kind of hero ahead of all the big tech earnings, which he says matter more than the Federal Reserve matters right now. Stuart Kaiser is the firm's head of U.S. equity trading strategy and joins us now on set. Good to see you again, Stuart. Thank you. Good to be here. Why are earnings more important than the Federal Reserve?

10:01It's a good question. If you asked me a month ago, going into the FOMC blind, would that be a smaller or bigger event than earnings? I would have said bigger. But, you know, the market seems pretty content right now that given the data that's coming in, the Fed's going to cut twice into the end of the year. Kind of takes that off the table a little bit in terms of the source of uncertainty. And, you know, to all of your point, I mean, valuation is very high. MAG 7 is holding an end. There's a relatively high bar going into these earnings, and I think the market is treating that as a big event.

10:26You also have to remember it's not just earnings, right? You have NVIDIA GTC. You have some tariff headlines coming up. You have the follow-through from the FOMC. So pretty much the back half of next week is just kind of a string of really important catalysts. How high is the bar for earnings? If we sit here and we say, oh, Netflix beat by X and NVIDIA beat by Y and whatever, is it going to have to be better than that? Are these numbers priced to perfection? I mean, I think you're getting pretty close to that, but I wouldn't say price to perfection. I think, you know, the market is setting a high number.

10:55The CapEx numbers are quite high, obviously, as well. But I don't think it's it doesn't feel as aggressive as it has been at other times during the past couple of years. I'm being honest with you. Stuart, I saw your notes on regional bank credit and help me understand, is the market sniffing something out? Because you said, you know, these issues have been out there at the same time. Most of us here on this desk have wanted to point out as this being idiosyncratic. No one wants to really say there's a credit issue in the room. Look, I think that that's really the trick right now is they do all seem idiosyncratic, but they all happened within about a 10-day period.

11:26And the market is trying to – I think the market is getting a little uncomfortable with the kind of concentration of those. To your point, I mean, hedging in high-yield credit has been one of the biggest hedging flows we've seen over the last three to six months. So macro folks have not been totally, you know, sort of ignorant to this potential risk. And I think that's, you know, decreased the impact. And then secondly, to your point, I think what happened over the weekend probably is people had time to go through these piece by piece. And I think the reaction you're seeing Monday suggests that the deeper dive work they did over the weekend suggested it is probably idiosyncratic.

11:56But look, nobody wants to be here six months from now kind of saying, man, how the heck did we miss those lines a few months back? I think it's idiosyncratic in terms of its impact on the market. I think it may be systemic, though, in the terms of everybody's probably doing it. So I know that's somewhat nuanced, but KRE is trading like there's a problem. Yeah, I mean, I think to your point, is this just, you know, evidence of broader, let's say, lighter underwriting standards and things of that nature? That's possible, but that's not really, to me, a credit event risk, right? That's something that's going to be a drag over an extended period of time.

12:28But you can't ignore it. I would say even folks that believe that, what they've said to us is I'd be much more concerned if this was consumer credit related as opposed to on the industrial side. So, yes, that is if you're extrapolating this out, is this sort of a bigger issue kind of across the lending spectrum? All right, let's talk about how to maybe make some money. Last question. You say you've got to go high-quality stocks, but also AI power generation companies. I love talking about energy. I love talking about electricity. But even I have to say and look at some of these companies and say, where's the earnings growth to that magnitude going to be?

13:01There's no doubt they have a great story to tell, but the market's really loving these companies. Yeah, I mean, we like PowerJet at the beginning of the year. Obviously, it got kicked in the face a little bit. That was a great call, by the way. Well, it was until the end of January when that deep-sea cat line came out. We kind of got hurt there. But look, we do believe that, you know, AI, yes, but also just bigger picture kind of grid issues in the U.S., you know, kind of make this a really attractive, you know, attractive part of the market tone. Also, if you look at a data center construction, the power part is a relatively small part of the total cost.

13:32And if you're a meta, a Google, and you view this as existential, that you need the power to get the chips to build the moat, then you're willing to kind of overpay a little bit up front for that power. And we do see some legs here in that trade still. Stuart Kaiser, really appreciate your views, and thanks for coming on set. Thank you. Stuart, thank you very much. Dan, got a comment on that? Yeah, I think the expectation part is a big one. And really, to me, the only thing that's going to move the needle here is in that top 10 names, right? If you think about Microsoft, you think about Meta, you think even about NVIDIA, none of them have confirmed the new highs in the S &P 500 over the last couple weeks or so.

14:04And Microsoft and Meta are about 10 % off them. So I'd say the expectations aren't actually that high for many of these names. And so it really would take a hiccup there. The other thing I'll just say about the broad market is, you know, you just mentioned the Fed. The Fed's going to be cutting into something right here where all of these companies, we talked about credit. I mean, they all want to take out lots of credit, OK, to build out these data centers. And that could really fuel another leg of this sort of rally. And so if we have, let's say, some resolution, Russia, Ukraine, let's say we have the shutdown, you know, reopen.

14:34Let's say we have the China trade thing come to pass. I mean, this is going to be an S &P that's up over 20 percent in the not so distant future. So the risks actually seem to be upside right here. I'm not telling you I'm bullish on the market right here, but that's the way it kind of appears to me. Well, I mean, I can just see this all playing out. It's nice when Dan gets – Well, I'm not joking. Dan took a happy pill. So, I mean, but I feel as if positioning actually is not as bullish. And there's notes out there from technical strategists that are pointing out actually positioning by the end of last week got kind of bearish.

15:06Sentiment can quickly reverse, in other words, from overbought to just not overbought, not necessarily oversold. So I kind of feel that that's where we sit. There's no question. Yes, there's 10 stocks that are really going to drive the earnings in aggregate, even though 85 percent or whatever of the S &P have beat so far. Earnings season has been fine. Resilience seems to be the word. I think it probably will be. You do wonder not to take anything away from this amazing show or this amazing network's coverage. But is any earnings going to matter except for maybe 10 stocks? Isn't that what I just said?

15:37Maybe if you listen to Tim. We called this a follow-up point to that comment. That was obnoxious. I am sorry, by the way. That was really – Dan's the happy one tonight. What's going on here? Brian emceed this charity event on Thursday night in Times Square. Did a great job. Nobody better than Brian Sullivan at that. See, now I love you again. Stranger things, they call it the upside down. All right. Meantime, can't stop, won't stop. Gold keeps going higher. Gold miners, too. With many miners rising again today, Guy, you've been highlighting gold miners for a long time, saying they haven't followed up with gold as much as they should have.

16:13They seem like they finally are now. Much like Apple, it's not just me. Tim's been on this for a while as well. And I will say this. I think historically people don't want to foray into the gold mining stocks because typically a move higher in the underlying metal is a blip, and they've been faked out so many times. This time, though, clearly something else is going on. And finally, the miners are participating. They've up huge. I think somebody just put$180 price target on Newmont Mining. It's not going to be a straight line from here. But you cannot run too far away from the mining stocks because this gold rally is still intact.

16:49Mike Coase is going to sound like a weird question, but it was brought up by Jones Trading in one of their must-read morning notes this morning. Is it possible there's a bubble in gold? a bubble in gold i mean i think it's expressing a lot of fear about debasement i think that's how we sort of take a look at both what's going on in equities and what's going on in gold you know i the other thing i would say though is that we when we're looking at the miners is that the spread usually what happens when you have increases in commodity prices like gold there are a lot of other uh sort of input costs for mining which are also rising but that's not going on here energy prices are actually going down which means that the margins for these miners are actually widening.

17:27And I would add one other thing, which is that this is sort of a wonky options thing. But generally speaking, when you deal with commodities, the upside out of the money call options, this is something I know you know very well, Brian, will typically trade at a premium actually to the at the money options. And this means you can take advantage of what we're calling skew here and potentially buy some call spreads. And I think miners is the place that you want to continue to make that play because relative to gold prices, they remain cheap. Yeah, miners two to one beta to gold over the last year after not doing that for a long time.

17:57On down days, we see that miners underperform by probably three to one. And I think you have to be aware of that, given where we've come from. I think the trade is more broadly into PGMs, whether it's platinum, whether it's platinum, they've run as much. But I think they have more room to go in terms of this asset class trade that seems to be going on for gold. And I believe copper. I believe copper is underappreciated in terms of the supply demand dynamics, certainly the supply side, but the demand that we now call, you know, getting the grid going in the West, even if China is less of a buyer.

18:27And I just think that some of these names in the mining space, whether you are Freeport, who has gold exposure, is mostly a copper play. I think they're the next ones in line. They're not going to have a gold miners type move if you don't get that kind of a move in copper. But I think you follow this trade out into some industrial metals. All right. Good stuff there, guys. We're going to change gears on deck after the break. More details on that big Amazon web outage that hit earlier, what we know and what we still don't. But before that, what the move in one big regional bank may be telling us about the markets, both stock and credit markets.

19:10All right, welcome back. Zion's Bancorp shares popping right now. The regional bank reporting its earnings and apparently easing some concerns about credit quality on its balance sheet. The conference call starts at about 10 minutes. So that means we've got CNBC's Hugh Sun for a few minutes ahead of that as well. The stock's up 3.3 percent. Hugh, how did sort of the raw numbers come in for Zions? Hey, Brian. So the numbers came in fine, even when including that$50 million loss tied to that alleged fraud that rocked the market last week. EPS was$1.48 per share, though it's a little unclear how that compares to the$1.41 estimate.

19:43Revenue of$861 million beat expectations for$843.1 million. Metrics include deposits, interest income also coming in at or above expectations. Net charge-offs were, however, worse than expected at$56 million, although that's almost entirely because of that loss that was disclosed last week tied to the Cantor Group. You could say there's been a bit of a relief that there wasn't anything new disclosed in terms of bad loans, but analysts will still want to hear much more from management about their activities in the NDFI market. That's loans they made to non-depository financial institutions. Just how big is this book of loans?

20:17What are the main categories, and are they comfortable with the underwriting in them? We'll be listening to the call starting in a few minutes. All right, so NDFI. We learn any day, Guy Adami, you can learn something new. Here's a good day. NDFI, non-depository financial institutions. Hugh, what does that mean? Why are we watching that? Yeah, and this is the whole universe of loans made to mortgage companies, subprime auto, private equity, insurance companies that grew after the 2008 financial crisis. So when they said that, hey, you banks, you can't make these loans anymore. Banks decided to actually, you know, make lend to NDFIs, which are the firms that popped up in that absence.

20:57So it's an ecosystem of, you know, non-bank lenders of which, you know, is pretty large. It's actually the largest category of loans, loan growth in the last 12 or 13 years, Brian. Hugh Sun, we'll let you get on that call. Hugh, thank you very much. Tim Seymour, what are you watching? Well, I think that the credit outlook and disclosure was stable, at least relative to what they'd given prior. And that's that's what you wanted to hear. And I do think that the outlook over 26, one of the other things we've heard is that there actually is a slightly improved growth outlook, especially on the lending side.

21:29Now, maybe in a world where we're concerned about credit on the regional industrial basis, you'd like to see them reel it in a little bit. There's nothing that we're hearing here that is validating a call that there is a runaway credit problem. I agree with that. But what are you willing to pay above tangible books? So I'll round up for them. Thirty nine dollars. So at current prices, the stocks trade in one point three times tangible book. Is it worth one and a half times that gets you to a sixty dollar stock? I mean, are we rewriting these banks or are we saying, you know what, they're starting to get a little expensive?

21:59Jamie Dimon pointed out that his bank at three times tangible book was expensive a week or so ago. Do we? I mean, we're watching. Zion's a big company, okay? But it's not J.P. Morgan. It's not Goldman Sachs, okay? This is a big regional bank. Do you, Dan, or do you, do you guys worry that there are, what was the term of the week last week, cockroaches under the balance sheet hood here? I think you have to worry. That's why I asked the question to Stuart. Don't Be a Hero, Kaiser, earlier if it was systemic in terms of everybody doing it. And I think, yeah, I guarantee you there's CFOs all over the country looking at what's on the balance sheet.