Big Tech Sells Off.. And Viking Therapeutics Plunges On Weight Loss Pill Data 8/19/25

0:02Live from the Nasdaq Market site in the heart of New York City's Times Square. This is Fast money. Here's what's on tap tonight. A high flyer flop from big tech to the AI leaders to crypto, some of the year's biggest outperformers coming back down to earth today. What the sell-off tells us about how to play the moves and a strong foundation. Builders bucking the broad market fade as housing starts surge and mortgage rates pullback. Is the group in for more good times ahead? We'll debate it. Plus, heavy losses for Viking therapeutics as its weight loss pill disappoints inside a big investment into Intel and a broadcaster buyout.

0:37So many things to talk about. Let's dive into Nexstar's acquisition of Tegna later on. But first, I am Courtney Reagan, and this evening for Melissa Lee coming to you live from Studio B at the NASDAQ. On the desk tonight, we have Tim Seymour, Karen Beinerman, Dan Nathan, and Guy Adami. Let's start off with big tech's sell-off. Every member of the so-called Magnificent Seven down today, not so magnificent, dragging the Nasdaq lower by a percent and a half. NVIDIA, the biggest loser, seeing its worst day since April on reports, it's building a chip even more powerful than the H20 for the Chinese market.

1:10Other chip makers like Marvell, AMD, Taiwan Semi and Broadcom also feeling the heat. And it wasn't just mega caps and chips. Anything tied to the AI trade was also under pressure, including Palantir and G.E. Vernova, the two best performing stocks in the S &P year to date. Also getting hit, crypto, then everything related to it, Bitcoin, Ethereum, both sinking from records. Tom Lee's BitMine down nearly 10 % for its fifth straight day of losses and strategy at its worst level since April. So what does today's action tell you about the durability of the momentum and tech trade? I mean, Tim, it seems like maybe just a rotation today was not terribly heavy on the headlines, other than what we told you a little bit there about NVIDIA.

1:53What do you make of the tech sell-off? Well, the durability of it outside of a couple real spikes in volatility moments over the last year has been that it's not only durable, but it's extremely durable. And I think it will continue to be the place where you're going to get the most growth. Today's trade, though, did feel a little bit like rotation. It did feel a little bit like high flowers were under the most pressure. It did feel like high multiple tech. I have screens that I've actually go through that are high multiple tech companies. A lot of them were down 5 % to 7%. And then you look at the staples, you look at the health care, you look at the home builders.

2:28We're going to talk about places that should be somewhat defensive. Interesting, though, some of the interest rate sensitivity that home builders seemingly have, they definitely have, except for the fact that today was also a day, and I think this has something to do with the risk off, that global bond yields closed again near the highs, if not at the highs. You saw JGB yields. You saw Gilt yields. You saw Bund yields. And while U.S. Treasury yields aren't challenging their highs, Everybody else is. And these are places where they've cut rates. And yet the long end of the curve is going higher.

2:56I think the market has some focus on that, although that's not most investors. I just think we've had an incredible run. And it does make some sense. We're in a very quiet time of the year. Frankly, if you're not on vacation this week, you might be next week if you're lucky. And that's what I think has to do with some of these outsized moves. Interesting. Karen, you're nodding along. You agree? Yes, I agree. Just about everything Tim said. I think that the run has been so extraordinary, right? If you step back a little and just squint at these charts, they're still really, you know, up and to the right.

3:28And I think so there was no particular news that really made anything move. And it's interesting. They all sort of moved together. And you talked about the crypto ones. I mean, even though if you look at something like bullish, you know, that I think did open it. I don't know, 100 percent higher than here, maybe. Right. So that froth seems to be off of a lot of things. And there's still froth to grow, right? But I am long MAG7 stuff. I'm staying long MAG7 stuff. I do still believe in the promise and the growth of AI. I don't think the stocks will move in a linear fashion with the underlying, right?

4:03And I do think that they will peak before the demand peaks. But I don't think that we're there yet. Dan, what about Palantir being in correction? Well, so what's interesting about Palantir, when you're trying to find some reasons why these stocks might have sold off, Citron Research, which is a short seller, they put a note out today saying it's maybe worth 40 bucks. And so when you think about it right here, it was down nine and a half percent. I mean, that's a huge move. And granted, I don't think that report has that much weight other than the fact that sometimes people just need to hear a little bit about this sort of, you know, I mean, listen, it is a bubble.

4:37Make no mistake about it. This is one of the most egregious stocks I think any of us on the desk have ever seen from the disconnection between the company, their products, their management. And this is not on the company. This is on investors. They are the ones bidding this stock up to 100 times sales, to 220 times earnings. And when you trade at a level like that, there's no margin for error, right? And so there's companies are expected to see a deceleration in earnings and sales from maybe 50 percent growth this year to maybe 30 percent next. But this is coming off a very low base. And you kind of think to yourself, OK, what do they have to do to grow into this?

5:15So, again, if you're an investor in this sort of stuff, like you got to understand there's different ways to play this. I think the way Karen's talking about it, these hyperscalers, the investments they are making right now, they will pay off at some point in the future. Right. There's no doubt about that. Maybe not to the tune of the hundreds of billions of dollars in the near term, but five, 10 years down the road to have this sort of infrastructure. That's not what Palantir does. They have a software and it's not even their whole business that has an AI platform that is helping companies move to that sort of technology.

5:46So to me, I don't find that particularly interesting. I do think it's interesting other than the piece of news that we talked about, the short report. There's not a lot out there to do this today. Guy, can you explain to me what's happening in crypto? So I look at that. Some days it's like fundamental. Some days I don't think it is. You're laughing, but explain it. You should say, Guy, can you tell me what the winning lottery number is going to be? Yeah, I'm ready. Tell me. You should get an equally cogent answer. No, I mean, I'm not being flippant. I'm serious. I don't think you are. I think Bitcoin to me or crypto generally is a risk on, risk off.

6:17And as we've seen some pressure in specifically NASDAQ names, I think it's part and parcel what's going on with Bitcoin. So it doesn't surprise me. Why is it happening? I'm not entirely sure, but it's funny. I mean, Bitcoin just made an all-time high of 123. Where's the trade? 112 or something. People are jumping out. I shouldn't say that. They're not cataclysmic in their views, but they're like, why isn't Bitcoin going higher? I think people have been conditioned to believe it's just lower left, upper right. I mean, this is just sort of a normal move for U.S. equities. With all that said, getting back to a couple things, Tim brought up global rates.

6:48He's spot on. For all you people here clamoring for a rate cut, cautionary tale coming out of the Bank of England. I think it's their fourth or fifth rate cut since last August. 200 basis points they've cut. And think about what's been going on with their yields. So if you think somehow cutting yields is going to magically help things on the longer end of the curve, think again, number one. Palantir, by the way, made an all-time high in February at 126. Stock went down 50 percent by April. So it's not like we haven't seen moves like this before. You mentioned correction, and technically that's the right term.

7:17But this is a stock that could easily go down 35 or 40 percent on the back of nothing other than the fact that people might be starting to laser in on valuations. Dan said it takes nothing away with a company that is operating at an extraordinarily high level. It has everything to do with valuations that historically don't make any sense whatsoever. We haven't gotten to NVIDIA yet, but we're going to now because the chart master says the technicals tell him it's actually time to sell this name. So let's bring in Carter Bruxton, worth of worth charting. Carter, what do you see here with NVIDIA?

7:46Yeah, I mean, the weakness today before we get to the charts was not idiosyncratic to NVIDIA. It was a lot of high-flying, marquee, super cap technology-type names. But NVIDIA is the big one, and you have a slight break in trend. Let's go to the charts and see what we can see. I have four in total. The first, as always, has no lines, no drawings, no judgments. Let's put some lines in. So second iteration, you have a well-defined trend line. This is an instance where, of course, the stock has gone from an April low of 87 to 184, about 115 percent. And just today, we broke trend, that very steep uptrend.

8:26Next, third chart of four, it depicts the former highs from which the stock sold off during the tariff swoon and back to which it recovered and then some. So the question is, do we sink all the way down to that level of support? Let's put them all together, four of four. And so we have nothing down, what, four plus minus percent. As Karen said, you'd have to squint your eyes to even see it. But the presumption is that it's not going to be contained to just this one day. And so for those who are nimble and those who do sell short, I would sell short. And for those who are long, it's time to hedge and or reduce in some way exposure.

9:09exposure to this name that we all pay so much attention to. Tim, what do you think of that? Well, I'm always listening to Carter. First of all, the move we've had is has been extraordinary. I look at relative strength as does Carter. Carter probably looks at a lot more than I do. But I see weakness in the Nasdaq relative to the S &P. I see weakness in the semis relative to the Nasdaq. And those are things I follow. I don't know that you're going to see a major reverse course. In fact, they both semis have not. But the Nasdaq made a relative high against the Nasdaq, which it had against the S &P, which it hadn't done since July of last year recently.

9:42That was very strong in confirmation. But I think things are a little hot here. And when you also bring in the context, I know that both NVIDIA and AMD were ready to welcome a 15 percent export licensing fee or export fee to do business in China. I do think there's a lot of there's some uncertainty right now about where the macro is on some of those regular call to regulatory environment call really the where the administration is leading that. I think you have a place here where you've got NVIDIA earnings coming up also on the 27th. And that's a really important event, obviously, for markets.

10:21But for a stock that's had a big run, my guess is there are people that are squaring up going into that. There's so many sort of hot words around NVIDIA when you're talking about the earnings coming up, but also new AI chip. China. Put it all together for us, Dan. Well, here's the thing. I think investors are going to be most focused on margins, right? So when you think about this newly, you know, chip that they're going to be able to export, they weren't able to export the last quarter. They took a five and a half billion dollar charge. Now you're going to suspect that there's going to be lots of demand.

10:46There's going to be double, tripling ordering. And Tim just used the term uncertainty. We don't know how long they're going to have these export licenses. So when I think about this stock, I say to myself, OK, like, you know, it's probably as good as it gets in the near term. I've said that before. But what's different now is that this is 15 percent of their overall revenue that they're going to be giving 15 percent to the government right now that's coming at a much lower margin. When you're taking 15 percent off the top and you're giving it to somebody else, you're going to see their margins that were 77 percent or so last year, maybe go to 70.

11:18And the street is still expecting them to be like 73, 74 to reaccelerate next year. So it may be a very different story. Ultimately, you will get to a digestion phase. There will be less demand. There will be more competition at some point. That's why AMD round tripped almost that entire move. Investors are expecting that. So to me, I think it's a tough one. You look at that chart and you say to yourself, yeah, you squint. But at some point, this is also a stock that sold off 40 % from its highs in March to its lows in April. So it could do it again. Watch those margins. Russell 2000, the market cap is roughly$3 trillion.

11:51NVIDIA is$1.5 trillion more than the entirety of small caps. Good for them, number one. But number two, margins are the story. And, you know, it's historically margins do contract. You do reach a point where competition starts to come in. You start to get peak margins. It starts to roll. Historically, when that happens, is it time to exit these names? We saw glimpses of it a quarter or so ago. They promised a reacceleration in the back half of this year. We're approaching the back half of this year. That's when we're going to hear if it's going to come to fruition or if things are slowing down.

12:21The entire thing, in my opinion, hinges on that. Carter, thank you very much for bringing us those charts on NVIDIA, kicking off that conversation. But we are going to move on to an earnings alert on Toll Brothers, shares of a luxury home builder under pressure, despite beating revenue and earnings estimates for its latest quarter. Our Diane Olek has more of those details. Hi, Diana. Hey, Court, you're right. A beat on the top and bottom lines in Q3 for Toll Brothers. But shares are trading slightly lower because new orders were lighter than expected, down 4%. Guidance was updated to the lower end of the range.

12:52In addition, both the value and volume of units in backlog dropped. That points to maybe some challenges ahead for sales. Now, Toll's CEO, Doug Yearly, said while affordability pressures and uncertain economic conditions persist, we are pleased with the resilience of our luxury business and more affluent customer base. Toll reported home building adjusted gross margin of 27.5 percent versus estimates of 27.3 and unchanged from the previous quarter. The average price on deliveries was$974 ,000, a bit lower than estimates, but the average price on new contracts was$1 million. And remember, about a quarter of toll buyers, Courtney, they do it in cash.

13:33Diana, it's Karen. Thanks for being on. Did they talk about tariffs and what was their take on tariffs? Well, we don't have the call yet. That's tomorrow morning. So this was just the straight earnings release. There was not much in there, nothing at all about tariffs so far. Tomorrow. All right. We will get more and a million dollars for that. Wow. Those are some eye-popping numbers. Diana, thank you so much. We know that you'll follow those color commentary when we get more of the results from the call and executive commentary. Tim, what do you think about the home builder space? Is this a place you want to be?

14:04You were talking about rates earlier on, but rates in general. Well, you know, we had housing numbers today, which were great, all relative to the month before. But generally, you know, new home starts are trending lower. And I don't love the space. I haven't loved the space for the last 18 months. And in there, There's been some nice rallies. But, you know, my general view is that there is a margin dynamic where the builders are eating significantly into the higher rate environment. I think there's a rising cost base that's coming from a lot of different fronts. I think there's a consumer that's under some pressure and affordability.

14:38So the luxury part looks pretty solid and the builders have had a very nice rally. So in the short run, that's my biggest issue here. I think there's no bargain here. There's no beleaguered oversold trade. In fact, I think it's kind of the opposite. I just want to talk about Home Depot for a second. So they had their announcement, you know, the quarterly earnings, which were fine. Right. It was, you know, some pluses, some minuses. And then I think the guidance was, I think, helpful in that it was conservative. But they said this does not include any improvement in any in home improvement. Right.

15:14And so to me, I thought they were being conservative that they actually think there is more there, that we are going to see more home improvement projects. And that seemed like as the quarter went on, things got better. Better. Yeah. So I thought that was really interesting. We'll see Lowe's tomorrow, a little different mix. Home Depot is much more of a contractor business. And but I thought that was pretty positive. Yeah, I mean, when I talked to the CFO, I said, well, what would get homeowners to get off of sort of the waiting period where he said, well, the projects aren't canceled. They're just delayed.

15:47They're just deferred. I said, well, what gets them over the edge? Well, we don't know. I mean, it's economic uncertainty. But if they do push that over the edge, it does help. And Home Depot's pro business, I think, is 55 percent. How does the CFO know that? I mean, like to me, we're in an environment where, you know, we're seeing unemployment tick up. We're seeing inflation tick up. We're seeing a consumer weakening delinquency is going higher. I mean, it just seems like an odd thing for them to say we're seeing smaller renovation stuff, but we're seeing a push out and that sort of thing. So to me, I just I looked at the quarter.

16:15I looked at the current quarter, like the way the commentary I look at the back half or what their willingness to kind of endorse, you know what I mean, their existing guidance. And I said to myself, there's more uncertainty there than there is clarity. Yeah, I thought it was very interesting that they actually reaffirmed that. I thought it was more conservatism. Well, it could be. But I mean, but that's a big assumption, too. I don't think you have to make an assumption that things are going to get pushed out right now when you look at just, you know, the environment that we're in right now. When you look at interest rates and you look at what's going on in some of the other commentary we've heard from the home builders, you know.

16:45So I don't know. I mean, I didn't think it was particularly great. And I look at a lot of the retailers. None of them, none of them have confirmed the highs in the S &P 500. And we had plenty of them in June and July, basically new highs in the index. Yeah, that is true. We're going to hear from a lot more of those retailers coming forward. Lows, as Karen mentioned, tomorrow, but others as well. And as we mentioned, I think it was Tim, housing starts to come in better than expected in July. But Zillow's senior economist isn't betting on new construction rebound just yet. Orfei Devongue is behind the call.

17:13He joins us now. Thank you so much for being here with us. I understand you look at this, of course, from an economic viewpoint rather than a stock perspective. But when you're looking at the housing market in general, what are you seeing? Are you seeing homeowners really waiting because they're hoping that rates pull down in a way that gets them to move? off the reluctance that they've felt so far? Look, affordability is still the main issue in housing today, you know, across the board. We're seeing affordability improving somewhat, you know, in places where builders have built a lot of housing.

17:49But this is still a problem. And so in places where you see a big increase in inventory, you're seeing a builder pullback. You know, you saw the numbers this morning. Permits are lower than, you know, fell for the first half of this year. They're lower than they were a year ago. And so that doesn't point to a lot of supply in the months ahead. Orfei, I think the average number of homes in terms of inventory, new homes in this country, about six, a little less than six months. As of June, I think it's up almost to 10 months, the highest number we've seen since 2008. Now you're hearing the home builders average selling prices have been coming down.

18:25I mean, that doesn't sound as much as people want to talk about this robust housing market. It sounds like anything but to me. Thoughts on that? Yeah. Let me start with the bad news since you since you went there. Look, uncertainty, I think, is is the problem. Right. It caused private sector job growth to reach what we call stall speed. People don't go out buying a new house when they're not getting a raise in inflation, eating at their paycheck. You know, they don't buy a house or a new car when they're kind of uncertain about their job prospects. And so that frozen labor market hasn't helped residential mobility.

19:01We know from the data that the number one reason people move is first and foremost a job. We're seeing that softness also play out in the rental market. Now, here's the good news. Mortgage rates have been on the decline since May. And historically, we know the Fed has put more weight on the labor market side of the mandate. And so we may see some support. I think ultimately a strong economy is how we see more activity in that in the housing market. Orphets, Tim. So let me go a little deeper on that and really play into your economist hat. So rates could be coming lower. We've just talked about how rates are going higher.

19:38Talk about history and where the housing market has been at a time when rates aren't terribly low relative to their recent history. Even if the short end is dropping, we know that doesn't mean mortgage rates get better. Just just thoughts on the industry relative to this type of an interest rate environment. Yeah. Look, ultimately, the changes in interest rates are in mortgage rates matter. But other things matter, too. Right. And so, you know, ultimately, the Fed rate cut is not really what's going to move the needle, I think, for mortgage rates. they're somewhat already baked in to today's rate.

20:13So I don't expect mortgage rates to decline very much. I think what has hindered the housing market this year is really the dwindling labor market prospects, the uncertainty that we saw in the spring. And this is kind of slowly resolving itself. And I think rate cuts are going to kind of help. Hopefully, we had that labor market report that kind of just confirmed, you know, one thing I had been talking about for months, even before the double revisions, was the slowing down of the labor market, right? And that showed up big time in the housing market this year. Mortgage rates, I think people are getting accustomed to the current level of mortgage rates.

20:57If you look at the behavior of sellers, sellers are basically back to kind of their typical behavior. They came back in the spring and now we're starting to see a decline in new listings on Zillow. And so that decline in new listings coupled with the pullback from builders is going to provide some support for prices for home values. And unfortunately, it means that buyers in this current moment who have more options than they've had in a long time and more price cuts than they've had in a long time, well, that might not stick around very long. If you start to see a pullback in supply, last month we had 27 percent of listings on Zillow had a price cut.

21:36Right. If you start to see a pullback in supply, that those conditions, that softness could get could get away from them. Orfe, thank you so much for joining us with your perspective. Appreciate that ahead of Jerome Powell's speech, obviously, this week, which sort of sets the bar for everything at which rates are based on. Karen, you talked a little bit about cost when you were asking Diana about Toll Brothers and what they had to say with tariffs. Any play in like materials going into home building? We talked about Home Depot, the retailer, but what about the materials at which you're building these homes with?

22:08Well, that's why I go to Home Depot scale. Right. When I think about if there's anyone who can deal with the tariffs, it's like it's a Walmart. It's a Home Depot who has the ability to maybe get some of it out of where they're importing from, be a little bit more efficient and take a little bit of price. So that's where I want to be. OK, makes sense. Well, coming up, another boost for Intel. SoftBank giving it a big vote of confidence what the investment means for the stock. And could the U.S. government be the next to follow suit? Plus, a crash diet for shares of Viking therapeutics. The disappointing obesity pill data is sinking that stock.