Bitcoin’s Jump Adds To The FOMO Trade… And UnitedHealth’s Latest Injury 2/28/24

0:01Live 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 Bitcoin breakout, the biggest crypto in the world, jumping back above the$60 ,000 mark, closing in on all time highs. It's market cap now nearly as big as Meta's. What's behind this move and can it possibly go even higher? We will debate that. Plus, a stock once called Godlike is coming back down to earth in a big way. The latest headlines dragging down shares of the UnitedHealth and why one top analyst says it is still a buy. And later, Alphabet's no good, very bad week.

0:33Gets worse as shares fall to lowest since mid-December. One of our traders says the company is ripe for an activist to take a stand in the stock. What they're looking for and what it could mean for the tech giant's investors. I'm Melissa Lee coming to you live from Studio B at the NASDAQ. On the desk tonight, Steve Grasso, Karen Feinerman, Guy Adami, and Dan Suzuki, the Deputy Chief Investment Officer at Richard Bernstein Advisors. Welcome, Dan. And we start off with what might be the latest FOMO trade to grip the markets. Bitcoin surging as much as 12 percent today, hitting the 64 ,000 mark at its highs.

1:04It is now at its best level in more than two years, just off its all time high. The recent rally prompting a rush of retail trader activity into the space. Crypto platform Coinbase reporting trouble handling the volume with some users reporting zero dollar balances in their accounts. CEO Brian Armstrong responding to the issues on X saying we are dealing with a large, in all caps, large surge of traffic. Apologies for any issues you encounter. The team is working to remediate. So is the fear of missing out FOMO on the Bitcoin boom, setting traders up for pain? Or can this rally keep riding higher?

1:38Guy. Well, BK, who's with us in a few minutes, he'll explain what's going on. One of the things I think is going on, a lot of this, I think, has to do with what's going on with the inflation readings. You know, there's this concern, I think, that maybe inflation is a bigger problem than the market anticipates, which means maybe the Fed's not going to be as dovish as everybody anticipates, which means maybe Bitcoin is the play here. You know, I've always thought Bitcoin is a play against central bankers, specifically our Federal Reserve. And if the Federal Reserve's in a bit of a pickle here, it makes a lot of sense to me that Bitcoin is going higher.

2:11How do you view Bitcoin as it relates to the markets? Yeah, I don't think there's actually that much unique to Bitcoin right now relative to other speculative assets. I mean, pick your poison, whether you look at the microcaps or any other speculative index, they're all moving up and down over the past few years with speculation. You look at the financial conditions index, it's moving higher just as Bitcoin is moving higher. I don't think that's all a coincidence. Karen. So I think there's a few things going on. This fear of FOMO and anything, right, that seems to be prevalent everywhere. I don't think we've fully seen the ETF effect in that that much money is now going to be entering the market and it has to go somewhere.

2:49So there's that. There is the halving or halvening. I never exactly know which it's called. So we have that. So we have supply getting smaller. And so much of existing Bitcoin is never traded. Right. So there's maybe all of that. And then to Guy's point about inflation, I was saying yesterday that I thought the Fed refusing to cut was actually a little bit of discipline. And that wouldn't necessarily be a great thing for Bitcoin. But if inflation is high and it does seem to be higher than we'd hoped, that would underscore, I should say, Bitcoin bid. I think it's everything everybody said. So the answer to it is all of the above.

3:29But when you think about it, why would it be the having? I struggle with that, too. That sounds like an HBO thing. As opposed to the having? Yeah, it's got to be the having. So it's got to be ETF because people or institutions, I should say, don't get clearance to buy an ETF the first day. It takes weeks, sometimes months to be able to buy it. So you have the ETF, you have the Fed, you have inflation. And I do think there's going to be a pivot. I think it's going to be a dovish pivot, not unlike the one we saw in October. That's going to be a tailwind for Bitcoin. You think the Fed's going to be a dovish pivot?

4:03Yeah, I still believe that they have a vested interest in acting a lot more hawkish than they are, truly. It always has the same thing. You hear from a Fed representative, they're hawkish. You see what they do, it becomes dumbish. We have seen the flows come in very strong and continue to come in even after the approval of the ETFs. And to your point in terms of the delay, I mean, if you're sitting on an investment committee at a pension fund or whatever it is, you wait for your meeting, you have that meeting, you deliver it, you take a vote, etc. And there was a headline just today that Morgan Stanley was examining Bitcoin ETFs to offer on its platforms, its investor platforms.

4:41So when that happens, that could be additional flows into ETFs. Unbelievably correct. Steve makes a great point. BK's talked about this for a long time. And obviously, a lot of this was anticipated without question. Now you're starting to see the dollars flowing as well. But there will be a point like any other security or commodity or index where things get dramatically overbought. And by a lot of different metrics, Bitcoin here at current levels, given the run that it's had over the last week and a half, probably fits that bill. So, you know, you can look at the volumes that came in over the last couple of days.

5:12Huge volumes on these types of spikes typically lead to some exhaustion. I'm not calling it top in Bitcoin, but a pullback from these levels makes a lot of sense. Well, if you think that the all-time high is within sights at this point, we hit it actually in today's session. People, you know, have become whole now, right? People who have bought at the top are whole. Anyone is whole. Anyone is whole. So maybe this is the time to take some profits. That's what Carter-Rex-Worth always says. I think I always believe in the reverse, right? People want to get back to even. So they sell. And then when they write and then that resistance disappears.

5:45And then you get pushed through that level. And everyone who sold said, wow, what a sucker I am for selling there. And they actually become the next tailwind for higher prices. Right. We do have some breaking news of the Supreme Court. We want to get to Eamon Javers, who's got the latest. Eamon, that's right. The Supreme Court just within the past couple of minutes is saying that it will take up the issue of whether former president Donald Trump has blanket immunity from prosecution as a former president of the United States for actions that he took while he was president of the United States.

6:16This just in from the Supreme Court. They say the issue before the court now is whether and if so, to what extent does a former president enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office? The court says that it will hear oral arguments during the week of April 22nd. So there is some delay now because we're obviously not in March yet before the court will resolve this issue. But this is the argument that the former president has made is that he has blanket immunity for, in essence, anything he did while he was president of the United States.

6:55The Supreme Court says now that it's going to give that a look. Melissa, back over to you. So I'm sorry, you said a date in April. So that's way after Super Tuesday at that point. Yeah, That's right. That's right. Thank you, Eamon Javers. For more on what's ahead for the crypto rally, let's bring in Fast Money Friend and Bitcoin bull Brian Kelly, CEO BKCM. BK, where do you think we go from here? well it depends on the time frame right so i think everything that you guys talked about is is exactly spot on so you have a asset that is bumping against a former resistance you look at some of the kind of internals one of the things that i look at it a lot is funding rates um and funding rates just a day or so ago got to a hundred percent so effectively you could almost make a hundred percent arbitrage so that brings in sellers we saw it hit 64 000 today and a lot of sellers came in.

7:48So in the relatively short term, it would not surprise me to see a pullback. And I, you know, I tell my team every single day, even in 2017, when we had, you know, Ethereum up 4000 percent, it still had a month that was down 50 percent. So this is an asset that is still extremely volatile. If it pulled back 25 or 30 percent, wouldn't surprise me at all. But long run, I still think we go to new highs. Do you think this price action is is the playbook for when Ether has its ETF approved? I think it could be. I think people will certainly look at this and go, well, boy, if Ether's going to come along and do it, I want to be in ahead of it.

8:26And I think that's what we saw a lot of the action in Ether this month or the last six weeks or so. There's a lot more to Ethereum and some of these level or some of these kind of second tier coins. But yeah, that's certainly a driver of that price for Ethereum. BK, big fan of your work. Tell Brian I say hi. To the extent that you even want to go down this road, what equities sort of are best suited to handle or take advantage of what's going on right now? Yeah, so there's I mean, there's a handful, right? You can go on the miner side, right? And the miners are great trading stocks. The problem I have always had fundamentally with miners is that they're really tough businesses.

9:04You always have to update your equipment. There's a lot of capital outlay. But when Bitcoin's in a bull market, you look at something like CleanSpark was a name that I looked at the other day. It was up 23 percent in the day. So you've got those. You can then go to kind of the service provider. Coinbase would be probably the biggest and most obvious one there. You know, there's clearly seeing massive inflows here. So that'd be another equity I would look at if you wanted to play kind of the ecosystem around crypto. Hey, BK, it's Karen. Also huge, huge fan of your work. Is this Bitcoin itself stealing all the oxygen out of the crypto space?

9:39Or are there other places that you would look that might be having to use the term value is that's a loose, loosely related term here. But where else would you look if anywhere? Do you want to be only in Bitcoin? Yeah, great question. I'm a fan of your questions, Karen. So Bitcoin is sucking. It is sucking all the air out of the ecosystem. If you just looked at the board today, Bitcoin, Ethereum, a little bit of Solana was up and almost everything else was red, right? I do think there could be a rotation trade coming, though, because we had a lot of excitement about Solana. It ran into a little bit of headway.

10:12If today's was this short term top at$64 ,000 for Bitcoin, what typically happens in a bull cycle is all the money that was made in Bitcoin and Ethereum starts to look for another home. So you look at Solana, you might look at something like a chain link, you know, one or two down that have a real use case and a real reason to exist. I think they could actually be the beneficiary of a pullback in Bitcoin. BK, when you look at Marathon and you look at these miners, when you talk about or think about the halving, is that a headwind or do they have to be more efficient in figuring out their business models on mining to make it a tailwind or at least neutralize that headwind?

10:54yeah and every one of these public miners is being incredibly efficient um with their processes right now particularly the halving now the halving to me is a lot more psychological than it is fundamental because it's you know you're going down to 450 bitcoin that's not a lot of bitcoin these days the miners are going to make money you know as long as they control their costs so i think the halving we look back at the last couple cycles you've had bull markets centered around them one year before, 18 months after. So I think people are looking at that. So it's more of a part of the setup phase, but it's not the catalyst for things moving higher, in my view.

11:30Outside of Bitcoin, BK, what's your number one cryptocurrency? Ooh, number one. Now you get me in trouble with everybody in crypto because I don't pick theirs. But I would have to say, and it's a trade that I'm actually doing, is the rotation from Bitcoin, Ethereum into Solana. I think that one's got the next kind of pop higher here. All right. BK, great to see you. Always great to see you. BK, Brian Kelly. Always great to be here. The legend, really, in Bitcoin. Wrote the book, 2014, Bitcoin Big Bang. It is crazy. It is amazing. As we see money go into crypto, Dan, do you think about it as there's an ATM somewhere in the market where the money is coming from?

12:13No, I think what it's telling you is that there's plenty of cash out there. There's plenty of liquidity out there. So there's no ATM because you don't have to go to the ATM because they're sitting on piles of cash. So is that cash going to come into equities and that's another sort of ballast for the markets? I think you're seeing that. I think really you're seeing speculation rise everywhere within equities, within cryptos. And I think it's gone really far. So I think that suggests that you might see some volatility in the near term. Now that we have two Dan – well, Dan's been with us. It's probably good to differentiate.

12:45Well, Dan Nathan and Dan Suzuki. We have only one Dan tonight. Tonight. But to the extent that I think we should, I mean, if you were allowing me to label him, I would label this Dan as sort of handsome Dan. What does that make, Dan? No, no, it's not opposed to anything. I'm just saying he's a very handsome man. Quickly, the ATM question. Look at how miserable gold miners have been for the last couple of weeks. It coincides to a large extent with this move in crypto. So maybe to answer your question in some way, gold mining stocks. Hedge to hedge. Maybe. When is the happening happening in gold?

13:19That's a great question. That's one of those, you know, you're a Diana Ross and the Supremes fan. We're not allowed to play music anymore, but there used to be a great song called The Happening. Now you probably don't want that to happen. America probably doesn't want it. Maybe another show. Meantime, shares of Snowflake and Okta moving in very opposite directions after their respective earnings reports. Let's get to Steve Kovac, who's got all the details. Steve. Hey there, Mel. Yeah, let's go with Snowflake because the big news is coming out of this one. That surprise announcement, CEO Frank Slootman, he's stepping down, sending shares over 20 % lower here after hours, down about 23%, it looks like.

13:52Instead, Sridhar Ramaswamy, a former Google exec, is taking over as CEO. Slootman's still going to be on the board, of course. And he was the mastermind behind Snowflake's IPO back in 2020, which at the time was the biggest software IPO at the time. Also from ServiceNow, you might remember his IPO there. As for Wamaswami, most recently ran a startup called Neva that was a search engine app that Snowflake acquired last year for about$185 million. As for the results here in the quarter, sales were up 32 % year-on-year to$774 million. And operating losses were$275.5 million. That was a big chunk bigger than they were in the year-ago quarter.

14:35And now over to Okta, like you said, moving in the opposite direction, up more than 20 percent after beating on the top and bottom lines. That company has gone through some layoffs and cost restructuring, also naming some new execs here. But look, you see shares up 20 percent on that, Mel. All right. Great. Thanks, Steve. Steve Kovac. By the way, do not miss the outgoing and incoming Snowflake CEOs. They will be on with Jim tonight. That's only on Mad Money, 6 p.m. Eastern time. That's a big decline on the departure of a CEO. So huge decline. But it's also a valuation thing to a certain extent.

15:07It was the fall of 2021. We had conversations on the desk. We said great company trading was trading at the time 80 times revenue. I mean, now the stock's more than cut in half and it's still probably trading close to 40 times ish revenue, which is very expensive. I would submit in any environment. So the answer to your question is, yes, it's a big move lower. It probably makes sense. I mean, there's an opportunity to buy the stock. I don't think it's at 179 or wherever it's trading right now. Where are you on high multiple software, Dan? Yeah, I don't really like high multiple anything. I think clearly it's all caught up in the same story, people chasing these.

15:43And a lot of these are great businesses. It's just people only focusing on the story, not focusing on the investment. And I think that's a mistake. I see. He does look like Dan a little bit when he talks like this. Watch. He's not high multiple anything. If you do this, if you do this, he looks like Dan. So when you look at this, if you go back to November before the whole market took off, This is the level that it's traded down to. So I agree with Guy. It's probably another$25 to the downside. Let's call it$150-ish. Should be support in the name. But as far as the high multiples go, unless you have rates being cut, you can't really buy a high multiple stock.

16:16You've got to wonder what Frank Sloopin is really going to. I mean, he's going to retire, according to this press release. But I don't know. A guy who takes all these companies public, it seems like he's a serial. Yeah, exactly. He's a serial entrepreneur. It's in his blood. So you think he has the next one identified? I don't know. I think it'll be interesting to watch, and we'll see tonight on Mad Money. Coming up, the next battleground stock, Alphabet, why one of our traders thinks the tech giant could be ripe for some activist attention. Who should be interested? More on that later. But first, a bunch of after-hours moves to dig into.

16:45Paramount, Salesforce, and a big move out of C3AI. The details from the quarters ahead. Don't go anywhere. Fast Money is back in two. This is Fast Money with Melissa Lee, right here on CNBC.

17:07Welcome back to Fast Money. We've got some breaking news out of D.C. on the spending bill. Let's get to Emily Wilkins for the details. Emily. Hey, Melissa. Well, yes, congressional leaders have announced that they have got an agreement to kick the can down the road just a little bit longer on federal spending. So instead of having the deadlines be this Friday and next Friday, they're now next Friday and March 22nd. Congressional leaders say that they think that they have six bills that they can get done by next week. But a couple of the bills they admit they're taking a little more time. They're a little trickier to do.

17:38There are a few more debates. And those are the ones they're hoping to pass on March 22nd. I mean, this is a bipartisan agreement, but there are Republicans on the Hill who are not happy about this. They did not want to see a continuation of spending. They don't think that these sort of kicking the can down the road moments are good for Congress or for the party. And so it'll be very interesting to see when this bill comes to the floor in the House, is it going to be able to get a majority support of Republicans? That's going to be a big test for Speaker Johnson. And of course, it's simply a question, can they all move fast enough?

18:11The House will probably be able to get this done very quickly. But of course, in the Senate, any one senator can delay things. And that will raise the question whether or not we will have a small shutdown going into the weekend. Melissa? Emily, thank you. Emily Wilkins. Meantime, shares of Paramount Global up after the media giant reported Q4 revenue that missed expectations but posted a surprise profit and strong streaming results. This after yesterday's news that talks to merge with Warner Brothers Discovery may have broken down. Julia Borson is here with the details. Julia. Melissa, Paramount showing progress in streaming, but there were losses in the traditional business that did outweigh that, particularly on the top line.

18:48Now, the company stressed that its fourth quarter direct-to-consumer losses were less than expected, and it did add slightly more streaming subscribers than anticipated, also announcing that Paramount Plus will hit domestic profitability next year. But while D2C revenues were driven by subscriber growth and pricing increases, as well as ad growth, advertising revenue in Paramount's TV division declined by 15 percent. The company's citing continued softness in the global advertising market. Now, on the earnings call, CEO Bob Backish has been talking a lot about the power of streaming to grow ad effectiveness and also unlocking the company's value for shareholders.

19:24Talked a lot about driving synergies across the company, while Paramount's CFO talked about optimizing cost structure, reducing costs and delivering high quality content. Now, there was just one question about potential M &A. Backish saying we are always looking for ways to create shareholder value. To be clear, that's for all shareholders. He said we're not going to get into any speculation or timing. Obviously, something we're focused on. He said this call is really to talk about business. Melissa? That is business. But anyway, Julia, thank you. Julia Borson, can't wait to get the conference call transcript to see how many questions are asked about potential partnerships, because that is what is being talked about, a potential partnership possibly with Comcast Peacock, for instance.

20:08What do you make of these results? Well, given the short interest and given all this speculation about a takeover, you would have thought this stuff. We talked about this a couple of weeks ago. It would have traded a lot better than it has. And, you know, it's up in the after hours. It hasn't even gotten back what it gave up during the day. So I'm less than impressed. I mean, this has been upper left to lower right for years now. And given, again, all the news that's out there and its inability to rally, I don't know what's going to be the catalyst at this point. Yeah. Well, the balance sheet is the albatross here, right?

20:35I mean, if they could get to break even, that would be great. But do you have that enormous amount of debt? It's sort of I don't know what's happening with the Skydance, Sherry Redstone deal where he was going to take control of part of national amusements. I don't know. I this the the linear TV, that's a very difficult thing to overcome. So I don't like it. If you look back on it and I know everyone's probably said this, especially Guy, as far as technicals, this stock was is trading below its pandemic low. and it was trading at$11.85 during the pandemic, traded below that. Then it ripped all the way up to$100.

21:12Then you remember it had that cascading. Well, that was the Archegos. Exactly, which I can never say the name of that properly. I say it like I know how it takes. That's why I always point to you, so you'll say it. And then it sold off. But this is only, only about M &A. You could talk about everything else. This is only about M &A, and this only makes it a bigger story for Netflix, who this is the game and everyone else is just trying to get some piece of the sun. Coming up, more earnings action. Cheers to Salesforce moving after hours and numbers out of that report next. And a huge drop in UnitedHealth.

21:43The insurance giant is still reeling from its cyber attack. And now regulators are launching an antitrust investigation. How all these bruises are stacking up against the name. You're watching Fast Money live from the Nasdaq MarketSide in Times Square. Back right after this.

22:02Welcome back to Fast Money Stocks. A little change, but closing in the red as investors awaited PCE data tomorrow morning. The Dow notching its third negative session in a row. The S &P lowers well in the NASDAQ, leading the losses down half a percent. Some more after hours movers. Shares of C3 AI surging after it beats on the top and the bottom lines. And HP is lower after a revenue miss. Salesforce also on the move after earnings results. The stock is down more than 3 percent despite beats on the top and the bottom lines. CEO Mark Benioff telling investors moments ago he's initiating a dividend and increasing buybacks.

22:35Kate Rooney is here with the details. Kate. Hey, Melissa. So Salesforce announcing its first ever dividend. It's a 40 cents. It's also upping its share buybacks by 10 billion dollars, but weaker than expected. Revenue guidance is overshadowing that news and the earnings beat. Shares have been down. You see more than 3 percent. Salesforce is looking for revenue of between$37.7 billion and$38 billion. That was a miss. Investors worry it signals a slowdown in spending on cloud and technology. Its clients have been scaling back on cost amid higher rates and inflation. Margins were slightly below expectations in the fourth quarter, but we're still above 30 percent.