Bitcoin’s Record High… And Big Banks Kick Off Earnings Season 7/14/25

0:02Live in 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 crypto craze. Bitcoin surging to yet another all-time high today. But how much more can the rally keep rolling? We'll dig into the move and all the winners in the space. And Bank on Financials, the stocks higher, heading into their earnings reports. What you can expect from these results and what it will mean for the trade. Plus, Meta's mega AI investment, Boeing, bounces to another 52-week high. And the lap of luxury, Tapestry, quietly climbing to all-time highs. What's behind the monster move and how should you play the stock now.

0:35I'm Melissa Lecomte, live from Studio B at the Nasdaq. On the desk tonight, Tim Seymour, Karen Feinerman, Steve Grasso, and Guy Adami. The stock's fractionally higher to start the week as investors weigh trade policy against key earnings and inflation data expected in the days ahead. The Nasdaq, though, setting another record close. More on that shortly. But we begin with Bitcoin topping$123 ,000 today for the first time ever, though now off its best levels hovering around$120K. The move coming at the start of a big week for crypto in Washington with House Republicans looking to advance a series of bills, including the Genius Act, aimed at regulating digital assets.

1:11Bitcoin now up 11 % in July and doubling in value over the past year. Other tokens coming along for the ride. Ether and Ripple each hitting their highest level since the start of February, while Solana is trading at late May highs. Crypto link stocks, including Coinbase, Robinhood, MicroStrategy, Circle, all ending firmly in the green. So what are all these moves signaling for the crypto space, but also what do they signal for the broader markets? Steve, you've been on this bandwagon for a long time now. Yeah, so obviously this is the most crypto-friendly administration. And it's in its infancy, if you look at it, if you pull it back a little bit.

1:48So we have the Genius Act, we have the Clarity Act. If you look at the old SEC, they ran through enforcement versus regulatory. This one's running through regulatory clarity versus enforcement. And I don't want to say anything is possible or anything is going to be allowed. But if you have it gauged as a commodity versus a security, it does open up a lot of possibilities for you. So when you look at the estimates on price, there are people who think this goes to$200 ,000 this year. We only have a handful of months. Well, I am a firm believer that it's going much, much higher from here. Think about corporate adoption.

2:30Corporate adoption is probably only about 2%. Central banks, only about 3%. Those are both going higher, much higher. Retail investors going much higher. So look at it through, I'll leave off with this. Look at it through the market cap of Bitcoin. That's around$2 trillion, let's say. Look at the market cap of gold. That's around$20 trillion. Maybe it doesn't have to be gold, but if it closes the gap to 50%, you're looking at$500 ,000 per Bitcoin. And I do think that in eyeshot, you're looking at$250 ,000,$350 ,000 pretty easily for crypto. There's a couple of things, a couple of hurdles, but I think those days of it losing 80 % of its value and then rallying up are long gone.

3:22There's too many people that are looking for the asset. So it's smoothed out in terms of the volatility. What do you think, Karen? Or do you think a lot of these gains that we have witnessed so far is everything that Stephen mentioned except pull forward and set at this price? I'm sorry. Say that again. Do I agree with everything Steve's mentioned? No, I mean, yes. Yes, basically. Yes, absolutely. Is that already in? Yes, exactly. Is that already priced in? Everything Steve mentioned since he's been on the show. Okay. We'll have to go back for a long time. Yeah, we'll get to MP later. But I think that there was some hype going into this week and excitement there.

3:56I don't know if this particular part is a buy the room or sell the news. One other thing that I think might be underpinning it somewhat, to the extent that Bitcoin is a play on the lack of discipline, right, of the Fed, of the government. And here we're in this situation where we, you know, the idea of the independence of the Fed is at question. That, to me, is somewhat supportive of Bitcoin as well. Now, maybe that's cooled a little bit in the last day. I don't know. But I do think, though, that the down 80 percent, that kind of thing, I think, is not on the table anymore unless somehow it gets displaced.

4:35But I'm staying long. I'm not looking to take any off the table. You know, Steve mentions the math behind it. I mean, that is the math. Gold's around$20 trillion. I think Bitcoin itself may be close to$3-ish. So, you know, even half of that, again, you can do the math. Bitcoin goes from 120 to maybe 360, 400. So there are people out there that believe that for a long time. And seemingly it's playing out right before our eyes. I think one of the other factors, and, you know, Karen mentioned undisciplined. I think this rhetoric around Jerome Powell, this renewed rhetoric about getting him out, having him resign, whatever it is, firing him.

5:08I think Kevin Hassett was on the show this morning talking about the president can fire the Fed chief, the Fed chair. That is true, but it's only for cause. But, you know, seemingly everything is caused in today's world. So I think part of this rally is predicated on that as well. Then you just add in the limited supply. And so this is not a case where, you know, this is not a fiat currency. There's not unlimited printing presses. And this is, again, part of the reason why Bitcoin has caught fire in the last five years. I mean, a lot of this is not an overnight development. But as we're pointing to Washington, and this is Crypto Week, and this is the crypto president, This is a dynamic that has been building over time.

5:46And it's a case that I think actually is representative of what central banks are doing with gold. And, you know, we talked about this, that that gold is actually a bigger is a bigger reserve in the ECB than the euro is. So central banks, I'm not so sure ready. But I do think we've said this all along. Also, the more regulation you have around Bitcoin and around the infrastructure and the infancy is is what gives a green light to institutional investors. and make it clear, this is institutional investors that are doing this. And these ancillary plays, like I'm long Coinbase, it's hard for me to justify the valuation, but it's not just the on-ramp.

6:22I think Base is a major infrastructure platform for cryptocurrencies. I do think there are dynamics here that will continue. This would not be happening if the markets were not at all-time highs. Let's be clear. Right. I mean, it is not a coincidence, right, that we were talking about NASDAQ at a record-closing high and Bitcoin hitting a new high today. So does Bitcoin tell you something about where we are in the markets and risk appetite? A huge appetite for risk. The VIX is telling you the same thing, right? You know, you could say that we're in a time where, well, we've got these tariff moves that might be huge, maybe not.

6:54Normally, you'd see a VIX much, much higher than that. One thing, though, that I do think is indicative of the froth is, you know, starting with a strategy or what used to be micro strategy. And now that being, OK, that's a viable strategy, not only for Bitcoin, other companies, you know, GameStop or whoever, but also for other currencies. That, to me, is feeling very frothy because I can't get comfortable with the underlying economics. Or stablecoins that are pegged to a particular asset and it's funded against a particular asset. Shouldn't be trading at a multiple of that asset. And yet they are.

7:27But by the way, just real small sample size. The last couple of days, Bitcoin has gone up while the market has been volatile during the day. hey, last week, Bitcoin was surging. The market was selling off. Sample size is too small. But you could make the case that we're really moving towards something here with Bitcoin. I mean, take a look. You're mentioning, you know, using it as a strategy, a treasury company, like MicroStrategy, formerly MicroStrategy, now Strategy. But Sharplink Gaming, SVET. We talked to Joe Lubin last week, co-founder of Ethereum. And he mentioned that, you know, he basically, his team screened a bunch of companies, identified this company, identified the board would be cooperative in terms of making an Ether treasury holding company.

8:10And they did that. And in just a month, it's up 160 percent. I mean, this is the kind of appetite there is for these sorts of vehicles. Yeah. Well, I mean, it was a time when you put dot com at the end of a company. The company would go up that type of move. Dot AI. And this is happening now with crypto as well. Not to say that there's something wrong with it. it's not. But the adoption of this is clearly manifesting itself in the stock prices. But that's a tough game to play. Now, strategy is in this game and they're in the game in perpetuity, right? I mean, they have to continue to do this. And I've said for a while, and it got dangerously close a few months ago.

8:45You know, as Bitcoin got down to the mid 70 ,000s, that was approaching the average price of strategy's holdings, which I think is now probably approaching 70 ,000. I don't know what happens if those two meet, but I don't think it's going to be particularly good. Does this move, which coincides with the move to record highs in the market, does this make you feel better about where we are in the markets in terms of this is a broader, we've been seeing a broadening or a broader participation in this rally. We see, you know, Bitcoin here moving as well. I think they're not mutually exclusive. I think markets can be okay here.

9:20And it doesn't mean that because crypto is participating and possibly seemingly moving at a faster clip, we should be very worried. I do not have a crystal ball on where the economy is going to be in the fourth quarter. We've got a big inflation number this week. My guess it's benign. We've got a lot of earnings coming this week. My guess is the bar's too low. And I think those are things that I think the broadening of the market when we've been talking about industrials, when we've been talking about banks, is something that's very healthy. But I do think there's an enormous amount of liquidity washing around.

9:48And those people that think actually that the Fed should be loosening or cutting rates. This is another argument why I don't know that the Fed should be reacting to the fundamentals here in cutting. All right. Well, UBS predicts tariff tensions will not derail the market, gives an optimistic forecast for earnings season. Let's bring in Evan Brown, head of multi-asset strategy at UBS Asset Management. He joins us here on set. Evan, great to have you with us. Thanks for coming. Thanks, Melissa. Great to be here. So signal to noise ratio is very low, which means what? Well, we're getting plenty of noise.

10:18We got almost Liberation Day by tweet, all these letters sent out last week and a lot of big numbers thrown around. But I think what's important is when you crunch the numbers, when you look at them relative to how much we import from all these countries, as well as the exemptions that we have now for Canada and Mexico, it's not actually that much. We've had an effective tariff rate that's gained year to date by about 10 percent, a little bit more. Even if the president, we don't expect him to put all of this on. We expect some deals to be made. But even if the president puts all of these on, it's just an increase of 2 % in the effective tariff rate.

10:53So it's not that big of an increase in taxes. And then offsetting that, we just had tax cuts. So overall, we think, you know, the market can continue to digest this tariff noise. How do you get to an effective tariff rate of about 2 % when prior to this tariff brouhaha, it was in the single digits? I think it was like 3 % or something like that globally. And then if you just think about, let's say Europe is 30%, let's just say it's half. I mean, how do you get to two? Yeah. So if you so we've already gotten the 10 percent baseline on everything. Yeah. We do have reciprocal tariff rates that are getting up towards Liberation Day levels.

11:29But you have a lot of exceptions on Canada and Mexico. You have what's likely to be deals with with Europe, we think, with the president speaking enthusiastically about the progress made so far. And so there's deals to be made around the sectors versus the actual numbers that are being thrown out on reciprocal. But on a relative basis, we're heading into an environment where this is more restrictive on the economy at a time when, if anything, we've come into this at all time lows on unemployment. So I understand that the news is better than we expected. And I understand that we've talked about on this desk that policy statements seem to be there's a lot of tailwinds coming in terms of other pieces of ammunition.

12:10How much do you think the market is offsides on the fundamentals? So I think the market actually understands that the tariffs that have been put into date are only really going to hit the economy over the course of the second half. I think that's, you know, we are going, whether it's tomorrow's inflation print or just over the next few months, we are going to see inflation rise. We are going to be seeing corporate profits take some of a hit. Someone has to pay these tariffs, right? But the market knows that. It's aware of that. And the market's kind of just ready to look through it because it sees the tax cuts.

12:43It sees an expectation for rate cuts coming and that's supporting the economy next year. And so I think when you put all of that together, that's setting up for a decent 2026 and markets like to discount for it. So, Evan, if I go a little deeper on your tax cuts and mitigation on it. So tax cuts are permanent and the tariffs are maybe temporary, but a one time effect depending on how they're rolled out. Corporate tax cuts, corporate tax rate went from 35 down to 21 percent permanent. Trump has already floated. If you produce here, we can move you down to 15 percent. So when we worry about corporations passing on tariffs, should we focus more on the fact that they're paying 14 percent less than they were?

13:29So first of all, one of the things that you're getting with the corporate tax cuts, even though you you didn't actually get a move in the number, You got it to 21 % last time in 2017. It stayed at 21%. But you're getting these CapEx expensing provisions. You're getting bonus depreciation, R &D expensing. And so all of that is going to support bringing the effective tax rate for these corporates down, even while they're dealing with the headwind of the tariffs. There's a structural move in the dollar going on that doesn't seem to have any correlation with the equity market. But at what point does it, if any?

14:09Yeah, so the dollar dynamics have been really fascinating this year, to your point. I mean, we saw the dollar go down when stocks were going down. We saw the dollar go down when stocks were going up. I think what that reflects is global investors who have become probably over allocated to U.S. assets are realizing it. They don't want to sell the underlying U.S. assets themselves. They don't want to sell the S &P. They don't want to sell treasuries, still deep liquid markets. But they are saying, OK, some of these correlations are changing. The dollar is not quite acting like the safe haven it has in the past.

14:42And so maybe what I need to be doing is is hedging that dollar exposure, selling dollars forward. And I think that's why the dollars continue to decline. That, in the meantime, is helping U.S. corporations because, you know, when they convert that weaker dollar, their foreign revenues look look better. Let me ask you about this rally. How much of it is predicated on the hope or expectation of the Fed cutting and how much? I don't think that the Fed cutting makes that much of a difference because I think the more the Fed is cutting, it's based on them viewing the economy being weaker and weaker.

15:19In the end, I'd much rather see, you know, an economy that is holding up OK. Right. And the Fed has to do less than the other way around, where the Fed is easing aggressively because the labor market is breaking. So as long as, you know, the Fed cutting once or twice would be helpful, but I don't think it's absolutely necessary. I think you have enough tailwinds for earnings coming in the next year. The AI CapEx cycle continues and the like. That's going to be able to propel the market forward despite, you know, what's going on with the Fed. You like what has been working. So Mag7, tech, AI trade, financials.

15:57Is there a shift, though, within these sectors to mid and small cap, recognizing a rotation that seems to be underway here, a search for lower valued companies relative to the S &P 500? Yeah, so structurally, you're always waiting for these small caps to just explode higher, right? Because they're very undervalued relative to the large caps. And we know how they tend to move once they get going. The thing is that everything needs to kind of fall into place for small caps to really move. You need inflation lower. You need the Fed to be cutting. You need tariffs to not be too much of an issue. And we know a lot of the small companies.

16:37So they don't have any of that, basically. Yeah, so they don't have that. And that's why we're not ready to get all in on small caps. It's useful to have some exposure to small caps in the portfolio, especially for those moments when they do get going. But, you know, that's really the ultimate Goldilocks scenario. And we are still in an environment where we have elevated inflation growth slowing down. It's not ideal right now. Evan, great to see you. Thank you. Evan Brown, UBS. Evan breaks it down really well. By the way, I thought when Evan was talking about signal-to-noise ratio, he was referring to the exhaust system on your Chevelle.

17:14Yeah. Oh, you remember that? Yeah. The 68 Chevelle, which was a great car. Okay. And the noise was – but you bought it for the noise. Well, you were 21 when you got that car. This is Evan's maiden voice. He's still here. I know. He is still here. We haven't wheeled him away. We should have him back. We have him on a wheelie chair. They did so well we didn't say goodbye to him. I actually did say goodbye. Thanks for listening. All right. What's your trade here? So I asked about the dollar, so I'll go there real quick. I mean, he makes a good point. The market's going up regardless of what the dollar has done.

17:43But I do think there's a point where this dollar weakness is going to manifest itself in equity weakness as well. It's interesting because this is multi-asset strategy, and I do think that there are other asset classes also that are going to continue to do well. Private credit is something that's outperformed. I realize there's not a lot of access points for investors out there, but there are either conduits or there are other ways to get exposure. Also, if you look at investing in preferreds and things that are higher-yield investments that actually run a lot in an environment where you see spread tightening, that to me is interesting stuff here.

18:14Coming up, Meta making moves. CEO Mark Zuckerberg announcing a major investment into AI infrastructure, just how much they're getting ready to spend, and the details behind the company's first super cluster. That's next. Plus, Boeing keeps climbing the stock trading at new 52-week highs, how the traders are handling the tarmac air. Ahead, don't go anywhere. Fast Money's back in two.

18:38This is Fast Money with Melissa Lee, right here on CNBC.

18:54We've got a news alert on an addition to the S &P 500. Pippa Stephens has got the details. Hey, Pippa. Hey, Melissa. Take a look at shares of Trade Desk surging here 11.5 % after S &P Dow Jones indices said that it will replace Ansys in the index effective prior to the opening bell this coming Friday, July 18th. This, of course, comes after Synopsys got that approval to buy Ansys. And TradeWeb here up nearly now 12 percent on the news. Melissa? All right, Pippa, thank you. Pippa Stevens. Guy, you follow TTV? Yeah, we do. And they are big Fast Money fans, as you know. And this time, for real. It happens to be true.

19:29The good news is, that's good news. The bad news is, look at the stock since December. It's been more than cut in half. So this bounce makes sense. And listen, it's still expensive despite that move, but this is going to get a little boost without question. All right, let's get to meta here. CEO Mark Zuckerberg announcing the tech giant plans to invest hundreds of billions of dollars into its AI super intelligence effort. This is a company considers a major AI strategy shakeup. CNBC's tech reporter Deirdre Bosa has got more. Debo. Hey, Mel. So this is Zuckerberg's most aggressive play yet in the race to build super intelligence.

20:02That's AI systems that can outperform humans. Now, to get there, he says that Meta will invest hundreds of billions of dollars into compute build out. That is really unprecedented. We're talking multiple multi-gigawatt clusters in the works with the first one, Prometheus, coming online in 2026. And then there's Hyperion that he says will scale to over five gigawatts over several years, which is just an enormous amount of energy and compute power. Now, Zuck says that this will give Meta the highest compute per researcher in the industry, and it puts Meta in direct competition with OpenAI and Oracle's project Stargate, possibly even ahead of hyperscalers Microsoft and Amazon on raw model training capacity.

20:42If it can execute, of course, their energy permitting hurdles that Meta and everyone else trying to build here are going to be facing. Now, MetaShares have been steady on the news today, but the open question is how will investors price this in? Are they truly bought in on Zuckerberg's AI vision in a way that they were not with the metaverse? Or will rising capex start to spook them when earnings come around and the bill gets bigger? Mel, back to you. You have all good questions, Debo. Thank you. Deidre Bosa in San Francisco. How do you, Karen, price this in as a MetaShareholder? I did not love seeing the hundreds of billions thread that Zuckerberg put out there.

21:18I would have also, I mean, the scale, she talked about it being enormous. It is staggeringly huge. But I also would like to hear about some of the, all right, what's the other side of the ledger, right? Right. How, what would the return on this be? How efficient can they become? I didn't, so this is a little bit concerning, to be honest. Eighty-four percent increase in CapEx spending from last year. net operating margins. Operating margins are in from 42 % roughly to 31.5 % already. So I think the market will lose patience if there's not a return on the investment. But you're already seeing that.

21:57The other number that stuck out to me is free cash flow, right? So that's what's really the number one thing that I'm watching. Margins are one thing. The free cash flow is totally something else, the market will lose its ability to see further out. And remember, a couple of years ago, he spent too much. Now he's spending just the right amount. I think he's spending too much now. The street is, a couple of years ago, they got blasted on the back of the spend. Now I think the market's realized, you know what, they actually know what they're doing. So I'm more on, I think this is encouraging news.

22:27And at 25 times next year's numbers, despite where it's trading, it's still relatively cheap. I just, I tend to agree with that. I think Meta has plenty of cylinders to hit on here. I think also advertising on WhatsApp. And there's different things here. I think the top line growth of 15 to 17 percent, depending on who you're talking to, it allows investors to be OK with this massive spend. And ultimately, it leads to where their ad, you know, essentially their ad biz and the investment in it is something that I think is already proven has been paying dividends. So I like it. I mean, to that point, we've seen the ROI, right?

23:01We've seen how Meta is using AI on itself in order to improve its returns. Does that give them more leash with this investment? More money, for one. Yeah, yeah, yeah, to do that. It does give them more resources. It does give them a little more leash. They've done an extraordinary job. This arms race, though, is concerning. Now, along NVIDIA, they're in the arms of dealing business. In Alphabet. Right? What's it do for the utilities trade? I mean, in other words, the AI-based utilities trade, I think, is alive and well. I'm long constellation, not because I just think it's that, But I think that whole sector has still been, since DeepSeek, has been under some pressure, and I think there's opportunity.