Fast Money 11/26/25

0:01Live from the Nasdaq market side in the heart of New York City's Times Square, this is Fast money. Here's what's on tap tonight. Thankful for gains. Stocks rallying into a shortened holiday week as markets head into Thanksgiving in the green. So with volatility and rates down and the Fed back in play, are we headed for an end of year holiday rally? We'll debate that. Plus, pharma red flag, the competition creeping up on Eli Lilly and how one biotech company's drug data could drag the pharma giant lower. And later, bounce back in Oracle after a rough month. how airline stocks are faring ahead of a busy holiday weekend, and the dark side of crypto, the$11 million Bitcoin heist making headlines, the potential impact on crypto pricing.

0:41I'm Melissa Lee coming to you live from Studio B at the NASDAQ. On the desk tonight, Steve Grasso, Guy Adami, Tim C. Warren, Mike Coe. We start off with Marcus heading into Thanksgiving stuffed with positive news. The major average is riding a four-day winning streak into the holiday. The S &P 500 up more than 3 % so far in this shortened trading week. The VIX, Wall Street's fear index, a far cry from last week's high, is now back below 18. The 10-year Treasury has dropped nearly 15 basis points in terms of yields in the last week, closing today just under 4%. And investors are once again betting there is now a really good chance the Fed will cut rates at the December meeting, odds swinging more than 50 % just from this time last week.

1:23So a seasonality on the horizon. This week's rebound. Do we think a year-long rally, year-end rally is coming? Guy. Gobble, gobble. I had to say that. Happy hump day. Let's get it out of our system now. OK, it's out. It's amazing. You know, Tim talked about this the other day. The fact that last week we were talking about, I was talking about the potential for an outside month to the downside when the S &P 500 was 6500 ish. We had made a new all time high in the month of November. We were flirting with the lows in October. They defended the 100 day moving average. And here we We are 250 or so handles higher.

1:59As a matter of fact, if something weird happens on Friday, you could have an outside month to the upside if we close on all-time highs. That's not out of the realm of possibility given what we're seeing. You mentioned the VIX getting tame again. It was absolutely showing warning signs a week or so ago. Yields coming down, even Bitcoin getting off the mat, all good things. And I got to tell you something, as we get into December, as bearish as I want to be, it's very hard given the calendar. You know, when you look at people and funds into year-end, And the reason why it's historically a positive sign or a positive seasonality for the market is if you're long the market, you want to see your stocks go higher.

2:35If you're underperforming the market, you want to average or you want to dress those positions up. So not saying that they're they're market manipulating, but you're more apt to buy this dip to make your existing positions look better than worse. So, you know, we always talk about the Fed and are they the biggest thing for the market? Well, did this week prove that? I think pretty much people are still worried about the Fed, right? So worried about Powell got a little more hawkish. That sent the market lower. And now we see a little more dovish and the market's higher. I think it's as simple as that.

3:10We had Waller on Monday telling another network that he would be inclined to cut rates. We have J.P. Morgan this afternoon flipping and now seeing a cut in December. Tim, so it does seem the Fed is a force in terms of Fed cut. Great for the markets. we are clear for that. There's a glide path forward. There's that glide path. And the Fed's always, of course. I mean, the fact that we're even, I don't think we're debating it. So let me just say, I thought it started last week, last Friday, and that's what turned the market was the Fed's Williams, New York Fed, arguably the most important Fed. And so you combine that with what was, it's a week, by the way that forgot NVIDIA.

3:52It's the week that NVIDIA forgot. And ultimately, the dynamic here is it's a great show for equities given that leadership coming from the semiconductors, which did lead, but not by NVIDIA, was there. So JP Morgan, the four mentioned, there they were upgrading their S &P to 7 ,500 next year, but they said it could actually be closer to 8 ,000 if we have a more dovish Fed. They qualified it and said we could go even higher. But at the root of they and other houses on Wall Street are the quality of earnings. And that really is, I think, part of the story here. This year-end rally and off of those lows, those intraday lows from last Friday, you've got almost a 10.5 % move in semis.

4:35You've got a almost 6 % move in the NASDAQ. Dare I utter the word small cap in the same sentence. And they rallied almost 8%. And so the question for investors often is during these bouts of volatility, should you you'd be doing anything or you should be buying. I'll just add one more thing is that retail showed both last Friday and on Monday. And this is actually data I got from JP Morgan, which is that they had one of their highest buying days, up days on Monday and 94 percentile up buying day on Monday after the kind of fallout from Friday. So I think retail is alive and well, and I think the market's going higher.

5:12And retail has largely been right all year. Michael, what do you see here going forward? Well, you brought up the VIX at the very beginning. Two things about that. The first is that we've seen multiple times this year that when the VIX has gotten north of 25, that that represented maybe a little bit of excess fear, a slightly oversold condition. And it seems like that was reiterated again very recently. The other thing about the VIX I would point out is that just because of the mechanics of how it is calculated, it looks 30 days in advance and is estimating the volatility that the S &P is going to experience over that intervening 30 days.

5:47But there would normally be what, 22 trading days in that session, in that period of time. Now we have slightly less because we've got a half day Friday, we're off tomorrow, and then we have a half day on Christmas Eve, and we're off on Christmas. So in that 30 day window, we're actually three days shy of the 22 you would normally experience. So the VIX is actually slightly higher, and it's on its way down. What does that tell me? I actually think there could be a little bit more room to the upside here because it seems like that oversold condition probably could run, you know, a little bit further from here.

6:18A little more to the upside, so more volatility potentially in these markets. I mean, what we've seen is something, I don't want to say extraordinary, but very interesting in terms of what has churned in this market. So we had Apple today, fresh all-time high, Alphabet coming off of all-time highs. And in the meantime, Tim mentioned the week that left behind NVIDIA, the week that left behind and Oracle. We're seeing this sort of rethink of AI, a rethink of AI spend, and therefore a rethink of who is leadership in big cap technology. Yeah, and if you had said to me, we play this game, if you had said to me, NVIDIA is going to be underperforming where the rest of these things, I'd be like, well, it's got to be dragging the rest of the market down with it, but it's not.

6:59I mean, the S &P has done this without NVIDIA. I mean, NVIDIA has been sort of meandering here at this sort of 180 level for quite some time. And quite frankly, it feels vulnerable to the downside, yet the broader market continues to grind higher. It's very impressive. And again, the fact that we traded down to those levels when we did and held it and defended it and it bounced the way we are, even I have to admit that's extraordinarily impressive. I felt that NVIDIA, you know, at 85 percent market share, it's a positive if that sells off and the others rally. The hyperscalers are creating their own chips.

7:33Not everyone needs the chip that NVIDIA creates. Some are basic needs. You have things that are just basically searching the web. You have things that really need inference. So I don't think that NVIDIA is on the top of the hill for long, but it's outlasted what I thought it would be able to run to. But how about from this point on? Yeah, I think the others do better than NVIDIA. I think Meta, Microsoft, the obvious ones do better. I think Amazon does better. So I think NVIDIA loses, they win. Oh, Mike, do you do you agree in terms of the churn within big cap technology, the reordering of the AI hierarchy, if you will?

8:14Well, I think it was a couple of weeks ago was my final trade. I mentioned Alphabet. We bought it on that dip the following Friday and we sold NVIDIA the day after earnings. You know, it's been a good run, but that was some relative weakness. It looks like that's not I mean, what are we down like one and a half, two percent from where we we sold it. But I agree with Steve that I think that you want to actually see it broaden out a little bit. And you don't need NVIDIA to carry the whole market by itself. I think that's kind of what this week illustrated. In terms of Apple, though, here we are sitting at all-time highs.

8:47Yeah, it's impressive. Money flows, I think, is a big part of it. You know, Tim has mentioned the fact that AI is probably not priced in. They seemingly, you know, maybe by being second or third, they're actually first in terms of the market rewarding them. It does make sense. Listen, I still think valuation is a problem. I get the install base and all those things, but you're really paying up here 32 times next year's numbers. Yep. For more on positioning your portfolio into year end, let's bring in Kathy Entwistle, Managing Director at Morgan Stanley Private Wealth Management. Kathy, great to have you here on set.

9:16Thanks. What are you telling clients? I mean, they call you right now and they're like, where are we in the markets? Because everything looks great. Absolutely. We're taking these opportunities where markets have volatility. Those are always opportunities for making changes, adding money in as markets are going down and also peeling off a little bit as they're rising. You're advocating or you're proposing to your clients that they sort of scale back on big cap technology. How is that message being received on the other end? Mostly, yeah, cautiously, but we're also we're scaling back. We're not we're not removing it.

9:49Right. We're just scaling back. So we're pulling back a little bit. But, you know, there were seven stocks in the S &P 500 that, like, you know, blew up the whole S &P 500, did great. 493 still remain. We think there's still opportunities in those other stocks as well. So we're trying to be more equal weighted, in a sense, and pull back on some of the overweights. What's changed, in your view, to move from an overweight to more of an equal weight on big cap technology? Just the fact that there's been such a run up, that there's been some issues with some of the companies not performing as well as they had been.

10:23And also that there's just more opportunity out there and we don't want to be concentrated. So, Kathy, when you look at it, I understand the diversification and the seven versus the 493. But those seven have actually earned all the revenues. Most of it. So how do you decide on where to diversify out of those seven? Are you looking small cap, which is unprofitable, in hopes that lower rates will help these companies? How do you decipher which ones you go to that have the revenue and the EPS tailwinds? Basically, the S &P 500, U.S. large cap, we like just very basic generic companies in a sense that we think have the opportunity to take the AI that's out in the markets and run with it.

11:05So we're not necessarily looking at all the AI companies. We're looking at which companies can run using AI and where we're going to get the most pop for our money there. I'll tell you, Kathy, both Tim and I are thinking of the great John Entwistle. I'm sure you've heard that before, but I had to mention it. With that said, private equity. I think you guys are trying to sort of get your clients involved. That's something new over the last couple of years. Can you speak to that? Yeah, absolutely. So we all remember the days of the big IPOs and a lot of the wealth creation happening at that IPO offering.

11:37Now we're finding that companies are staying private longer and the wealth creation is happening before a company goes public. So in that respect, we want our clients to participate in that growth and we are putting them in private markets. So it's not really private equity per se. It's private markets specifically. So potentially these unicorns that if they went public, they would be unicorns, but they're staying private longer. Like I don't know if it's open AI, but like an open AI. Right. Opportunities that where companies are staying private longer. to be able to participate in that growth.

12:09Also, when you think about infrastructure, we have private infrastructure, we have private equity, we have private credit. And private infrastructure, it used to be bridges, tunnels, roads. Now it's data centers and cell towers. So in that respect, you're getting access to maybe data centers that seem to be a very hot area to invest in right now, and you're getting easier access to it. How do you view the entire portfolio if you are trying to scale back on big tech exposure, but then you've got the exposure in private equity or private markets to data center? Absolutely. Well, it used to be a 60-40, 60 equity, 40 fixed income.

12:47That's not the case necessarily anymore. We're peeling back a little bit on the equity side. A lot of our clients have won the game. They don't need to take huge risks in the market. So we'll end up putting them, maybe get down to 55 % in equities, add the alternatives. And we still like fixed income. I heard someone earlier talking about maybe munis aren't working. We think munis are going to be really great first quarter next year. So get a little deeper on that risk curve. So what's the conversation like when you talk about crypto, whether it's specifically Bitcoin or how they're investing in it?

13:16Is it through ETFs? What modality are they using? Absolutely. We're using mostly ETFs. Clients are really curious and interested. I would say we're really at the beginning, the point of learning and understanding about crypto, at least our clients are. So we're trying to educate them, trying to have them dip their toe in the water. And ETFs seem to be the area where they're most comfortable stepping into that area right now. Kathy, great to see you. Thank you. Have a great Thanksgiving. Kathy Entwistle of Morgan Stanley. Mike Coe, what do you think about scaling back a little bit on big cap tech exposure?

13:53I think that's okay. I don't know that private credit would be the place that I would deploy that money, though. I actually think that there's probably a decent amount of risk in private credit, actually. I mean, I understand it's a fast-growing area, but I don't think, you know, these are not mark-to-market instruments. So that's something that I think I would caution people about if that's an area that they are contemplating right now. As far as fixed income is concerned, though, I think it can be in like the five to seven year tenors. And I think that actually the results are going to be reasonably attractive in that area.

14:27And I think there is a lid to where the rates are anyway. So that's going to be less duration. And we're probably not going to see those rates spike. So I think that's probably a good place to diversify. Private credit, private equity, unless you're a vulture investor, I'd probably stay away from those two areas. Tim? Well, I think you have a discussion about asset class allocation. And it also depends on just how high net worth the client is. What Kathy was talking about, some of those clients, ultra high net worths, for sure, they should be in alts and alts are non-correlated. And the question is, you know, what percentage of a portfolio should be in alts?

15:03I think the other question we've also digested over the last three to six months is what's going on with gold? Where is gold as an allocation? Where are precious metals? I think it's fascinating that really for the first time since they have been in institutional allocation, Bitcoin or crypto assets have had their first test and probably I wouldn't say they failed the test. I think it's been, again, a very interesting time to see how institutions have handled it. We've talked on this show how the fact that you now have it in institutional hands may mean it's in faster money, believe it or not, than some of the crypto hands.

15:37But fascinating conversation. Asset allocation for high net worth, ultra high net worth is different than it was. 60-40 is, I think, you know, it's not that it's outdated, but I do think it's yesterday's news. And I think you want to have as much tech today as you had yesterday. I agree with Tim real quick on the gold. To me, it's fascinating that the GDX did not sell off in a meaningful way. And if you look at it right now, it's still within sort of earshot of its all-time high, which I think is very encouraging. I think it speaks to the fact that people have not given up on the gold trade, nor should they.

16:10We've got breaking news we want to get to on the shooting in Washington, D.C. Eamon Javers has got some details here. Eamon. Melissa, authorities here in Washington just wrapped up a press conference giving some additional detail on that shooting that we saw here in Washington at just about 2.15 this afternoon, just a couple of blocks away from the White House. Most importantly, what authorities are saying is that the two National Guardsmen who were shot in the incident are alive. They are in critical condition. That contradicts the report that we had from the governor of West Virginia earlier, who said that both of those National Guardsmen had died.

16:44Now officials say they are in critical condition and they are receiving medical care. So that's the important headline there. Also, we're learning that the suspect is in custody and the suspect was shot in this instance by additional National Guardsmen who were on the scene. Not clear exactly who shot him, but they were able to subdue him after the shooting. The investigators are working on his identity now and looking at any connections that he might have had, but they say this was a single shooter and they believe that there are no other suspects at this time. They say this shooting happened right at the exit to the metro here, just around the corner from the White House, and that the shooter approached the National Guardsman, discharged his weapon immediately, and then almost immediately after that was set upon by the other National Guardsmen who were there.

17:36The Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, Secretary of War, as he refers to himself, is now calling for an additional 500 National Guardsmen to be sent to the District to Colombia to reinforce security here. He says he's doing that at the direction of the president of the United States. So we will see more troops on the streets here in Washington, D.C., Melissa. Back over to you. Eamon, thank you. Eamon Jabbers. Coming up, Oracle off the mat, the bounce in that stock after a rough month and why Wall Street says the tech giant isn't getting the love it deserves. Plus, the dark side of Bitcoin, the crypto heist making headlines and the millions stolen from one tech investor at gunpoint.

18:13The details ahead do not go anywhere. Fast Money is back in tune. This is Fast Money with Melissa Lee, right here on CNBC.

18:28Welcome back to Fast Money. Oracle shares showing signs of life jumping 4 % today as Deutsche Bank reaffirms its buy rating on the cloud company. The firm saying Oracle is getting little credit for its business with OpenAI, which they argue solidifies Oracle's leadership in deploying AI cloud infrastructure at scale. Shares are still down over 37 percent since its peak in September. Tim, would you agree with this assessment on Oracle? I would on valuation, and I would in terms of sentiment. I think it's absolutely overdone because it's starting with the premise that they are ground zero for AI debt concerns, even before they've really created an actual credit profile that should warrant that.

19:08If you look at the historical valuation somewhere here after a from that September 10 closing high, so not even the intraday high to even where it's now rallied back, it's still down 35 percent. It puts 26 multiple of EBIT somewhere around 22, 23, maybe even a bit lower. And that is in line with historical. So I just you know, I don't love Oracle. I don't love this. Let's put it this way. The strategy has been so much so fast and it has been extraordinary. It's hard to like the price action, which has been extremely volatile in both directions. Having said that now, after you've kind of round tripped a lot of that, I think the valuation makes sense.

19:49And those numbers, those multiples on 26 and even 27 are numbers before the open AI ingredients into top line and bottom line. So I kind of like the call. It feels like now Oracle's like a battleground stock, right? I mean, it's back to June levels, basically. So as Tim had mentioned, no open AI deals priced into the valuation here. DA Davidson yesterday said, you know what, if you take a look at the CDS, it's rising. And they don't believe in a default, but they're just saying the market is realizing that what is being priced in is this notion that maybe Oracle, that they're based there depending on spend that's going to happen from a customer that may or may not actually see the returns.

20:30Yeah. May not be there ultimately. I went back and watched all the September 10th videos, read a bunch of stories, and people were tripping over themselves to say. And I think we talked about it either that night or a couple nights later. It didn't make a lot of sense to us, excuse me, collectively, just because the revenue is fine. But we didn't know what the earnings were in the back of it. Now, subsequently, I never thought we'd back and fill to levels. We got to here we are. I don't think it was meant to be at three hundred and twenty something dollars. I don't think it should have traded below 200.

20:59It'll sort of sift in. Tim is right. Valuation, you can get your arms around. And prior to this, this was sort of a slow and steady old tech play that was working. Now they put a bullseye on their back, whether they realize it or not. If you look back to those June levels gapped up from one 70s up to two 15 or so, I would look at this week's lows somewhere around one 94. four. Use that as your stopout if you have to be long the stock. But I think it bounces further. By the way, the Deutsche Bank analyst,$375 price target on this one, Mike. Yeah, not for me. Look, I mean, if you're concerned about the trade in the AI space in general and you're trying to look for kind of a long and a short, I just don't understand why you wouldn't continue to be long a name like Alphabet and potentially on the short side an Oracle.

21:47It's still trading a turn or two above its long-term average. It has negative free cash flow. It's, you know, it's not one of the ones that I would pick to continue into that trade. If anything, it would be the opposite side of the ones that I like in this space. Coming up, the dark side of the crypto trade. How a recent crypto heist is putting the safety of self-storage into focus and the impact it could have on Bitcoin prices. You're watching Fast Money Live from the Nasdaq Market Side in Times Square back right after this.

22:22Welcome back to Fast Money, a dark side of the crypto trade coming into focus after a targeted heist left one tech investor robbed of$11 million worth of Bitcoin and Ethereum. Mackenzie Sigal has got the details on this one. Mackenzie. Hey, Melissa. So Y Combinator CEO Gary Tan, a friend of the victim, posted security footage showing someone posing as a delivery man rushing into a San Francisco home in broad daylight. Now, police say the intruder tied up the resident, demanded access to his financial accounts, and then stole about$11 million worth of crypto using the digital keys that were stored on the victim's laptop and phone.

22:57And inside the industry, these are known as wrench attacks, where criminals have realized that it's often easier to show up with a weapon than hack a wallet online. Facial recognition, that makes it even simpler. You tie a victim up, point the phone at their face, and then drain their account. Based on public reports, there have been more than 60 of these physical attacks on digital asset investors so far this year. NBC News has identified crypto-related kidnappings in 44 countries, including brutal cases in France and a high-profile abduction and torture of a trader in a Manhattan townhouse last year.

23:28I will say this, we tend to see upticks during market surges like last November as Bitcoin hit a new record high after the election and in tandem with the run-up we saw last month. Mel? Wow. Mackenzie, thank you. Mackenzie Sigalos. This happens, obviously, if it's self-storage, self-custody. But I guess in theory, with facial recognition, you can also access a Coinbase account. Which is terrifying. Uh-huh. It is. And that's just the world we live in now, unfortunately. Now, I don't know if you necessarily want to trade around this, but one, it's a horrible thing. Two, I think it's very encouraging that Bitcoin got off the mat the way it did, because we were precariously close to trading at the level that is, to me, concerning.