Fast Money 5/13/25

0:02Live from the NASDAQ market side in the heart of New York City's Times Square. This is Fast Money, and here is what's on tap for tonight. In the chips, the semis on a roll now up over 22 % in the past month, led by outsized moves in Micron, Texas Instruments, and Broadcom. NVIDIA now also joining that party. Is the rebound for real? We're going to debate. Plus, unhealthy returns. UnitedHealth plunging as the CEO steps down and the company pulls its guidance for the year. Could the stock be approaching the so bad it's good level? And then later on, what has Boeing flying high in the last month?

0:40We're going to go off the charts with Uber. And then shares of coin up a pretty penny. Can they keep going higher? You get it, guys, right? I'm Dominic Chiu. And from Melissa Lead and I coming to you live from Studio B at the NASDAQ MarketSide. On the desk here with me, Tim Seymour, Bono and Eisen, Carter Worth, and Guy Adami. I'm going to just say Guy. Gary, Gary, Gary, Gary. I'm going to say Gary. All right. We're going to start, guys, with that red-hot chip trade. The semiconductor ETF, the ticker SMH, is spiking 22 % over the last month. It's up nearly 10 % in just the last two days. NVIDIA is jumping 12 % since the start of the week.

1:18And once again, joining the rarefied heir of the$3 trillion market cap club. This comes as President Trump announced a$600 billion investment by Saudi Arabia. and along with his host, MBS. He also met with Jensen Huang of NVIDIA, Lisa Su of AMD. We're going to have more on that in just a couple of minutes. But despite the broad gains in the markets, the 10-year yield hitting 4.5 % on the nose, again, for the first time in just over a month. Guy. Yes, sir. Guy. Yes, sir. This has been a key level for you, 4.5%. But Tim. Tim over there. That's me. Guys over here, we're going to start with what's happening with the 10-year yield and what exactly is happening there.

2:05Well, first of all, welcome, as always. It's always a pleasure to be here. It's a lovely tie you're wearing, by the way. I'm going to tell you more about the tie, by the way. I mean, if you remember, it was a couple weeks ago, probably three weeks ago, that the bond market was absolutely melting down overnight between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. our time here on the East Coast. And I think that caught the attention of a lot of people, and justifiably so. Next day, the president said a couple things that sort of cooled people, swayed some of the concerns. and yields backed off. But we're right back to those levels again, albeit probably for different reasons.

2:33But I do think it should be somewhat concerning because here's an environment where, you know, inflation seemingly is coming down in the report today, yet 10-year yields continue to grind higher. I think that's one thing. Listen, everybody's excited about the S &P. They should be. But the market should be more focused on what yields are doing, I think. All right. So the yield picture is there. Let's talk about the semiconductors. Hot trade. Is it going to stay that way? Well, first of all, speaking of hot guy, I think is right on the tenure, although I actually like it at 460 and I like it at 460, at least with the economy doing what it's doing.

3:04We talk all the time where we have been difference between soft and hard. Hard data is fine and it probably warrants 460. But back to the chips, if you want this market to go higher and again, call whatever shape you think this is in terms of letters of the alphabet. But this looks a lot like a V and it actually looks like that V that goes a little bit higher and up. What is that in math terms? Isn't there like a symbol in math that's like the V that kind of I took a stick, but that's anyway. It's like the square root symbol. I think something. I failed calculus. That's how I met my wife. So it's it's still good.

3:36But but ultimately, the chips leadership is extraordinary. And if you look at the intraday low on the seventh, the semiconductor index, whether it's the SMH, the Sox, you name it, a 49 percent off that intraday low. Now, there's a lot of reasons why semis were underperforming on the way down. And then there's both some of the news over the last couple of days, but even along the way of the last 39 days when they've outperformed the S &P by 17 percent. You've gotten other ingredients into the reasons why we were buying chips very hard for two years. Carter, I'm sure, has a view on market leadership and what you might need, what you might not need.

4:10To me, you need the semis. And if you look at the last 40 days, whether you like it or not, they are taking markets higher with them. And NVIDIA, the biggest of the semis, even though, yes, the industrial chips like Texan and Micron have had a great renaissance. NVIDIA is actually outperforming semis. And that's exactly what you want to see. I know people want to poo-poo that. I like that trade. All right, Carter, for years now, I've heard traders say that semiconductors are the leading indicator for the rest of the tech space, whether you believe it or not. Do the charts bear that out? Well, they're the cyclical beta theme within tech, right?

4:44The software is a more stable. This is a more boom-bust. People get in to book to bill and we got too many. We don't have enough and so forth. But in terms of they peaked earlier. Remember, the stock market peaked February 19th, as you know, but semis peaked in July. Semis also dropped 42 percent. The S &P dropped 21 percent. That's beta. That's cyclicality. And so this ricochet is more violent than that in the market because its sell-off was more violent. Again, down 42 percent from a high versus 21 for the S &P. So it's beta, it's juice, it's cyclicality, and right now it's well bid. The question is, does it have a lot more room to run?

5:22I would hedge here or trim longs. Oh, okay. Bono, what do you think? Yeah, you know, I tend to agree. You know, Guy kicked off the show talking about the 10-year and how we got here. And I really think the path to getting back to that 4.5 level is quite important. A couple of things. You know, now that we've had this massive bounce or ricochet or V-shape back to, you know, the April levels, I think you really start to look and see, as well as having the fact that earnings are out of the way, whether or not the multiple, essentially the difference in premium that you're getting for owning equities is commiserate with the risk that you're taking vis-a-vis the risk-free rate.

6:00And I think that's, I don't want to like parse words and put words in a guy's mouth, but I think at least that's what that elucidates for me. At 4.5%, do I really start looking at more fixed income products versus chasing the rally that we've already had? And then in terms of the semi-trade that Tim mentioned, clearly you want to see leadership from that AI, because that's really the catalyst for growth and leadership. But the industrials, I don't think, should be overlooked. And I think that also gets you back to the 10-year level, because now what you're seeing is, being that you're seeing that those, you know, the Texans, the Marbells, the Microns of the world rallying 4 % or 5%, You're seeing economic growth projections, and I think that's being reflected.

6:37Nothing like getting the capital asset pricing model conversation into the conversation early. OK, so for more on that$600 billion Saudi investment and all the semis that are going to be sold there in Saudi, let's bring in Christina Parts and Nevelis for that story. This is one where it could be a ton, maybe even literally, of chips that are going to be sold into possibly into the Middle East. is this really the game changer fundamentally that gets these trades higher and higher? I would say yes, because it's one door that closes, another one that opens. And I say the door closing would be China, right?

7:12So 13 percent of total revenues for 2024. Here is Saudi Arabia going to buy hundreds of thousands of supercomputer chips. And we don't need to go into the names of all of these chips, but they committed to that. And not only with NVIDIA, with AMD, there was other announcements with AWS, Cisco, Qualcomm even. But the big news, why you saw the stock really jump 6 % is they got the green light to start shipping their products to Saudi Arabia without having the gatekeeper, which is the United States. Previously, up until today, you would have to get U.S. export licenses. AMD and video would have to get these chip, these licenses in order to sell X amount of chips to Saudi Arabia.

7:51Why is that? Not only Saudi Arabia, Middle Eastern countries because of the ties with China. China is Saudi Arabia's largest trading partner. So a lot of people think, oh, the technology just ends up over there, backdoor, right? Well, it seems like that sentiment has changed. Perhaps you can say because the president was receiving all of these U.S. investments. But here's an opportunity now for NVIDIA to reap the benefits of this change in policy by shipping their advanced technology. And we're talking advanced because when he took the stage today, that's what struck me as so remarkable today was it was Blackwell racks.

8:23You're mouthing it. You're saying Blackwell with me. I saw it on the video. It was crazy. Yes, that is a big move in why you saw the stock. However, if you look at the reaction, maybe some say that this is already priced in. It's retail traders really just trading on the headlines. Production really needs to ramp up quite a bit for NVIDIA to actually benefit from said purchases. Like you said, it could happen. But reaping the benefits in terms of the fundamentals may not happen until 2026, 2027, which is great because there's that time when the door closes and this Saudi Arabia door opens. This Jensen relationship with the administration is one that has a lot of people focused on just how well NVIDIA can do, given the fact that now he is very much in the inner circle, if you will, of business leaders surrounding President Trump.

9:09Oh, yeah. If that is the case, is it just really NVIDIA? Is that the only place that traders and investors are looking because it is so close to the administration? You mentioned AMD. We haven't really talked about Intel. He mentioned Trump did himself, Taiwan Semiconductor, in his remarks. He called it Qualcomm. So if there is this ecosystem around it, is this truly the rising tide that's going to lift the entire chip sector? And there's also Broadcom, too, that's actually outperformed. Tim and I were talking about this before coming on set. That's what we do. Yeah, I'm just always talking about chips and stocks and stuff like that.

9:44It is an opportunity because there is so much money, and they're looking to pivot away from the oil investments towards – They say they want AI to contribute about 12 percent of GDP in Saudi Arabia. This is coming from, you know, locally statistics over there. And so there's an opportunity. They have a lot of cash at hand. They want to improve their data infrastructures, their supercomputers. Number one company to do so and help with that as the backbone is NVIDIA. But it doesn't mean that there's not opportunities for other smaller players, too. And not just the chip names, but you also have all of the like the Ethernet company companies as well.

10:18coherent, for example, let's just say, or anybody that helps with the liquid cooling side. So maybe the server assemblers, too. So it could open a big door to your question. All right. There we go. There's the trade of the semiconductors right now. Christina Parts and Nevelis, thank you very much for that. All right. Now, from the chip surge to the crushing day for United Health, that stock is sinking 18 percent after the surprise exit of CEO Andrew Witte and the suspension of this guidance for the rest of the year. Witte will be replaced by Stephen Hemsley, familiar name. He held the CEO role from 2006 to 2017.

10:50The stock has nearly been cut in half since the CEO of its insurance unit was murdered back on December 4th. The big question now is, do we think that this is a bottom after everything we've seen over the course of the last few months? Let's bring in Sarah James, the managing director at Cantor Fitzgerald, covers UnitedHealth, UNH, and many of the peer companies in its group. Sarah, can you just take us through right now? This has been a dramatic fall for a Dow component. What exactly is driving this much downside? It can't just be the CEO change. No, it's actually a margin issue with one of their core products, Medicare Advantage.

11:34So what insurance is sold to seniors? And we got a first glimpse of it in the first quarter. We knew that there was a little bit of a problem. They took guide down. But what we learned today is that it's broader. It's not just senior retirees and group accounts like your state employee teacher union. It's also individual seniors and high acuity seniors. So there's been some cost compression and they suspended guidance while they brought in probably one of the best CEOs in the industry who has operational and strategic expertise, has run a Medicare turnaround and we believe is the best person to have in place at this phase for the company.

12:12I mean, he was the CEO for over a decade, was the executive chairman for the balance of those years since around 2017. It's not like there's a continuity issue here. This is the person who's been at the top of the chain for a while. What exactly is it going to be that makes you feel as though this is a stock that can meaningfully turn around in the next several quarters? Yeah, and that's a true statement. We're calling this as the bottom. We think that they've taken out all the earnings uncertainty in here. We just cut our numbers today to what we think is a really realistic floor of about$23.25 and getting up a little bit above$26 next year.

12:53that allows them to reprice next year for Medicare Advantage, bring up margins. Next year's a great year for them. They have margin expansion in Medicaid, Medicare, Optum Health, Optum Insight. There's a lot of tailwinds coming up once we get past this uncertainty. And I think that's what the new management team is really trying to do, is set the floor for where the base is. Now that we know where all the problems are, you can take out the entirety of that earnings. We know it's still profitable, but go ahead and be conservative and make it a new base to grow from there. Hey, Sarah. Yeah, I agree.

13:29And in fact, part of the performance of UnitedHealth over the last, say, three or four years up until this point where the stock's been effectively cut in half was that it deserved a higher multiple because it was growing faster than its peers. It really was an extraordinary story. What the market has done to the stock and leaving fundamentals aside, but popping this kind of into your model or any other analyst, it seems to me we're somewhere around, you know, the midpoint of the pre-25 guide, which is somewhere around 26 bucks a share for 26, which leaves you at 12, 13 times, which is a multiple that to me, again, is my math wrong?

14:03And if not, what changed today? Because otherwise this thing seems like it's not just, you know, an opportunity, but an opportunity a lot of people have been waiting for. Yeah, it's days like this where I wish I could invest in stocks that I cover because I would be loading it up into my retiree account. You know, this stock outside of 2008 when we had the CDO market collapse has not traded this low. This is a diversified model. They have a lot of businesses that are doing well that are going to go into margin expansion mode the next couple of years. So you rarely get a discount like this. So you're right.

14:40Twelve times is an unusually low amount. The way that we think about it is we get a quarter or two ahead of now. Guidance comes back into play. Confidence comes back. They've repriced their Medicare book. And you can start to get to that sort of mid-teens type of multiple. And if you get there, that's 30%, 40 % plus upside. So we think this is a great time to be looking at a diversified player like United. All right. Sarah Carter, Canter, Covers Yan, United Health Group. Thank you very much. We're going to talk to you again soon, I'm sure. Thank you. All right. Carter, you once called this stock godlike.

15:19And what the charts show right now is what could be a falling knife for a lot of folks out there. You wonder if God's fallen off of Zeus. So this is a stock that's up like 20x over the S &P and almost every stock in it. And now it's having a bad moment. I think you'd be contrarian here. just what we heard from the guest, and you step in and buy. All right, so one more question to follow up. Maybe, Bondowin, I'll go to you on this one. If you look at UNH, this is a stock that was the most heavily weighted member of the Dow just two years ago, three years ago. It is now the seventh most heavily weighted member of the Dow because it's a price-weighted index.

15:56What exactly is enough for you to say, you know what, this is too much of a value, I got to get in? probably if I start to see a break trend or if I were to start to see short interest really increase I would look for a you know a counter trend move there if you're asking me for specific things that I'd be looking for that would say okay actually I feel like cinnamon is overdone I think short interest would give you that RSI kind of dropping below 30 I need to see where it is now I can't tell you that number right off top of my head but those would be like indicators that would at least give me some type of quantitative and tactical tool that I can point to and say you know what, at this point, I feel like cinnamon is overdone.

16:32Okay, guys, thank you very much for the UNH stuff. Coming up on the show, a big day for Boeing as April orders and deliveries help boost shares. The tailwind numbers giving that trade some air coming up next. Plus, auto stocks making headlines today. And while markets keep climbing on tariff cuts, a former Ford chief says the threat is still very real for the automakers. The potential impact on those names when Fast many returns after this break. You're watching Fast Money here on CNBC. We'll be right back.

17:12Welcome back to Fast Money. Shares of Boeing topping the tape, surging two and a half percent and hitting a 52-week high after posting strong delivery numbers for the month of April. Phil LeBeau has got all the details. Phil. And, Dom, deliveries is really the focus. It's not that these are spectacular numbers for the month of April, but they are steady progress. That's what the investors and the Wall Street community want right now when it comes to Boeing. Take a look at this. In April, they delivered 45 airplanes. That means year-to-date deliveries total 175. 45, by the way, matches the high that they also achieved in terms of monthly deliveries back in January.

17:48You have 737 MAX year-to-date deliveries now at 133 as they gradually ramp up deliveries of the MAX because they're increasing production. And then there's the China news. China is interesting because while it's just about 10 % of the order backlog, they want to not have deliveries stop. And there was news on that front today. Look at this. In Q1, delivered 18 planes. In April, there were two deliveries before China said, hold on, we're going to take a pause on deliveries while this trade war escalated. Now, reportedly, they're back into the business of accepting aircraft. If they do, the remainder of 25, there are about 50 airplanes that could be delivered to China this year.

18:31In terms of orders, it's not a huge market right now. The industry is pretty well backlogged. And as a result, orders in April, just eight planes for Boeing. Year-to-date orders coming out to 212. And a couple of other notes. As you take a look at a two-year chart of Boeing, the reason we're showing you a two-year chart, we haven't seen this level for the stock since, what, early 24? The last time it was above$200 a share. The backlog stands at 5 ,643 planes. And, Dom, today they announced an order. It's not part of the April orders, but they announced an order out of Saudi Arabia, like so many companies over there with the president and the Trump administration.

19:11This was to Avi Lease, a Saudi Arabian jet aircraft leasing firm. 30 planes, up to 37.37 maxes. So yet another piece of news today that made people say, I like what I'm seeing from where Boeing is right now. All right, Phil LeBeau with the latest there on Boeing, Dow Component. Thank you very much for that. Tim, I'm going to turn to you for this one. You can't look at it from a valuation perspective because it's negative on a trailing basis, the PE. It's negative on a forward basis. They're going to lose money for a while. That's what the estimates are. How do you pick when to get into it? It's already up 15%, by the way.

19:44Well, as our viewers know, Dom, and I know you follow the fast money acronyms as well because most people do, but it is the B in bland. And it was the B in bland because I didn't expect 25 to be a gangbuster year in terms of profitability. I do expect it to be a gangbuster year in terms of turnaround. If you look at these delivery numbers, even for year over year for April, There's some there's some I think some startling and important numbers in there, including 29 max versus 16 a year ago. That that really is part of the story, I think, that you want to see, especially with the max and all the regulatory issues there.

20:14The change in culture around engineering, I think, is slow to happen. But as you said, they lost 20 over over 20 bucks a share last year. I actually think they're going to eke out a small amount of profit this year. I think the street says they're going to lose 50 cents a share. But by 26, they're going to make four to five dollars a share. The free cash flow, I think, will be significant. I also think sentiment-wise, why wouldn't you be one of these countries on the other side of the table saying we're going to be buying a lot more aircraft? These are big ticket items. These are big things on trade balance.

20:43And I think Boeing is in a sweet spot. Carter, the chart, it has to look OK. It's still up 15 percent already this year. Sure. It's the definition of a bearish to bullish reversal. Remember, the stock is still down 50 percent from its high. That was back in 2019, 400 and something a share. Here we are at, what, 203. But that's how it starts. You go down and down and down. At some point, you base and bottom. Altogether different from UnitedHealthcare, which is still plunging, more speculative to catch a falling knife, where something that's based and is up 15 percent, that makes it even better.

21:14All right. There we go. There's the Boeing trade. Thank you very much, guys. There's a lot more to come on Fast Money. Here's what's coming up next. The rally rolls on as markets continue their tariff cut climb. But one former Ford exec says the automakers are still facing a real threat, the latest pressure on the industry. Next, plus crypto's major milestone as the S &P 500 welcomes Coinbase in with open arms. What it means for the stock, crypto, and the latest read on how retail investors are navigating the recent rally from the lows. You're watching Fast Money, live from the NASDAQ market side in Times Square.

21:52We're back right after this.

22:02All right. Welcome back. There's just a handful of tickets left for the next Fast Money Live event on June 5th. You'll watch the show here at the NASDAQ live, maybe ask a question live on the air, and then you're going to stick around for an exclusive Q &A session, followed by some one-on-one time with the traders and a top-shelf cocktail hour, plus a great one-of-a-kind piece of Fast Money memorabilia. And for those of you who don't already have it, a six-month subscription to CNBC Pro. So just scan that QR code on your screen or head over to cnbcevents.com slash fastmoney. Guys, is the invitation still open to kind of, you know, come in?

22:40Last time you were here. I know. So here's what I want to say, Guy, and I want to turn for you to this. This tie, I was at a charity golf event just yesterday at Sleepy Hollow. People who follow me on social media know, right? This tie was the MC's tie, and it was given to me by a guy from Cleveland. He wants to remain anonymous, but I've got to give him a shout-out. This is the tie, right? The reason I'm saying this is because there are a lot of people out there who love having conversations with people in person. Well, I'll tell you what. And a lot of CNBC fans are out there. I feel like, I mean, first of all, this tie is a baseball tie.

23:10I'm a huge baseball fan. In fact, the stadium series this weekend in the Bronx is actually, they're going to turn that into Shea Stadium because I think the Mets are going to dominate. But this tie right here, I can tell you this tie and the tie, I just volunteered Guy's tie. These ties are gifts. These are special gifts. And we're grabbing that tie, too. For somebody who's going to come out here for this event. That's right. 100%. But they've got to be here from Ohio for your tie, I think. Right? Cleveland. Cleveland rocks. Sleepy Hollow is beautiful. Folks should come. I don't think there are many tickets left.