Fast Money 9/17/25

0:00Hi, it's Melissa. Before we jump into today's show, I've got something exciting to share. On December 11th, we are hosting a special edition of Fast Money Live, trading the holidays right here at the NASDAQ market site. You get to watch a live taping of Fast Money, meet and interact with the traders, and, of course, celebrate the holiday season with us. It's stocks and cheers in the heart of the city, Times Square in December. You will not want to miss this. Tickets are available now at CNBCEvents.com slash Fast Money. Live from the NASDAQ market site right here in the heart of New York City's Times Square, this is Fast Money.

0:33Here's what's on tap. The Fed in focus. Jerome Powell and company delivering on a rate cut. Stocks mostly shrugging it off, but one group had a nice pop. We're going to dissect what may be in store for the rest of the year. Lilly's next move. They want to sell you an obesity pill. Will investors buy in? Plus, the retail rally. Lyft scoring a big win in the rideshare battle. and why the chart master says it is time right now to sell maybe the biggest China name of all. Hi, everybody. I am Brian Sullivan in for Melissa Lee tonight. Coming to you live from the Studio B at the NASDAQ. And on your desk tonight, Mr.

1:11Tim Seymour, Dan Nathan. What's up, Sally? Steve Grasso. How are you doing, Tim? And Michael Cantopoulos. He is the deputy chief investment officer at Richard Bernstein Advisors. Also, have Carter Worth coming up in just a minute. Tim looks a little underdressed in that picture, huh? How so? Well, you guys are just. I don't know what's going on. This kid can't go off the rails. We're not like after 20 years of change in the uniform tonight, all right? Sandy Cannell, let's make he wants blood pressure down. All right. Let us start with where else the Fed and stocks. The Dow making a new high. Small caps got a little bit bigger.

1:49The Nasdaq, though, did not play a starring role here on Broadway. Some tech stocks pulled back. In bonds, don't get your hopes up that mortgage rates are going to come crashing down anytime soon. The 10-year yield ending pretty much where it began the day. Oil and gold both lower as the U.S. dollar actually did something it hasn't done a lot of. It actually went higher against most major currencies. All this, of course, after the Federal Reserve did what pretty much everybody expected. It cut its overnight lending rate by one quarter of one percent. Question, of course, now is what now? Newly appointed Governor Stephen Myron, the only board member voting for a full one-half percentage point cut.

2:31Let's get now some of the headlines of the man who is right there in the room where it happened. Steve Leisman with more. Steve. Thanks, Brian, and thanks for not breaking into song. The Fed gave the market almost exactly what it wanted, a 25-base point rate cut and a forecast for two more. But it also introduced some risk into the outlook. Look, there was an expected dovish dissent for a 50 base point cut by Fed Governor Stephen Meyer, but also widespread disagreement on the committee over the right path for rates. Ordinarily, when the labor market is weak, inflation is low. And when the labor market is really strong, that's when you have to be careful about inflation.

3:08So we have a situation where we have two sided risk. And that means there's no risk free path. And so it's quite a different difficult situation for policymakers. And it's not at all surprising to me that you have a range of views. A huge range of views. In fact, one person on the committee in their forecast did not want to cut. Six wanted no more cuts. Two wanted one more cut. Nine wanted two more cuts this year. Three, by the way, was the average. One person who we think is Stephen Myron wanted five more cuts this year. That forecast for deep cuts, by the way, called outrageous by Jeffrey Gunlock, but could be a sign of things to come.

3:50According to Joe Buswelles, he said, given the coming changes to Federal Reserve personnel next year, we urge all to take this forecast with more than a grain of salt and would strongly suggest the Federal Reserve is moving in a direction where it will tolerate inflation well above target. Gunlock himself was concerned about negative interest rates. Futures markets trading, though, with confidence that there will be at least two cuts this year, maybe more confidence than Powell expressed. The key to the immediate outlook may be in the statement. It said that downside risks for employment have increased.

4:18As long as that's the case, the Fed may be cutting rates until inflation and employment risks are believed to be balanced. Brian? Any talk about this so-called, you know, third agenda that they may have about keeping interest rates stabilized for a long period? kind of adding that third leg to the Fed's stool along with the job market and overall inflation? So just to be clear, Brian, I've always known that was there, but it was never an aim of policy. The policy has always been focused on getting essentially inflation to target and doing so with maximum or the best you could do when it comes to employment.

4:58The idea of stable interest has always been in the Federal Reserve Act, but it's never been a focus of policy. I don't hear it right now, Brian, as a focus of policy, but I do hear people like Gunlak talking about this concern. I'll read you this quote that he said here real quickly where he said, I think the job interview that is for chair will be what will you do what I tell you to do? And if the answer is no, I think you're not going to be Fed chair. So that's one of the concerns I will point out, though, and I think this is worth pointing out. The best way to secure or to improve your position for Fed chair would have been to dissent for a 50.

5:35Chris Waller and Mickey Bowman, both Fed chair candidates, did not do that today. Well said. And a lot of drama, not just around interest rates, but inside the Fed and the statement as well. Steve Leesman, we're glad you're there. Steve, thank you very much. All right, guys, let's go around the table, talk about sort of put policy to action. Tim, your take on the Fed today. It was a hawkish cut. There was no drama. In fact, that's what we wanted. It's what the market wanted. It's what the institution of the Federal Reserve wanted. And I think if you look at what the market had priced in, it had absolutely priced in 25.

6:09But it was it was it was inching for more than two rest of year and one in 26. I don't think it's a disaster. The downgrade of the labor market also no real surprise here. But when you hear that from the Fed and what we all say all the time is that a growth scare is something that would be a lot more powerful than the Fed not doing another 25 or 50 basis points. They didn't say that. I'm kind of happy we got this one out of the way, because I actually think this was as uneventful outside of what it is for the institution of the Federal Reserve. And I thought, you know, Bowman and Waller did a great job.

6:42Even with the Myron call for half-point cut? What did you expect? I mean, I don't I I expected that. are expected an outlier, and that's what we got. Everyone else voted in line. Yeah, I think those two folks that dissented in the last meeting, I think it's pretty interesting that they didn't dissent this time. It was such a big deal. We hadn't seen two dissenters in a very long time. That was kind of the narrative when you looked at that last meeting. So at the end of the day, I think they kind of did what they did or needed to do. They signaled, you know, what is going to be the case. I don't think there was too much expectations that there would be that much more than 75 basis points this year.

7:13I'm actually a little surprised at just two expected 25 basis point cuts next year. But they seem pretty much in the camp that their dual mandate is fairly balanced right here. And, you know, I just think of this. The stock market basically closed flat. You know, the 10-year yield closed flat. I mean, this is the sort of market we're going to be in. I think that PCE that's coming up is at the end of next week. I mean, might that be something that folks are, you know, concerned with? We saw the inflation readings over the last two weeks. We just didn't see any stock market volatility in around those sorts of things.

7:44Yeah, but we have an S &P, Dan, that's up, I think, and don't at me as Guy would say, 10 % over the last three months. So was it a buy the rumor? We also had gold. You know, gold has gone up 11 % in that same time period. When's the last time we could ever remember that gold has gone up in tune with a huge rip in the stock market? So there is some stuff going on under the surface. Yeah, and rates did come down ahead of this, to your point. We saw yields come down basically 10 % in the last two months from the 30-year down to the two-year. So I think there was a lot of pre-loading, front-loading on this.

8:17I think there's going to be more 25 basis point cuts. Three in a row. Maybe we'll get that. But just remember, May— I think that many— There's only seven people called for no cut. Yeah, things change. Expectations change on a dime. And let's remember, May 2026, Powell's not going to be there. So I think the more you get closer to that or head into that date of May, the more dovish the Fed actually becomes. And those dissenters probably get louder. Yeah, because, Michael, I'm going to say something now that's going to offend approximately 99 % of our audience. Which isn't something not terribly new.

8:52It's not everybody. Which is that if you're running a hedge fund or you're Goldman Sachs or any of your clients, if you wait until the Fed actually makes a rate call to say, oh, let's now buy stocks, you're done. You're fired. You're finished. Wall Street did not wait. For weeks, they've been buying bonds, bringing yields down, buying gold, buying stocks. Yeah, I'm going to be a little bit of the party pooper here. You know, every time the Fed cuts rates because of poor growth, you don't basically have a durable rally until they get well below neutral and you're actually stimulative. So unless you think they are now below neutral and that they're only cutting because of some sort of immaculate disinflation, you shouldn't actually be buying today's cut.

9:35No one really small caps a little bit. Well, not only that. Well, you have to think about the rally that we've seen has been anticipation of this cut. Right. So so it's already happened. The rally because of the cut has happened. In my view, you know, Chair Powell indicated that he's caught between a rock and a hard place. And I think that was actually a pretty bearish message. He basically said, listen, guys, this is an insurance cut. This is not the start of a new cutting cycle because we can't because we're worried about inflation. And that's not necessarily positive. So I want to that's fascinating.

10:06And so does that mean that as of Jackson Hole, it would sell the market? Because ultimately what you're saying is any type of a cut environment, and that's where the Fed really pivoted. Leave the politics aside. Let's talk about the data, which is I know what you're doing. And I hear you historically. But again, if you think about all the accommodation and where rates were as a function of COVID and nothing else, and hanging on too long that these cuts are in line with the history you're talking about. You know, I don't think so, because I don't think the Fed is actually restrictive. Right. If you look at financial conditions, they're incredibly easy.

10:39And so, you know, I just disagree with the idea of the Fed being restrictive at the moment. And, you know, unless you get, listen, and it is possible, Tim, if you get falling inflation without growth rolling over, it's a boon to the market. We know that, right? But what's the likelihood that you're not going to get inflation or serious margin compression from tariffs? I think that's very, very low. Let's stay right there because I will, and we got a great guest, a perfect guest actually to answer this because I'm going to say something too. And this is one of the reporters, I can't remember who, followed up with Jerome Powell and said, I'm confused.

11:13I was listening to Jerome Powell. I was a little confused. He didn't sound as focused as maybe I would have liked him to be. But it doesn't matter what I think. Let's bring in Richard Fisher, former Dallas Federal Reserve president, also a CBC contributor, a senior advisor to Jeffries. Richard, good to see you. Do you feel like Powell may be a little confused? And maybe it's not his fault. If so, you could say, no, he's not. But when you've got AI out there, you've got this weird thing happening with jobs. And to Tim's point, you're coming off of four or five years where everything was kind of muddled up by COVID.

11:50I think we could forgive him if he is. Or am I wrong? Was he completely lucid today? Look, I don't like the word confused. I thought he was quite honest. It's not clear in terms of the balance of risk, which he articulated. We have some opposite forces acting here. Obviously, inflation is running closer to the 3 % level. And by the way, if that's the case, you should always have a positive real return. Otherwise, you hamper capital formation for businesses. So they're close to that presently as inflation is running at the same time. And I thought he was pretty articulate on this, which is the reason that we have weak employment statistics, in addition to the revisions and all that kind of stuff, is because of, he didn't say it directly, but because of the fiscal policy and because of immigration policy.

12:44So I didn't hear any confusion. I just heard a great articulation. I want to say one thing, though. Now, as far as Bowman is concerned and Waller, I was rather proud of them because they stuck to their sense of economic logic. And clearly, it's not just voting for 50 base points this time, but for five cuts. It's very clear that Mr. Myron will only do what the president wants. And the best part about that, in my view, having been on that committee for 10 years, the way you win an argument is through persuasion. and economic logic and presenting the data as you see it, he's having no influence whatsoever.

13:27And I think that's a good thing. We'll see how this evolves. He didn't have a chance to read the materials before the meeting. And we'll have to see when the transcript finally comes out how he behaved. And I assume that was civil. But the nice thing is he had no influence. He had no influence, no influence on the argument. And that's pretty clear. And projecting five cuts going forward, he's way out left field. Or should I say way out in right field in the case of this administration? I see what you did there. You said a lot. That's why we love having you on, Richard, by the way. So let's try to unpack this one by one.

14:04Okay. Stephen Myron also, by the way, has kind of a dual role in the White House and in the Fed, which I don't think if we've seen it before, it's probably like in the 20s or 30s. And you'll forgive me for my lack of deep Fed history. You can comment on that. But what I'll say and what I meant by Jerome Powell at the top, Richard, is that this is the first cut that we've had with the PCE and other inflationary measures as high as they are, I think. And Tim can talk to speak for himself why they called this a, quote, hawkish cut. Well, again, they do have a dual mandate. Although every president, I don't care if it's Donald Trump or Democrat or Republican in history, has always emphasized the employment data.

14:52That's where their votes come from. That's why they worry about employment. It's perfectly understandable. And every Fed chairman, even though you have a dual mandate of the modern system, has to worry about inflation slash deflation. And I think finding that balance is a very difficult one. But I will not be the least bit surprised if the White House is critical of this decision because the president's worried about the employment situation. And he also, I think, and this is highly opinionated, forgive me, but he wants to have a scapegoat. So his average voter, 60 % of his vote came from people without either high school education or less.

15:32So that demographic here, when he says, I want rates cut, I understand his politics. And that is those people listening to him who are a little more economically distressed right now than the rest of the 1%, et cetera, hear that and think, ah, my credit card payment, my auto payments, my home payments will go down. As we all know, it doesn't work that way. That's not related to Fed funds. It's related to where the 10-year is trading or where you are further out in the EO curve. So I understand the president's position. I understand the politics of it. The important thing is that the central bank not hew to that, as Myron appears to be doing, but instead that they do things as objectively as the central bank should do.

16:15And let's hope they get it. Richard, we brought you on for that opinion. So we're glad that you expressed it, Richard. No, seriously, Richard Fisher, thank you. These are interesting times at the Fed. No, we don't want to. That's why you're a contributor. We actually legally can't. No, Richard, thanks for coming, Richard Fisher. Thank you very much. Those points, well taken. And I think his point at the end was kind of taken as well, Tim, because the bond market didn't move today. The Fed can say what banks can lend at tomorrow. But I think the bond market's going to have a say at what happens three, six months, years from now.

16:54Right. And the bond market, if it was really worried about the Fed as an institution, might have started to talk a little bit more today. And the long end rates might sell off. And because I can't do a better job on the the economic story and inside of the Fed than Richard Fisher. I'm just going to give you my market perspective on this. This was a mildly hawkish cut, which gives you the reaction it had today. Of course, gold sold off today. Of course, the dollar strengthened today. I think the dollar continues to weaken. If the trend is anything close to what Michael is saying, the dollar is going to weaken, and that's going to continue to be good for not only investing internationally and the emerging markets, which are alive and well and have a lot more intrinsic growth than we have here.

17:32But I think mega cap tech is going to have its best quarter of the year in the fourth quarter because I don't see anything that stops that. So today was a breath for the market. And I think it was an exciting day for the Federal Reserve because it is nice to see they are still in line. Richard talked about jobs numbers. Jobs numbers have been abysmal. And it's not just he stated immigration. If you go back, there was a print of revisions of almost a million jobs. It was never as strong as the Biden administration said it was. Not that they lied, but it wasn't that strong. So you have immigration, you have issues, but we revised it by 900 ,000.

18:11I think that revision was for the first until 25. No, it was. It was. It was. It was. Yeah. It was. It was. It was six months or four months of the presidency. Yeah, it was backdated. It was all the government jobs that were added. It was not. It was it was a buy. We don't need to talk about the Biden. No, no, no. My point is the economy and the jobs market is weaker than we all think it is for various reasons. You've heard that. So we've heard that, but that's why they should be cutting. That's why they should be cutting 50 basis points versus 25. So, you know, he mentioned GDP, 1.5 percent, down from 2.8 percent last year.

18:49We know the average of jobs over the last, you know, let's call it 12 months, that's been weakening fairly dramatically. And so what Mr. Fisher just said from a political standpoint, it makes perfect sense. We're starting to even see, you know, he gave a stat about folks who don't have college degrees. Every day you're reading a new story about the unemployment rate for kids who are graduating from college. It's been a difficult situation. I think Fed Chair Powell even spoke to that sort of today. So you have, you know, weakening jobs market. You have weakening GDP year over year. and you have a scenario where, you know, it's like, I don't know.

19:24I mean, like, that was a risk management cut. That's what he said they're going to do, and they're going to sit here, and they're going to wait. CPI last year was 3.4 % on average. We have it not that much lower right now. The irony of this whole thing is that, you know, the administration wants to cut front-end rates, and they're talking about the multiplier effect and housing affordability and all this. And what happens if you cut a lot into the greatest economy ever? Long-term rates skyrocket. Hold on, hold on. Let's not forget, they cut rates 75 basis points last year. When we tripped the SOM rule.

19:55Yeah, but which four people in America had ever heard of until they did that. Me and I. No, yeah, maybe around this day, but you get my point. I think that's what frustrates some people is that we got three cuts last year. Now we get sort of one cut, but yet the economy arguably was better last year than it is right now. Well, if you look at the macro data in August of last year, July and August of last year, it was objectively worse. You look at PMIs well below 50. Which is why they rushed to 50. Exactly, which is why they rushed to 50. And the committee thought inflation was trending lower because tariffs weren't an issue.

20:33Remember, if we didn't have tariffs right now, the Fed would be seeing weak job numbers and no risk to inflation. And they might be cutting more. But because of tariffs, they're wary of inflation. They don't want to cut as much. All right. It's a good discussion there. Big news story, but we're not done on deck. Why news out of Nashville gave a big lift to Lyft. Plus, why Carter Ward says it is time to sell one of China's biggest stocks.

21:09Our Lyft was a big winner today. The ride share company popping 13 percent is partnering with driverless car company Waymo and it's coming to Nashville. In other words, soon, guys, you could have a few drinks in Nash Vegas and then call a Waymo on the Lyft app. Shares at the highest level in three years. Uber, by the way, Tim, falling on the news. Well, I think there has been this whole Waymo and which platform actually might be. And there have been times we've been selling both these names on those days when it seemed as if they weren't going to be the platform from which driverless, whether whether it's Waymo, whether it's Tesla.

21:46I think part of the story in Lyft is also that the company is now got a lot more credibility with the street. The analyst community probably took 15 months to get used to a new management team. The former management team did a poor job, had zero credibility with Wall Street. I think you had some insider buying, which is part of the story here. think this is a company that was waiting to kind of normalize. I think it's a bunch of ingredients. You can't tell me that this headline today is the reason why the stock before today was up 65 percent since a month ago. It's there and they're going into driverless autonomous, as you just stated.

22:22Their international expansion, the acquisition of FreeNow app. All of this is heavy growth. I think the stock probably can cross over the$30 range. Then it gets a little sticky. What do we learn today, though? You make a deal that doesn't involve human beings, your stock pops. Well, let's be clear. I'm being serious. This is not, Sully, this is not them going into autonomous vehicles. This is them doing a deal to find the logistics for one way or another. You know, Uber has done this with Waymo also. So it's just telling you that Waymo is in the capber seat. Waymo can go to any of these folks and say, we want to do this.

22:57Waymo knows that a robotaxi from Tesla sometime in the future, we just don't know when, let's take the over on that, is going to be there. So the more entrenched that they can be, the more markets they can be and using the different, like, it's sort of a situation. We've been talking about this for a while since Lyft was the L in your Bland. Yeah, Blysep. But it was a Bland acronym. No, but the point here is that this thing had a$5 billion enterprise value like a year ago, you know, and they turn profitable and they're growing double digits and, you know, that sort of thing. And people have just kind of left them out a little bit.

23:30They're not even in it. You've been in a Waymo? I have. Dude, I was in it yesterday. I took four of them in LA. Dude, how do I know? I'm not tracking your movements, dude. It is. I didn't say that you knew one way or another. I'm just telling you that I did it. Dude, I was in one year. I took 10 Waymo rides in Los Angeles the last three days. It's amazing, isn't it? It is literally you're in the future. It's pretty fun. But the question is, we've been talking about, do they scale? Okay, like you look at these nice cars and they have all this hardware on them and the software that goes into it, that sort of thing.

23:55So I don't know if they do. RoboTaxi, I think that the Tesla valuation has a lot to do with that. But listen, I think Lyft is in a great spot. I think one of these networks probably buys them at some point. The stock trades at 1.3 times sales. I don't think it's expensive, but I sold 30 calls out to December because the stock's gone from 13 to 23 in three weeks. And I can roll up and out if some great stuff's happening. There's a lot of momentum in the stock. Take advantage of it. All right. Good discussion on Lyft and Dan's travel. Coming up, we're going to go from driverless cars to chicken fried steak.