Fast Money 9/18/25

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.

0:33Big show. Here's what's on tap. A day two turnaround. Stocks surging. Investors digesting yesterday's Fed decision. Small cap Russell 2000 hitting its first record high in nearly four years. What is behind the day after euphoria? More importantly, how long could it last? A late night lowdown. What Jimmy Kimmel's suspension may say about the state of broadcast TV and what it might mean for a multi-billion dollar deal in media. Plus, Intel soars on a big investment from NVIDIA. We dig on the latest results from FedEx and homebuilder Lenar. Cyber surge. The headlines from CrowdStrike sent the sector soaring today.

1:15Hi, everybody. Melissa Lee is off tonight. I'm Brian Sullivan coming to you live from Studio B at the NASDAQ and on your desk. Tim Seymour, Dan Nathan, Guy Adami, and we are very pleased. And thank God you're here. Lori Calvacina, head of U.S. equity strategy at RBC. Lori, classing up the joint. All right, we've got a lot to do. We're going to start with a slate of all-time highs on Wall Street. Now, the major averages hit record highs. That's happening almost every day. Investors digesting yesterday's Fed rate cut. Earnings still look good, blah, blah, blah. The Nasdaq up about a percent. But it was the small cap Russell 2000 leading to gains.

1:56It rose more than two and a half percent. And you may not know this, but the index setting its first record close since November of 2021. Interestingly, though, rates actually were up. The benchmark 10-year yield went higher, not lower. In fact, at one point today, it hit 4.14 percent. Yesterday's very brief drop below 4 percent seems long forgotten. But Appaloosa management president and founder David Tepper, also the owner of the Carolina Panthers, urging caution, telling Squawk Box this morning we could all be headed for dangerous territory. to go too much more on interest rates depending what happens with the economy you know is is it gets into the danger territory right now to go another 25 basis points or another 50 basis points does it really matter you know one way or another it probably keeps the stock market a little buoyant um i you know you have to be careful because we're like you said where the average stock isn't cheap the big stocks are not cheap Guy Adami.

3:04Hello, Brian. So I won't use the term basis point except to say that I'm not going to say basis point. Let's talk one quarter percent, one half percent. Is David Tepper correct? First of all, it's great to have you here. I'm sure Tim greeted you last night. I did. I did. But we can do it again. Well, why not? You're back. You should do it. Hello, Brian. Number two, that's about as dour as you're going to hear David Tepper. So when he has that type of tone, listen, I don't think he's saying you sell everything today or tomorrow. But when he's somewhat cautious, which you really haven't heard him be over the last decade or so, I think you have to take note.

3:36And what I think he's speaking to is, you know, the Fed's sort of in the rearview mirror. Another couple of cuts are probably not going to move the needle that much. But it's hard finding value right now. And the market has gotten itself expensive. So when I listen to him and I hear the tone in his voice, to me, it sounds somewhat cautious for the first time in a while. Well, he was really balanced and he talked about a lot of things. He even talked about his politics and he said he's right up the middle. And that's what I heard in terms of his market view. And what I hear what I think you're saying, what I think the market did today, when you see all four indices close at all time highs, but you've got the high growth, very expensive Nasdaq, but maybe you're paid for that growth finishing and then small caps rallying.

4:16You've got kind of a barbell strategy. You've got people saying that's a glass half full interpretation of the Fed saying, yeah, we're we're certainly in easing mode. two, five, how many cuts, but the economy is not falling apart. Jobless claims today, a volatile data point, but nonetheless showed that jobless claims fell. That gave the market a little more ammunition to say the labor market's not so bad. So my summary on all of this is, sorry, guy, hold your ears. Yeah, this is Goldilocks. You've got Fed in an easy position, and you've got an economy that's not falling apart. Even if stocks are expensive, you're buying equities in that environment.

4:50Yeah, I guess you are unless yields start going up, right? And so when you think about last year. Which they did today. Well, they did a little bit. Last year at this time, you know, we had that jumbo cut 50 basis points. The 10-year was trading at 3.7 percent or something like that. Went all the way to 5 percent or so over the next, I don't know, three to four months. And so you've seen a big divergence over the last, call it, couple months where the S &P has just kind of blown out to new highs. And you've seen yields on the 10-year go the opposite way. If you start to see yields maybe work their way up to four and a half where they were just, I don't know, two months ago, that might be cause for the S &P 500, at least investors, to kind of take their foot off the pedal a little bit.

5:27And I'll also say that, you know, we see this rotation in the MAG-7. It's, you know, it happened when we saw Google, when we saw Amazon and the like. Now you're starting to see these names kind of underperform these moves. NVIDIA has never confirmed the new highs in the S &P or the NASDAQ. And we're starting to get kind of, I guess, long in the tooth. You know, you take this NVIDIA investment, I know we're going to talk about it later. You know, it feels like we're trying to pull lots of rabbits out of hats. And I'm not saying that is by design. The Sox massively outperforms today for something that is not going to be really relevant to the technology complex for a while, at least six months, maybe a year.

6:02Yeah, look, our call on the market has been we like stocks into next year on kind of a 12 to 15 month view. We put out a 7100 target earlier this week for the second half of 2026. But we kept our target low for this year. We nudged it up a little bit to 63.50, but that's lower than where we are right now. And what we're trying to reflect, you know, what the message we're trying to communicate there is we do think we need a period of digestion. We think that this kind of workhorse part of the market is hitting valuation ceilings. And when we look at the broadening trade, you know, I understand people want to get bullish on rate cut bets, but I've been hearing about that for months.

6:36And if you look at the small caps, they're not expensive. They've been or they're not cheap. They've been under own, but the valuations have already crept up. And I don't want to counter sort of the coverage guys, right? Because I think the Fed was a part of this. But let's be to your point. I think you're saying if somebody was surprised that the Fed cut rates by a quarter percent, they should go back to whatever day job they had because investing is not for them. I don't know if today I don't know if today. That's hardcore, man. It is. It's brutally honest. That's my middle name. It's actually Thomas, but either way, you see my point.

7:12Nobody should be surprised. So I just don't know if today was really because of the Fed. Right. Well, I go back to what Tim said. You used the word Goldilocks. And I think that Goldilocks view, our economists call it stagflation light. But, you know, that informs my view that stocks can move higher into next year, you know, kind of getting past some short term issues. But when people are sort of banking all their hopes and dreams on the broadening trade and the small caps and the riskier stuff, I'm sorry, but Goldilocks is not good enough for those stocks to embark on a sustainable trade. It worked today, though.

7:40We got the new high for the Russell first time in three and a half years. But as I've said, I don't know if this is famously or infamously or no one even cares, but, I mean, who cares about small caps? Like, I don't even know why we talk about them so much. They're such an insignificant part of the market. I understand there are stock pickers out there. But I'm not chasing small caps. What about regional? I know. You're right. I'm just as mean as you are, Brian. You just had 2 ,000 companies. I hear a lot of it from the hedge fund-oriented parts of the business that are looking to make some trades.

8:05And, you know, what we've said to those folks, sure, is this could work a little bit more in the shorter term. But if I'm talking to my retail investors who are more long-term investors, my small cap PMs who adjust what kind of stocks they own based on, you know, kind of the overall health of that asset class, I can't sit here with a straight face and tell them I think, you know, we're going to have another like year of outperformance here. You might get a couple more weeks. You might get a couple more days. You watch valuations. We're at 16 and a half times on the Russell PE last we updated our model.

8:33Guess what? But they topped out last time at 17, before that 18. There's not a lot of room. And I think, not to push back on Tim, who is basking in the afterglow of a nice victory at Shea today. Yeah, we needed that, by the way. We did. So we're not glowing in anything and flushing right now. Well, you appear to be. But we're committed and loyal. We're flushing something. We're loyal. People will look at the small caps as sort of some indication that maybe the economy is getting back on somewhat solid footing. Bingo. Whoa. Excuse me? That's why we care. Tim was saying nobody cares about small caps.

9:01Why are we even talking about them? Why are you yelling at me? That's why, number one, that's PMs. They're a barometer. Right? They're not the fifth beetle. They matter. And they're representative of the entire economy, I think. I think I just sort of said that. I don't know. By the way, why do you have an umbrella? Do you know something that I don't know? I left it here yesterday. Okay, fair enough. Well, they say when cows are lying down in the field, it's going to rain. Yes, I've heard that. So when Brian brings an umbrella to Fast Money, it's obviously a beautiful day out. Hold on, let me extend this umbrella a bit.

9:29Open that up. Go to your point about small caps representing the macro economy. I think that's it. I think that's what people are looking for the all clear. If small caps can get through this level that we saw, as you just said, November of 2021, people say, OK, it's mostly regional and small banks. Maybe that gives us the all clear. The economy's OK. Fed is cutting. But, you know, we're on terra firma here and we can continue to be long this market. What was interesting, Dan, about today's market, small caps included, is that and it wasn't just the mag seven. Cummins hit a new high. Pentair hit a new high.

10:00JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, American Express. Who am I missing? Corning. Caterpillar. GE. Caterpillar. This is a broad-based rally. So maybe they can pull up Caterpillar for a sec. And it was broad in that if you're in the broadening out trade, then you'd like to see this sort of performance. I think most importantly to me was the regional banks. Like, wake me up when they make a new high. They're still up 5%, 6 % off those 52-week highs. You would have thought, and I think I mentioned this last night, Sorry to be a broken record that, you know, all this pro growth deregulation, all this stuff coming into the year.

10:33You'd think that regionals are acting better. Now, they're acting pretty well right now. And maybe that's the next one to break out. Caterpillar is interesting to me because it's been in this sort of consolidation after this massive run off the April lows. And I don't see any news in Caterpillar. You guys see any news in Caterpillar? It just broke out. Yeah. No, it was the same thing. So, you know, a lot of traders or investors, whatever, they're looking to rip certain stocks here. And I think that is something that is worth paying attention to. but it also might mean like a last gasp, if you will, of this rally.

11:00So Tepper, Laurie, Tepper owns the Carolina Panthers. And to use a football analogy, you know, sometimes you're a little bit tired. They put the smelling salts under the guys. It kind of perks them back up. He said in that soundbite, maybe the 25 or 50 basis points, I said it, I know, doesn't matter that much whether you get one or the other. But I think he said it might keep the market buoyant. It doesn't hurt the market buoyant. No, it doesn't hurt the market. But, I mean, going back to your comment earlier, I've been hearing about cuts in May. Cuts are coming. Cuts are coming. CapEx is coming.

11:31You know, people have been trying to play this rebound for a long time, and that's what's gotten us to this point. It's not like we just woke up and said, oh, my gosh, the Fed cut. We weren't looking for this. And, you know, if we sort of look at the sector action, you know, I appreciate that people think industrials, you know, are cyclical and benefit from rate cuts. And I'm certainly not disagreeing from a fundamental perspective. But industrials are the most expensive sector in the S &P 500 right now. A rally led by something like financials, you know, that makes me feel a little bit better because even in the big caps, you do still have some relative valuation.

12:01Lori's bringing the heat, by the way. I love it. That's why we had her on. She's like, I'm not buying this rally at all. But you do have a 70. I want to repeat what you said earlier. You have a 7 ,100 target on S &P next year. So you remain optimistic. So, you know, we have this four tiers of fear framework, right, which we kind of formalized earlier this year. It's how we think about drawdowns. And we had a tier 2 one. in April, right? It's a growth scare, 15 to 20 percent. I'm not looking for that kind of drawdown this time around. Garden variety tier one, five to 10 percent. That feels like that's enough.

12:33You know, maybe not even 10 percent, frankly, right? But you do need to pull a little bit of froth out of here. And I think the other issue, frankly, is we've got all these uncertainties now around the labor market. Obviously, we had a good data point today. But that's something new that really was not being contemplated. So we think, you know, you might hit a few potholes in here that aren't really being anticipated. I think the path ultimately is higher, but I do think we go through some potholes first. And I don't know, Guy Domi, if I'm going to say something a lot of people won't like. For like a fourth time on the show.

13:04That's why. This is what you do. This is what I do. Okay. Would it be that bad if we had a 10 % drawdown between now and the end of the year? I don't think that would be an unhealthy thing for this market. So it's funny you say that. So it's easy to say that at all-time highs, but then we're in the midst of one. It's always for reasons you never saw coming. They always feel scarier than you thought they would feel. So I think just in terms of the overbought conditions on just about every metric, that would make a lot of sense. And it's great to say it when you're sitting here in the catbird seat, but when you're in the midst of one, nobody wants to go through it.

13:35What do you mean, what does that mean? I just never knew what that term meant. It's Shakespeare. By the way, remember the movie War Games? Yeah. DEFCON 1, 2, that's what she was channeling her inner war games. with that whole thing. I like that. I'm being told by the producers not to talk about war games. So I'm not going to war whoppers. I promise I won't. Anyway, Christina Parts and Elvis is here because guess what else happened today? Intel popped in a big way. One of the best days Intel investors have ever had. By the way, that says a lot. NVIDIA is investing$5 billion, part of a partnership to develop data centers and PC chips.

14:13We had a massive gain. Christina, I know you've been on a lot all day. We appreciate you staying late. What's kind of the main takeaway here on this story? It's a vote of confidence in Intel. Not necessarily their foundry business, because that was completely missing from the press release, missing from the press conference with the CEO and Liputan, CEO, I should say, NVIDIA. They spoke about the integration of data centers and the PC market. So that's two great things that Intel and NVIDIA will be working on. And why you saw a negative reaction in ARM, in AMD as well, even though AMD said essentially that they're not worried.

14:46They put out a little statement afterwards. I think it was telling that the White House wasn't on the press release either, but they got in about a month ago. They bought 433 shares of Intel at$20.47. So that's almost a 50 % upside right now. Not a bad deal. Yeah, good trade. Fast money. Good trade. But to your point, your conversation you were just discussing before about froth in the market, look at the increase in the price for Intel. Is it warranted when there's a lack of timeline? We don't have specifics on the products exactly. The foundry business, which needs the most help, is not being mentioned in here.

15:18And then you're seeing, you know, quantum names, other, I don't want to say meme-type names, really rallying today. So perhaps that added to that massive stock bump, which we can say has been the highest since 1987 for Intel. And you know what? A very, very smart – we have the smartest audience on television, by the way, Dan, Nathan. We had somebody point out to me today and said, this reminds them of when Microsoft invested in Apple back in 1997. But it's a very different situation here, right? And so when you think about it, I think, you know, Christina, just like if they're not using their foundries, like this is a company that's missed every major tech cycle over the last 20 years or so.

15:53And so when you think about NVIDIA, a$4.3 trillion market cap company, you know, what are they going to do,$200 billion in sales? There's nothing that these guys could do together that actually helps NVIDIA. So you think about what happened here. The White House says, hey, listen, we need a little bump. We ran ahead of this thing. You know what I mean? And you know what I mean? Like, it's just not important. But doesn't this deal make, on some level, more sense for NVIDIA than it does for Intel? It gives them expanded, you know, from discrete GPUs to the integrators and something that they've got more addressable market.

16:24And so. Yeah, to that point, the collaboration, especially with everything going to be on location, right? Your phones, Qualcomm will argue that, that all the AI is going to be on your phone on PCs. And so this is an opportunity with Intel having 70 percent of the PC market. and they're already, you know, the x86 architecture and stuff, they're fully integrated everywhere. Why not have NVIDIA, you know, join forces, stick their GPUs, and they're calling it, you know, technical system on a chip and just creating that. So here's NVIDIA tapping into Intel's market, which they still are very relevant, despite the hate and people may not trade Intel and don't like it, etc.

16:58The stock boom today, Guy, best day, as you can see on the screen, 1987. But is this a long-term Intel buy? I don't know. Long term, if you're a fan of the show, which the smart audience you spoke of earlier, hopefully they are. It's the art of the Dell. We've been collectively talking about how this set up, homeland security play, whatever you want to call it, and that the logical place for Intel to go, albeit I had no idea that we, I don't think any of us thought NVIDIA would make an investment, but would be this 32.5, 33 level, which is where we broke down from in July of last year. It made it there today on north of half a million shares, which is more than five times normal volume.

17:38So I don't think today is the day to go pouring into Intel. I think today is to be taking some money off the table. I agree with that. I think that ultimately collaboration with NVIDIA is good for Intel. And I do think that right now that Taiwan semi-relationship that NVIDIA, I mean, it's going to be tough to knock that off. I also think the other things that sold off today, that's an opportunity because it's not something I would be worried about with Arm. It's not something I would be worried about with some of the other peripheral places. You know what? It does, I think, and we'll have to go.

18:07But, Christina, it gives NVIDIA a lot of political cover. I'm not saying they need it. I'm not saying they're ever going to need it. But if anybody politically ever came after them, they could say, oh, look what we did. We invested a bunch of money in Intel. Yeah, and they're not going to agree with you on that. But, of course, think of the timing right now. They're used as a bargaining chip between the United States and China. So, here, let's invest on American soil, just what President Trump and the White House wants. I'm not going to finish the sentence. Our audience, our smart audience, make the assumptions.

18:32Once again, no, it's good we point that out. Stop mid-sentence. Well, the implication is there that NVIDIA is used as a bargaining chip. President Trump and Xi Jinping still have to discuss matters. NVIDIA is being blocked in terms of all of their advanced chips. So here's an opportunity for the United States to really push NVIDIA forward. I'm being told to stop talking now. There you go. Christina Partzanelos, we appreciate it. Thank you very much. Coming up, the results. Moving FedEx and homebuilder Lenar and another shakeup in late night. The potential ripple effect for Jimmy Kimmel is taken off the air indefinitely.

19:06Don't go anywhere. Fast Money back at 2.

19:19All right, we've got an earnings alert on FedEx. Shares are moving higher, up about 6 % right now. Earnings and revenues topping Wall Street expectations. The conference call just minutes away. Let's get on to Frank Collin with the latest on FedEx. Frank. Hey there, Brian. You know, the story of this report, it's really the guidance. So FedEx previously only offered guidance for the quarter that just reported. They gave full-year guidance. Revenue outlook much better than expected. It came in at 4 to 6 percent compared to the estimate of 1.2 percent. So blowout outlook. The EPS outlook, that was a bit of a different story.

19:49Very wide range from$17.20 to$19 a share. And the midpoint was below the estimate. but obviously the top end was well above. Another metric that investors and analysts have spoke with were watching very closely was the margin for Express, where the majority of the revenue for this company is generated. Demand for air freight and also the rates for air freight were both expected to be just a bit soft because of the end of the de minimis exemption that allows small value items to be imported without tariffs. But Express beaten both revenue and margin with actual margin expansion, 6 % this quarter compared to 5.4 % a year ago.

20:21The company also said its plan to spin off its freight business, FedEx Freight, is still on schedule for June of 2026. Now, that business, it missed on revenue and margin, but investors, you can see, clearly focused on the very strong outlook. Back over to you. Yeah, Frank, by the way, can I just give you a shout out, Frank? You're doing 10 the hard way, 5 and 5. You've done it a million times. We've done it together a million times. So he's really patting himself on the back. That's why I look like this, by the way. Can you give us a preview of WEX tomorrow morning? Can I give you a preview? Come on, Brian.

20:50of PreviewX. Know what I can tell you about? UPS, shares are higher. It traded in sympathy with FedEx. However, they just announced that their acquisition of Arafeta, this is a Mexican parcel delivery company, it's not going to go through. They announced it in June of 2024. That's not going to go through. That was actually a near-shoring play down in Mexico for UPS, so announcing that's not going to work out. Perhaps a reason for the stock just to trade just a bit lower, but obviously trading on sympathy with FedEx in a positive way. Sometimes we say in sympathy, it's a negative thing. So a lot of developments in the parcel space.

21:19The real The question is, with rate cuts, what is that going to mean for both of these businesses, specifically when it comes to B2B revenues, higher margin B2B revenues, specifically in manufacturing? Is this one rate cut going to spark a manufacturing resurgence? Do we need a couple? I think that's the question for both of these companies. There we go. We got a preview. Worldwide Exchange tomorrow morning, 5M. Frank Holland, thank you very much. Tim Seymour. Well, Frank, as he often does, he nailed it. The trade's UPS. And UPS, which has been a major underperformer even relative to FedEx. And when you hear about some of these trends and granted, UPS a year ago, all we could do is talk about how FedEx was stepping all over themselves.