Inflation, Rates & Fed Policy 9/26/25

0:01Live in the Nasdaq market, this is Fast Money. Here's what's on tap tonight. Pharma and And furniture and freight, oh my, all the industries and stocks moving on the president's new tariff plans and what the latest levies could mean for the broader market. And inside Intel's semi-surge, the stock jumping another 20 % this week. On news, it's just looking for more investments. We try to make sense of this monster move. Plus, shares of Boeing take flight. We count down to earnings from Nike. And Solano's next move, the CEO of a new crypto treasury fund, talks to us about what is next for the coin after a rough week.

0:35I'm Melissa Lee. We come to you live from Studio B at the NASDAQ. On the desk tonight, Tim Seymour, Karen Feinerman, Courtney Garcia, and Guy Adami. And we'll get to all of the tariff news shortly, but we start off with Intel's monster week. Make that two monster weeks. The semi-stock up another 4 % today, bringing its gains since Monday to 20%. That's on top of a nearly 23 % rise last week. Brings its gains for September to more than 45%, its best month since 1987. The initial bump came after the U.S. government announced in late August said it would take a 10 % stake in Intel. Then last week, NVIDIA said it would invest$5 billion in a hardware design deal with the company.

1:11Japan SoftBank also getting in on the action. But this week's move comes on headlines. Intel is seeking even more investment with Apple and now Taiwan Semi among the potential partners. It's reportedly approached. So how do you make sense of this rally in the stock? Guy, what's your take? Well, I think we've done a decent job with Intel. You know, we've said for a while, we could get back to the levels that we saw in July of last year when it broke down from 34.5 and went in a straight line lower. So here we are now. It did it today on two times normal volume. You mentioned all the headlines. I think we all would agree their business is not fixed by any stretch, but this investment clearly helps.

1:46But what do you do now? I would suggest, given the volume we traded and given the fact we're up against a downtrend line from the spring of 2021, if our crack staff wants to go back that far, you've got to be taking profits here. Yes, you could get more headlines and maybe get a little more juice here, But I think that most of the run is pretty much over now. Yeah. Tim? I'm surprised that today's headlines did anything. Thank you. And I'm not surprised that a headline around limits on foreign chips in the U.S. and a one-to-one ratio and different things that I heard that also are not necessarily stated as gospel yet.

2:21But that does make sense. It does make sense, therefore, if Intel can do some kind of a deal with Taiwan Semi. And there can be some offload in terms of some of the capacity in production. The discussion around Apple makes I don't even it doesn't make any sense to me. But I read those headlines. Taiwan Semi seemed to not confirm, in fact, kind of refuted that there was anything going on. And yet here we are. So I do think that some of the upward pressure on the stock was more about the dynamics that still makes this semiconductor USA. That's this company national champion. They're not. And yet they are.

2:53And that's if you have every one of these players. Let's leave Apple out for a second. But it does make some sense why you could see something with Taiwan Semi. Taiwan Semi has certainly engaged with this government, with this country, has talked about building out Foundry. There are plenty of plans in the works here. The idea with NVIDIA, we talked about that. I thought that made as much sense for NVIDIA as it did for Intel, even though they got the bigger relative boost in market cap. So guy, you know, he's like, sell it here. I think he's probably right, except for the fact that I do think that there are more announcements to come.

3:29And this is what seems to move this stock. Yeah. I mean, what's sort of ironic about this whole thing is government backs up. I get the first initial NVIDIA deal I get. But then when you hear headlines that it's looking for money from Apple and from Taiwan, you start thinking like desperation is being rewarded in the stock, actually. Like, why does it need so much money? I don't know. There's expression, you know, feed the seals when they're barking. So I guess that's partially what's going on here. The government has not yet closed on their stake, though. Have you ever fed seals, by the way? I mean, do you go to the zoo?

4:01I mean, that would be the only place I would expect you to be feeding seals. But nonetheless. Yes. So I don't know if that's actually closed. I don't think that it has. So I agree. I'm sort of curious to me some of this other stuff. But I do think that the part where you are taking away some of the downside, If there is liquidity, if there is money there, I mean, you know, the bonds have sort of been terrible. Now they've found a bid in the last couple of months. So if there's life there, that's good. But having, you know, having seen the stock trade at 2021 and now having it at 35, I could not possibly think of buying it here.

4:38Yeah, and I think when we saw over the summer, they came out and basically said, OK, with our foundry business, we're basically not moving forward until we actually have like some like looking forward to people who are going to invest here. I think that's what you're looking at because investors didn't really like to see that news. But now you're seeing they're actively going to these different investors to make sure they're getting the money there. So I do think that's going to be a positive for them because I think longer term, it is their foundry business that people are hopeful on. But that is still expected to have a loss through 2027.

5:05And I think realistically here, this stock is up over 40 percent in like two weeks. And we're talking about this is the this month, but most of that was just in the last two weeks. And I think after this kind of a run, when their core business still isn't fixed, yeah, I'd probably be looking to take some profits here more than anything else. All right. We'll get some more on Intel and what the options market are saying about the stock later on in the show. But first, we want to turn to the broader markets. Major indices snapping a three-day losing streak even after President Trump announced a slew of industry-specific tariffs set to take effect October 1st.

5:34Truck manufacturer Packer up 5 percent after the president wrote on True Social that the U.S. will impose a 25 percent tariff on heavy trucks. Peccar, which owns Peterbilt and Kenworth, makes over 90 percent of U.S. trucks domestically. Meantime, home furnishing stocks mixed after Trump said kitchen cabinets, bathroom vanities and related products would be tariffed at a 50 percent rate. Upholstered furniture will get a 30 percent levy. RH and floor and decor among the biggest laggards in the group. And the president said he would impose a 100 percent tariff on any branded or patented pharma products that follow several major U.S.

6:09manufacturing deals that pharma companies have struck in recent months. European drug makers Zeeland Pharma, Novo Nordisk, Roche getting hit the hardest today. But this is still an overhang here in the markets in terms of the tariffs to come, the inflation to come, the price increases by companies, whether they're eaten or passed on, to come still, Karen. Yeah. You know, I don't know what to make of these. And I feel like it's switched from shoot first, ask questions later to ask questions first, because maybe it won't even happen. and maybe the effects of it are less than you think. And, you know, I know we'll talk about the pharma stocks later.

6:44I mean, I don't know. I find the cabinets as a strategic, is it a, what was the? National Security Concern. Yes, National Security Concern. Upholstered furniture guy. Upholstered furniture must be. I don't know why the upholstered versus the other. I'm not really sure. Non-uppolstered. Yes, I just wonder maybe was that he likes upholstered furniture more. I think he does like upholstery. So I don't know what that was about. I mean, I also I don't love this sort of what seems scattershot strategy. It's hard to run a business when you just don't know what your tariffs are going to be. So I don't know what to make of the whole thing.

7:20I don't trade on it. I mean, we already heard from RH and they said that they would take a tariff hit and he was trading lower again on a potential tariff hit. Yeah. And I guess I look at today's price action and I think people are asking questions first and shooting later in that. I think people are not moving in the market here. I think the market today was all about a softer PCE. You actually had consumption data that was showing that the consumer is spending. We had a week where a long, long time ago GDP was better than expected, but jobless claims were better. We've got a jobs number next week.

7:55And as long as the job market's not falling out of bed, this was a week when the data supported the equity market. It said that the world isn't all that bad and that, in fact, this is a great environment to be buying equities. And after three days of where it seemed like people, you know, a lot of charts Carter talked about yesterday starting to roll some mega cap tech that was stalling. You know, after three days after today, it felt like it feels pretty good back out there again. And I think that's where the market responded more to the macro than those headlines. Yeah. And what's also optimistic, I suppose, is that in terms of the tariff impact, the impact was really focused on individual stocks in the field as opposed to a broader market concern.

8:33Yeah, but even then, I mean, I think a lot of these tariffs are seen as more bark and less bite. I mean, a lot of this has been, I don't know if you want to call it a negotiation, but they're coming in much worse than they're actually going to be. And that's where I think markets have realized that they need to wait to digest this and even see if there's going to be any sort of legal action against them and can they even take place. So I think you're going to get some of these knee-jerk reactions with the specific names that are going to be impacted by this. But I don't think it's anything you want to trade on, at least in the short term.

8:58It's that whole fool me once, you know, shame on you, fool me twice. And I think the market realized when they sold the market off aggressively in April when he came out with these, you know, seemingly preposterous numbers in terms of tariffs, the market sold off and then he backed off. And I think the market is saying today, I think everybody said the same thing, that, you know, we sort of don't believe it's going to happen. I actually thought these rest I thought restoration hardware actually traded pretty well today. All things being equal. And obviously the market did as well. The one caveat, of course, being the bond market, which is now tenure yields up almost 20-ish, 19 basis points since the Fed cut rates a couple weeks ago.

9:31All right. Let's focus in on the pharma tariff impact with Jared Holtz, health care strategist at Mizuho. Jared, always good to see you. So it was a shrug basically from big cap pharma stocks in terms of the impact. But walk us through some of the impacts on some of the smaller players that may not have U.S. manufacturing. I would think that it would have a much more devastating impact for not the mercs of the world, but maybe sort of the mid and the small caps. Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, that was the I think some of the response out of the buy side community last night on the on the tweet itself was, could this have a negative impact for companies that are not domestic and have not really moved manufacturing here?

10:11I think the issue is that most of the biotech companies that we follow are mainly domestic, even though they might have R &D efforts and development efforts overseas. So the net impact today was positive for pharma. And even though there is a little bit more opaqueness around biotech that you alluded to, most of the companies are located here. And when you kind of consider the tweet and the commentary around if you have your facilities here and if you're investing here, you're kind of out of the fray to some extent. So not a huge risk, I don't think. Right. Let's move and look ahead to Monday because Monday is a deadline for most favored nation updates in terms of pricing strategy from Big Pharma.

10:53What are you expecting big pharma companies to say? And how does the, you know, we will build here in Delaware or Texas fit in with MFN? Yeah, I think that's first and foremost. The amount of cash that's been allocated or promised for domestic production, I think, will be number one on the response list from pharma. AstraZeneca,$50 billion. Roche,$50 billion. J &J,$50 billion. Eli Lilly,$50 billion. That's four companies,$200 billion. I think there's another$100 billion in there somewhere when you kind of aggregate everybody else. That'll be first. I think second will be just the crushing potential for R &D if prices are cut too dramatically will be two.

11:42There will be some sort of reconciliation done, I believe, to kind of show the government this is potentially very bad. And then three, I think it'll be we're going to have no choice but to increase prices elsewhere rather than reduce here. So if you're OK with that, maybe that's the strategy. And we've seen some of that kind of come out, you know, the woodwork over the past couple of weeks. This variable has been out there for a while, but does it change the calculus in terms of M &A? In other words, does it force people's hand more or does people get ratcheted back more? I think it forces people's hands more.

12:18You know, this has been a pretty big year for M &A. I think there are some who believe it should have been or it was set up to be stronger. These things obviously take time. And there's a there's so many companies within the public domain, as we know, private. We've spoken about China. I think it accelerates it because I think that even when you consider everything and maybe it's not so bad, the headwinds still outweigh the tailwinds for this industry. It's got to accelerate it. So if you're in the increased price elsewhere camp, if that's what you've got to do, rather, how much would that affect demand and what could they trade into if you can't buy the expensive U.S.

12:55drug? Well, not only could it affect demand, I mean, it's really tough to know it's going to be a drug by drug basis, right? Like some oncology drugs, it may not be avoidable versus other drugs that are not necessarily unmet medical need or less. But what we're also seeing is pharma companies almost threatening countries by saying we will pull out versus selling our products at such a steep discount. Because if we can retain the cost of doing business here, we may be better off. And then the MFN impact won't be as severe on the other side. So I think that's going to be part of it, too. Wait, it's not going to be as severe because they're just not operating in a country.

13:34And so the pricing standard is not there. Right. The expenses associated with running a business in a country where you're selling drugs at such a discount may not be worth it. So you can you can pull out. Now, I don't actually think that will happen. But I think the threat of that is is certainly possible. But the United States isn't that market. Right. I mean, it's one thing if you're a landlord on a side street and say, I'm not going to rent it for a below market rent, I'll wait it out. But you can't wait out the United States. No, that this country will be protected. We know that the pricing dynamic needs fixing.

14:06I think it'll happen by increasing Europe rather than cutting here too dramatically. I mean, between the IRA, the loss of exclusivity, MFN, this industry has never been under more pressure, I don't believe. So there have to be ways to kind of navigate through it. And I think possibly pulling out of markets where the economics just don't make sense could be one of those results. Jared, thanks for coming by. Good to see you. Hold on, before we let him go. Yeah, we can't let him go. We've got to talk about something. Brownies win a game, and suddenly he's Mr. Brown. I mean, it's unbelievable. You know what?

14:41In his defense, it's been a tough team to root for, and Jared shows up every week with Brown on, so to speak. Voted man. Well, I mean, that is like, I mean, but I like what he's doing. Stingy D. A lot of people say it might be the best defense in the history of the North. At least in the AFC North. Okay, enough. Thank you. Thanks. Meantime, we've got breaking news here. on the Supreme Court allowing the Trump administration to withhold about$4 billion in foreign aid. Emily Wilkins is live in D.C. with the latest. Emily. Hey, Melissa. Well, yeah, I mean, this is a big ruling from the Supreme Court as it applies really to the debate that we're having right now over funding the government and shutdown.

15:18The White House, if you remember, they actually went to Congress a few months ago and said, hey, we want to withhold this funding. Congress voted. It was a partisan vote, but ultimately they approved it. Then the White House said, hey, we're not actually even going to ask you to approve it this time. We're just letting you know we're going to withhold$40 billion in foreign aid. And now the Supreme Court has come forward 6-3 to say that the White House is allowed at this point to withhold that funding. And remember, this is funding that Congress approved in a bipartisan manner with both Republicans and Democrats working for it.

15:53I mean, this is really government 101. It's supposed to be Congress that has the right to decide exactly how the federal government is going to spend money and on what. And so I think this really brings in a lot of questions as Congress is once again trying to figure out what the funding levels are going to be for fiscal year 2026. Is the funding that Congress actually approves going to be spent by the White House? Or are you going to see more examples where the White House withholds funding? I mean, this ruling does point out that a lot of this is on foreign aid, and the ruling says that the executive's conduct of foreign affairs outweigh the potential harms to the plaintiffs.

16:31So it seems like this is specific on foreign aid, but of course opens up a lot of questions about what's going to happen with the next funding bills to come and what other funding the White House might try to withhold. Meantime, Emily, can you give us an update on the potential government shutdown? We've got five days. Yep, just five days away. And honestly, Melissa, at this point, we don't seem to be any closer to some sort of a resolution here. At this point, it does look like the government shutdown would begin Tuesday at midnight. The wide ranging number of impacts, the longer a shutdown goes, if the government still shut down next Friday, we could not see job numbers.

17:08From there, delays to loans, to small businesses, to farmers, a slowdown process for companies going public. There could be impacts at the ports and, of course, no pay for federal workers or contractors. And since, of course, the U.S. national parks and monuments would also likely be shuttered, the U.S. Travel Association estimating that the travel industry will lose a billion dollars for each week of the shutdown. Of course, remember, the shutdown is set to be different than any we've seen before because the White House is threatening massive layoffs of federal workers. Now, the Senate is back on Monday evening.

17:43As of now, we are expecting them to vote on continuing the current funding to November 21st, give them seven weeks to try and figure out exactly how to do the more detailed funding for fiscal 2026. But you're going to need 60 senators to vote for that, which means if all Republicans vote, you need at least seven Democrats. And at this point, we'll see what develops over the weekend. But it just doesn't seem like those votes are there right now, Melissa. And Emily, the last time the government has fully shut down was more than a decade ago. It was 20, I guess, yeah, 2013 was more than a decade ago, huh?

18:16There was a partial government shutdown in 2018, but this one would be a total government shutdown. All right, Emily, thank you. Emily Wilkins. I ask that only because typically the market looks through these sorts of events. They are short-term, et cetera, but this is a full government shutdown, and we have not seen it again for more than a decade. Is this a little bit different this time around, do you think, or no? I've thought a couple different times it's going to be different, and we get to sort of the 11th hour, and things sort of work themselves out. And I think the market is saying, you know what, we're not going to sell anything until we know for sure, and then we'll have enough time.

18:48So I don't think you can trade on the back of this, in my opinion. I would not be trading on the back of it, or I certainly wouldn't be trading to the downside. I'm going to look past this. It doesn't mean it's not troubling. And I think what we're talking about in terms of just White House acting unilaterally in areas where, you know, the government who have legislated a budget are pushing back. There is certainly a side that's dug in very deep here, and I don't think it's going to be easy. Coming up, a boost for Boeing. Shares seeing their best day in three months. The headlines behind the liftoff and whether this name can fly even higher.

19:23Plus, Nike limping into earnings next week with a billion-dollar tariff threat hanging over its head. What we can expect from the sportswear Giants report right after this. This is Fast Money with Melissa Lee right here on CNBC.

19:46Welcome back to Fast Money. Clearing skies for Boeing. The FAA easing restrictions on the company, allowing Boeing to take back partial control of safety checks on its 737 MAX and 787 Dreamliner planes. Additionally, Turkish Airlines placing an order for 225 Boeing planes after President Trump met with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan. Shares of Boeing up over 3 percent today. is this sort of the the final gate for Boeing to clear? I mean the hope is right I mean I think the fact that you're seeing there's restrictions are easing means that we're finally getting okay with their new processes in a place they don't need as much oversight and I think the fact that you're seeing more and more orders is showing that people are actually starting to be okay with ordering these planes they're comfortable with their new process and I think that is what they've needed.

20:31At the end of the day it is a duopoly right it's either them or Airbus There's only so many options. And this is a really aging fleet across the entire airline space. Like, this is really needed. At this point, though, they have, what, like over 6 ,500 orders, I think, in backlog. It comes to can they deliver on them. I think that's the big question, which we have to watch. But I think these are all very positive signs for Boeing in the long run. President Trump is quite the salesperson for U.S.-made goods. Absolutely. Like planes. Well, Boeing was on the, they were on the kind of the global tour.

21:01And they should be. and this is also the B in band or bland. Whichever word you want to use, I'll use them both. And I think it will be fascinating to see what kind of a cash burn or a free cash flow number, there it is, we have at the end of the year for Boeing because I think the analyst community has not priced in any free cash flow and it's just about how much less of a burn. And a move from 37 to 42, I think, in terms of the 38 to 42 on production and deliveries is something that really does start to move the needles. So it's not about the order book for Boeing, and it's not about demand.

21:36Yeah, it's about cash flow. It's also the B, I think. In carbs? In carbs. It is. Yes. Because I thought it could be A for aerospace. It could. It could be. I mean, we've seen the stock higher than here on the hopes that this would happen, actually. Yeah, look at that. It is. Son of a gun. What? Son of a gun. You actually did it right there. There we go. So, but they've had some other things, although there was some positive news on the Boeing and defense strike workers today. Maybe they're back at the table. That could be good. So I still like it right here. This is very good news, but I still think there's lots to go.

22:10255 was, I'm laughing, could have been crabbed. That might have been. Could have been braced. Could have been even better. But I digress. This is like playing per quacky. No, but 255 to December 24 high-ish, and then you go back to March of 2021, I think that's where it goes. And that's where it's had trouble before, but I think that's where it's at it. All right. There's a lot more fast money to come. Here's what's coming up next.

23:00After this.