Looking for Clarity on Tariffs and Can Gold Keep Shining Bright? 4/1/25

0:02Live from the Nasdaq market site in the heart of New York City's Times Square. This is Fast slumped. The SMH down almost 13 % this year, underperforming the S &P and the NASDAQ by a wide margin. What's the next move for this all-important tech sector? Stick around to find out. And later, breaking down another record day for gold. Cathie Wood and Corweave's massive turnaround. An extra, extra. Read all about the 2 ,000-plus percent two-day move in conservative news network Newsmax. I'm Melissa Lee coming to you live from Studio B at the NASDAQ. On the desk tonight, Karen Finerman, Dan Nathan, Guy Adami and Katie Stockton, founder and managing partner at Fairlead Strategies.

0:52And we start off with markets bracing for the onset of the White House latest round of tariffs. President Trump expected to host an event at the Rose Garden in less than 24 hours where he will lay out his plans for the countries and products that will get impacted. Markets seesawing his investors away clarity on the levies. The S &P and Nasdaq ultimately ending the day up less than a percent while the Dow was near the flatline. For more than what we could expect tomorrow. Let's bring in Megan Casella. Megan. Hey, Melissa, less than 24 hours out, and I am told that things continue to be fluid and discussions are ongoing.

1:23Meetings continue to be held in the Oval on exactly what tomorrow's announcement will look like. I'm told they're continuing today. They will continue throughout the day tomorrow until that 4 p.m. announcement. So we are unlikely to have any firm details until then. But I can say that all options remain on the table and they continue to consider three primary options. One would be sort of the most extreme options, that blanket tariffs as high as 20 percent on nearly all imports. They're also talking about tiered rates of tariffs, potential buckets that countries could fall into, or they're talking about customized country by country tariffs.

1:57I'll also add to this list that The Wall Street Journal just in the last few minutes is reporting that the president is also considering a sort of lesser middle of the road option that would be a lower than 20 percent tariff on a smaller subset of countries. So that fits in with everything that I've been hearing in in terms of all options being on the table, and continuing to find some sort of a middle ground here that would satisfy the president, while not sending markets reeling at least not too much. That's the ultimate goal. I can tell you one other thing that I've learned today from talking with White House officials is something else under active discussion for tomorrow is revoking the de minimis threshold for China specifically.

2:34This is something President Trump tried to do back in February. It's been on pause since then. They're actively considering whether to fully revoke that exemption starting tomorrow. This is something that have implications for companies, as you know, like Xi 'an and Temu, as well as small businesses and small business platforms like Etsy. Something else to watch tomorrow is whether they fully revoke that loophole for China. And then finally, Melissa, two other details that we picked up today. One is that any tariffs being announced tomorrow are expected to be effective immediately. So no lead time for companies to get used to this could take effect that day, potentially the next day starting to get collected.

3:09The other thing that we learned today, I asked White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt at her press briefing earlier today whether tariffs are expected to kick back in tomorrow for Canada and Mexico as planned. Remember, there had been a one month temporary exemption on those fentanyl tariffs against Canada and Mexico. I asked whether that pause was likely to be extended. She did not want to give any specifics, didn't want to get ahead of the president and his announcement tomorrow. But she said the president continues to be concerned about fentanyl, suggesting he may think there's more work to be done from Canada and Mexico.

3:40At this point, we are expecting that pause to be lifted and those tariffs to kick back in tomorrow, Melissa, alongside the reciprocal tariffs as well. All right, Megan, thank you. Megan Casella from the White House. So everything is on the table. We don't know anything right now. With that said, I'm going to ask a very unfair question of Guy Adami, and that is, what do you think the markets, what do you think happens tomorrow? In other words, have we priced in peak uncertainty around the tariffs? And so it is to the upside tomorrow. I think it's a fair question. I think the answer is yes. Now, it's the third time we've traded down to sort of this 5500 level, which seemingly is for every reason a bit of a line in the sand.

4:16You had to bounce yesterday. You had to bounce today. I think that's encouraging. I don't think my instinct suggests he's not going to do something more onerous than the market is believed. I think he wants to do something down the middle, which will provide a bit of a relief rally. I think it's going to be short lived. I'll say this as well. I think the bond market sells off on the back of that. Potentially gold, we'll see. But I think the stock market could rally on the back of that for sure. Yeah, and again, to your point about the worst case scenarios, I think what they're trying to do right now is create a scenario where there's a base case, there's a worst case, and there's a case that's better than expected.

4:48And so I think the market reaction, we've dealt with a lot of this volatility given the uncertainty, and I think the market might really appreciate a bit of certainty about how this goes. But I don't think that guarantees any certainty because I think that they're trying to get these other countries to the negotiating table, right? And let's just see how they respond to, you know, these different cases. And, you know, I think about this and we just heard they're going to start collecting immediately. They're not collecting from these companies. They're collecting from U.S. companies that are purchasing these goods from overseas, right?

5:19And then the companies have a decision whether they want to eat the difference or raise the prices and pass it through to consumers, which might result in less sales, right? And so you think about this, we just got done with Q1, and that's kind of baked in the cake. We saw some of the consumer data. We saw some of the business confidence data, that sort of thing. So that's going to be in Q1 earnings. The Q2 guidance could just be horrible, if you think about it, the lack of clarity in even how they quantify what the consumer is going to do in response to these tariffs. So to me, that's where you get back to this uncertainty.

5:50That's why you probably have 5 ,500 to the downside going to 5 ,400, maybe 5 ,200. I agree on the uncertainty. We'll have some certainty on some things, maybe, but then to the, you know, the response to that, we won't have certainty there either. So when you say markets were bracing, yeah, really like feeling like just waiting to get hit. Right. From some side or the other. And I think, you know, markets hate uncertainty more than they hate bad news. And so it doesn't feel great to, I mean, yes, we'll have some news tomorrow, a lot of news tomorrow, but I think it's going to take us a while to process it.

6:25We'll see. Some customers or some, you know, the Home Depots of the world, they're powerful. They can negotiate prices with whoever their vendors might be. Some others can't. We'll see. It's going to be difficult to implement immediately, too. Right, right. The other side of the uncertainty is the 10-year yield going below 4.15 percent of it. That was an interesting move as well, Katie. Yeah, you know, we've seen yields really kind of pivot alongside the dollar, and that It comes with the new administration. So it was a change in trend that we didn't really anticipate. But now we have long-term shifts in, say, the stochastic oscillator, things like that, that are suggesting that we will see yields come in even further, maybe even sub-4 before we come out of this.

7:09And I would agree on the relief of uncertainty. The S &P 500 does have support around 5480. The secondary support below that is about 5 percent below. So usually when you get that first oversold, which is what we have on a weekly bar chart of the S &P, you get a rebound, short-lived, I agree with that term, and the retest can be pretty severe. Take you down at the recent low, and that becomes your intermediate term entry. Right. The little bit that Megan had mentioned in terms of revoking the de minimis loophole, that's really interesting because that's what retailers have had to deal with. I mean, how can you compete against a$5 swimming suit coming from China for free shipping?

7:50Yeah. No, this is good for Amazon. It's good for Etsy. Target. I would. Yeah. Cold. I mean, any sort of lower price good. Yes. But there's no method to the madness. You're talking about two Chinese retailers. So there's a headline that's been going on for the last couple of weeks that Trump is considering giving, you know, some relief on tariffs to China if they help him do a deal to buy TikTok. Like, just think about that. In 2017, the Trump administration were the first ones to make noise about banning TikTok. So how like how does that make any sense? And I think that's a big part of it. You talk about this de minimis thing.

8:22I think it's de minimis. I just don't think it matters. And I think what matters is like, what are you willing to trade at the negotiating table for something that is long lasting? If you're really trying to make some meaningful changes to these trade relationships and these trade imbalances, playing tip for tat with TikTok. I don't know where I was going. I could have gone a lot of ways. Yeah, right. It just doesn't make a whole heck of a lot of sense. You see, essentially, I would submit the madness is the method, right? I mean, I think they're just trying to do things differently. And they're not really all that concerned about the uncertainty that we talk about, the fact that the market seemingly doesn't like it.

8:57I think they view that to be a negotiating tactic. You don't have to agree with it. But I think that's sort of where their head is at this point. Yeah. In terms of the sectors that look poised for that sort of bounce, Katie, what should we look for? Usually when you get a relief rally, and this would be aligned with what we're going to talk about later with the tech sector, the tech sector does exhibit upside leadership. You see the higher beta segments of the market, the higher growth, and, you know, that's where you get outperformance. But it should be fleeting based on what we're seeing because we have long-term topping formations in place across the board in technology, semiconductors.

9:32And to me, that's what we really want to keep our sights on because, you know, with a brief relief rally, we should have a selling opportunity. Yeah. For a trade. Well, I think what would it be? Where do we get up to? I think, listen, I'd say 58 and a quarter was sort of the number I looked at. We got up to 5 ,800-ish, I think, on that recent rally. I mean, maybe we stall there. But I think, again, I think these things are going to be short-lived. I will tell you, and I think you remember this, Katie was on this show in the summer, I think June of last year, almost a year ago-ish. And she talked about how her work suggested volo was going to become a thing.

10:05And that August 5th, we obviously saw it. Volatility is still a thing today. And it typically lasts a lot longer than people think. So rallies are short-lived. I think the downside is inevitable. But I think we rally first. Well, even with all the uncertainty around tariffs, gold hitting record high after record high. Katie, what do the technicals say about gold? You know, gold obviously has very strong positive momentum. And it's across time horizons. The daily, weekly, and monthly bar charts have it. So the way we feel about something like this is that it just makes sense to keep the moving averages on your side.

10:35There have been numerous overbought sell signals on the way up. And the fact that they're not being confirmed or there's just a very minimal reaction to them is a testament to the momentum. We're now we've surpassed in gold the price objectives that we can derive from the most recent breakout. It was around 30, 60 per ounce. It doesn't mean that that's totally overdone. it does, you know, have us more attuned to the direction of those moving averages. And if somebody was really attuned to the short-term picture, they might want to stay with that 20-day moving average. And obviously, you could go longer term than that.

11:10But what's really important this year, year to date, is the outperformance from gold is notable to the extent that the ratio against the S &P 500 has broken out. And it suggests that it's more sustainable. So it's very much in falling with a more volatile year, with a trading range, perhaps at best, if not a bear cycle. All right, for more on what is next for gold, let's bring in Ryan McIntyre. He's a senior managing partner at Sprott. Ryan, great to see you. You're seeing gold to$3 ,200. Yeah, we first see the resistance for gold at$3 ,200. And if we see it break beyond that, actually, we see quite a bit upside from there.

11:46So it could be just the first step here, but wouldn't be surprised if it bounced off$3 ,200 first. How about the miners? The miners are interesting. People have 100 percent gravitated towards gold in a physical way. But there's really been a lack of enthusiasm towards the mining stocks that mine gold, which is very interesting, because typically when gold's hitting record highs, you tend to see a lot of enthusiasm for their leverage plays on gold, like gold mining equities. And you really haven't seen that to the degree we have seen in the past, which is very interesting. We're at a point now where people are concerned about if they don't have it, they don't own it.

12:19Right. Possessions, nine tenths of the law. You better have it in your vault, safe, domiciled in your country. PHYS works in that environment. But speak to this is I've been in the business a long time. I don't think anybody's seen anything like this that thirsts the need for the physical gold. You're completely right. I think people really have a visceral reaction to wanting something physical in this environment that's more certain. You know, if there's one trend that we're seeing today is people want something in an asset that's independent from other asset classes, but also independent from other institutions as well.

12:53So something that really stands alone in physical gold really does that where you don't have to depend on anyone for its outcome. I hate to say that. I mean, this sounds like a strange question because there's no obviously PE ratio for gold. It doesn't pay dividends and all these different things, no cash flow. But at what point would you ever say that gold is in a bubble? Or is there no circumstance under which gold is a bubble? At some price, for sure. I mean, you can't deny that price is a huge factor in investment returns. I mean, since gold came off the gold standard in 1971, it's annually compounded at about 8 % a year.

13:27And we'd expect that to continue as money supply continues to increase. And there's very little marginal addition of gold in actual physical circulation year to year. So that's very minimal. So it's really all about money being printed effectively. So basically, you answered the question concerning the miners in a way because they have to replace depleted assets eventually. And eventually, inflation hits their costs, right? So they have to deal with that. So is physical gold always the answer for you? To me, it's the permanent answer typically in a portfolio. We think that's a strategic holding that people should have at about the 10 percent level.

14:06We also think miners can play a really good role as well. anywhere from 0 % to 5%, we think, based on valuations and enthusiasm. So if people were really excited about gold mining companies, they were raising a ton of money, huge valuations, skew that towards the zero side. If people were benign about them, didn't care about them, more towards the 5 % side. And what's interesting about gold mining companies, they get leverage to the gold price. So every 1 % move in the gold price, we'd expect about a 2 % change in profitability and therefore a share price move. And the other part you get as well with additional gold price expansion is you actually get growth as well.

14:44And so that's growth in the reserve base, maybe growth through production expansions and so forth that actually is organic within the firm as well. Did you at all in the last, I don't know, let's say year or so feel any kind of threat to gold's position from Bitcoin? We got asked that a lot. And I guess our view is, you know, we never felt that, but we could feel other people feeling that. And it's really tough when Bitcoin is doing well versus gold. And people are saying, oh, gold isn't the hedge that it once was and all this type of thing. But I guess our view is that, you know, gold's got the track record.

15:19Gold's got the unique attribute of being physical, which Bitcoin does not have. And you really it's hard or impossible to create gold out of thin air like you can with cryptocurrency. So to me, it's an asset class that stands on its own. Ryan, thanks for coming by. Appreciate it. Ryan McIntyre of Sprott. Here's a question. GDX or gold with the addendum that GDX is below on the forward PE basis is below its 10-year moving average and 20-year average as well. So I'm going to go off the charts. I mean, he's here. I haven't replied to him yet. You know, it's P-H-Y-S is the outperformer here. It's the physical gold.

15:55But if you're making me choose between GLD, that ETF, or the miners, I'd rather be in the miners. There's a scenario where GLD actually doesn't work. And quickly to answer your question about bubbles, I mean, every two weeks commitment to traders comes out and you can find out where speculators stand, whether they're long or short. Those typically are a good indicator. But with the way central banks buying gold and hoarding gold, you know, I think we're far from a bubble right here. UBS had a recent note saying that with gold prices soaring, not a lot of analysts have increased their estimates for the gold miners.

16:25And so that is going to come and that will be an upside surprise. You know, you look at the long-term picture for gold miners, there's this giant triangle formation. And it's already, the group has lifted out of this formation. And that tends to be a very positive development. We tend to recommend the same as Ryan, to go straight to the commodity if you can, especially if you're bearish equities, because even the gold miners, which will usually outperform in that environment, probably won't be entirely immune to it. Their correlation isn't quite as tight. But it is a compelling long-term setup.

16:57I just want to say kudos to you and Tim, if you were here. You have been on this for years now. Got to get something right. You know who's not on the trade is President Trump and Elon Musk. Remember in February they were talking about they don't believe that Fort Knox has all that gold. And when you think about that coming from the administration, like, doesn't that make you pause a little bit? They said it, guy. I mean, these are the two most important people in the world. I don't think they said that. They did say it. I'm looking at the quote on CNBC.com right here. I'll put it in the chat. Yeah.

17:28Again, I mean, yeah. Must tweet it. Coming up, Corwee with a monster comeback as Cathie Wood's ARK Invest discloses a major stake in the newly public company. We'll debate whether the AI stocks momentum can continue next and later. Auto sales revving up ahead of President Trump's tariffs. What happens when the levies go into effect? That's straight ahead.

17:50This is Fast Money with Melissa Lee, right here on CNBC.

18:04Welcome back to Fast Money AI Stock. CoreWeave rallying almost 42 % on its third day of trading. The NVIDIA-backed company now significantly above its$40 IPO price. Today's move comes after Cathie Wood disclosed a stake in her ARK Next Generation Internet ETF. That position valued at nearly$19 million before today's open, now worth more than$26 million. Yeah, the bummer for Corweave is that the deal was obviously mispriced. If two days later it's trading at 52.5, they sold 37 million shares at 40. So if you're an opportunistic investor like Kathy, that's great. She has a thesis on this sort of thing.

18:41I just mentioned that it's got probably a high short interest. We talked about this on Friday. Folks were probably looking to short this sort of thing. options started trading today. The most active options were 25 ,000 of the April 17th expiration 50 strike calls. So a bunch of the May 50 strike calls also traded. I think so again, I think some opportunistic traders were taking advantage of it. I think you probably had some real investors come in who might have been curious about the trade last week, but didn't participate. And the last thing I'll just say is that, you know, you had Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan were the underwriters.

19:12There were stories around the last couple of days as they took a discounted fee, not a big fee as you normally would for an IPO of this size. You have a green shoe. This is an over allocation. I bet they ripped the thing. I bet they were probably sick of being told they didn't do a good job on the pricing and they couldn't create a book and the thing traded really poorly. So they take the green shoe and they rip it and they create a short squeeze. So, I mean, they didn't have any control over when they, right? The train was in motion. They had to price. There was no question. They couldn't pull it.

19:39But also, it's such a what they sold was such a small part of the overall float. They had to get it done at any price. You know, Dan mentioned this in a call, the open AI valuation, that investment soft bank thing. I think that had something to do with it. I'd feel much better about all this if NVIDIA had a similar type of day. It did not. I mean, it was up today like a lot of other things, but not nearly as much as theoretically it should have been if they were somehow trading, not in tandem, but somehow comparably. It didn't happen today. How many more days until you can chart this thing, Katie?

20:11Oh, I like to see six months. So we've got some time. I'm buying time. How is the AI trade overall? You know, people have asked me, is it dead? And I would just say, no, but it's out of favor, right? So I'm quite sure that we will resume the secular uptrend at some stage here in the S &P 500. Our call is for that to happen maybe Q4 or early 2026. So we believe that the AI stocks will kick back in then. But NVIDIA alone, I mean, the toppiness of that chart is evident really across timeframes. And while we are expecting there to abounce, we're better sellers because the loss of momentum is pretty meaningful and pretty new.

20:49You know, it's interesting. And Deirdre Bosa, our friend from Tech Check, she had an awesome – and I'm being serious. Go to CNBC.com and look at this video. It just came out, her Tech Check. It's 40 minutes long. It's talking about all the innovation that's going on in the private markets out there. And there's really a lot of interesting stuff. So when you talk about the momentum being dried up in the public markets, it's all the infrastructure plays, right? It was the early ones. And now, as you get to the application layer and she goes through and I think there's like a dozen CEOs of doing really interesting applications, that's where the excitement is.

21:20And Guy just mentioned OpenAI just raised$40 billion with a B at a$300 billion valuation. There's a lot of that going on. So it's interesting. Unless you're a VC, I don't think there's a lot going on in this trade right now. There's a lot more Fast Money to come. Here's what's coming up next. Great tech expectations. After a brutal start to the year, is the tech sector gearing up for a Q2 comeback? We're going off the charts with Kate Stockton to find out. Plus, a media stocks meme moment. Newsmax shares soaring again in their second trading day. Why investors are betting big on the conservative outlet.

21:58Next, you're watching Fast Money live from the NASDAQ market side in Times Square. We're back right after this.