Major moves in semi stocks... And what’s next for oil 9/2/26

21:51He's tired of these earnings. Great to see you, man. Thank you very much. Karen, coming over to you. Look, I'm always long. And I'm always long whether that's the right thing to be or the wrong thing to be. But I'm still long AI, but I also have financials, health care, energy. Those are probably my – and banks as well. Those are all big allocations. Steve? Yeah, I don't think – I had a belief that we weren't going to see a rate hike. But I think the Treasury Secretary, Scott Besson, getting in front of this and using the Treasury fund to buy the long end and to figure out ways to moderate the long end.

22:28I feel as if they know it's stacked against them or they're preparing for the inevitability that we are going to see a rate hike. So I'm a little unclear on that. I still think we stay sort of sideways. I don't think we get a cut, but I think we stay sideways into year end. Guy, coming over to you. Is a rate hike, does that create competition from the bond market for equities? Does it just create kind of a ceiling on where equities can go? I mean, what happens if we get that rate hike? I said, I talked to a lot of people. They see a broadening. Where do you see this all going? I'll say something that I'm going to get a lot of Twitter hate on and might snicker at me.

23:02I think if the Fed were to raise rates, it actually might calm the fears of the bond market in some perverse way. And I think the back end of the curve might behave in a way that you don't anticipate rates actually going lower. Now, that's counter to a lot of people think, I'm sure, and I'm not necessarily 100 percent certain what happened. But it's not out of the realm of possibility because I think a lot of people then be walked off the ledge and you'd see stability for the first time in a couple of years. All right. Coming up, Venezuela's oil. It's back in play with the deal to get the U.S.

23:31back to more black gold pumping and the key companies that are getting in on all that action. You're watching Fast Money Live from the Nasdaq Market Site in Times Square. We are back right after this.

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25:09State podcast or find Schwab Market Update wherever you get your podcasts.

25:27Welcome back to Fast Money. Stocks snapping a three-day losing streak. The Dow adding 300 points. The S &P and the Nasdaq each gaining a half a percent. And the Nasdaq 100 up about a quarter of 1%. Uber rising at percent and a half after announcing plans to cut 3 ,300 jobs or 10 % of its workforce. The CEO writing in a memo, the cuts are aimed at consolidating teams and concentrating workers in a smaller number of key hubs. Jack Daniels maker Brown Foreman jumping almost 4 % even after missing sales estimates this morning. The company maintaining its full year guidance and also warning that macro pressures and geopolitical instability are weighing on consumer behavior.

26:04Some more after hours action to bring to you. HP Enterprise down despite better than expected results and guidance, five below higher after its beat and raise in PVH higher, even after the Calvin Klein parent company gave some lackluster guidance. By the way, the HPE CEO is going to be on Squawk on the Street tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. Eastern time. Banks also bouncing back today after hitting more than two-month lows just a day ago. Both the KBE and the KRE Regional Bank ETF up 2 % or more, but a couple big names, they just weren't able to hold on to their early momentum. We're talking J.P. Morgan, Bank of America, Citigroup, as well as a number of others closing well off their session highs.

26:42Karen. Yeah, so I like the bank sector. I love J.P. Morgan. I like Citibank as well. You know, I think SpaceX was sort of a moment for all of those banks. Remember, Goldman Sachs had that gigantic quarter not long after that, And all the banks really rallied. And then I think, you know, Iran heated up again and oil started to move and all of that. But they've come in. But I still think I like the banks. I think that they're going to see a lot of efficiencies from AI. I think that credit quality is good. The consumer is still spending. Their consumers are still spending. And if you're in the debt capital markets business, equity capital markets business, trading, yes, all of that is great.

27:20So I'm staying long for sure. If I own no city, I would buy it right here. Dan? Yeah, it's interesting that you just mentioned consumer credit. And by all means, it looks like it's hanging in there, especially for that top part of the K. And I think there's some bubbling up on some of the lower end. And, you know, I've just been kind of focused on Capital One and American Express. It's kind of hitting two of those sort of, you know, demos, if you will. And those stocks really can't get out of their own way. And, again, that doesn't mean that their users are having problems. It doesn't mean that we get data on defaults and delinquencies and that sort of thing.

27:54But through the lens of the market, I mean, those two stocks I find are very, very interesting. To Karen's point about if you're talking about equity capital markets, debt capital markets, you talk about investment banking, you're talking about trading. We saw amazing numbers out of all of these banks over this last quarter and guidance that worked pretty well. But I'll just say this. If higher rates, if higher oil, if uncertainty around geopolitics, if we see any blips in the AI trade, these deals are not coming. I mean, these big trillion-dollar-plus deals. If Anthropic gets pushed out in the next year and by all means they want to get it done pretty soon, then you're going to see these banks kind of come in and specifically probably Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs.

28:31Grasso. Yeah, I do think Karen's point on the IPO market where you saw this rush in and they all got had a huge payday. But I still believe that the IPO market is open and it's not only open for those high profile names. It's open for a lot of other names as well. But if you look at specifically Wells Fargo, different animal, different breed, it's actually breaking out now on a chart. So not to get too specific and granular, I would choose Wells Fargo over the balance for a host of different reasons. Underperformed, then caught up and has underperformed recently. The chart looks like it's really breaking out to me right now.

29:05All right. Look at Wells Fargo finished up about two and a half percent. All right. Coming up, the next move for crude. what the latest flare-up with Iran could mean for energy prices, plus a major suspension in the NBA of the Clippers owner and former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. We'll have all the details when Fast Money returns. Stay with us. Missed a moment of Fast? Catch us anytime on the go. Follow the Fast Money podcast. We're back right after this.

29:44Welcome back to Fast Money. Meantime, oil prices up again today as new details emerge from the U.S. Venezuela oil deal. Our Brian Sullivan was on the ground in Caracas. We spoke with Energy Secretary Chris Wright about the U.S. government's partnership with a private company to develop 17 Venezuelan oil fields over 100 years, with the Defense Department taking a 35 percent stake. Brian also sat down with Chevron CEO Mike Wirth about the company's separate deal with Venezuela and the structural changes that made that possible. We've seen a significant change in the fiscal and commercial terms and the legal framework for investments in Venezuela.

30:21This has been negotiated over the last several months. There's a new petroleum law that's been put in place, and that has changed the taxes, the royalties, other terms around investment, and has taken us from not being very competitive within our set of alternatives to something that's very competitive versus our options around the world, which is why we're willing to commit significant capital and grow the way we are. For more, we're joined right here on set by Michelle Caruso Cabrera, CEO of MCC Global Enterprise. It's big. And the CBC Conspirator. It's a pleasure to be here, ladies and gentlemen.

30:55Got to get all the applause out. You were also recently on the ground in Venezuela. Thank you for joining us tonight. So we just heard from Mike Worth. We've seen great reporting from Brian Sullivan all day. I think the question for a lot of people is exactly what is the state of play in Venezuela? Mike Worth, he just kind of alluded to it that the situation has changed a bit. There's an interim president, Delce Rodriguez. And I think the question, the other question is, back in 2007, Conoco and Exxon, they had things seized, their property and their assets. Has that completely changed? Is it safe to invest and put capital there now?

31:23Yeah, Venezuela has a terrible track record. And what happened today with Chevron announcing a separate deal from the United States was meant to put that to rest, to say it is safe to come back. I would say the other thing that was achieved through this is when I was on the ground in Venezuela, there was consternation that there hadn't been enough movement when it came to the oil sector with enough deals with smaller players trying to get things done. They didn't know if it was lack of capacity, lack of desire. But this certainly turbocharges the situation and gets oil up and running faster. And that's important because the United States, it's in the national interest of the United States.

31:59You know, they arrested Maduro. You broke it. You bought it. You need to stabilize this place. You need to start increasing the amount of revenue coming into the country. So that way you can stop the mass migration that was so pervasive for the last 20 years. You know, eight million people leaving the country. So there's a lot of things that this deal the White House believes achieves for them. It's great having you here. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve got below 300 million barrels. That's sort of the line in the sand. There's a school of thought. I think the president believes is that this could be the key to refilling it.

32:28Is it that simple? So it's going to take a while. Right. Mike Worth says to double production is going to take several years. So I don't know that what happens there today is going into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. But this is certainly about reducing the reliance on Middle Eastern oil for sure. Will it take a while to get up and running? Yes, of course. But, you know, in real estate, you use the term place has got a load, has good bones. But as well, it's got good bones. They used to produce more than three million barrels a day. They know how to do this. They need investment. They need less corruption, et cetera.

32:59And bringing in American companies, I think, is going to help them achieve that. So this has also been framed as kind of a national security deal. It's another source of oil here in the Western Hemisphere. But why Venezuela? will. Why not try to strike a deal with Argentina, where they also have oil reserves, or obviously in Guyana, where there's very rich oil reserves as well? I think the White House would say all of the above. They want all of that, right? Argentina is living through an oil boom right now that they've never experienced before. It's super important for them because they lack dollars and they really need them to stabilize their currency.

33:28Guyana is going to be an incredible source of oil. I think all of those things for the United States are extremely important. The other thing I would say in terms of national security is the White House was very up front saying that the fields that they're taking right now are paying for or doing a deal about, they were taken from the Russians and the Chinese. So this is also, Marco Rubio said, this is also about eliminating the Russians and the Chinese from the Western Hemisphere. Can I ask you, what's the vibe there in Venezuela? How do they feel about the United States presence? And what's the, are they optimistic?

34:02So the polling shows that President Trump is incredibly popular. Throughout Latin America, he was incredibly popular after this move with Maduro. People were absolutely thrilled with it. When it happened, they could not cheer because a lot of the old regime was still in place. But behind closed doors, they could tell you they were very, very excited. You know, they won the baseball World Series. And one person said to me, you know, we were so ecstatic. We were so thrilled. And I think we were so jubilant because when Maduro was arrested, we weren't allowed to express anything. We had to stay quiet.

34:36So when we won the Baseball World Series, it was a way to express joy that they hadn't previously been allowed to express. One other question for you. The Department of War taking a 35 percent stakeout. I don't know about you. I wasn't aware they had private equity investors inside that department. Exactly how does that work and how does America reap the benefits? Well, Steve Feinberg is number two in the Pentagon, right? And he's a private equity guy. And so he's brought in a lot of private equity people. I mean, you put private equity people in a government, they want to do deals, right? Every, you know, a hammer thinks everything's a nail, right?

35:09So they like to solve a lot of issues by proposing deals. I think it's just their natural way to think. So this is the Office of Strategic Capital. They brought in a lot of money that they can use to try to advance what they think are the national security interests of the United States when it comes to critical minerals, when it comes to semiconductors, and when it comes to oil. MCC, it is always a pleasure to see you. Thank you very much from that on-the-ground insight from Venezuela. Thank you. Brasso, come on with you. The real trade are the refiner still. They've had unbelievable years. You look at Philips, you look at Valero, you look at Marathon, all up above at around 100 or way above 100 % year to date.

35:46Those are the ones that are going to be refining this heavy, sour crude where we are set up for light sweet. but these refiners in the Gulf are capable of doing it. This trade extends longer than most people thought it would. Crack spreads are at all-time highs. It probably goes higher. All right, coming up, the NBA handing down a big penalty to the L.A. Clippers owner, Steve Ballmer. All the details and the implications right after this break. Fast Money's back right after this.

36:23Welcome back to Fast Money, a developing story at this hour with the NBA throwing the book at the L.A. Clippers. Owner Steve Ballmer and star Kawhi Leonard as a result of charges that the team circumvented the salary cap to pay the NBA All-Star. The Clippers will lose five first-round draft picks beginning in 2029. The team's going to be fined$30 million. Kawhi Leonard will have to pay the league$700 ,000 for his part in the scandal. And this is the big one. owner Steve Ballmer will be suspended from all league and all team activities for one year. The Clippers reacting, telling CNBC, we vehemently reject the NBA's findings, which are the result of a heavily biased investigation seeking to justify a predetermined narrative rather than facts and evidence.

37:05What the league told us privately differs from what it announced today publicly. The Clippers say they intend to challenge the decision. Ballmer himself has yet to comment. Joining us now on the Fast Line is Jason Gay, sports columnist at The Wall Street Journal. Jason, thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. All right, so Steve Ballmer not commenting, but we have had a comment from Kawhi Leonard. He essentially is taking responsibility for lapses of judgment by people in his inner circle, and he says he regressed the distraction. Give us the sense of how you see all this. Can the Clippers actually challenge this, and what happens next in this process?

37:41Sure. I mean, the funny part is, of course, is that Kawhi is moving on. He has been traded. He's off back to Toronto where he won a championship before joining the Clippers in 2019. As for the Clippers, the real pain here is going to be those draft picks. That is obviously a key team-building part of the way NBA teams are constructed. And to lose picks in that kind of succession is a real, real injury. In terms of options that the Clippers have, I mean, they're making, obviously, you know, a lot of noise about taking this to some other forum, you know, some sort of arbitration process. I don't know exactly the mechanics of how that will work.

38:23I mean, obviously, they are part of the NBA here. But this is a rather unprecedented situation. Jason, it's Karen Feinerman. Thanks for being on. And so I doubt that I actually I guess I'm almost certain other teams might have some sort of unusual sort of deals with players. Do you think they should just consider abandoning or restructuring the entire cap structure? Well, I mean, let's go specifically to what is being investigated here and why the NBA had the rule that it had, which was that it was to kind of alleviate any sort of back, you know, end deals, you know, surreptitious dealings that would add financial weight to a league that has a hard salary cap.

39:13And if you don't police that, you create all sorts of opportunity and incentives for teams to construct situations and packages like this. And then what kind of cap structure do you actually have after that? I think that's why the Azul's exist. What happens in this Locktell Report is that they make it pretty clear that the Clippers were quite aware of this circumstance because they had, in fact, been penalized before with a player, DeAndre Jordan, before Kawhi Leonard. And, in fact, Leonard's case is pretty well known around the NBA that there had been discussions with multiple teams about potential additional financial opportunities for Leonard and that teams were advised to not enter into those kinds of agreements.

39:57So, Jason, about 25 years ago, we saw a similar situation with Joe Smith, a player. Yeah. And that team also lost, the Minnesota Timberwolves. They lost five first-round draft picks. But that was under the David Stern NBA, a very different regime than the Adam Silver NBA. So I want to ask you, does Adam Silver, does they have the support of the other owners and the people in the league to maintain these five draft picks being forfeited? Or do you see the Clippers having the potential to maybe lobby the other owners and say, hey, you know, this is an extreme penalty. I mean, it's not quite a death sentence, but it's certainly extreme.

40:28I think you're going to have both. I mean, I think you're going to have people, you know, lobbying on behalf of the Clippers. And I think you're going to have people who appreciate that the league took a hard position on this. I mean, let's not also forget that Adam Silver is forever tethered to Steve Ballmer and the Clippers because Steve Ballmer was the owner who came in and purchased the Clippers amid another crisis with previous owner Donald Sterling. This has to be, you know, quite surreal for this to be entangling his commissionership again. You know, the complexion of the NBA has changed quite a bit as well.

40:59A lot of private equity money coming in. It's just a different NBA from family ownership. So with these new owners, do you think they want to see a harsh penalty to someone like a Steve Ballmer? And, of course, there's a lot of deals in play, whether it's the Lakers or other teams. Do you think this might have a chilling effect that an owner can say, hey, you know, I can be penalized? very harshly if I'm trying to run my team even slightly beyond, you know, the line that's been set by Adam Silver. Right. I mean, just to go into the macro here, I think that the name of the game is for individual owners and ownership groups is franchise valuation.

41:33And yes, there are ownership groups that are, you know, in under the hood, looking at the mechanics of the caps and team construction and winning and all that. But at the end of the day, this has become sort of an asset class that is managed as such. And the particular small, you know, debates over, you know, caps and the structuring of deals, I don't think are as much a material issue for owners as if you had something that was affecting the bottom line, affecting the valuations of these franchises. Then I think you would see a real uproar. To date, we haven't seen anything like this. In fact, we've seen quite the contrary with these franchises just exploiting the value.

42:12All right. As it stands right now, the Clippers are going to forfeit draft picks from 2029 and 2033. Also, owner Steve Ballmer suspended from all activities for one year. Jason Gay, thanks for helping us break this down. Cheers. Thank you. All right, coming up here on Fast Money, a big alphabet. Berkshire Hathaway's CEO spoke to CNBC about his third largest position while he's staying bullish on the hyperscaler despite recent weakness. Also, here's a sneak peek at the Kramer camp. Jim's chatting exclusively with the CEO of Rubrik. Catch that full interview at the top of the hour on Mad Money. Much more Fast coming up in two.

42:54All right. Welcome back to Fast Money. Shares of Broadcom are racing early losses, climbing into positive territory, up just about 1 % right now. The CEO on the call raising fiscal 2026 AI revenue guidance to 58 billion from 56 billion. That's a 186 % increase from last year. He also said the company's on target to exceed EPS of 30 bucks in fiscal 2028. Meantime, Berkshire Hathaway CEO Greg Abel on Squawk Box earlier today digging into the company's stake in Alphabet. Here's what he had to say. I called Warren and I said, we had a significant opportunity to invest in, continue to invest in Google, but with a significant block.

43:35Discuss the size. They hadn't set the size, but recommended that we consider$10 billion. And Warren and I discussed the size. We discussed the size of discount. And I'd recommended 6.5 % discount. And we were comfortable with that. That stake now worth about$37 billion, Alphabet's Berkshire's third largest stake, the Google parent, under some pressure recently, having put in a fourth straight losing month and down over 12 % since the start of May. Karen. I like it. It's one of my biggest positions. I mean, I like the Berkshire owns it. That's the kind of holder that you want. But I think, you know, the hyperscalers, they're in favor.

44:13They're out of favor. You know, we'll see the new model released today. We'll see if that is enough to sort of goose the stock again. But it's not crazy expensive. I like it. Dan? I think this is so much more than a hyperscaler. And I know that that's what you buy into. If you think about it, they have the TPU. They have distribution across so many different platforms, including Android. They have DeepMind. And, you know, they're able to use this infrastructure to serve their, like, biggest businesses, right? And they also have GCP, which sits there just waiting for enterprises to do this. You talk about the models that come out of the lab.

44:47So, to me, this is, like, the most diversified way to play AI going forward, especially if you think that, you know, some of the hyperscalers or a meta or some of these other inputs, you know, input suppliers, that sort of thing, are probably tapped out. This is the one, I think, that gets bought on big pullbacks. And you have search. And you have. And Waymo. And Waymo. Search funds everything else. Right. And YouTube. Yeah. Got a lot of stuff. Guy? And you have a valuation, as Karen said. I mean, it's a market multiple for a premier. I mean, it's a premier franchise. Their moat is still very wide and very deep, I think.

45:21I mean, the existential risk we talked about a year ago has not come to fruition. So I'm with Karen on this one. I think the problem is they went to where we started the show. Free cash flow negative for the first time since the IPO. and with everything from ads to search, funding the AI spend, you're at that tipping point where they have to find that right balance between what they're bringing in and that free cash flow machine because it wasn't the right balance. The stock paid for it. Hopefully they get it. Yeah, Abel calling Alphabet a significant player in the AI trade. So giving a vote of confidence.

45:52All right, coming up next on Fast Money, we got your final trade. Stay with us.

46:07welcome back time for the final trade let's go around the horn steve paypal deal was off stock plunged now you start to see it rallied back i think it's going to go much higher from here yeah so if it's good enough for abel and it's good enough for berkshire hathaway and for f block it's good enough for my final trade google dan yeah broadcom moves down is up i was not impressed with much of that came out of there um i wouldn't be buying it here at people Given the Clippers draft history, the NBA is doing them a huge favor. Just take a look at what they've done. Halliburton, young man. Halliburton.

46:38Tyrese Halliburton? No, H-A-L. All right, thank you for watching Fast Money. Mad Money with Jim Cramer. It starts right now.

46:54All opinions expressed by the Fast Money participants are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of CNBC or its parent company or affiliates and may have been previously disseminated by them on television, radio, internet, or another medium. You should not treat any opinion expressed on this podcast as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of an opinion. Such opinions are based upon information the Fast Money participants consider reliable, but neither CNBC nor its affiliates and or subsidiaries warrant its completeness or accuracy, and it should not be relied upon as such.

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