Markets Digest Latest Inflation Read… And Trade Desk Turmoil Deepens 8/14/25

0:01Live from the Nasdaq market site in the heart of New York City's Times Square this is fast money. Here's what's on tap tonight. National Intel shares the chipmaker popping on a report that the U.S. is considering taking a stake in the stock. The precedent that would set and what it means for the chip sector. And Trade Desk tumbles. The ad tech stock dropping on reports a major client is pulling back from the company. What will it take for shares to recover from here? Plus, Eli Lilly makes the moves on Manjaro. Corwee crumbles again ahead of lockup expiration. And Baba bobbles. Some major funds are selling the stock should you follow suit.

0:33I'm Melissa Lee. Come to you live from Studio B at the NASDAQ. On the desk tonight, Tim Seymour, Steve Grasso, Karen Feinerman, and Guy Adami. We'll get into this morning's inflation data in just a moment. But first, shares of Intel spiking late in the day on reports the Trump administration discussing taking a stake in the company. That after Intel CEO Lip Boutin visited President Trump at the White House just on Monday. Eamon Javers has the very latest developments. Eamon. Hey there, Melissa. What we've got now are a whole lot of no comments from all parties, Starting with the White House, take a look at this statement they put out just a short time ago.

1:07The White House saying discussion about hypothetical deals should be regarded as speculation unless officially announced by the administration. That is a no comment. What you don't see in there is a denial. Take a look at the Intel statement as well. Intel is deeply committed to supporting President Trump's efforts to strengthening U.S. technology and manufacturing leadership. We look forward to continuing to work with the Trump administration to advance these shared priorities. But we are not going to comment on rumors or speculation. There's that word again, speculation. What you don't see in either statement is a denial that this is being discussed behind the scenes, which is what the Bloomberg report said, citing people familiar with the situation.

1:49The Bloomberg report, a little bit thin on details. They don't have a price that the U.S. government is going to pay for this stake. They don't have a percentage of a stake that the U.S. government might take in Intel. Nonetheless, you see what it's done to Intel shares there late in the day here, Melissa. Back over to you. All right, Eamon, thank you. Eamon Javers, already going to the start. The stock was up a lot. It's up 19 percent on the week. Maybe the best thing that's happened to Intel in recent history is that President Trump picked on Lip Boutin. I mean, because that's what it looks like in terms of the stock performance.

2:20And I think we had that. We've been having the conversation. It hasn't panned out. Now it's starting to. And everything about Intel could be sort of the Taiwan, semi of Taiwan. Well, Intel could be sort of the same thing here in terms of the foundry business. It makes actually a lot of sense in terms of security being domiciled in the United States, dominating here. And we've said that for a while. Now it's starting to manifest in the stock. And I don't think this is over by any stretch. I mean, this had always been a pillar for a long time. And Tim, we've been talking about this for months, maybe longer, about how it is a national semiconductor company.

2:57And now under the Trump administration, if he wants to bring back manufacturing here, this makes 100 percent sense. But it makes sense or it would have made more sense in the context of let's provide incentives, let's provide opportunities for access to either government funds or loans or grants. It's not taking a stake. And so as the guy that's been investing in emerging markets a lot of his career, when you hear a government nationalizing a company, stocks don't rally 8 percent. They usually sell off dramatically. So I'm not saying that this isn't necessarily good news. And I think it's interesting that the White House was effectively talking down intel while maybe thinking about buying them.

3:38I think you've got a fascinating story because the Trump administration and a very different world order is very focused on national champion companies. And this is something that, again, I feel like I've been used to dealing with around the world. And that's fine. In fact, it may be the right move. Lip Boutin, who was known as Mr. Chip in China. I mean, the concerns that are coming out of, say, Ohio, I think are probably more. Ohio's a battleground state. It doesn't surprise me that making Intel and their lack of spending on more jobs in Ohio a potential target, and there's a whole political process that's going here.

4:18But there's no question that LiPoTan has a lot of relationships in China. This is a U.S. versus China chip war and tech war. And I do think that it's not only not surprising, but it's appropriate that people should make sure that Intel is properly a U.S. company focused on U.S. concerns. And, you know, if it's more of a public, excuse me, yeah, if it's more of a government-owned entity than a pure private entity, there will be that much more control. And maybe this is the day and age where we need to. But this is not conventional. And this is very surprising. It is not conventional, particularly post-Great Financial Crisis.

4:57as we were discussing during the great financial crisis, the government took stakes effectively in a lot of companies, including GM and the financials, Karen. But that was during a time of crisis. And for this to happen outside of crisis is unusual. I mean, maybe they think of it as a crisis, right? For Intel? For Intel. Clearly, Intel has, you know, the promise of Intel over the last few years hasn't borne out, right? So, but you're talking about to save the banking system, right? Right. They said every every major, you know, G-SIB had to had to issue it preferred to the government, whether they wanted to or not.

5:33And this is a very different situation than that. Although, you know, I don't know what kind of bargaining power Intel has. I don't know if they want this. Maybe they'll think it's great. I don't know. But I don't think they have a ton of bargaining power. So it's interesting. It is it's it's not. I wonder if we're going to see any more kinds of transactions like we haven't even seen one yet. It's a story of it. Well, I think this is more strategic. This is not a state-owned enterprise. This is a stake. And MP, they did take a 15 % stake in MP materials. So he sees this as strategic. Rare Earth, strategic.

6:10Chips, strategic. So if you come up with a bunch of different companies, he'll probably take a bunch of different other stakes. I don't really have a problem with it. I own Intel. So, of course, I want to see the stock go up. And you owned MP. And I owned MP. So for me, you know, I invested around those strategic companies. As long as they're just stakes and not state-owned enterprise, I think I'm okay with it. Right. And, Tim, going back to the emerging markets metaphor, I get that. But there is a board. Theoretically, the board will vote in some way on this. And isn't investing along with the government?

6:44I mean, you've got a government put, maybe the strongest put out there, in theory. As we've said with Alibaba, if I know the government's on my side now, then I'm a much more confident investor and maybe I've removed a lot of governance dynamics. But think of any country can dub any sector strategic. And that's what's happened. And I've invested in countries where they've dubbed 18 sectors to be strategic, which means suddenly they are no longer in the hands of the private sector. Now, again, decide what you want as an investor. this may be the right time in a world where globalization is dead to be betting more so on board with your government.

7:22And in this case, it's the U.S. government. And if there's a government in the world I'm going to bet with, it's the U.S. government. But I think we just need to point out what it is. And the dynamic here is one where calling something strategic, you can call anything strategic. And that's, in fact, what governments anywhere have the ability to do to give themselves the access into sectors if they want it. And so, look, we all recognize that, and I've said this before, that data is the new oil. So natural resources where everyone in the world in the past had to fight and call strategic interests were first.

7:57We weren't letting the Chinese buy our oil companies. We're not going to let them buy our chip companies. So this is just the world we live in. But but it is a different time. And this is along with MP. It is important to bring that up because the deals are very similar. Yeah. First MP, then then what? Copper, steel, you know, you name any other resource out there, nuclear power, you know, first Intel and then what? Is there NVIDIA? Is there you know, there's a lot of other sort of roads you can go down if you want to. Yeah. Well, yes. And, you know, what I find really fascinating, two weeks ago, and I'm a little hyperbolic, but Lipután was a Chinese operative, effectively.

8:42Right. Selling technology to China, to a Chinese military academy. And now, you know, so it's amazing how quickly things change in today's world. All right. Well, we'll just remember the talk of this U.S. Sovereign Wealth Fund. Right. Right. Where I don't know where the money was exactly coming from, But maybe they're just sort of piecemailing the U.S. sovereign fund together. True. And maybe there's another way of looking at it, too. Maybe Intel is in more trouble than they are projecting. And the U.S. government had to step in to help it along to make sure that it is not going to. The big question is, does this solve the problems to that very point?

9:20Does this solve the problems that the government, that Intel has had? Does this make them go from 15 percent market share above that? They're equal to Broadcom and NVIDIA owns market share. Tim, you want to get in? Well, just really quickly, let's not forget that Ohio is probably the most important state to win in our country right now. And Trump has won it and Republicans have won essentially the last three go rounds here. But if you think about where a lot of the uproar was coming on Intel, when the point guys referencing, you know, Bernie Moreno is someone that's been very supportive of President Trump.

9:56He's someone that's very politically savvy and somebody that is making a big deal out of what Intel hasn't done to fulfill commitments in Ohio, especially when Intel says we might not be done with this till 2030. This is very much about Ohio. This is very much about politics. And it just is what it is. Let's stick with the semi space here. An earnings alert on applied material shares dropping despite a beat on the top and the bottom lines. CNBC's Christina Parsnevelis is here with the details. Christina. Much of this has to do with the outlook and just the drop in demand coming from China. So they announced on the call that it's still ongoing that the China revenues or China contributed about roughly 35 percent to total revenues.

10:35That's going to drop to 29 percent. The CEO listed out three main facts as to why their outlook was less than what the street was anticipating. There was the weakness from China. They said that Chinese fabs were really ramping up spending in 23, 2024, not doing so much now. The second factor, which was interesting, is that the export licenses, they have still not got those through the U.S. government. And they said, quote, that they assumed none of these licenses will be issued in the next quarter. So that's a big sign for a lot of other chip makers that are going through the same problem, waiting for the U.S.

11:06government. Think of all the paperwork. I know NVIDIA is maybe getting a green light, maybe AMD, but that's about it. And the third point was they brought up nonlinear demand. So let's just call it lumpy demand from leading edge customers. Most notably, they don't call out TSMC, but the assumption is Taiwan Semi because Taiwan Semi was also mentioned in KLA's report. That is a peer to applied materials, seeing that there was a little bit of weakness. And then some rumors, even more so in the past few weeks, that TSMC is closing down some plants over there, more lagging edge. And so that would weigh on these equipment manufacturers.

11:37But applied materials does have more exposure to China. And the stock has really underperformed its peers, KLA and LAM Research, just a year to date thus far, and even chips overall. All right. Christina, thank you. Christina Parts Nevelis. Where'd you go with record quarter in revenue and the guide scares people. And now it's it's first of all, the stock has not traded well at all now for the last six months. Pull up a chart. Now we're getting towards levels that I think we got down to one twenty five or so in April bounced, obviously. But we're in the midpoint of that bounce. Valuation is never a concern here, but the guide is scaring people in this environment.

12:12If you guide lower, you're going to get punished. They should guide lower, though, right? I mean, there's a lot of big question marks here. So, I mean, maybe, you know, in the coming days people think, all right, well, that's a worst-case scenario. I don't know. It's not my thing. I wouldn't be near it. But if I were they, I would have put out just that same kind of release. Are we doing a would-you-rather? Because it felt like a little bit of a little bit. I was prepared for a would-you-rather, so I didn't know there would be homework. I don't even know what it would be. Versus KALAC? No, I mean, it depends on where you want to go in the semi.

12:44Yeah, it depends on where you want. No, it can't be versus, although I've been known to do that. I would go either Micron, where you're in danger of a little bit of a double top on the chart. But AMD is the natural competitor to NVIDIA. It's NVIDIA's world. Everyone else is just playing in it. I'd probably go with AMD, even though it's outperformed thus far. Yeah. Meantime, wholesale prices come in much hotter than expected in July, with the headline producer price index rising. Nine tenths of a percent from the prior month. It was the biggest increase since July of 2022. For more on what it could mean for the Fed, let's bring in senior economics reporter Steve Leisman.

13:21Does it change anything? Did it change any of the probabilities? It does, and it's kind of curious what happened after this hotter-than-expected wholesale price report. Mark, it's not so much rethinking September as rate cuts beyond September. I'll show you the data we're talking about. Up 0.9 on the headline. Fastest gain since the inflation of the pandemic. You take out food and energy and trade and services. The game was still a pretty robust 06. J.P. Morgan writing, the fact that there is upward pressure across all recent inflation reports that is not directly attributable to tariff goods may give some officials pause.

13:54St. Louis Fed President Alberto Musalem, he sounded like one of those officials with a little bit of pause inside of him, saying the Fed is still balancing potential weakness and jobs and an inflation level running at 3, while the Fed has a 2 % target. Despite the data, the futures market continues to price in a strong, a confident 93 % probability of a September rate cut. Now it's less sure about a second cut in October. That's kind of right around the toss of a coin level. And it's below the toss of a coin level for December. Both of those had been pretty fairly priced in. So that's where the action was.

14:25Tune in to Squawk Box tomorrow. We'll find out if Chicago Fed President Austin Goolsbee in the exclusive interview is on the pause or the cut side. The Fed and the market have got time for a meeting of the minds with the Fed expected. Fed speak expected next week from Jackson Hole. Another inflation and jobs report before the September meeting. So it's not a critical split right now, Melissa. But at least for now, it seems like the premise that perhaps inflation is OK right here and there's some weakness in the jobs report manifesting itself. But inflation may still come forward later on. According to those probabilities, that's what it seems like the market's pricing in at this point.

15:02I think that's right. If I could answer yes and put an asterisk next to it and tell you that the Jackson Hole conference is about the labor market. And we have hardly begun to speak about changes in the labor market relative to immigration and the labor force. Fed Chair Powell's talked a little bit about it. Mary Daly from San Francisco has. Goolsbee has as well. You have a big changes happening with the labor force right now because of what's happening with immigration. That factors in as well. So the Fed has this moving target on the inflation side with tariffs. It also has a moving target on the labor side.

15:35And the question is, what is normal in an environment where you have the labor force not growing as much? It could be that 75 ,000 or 50 ,000 is the normal run rate. The Fed may feel, hey, that's what we should be doing if labor force isn't growing. Steve, it's Karen. Thanks for being on. Does it matter really if they cut 25? I sort of think it sort of depends what Powell's, you know, is he dovish? Is he hawkish? What does a 25 really matter? I think that's right. I think the market is wondering how far and how long will the Fed remain above the neutral rate, which is somewhere in the 3%, 3.5 % range.

16:12You have Scott Besson, the Treasury Secretary, saying the Fed has 150 to give. And David Zervos, one of the candidates for Fed shares, saying the Fed should do 50 come September because it's behind the curve. of the Fed. I'm pretty sure it doesn't feel that way. And it's really interesting right now where the individual comments, Karen, I think have to be listened to pretty carefully because we had Jeff Schmidt from Kansas City talk tough in terms of his willingness to cut rates, saying he's sort of more of a hold guy. I thought Boussalam today was a little bit in the middle, but maybe leaning towards holding and we'll hear Goolsbee tomorrow.

16:44So it's a tough call right now. At the same time, have to give the news. Obviously, you know that Waller and Bowman, two Fed governors. They dissented in July. So Powell has his work cut out for him to try to balance these divergent views. They're in the market a bit, but they're also on the committee. All right. Steve, thanks. Good to see you. Steve Leisman. Tim, your take on PPI and markets?

17:11I think these numbers were not quite as devastating as the headline sounded or appeared, And if you strip out services, we're a big part of where the heat was. I know we're a services economy. But on the good side, if you strip out food and energy, we were at point three, which is where we've been. So but I think that given all the rhetoric, giving all the angst, given all the concerns about the Fed as an institution and where are we in going into the Powell change and the new Fed governor, this is a number that based upon the Fed we've had from this point going in reverse, they would not be going in September with this PPI.

17:47I'm sorry. So, again, I don't think this was a terrible number. But the Fed we've had so far, I don't think moves on this number. And that's what makes this number fascinating. The key is obviously, I think, straight down the barrel of labor and the employment number that we have the first week of September. That's going to make the call. Tim's right to break down the number, but it's still the hottest PPI, I think, since March of 2022. Corps back above three. And you have an administration calling for Treasury Secretary best on 150 basis points. The president 300. Doesn't really make a lot of sense, in my opinion, given those numbers.

18:23But I'll say this. If you had told me last night what these numbers are going to be, we play that game. S &P is down 80 handles, 90 handles. No, I'm being honest. Tenure yields above 4.35 and nothing really happened. This number is extremely volatile. Next month, it'll trade lower. It'll be lower than it comes in. But remember, two weeks ago, we thought we were in a recession because the jobs numbers were so awful. So these things change very quickly. I think he does cut in September, and I think he cuts one more time in December. It's not going to be 50 basis points, but it'll be 25. Coming up, Berkshire buying in while the Oracle of Omaha is taking a stake in beating down UnitedHealth.

19:06And the other updates from so-called smart money, that is next. and offloading in the China trade, big funds dumping mainland stocks. What it means for a few of our trader acronyms as BABA gets beaten down. Do not go anywhere. Fast Money is back in two.

19:28Welcome back to Fast Money. Shares of embattled UnitedHealth jumping after news Berkshire Hathaway has taken a stake in the insurer. CNBC's Leslie Picker has the details on that and some other buys by Berkshire. Leslie. Hey, Melissa. Yeah, it was an interesting quarter. Berkshire Hathaway taking a new stake in UnitedHealth, sending that beleaguered stock soaring in after hours, trading up 8 percent right now. Warren Buffett's firm held about$1.57 billion worth of UnitedHealth as of the end of Q2. Appaloosa also making a big bet on UnitedHealth, adding 2.3 million shares to hold$764 million worth, now the firm's largest single-stock position there.

20:08Michael Burry's Scion also bought a lot of notional exposure to UnitedHealth worth over$100 million as of the quarter end. Berkshire Hathaway also revealing three mystery stocks that had been omitted from the Q1 filing due to special confidential treatment. This quarter, we learned the firm took new stakes in steelmaker Nucor and homebuilder D.R. Horton and built a new class of shares in its peer, Lennar. Those three stocks also higher in after-hours trading, along with UnitedHealth. Nucor up about 6 percent, Lennar up 4 percent, and D.R. Horton up 3 percent. Just a reminder, though, all of these positions are as of the end of June and may have changed in the six weeks since.

20:47Melissa? Leslie, I also want to ask you about CoreWeave, which you've been following during the day, the lockup expiration. But you've also got some new reporting. The stock is down 3 percent after hours on top of the 15.5 percent decline in regular session. Yeah. So this is an interesting one, Melissa, because as we talked about earlier today, there was a lockup as of the end of the trading day today, as of the aftermarket. So the fact that we see shares down 3 percent, I have a couple of inbounds saying that the blocks are out there for sale. They're looking at prices above where it's trading now at about$97.

21:20So we'll see how many of those hold at that price range. Usually with these block deals, you see a discount because they're being done in a privately negotiated transaction. And if you do see a lot of these coming out at the same time, which is obviously the concern of the market, those shares down 15 % today, there's a concern that the discount will be there as well as the additional supply into the market. So usually people who are going to be onboarding those shares from a block will do so at a discount. So you can see those shares down 3 % right now. All right. Leslie, thank you. Leslie Picker.

21:55A lot to trade here. Where do you go? Well, CoreWeave, if you have a problem, which I do with NVIDIA having the bulk of their revenue coming from four different customers, CoreWeave's 77 % is coming from Microsoft and NVIDIA. I can't buy a stock like that. It leaves too much open-endedness for me. All right. UnitedHealth is a very interesting, it seems like the popular pick here in 13F land. I mean, I think actually the Appaloosa thing, well, it took a leg higher when the Berkshire F came out. And then it took another leg higher when the Appaloosa won. That was more of an aggressive bet. You think of Berkshire as much more long term.

22:32And I wouldn't be, this is, it's a billion, it's not chump change, but it is to Berkshire. So I find that interesting, though. It would probably be good for all that whole space. On July 28th, I sat here and said, because I think UNH reported on the 29th, I said, given what's happened, given where it is, if they say something incrementally positive, it's a$325 stock, which is still a blip, but a decent move, proceeded to say nothing good. And I think it traded down to like$238 or something like that. Now, here we are back at these levels. Again, they haven't said anything, obviously. Nothing has changed.

23:06But you see people like this getting behind them. I think the bet is they'll get through this difficult patch. We can wrap our head around a lot of different things that they do, and we're willing to sort of take some short-term pain. So it should trade back to 325 on this news. There's a lot more Fast Money to come. Here's what's coming up next. China's stocks get choked up. Shares of some of the country's biggest names dropping as major investors hit the sell button. Is there more downside of the names, or is this a time to buy? Plus, an advertising adjustment. Why shares of Trade Desk are getting hit yet again.