Micron and Memory Vs. Everyone Else… And What’s Sparking a Bitcoin Sell-off? 6/25/26

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0:39My answers helped me become the soccer player I am today, trusting my instincts and stepping onto the pitch without fear. Bank of America champions U.S. men's national team member Tyler Adams and everyone who dares to ask, what would you like the power to do? Bank of America, proud to be the official bank of U.S. soccer and FIFA World Cup 2026. Bank of America, NA, member FDSP. Live from the NASDAQ market site in the heart of New York City's Times Square, this is Fast Money. And here's what's on tap tonight. Memory, pain, and gain. Storage stocks like Micron, Seagate, and Western Digital all continuing to climb.

1:14But is the strong memory run crowding out device makers like Apple and Microsoft? We'll debate the tech ripple effects. And the latest hit to Bitcoin, the record ETF outflows this month, and how the crypto crush is hitting proxies like Strategy, Coinbase, and Robinhood. Plus, the traders bite into McDonald's rough year, the technical take on Amazon and some unloved MAG-7 stocks, and SpaceX falls out of orbit. What the stock's return trip down to Earth means for Anthropik and OpenAI ahead of their potential IPOs. I'm Mike Santoli in for Melissa Lee, coming to you live from Studio B at the NASDAQ.

1:49On the desk tonight, Dan Nathan, Guy Adami, and Katie Stockton of Fairleaf Strategies. Tim Seymour will join us in a moment. Good to see you all. It's an honor to have you doing the double, Melissa. You're the hardest working person at CNBC. I call it the full Melissa because she does a double every day. It's great to have you. So thank you very much. We are going to start with the latest signs of memories, gains, creating hardware pain. Micron soaring 16 % after last night's earnings, where the company more than quadrupled its current quarter sales guidance. and said tight memory market conditions could last beyond 2027.

2:27Those headlines boosting SanDisk another 20 percent, with other storage stocks Seagate, Western Digital also firmly higher. But those moves coming at a steep price for the consumer device makers reliant on memory chips. Today, Apple announcing price hikes between$1 and$300 on MacBooks and iPads. Fears now the iPhone is potentially next, the stock falling over 6 percent on the day. Microsoft also coming out with Xbox price increases between 100 and 150 dollars tied to the memory crunch. That stock closing down another three and a half percent. Dell and HPE also getting hit today. So while Tim Cook calls the price increases unavoidable, will investors start to avoid anything relying on memory?

3:08So, Guy, talk about sticker shock on the, you know, earlier today. Clearly, it's all about who's imposing a tax and who's paying it. Historically, you know this. And again, it is great to have you, Michael. Historically, Apple's been able to squeeze their, if you think about it, the people they get their stuff from. Right. And now that seemingly the pendulum has swung where now they're getting squeezed and it's going to manifest probably in the margins. Now, you could say that, you know, whether it's elastic, inelastic in terms of their devices and their products remains to be seen. And maybe they'll make up for it in terms of revenue.

3:42But there's no denying it's probably going to hurt margins. And we're seeing it now. Now, what's amazing to me is if you had told me Apple would be down along with some of these other MAG7 names to the extent that it's down today and the S &P 500 closed unchanged, I think that's remarkable given the run that we've had over the last few weeks. Well, it is. I mean, Dan, you know, we can look at this type of action and say it's this benign rotation. The market is sidestepping some of the danger from the clients. You know, NVIDIA is down along with the rest of them today. and the fact that all the conviction is in this narrow channel directed toward memory and everything else is starving.

4:21That's a problem. I mean, I used to read your column back in Barron's and you were always to write it. Yeah, you did. And you're often hitting on some of the stuff, especially as in the aftermath, I would say, of the dot com. And there's a lot of lessons, I think, to be learned. And, you know, we saw back then that, yeah, there was a lot of enthusiasm about the underlying technology and everybody in the supply chain and the like. But then it spread out right to the industries that were either going to be disrupted or the ones who were going to benefit. And you know what? When the bubble burst, it didn't matter.

4:46The correlations went to one. I mean, everything went down. Right. So when I look at some of these industrials like a caterpillar or something like that, I say to myself, that's great. It's a great story right now. The earnings growth is great. We haven't seen this sort of growth in a very long time. But it's going to be a bit ephemeral. And the other side of it is not going to be particularly great. And we just know that from history and it won't be different this time. You know, one thing that really stuck out to me about the move in memory is, OK, well, Hewlett, Dell, they all just reported that huge gaps.

5:12Maybe they can pull those charts up. They didn't guide down for margins. OK, that's coming to a theater near you. And this was like a few weeks ago. You know, so if Apple is coming out, this is a company that reported three months ago and they are already raising prices because they need to defend those margins. Right. And you think about where their margin comes from. The mix shift for them is great. It's services. Right. If their hardware margins come under pressure, then they got a problem. And if this kind of dollar cost or this dollar price that they're raising right now pushes out demand, well, then that kind of messes everything up.

5:43It messes up services. It messes up the potential for uptake with Apple intelligence. So I think there's a lot weighing on Apple and getting this right over the next few months. And it's not going to be easy because what the stocks are telling you and the memory and the storage space is like it's not abating. I just was really surprised today that Micron was able to hold those gains. You know, the SMH gapped up 5 % within an hour is down in the day. And I just thought that was something that was going to kind of continue. But it might be, you know, one step forward, two steps back for the here on out.

6:12Yeah, I was pointing out Micron traded$100 billion in its own stock today. So basically it was a frenzy and it did close basically slightly above Monday's closing high, Katie. You know, I guess on one level you say, yeah, it had this two-day shakeout. And that seemed to be enough on the short term. But for semis in general, has there been any kind of reset that they still look like they need to have some payback? There is so much pressure on them to perform here, isn't there? I feel like every day becomes greater, especially today. But what we've been seeing more recently is that the 20-day moving averages, which we're tracking as our primary short-term trend-falling input, they're still pointing higher for most semiconductor stocks, including Micron.

6:51And with that in mind, we generally want to stay with what's working in the marketplace right now. That could change abruptly. But the 20-day moving averages are a great way to eliminate some of the noise. And so far, it's been treating what we've seen in semis, at least, noise. However, the S &P 500 has not been immune to one of these downturns. So the rotation that we've seen is definitely significant. It's significant. It's definitely happening in this churn period for the overall index. And, you know, I wonder the price reaction in Apple. It comes in the context of new pressure on MAG7 in general or just the sense out there that that mega cap move is kind of yesterday's trend.

7:35And I know there's been some breakdowns in that area. So how does that work? Without question, the relative performance of the MAG's ETF, which has all seven of them, has been deteriorating for a long time now, months even. and the ratio went to a new 52-week low. So that's a breakdown in the ratio that reflects underperformance. It also supports greater underperformance. So it is pretty meaningful. Today, it was acute, the declines in the mega caps relative to the rest of the market. And I think Apple, below its 50-day moving average, probably has more downside. It shows a loss of momentum that is, of course, significant.

8:09It was a gap. That tends to see downside follow through as well. It's not without support. There is definitely strong support not far below for Apple. But we've seen enough action in the mega caps that tells us that sentiment has certainly shifted there. Microsoft, another example, testing support. Yeah, I mean, I was trying to kind of read into it what the message of the market is here, Guy. And it seems to be, I mean, obviously, it's rolled from Microsoft's supply on OpenAI. They've got this lead in chat GPT going back three years. And then it rolled into Oracle. It's going to be building the guts of it.

8:45Right. So you keep going to where it seems like the dollars are sweeping through. And now we're really out on this limb 100 percent of memory. And it seems like the concern overlaying a lot of this is, you know, the hyperscalers are taking their free cash flow. They're handing it to memory makers and other hardware makers. And maybe what they're building is something that's going to be commoditized in a few years. And right now, the market is, well, until the last couple of days, the market has been saying maybe not so much. Now, when you look at it, you're saying, wait a second, maybe there's some things to be concerned at.

9:20And, you know, Katie mentioned the technals. I'll say for Apple, closed below the prior high we had in December, which I think was sort of 284 or so, did it on two times normal volume, a little bit more than that. And now we're below some moving averages. So there's reason for concern. And, you know, you're going out on a limb that continues to get more and more narrow. Yeah, I think that's concerning. But against the backdrop of an S &P that hangs in there like a champ. So, you know, we'll see what what sort of transpires. And Tim, I think I think you're with us here. You know, we being too alarmist here because, you know, we do have the banks up one percent today.

9:56Airlines were ripping. It felt like some of the stuff exposed to the real economy was doing fine or at least playing some some catch up. So what's your read on all that? I think that's the same market we've had. Katie pointed out the technicals. I'd make an argument that MAG-7 peaked last July. The breakout of the NASDAQ 100 against the S &P that we finally got was driven more by that rotation within the semiconductor world. And therefore, you can make an argument that the rest of the market, I mean, look, industrials have been on fire all year. I mean, rails, airlines have just caught up, but there's been different parts of the industrials trade.

10:34Nice to see health care working. So it's the age old question. What can we get from a market when we don't have the biggest market caps in the world participating? And I think today's a disappointing number for a lot of reasons around Apple. But I think the market has moved on. And the question really is when semis as a group stop outperforming, can the rest of those names hold up. But this isn't new. And I guess I just feel that the trade in transports, industrials, energy, we talk about some parts, though, of obviously the financials as well. I mean, this is an encouraging sign for people that see market broadening.

11:14That's fair. Although I would say industrials, it's really been AI levered industrials that have carried a lot of the weight. And I mean, it's just fun today that Caterpillar was up the equivalent of 400 Dow points within the Dow, and the Dow itself was up 74. So it just shows you, I mean, obviously it's a lumpy benchmark, but it's fascinating how you're still kind of coming out in the same place, which is who's got a share of the AI gravy train. Yeah, listen, we've seen this before, right? So two years ago, three years ago, you just mentioned Microsoft, CapRetSea, OpenAI, that now they own 27 % of this thing.

11:53Maybe it's valued at$850 billion or something like that. And no one cares. I mean, the stock's down 35 % from its all-time highs. Last year, it never confirmed one new high in the NASDAQ going back a year, obviously, or something like that. And if you look at all those names, that was the leadership. They are the ones moving around. What is it,$20 trillion in market cap or something like that? And so I just don't buy it that you have this pocket that is clearly in a bubble. You keep hearing about these long-term contracts that they have signed and it's taken to the bank. But the market is willing to reward that right now.

12:25And that's not really how it works. It's meant to discount that sort of stuff. So it tells you that we're a little off sides on this last kind of bastion into this trade. I mean, at some point, if the hyperscalers can't stabilize and they can't rally back and the news keeps getting worse, Google's a great example. Great, great story, right? The vertical, everything this, that, TPUs, this one. And all of a sudden, they got four researchers leave in the last few days, and the stock drops 5%. So people are looking for excuses to sell, and I think that's a big part of Apple. Who knows? Maybe we have to have a little bit of a risk-off moment, and everyone says, oh, look, they're defensive.

12:59Microsoft's at 18 times earnings, and nobody likes it, and Meta's at 16 times, and there's these massive discounts, and they still have pretty decent underlying growth. So who knows? We'll have to see, because as we've been talking about, the story changes without notice sometimes. Meanwhile, Chicago Fed President Austin Goolsbee talking about whether inflation relief is ahead. He joined Power Lunch earlier today during their special live show from the SIBO. Let's hear what he had to say. We've had periods where we were making progress. Then we kind of stalled out on the progress. Lately, it's been going the wrong way.

13:33But some of the going the wrong way is driven by what we hope to be temporary events, wars, tariffs. These are things that are supposed to be one and done and then you would see the inflation going away. Let's bring in CNBC contributor Peter Bookbar, chief investment officer at one point, BFG Wealth Partners. Peter, good to see you. Thanks, Mike. So Goolsby, I mean, a lot of this has been pretty consistent in terms of Fed folks saying, you know, not mission accomplished on inflation. Maybe that just means a wait and see. And then we had the PCE numbers today, which were hot, but no hotter than expected.

14:13So how do you view all that? Well, I found it interesting is, you know, Kevin Warsh's message was, I'm not going to lean in any direction. Goolsby seemed to have followed that. I'm not leaning in any direction. And John Williams spoke and right down the middle. And I think that's their message because every meeting is a new piece of information for them. So, yeah, I think it's official forward guidance we know is done. With inflation, it was somewhat old news today because of the subsequent drop in energy prices, and that'll flow through over the next couple of months. But I still think the Fed is dealing with a situation where we're going to ping pong still between this 3 % and 4 % inflation range.

14:53So where should the Fed funds rate be? Well, at an effective rate, about 3.6%. Well, when you get to 4%, you're easy. And when you're at 3%, you're still below their long-term 1 % real rate. So the Fed should just sit there and do nothing for a while. And also with energy, OK, we saw the spike. We've seen the pullback. But does oil just stop here at 70? Or does it settle out at maybe 80? Or does it go back to 65? I think it settles out in the 80s, which will further complicate the inflation story and keep the Fed from doing nothing. And I actually think trying to predict what the Fed is going to do by year end is even more difficult because they're not telling you anything.

15:35Right. And the market will try, but it's not going to get a lot of clues, presumably. You mentioned the sort of standard Fed funds real rate buffer that they want over inflation. You know, longer term real rates have been going up. Right. So, I mean, I know it's kind of slippery how you measure these things, but that should be some kind of a restraint. The dollar has been rallying heavily. What is all of that kind of netting out to in terms of what it means for the rest of the markets? Yeah, no, that's it's an interesting question to try to figure out, because originally when the war began, the dollar rallied because people were selling the currencies of countries that were importing a lot of their energy.

16:14Well, now oil is back to 70 and the dollar is still going. I think the dollar is just on a momentum thing to the point where we're now we're very overbought. And to try to get further dollar strength from here, I think, is going to be really difficult. Peter, I'm with you on that. The Fed should probably do nothing to the extent that they can. But, you know, Jim Chano sent a chart out today talking about junk bond spreads widening out against the backdrop of the S &P going higher when net divergence typically doesn't end well. So they can do nothing for a while. But if credit spreads start to move in a way that's not natural and deleterious, they're going to be forced to do something.

16:51Sort of thoughts on that. I agree. And not only those spreads, but seemingly every single day, there's another private credit fund saying we had more than 5 percent redemptions and we had to gate again. You know, when you look at the BSD ETF, the BDC ETF, that really has not rallied. You look at the LSTA Leverage Loan Index, it's bounced a bit because rates have gone up and benefits from that. But I do think that they're going to get into that situation where inflation is still high, but the economy is softening. And what do I do? And what happens if, you know, the AI trade or the stock market gets weak knees and that has an impact on the economy and the stock market?

17:31How do they respond to that? So Kevin, I'm glad he's there, but that doesn't mean his job is easy. Peter, back to the stock market. Michael just mentioned maybe there's a chance that hyperscalers end up being really cheap and discounting a lot, and maybe they become defensive. If we do have a market that gets a little bit nicier over the course of the summer, where else would you be? Where else do you think is defensive right now? I know you're going to say gold, but where else do you want to be in the stock market? So my favorite area of defense right now, and we're along a bunch of these stocks, are the hated consumer staple stocks, specifically in food and products like a Kimberly-Clark.

18:07Like you take Kraft Heinz, for example, 7 % dividend yield, 65 % payout ratio, which is rather reasonable, new CEO that's going to invest in the business for the first time in 10 years. And there are 22 analysts that follow it, and one has it as a buy. So to me, that's a nice defensive spot. And then you have like McCormick, which reported a decent number. The stock rallied. Hormel had one a few weeks ago. The stock rallied. I think it's a very interesting group that is defensive from a dividend perspective, a valuation perspective, and certainly from a business perspective. Katie, I'm guessing the charts aren't giving you a green light on those.

18:44Well, you know, they have improved. Without question, we actually featured a chart of Maple Bear. So that was sort of our version of a consumer staples idea. So improved relative performance, improved momentum. They're obviously not established long-term uptrends at this point. But I do think there's opportunity there for these countertrend moves to unfold. So not in disagreement. All right. Good to hear. Peter, thank you very much. Tim? Well, Peter's view on the dollar is interesting. What's fascinating to me about the dollar is, right, is less Fed communication, as Peter said, almost the kind of the neutered voices of the Fed these days.

19:23Does that, though, mean the market wants to interpret hawkishness? And I think the dollar is the most interesting dynamic for the market, because I think if the dollar was weaker here, I think there'd be a lot less pressure on certain sectors. And I think, you know, it doesn't take away the angst around the hyperscalers trade. But I think the dollar's direction is very important for the next move in the market. I think the move in copper and some of the materials that are not gold, we know the move that gold has inversely to the dollar. But copper should not necessarily be behaving the same way.

19:52So I think the weakness you've gotten in trades like Freeport, some of the copper miners, but also the Rio Tintos, the BHPs, that to me is still, again, picks and shovels, but also companies that have never been run better and have high free cash flow yields. Yeah. Rocks and sticks even. So we got it. Thanks, Tim. We got a news alert here on OpenAI. Kate Rooney has the details. Hi, Kate. Hey, Mike, so OpenAI, from what we're hearing, plans to do a limited release of its newest AI model. This is ChadCept 5.6. It hasn't been released yet, but the government, from what we're hearing, has asked the company to do a staggered rollout.

20:28This would be similar to what Anthropic, its rival, had done with its own recent model, Mythos. This is according to a source familiar with these plans. CEO Sam Altman did tell staff about this, and rival Anthropic really did the same thing in April with its limited rollout of that cyber model. mythos. It had a select group of partners over cybersecurity concerns rather than a wider release to the public. The information was first to report this, but it does come a couple of weeks after the administration forced Anthropic to pull its most advanced model off the market using export controls as part of that.

20:57That is still not resolved from what we're hearing. And then in the meantime, New York Times now reporting OpenAI is leaning towards holding its IPO until early next year. Sam Altman is also reportedly pushing advisors to find a way to get OpenAI's valuation. In this listing above a trillion dollars. And some details here in this reporting that SpaceX's listing is weighing on this process and this decision with shares below the listing price. OpenAI advisors reportedly have been cautioning the company about some of the enthusiasm they're seeing from retail investors. So that seems to be weighing on this decision.

21:30No comment, though, from OpenAI on that one, guys. All right, Kate, thank you. Yeah, it's pretty delicate, obviously. And, you know, if nothing is getting done right now in terms of a filing, it's not happening this summer. You're talking about the fall probably, and if next year maybe isn't that big a leap. But what do you think the calculus is? Yeah, I mean, listen, what we've seen in the IPO market, we obviously had the huge one, and it's not trading particularly well, but one week does not make a trend by any means. And then when you think about Cerebris as another one, it's broken its IPO price.

22:01And I never thought the OpenAI or probably Anthropica was going to come this year. I just don't see an appetite for them when you see the Mag7 acting the way they are. And, you know, a lot of the conversation has turned into price compression. Now we have the whole idea that we're going to see export controls on our best models. Right. And at a time where Microsoft is considering putting DeepSeq from China, there are four model in Copilot because OpenAI and Anthropic, they're not working well. They're not seeing the uptake on that. So I just think that it's about as clear as mud right now about how these models and how these companies are going to come to market and how they're going to be perceived.

22:33And I just can't imagine right now is the time to do it. It's pretty unusual, though, Guy, to see a private company with revenue ramping the way theirs are to like$50 billion annual run rate and be like, no, we know the public market's not ready for us. Well, a lot of unusual things have happened over the last couple of years. So, yes, and you're right about that. And you wonder, you know, are they sitting back and watching this the way space, understanding it's a week and a week and a half into this thing. But, you know, what impact does it have potentially? and you're probably as well-equipped answers as anybody, on the consumer, on the, you know, the retail trader psyche, the fact that, you know, this is now challenging the level that it came out on in a very short period of time.

23:15To me, that's something you watch for the broader market, I think. Oh, yeah. The average trader who bought SpaceX is underwater, without a doubt, in terms of the average price it's traded at. So not necessarily positive reinforcement there. Coming up, airlines take off while industrials like cat and deer continue their run higher. Next move in those names ahead. Plus, a potential senior surge for obesity drug makers. How Medicare GLP-1 coverage could boost pharma names like Lilly and Novo. Don't go anywhere. Fast Money is back in tune.