Nvidia’s Record Setting Run… And Trump’s Powell Pressure Ramps Up 7/15/25

0:01Live from the NASDAQ market site in the heart of New York City Times Square, this is Fast Money. Here is what's on tap tonight. Non-stop NVIDIA, the chip giant adding an entire AMAT to its market cap today. The stock now up nearly 55 % since Liberation Day. Can the bull run continue? We're going to talk about that. I don't know if we're going to debate it because we all agree it's awesome. Plus, tracking inflation, the latest CPI data showing prices ticked up in June. So what does that mean for the Fed and the economy? And then later, breaking down the banks ahead of Goldman's report tomorrow.

0:40A boom in Bava. Can you still bet on Chinese tech stocks? And we're going live to the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit with the CEO of natural gas company EQT. I'm here. I'm Joe Kernan. In for Melissa Lee. Coming to you live from above Squawk Box's studio at the Nantac. Feels good. Moving up in the world. Moving up in the world. Feels good. Exactly. Took an elevator up. I decided I'm not going to kid about it. People, you know, we are pampered, highly paid idiots, and people that deserve no tax on overtime, they deserve no tax. That's not why I'm here. I'm not getting. You drew the long straw today.

1:19I drew the long straw. The long straw. Mel does a lot for me. She comes in, and she was in three times last week. You two, by the way, can I say this? I'm allowed to say it. You guys do well together. By the way, they're still playing the music. I think you're saying it anyway. You two are wonderful together. I love you two. No, it's good. It's great. It's good. I think you're a little scared of her. I mean, I think we can school in Boston, but she is wicked smart. Yes. Can I use the word wicked? You just did. Tim Seymour is here. Well, you know everybody who's here. Look, they got rid of it. They're not going to do it.

1:47Carter Net-effing-worth is here. Rebecca is here. I know you from a lot of people. Yep. I'm not going to go into that. Don't dox her. I'm not going to dox you. I'm not going to dox you. No, you can dox me all you want. I'm Guy. That's Tim, and this is Fast Money. We start with yet another NVIDIA record after the semi-giant got word from the Trump administration. It can eventually resume sales of its water AI chip. Is it H2O? No, sorry. H2O. H20. Sorry. AI chip in China. That was a joke. It's not water. Clearing a major hurdle for the AI darling. Other chip makers, including AMD, Broadcom, Micron, all popping, helping lift the SMH ETF to an all-time high.

2:31All this is NVIDIA CEO Jensen Wang is in Beijing this week, just days after a White House meeting. It seemed to kind of usher this in. So if the doors to China open again, is there anything that can stop NVIDIA's run? Five trillion. We were talking about five trillion. What do you think? Well, it's 4.2. First of all, welcome. I mean, as I said earlier, Tim was not here, but I'm not going to put a qualifier on it. You're not on the Mount Rushmore of CNBC. He might be. He's on the Mount Rushmore of cable news. I think we have to sculpt another mountain altogether. All the wrinkles on those. No, you look great, by the way.

3:06Oh, NVIDIA. NVIDIA. 35 years, though, it's scary. You have been here 35? 35 years. How is that possible? I don't know. I don't know. I can't seem to fit in anywhere else, I guess. I think you fit in anywhere you want to fit in, Joe. Here is, if there is a problem, it comes in the form of this. What can derail it? You asked the question. Competition can absolutely derail it. And the competition is out there. And historically, these companies find themselves under the auspices of exactly that. So although they're cheap on a price to earnings, I think we all can agree, at a price to revenue approaching 17 times, that is historically rich.

3:41So if competition comes, there's margin deterioration. Margin deterioration takes down profits to earnings. And that P.E. that looks great won't look so great. That is, to me, the only wild card in this entire thing. I'll add one more in the short term, just a catalyst to watch. and that would be Russia-U.S. relationship. We now have a 50-day clock before, in theory, we get secondary sanctions on Russia. Who does business with Russia? China, India. And so if we put 100 % tariffs on China as a quid pro quo for the Russia, that's not going to sit still. That's going to flow back to our business.

4:18So it's something to keep an eye on. Yeah, go ahead, Corey. No, just in terms of NVIDIA being ahead of itself, which is always a thought, can it keep going? If you look back at its peak, intermediate peak, before the market sell-off in April, right, it is only up 16 percent and the tech sector is up 12, meaning it's only outpacing the sector by 400 basis points on a seven, eight-month basis. So, yes, more volatility, dropped 45 percent in the sell-off and now up a double from the April low, but really not much ahead of the sector overall on an eight-month basis. Well, I forget when this was where we had those headlines after hours about a$4.5 billion charge to NVIDIA.

4:54And it really was almost kind of in the teeth of what was a headwind on NVIDIA in terms of sentiment. There was a handful of dynamics around there. And so getting back to today's news and what this ushers in, I don't know that we necessarily have new projections in terms of what this means for the valuation and for the upcoming quarter, which is we all know is going to be a great quarter. But I think it brings back into the markets dynamics, not just about, you know, GPU demand. But this is the sovereign AI trade. This is, by the way, a trade that now includes AMD. Let's not forget they were they essentially are sitting at the table much in a much smaller chair.

5:29But I think inference demand, all the other parts of this thematic trade, I think, are very important. And then back to Carter's charts. I mean, if you look at the relative performance of semis to the S &P, we hadn't made an all time high since last March, really last July. And it looks like we're barreling there. And today, effectively, the triple Q's or the Nasdaq did match that relative high from July of last year that I think is important for leadership and obviously where the indices go from here. On this show, it's all about the stock, isn't it? What would you like to discuss? We'll talk about it if you want.

6:01We had this story this morning, but we have three hours to talk about it. Andrew's deal was that if it was a security risk, these chips to start with, well, maybe you were watching. I always watch. Why isn't it now, and why the flip-flop on this? So there was an interesting comment that Jensen Wong made about this in an interview recently where he talked about if they thought there was any dual use, military, et cetera, being used, there were things he hinted that there were things NVIDIA could do that would limit the ability of China to continue using the chip. So you wonder, I mean, I'm reading into this here, but you wonder, have they something embedded in the technology that could actually protect it?

6:40Because remember, these things got approved during the Biden administration when we had controls on. Do you remember what my take was, though, this morning? My take was, who also wants NVIDIA to hit$5 trillion market cap? Donald Trump. Who also wants a NASDAQ to keep hitting new highs? Donald Trump. Yeah. When it comes down to it, there's a lot of sound and fury and a lot of tariff stuff. But look what happens with TikTok. Look what happens when you get a market check that looks negative. I think he—I don't think it's a taco trade. I think you can go and be Jensen Wong and talk to him, and he will listen.

7:16I think Tim Cook can go talk to him, and he will listen. Let me say this. I think Tim has thoughts about, you know, allowing them to do the lower-end chip in China blocks out potentially any competition. It's a strategic move. Exactly right. So I admire the administration for letting this go through. Right. That's why I think we decelerated. Once you saw Liberation Day was the worst it got, it's been decelerating ever since. The question is, on August 1st, do we go back to trade war fears? Well, and I think, and Rebecca's bringing up a good point, because it's not as if Russian sanctions haven't been there for a long time.

7:49And it's not as if Russian oil hasn't been getting out all over the world for a long time. If Ukraine war, in particular, rhetoric and maybe a recent, you know, call it instigation of U.S.-Russia taking a step downward after we weren't really sure what the relationship was with the administration in Russia for a long time. That is a reason that you could start leaning on China and India. who need Russian oil more than anybody. And the Chinese have all kinds of deals with Russia in terms of Rosneft and debt deals and pipelines. But I get back to that sovereign AI tour that Jensen Wang did with President Trump through the Middle East, through all these places where, remember, we say this about the public sector and every other sector.

8:26It's always three steps behind the private sector. Well, guess where they're really behind? They're really behind in AI and in terms of the infrastructure built up. All we do is talk about hyperscalers. So, you know, I know it's hard to hold your nose and look at some of the valuations here. I don't think NVIDIA's valuation is awful at all. In fact, I actually like it on a forward basis. I love where the chart has gone. And I think that's right. I mean, you have to think about who are the people that want this trade to go higher. It's not just the administration, but I think it's a lot of the people that are committed to it.

8:54So at some point, we're going to start talking about the rest of the market that has a lot of exposure to the benefits of AI and the margin expansion. But right now, it's back to the future. Does the market at these multiples and with the rebound, does it now adequately discount AI? I don't think it possibly could, even now. How powerful it could be in two, three, four. I mean, all the negative things we talk about. I mean, AI is a tailwind, is it not? Jeremy Siegel was back this morning with Jeremy Siegel talking about how we still don't know just how powerful it's going to be. So when you worry about near-term things, they might be, you know, long-term, they might not be holding the market back.

9:38Yeah. I've always believed this is a structural trade. Bigger than the Internet? Potentially, to your point. We don't know. We don't know. But I think at this point, I bet on it being a structural trade, and I just go up and down with my lumps because I'm very tax-focused with my holdings. And if we get evidence that something's changed, then you reassess. But we don't have anything yet. Gene is champing at the bit. For more on NVIDIA's record run, Gene Munster of Deepwater Asset Management joins us now. You're listening. Maybe you think you can weigh in on AI, but someone said we can't quantify what this means for NVIDIA.

10:12You tried to do that, didn't you? You actually, if they are able, how much of that write-off comes back? It reminds me of a bank when they bring back reserves in, and all of a sudden they didn't need to have those reserves. Right on. So the impact, I think Tim Mimmy mentioned a little bit earlier, it was 15 % of their business was this lower level chip. Non-direct sales to China is probably another 10%. So think of a quarter of NVIDIA's business is China-related. We're talking about that 15%. And so that begs the question, they get back 15 % of the business. Why is the stock only up 4 % today?

10:45In part because this was telegraphed. Jensen was pretty clear that they're going to find some way forward here. But another piece to it, too, is that just given how unpredictable a lot of these developments have been, you hear one thing one day, a few weeks later, you get a totally different outcome. You mentioned the Russia impact on this. Investors are also asking themselves, like, is this really going to be back for good? And so that kind of explains that gap between that 15 percent add back and the 4 percent. But in general, Joe, this is obviously good for NVIDIA, but I would put everything I just went through as part of the smaller picture of the news today.

11:24There's a much bigger picture that I think is going on in terms of what this means for the broader AI space. So give me a law of large numbers and what's possible two, three, four years from now with NVIDIA? What kind of things are we talking? We're talking about$5 trillion, I guess, anyway. So with NVIDIA specifically is that next year, the street numbers, the analysts that updated their numbers today, not all 40 have updated their numbers, but those that did are looking for 30 % revenue growth in calendar 26. Previously, it was 25 % growth. They're going to grow by about 60 % in calendar 25.

12:02And so when I think about how big this can be, I think that ultimately, we're going to be 35 % better. And ultimately, that probably is going to get us to five, $5 trillion and greater. And I would just, you know, I mentioned that the bigger picture going on is that there was a huge read, a huge tell in terms of what this means for the broader AI trade. As I've been talking over the past few months with a former trade official that worked with Trump on the first, in his first administration around trade. And over the past few months, he's really stressed the importance of NVIDIA in the conversations, especially trying to get some of these rare metals.

12:37But the fact that China is willing to use NVIDIA, their junior varsity chips, as a key negotiating piece, the fact that they're willing to accept that, I think really underscores two things. Number one is that U.S. has a substantial lead when it comes to the hardware side. And second is that they recognize the power of AI is going to be so important that they need to take anything that they can around these lower level chips. And so I think that when we ask the question, Joe, about like, where does Nvidia go? I think that we're probably 20 % of the way through this buildup. This is going to go on much longer than people think.

13:15Gene, so you talk about the broader trade. So put your analyst hat on and is this the day actually to buy AMD or Taiwan Semi, who the RTX Pro is being built off of essentially their N4 platform. So are investors, should we be focused only on Nvidia? I don't think investors are, but let's take this away into stocks that are really exposed to this trade. So on the AMD side is that there is a market share question there. Do they ultimately have the chops? And so I think that TSM is probably a better place to be there. I think if you go down the list and look at other supporting cash run infrastructure, infrastructure where the companies like Vertiv that are doing some of the cooling, things like that I think are part of it.

13:59So I can't speak to AMD specifically, but I just, again, kind of want to anchor is that we constantly talk about AI, but I still think it's hard for us to grasp how early we are. All right, Dean, and at this point, I mean, what did we get scared of? What was it called? Deep Six or something? Deep Six. Deep Six. Never mind. Never mind. Someday. No? We learned a lot about DeepSeq today. I mean this was a deep fake. The reality was that DeepSeq was all about being able to train advanced models on far less sophisticated hardware. DeepSeq is great. We use these models internally at Deepwater. DeepSeq is great at the lagging, not the frontier models, but all the actions happen on the frontier.

14:48And so I think the fact that they need these Again, junior varsity chips is evidence that DeepSeek really doesn't deliver the yield on that kind of that high end, most frontier models that we had thought of back in January. OK, Gene, thank you. I have to ask everyone whether they're buying, I think, now, right? You don't have to do anything. You're hosting the show. You can do whatever you want. On this show, I'm going to take instructions. So do I ask you if you're going to trade? Are you buying it? Is that the game we're going to play? I don't care. Trade it, dude. I thought it says right here in this rundown.

15:21I'm playing a game called Would You Rather. And I'm sort of the key dude. First of all, Nevermind, I believe, was the Nirvana album, number one. Yeah. Number two, I'd be with Tim. Is that the one with the baby? Yep. That's a good job by you. Thank you. AMD, watch analysts start to chase AMD here. I think HSBC just went from 100 to 200. Analysts are going to start to run to raise their price targets. And that 210 level we saw, I think, this spring of last year is in the crosshairs. That's it? I like it as a pair. How about this? Oracle's double the performance of NVIDIA over the trailing 12 months.

16:01I like that as a pair, meaning to be long NVIDIA but short Oracle to give yourself a little protection. I also need to, you know, with live TV, sometimes you make some mistakes. I don't think the baby was Frances Payne. I just said that to you. I just said that she was the mother. That's not the baby. And you yelled at me. OK. And I think it's also important to note that eventually Nirvana sued the baby. The baby is like 30 now or something. And something was going on. It's a metaphor for something. So look, back to the market. January of 25 was the deep seek moment that everybody questioned whether the hyperscalers were overextended and whether this was an aha moment for at least lower power chips that were proliferating in China.

16:41I think what we've all said collectively today is is that it's just not that moment. The question really is, how do you want to play this trade? And if I think about where semiconductors are as a group, there are places that I think people want to own exposure, which includes Broadcom, which includes Taiwan Semi and AMD. Very good. Coming up, a lot of other things to talk about, especially earnings, because we're in full swing. This is the way it always starts with these banks, big banks kicking things off. The numbers from their quarters next, Rebecca likes to talk about things. Do you know it?

17:15I've spent a couple years in banks. You did? I know. The minutiae gets me. And you've got to know each one specifically to know what's above and below. They are complicated. People are expecting that interest income. Anyway, she's going to do that. Plus, we're digging into energy space. As nearly$100 billion in investments are announced at the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit EQT CEO. How many letters is that? I think Jeopardy. Toby Rice joins us next. or we'll afford to lay out where he sees the sector heading next. Don't go anywhere. Fast Money. Do not. Please. Come on. We'll be back in two.

17:52Chuck Woolery. Nice Woolery.

18:00Welcome back to Fast Money. Natural gas company EQT announcing it will be making some major new investments in energy infrastructure. Our Brian Sullivan, my other bro, is live in that TV. but from the CEO with the CBO, Toby Rice. What's going on, Sully? Well, stock's up 26 % year-to-date. Joe, I know you guys on Squawk Box talked to Senator Dave McCormick, whose event this is at. As soon as you guys wrap, we started, so it's kind of great to, it's the Kernan-Sullivan-Kernan show. Either way, we'll send it back to you guys to talk about EQT and NatGas in a moment. Toby Rice, great to see you live on Fast Money and CNBC.

18:40This event, okay, Okay,$92 billion of money is being committed to AI energy and AI infrastructure. How confident are you that all of that, some of that, most of that will be put to use and actually build things? I think you look at the companies that showed up today and made those announcements, companies like Blackstone. These are big major league companies that don't take making announcements lightly. I'm very confident that a lot of this that has been announced today is going to get done. To see the number of high caliber folks coming here just reinforces the importance, the fact that President Trump made his way here and brought almost half a dozen of his cabinet members.

19:24It shows you how important this is to everybody involved because Pittsburgh needs to become the ecosystem for AI. And we've got all the resources in place. So it makes a ton of sense. This is going to be a great opportunity for us to build the AI ecosystem here. Well, you know, obviously Steel City, right? We think about Steel City. We think about why this city became a steel capital. Well, you had coal nearby, but you also had rivers. You had energy sources. Oil, the first domestic well, was drilled near here. So it had a lot of the aspects that made building steel easier. Does it have the same for AI?

19:56Well, when you look at the AI value chain, one of the biggest issues that people are getting their heads wrapped around is the massive amount of energy that is going to be needed to unleash this AI revolution. Net energy is going to come from natural gas. We are going to be the fastest, most cost-effective, cleanest energy solution. So what better place to put your big power data center other than a place where the energy is going to be there? Now, today, EQT announced that we're going to be supplying over 1.4 BCF a day of natural gas. That's the announcement that we made today. That is going to set up a decade of sustainable growth for our business at EQT.

20:34It's a tremendous amount of energy, but it's a sign of things that more will come. Here's the problem with energy and natural gas is that the numbers are like, remember Carl Sagan, you talk about the universe, the billions and billions of stars. The numbers are so big, they're hard to understand. Put 1 billion cubic feet, 1 BCF into sort of layman's terms. Like how much natural gas are we talking about? Yeah. So 1 BCF a day of natural gas would be enough energy to power New York City. So this is a tremendous. Yeah, it's over 6 gigawatt. New York City is about 5.5 gigawatts. So the numbers we're talking about, these are majorly type of opportunities.

21:11It's why it's going to take America's heavyweight blue chip operators to deliver these solutions. That's why when people have energy needs, they're calling America's natural gas champion EQT, and we are answering these calls, and we are going to deliver. You know, it's always the last mile that hurts things, that makes it hard, right? You think you're going to do all these big things. You've got Google here, Amazon Web Services, BlackRock, Blackstone, and many others. They're here, okay? Core Weave, we just talked to their CEO on Closing Bell Overtime. But it's like permitting, right? It's like getting the power lines built.

21:42You can't get those things built. You can't get the big things built. And we had Governor Josh Shapiro on earlier, a Democrat. He's confident the permitting can get done to actually do it. And I share that confidence as well. I think one thing that's special about Pittsburgh is our leaders, like Dave McCormick, like Josh Shapiro. If these guys are playing with a chip on their shoulders, they know that Pennsylvania is not producing at optimum, at full potential. And they're working to clear the roadblocks so that we can get the infrastructure built to create these great opportunities for the Commonwealth.

22:12So that's another reason why companies have selected Pennsylvania to put massive investments here. And as far as permanent reform goes, which ultimately is going to be a sustainable answer, it's going to happen because it has to happen. We can no longer live in a country where we can't get things built. And we're not just talking about pipelines or transmission lines, whether you're talking about solar facilities or wind farms. It's hard to get anything built. The system is maxed out. And with this great opportunity in front of us, the stakes are even higher for us to meet this AI revolution because we are in the great race with China.

22:44And we have got to keep our edge and we have got to win this. Well, we're going to leave it there. Toby Rice, EQT, the biggest, biggest natural gas producer. Biggest integrated natural gas. America's natural gas champion. The integrated natural gas producer of the United States. Toby Rice, thank you very much. So think about that with these numbers. Mark Zuckerberg just announced that Meta was going to build a five gigawatt data center. You just heard the numbers. Five gigawatts is five Denvers or almost one New York City worth of power for a data center. I mean, these numbers, and I'm sure you got the Carl Sagan reference, Mr.

23:17MIT. I don't know about the Georgetown guys, but these numbers are truly massive. Billions and billions. Is it on the moon, Zuckerberg's new thing? Did you see that report earlier from Diana? We're building data centers in outer space. Yeah. TBD. That was my, that was my, hey, that was a great interview, Brian. And it's good to see you. We got to go. I'm not going to ask you to trade it, right? He doesn't know. Okay. Let me, okay. No, Brian, we don't want to know. Guy, how about you? Well, are you familiar with my tube? Excuse me? Yeah. No, it's a fair question. It's a fair reaction. I mean, I know Tim as well.