Oracle Reports Results… And Stocks Swing Amid Iran War Developments 3/10/26

19:14Melissa Lee:You know, this is a very unpopular war right now. And the idea that we're going to put our sailors in harm's way to kind of in this immediate or intermediate phase to get, you know, tankers moving through there doesn't make a whole heck of a lot of sense. So the idea that this is going to continue to be a bottleneck, I think, makes some sense. So a lot of folks were just saying, I mean, like, you know, Sankey last night was saying 60 is the new floor, 80 might be the new floor. I mean, if this thing does not get resolved anytime soon.

19:38Tim Seymour:We've got a news alert on the ongoing Anthropic Pentagon feud. Kate Neroen, he's got the details. Kate. Hey, Melissa. So Microsoft now getting involved here, throwing its support behind Anthropic in this ongoing fight with the Pentagon, filing an amicus brief, supporting the AI company Microsoft, advocating here for a temporary restraining order that would block the Pentagon's supply chain risk designation. That is what Anthropic has already asked for. They sued the Trump administration yesterday, calling the government's actions unprecedented and unlawful. Microsoft, in this brief, supports that, argues that it would avoid disrupting the American military's ongoing use of advanced AI.

20:16Tim Seymour:They say otherwise. Microsoft, other tech companies, would need to act immediately to alter existing products. They argue, bottom line, it could potentially hamper U.S. warfighters at a critical point in time. Microsoft does have a financial stake here, too. $5 billion investment in Anthropoc. So likely part of the reason they are arguing here, close partners with Microsoft, but they are jumping into this debate and this ongoing back and forth between the White House and Anthropoc Mill. All right, Kate, thanks, Kate Rooney. Coming up, committing to memory. Storage stocks back in rally mode today.

20:46Tim Seymour:Can the surge continue and how much higher could these names go? And global gains. The China trade climbing today as well. The trade data out of the mainland helping boost that group. Straight ahead. Don't go anywhere. Fast money's back in two.

21:02Tim Seymour:Your data lives everywhere. On-prem, in the cloud, across apps. Bring it all together with EverPure, the platform that acts like a living system, delivering the latest in data performance, security, and innovation without ever slowing you down. Sophisticated enough to anticipate your ever-changing data needs, yet simple enough to feel like second nature. Tame your data chaos with EverPure and make storage and data management the simplest part of your business. Visit everpuredata.com to learn more. At Venture Global, we think about what can be done, not what's usually done. Through innovation, Venture Global is not only building some of the largest energy facilities in the world right here in the United States, but delivering American energy at a fraction of the cost in a fraction of the time.

21:50So while others are busy talking, we're busy building. That's Venture Global. That's unstoppable energy.

22:00Tim Seymour:I'm honored to make history and to make my community proud. What a brilliant tackle from Naomi Kerma. What would you like the power to do? Bank of America, proud to be the official bank of U.S. soccer. Bank of America and a member FDSE. Welcome back to Fast Money, a rally in memory. Chip stocks today, shares of Sandisk, Micron, Seagate, Western Digital, all jumping the session. The stock's close to retaking all-time highs. Sandisk up over 160 % so far this year, while the rest are up 40 % or more. So how much upside is left in this raging AI play? And then there's the other story, of course, where you have a lot of the other memory makers, Samsung, SK Hynix, being impacted by what is going on in the straight-up form moves in terms of limited energy.

22:46Tim Seymour:A lot of South Korea depends on foreign energy to power the electricity there. So there are concerns about electricity shutdowns, which the South Korean government have warned about. There hasn't been any yet, but that could certainly snarl production and make these chips a little more scarce, a little bit more expensive, Tim. Well, it's been interesting because as South Korea has had some of their own issues with the Iran war, it's triggered also some broader pain across memory. Look, what we've all been talking about for the last month, maybe longer, you know, Dan's done a nice job of flagging at least the valuation absurdity in memory.

23:19And that while, yes, I think we have some understanding when supply can finally respond to the demand here, I'm not chasing memory stocks here. And I think you have a case here where the market was sorting through a lot of the rotation even before Iran. Korea's rally back is very much a function of what's going on in the Middle East and at least better sentiment night overnight. Let's let's see what goes on tomorrow. And that's something that I think is is therefore pulling up high next. I mean, what's going on in the Korean market, there's a lot of levers. There's a lot of retail. There's been a lot of FOMO that's related to what's been going on and reform in their market.

23:56I wouldn't impute that upon SanDisk and Micron and Western Digital. All right.

24:02Melissa Lee:I look at SanDisk and I think, listen, the move to the upside has been historic in a word. But look how quickly people pull the ripcord on the stock. It was below 500 a couple of days ago. It's obviously rallied back north of 600 now. But what that speaks to is the hair trigger I think all these names are on. Now, if you think you're adept enough to get out of these things, as Dan would say, have at it. But the next rug pull in these names, I'm not necessarily sure it's going to stop. Agree. I mean, could it go higher? Absolutely. I would not short these for sure. They're all up a little bit, I guess, on the back of Oracle, a good Oracle, you know, up a percent or two after ours.

24:37But not for me here. All right.

24:40Tim Seymour:There's a lot more fast money to come. Here's what's coming up next. Moves in the mainland. Beijing's export data fueling gains in Chinese stocks. A look at the trade numbers and the biggest winners on the news. Plus, navigating the volatility. Investors digesting the latest developments in the Middle East. How the swings in energy prices are impacting our next guest's investment decisions. And where she sees opportunity now. You're watching Fast Money, live from the NASDAQ market side in Times Square. We're back right after this.

25:40Tim Seymour:Make storage and data management the simplest part of your business. Visit everpuredata.com to learn more. At Venture Global, we think about what can be done, not what's usually done. Through innovation, Venture Global is not only building some of the largest energy facilities in the world right here in the United States, but delivering American energy at a fraction of the cost in a fraction of the time. So while others are busy talking, we're busy building. That's Venture Global. That's unstoppable energy. I want to grow the game so every kid can fall in love with soccer like I did. So I asked myself, what would you like the power to do?

26:24My answers inspired me to invent a pop-up soccer goal that can turn any basketball court into a street soccer pitch. Bank of America champion street soccer advocate Kyle Martino 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 and a member FDSP.

26:48Tim Seymour:Welcome back to Fast Money. China reporting a record trade surplus. Its trade balance soaring to more than 213 billion dollars in the January, February period versus expectations of less than $180 billion, the country's exports also massively beating expectations. This despite ongoing trade tensions with the U.S., the strong data partly attributed to the late Lunar New Year holiday. Chinese stocks gaining on this news, Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu, and PDD, Pinduoduo, all seeing outsized gains. And Tim, this is interesting because this captured the time period in which Trump levied a 10 percent global tariff.

27:22Tim Seymour:But in the end, China's tariff actually came down. So if that was a help. It was. And I don't know if as investors, we really want to see China's export and the trade surplus. We want to see exports up, but we don't want to see the trade surplus be at a record. And obviously the U.S. doesn't want to see that. But leaving the politics of that aside, I want to see domestic consumption. I do think there's some lumpiness in this number, and I think we just need to be careful also based upon the Lunar New Year. If you get back to Chinese equities, though, in the Chinese tech sector, that K-Web is down 31 % from their highs in October.

27:55I'm not sure fundamentals have changed a whole lot. Today, Tencent, which I think was really oversold, was up over 11%. There's some discussion that they're actually putting AI agents into WeChat. It's a story that I think is going to continue to be where some of the Chinese mega cap tech companies are also finding their AI access. We know Alibaba has a number of different elements and that AliCloud is a place that I think investors should want to own exposure to. The politics equal the fund flows in China tech, but I'm long and I stay long. I'm long also, though. Alibaba for me is my biggest position there and in some FXI and K-Web.

28:31But the run that Alibaba's had in not a good way, I think, you know, was so oversold. This is an opportunity or the excuse to have a rally. And I think there's legs to this rally.

28:42Melissa Lee:Yeah, I agree with that. The report on the 19th, You can make an argument that it should have gotten to 125 if you want to get technical levels. It didn't get that low. But I think the setup in earnings, in my opinion, is probably as strong as it's been in a while. I think the average price target, not that it matters, for analysts is about$200 on the screws. I don't think you can see that post-earnings. But I think even a benign report, this stock should be in the mid-150s. Guy, what's one of the most important companies in the world coming from that region? That would be Taiwan Semi. Taiwan Semiconductor.

29:12Melissa Lee:Now, we don't rehearse that either. So they released sales for January and February, up 30 % year over year. This is a company that had sold off. The stock was down 15 % from its all-time highs at the lows yesterday. It opened up a couple percent on that. It should have. That's a great number, right? Their biggest customers, we know who they are, NVIDIA, Broadcom, AMD. Stock closed down in the day today. And I just think that's really interesting. Obviously, what you're talking about with those companies you just mentioned is a very different story than Taiwan Semi. But to me, this also remains one of the most important stocks to me in the market right now, because I do think it just kind of ties a lot of the stuff we've been talking about with the AI trade together.

29:50Tim Seymour:Coming up, the next move for stocks as developments in the Middle East continue to swing global markets and energy prices. Where our next guest sees opportunity and how she is putting money to work. Fast Money is back in two.

30:07Tim Seymour:Welcome back to Fast Money. Stocks closing out a volatile day near the flatline. The Nasdaq just in the green. The Dow shedding 34 points. And the S &P 500 losing nearly a quarter of a percent. All had been solidly higher earlier in the day. A number of fast movers catching our attention today. Kohl's finishing a percent and a half lower in a volatile day. Shares were up more than 14 percent early in the session. The retailer topping earnings estimates this morning, but forecasting a steeper than expected drop in annual sales. Elevance Health higher after reaffirming full-year guidance ahead of investor and analyst meetings.

30:37Tim Seymour:The stock's still down more than 30 percent over the past year. Shares of Novo Nordisk getting hit after receiving a warning letter from the FDA due to a 2025 inspection at the drugmaker site in New Jersey. Novo down nearly 24 percent this year. And vaccine maker BioNTech dropping nearly 18 percent after announcing its co-founders are leaving to start a new company. The company also giving a disappointing revenue outlook. And Vertex Pharma, jumping 8 % after saying its experimental drug for a rare kidney condition, succeeded in a phase three trial as the company looks to diversify beyond its cystic fibrosis treatments.

31:12Tim Seymour:Meantime, crude oil settling lower today but trading off its worst levels after reports that Iran was laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz. President Trump threatening action if those reports were true. The news also sending shares off their stocks, I should say, off their highs of the day for more on what the ongoing conflict in Iran could mean for the market. We're joined by Yasmin Yu, Chief Investment Officer of Bryn Mawr Trust Advisors. Yasmin, great to have you with us. Thank you, Melissa. You are really taking sort of a calm approach to this whole thing because you actually say it's a good time to buy.

31:45Tim Seymour:History tells you to buy. Yeah, we think we're in a political event, headline-driven, choppy markets, because investors really don't know how the conflict with Iran is going to resolve. So it's been a tug of war. On one hand, oil approached 120 yesterday after pulling back. It's still up substantially, right? 25 % year to day or month to day, 50 % year to day. And that raises concerns about, you know, higher input costs, slower consumer demand and softer sentiment. But then on the other hand, every time when this geopolitical event, markets generally sell first, ask questions later, and then equity markets 12 months after, usually they went up higher, right?

32:44If you look back at the Iran war, the first Gulf War, you know, even the conflict between Israel and Hamas, equity markets were higher six to 12 months later. So unless geopolitical tensions morphed into, you know, sustained high energy prices, and that's going to make inflation sticky and may potentially delay Federal Reserve's interest rate cuts later in the year.

33:13Tim Seymour:But layer that into the picture that we had going into the conflict, and that was private credit concerns. We have concerns about the job market slowing. It wasn't exactly a robust picture for stocks going in. And then we have this, and you're still bullish. I will say a base case for the economy, the economy is slowing, but it's not breaking. So we're seeing slower economic growth, sticky inflation. But if you look at corporate America, it's still delivering. So three quarters of the S &P 500 companies are beating earnings estimate for the quarter. And that means profits are still holding up.

34:00If you look at the policy, right, last year we got the one big beautiful bill providing support for tax cuts, R &D incentive and a constructive M &A environment. So putting this conflict aside, when we look at the U.S. equity market in particular, we think it's at 945. So it's not at the peak, but it's certainly late cycle. And I think the past few days with the conflict, you see equity markets are still very resilient. It's only off two and a half percent of its all-time highs. And some of the weaker areas here today, software, Max7, even cryptos have shown relative strength. I think that tells you market leadership can stabilize sooner than you expected.

34:57Melissa Lee:Yeah, couldn't you make the case, though, that it's a lot more like the end of 21 into 22? And, you know, in 22, we had Obviously, this surprise invasion of, well, it wasn't much of a surprise, I guess, of Russia into Ukraine and the disruption that we had from energy. I mean, this pales in comparison to that, right? And if you think about where we were as far as valuations, it's equity leadership, some of the themes that were going on. The economy was definitely, you know, on shaky ground then. Well, the S &P sold off 27 percent, peak to trough, right? And it took two years to get back to those prior highs.

35:26Melissa Lee:And I think the longer this goes on, I think we're going to see more comparisons to that period, especially because you have a weakening labor market. You have obviously growth that has been slowing a little bit if you look at GDP year over year. And then you have inflation that's sticking around. It's not 9 percent, but it's enough right now to keep the Fed on the sidelines. So just thoughts on that. Yeah, I think it's hard to compare back to 2022 because, yep, oil price has gone up. You question how sustainable it's going to be. And if you look at other components within the CPI, like rent, wage growth, those are not seeing a lot of growth within CPI.

36:06And also, I would say we run balanced, well-diversified portfolio, global portfolio, not just in the U.S., multi-asset, you know, across fixed income equities, alternative investments as well. So for us, there is an only way to deliver on that return. If I look at my fixed income sleeve, we actually have pulled back on risk. We have become a bit more defensive. We trimmed credit. We added to U.S. treasuries within 10 years, really focusing on income and quality. Within equities, we have slight overweights to U.S. large caps, small caps, and we're running neutral in international, both international developed and emerging markets.

36:59But we're actually putting risk on international small cap. And then within alternative investments, we like real assets, which includes commodities, natural resources, real estate and infrastructure because they provide inflation, protected cash flows. And talking about volatile markets, we actually like liquid hedge funds, particularly like CTAs, time following strategies, long short equity, macro, global macro strategies. All of these can monetize volatility.

37:36Tim Seymour:Jasmine, great to see you. Thank you. Thank you, Melissa. Thank you. Coming up, how affordability concerns and credit turmoil is impacting the consumer. The CEO of fintech company, Dave, tells us how he is navigating the market moves and how his firm is using AI to disrupt the banking system. Fast Money is back in two minutes.

38:00Tim Seymour:Welcome back to Fast Money. The average U.S. gas price hitting nearly two-year highs due to the war in Iran. That combined with broader inflation and recent job cuts means the American consumer is feeling a lot of pressure. Our next guest hopes to alleviate some of that pressure using AI to change banking for the lower-end consumer. Jason Wilk is CEO of Dave, a mobile-native consumer banking company. He joins us now on set. Jason, great to have you with us. Thanks for having me. Who is your target audience here? What kind of consumer are we talking about? So we help 14 million Americans with short-term credit using AI for alternative underwriting versus using traditional FICO.

38:35We found that customers in this segment were overpaying for credit with overdraft fees, payday loans. We disrupted the whole space by using cash flow underwriting combined with AI to deliver a much better experience at a fraction of the cost of the incumbents. Our customers have FICO's under 580 generally, and we've been able to offer credit in the size of around$200 per user per paycheck with loss rates now 1 % thanks to AI.

38:59Tim Seymour:What have you been seeing recently, if anything, in the past couple of weeks that might indicate that the consumer is feeling in their wallets what is going on in Iran? So what's unique about our business is that to get underwritten for credit, consumers have to connect their bank account to us via a company called Plaid. When they connect their account, we can see all their transactions over the last six to 12 months. And we're just not seeing a lot in the customer's accounts. Income is actually up a little bit. Tax refunds are up 10 percent year over year. Our customers are mostly gig economy.

39:30They're working retail jobs. And so it was interesting to see the impact of the tax refunds here as of most recent. But things like the war on Iran that are pushing up gas prices over$100 a bill, a little bit down today. But that puts stress on the American consumer. They're already pretty stretched thin right now. But ultimately, that's the consumer that we're here to help. Before Dave, they're turning to heavy overdraft fees, paying$34 to access gas when they can't afford it. Now with Dave, they can access gas money for$5 for borrowing for a tank of gas. And that's a pretty amazing innovation in what we're doing so well in this economy and pretty much every type of economy at this point.

40:07Melissa Lee:Jason, in an environment where delinquency rates are going higher, yours are going lower. Your 28-day delinquency rate was down 12 % sequentially, which is pretty astonishing. Is that based on, I would think, a large part AI in the platform you have? Well, it's a combination of AI, a combination of having the visibility into the consumer's accounts. and then also the duration. Our duration is really short. Customers borrow money with us between paychecks. So average duration is about eight to 10 days, very short. When you combine that with the heavy visibility and all the collection capabilities that we've got, then you marry an AI.

40:40Lost rates have gone from 10 % in 2017 when we launched the business. 200 million transactions later, we're down to 1%, which is record lows for the business. And we think AI is a huge part of the story.

40:52Melissa Lee:All right, sticking with the AI here. So you have 14 million customers. You have nearly 700 million dollars in sales expected this year and you only have 280 employees. So we've seen fintech. We've seen job cuts, that sort of thing. Talk to us a little bit about how you operate with such a low employee base and then how you see it playing out like across the industry. One of the benefits of our model, we're so capital efficient. And so even prior to going public in 2022, we only raised 60 million of venture capital funding. Compare that to some of our competitors that raised billions of dollars.

41:22And so a lot of those companies got pretty bloated headcount. We've always been very efficient because we've used our cash flows and our profits to generate our hiring. And ultimately, we've been 300 people since going public. We're still 300 people today. If anything, we're actually hiring this year. We're going from 300 to 320 to invest in new credit products for this segment of the market that we think is largely overlooked by the big banks.

41:46Tim Seymour:Jason, great to have you with us. Thanks so much. Not Dave. Dave is the company.

41:50Melissa Lee:Not Dave. You looked at me when you said that. As if I made the mistake. I called him Jason.

41:55Tim Seymour:We had the CEO of Bob Evans on, and Guy called him Mr. Evans when his name was not Bob. I wish we could find him.

42:00Melissa Lee:That was actually very funny. I apologize. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

42:03Tim Seymour:But when you think about AI, there are obviously ways that big banks benefit from AI, the efficiency, et cetera. But it also could enable startups that could be competitors in some way. Right, right. I mean, they've been facing that for a while. I think Jamie Dimon would probably say I think it was Square that was the one that he wished he bought. Right. Right, exactly. Quick program we know here, May 28th, right here at the Nasdaq Market Site. Karen and I will be part of a great CNBC Pro event, Wealth for Women, Financial Strategies for Serious Investors Looking to Up Their Investing Game. It's an all-star lineup of top CNBC Wealth Advisor contributors.

42:39Tim Seymour:So for tickets, click on the QR code on your screen or visit cnbcevents.com slash wealthforwomen. And by the way, anybody can come. Let's make that clear.

42:48Melissa Lee:Except if your name is Guy Adama. Yeah, or Dan Nathan. And thanks for the look, people. And that has nothing to do with you being guys.

42:55Tim Seymour:Much more Fast Money in two.

43:01Tim Seymour:Welcome back to Fast Money. Check in Oracle once again up 9%. So the company beating estimates, giving strong guidance. The conference call just ended. So let's go back to Gil Lauria at DA Davidson for some details. Gil, what'd you hear? A lot of the conversation was about capital needs, and they gave us a couple of important updates there. One is they said, remember, when we look into next year, we don't have to do it all via CapEx. We can use prepayments and we can have some customers that are going to bring their own GPUs. So the level of CapEx doesn't have to grow in respect to the level of revenue that's going to bring.

43:36That's one update. The other one is they have not yet started issuing that the market offering. That means they still have 20 billion of dry powder to raise. and it's a good thing they didn't because the stock was 143 just a couple of weeks ago. If they do issue shares, it's better to do it at 163. And then the third is pointing to the fact that their customers now have a lot more capital. That's referenced to OpenAI that just raised$110 billion of equity, which should make them set for the next two or three years in terms of compute spend. So part of it can go to Oracle. So that's a pretty positive update on their ability to deploy capital and then have the revenue grow in respect of that.

44:18Tim Seymour:Did we actually get the CapEx number for out years, Gil? We did not. They didn't give a fiscal 27 outlook for CapEx, mostly because those are all moving pieces that they have to figure out. But again, they're saying it's not going to have to grow that much. Right. Gil, thank you for the update. Gil Lauria, DA Davidson. Tim Seymour, that's interesting. prepayment or BYO GPU? Well, yeah, the flexibility is what we've kind of been talking about. But also, Gil talked about the black box nature. We don't know where CapEx is going to be. The fact that they reaffirmed$50 billion on CapEx for 26 and the other things that Gil's talking about are capital markets dynamics.

45:00So they funded 30, they have 20 to go. They're not going to fund anymore in 26, as far as I can tell. And those are the short-term things. I don't think you've removed of the uncertainty here, but what they've expressed, and I'll go back to the open AI, let's step away from some data center because we can and show that there's flexibility. It doesn't change the uncertainty hanging over this company, but I do think in the short term, people feel as if we've got some visibility, not long-term.

45:28Tim Seymour:Having the full ATM though, hanging out there, I mean, would you be concerned about dilution involved? Well, it's a known thing, right? So you would hope that that's already accounted for. And I mean, it's a very, very large company. So 20 billion, they can feed that out. I mean, good for them. Guild makes the obvious point, though. But 20 bucks higher is a better thing. Yeah. Up next, final trades.

45:54Tim Seymour:Time now for the final trade. Let's go around the horn. Tim Seymour. Yeah, Brazil EWZ is up actually almost 2 % in the last five days. Been very resilient. A lot of oil exposure there to the upside. Either way, stay long, Brazil. Karen. Yes, we talked about a little before Alibaba had a very nice day today, but I still think with that bad run that it's had, there is more to go to the upside. Dan.

46:16Melissa Lee:Yeah, Bitcoin is 70 ,000. I think it's 60 ,000 before 80 ,000. I'm going to Ibit. Guy. Like what Tim did there. I speak Portuguese, as you know, I would say to the bane to that. That's about it. Tim Seymour. Tim looks good tonight, by the way. I'm not exactly sure why.

46:31Tim Seymour:Salesforce, CRM. All right. Mad Money starts right now.

46:38All 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.

47:04To view the full Fast Money Disclaimer, please visit CNBC.com forward slash Fast Money Disclaimer. My mom inspired me to dream big and work hard. Siner Adams! 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 N.A. Member FDSE.