Reciprocal Tariffs Boost Stocks… And The Impact of RFK Jr’s Confirmation 02/13/25

0:00Live in 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. Tariff talk. President Trump signing a sweeping action on reciprocal levies and promising more are coming. What it will all mean for companies' bottom lines and your portfolio. And confirmed one of the president's most controversial cabinet picks winning confirmation to lead HHS today. What RFK Jr. could mean for U.S. health care and the stocks in the space. Plus, investors check out of Hyatt shares. Are Microsoft bonds more attractive than Treasuries? and what is behind Intel's best week in 50 years.

0:35I'm Melissa Lee, coming to you live from Studio B at the Nasdaq on the desk tonight. Tim Seymour, Karen Feiderman, Dan Nathan, and Guy Adami. We start off with the very latest on the president's tariff, tit for tat. Markets seem to breathe a sigh of relief after Trump signed a memorandum laying out his plan to impose reciprocal tariffs on other countries, but stop short of actually implementing any. The S &P closing within a whisker of a record. The Nasdaq jumping a percent and a half and the yield on the 10-year treasuries dropping 10 basis points. For more on what we heard out of the White House today, we are joined now by Eamon Jabbers.

1:04Eamon. Hey there, Melissa. Well, take a live look. We've got tape feeding in right now of President Trump and Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India. They are meeting at the White House today. Just a few moments ago, they sat side by side in the Oval Office, took a few questions from the pool. We'll update you if there's any news coming out from that. They are expected to have a press conference here in just a short time. But earlier today, I was in the Oval Office as the president signed this presidential memorandum, directing his government to conduct a study on reciprocal tariffs. And the study will analyze the ways in which the United States needs to respond to tariff regimes around the world.

1:43The president in that meeting said that India is, in his view, one of the worst offenders on tariffs, charging too high of a price for American goods to come into that country. I asked the president what the timeline is on all that, because that's what the market wants to know. How soon are we going to see these tariffs take effect? He turned that question over to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who had this to say. Our studies should be all complete by April 1st. So we'll hand the president the opportunity to start on April 2nd if you want. So I think we'll be ready to go on April 1st. And we'll hand it to the president and he'll make his decisions.

2:21But remember, if they drop their tariffs, prices for Americans are coming down. Our production's going up and our costs are going down. So, Melissa, what does that mean in real terms? Well, it means there's a tremendous lobbying opportunity now until that April 1st deadline when industries and governments around the world have the opportunity to talk to the West Wing, make their case for any exemptions that they want to have. other countries can come to the United States and work out a side trade deal if they want. I think this is going to set off a massive wave of global tariff haggling between now and April 1st, and we'll see where we land on all that.

3:02But crucially for the markets, it means that the tariffs are not going in place today. And a lot of people as late as yesterday or this morning thought that might be the case. That is now not the case. And now you see what the market reaction is to that, Melissa. All right. Eamon, thank you. Eamon Javers in Washington. The specter of tariffs increasingly becoming part of the earnings conversation. Of the S &P 500 companies that have reported Q4 results so far, more than 60 have said they are closely monitoring the situation. Many have been noncommittal about the impact. Tesla, General Motors, Mondelez, Cardinal Health and others saying it's too early to quantify the effect on their businesses.

3:36But Chipotle did say that tariffs on Mexico and Canada would have an ongoing impact of about 60 basis points on its cost of sales. And as we discussed yesterday, Ford CEO Jim Varley said tariffs would blow a hole in the U.S. auto industry, and that so far he's seeing a lot of cost and chaos. So how can we expect these latest levies to shake out? We do have a one-month reprieve, Tim, but companies are doing their backup plans right now and trying to forecast. I think we're waiting and seeing. I mean, companies also need to get out there, and just like the Federal Reserve, they're going to say, well, you know, we are concerned about this, but until they happen, we don't really know.

4:10And that's really been the strategy. I mean, applaud the White House for using the ability to use tariffs as a stick, whether there's follow through and whether there's actual long term pain from relationships that are bilateral and long term friends in the United States. I mean, you know, and if if that hurts the friendship, then so be it. I mean, that's the mentality here. And the White House has taken a very pragmatic view on whether whether these things actually happen. So far, we haven't really seen the follow through. So ultimately, if I'm an automaker, I'm absolutely concerned. And it's not as if the auto sector needed any more headwinds.

4:40And if you look at what the SARS data, so the annualized U.S. car purchase data, if you look at some of the margins, if you look at Ford as a company, even as they have struggled with some of their operations that have been not around the world, but even in this country, there's a lot to be concerned about. It doesn't surprise me that the auto sector over last weekend was lobbying very aggressively. So I think we kind of wait. But again, yesterday was the day when the European reciprocal tariffs were going to come out. You heard 27 EU ministers say something on the tape and you heard a bunch of German companies.

5:12Those are some of the companies I was watching because I own a couple of them talk about the impact. It doesn't surprise me companies are saying what they're saying. It's pretty clear the market is looking way past it. You say that. Why do you say that? Well, a VIX below 16 is pretty clear to me. S &P 500, all time highs. That's pretty crystal clear to me. I mean, there seems to be a lack of interest now and just even to talk about tariffs and what they potentially mean for the market. So it's back, Bernard, to Tim's point. What today I thought was interesting, and you sort of led with it, PPI today was hot.

5:40And if you had said to me, again, we play the game last night, it's going to come in much hotter than expected. I said the markets are getting lambasted and yields would go even higher. But apparently some components in the PPI that feed into the PCE were soft. So people are really grasping at straws here. I'll say this again. I do think rates are going higher. I'm shocked at how they performed today. But I think this was just a reprieve. So I think to your point, a couple of those things were medical services looking lighter for our next big inflation reading, as well as airlines ticket price.

6:13So that may be partially what we were talking on our halftime call about what was weighing the airlines beside Hyatt. That might be it. Even that all that together, though, I'm still surprised at how strong bonds were. The tariff thing, I mean, I agree that if India lowers their tariffs, that's better. But I do think we always talk about the animal spirits and how good that's been for, you know, just companies feeling positive and willing to spend money to grow. And I think this throws a wrench into it. You don't know what your costs are going to be. It's hard to really plan. Yeah. You know, one thing like an auto industry, for instance, you might see a surge of buying ahead of this.

6:48If, you know, you have the CEOs of these companies come out and say, you know, it's going to blow a hole. I think it was that exact quote, you know, one way or another. I mean, you also might see some activity where folks are buying a lot of these inputs to their manufacturing ahead of time, too, which might skew Q1 growth to some degree. And if these reciprocal tariffs are put in place and then you have a scenario where maybe the global economy starts to slow if you do get into a tit for tat sort of trade war. So, again, what Karen just said, I mean, the uncertainty is probably pretty good. But when you think about the playbook that we've seen from the first Trump administration, I think the baseline is most likely.

7:25When you have this much time for him to negotiate with these folks the back and forth, the likelihood is that the worst case scenario is not going to happen. You know, but we mentioned sort of the lack of volatility and in a broader market without question. But we talked about this last night and it happened again today. I mean, individual names, not small companies, multi-billion dollar market cap companies, both to the upside and downside post earnings, moving up and down 15 and 20 percent. I mean, the trade desk, I'm not picking on the company, but stock was down 30 percent. I mean, that was a 60 something billion dollar company.

7:57So you're seeing some dramatic moves in individual names. Me, I just think it's a matter of time, given the backdrop that we've talked about for the last six minutes before it makes its way into the market. I just think we have to be reminded that all this tariff talk and the speculation on inflation comes when we've had back to back prints that are awful. I mean, it's not there's no disinflation anymore. If anything, we really have inflation coming back. And the CPI, what we learned is that the core services CPI, 5.3 percent. I mean, that's a nasty, nasty number. And if you look at the intermediate goods today in the PPI, so some of these things are trickling all the way through.

8:29There's very little to feel good about about what's going on with inflation, with trends that have nothing to do with tariffs. So I think that's very important. To Guy's point on volatility, I think there's absolutely a relationship with the dollar and volatility. The dollar has given up ground. Volatility has fallen. And if you look at where we are, and it's part of what's going on also in European and global stocks, they're outperforming the U.S. And you may think when you own an ETF that it's really just about the underlying. It's really about the currency, and it's imputed back. Again, it will rally more if the dollar weakens against those underlying currencies.

9:03So global investing has been the best place to be to start the year. The dollar may have peaked. Rates may have peaked. Global meaning ex-US. Ex-US. And again, I won't speak on the merits. I'll just speak on the performance to this point. And, you know, when you also have the MAG-7 running out of gas and it's now the MAG-1.5, that's another reason why you had seen crowding out for other investments when the MAG was doing so well. I think this has everything to do also with the rest of the performance. So are we hearing those animal spirits that all those CEOs were so excited about? All those bank CEOs were talking about at Davos, right?

9:33How everybody's so excited and there's been a real change in mentality since the election, etc. Are those spirits dying slowly? We're hearing the whimperings of the spirits just sort of fluttering. Well, if a lot of them existed in tech and we can talk about the deregulation financials and the potential for M &A, I mean, that's a separate thing. I think Guy would mention that J.P. Morgan at this valuation, it's not something that you want to go chase some of these banks that have seen a lot of appreciation and seen valuation, you know, bumps that they haven't seen in a very long time. But the tech thing, and you talk about the MAG-7, the MAG-1.5, you know, if you start to sleep, like all these companies, they put out their CapEx numbers.

10:08Microsoft, Google, Amazon, they all got hit on the other side of those because there were big numbers. But yet revenue growth has kind of slowed, right? It doesn't mean that they say they're going to do$65,$100, or$80 billion, that that's actually what's going to happen. And I think if you see a pullback on CapEx because you don't see uptake of this, you know, compute and the like, and you throw in DeepSeq in there, It's going to put pressure on, you know, like the cost of this. It trickles down. Yeah, it does trickle down. And I just think if that CapEx comes out of the economy, that might be the sort of thing that slows things up a little bit.

10:39So, again, you're seeing it in some of the names that are playing a bit of catch up. And I think one example would be an Applevin or some of these other names that have just gone ballistic, Carvana. And that's where that sort of stuff, Roku tonight after the close, that's where that's happening. But to me, that's not a broadening out and that's not a bullish sign for the market. All right. Meantime, Intel shares, they jumped 7 % today. bringing its gains for the week to 26 percent. The stock now pacing for its best week since January of 1975. I think that was starting his first job then. OK. Yeah.

11:09You know what? Hold on. You're right. I was working like a Carvel. I was making Carvel cakes like Fudgy the Whale. Jinx. All right. Helping to boost the stock, Intel that is, reports that the Trump administration is pushing the chip maker and Taiwan Semi to form a joint venture for chip production. Earlier this week, Vice President J.D. Vance also promised to safeguard American AI technology. Let's bring in Patrick Moorhead. He is the CEO at Moore Insights and Strategy. Patrick, great to have you with us. J.D. Vance may want to protect American AI, but Intel doesn't really have American AI. At the same time, there's a real emphasis on bringing production here and preserving the chip industry on our shores.

11:50So how do you see that benefiting Intel? Because we thought for years now that that was going to be the trend that would help this stock. Yeah, so politicians, as we know, are fast and loose with what they say. And my interpretation of what J.D. Vance says is very consistent with what the administration wants to do. It wants more manufacturing in the United States, and it wants to sell more U.S.-based chips. And if you put those two together, they would favor Intel. Not only is Intel a U.S.-based company, but it has most of its manufacturing here in the United States. And with its upcoming 18A process, it should be very competitive on those large chips, even with TSMC.

12:36And you can imagine the pressure that the Trump administration would be putting on right now on the NVIDIAs, the Broadcoms, the Marvell's, to motivate them to take a second look at this. We can also see some tax breaks on manufacturing that has done in the U.S. before. So I think all of those are on the table. And I believe all of those benefit Intel. Patrick, it's Karen. Thanks for being on. So Intel, as we all know, is somewhat rudderless. And TSMC is obviously considered the premier name. Do you think there's something to this? Does this seem, could this be likely? So I don't see, let's say, a TSMC acquisition for national security reasons and keeping Intel an American company, but I could see some joint ventures as a form of financing and potentially an intellectual property sharing of some sort that could help Intel.

13:38But let me be very clear. Intel, from my point of view, what I know, doesn't need help on 18A with big chips. It could use some help on smaller chips that could go to, let's say, Apple or a Qualcomm. Intel needs capitalization, too. And as you've seen from some of the structures that Intel has put up with some of the 49 % investments from companies, that would be a needed source of cash. This becomes a homeland security thing. So the flip side of that coin is who's potentially negatively impacted by all this on the chip side of things? I think it's clearly TSMC, right? They're between a rock and a hard place.

14:26They're in a good situation in that they are the leading provider of the most difficult chips to produce. Those are done primarily in Taiwan. They're starting to do some of that here in the United States, but they are potentially the biggest loser here for sure. So does this mark a turnaround, Patrick, this stellar week that Intel has had? Are we going to say we've seen the worst for this stock? Or, I mean, what do you make of this run? So, listen, the company was trading below book value and any whisper of anything that could be construed negative was taken negative and its stock has been driven to the ground.

15:11I do believe that the company has reached its low point or did reach its low point. one of the reasons its designs didn't go over as well as they could have was because it was on a less than competitive manufacturing process. In fact, they fab some of their chips at TSMC. I think that's changing with 18A. The biggest issue for Intel right now from a market acceptance is that they missed the data center AI GPU market. Somehow AMD with a lot less resources was able to get into this market. And Intel, as you know, pushed back their roadmap a year because what was supposed to come out this year wasn't going to be competitive.

16:04Right. Patrick, great to get your take. Thank you for joining us, Patrick Moorhead. So we don't have a management team, a permanent management team at Intel. They missed steps. So do you have I mean, you have been an investor in Intel. Do you have faith in it at this point? No. I mean, I think we need to call it what it is. And Dan has it in his acronym, I think, for a good reason, which is is that it won't take a lot to turn this thing around. But let's remember, we just had numbers from the company. I don't know how long. And as Patrick just pointed out, they pushed out the Clearwater dynamic.

16:38Their Gaudi chip is not really ready. Essentially, the other one is being at least worked out internally. The dynamic here is this is a company, 25 is now a transition year at best. This is a company that, if anything, what we've heard from them over time is that they are not competing. And we've been very worried about cash burn. We've been very worried about this company that's been cutting costs, that's had to cut private equity deals with some big private equity firms, their Ireland project, which I think is 49 % owned by Apollo for a big number. This is a story of a stock that if the headlines this week about TSMC, no way is that a takeover.

17:12I mean, let's be really, really clear. And there's a lot more risk even in getting closer manufacturing bed with them, even in this country, when we think about all the risks around TSMC. So, you know, I want to believe I own the stock. I own it from higher. I've also bought some lower. I mean, I believe there's an opportunity to make money in this stock. The news flow is not going to be good unless there's a major strategic change. This is without a CEO. Rudderless is the right word. I think this is a big week. You could fade this. Yeah, and, you know, the TSMC thing. I mean, Intel is in the process of building out fabs.

17:41That was a big – you know, that was one of Gelsinger, the former CEO's, you know, main kind of strategies. If you think about it, you know, I go back to, like, M &A and the potential for, like, some sort of deal. I remember Qualcomm had approached them in September. But that would make absolutely no sense. When you think about the end markets that Qualcomm serves, you know, 40 % of their revenues go to Samsung and Apple. We just had Patrick just speak to the fact that, you know, we know those end markets are really weak. I don't know what happens for Intel if you put those two companies together.

18:08I'm sure there's a lot of crossover as far as employees and the like here. But Qualcomm is a fabulous company. But it's just the wrong end markets. For this company to get turned around, that would be Intel. That wouldn't make a whole heck of a lot of sense. Coming up, a number of names on the move after hours. GameStop surging as a company considers some crypto investing and win. Volatile on its results. The details on both next. And they're not the only stocks. We've got our eyes on. the headlines driving monster moves in a handful of names and the latest on one cyber stocks return to market.

18:35Do not go anywhere. Fast Money is back in two. Welcome back to Fast Money. We've got a news alert on GameStop, the meme stock popping after hours on news that is considering investing in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Kate Rooney joins us now for the story. Hey, Kate. Hey, Melissa. So GameStop is evaluating this plan to invest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. CNBC.com reporting this one. According to three sources familiar with GameStop's plan, those sources say the retailer could still decide not to follow through with those potential investments. And it's still in the process of figuring out and evaluating if this makes sense for GameStop's business.

19:11It comes after Ryan Cohen, the CEO of the video game retailer, posted a photo earlier this week with Michael Saylor, the chairman of MicroStrategy, which is the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, one of the first to do this crypto investing strategy, although two people did tell CNBC that Saylor was not involved in this decision. GameStop has tried to expand in the past into digital assets with crypto wallets at one point, but it shut that down in 2023, citing regulatory uncertainty. GameStop has had a volatile few years since it was front and center of the Wall Street bets and meme trading mania.

19:44The stock was up as much as 20%. It's up closer to 9 % now. Mel, back over to you. All right, Kate, thank you. Kate Rooney, It seems that for anybody who saw that picture on Twitter, you would have known that this was going to be the next step and that the stock would pop at least this much on that news. And then we just I think we had a conversation about it. And I think one of the reasons you get in this fade is people that are taking advantage of this. But I don't well, I don't see any compelling reason to buy GameStop. Certainly not because they're going to foray into Bitcoin. If you want to be a long Bitcoin, be a long Bitcoin.

20:16It also it cannot be a micro strategy. It doesn't have the balance. It doesn't have a lot of cash. It has cash. Right. But four point six billion dollars of cash. But, you know, the hope that, all right, we're going to use our cash, even though our business is losing money. Yeah, we're going to use our cash by Bitcoin. And we really hope and think it'll trade at a premium to the Bitcoin that we own. That has to be the strategy. They can go out and buy apples. Right. Right. Yes. If you're just telling me I'm going to go out and buy an asset and I think it's going to go higher. It can be by Bitcoin.

20:47Right. No. But when you see them together, obviously. following like a strategy hope of, okay, it trades at two times Bitcoin. I mean, I wouldn't short it, but this is insane. But why should it? This is insane. But you know what's funny? And I agree with you. And I'm long Bitcoin. But Sailor, he's there. I mean, he's like Bitcoin Jesus. I mean, like, you know what I mean? You'd have to pry it out of his cold, dead hands. I mean, like, these guys at GameStop, they will not go back to Elon. You remember? Well, they just sold. They just sold their Bitcoin in an effort to kind of make their numbers look better.

21:16So I just think you're going to have, what do they call it? We can't, no. What was the hands? Diamond hands. Diamond hands. These guys won't have diamond hands. Opposite diamond hands. Bang. Cole. We've got another earnings alert on Wynn. Shares initially surging after being on the top of the bottom lines, but now well off after hours highs. CNBC's Contessa Brewer joins us now to break down the numbers from the quarter. Contessa. Yeah, the call just wrapped up too, Melissa. Las Vegas seeing healthy business against some really tough comps in the previous year. Remember F1 launch? Ooh, everybody charged a ton on the call.

21:48CEO Craig Billings said they saw about a$20 million drop in EBITDA if you compare the two years of F1, mostly because of room rates. They went down, but he pointed out they were still 50 % higher than Wynn's two closest competitors. Also, by the way, Vegas players really love slots. The amount they wagered on those machines went up 13%. And we heard that from MGM yesterday saying that it set slot records. So, hey, that's good for Vegas moving forward. And Billings said the first quarter shaping up well, excluding the Super Bowl, which Vegas hosted last year. You can't really beat that. In Macau, Billings said January saw full occupancy in the hotels, healthy gambling, strong volume for Chinese New Year, although he said hold was choppy.

22:31That's how much of the wagers casinos actually keep because of luck. CFO Julie Cameron Doe pointed out that Wynn is in a strong cash position, and it means dividends, buybacks, reducing leverage, all of that good. But a lot of focus on the call, Melissa, about when Al Marjan in the UAE, too. DraftKings up after hours, but seven and a half percent contested. They're out with results as well. Yeah. And their results missed top and bottom lines. They missed on monthly active users. However, they raised the guy, the low point of their guidance from six point two billion this year to six point three billion.

23:03So the range is six point three to six point six billion. And that does not include what everyone assumes is going to be fantastic results from Super Bowl, because of the Eagles winning and it being such a blowout and the player parlay, the props not really paying off the way that they could have, and certainly not in the way that we saw in the football season where customer-friendly results really cost the sportsbooks big time. So that's probably why you're seeing the stock up as much as it is 6.5%. All right, Contessa, thank you, Contessa Brewer. What do you want to trade, Tim? I'll trade Wynn.