Risk-On & Risk-Off Trades Get Hit… And Insmed CEO On Stock Surge 11/3/25

0:03Live from the Nasdaq market site in the heart of New York City's Times Square. This is Fast Money. Here's what's on tap tonight. A market puzzle. One big risk on trade and a big risk on one moving in the same direction over the past week. What it says about the state of the market, how to position it to year end and housing headaches. Homebuilder stocks trading at three month lows. Is there hope for a rebound? We'll talk to the CEO of mortgage lender Better.com for a pulse check. Plus Palantir's post earnings volatility, heavy static for telecom stocks and a biotech company well outperforming the MAG7 this year.

0:34We'll talk to the CEO of Inzmet, fresh off earnings and new approvals for gene therapy drugs. I'm Melissa Lecomte-Lar from Studio B at the NASDAQ. On the desk tonight, Tim Seymour, Steve Grasso, Dan Nathan, and Guy Adami. We kick things off November specifically with that trade that made us go hmm. Things that make you go hmm. That's right. The market that makes you go hmm. Both the risk on crypto trade and defensive staples under pressure in recent days. is Bitcoin closing in on the$105 ,000 mark, while the XLP Staples ETF is trading at more than 50 two-week lows. It's not just Bitcoin hitting a wall.

1:06Ether and Solana have both posted double digit losses over the last month in crypto-focused names like Circle, eToro, Strategy, Bullish. They're also struggling. While Kimberly Clark was largely responsible for the Staples move lower today over the past week, we have seen big losses in names from Altria, Hershey to Hormel and Cisco. Staples, also the only S &P sector down year to date. So if both the risk on trade and the safety trades are moving in the same direction, what does that tell us about the state of the market that we're in, Guy? It's a great question, Melissa Lee, and I will attempt to answer it.

1:40I don't think it's, I think it actually is telling the real story. I think the S &P 500 is telling one story. But you look and I'll add a couple other things. At one point today, the VIX traded almost 19 on what was a pretty benign day. You mentioned Bitcoin underperforming. Maybe part of that is Jerome Powell walking back a December cut. But this was in process long before he started talking. You mentioned the staples as well. I mean, there's something clearly going on. And I think the volatility index is sniffing it out. I also think this weakness in the bond market, I want to be careful here, is something that's going to sort of permeate over the next couple of weeks.

2:14So despite the fact that those seven to ten names we talk about are doing very well, market breadth and other things suggest something otherwise. Yeah, market breadth has been miserable. If you're a MAG-7 ETF or a MAG-7 player, life's good. And today was that kind of a day. It has been pointed out. I mean, the equal-weighted S &P is down 6.5 % since September 1st. Meanwhile, semiconductors have outperformed the S &P by 22 % since September 1st. So it just tells you, I mean, a micron, which is doubled. It just gives you some sense of what's going on here. Obviously, we're going to talk about this other headline today, which is Amazon OpenAI, yet another one.

2:50But I think the dollar creeping above 100 on the dollar index is another one of these things. It's not that the dollar, which often can be seen, a dollar rally is a risk off moment. It's just it's a combination of a lot of things. I think the weak dollar trade is something that a lot of people were expecting. I think there's a dynamic that people believe is important for the stock market. And so, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of anecdotal evidence in a world where we apparently don't have real government data anymore that certain parts of the economy. Listen to the shippers. Listen to a lot of different parts of the economy.

3:20Rails over the last couple of weeks have given us actually a lot of data points in terms of what is the most economically sensitive, arguably part of the economy, at least to impact stocks. So I would just jump in and say I think after a heroic run in equities, it's not a surprise to run into some heaviness. I still think this is the best month of the year. I still think we're going to be higher than where we are today by Thanksgiving. Gobble, gobble, guy. And I think it's a case where, you know, you can't overthink this. The Fed's out there. Different members of the Fed are saying we're now more focused on inflation than the jobs market.

3:51And so there's not this green light for straightforward Fed and everything else, even though, again, the most exciting trade in the world is game on. So I think if you wanted to buy the market off this dip, you would have to have a green light by the Fed. So I think that's the number one thing to cut again, to cut again. Number two, Guy said it's been going on for quite some time. The week is a Bitcoin meme stocks, quantum stocks. Those have been bought. Those are the risk ones. Those are the non-profitable companies. And then Jerome Powell last week takes December off the table. That means rates are going higher.

4:25Or the market's saying that rates are going higher. So what goes lower? Staples. It's competitive. Higher rates, they underperform. What doesn't perform well with higher rates is Bitcoin, too. So there's a double reason why Bitcoin doesn't perform well. There were choices a month ago with quantum. Now they have higher rates to look forward to. Yeah, just saying the earnings front, you know, the dollar that Tim just mentioned is kind of doing this rounding bottom. It's back up to that$100 level. And then if you think about rates, if they're not like definitely priced to go much lower from a U.S.

4:58multinational standpoint, there's some pressure there as far as earnings have been a tailwind. And on the crypto thing, I mean, listen, you know, Bitcoin was moving higher when rates were higher, you know. And I think this is one of those ones where you want to kind of say there's certain relationships that make some sense. This thing has defied a lot of relationships. And I think what's going on right now is that over the last couple of years, we had this move. We had ETFs that were being listed. Then we had deregulation. And then we had these treasury strategies. Well, it doesn't seem like there's too many other companies now signing up for these treasury strategies.

5:26And if you think about it, MicroStrategy was first to it. I think they own 640 ,000 Bitcoins. I mean, like 3 % of all the available Bitcoins. That might work out great for Michael Saylor and strategy. It might not work out that well for all these other companies. He is he just owns Bitcoin. The other ones are basically replacing stuff on their balance sheet with Bitcoin. It might end up not doing the thing that they hoped it to do. And then if we ever have a reason for this to unwind a bit, it's going to be quite nasty. And then if you think about you just mentioned all those companies that have gone public who are these trading companies or brokerage firms or whatever.

6:02I mean, if you don't have stable coins, if you don't have a healthy stable coin market, then those companies, I don't know why they exist, right? We already have places in which to trade them. If you look at Robinhood, how much that they trade these things, why do you need a company just designated to be there to trade crypto? Like, that's my personal view. I mean, I have a Robinhood account or a Fidelity account. I can trade it all right there, right? And I can have my 401k there. I don't think that's the thing that those other exchanges are there to do. They're there to kind of do stable coins.

6:30And to me, it seems like a solution in search of a problem. And then when you see technicals on Bitcoin, every time you trade down$5 ,000 worth, you see this delevering come in or risk adjustment come in. To Dan's point, the higher Bitcoin goes, the higher those Robinhood coin stocks will go. But once you take the steam out of it, that unravels to a lot of tentacles in that whole space dramatically quickly. Yeah, I mean, I think that it's a good point that there's a lot more leverage in this trade than there had been before. And so this unraveling happens at a much faster pace. Let's put a pin in it for now.

7:06We've got some breaking news we want to get to on Starbucks. And it's China business. Kate Rogers got the details. Kate. Hi, Melissa. That's right. We've been anticipating this news. Starbucks announcing it's found a partner in China entering into a joint venture agreement with Vuyo Capital. It's a leading alt investment firm to operate Starbucks retail business in China. Now, under this agreement, Boyu will hold up to a 60 percent interest in Starbucks retail operations in China. Starbucks will retain a 40 percent interest in the joint venture, and it will continue to own and license the Starbucks brand and IP to the new entity.

7:39Boyu is going to acquire its interest based on a cash-free, debt-free enterprise value of approximately$4 billion. And Starbucks expects the total value of its China retail business to exceed$13 billion. And two other details here. The joint venture, according to this press release, Starbucks expects this to be finalized in Q2 of its fiscal year 2026 after completing required regulatory approvals. And just a reminder, the China business, Melissa, has really been turning around in the most recent earnings report last week. Same store sales were up 2 percent, boosted by a 9 percent climb in traffic.

8:15And a reminder for viewers, China is extremely important to the Starbucks business. They often refer to it as their second home market. You can see the stock is higher by 2 percent right now on this news. Back over to you. Kate, I'm not familiar with Boyu Capital. Where is it based? So I'm not sure where Boyu is based, but the operations are going to be headquartered in Shanghai, Melissa. I'm still going through the release and I'll bring any updates that are pertinent back over to viewers. OK, thank you, Kate. Kate Rogers on Starbucks. Starbucks shares are up about 2 percent on the announcement of this JV.

8:44Tim, as a shareholder, what do you make of this? Well, on some level, it may be positive you've been concerned about them not being able to do it in China without a partner. There's been a lot of local competition. This Boyu deal, whatever we're calling this deal, where they've given up majority control, is something that this isn't a I mean, there's a headline that's been out there for the last week. And some of this started to come out on their earnings call, which wasn't fantastic. In other words, we get back to the story, which is it's going to be really hard to find what the next catalyst to take Starbucks higher, even though I think you've priced in a lot of bad news.

9:14I don't think you have to run out and buy it. And I don't think this this headline is something that should have people overly concerned about. China is no longer a growth spot. We are learning that Boyu Capital is a Hong Kong based firm. And that may play into the strategy here. You want some Chinese partner. Right. A Chinese partner to be in China. I'll just say this. October 8th, I think it traded down to 80 bucks. Starbucks go back to May traded down to 80 bucks. So if you want to trade against something, it's the 80 dollar level. Obviously, you're through earnings now, so that is a catalyst.

9:46So I actually think you might actually get some momentum to the upside here in Starbucks. You know, it's interesting. Another U.S. brand that's having a tough time over there is Tesla. And you see that some of the local operators are doing much better than Tesla. Tesla is expected possibly to have a 5 % year-over-year decline in China when some of their competitors, X-Pen, NIO, BYD, they're growing at like mid-teens or something like that. So to me, it's kind of interesting. I don't know how a Tesla partners locally. I mean, there isn't a major price war. But it's interesting to think about we're in the middle of this trade war and make no mistake about it.

10:17We're still in it. Some U.S. brands are going to continue to have a hard time for nationalistic reasons, but also operational reasons. Brian Nichols, an operator and you can't count him out. But this is a very hard thing for him to turn around. Right. The amount the sheer amount of stores that you have. He's got a bunch of different levers that he's trying to pull. None of them have worked so far. But technically, this is where the stock should bounce. This has been support going back to April. I would take a flyer out on it. All right. Meantime, Evercore ISI finding unprecedented bullishness among clients in its latest weekly market sentiment survey.

10:48Let's bring in Julian Emanuel, the firm's senior managing director. Julian, great to have you with us. Great to be here. So you were shocked by these results. Shocked. So, look, and again, part of it is a function of the fact that contrary to a lot of people's expectations, ours included, September and October were as strong as they were. And frankly, we all know what the calendar looks like, that November and December tend to be positive months anyway. But this level of bullishness in our mind is a bit of a contrary indicator. Going back to 2018, the second highest reading we got when we asked what's the next 10 percent in the S &P 500 was 69 percent set up.

11:27Last week, it was 76 percent. And, frankly, when you think about the setup and you think about last week, we got a lot of good earnings news. We got a lot of good geopolitical news. And the market just really sort of didn't go anywhere at the index level. And we've got a little bit of an information vacuum the next couple weeks and a government that's still shut down. So it's a near-term cautious setup, in our view. But longer term, you are bullish. Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, as uncomfortable as owning stocks at this valuation has been, and frankly, we want to see it become uncomfortable once again.

12:10You know, you look at the AI story, it continues to get better. And the earnings are just incredible. So what you're saying is basically disregard some sentiment and stay in for the long haul if you're that type of an investor. But to the extent that we just got done talking about market breadth, which is narrowed almost to, you know, a short little kind of triangle here. What does this mean? Is this part of your euphoria dynamic or would you be concerned more broadly about market breadth? We all know there's a headline tomorrow. There's another one next week and there's another one next week.

12:46That's about retrofitting AI capacity and all these big boys that are already there. We know those headlines are coming. The rest of the market's not doing much. Right. Well, so and if you look at this last couple of years of bull market, unlike the late 1990s, which we are all fond of comparing it to, you've had market breadth expand the entire time, whereas in the late 90s it was declining for those last couple of years. And so to sort of lose that prop the last few weeks is certainly a worry. And to your point earlier, Tim, is nobody is positioned for a stronger dollar. And when that's the case, you tend to have other pain trades.

13:26Bitcoin is certainly likely to be one of those. And the entire recipe tends to be something that will likely spread the caution. Again, we're not going to have any more information until the last of the MAG-7 reports two weeks from now. How problem, by the way, I don't think this is going to happen. I think they cut in December. But how problematic for the market would be if they didn't cut in December? It would be pretty problematic. In our view, they are going to cut. We still, basically, if you look at the market implied probability, it's around 65 percent today. We think actually, counterintuitively, we'd rather see that move down to 50 percent because that's when you put a little starch into the VIX and you put a little fear in people's eyes and you get your buying opportunity.

14:16Julian, how concerned are you over the SCOTUS decision on tariffs right now? And if they rule against tariffs, does that just make you more bullish because the cuts would probably be coming? Well, here's the problem, Steve. Do we as investors actually like tariffs now or do we not like them? The market likes them. The market does like them. And our concern is probably less than an adverse ruling because our policy people think the Trump administration will be able to find a workaround to call it 80 to 90 percent of the tariffs that are on the books right now. And more whether the payback is mandated, the 250 to 300 billion dollars that's been collected.

14:59it. That's the kind of jolt that the interest rate market is not prepared for. Interest rate volatility is actually lower than equity volatility right now. Going back, though, to the contrarian indicator of your survey, in the short term, do you think that indicates the bullishness, the extreme bullishness that you've seen, a short-term pullback? And if so, what magnitude of a pullback? We don't think, again, given the seasonality of November and December, it's going to be all that incredible. You know, the 50-day moving average, which is about 3 % below where we are right now, has held most of the pullbacks the last several months.

15:41But frankly, when the market is priced at 26 times and there is an element of complacency against all assets, it's probably enough, again, to create a more robust buying opportunity. Julian, great to see you. Thank you. Thank you. Julian Emanuel. I love the expression, put starch in the volatility. Yeah, I mean, it's very... You must get a visual on that. Right, right. You can just feel it stiffening up. Absolutely. But would you agree with the assessment in terms of where we are right now, Dan? Yeah, I mean, there seems to be a bubble in calling a bubble in AI. And that's something, no, I mean, and I get it.

16:19I look at the market and I see these two things, right? Tim just kind of described what's going under the hood and the RSP, the equal weight versus the mega cap weight. And I hear a lot of folks talking about how the financials have participated, industrials have joined the party, that sort of thing. And I say to myself, there's no way this market is going to come down meaningful if it's not done by this AI sort of trade. Like, that's it. And look what's going on in the aftermarket right now. I mean, Palantir, I know we're going to talk about it, but this is important to this market conversation.

16:46I mean, stocks unchanged and the guidance that they gave was fine. You know, this is a company that trades 100 times sales. And normally you would say, well, it's not good enough. You know what I mean? People would take in profits and they're not. The other thing as far as the options market is concerned, if you look at any of these sorts of names, the calls are more expensive than the puts. People are more interested in getting upside exposure than they are downside exposure. And that's telling me a lot about something about the psychology with the market right here. Well, speaking of the AI trade, let's get to Amazon here.

17:14surging 4 % today, closing at another all-time high. The latest jump coming after Amazon Web Services and OpenAI announced a$38 billion multi-year cloud deal. Today's move, combined with Friday's post-earnings reaction, marks its best two-day gain for Amazon stock in nearly three years. I read an interesting comment from RBC about this, saying that Amazon, AWS, is the only one with no agreement with OpenAI. And so that was negative investor sentiment surrounding the stock. And now it has an agreement, so it's joined the club. It's A-OK to get in on this trade, Guy. It also did something. So it traded two times normal volume today.

17:49It opened basically where it closed. And you have two gaps lower in the chart. You're setting up for, dare I say, a bit of an island reversal if we open lower tomorrow. I didn't think the news today was that earth shattering. I will say collectively we had been bullish on Amazon into earnings. I think this move today extends it. I think it trades lower from here. I think it validates, though, investments AWS has made. and they're going to retrofit again AI and data center. The capacity on this deal that essentially goes to work right away runs out at the end of 26. So this isn't one of those ones where we're talking about 28 to 32.

18:24This is one that actually really is in play now for a company that has been making the investment. So for a company that I know this is hard to ever say about Amazon, but that has a relative valuation argument in favor of it over at least some of the players and certainly relative to itself, I'm not surprised to see the distraction. Guy's right on the – fascinating on the charts. And to the extent that people were waiting for this kind of an announcement, let's see how much you follow through. But those numbers that they had late last week were great. This just keeps the momentum going out of earnings.

18:54When you see AWS recapture some momentum up 20 % year over year, this is what they had to do because now they have a seat at the table too. I'd be a buyer right here of it. It's a catch-up trade. Yeah, and, you know, OpenAI is interesting. They seem to be – and maybe this is a great strategy for them, I'm more interested in renting this sort of compute than actually building it out. I know Stargate exists, and this is something that's going to come in the future. And, you know, we've got the Oracle deal. We've got all this sort of stuff. But they're spraying this all around. And, you know, you use the word tentacles.

19:20I mean, at some point, if there is – No, it's just the metaphors are flying tonight. Starch. We've got the spray. My only point is – There's a lot of places to go with this. I won't. I mean, things better go right with OpenAI. Because if it's not, the tech sector as we know it is just going to be decimated. Coming up, we're just going to move on. But earnings season rages on. Shares of Palantir on the move after reporting in the last hour. The numbers and details from the latest quarter next, plus a media meltdown, why Wall Street is changing the channel on shares of Comcast. And whether there's any chance of a rebound for the stock.

19:52Don't go anywhere. Fast Money is back in two.

20:04We've got an earnings alert on Palantir. share is volatile even after the company raised its fourth quarter revenue guidance above Wall Street expectations. It also beat top and bottom line estimates. The stock closed the regular session at a record. The conference call kicked off at the top of the hour. CNBC's Morgan Brennan has got more in the quarter. Hey, Morgan. Hey, Melissa. Well, the big earnings takeaway here for Palantir, and this is from the call, is AI is driving the growth. U.S. is driving the AI adoption. Palantir's U.S. revenue grew 77 percent last quarter. U.S. commercial up 121 percent.

20:33Q4 U.S. commercial forecast. It's implied to be similarly strong here. Rule of 40 score. This is an eye-popping 114%. This is an enterprise software metric. Higher is better. I spoke with CEO Alex Karp, and I asked whether he thinks an AI bubble is inflating and or a shakeout coming across the tech space more broadly, given all the deals being struck, all the capital pouring in. He told me, quote, here's this large set of the AI market that works, either in consumer or enterprise. The things that are valuable will remain valuable. The things that are not valuable are going to get flushed out. The strong companies are going to get much stronger.

21:07And the people pretending they're doing stuff are going to disappear quickly. And I think looking at Palantir's numbers, he would be suggesting that Palantir is one of those valuable companies that gets more valuable. The conference call is still ongoing. The last thing I would say, Melissa, on this, and this was a big part of my call with CARP, conversation with CARP, And it's a big part of this conference call right now is what this new AI era and implementation of it is going to do to the economy and to the workforce. CARP talking about a worker available GDP and that that's the focus of Palantir.

21:38But basically saying that what's going to be valued within the workforce and what that's going to mean in terms of demographic breakdown and how that's going to reverse and change is underway here. And it's going to that AI is basically going to change what we consider the most important when it comes to workers of the future. Morgan, thank you. Fascinating stuff. Morgan Brennan on Palantir. We should know in terms of the reaction, the stock sort of in the after our session at this point, it had beat 19 out of the past 20 quarters and about half the time traded up, half the time traded lower. So you never know.