Semis, Bitcoin Help Fuel Market Climb … And The Insmed CEO on Trial Results 6/10/25

0:02Live from the Nasdaq markets, in the heart of New York City's Times Square, this is Fast Money. Here's what's on tap tonight. A semi-surge. The chip stocks have rallied more than 50 % from their April lows. But can the group power the market back to new records? We'll debate that. In healthy gains, a biopharma stock surging to 25-year highs on the back of its hypertension drug trials. We'll talk to the CEO to find out what is next for this company. Plus, oil stocks get energized and lead the markets higher. The CEO of a company trying to blaze a trail in AI drug development. And a McCrispy taste test by Wall Street hasn't been impressed by McDonald's latest offering.

0:35and what it will mean for the stock. I'm Melissa Lee coming to you live from Studio B at the NASDAQ. On the desk tonight, Courtney Garcia, Karen Feynman, Dan Nathan, and Guy Adami. We start off with stocks inching back toward records. The S &P 500 less than 2 % off all-time highs as investors hope for a positive outcome in the trade talks between the U.S. and China. And it's been the chip trade leading us back to these levels, the SMH Semiconductor ETF, at its highest level since February. Names like Broadcom, OnSemi, NVIDIA, Micron, AMD, Some of the top performers this quarter. Crypto has also been on a tear.

1:07Bitcoin flirts with its recent all-time highs. It's now held above$100 ,000 for 30 days in a row. That's its longest stretch ever. Robinhood, Coinbase, Riot platforms, and Strategy all seeing huge gains in Q2. And stablecoin stock Circle Internet soaring nearly 250 % since its Thursday debut. So will these be the trades that take the markets to new highs, Guy? Yes, Mel. Well, it better be because that's the biggest waiting, right? And it feels like to me now, we're in June. It's going to be, before you know it, second half of the year. People are starting to chase now. People that are behind the eight ball are saying, hmm, year's going to get late really quick.

1:44We better start playing a little catch up. But I think that's what you're seeing. In terms of the SMH, it's make or break time. And I know it sounds crazy, but it's had a huge run off those lows in April. 283, I think, was the all-time high this time last year. We're within striking distance of that. I mean, you could potentially have one of these epic double tops, but it has to get there first. Wasn't make or break earnings season, and didn't we get through that just fine? Yes. Right. Well, they ran into it a lot, right? So the bar was high, and they actually did a pretty decent job of meeting the bar.

2:14I think sort of what's going on now, you know, we always talk about the market absolutely hates uncertainty. It rather would have bad news that it can digest. I feel like this is the flip side of that. The market is just on hope, hope that we get a deal. If we get a deal with China, maybe that's very good for chips. and the hope might be better than whatever the actual reality is. That sort of seems, and you have the VIX now, sub-17. I mean, it's really not that long ago that we were in a very, very different kind of tape. So this seems a little too hopeful for me. You know, Q1 earnings, I think the bar was really low, right?

2:47So think about this. We had the banks come in about, you know, I think it was April 11th, 12th or something like that. And they got off to a great start. But if you think about, like, where we just were with the market and the volatility, I think a lot of folks didn't think that was going to be it, right, from April 7th, April 9th, that period where we kind of bottomed. So, you know, as we got further into earnings season, I think the big debate was what is mega cap tech going to do? What are some of these semis going to do? And so when you go and look at what the socks did off the lows in April 7th, it doubled the performance of the S &P 500, right?

3:16But it's still down about 12 percent or so. And we are a whisker or whisperer? Either or not. We just had this debate, people. So that's why. We're like five minutes. I know we did, but I'm going to say whisker. I'm in the whisker camp, okay? And, you know, so let's just see. Taiwan Semi out this morning with May sales up better than expected. You know, some of the analysts I was reading, they're like, oh, we can't figure out why. Well, they're double ordering in front of this stuff, like given all the uncertainty or whatever. But the other fact is, and this did come out of earnings season, is that CapEx was intact, right?

3:45Like a lot of folks who thought given the uncertainty, maybe you'd see a pullback, that sort of thing. We didn't. And so, you know, like I get it. And as a silver lining guy on the desk, I get what Guy is saying because look at today. GM Ford, Toll, Lennar, FedEx, UPS, Schlumberger and Exxon. Take your pick or whatever. So I was taking two from these groups that have really been laggards, if you will, and they had a day. They're still not anywhere near their prior highs. But I think it's worth noting that that could suggest a little bit of a broadening out as we get within a whisker of those prior highs.

4:18Yeah, and you're clearly seeing, like to your point, the CapEx has continued to be strong. And the AI demand is not going anywhere. We've seen that with NVIDIA earnings. You saw that with Taiwan Semi. And I think, too, the biggest optimism right now is what's going on with these talks with the U.S. and China. And if you do start to see any sort of easing of those export controls, that's what people are hopeful on right now. So, you know, have they had a big run up? Yes. But as if you're starting to see some of those things starting to ease, investors are going to continue to get in here. They do think you're going to see some of that catch up trade to Guy's point.

4:44Yeah. I mean, obviously, the way Tim talks, Tim talks about semis as a leading indicator very often. And so does this indicate that the economy is actually on better footing than we all think? I don't know. And the point about it spreading in terms of the market participation, that's also a good sign. Yeah, I think it's a good sign for the market. I don't know if it's a tell on the economy. Maybe it is. Maybe I just look at the world a little bit differently. I think the economy is a little bit of a different story right now. But the semi-trade clearly is back in play. And, you know, if you want to play the game, what game do you like to play?

5:13The would you rather game? There's so many. There's so many. So many good ones. Can I play a would you rather? Sure. Would you rather? Why not? Here's one for you. This is not what we've done before. Qualcomm or NVIDIA guy at these levels? You know what, Mel? I'm glad you asked that. I mean, NVIDIA is sort of mired here at this$143 level. You know what I feel about in terms of price of sales. Qualcomm, I think, is about to break out through a one-year downtrend that we've been in since this time last year. Valuation is obviously pretty compelling. It always is. And I think if you want to play the game, Qualcomm is the place to be.

5:41So they're implicitly saying that you want to be off the AI trade. I think in terms of NVIDIA and some of the tangential names, I think they've gotten a little ahead of themselves again. Qualcomm, obviously not as much AI. I think that's interesting to place. Yeah, co-pilot PCs, that was meant to be a catalyst for Qualcomm. But it just seems like consumer electronics outside of anything that goes in a data center is not particularly hot right now. And just to take a shot at Tim because he's not here, it's really easy to do. You can make the argument that, you know, semis aren't that cyclical anymore.

6:09If you think about the secular shift that's going on and you think about how specific investors have been within the semi space. And that's your point. Like if you're Intel, if you're AMD, if you're Marvell, if the list goes on and on, NXPI, you've been left out. You know what I mean? So the one thing I want to go back to the broader market is, OK, so we're back towards the S &P, the prior highs. The dollar is still stuck here. Right. And that was a trade in April that really freaked people out. The 10 year yield is still around four and a half. That's something that really freaked people out.

6:38So if the currency market and the rates market is that much bigger than the equity market, you know, you could say, well, the stock market is a discounting mechanism. And I'd say I want to focus more on yields in the dollar because they can't get out of their own way. And if we don't have a deal, then do we go right back to the same stuff? And so I'm not like I don't know how you can get bullish here. And I will say this quite honestly. I said this. I couldn't think of a scenario two months ago where we'd be back up, you know, here. OK. And I still can't see a reason why we'd make a meaningful push higher, because if we have a trade deal, we're right back to April 1st.

7:14Right. And we still. Can I argue with Dan? Yeah, of course. But I mean, why is that why is that so difficult to understand? Not you, just the people out there. Like, why is that so difficult to understand? If we take a step back, right back towards April 1st, we're still in the same spot. And there's actually been a lot of damage done. I agree with that. I do think there is damage on someone. I guess you're called it scar tissue, which I thought was a very good analogy because it doesn't heal all the way the same. But if I had to come up with a very bullish scenario, the two things that I would point to three actually.

7:44So if we get a big, beautiful bill of some sort, which I think we will, that will have, I think, a positive effect. I think that you're going to see productivity gains. And I think you could also end up seeing the bond market that hangs in better than we thought. So there's a couple of things going on. And then you add in deregulation, which I think is really, they haven't really started that in a way that's had a significant impact on the market. So those things, I think, could be very bullish effects on the economy. The productivity, though, is separate. I mean, that you're saying we would have seen regardless of what the political backdrop.

8:27We don't need the bill to be productive or not. Yeah, that's all part of AI, right? But I do think that's the story that everybody after November got excited about was less regulation and less taxes. We got completely away from that as you got to these tariffs. But at some point in time, we are going to move past that, which would you see what's happening with the markets? And all of the hard data on the economy has continued to be strong. The economy is not falling off a cliff like a lot of people were calling for two months ago. I think that's the bigger story is if we can start to see some of these sentiment levels come back up, people are becoming more optimistic, which I do think you're starting to see a little bit of that.

8:58Like the economy is holding up strong here. If the consumer continues to hold up, that's what's going to keep the economy going. Look at the lower third there, Dan. Do you read it? Can you see that? Whisper. They're just getting all up in my grill. I'm sure he was a K at one point and they flip-flopped it. It's really the dumbest saying in the market. Why is he so against it? I mean, are you against cats? I have two cats, which is troubling. I have Tom and Tigger. Anyway. I do. They're two orange cats. Let's get more on this run in chips and bring in Patrick Moorhead of Moorhead Insights and Strategy.

9:33Patrick, thanks for joining us. Great to be here. Thank you. What do you make of the chip run? A lot of people say it's too hot, but I just think it's just beginning here. I mean, the only place that we've seen heat is in hyperscaler data centers. We haven't even touched the enterprise data center, the enterprise edge, and we've seen no impact at the device level, not even including robotics. So I think we're at the beginning of a massive five year run here. And this is just the beginning. It's Karen. Thanks for being on. So we talked a little bit a week or two ago about enterprise is really not even on the sort of the landscape where people don't focus on it.

10:21It could potentially be bigger than hyperscalers, possibly, or a very significant chunk. How big do you think that could be? It's a trillion dollar opportunity. And what's happening is enterprises are a little slower getting adoption because they have technical debt that they have to figure out. They need to get their data planes figured out. They need to figure out how to run AI inside of their data centers. We believe that this will start to hit big in the second half of 26. I don't think we need to get ahead of ourselves here, but you're going to see companies like HPE, companies like HP, PC companies, and even those who operate on the edge, let's say, who are building out new types of manufacturing facilities, new types of distribution facilities.

11:16Although I don't agree with everything NVIDIA says or they bring out, I do believe that the enterprise and the enterprise edge are the next waves that will hit. I don't think we're going to see this massive slowdown in hyperscalers either. This is the biggest opportunity since the internet, which I was part of working for a tech company. We saw the bust, but I don't think it's going to happen here because of the pilots and the new applications that are scaling currently. Patrick, Intel had a day-to-day. Is there a scenario where they have a meaningful move in the stock price over the next six to nine months?

11:59Sure answer is yes. I mean, they're trading below book value, I mean, you could literally sell everything they have, pay everybody off, and it's undervalued. If they get one anchor tenant announced for their foundry, that would absolutely send Intel skyrocketing. I do think that there is something to the trade negotiations with China related somehow to the NVIDIA pop that we saw today. I haven't able to specifically identify it. But when you sit back and think about what does the administration truly want, they need a strong intel. And I do believe that the administration will make moves that will put them in the driver's seat.

12:50And whether that's a China investment in intel, potentially making Huawei chips at Intel. I know it's hard to imagine that, but that would be able to cool off the tensions as we move forward. What Intel has to show first, though, is that it can, at scale, run chips through its own what's called 18A process and improve their gross margin, which gives them then a larger chance of getting the big deals, getting the Qualcomm's, getting the Apples and getting the NVIDIAs to run through their factories. Patrick, fascinating stuff. Thank you so much. Patrick Moorhead, Moorhead Insights. It was an interesting notion to think of a Chinese investment in Intel when the Trump administration didn't want to take Japanese money for U.S.

13:45steel. But putting that aside. Take a look at this chart that the chart master has put together. Basically, he's saying sell semis. That would be the great Carter Braxton Worth. Carter Braxton Worth, the Worth charting, says to sell this run. What do you say? The crack staff put that chart up and you can see. I mean, this is a downtrend that's been in place. We talked about. I mean, it makes sense. Listen, I don't think he's saying the trade is over by any stretch, but his work suggests we can stall here and do a back and fill. And I think to a certain extent, that's what Dan and I are saying as well.

14:14All right. Meantime, CNBC confirming reports that Google is offering buyouts to U.S. employees in its search and ads unit. This comes as a tech giant search business faces increasing threats from AI. Google also offered buyouts to platform and devices team earlier this year. So this could be a major overall here that we're looking at, Dan. Yeah. I mean, if you think about it like as a mosaic over the last year and you think about what they've been able to roll out and kind of the reviews of some of their models in Gemini in particular as like a consumer facing sort of thing. It just hasn't been great, right?

14:44And OpenAI, you know, just keeps shipping great product and they keep kind of pushing forward. And part of their mission is to really kind of come at Google search, right? And think about that. And so you put all this stuff together, there's an article in the journal we were talking about. It's really hard to see how they're going to maintain this share that they have right now. They almost have to cannibalize themselves, which is what they're doing with these overlays right now. But the problem is, as you trust these answers more, these contextual answers, the less likely you are to click through to the site reputation and the less likely Google is to get paid.

15:15So, you know, it's by belief when OpenAI, perplexity, they come out with these browsers the next few weeks or months or something like that, it's going to be a real test to Google. And I would suspect that this rally that we've had right now, despite valuation, it's going to probably give up the ghost a little bit here. And that's, I think, been the biggest concern with Google is how much they're spending on AI. And if it is, in fact, going to start to cannibalize their search business, it's not going to justify that kind of valuation or the amount that they're spending there. So I think that's it's going to continue to be a story that people are watching.

15:42At a certain point, they're going to have to prove it. But how can they compete against an open AI or a perplexity browser if they don't spend money on their own Gemini product to make it competitive? Otherwise, you're just saying, we're going to stick with the old stuff until it's completely obsolete. Well, one of the things I found a little bit frustrating about Alphabet is the year of efficiency that Meta did so well. We never saw a year of efficiency at Google, right? We did, remember, it was a big change when Ruth Borett came in, right? And then she had a much clearer accounting. We knew what different businesses were.

16:16But I think of, like, I hear that article and I think of the search being under threat is real. The other thing is, I think they can be more efficient, right? And they haven't even really, I think, you know, 188 ,000 people work there. So I feel like there's room there for more efficiency. Dan talked about this more than a year ago. I mean, Apple, Google, they had opportunities to buy a lot of the companies that we're going to be talking a lot more about over the next six to nine months. And they passed for whatever reason, maybe thinking they could do it themselves. And now you're seeing sort of the other side.

16:50And I go back to the comments Ben Wrights made, was it three months or so ago when he threw Google? I mean, he used Eastman Kodak as sort of to be somehow analogous to what potentially Google could be facing, which is I'm not saying he's right. I don't think he knows that that's going to happen by definition, but that's a pretty interesting choice of words. I just want to push back for a second. I don't know that any of them felt like they could buy anything. We're in a different world of M &A. Like, if you look at that Meta deal today, which is really 49 percent. And yet they seem to be kind of consuming the whole thing in a way.

17:26Right. So I just don't. So they've done a lot of them have done AWS and Google and Meta. They've all taken stakes in a lot of different things. I don't know that they could outright have bought anything. Especially Alphabet. Especially Alphabet. Yes. Coming up, a boom in biotech as InSmed shares surge after its latest trial data. The CEO will join us next to lay out the results and will give us details on the company's next move. Plus, a number of fast movers making headlines today. Like Casey's, J.P. Morgan and solar stocks were catching the traders' attention. Don't go anywhere. Fast Money is back in two.

17:58This is Fast Money with Melissa Lee, right here on CNBC.

18:11Welcome back to Fast Money. Shares of biopharmaceutical company, Insmed, surging almost 29 % on positive Phase 2B trials of its treatment for pulmonary arterial hypertension. That's high blood pressure caused by narrowing and thickening of the blood vessels in the lungs. INSMED getting several upgrades on the news today, including from Jeffries and Leering. Shares closing at their highest level since November 2000. Joining us now for a CNBC exclusive live interview, Will Lewis, chair and CEO of INSMED. Will, welcome back to Fast Money. Congratulations on this data. Thanks so much. The analyst community are overwhelmed by it.

18:45It could be the best in class, as Truist. Leering says it easily exceeded the best case scenario here. What is the next step in terms of getting this to market? Well, today is clearly a great day for patients with this disease. This is a fatal condition, and the data we put out today is really, to the best of our knowledge, looking at the primary endpoint, the best data that's ever been put out in any clinical controlled trial ever across any medicine for this disease. So our next step is to take that data to the FDA and have a conversation about what the development path looks like from here.

19:14Can you talk to us about your pipeline? Because this is not the only drug that you have in trials. And so what does your pipeline look like in terms of drugs to market, drugs in phase three by the end of, pick your time point, the end of the year, five years? Sure. So right now we call ourselves three for three. So our first three major late-stage compounds have all now either been approved or have passed serious significant clinical milestones. It was about a year ago today that we had our phase three data from the ASPEN trial, which looked at the treatment of our second compound in bronchiectasis.

19:46That one has now a PDUFA date of August 12th. So, presuming that that goes forward as expected, that will be approved and we'll launch that drug this coming next quarter. So, that's one of three. But all three are either first or best-in-class medicines. So, they're going to have a big impact on these patient populations. So, I mean, we talked last year. I know we had some glowing things to say, and it's come to fruition. Probably not in the same way we thought, but here we are. This feels like the start of something, not the end of something, in terms of the stock, but also in terms of the company, for sure.

20:18Absolutely. I mean, I think we are at the strongest point in this company's history. I've been here for 13 years. When I started, the company had 25 employees. Today, we number about 1 ,500 with offices and operations in the U.S., Europe, and Japan. But these first three medicines, each one of them represents a potential blockbuster in their respective disease states. And as I mentioned before, our first one, Eric Case, that's approved, first ever approved for that disease. The second one, DPP-1 for bronchiectasis, that will be the first ever approved for bronchiectasis, a condition that numbers almost 550 ,000 in the U.S.

20:52today. And this third one today, TPIP, goes after what is a very well-established and competitive market, but it comes with best-in-disease data. Yeah, we saw some of your competitors down sharply today on the back of your results, United Therapeutics and Liquidia, for instance. In terms of, you know, just last week, we were talking to Jared Hulse of Mizuho, and he named InsMed as the number one takeout target in biotech at this point. How do you think about remaining independent versus exploring a sale, particularly as a backdrop for biotech in general has been fairly negative? Investors just have not loved the space, let's put it that way, for the past five or 10 years.

21:32Yeah, it's been a very challenging time for the biotech industry, and that's what makes our ability to perform in this environment all the more remarkable in my mind, and kudos to the whole team at InSmed for making that possible. I will say that, as you mentioned a moment ago, I think this is just the beginning. Each one of these medicines we're talking about has the ability to impact diseases beyond the ones we've already spoken of, so there is additional data, additional events that are going to happen between now and even just 12 months from now. Roughly six to ten different clinical or regulatory or commercial milestones that the company is expected to pass, which should continue to improve our opportunity to develop medicines, to help patients, and consequently drive value for our shareholders.

22:12All of that sounds very expensive. We were just talking about your balance sheet before. You pay down a lot of debt. Are you going to raise some more money? And is that your way of saying that we will stay independent? So our focus is clearly to build value for our shareholders through the provision of medicines that are going to have an impact on patients. We don't really lift our head up from that mission. and it's always been my experience and my background. I was an investment banker in the dark past. And what you learn is that companies are not sold, they're bought. And so when someone decides to do that, they're going to take us off our path, so be it.