Stock Wrap Up February Flop… And Bitcoin’s Dip 2/28/25

0:02Live 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 February to forget. Stocks closing today near their highs of the session but still posting solid losses for the month. The Nasdaq briefly erasing all its post-election gains and seeing its worst month since April. But what does the action mean as we get ready to kick off the month of March? And a Bitcoin bummer. The cryptocurrency dropping below the$80 ,000 mark for a time before bouncing today for the first time in over three months. Is there more pain in store for the digital asset or are we primed for a rebound?

0:38Plus housing headache as the home builders struggle at the start of the year. A box office make or break moment ahead of the Oscars this weekend and the traders reveal their charts of the month after this very volatile February. I'm Mike Santoli in for Melissa Lee today coming to you live from Studio B at the NASDAQ on the desk tonight. Tim Seymour, Karen Feynman, Courtney Garcia and Steve Grasso. Welcome to you all. Welcome to you. Thank you. Yes, I appreciate you. It was great to have you. You got me. You showed me the right place to sit and everything. Do you have a fast money nickname yet, Mike?

1:13I mean, have you been given you one? Sounds like Tim has thought about one for you. You got 58 minutes and 40 seconds to come up with one. Remember Jamal Wilkes in the Los Angeles Lakers? Yes, of course. What is his nickname? Well, he's Keith. Silk. Silk. Silky Smooth. Mike Santoli. I'll try to live up to it. Thanks, guys. Hey, markets rebounding late in the day to close near their highs of the session, but it was still a rough month for equity markets. We're going to get more on that in just a minute, but we start with more on the fiery Oval Office argument between President Trump, Vice President J.D.

1:46Vance, and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, which ultimately led to the cancellation of their press conference this afternoon. Eamon Javers is at the White House with all the headlines. Eamon, the market seemed to stop and gape at what was going on there, as I guess all of us were, but knit it all together with us in terms of the upshot. Yeah, Mike, there was a lot of stopping and gaping watching what happened in the Oval Office today. Dramatic and unprecedented events in the Oval Office as the meeting between the United States and Ukraine broke down into what ultimately became a shouting match between President Trump, President Zelensky, and Vice President J.D.

2:23Vance. A lot of this was over U.S. concern that Zelensky was not being grateful enough for American foreign aid, was being disrespectful to the United States in the Oval Office, as the vice president put it. And at one point, I want to bring this to you because there's this question as President Trump is now reorienting American foreign policy away from Ukraine and toward Moscow. There was a question from a reporter in the room about whether the president, President Trump, that is, is too close to Vladimir Putin. Here's that exchange. You want me to say really terrible things about Putin and then say, hi Vladimir, how are we doing on the deal?

3:03That doesn't work that way. I'm not aligned with Putin. I'm not aligned with anybody. I'm aligned with the United States of America and for the good of the world. I'm aligned with the world and I want to get this thing over with. You see the hatred he's got for Putin. It's very tough for me to make a deal with that kind of hate. And you saw, Mike, as you said, that the press conference after that meeting was canceled. The luncheon that was scheduled today at the White House also canceled. The president is getting ready to leave the White House here. He's going to spend the weekend in Florida. We'll see if he talks to reporters on his way out the door.

3:37Following the president for a couple of years, I can tell you, I expect that he will talk. He will want to have the last word on this exchange. So we'll wait for those comments. But meanwhile, we're getting a reaction from all over the world here. What we're told is that Zelensky has already spoken to France's President Macron, also the head of NATO. The Canadian foreign minister posted that he has spoken with the Ukrainian foreign minister to reaffirm Canada's unwavering support for Ukraine. German Chancellor Scholz says Ukraine can rely on Germany and Europe. And we saw this from the vice president of the European Commission saying that ultimately the free world needs a new leader.

4:15She says Ukraine is Europe. We stand by Ukraine. We will step up our support to Ukraine so that they can continue to fight back the aggressor. Today it became clear that the free world needs a new leader. It's up to us Europeans to take this challenge. So the question now, Mike, and it's an unknowable, is what happens with the U.S.-Ukraine relationship? What happens to U.S. military aid to Ukraine, if anything? And what happens to the U.S. relationship with Europe? A lot of damage done here today. This president sees himself as a disruptor and a dealmaker. He's certainly done some disrupting today, and we'll see what kind of deal he's able to pull out of the events of this afternoon.

4:55Amos, Tim, thanks for joining us. Extraordinary comments from around the world. And we talked about alignment. You talked about alignment. My sense or my guess and my question to you is how about alignment within the White House? And if we looked at markets, markets, that was the low point of the day. And I know they're not related, but on some level they are. Was there some attempt by the White House to walk this back? Because it clearly looked like that was the nadir of sentiment today. But again, trying to understand within the administration and Trump's team if this really is a clear issue of alignment.

5:26Yeah, I mean, look, in terms of what happened inside the White House afterward, I can tell you that there is there's no deviation of views among anybody at this White House that the president handled himself appropriately appropriately and did the right thing. I mean, within moments after Zelensky left, I was getting texts from White House officials saying the president just kicked Zelensky out of the White House. They wanted to hammer home that point, that this was the president being decisive, making a break, a deliberate break with Ukraine, that feeling that the United States is spending a lot of money here and getting not enough return and not enough respect back.

5:58And then the question of markets, Tim, I think is a good one. You know, you know better than I do why markets reacted today. But, you know, the old cliche is that markets hate uncertainty. And what we saw in the Oval Office today does bring a whole lot of geostrategic uncertainty back onto the table that maybe a lot of people thought was off. Amen, absolutely. Appreciate it. Following every turn of it for us. And now in terms of the interplay with markets, I mean, Steve, the market usually is going to look for something specific that it needs to reprice, maybe in any of these geopolitical events, as opposed to just a feeling or some kind of a guess of what it's going to mean down the road.

6:36So what did you what did you read today's market action as in relation to this? Everybody just backed off. Buyers really. This was something that we've never seen. Right. So no one knew what to make of it. It was the end of the month. You had a large pension rebalance. Everyone took their fingers off the buy buttons, gave it a little bit of a rest. They came in late in the day. But we don't know. It's so manic. Does he show up at Mar-a-Lago? Does he show up next week? Is there a phone call? Is there something that happens in a 24, 48, 72-hour time period? President Trump wanted a reason to distance himself.

7:17Remember that tweet that was super aggressive against Zelensky? Then he backed off from it. I think he almost wanted this to happen. So does it do something to the overall markets? I think people are just going to take a hiatus, take a little bit of a breather. Remember, it was month end. I think people would probably, news stories are going to be cycling over for the next two days. Let's see on Monday, Tuesday where it falls. We do have tariff Tuesday. So that might take a little bit of the focus off of this. Courtney, the setup was interesting, too, right? The market was down 4.5 % coming into today.

7:52It was getting a little bit overdone, maybe to the downside. Oil's been tame. Rates are down. So in other words, it wasn't just like this came out of the vacuum and we were at all-time highs to react to. I guess the question is, should investors be incorporating this in any specific way to their market outlook, to their portfolio strategy? I wouldn't say yet, right? I think this is just so new. We don't know how this is going to play out by any means. And I think coming into this, what a lot of people don't realize, and we're talking to all of our clients, is the fact that Europe has actually been outperforming the U.S.

8:21this year. When you hear Trump talking about America first and we're going to put tariffs on all these other countries, I think a lot of people who aren't following this day-to-day do not realize that that's been happening. And even today, if you looked at the European indexes, they also sold off, like right after that conference, but also just came right back up by the end of the day. So I think a lot of this, there was that knee-jerk reaction. But I think it's been positive to see that the markets have been reacting a lot less to these political headlines coming out of D.C. And I think that's what it is, is there has been so many of these.

8:47This one is probably more extreme than others. But the fact that markets are taking a pause, I think, is a good thing that they're looking at fundamentals, not just political headlines. Karen, is that the way it feels to you, that the market overstimulated and therefore just kind of shuts down on it? Or have we priced it in here and there? I feel like it was theater somewhat, right? As we all said, we've never seen anything like this. And you'd certainly be surprised to see it in that open forum that it was, specifically designed to have the press there. So we saw it right when he came in, tariffs right away and then backed off a few days later.

9:21So, I mean, you'd sort of be you can't just follow whatever the shiny thing of the moment is because it may not be shiny in two days. So let's see. But I think that it's tiring, though. It's tiring for investors. And I think also it does weigh on sentiment for some CEOs, right? How do we know how to gauge our business? How do we know what kind of inventories we need? How do we know what tariffs we may, may not face? How do you prepare for that? That's hard. To your point, defense stocks, you would have thought they would have rallied more when he said, you're paraphrasing, you're on the precipice of World War III.

9:57You're on the brink of World War III. You would have thought defense stocks would have rallied a little bit more. Amlong MP, that one did rally because the reason why they were in the White House Oval Office was because of rare materials. Or by him, the overall thrust of what the president was saying is we're out. We've written our last check. So maybe defense stocks aren't going to go up if this is not going to be as. Although European defense stocks have been very strong. Yeah. And as someone spent two years in Russia, I can tell you there's American CEOs that don't want to have any part of doing business in Russia because they don't want to have any part of doing business in Russia.

10:30And I think there's a lot to unpack here. And I do think as we went into 24, again, this is 25 is the year where 24 maybe is unfolding, I think. And that includes less MAG-7 than the market expected in some of that transformation. But I think the geopolitical theater, whatever we're calling, today was theater, but there's a lot of geopolitical trouble spots. Europe's going to dig in around this. And, again, I spent a lot of time focused on this issue. NATO and support of NATO is a very big deal across Europe, which means that the headlines out of Europe, and we just saw some, and Eamon read a couple of them, aren't going to get better.

11:03I think they're going to get worse. Get it back to the market. We came into this moment, this low point in the day where the S &P rallied 2 % off of that low to close the day at really a low point for, I would say, over six months for where markets have been. Really, since if you think about where we came into this, where we came into a lot of the NVIDIA numbers yesterday and the market's digestion of them. And you could make an argument that this was a really bullish response. And again, I get back to that deep seek low. And if you look at NVIDIA, it basically rallied right off of that. So did the SMH.

11:33I'm not saying that that is sustainable. I'm telling you that if you're looking for support and support being held, that's the cues, almost touching the 200, sniffing there and bouncing there. This isn't awful. And sentiment's about as bad as it gets. And I'll say one more thing about valuations for some of these big multi-cap, mega caps. You know, if and in fact, I was just talking to one of the smarter hedge fund guys I know who who I think had a great call on this. Sixteen times on Google right here. I mean, I don't really care. And that's a place where I think you really have to pay attention to what some of these stocks have done.

12:03I mean, the reality, too, though, is I mean, as much as you may not want to talk too much about it, the market in it inherently is kind of amoral about these things. Right. The market doesn't want a just piece. It wants peace. Right. It wants kind of the distraction out of the way. I mean, I'm not saying the market jumped to that point. Right. No, the market likes certainty. It almost doesn't matter what the certainty is. If tariffs, this is their X, and that's it. We know their X amount, then they adjust around it. Yeah. Well, there is a little more going on than just the geopolitical scene. All this happening as Wall Street digests the latest core PCE figures.

12:38The Fed's preferred inflation gauge increased by three-tenths of a percent month over month in January. That was in line with estimates. But just last hour, Chicago Fed President Austin Goolsbee told our Steve Leisman that inflation is still higher than they'd like it to be. Steve joins us now with all the headlines. And Steve, also plenty else to talk about within that personal spending data and Atlanta Fed GDP. Now, where do you want to start? Yeah, well, you know, Goolsbee sort of addressed all of it. He did say there's more work to do on inflation, but he likes what he saw when it came to the inflation numbers.

13:09And he said this shows we're still one on the path back to two percent. We've had a couple of good ones in a row. He's been kind of a dove on inflation, and the numbers have kind of been breaking his way down to that 2.5 % range, still above target but headed in the right direction. That's the first thing. The second thing is he did take note of those weaker consumer sentiment numbers, consumer spending numbers. It was minus 0.5 % when it came to real consumer spending this morning. He said, look, it's one month's worth of data, but it's definitely, quote, worth keeping an eye on when it came to that.

13:42He also talked about tariffs. He said, look, normally we look through these tariffs. But you know what? It's a little more complicated than that. Here's what he said. Tariffs are a one-time cost shock that monetary policy should mostly look through. But I don't think it's going to be that easy to figure out which part, if you started to see inflation going up, which part is the part you're supposed to ignore. Yeah, that's the problem. Which part do you ignore? Of course, the market, Mike, as you know, is looking for two cuts this year. Maybe those tariffs kind of interrupt that timing of, say, a June and a September cut.

14:16Steve, when you look at it, Austin has been more dovish, as you mentioned. He's been a more dovish person through that prism. But when you look at the PCE, how much did weather have an influence over this and how much was it really weighted to autos? Because autos seasonally, this is usually a weaker time for autos. So we have the weather. We have autos. Is this something we should take as a one off or is this a trend? Well, I think the weather was something that might have affected the spending numbers. I think that's what you're asking about or that's what you're implying. And yeah, it might have had a big effect.

14:54Jan Niffin, one of our retail analysts here, did write me a note that said it was all weather. I'm a little bit not ready to go there because, as you know, those sentiment numbers went down as well. And people, I think you guys were talking about the confusion from policy. See, I think that's permeating the public a bit here when it comes to, you know, whether or not they feel confident in the future. A lot of balls in the air, a lot of balls in the air when it comes to what the federal government's going to do, what kind of spending there's going to be, what benefits are going to be. And also employment is some of the surveys we've seen of consumers have also shown confidence in in finding a new job has gone down as well.

15:28So I would I would be careful with it. The Atlanta Fed, Mike mentioned before, I would put that to the side that was heavily influenced by a huge surge in imports we got in January. I'm betting Tim Seymour took note of that. And that ended up taking 3.7 percentage points off the Atlanta Fed number. So they got down to minus one and a half percent. Other economists I'm looking for are still looking for a slowdown in growth, but more in the, say, one to one and a half percent positive place. Steve, I love how you know exactly what I'm thinking, especially during those moments. By the way, Steve and I overlapped in Russia back in the day.

16:06I'd love to talk to you about Russia, but maybe we should save that for another venue. I want to ask you about jobless claims this week. This was the week we cared about jobless claims when they spiked 24 percent. It's a very volatile series, but it seems in the context of data more broadly that wasn't supportive. And you add in some spending and some consumption numbers. Are you worried about this number? Did the market overreact to jobless claims? I'm going to take Austin's language on that. I'm keeping an eye on it. Look, 240 is the higher end of the range. But if you go back, it's still pretty low, OK?

16:39You used to go start worrying about Globus when they're like 280, 300. We're not there yet. It's definitely been up from 200 to 240 since the beginning of the year. It's worth watching. You're going to see some of the not federal layoffs. Federal layoffs are counted in a different index. Those are up only a little bit year over year. That will probably start to rise, but it won't infect the jobless claims numbers. The jobless claims numbers could be affected by private federal contractors, other people who are not working for the federal government that lose work because of less federal spending.

17:12Worth watching that. These tariffs have me more worried than perhaps the street is about them. I think that there's potential negative. These are much bigger than they were in 2018, much more widespread. They really hit it. two of our most important trading partners. So I think there's a potential negative economic outcome from them, which a lot of people on the street are also forecasting. Yeah, certainly if it happens, a full blast as threatened on time. And Mike, I'm sorry, just one more thing to follow up with what Tim is saying. That whole surge in imports was probably front running the tariffs.

17:45Yeah. And there might have been some consumer spending in the fourth quarter that front ran those tariffs as well. Yeah, there definitely is a little bit of potential there for some catch up across a few fronts. Steve, thank you very much. So, Karen, I mean, look, the bond market, based on what it's done recently, isn't too concerned about inflation by the looks of it. You have the two-year yield under$399 at the close, and they're seemingly wondering if we're more vulnerable on the growth side. Yeah, I think so. And also this PCE number being just in line, I mean, anything above that, even the tiniest bit, would have really, I think, been bad.

18:18because, you know, the Fed is already on sort of neutrally with the let's wait, wait, wait. Now this gives them a little more flexibility than they had in the market like that. Yeah, it does for sure. It seems like we'll get a lot more jobs number next week. So I'm going to fill in some of the blanks. Coming up, a disastrous month for homebuilders in the books. But can this group lay a foundation for a spring comeback? We're going to debate that next. And we're rolling out the red carpet for the Oscars. Film's biggest night could have major implications for the Magic Kingdom. That's right after this.

18:55You're watching Fast Money here on CNBC. We'll be right back.

19:09Welcome back to Fast Money. home building stocks closing at a rough month, down 6.5 % in February and far underperforming the broader market. The weakness coming amid a slew of disappointing data for the housing market, pending home sales falling more than 4 % in January to the lowest level on record, and new home sales fell to greater than expected 10 % month to month. So will this trade be on shaky foundation through the spring? Steve, on the other hand, what's going on with rates? 30-year mortgages, I think, are down below 6.75 again. If you look at historically, we all remember on this desk, with the exception of Courtney, what mortgage rates, what normal mortgage rates were and what they were.

19:50I don't know what they should be, but I know that. I forget a lot, by the way. You do forget a lot. You do forget a lot. Yeah. So when you look at them now, it seems like you don't want to touch these. And you need that 30-year mortgage to come down. But when you think about it, people own a mortgage. They don't own a house. So you can't move. It's going to cost you twice as much to get out of your house. So I think people will lift a leg and say, I'll sell something if I could refinance on something else. But that mortgage rate has to come down below six for it to get attractive. And right now you're seeing it stagnate.

20:26And there's only so much the home builders can do to add incentives and to buy down that mortgage rate. So I don't think we're there yet. I think to your point when you introed it, maybe the spring is the time where we see a resurrection of the home. Yeah, you see more things listed, but also more things pulled off tomorrow. What's the number, 60 % of homes with a mortgage? I think it's under 4%. For now. But hopefully that's aging. We're burning through that. Those people do need to eventually have to move. And I think that, yeah, terrible for the month for home builders. But that 30-year coming down, as much as it had, maybe it's not quite enough.

21:05But some people are going to just have to go with that anyway. So I actually am optimistic on this pace. I mean, Courtney, obviously the stocks have taken a hit. So if, in fact, things are going to pick up, the market's giving you a little bit of an opportunity. But how does that fit into maybe the broader consumer trade as well? Yeah, and I think the bigger picture here, there's been this huge supply and demand constraint when it comes to housing that is not getting fixed. And first of all, my generation is so sick of all the baby boomers telling us, like, oh, rates were low when we bought houses.

21:32You catch that, Steve? Like, there are memes about this. I can't hear so good out of this here. By the way, I'm Gen X. So you can get that. I'm not a baby boomer either. No boomer here. I'm not a baby boomer either. I'm all X. Just so you know. But really, what is happening is as these rates are higher, it's everybody who does have those mortgages, which you point out, that are less than 4%, is not putting their houses on the market. But I think you're starting to see people are waiting for rates to come down. They can't wait forever. Like at a certain point, you're going to start to see those go back on.

21:59You're going to start to see people who are getting to places in their lives where they are going to start to buy the houses. But I do think higher rates probably actually benefit your home builders because they can give you those incentives. As rates go down, you're probably going to see more current homes go back on the market. So February actually tends to be a pretty bad month for the housing stocks. It's been a particularly bad month. I think the sentiment's probably oversold. So, yeah, I think if anything, I'm with Karen here, I'd probably take advantage of it as an opportunity. All right.