Stocks Drop In Major Reversal… And Opportunities In A Red-Hot Biotech Sector 11/20/25

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. NVIDIA in reverse, the semi-giant giving up gains of more than 5 % and ending the day down 3%, what the roller coaster ride means for the rest of the market. And winning Walmart, the retailer beating estimates for the latest quarter and upping expectations for the year, how the big box company is navigating a questionable consumer landscape. Plus, digging in on the long-delayed September jobs report, a weak signal for internet stocks and more gains in biotech. We talk with 1BC about whether the healthy returns can continue for the sector.

0:44I'm Leslie Picker in for Melissa Lee, coming to you live from Studio B at the NASDAQ. On deck tonight, Carter Worth, Dan Nathan, Guy Adami, and Mike Coe. Thank you all for being here. But we begin with the massive reversal on Wall Street. Euphoria over NVIDIA's Blockbuster earnings last night fading fast. The hyperscaler up more than 5 % at the open, but ending the day sharply lower. That whipsaw action took the major indexes down with it. The Nasdaq giving up nearly 3 % gain today to end the session down more than 2%. The Dow swung more than 1 ,100 points from high to low in the S &P end of the day, more than 3 % off its highs.

1:22All closed near their lows of the session. Bitcoin also failing to get off the mat, continuing its plunge toward the key$85 ,000 level. It set a new low dating back to April. All of this action pushing the VIX above 28 at its highs. Wall Street's so-called fear gauge closed its highest since April. So what does today's action tell us about what to expect through year end? Guy, first of all, maybe just take a step back. What the heck happened? Well, let's take a step back from that. Yeah. And say this has been a historic week here on Fast Money. Jim Cramer came on Monday night, first time ever.

1:59More importantly, you're hosting this show, Leslie Picker, and we are thrilled to have you. Thank you. Your coverage in the financials has been fantastic, so it's great to have you tonight. I will now answer your question. What the heck happened? Well, you know, we've been talking about the volatility index on this show for a while. The fact that on a couple different occasions over the last month, you've seen spikes to the upside, and we thought those were sort of a precursor or maybe sort of rumblings on what is yet to come. What else was going on? You mentioned Bitcoin. When the Nasdaq was up at its highs today, Bitcoin was not moving.

2:29As a matter of fact, it was going lower. To me, that was sort of a sign that, you know, maybe this rally is going to be somewhat short-lived. I don't want to pretend that I knew this reversal was coming, but here we are. What does it mean? Well, you don't see reversals like this all that often, and I think they're very powerful. And Carter can speak to this. If you get a close below 6 ,500 this month of November, which is now in its 20th day, we're going to start talking about outside reversal month, which rarely, if ever, happens, Les. Well, that's right. I mean, so to put it in context, obviously, there's always the thought that there has to be some news item.

3:01Was it NVIDIA? Is it the fear maybe in crypto? Often things just start to sell off and there's something called, hey, get me out. When people are buying, they buy reluctantly. They say, oh, well, I missed my price. I'll stop. But when they sell, they want to say, and they do, get me out, which is to say they sell without regard for price. So this has a bit of a panic to it. And the question is, is it likely to be contained? And we can talk about this later, but we're now down 5 % plus. That's the first time that's happened since the plunge low of April, the tariff low. You get typically 5 % plus or minus dips, corrections every two to three months.

3:38We've gone seven, almost eight without one. And so this is long overdue, and I wouldn't think it stops here. So this is a pretty voracious turnaround, though. This is especially lacking some sort of a catalyst. So do you think there is some sort of technical, you know, maybe it's momentum reversal, maybe it's short covering last night that then kind of reversed itself today? I mean, how do you look at the internals? At this level, it's maybe a bit new. But think about this. In the beginning of the month, right, the S &P was at an all-time high, essentially. But the constituents internally of the 500 stocks, the average stock was down some 15 % from its own respective 52-week high.

4:11So it's been these great winners that have held the whole thing up. And now we're seeing some trouble in paradise. So presumptively, the index has more to go. Yeah, so Carter just mentioned reluctant buying. And I think that's what you probably saw after the print last night in NVIDIA. You know, we're sitting around. This is 24 hours ago. We're looking at what they reported. Everyone expected a better than expected number. They expected better than expected guidance. You look at that margin number, and I guess our take at the time was that, you know, great, they have an upside in gross margins.

4:37Well, who is that at the expensive? It's expensive all their customers, right? And so my reaction is like, okay, let's look at the hyperscalers. Let's look at the biggest sort of buyers of those sorts of chips, and let's see how they act today. And they were starting to give it up really quickly. And then I was looking at some of the component suppliers to the server makers and the servers that go into the data centers. And you saw right out of the gate, memory was weak, storage was weak. You know, those neoclouds were up a lot. They did not have a hard time giving up all those sorts of gains.

5:05So Oracle, one of the biggest customers, that thing got absolutely killed. That was my final trade. I actually thought it would continue to rally in this sort of environment. But this is actually the most vulnerable of the ones. They got all these great contracts, except they don't have the money to pay for the infrastructure build. And I think the market's coming around to that. Even the competitors to NVIDIA, look at AMD and look at how that closed today. That went down fairly quickly on the day and it closed down 8%. But, you know, when you look at NVIDIA, it was the largest market cap company on the planet and the expectations and the focus on it.

5:35And you say to yourself, OK, who is the incremental buyer of this on good news? And I think that's really what happened. And when you have a stock like this open on the day at the high of the day and close on the low of the day, You know, the expectation that this is going to turn right away, especially in the environment that we've been in, is probably not a great one. And so to Carter's point, if you see sort of panic selling, and Guy makes this point all the time, what do they say? They don't talk about it to the upside? Well, it's funny. We don't use the word panic to the upside ever. When you hear panic, it's usually associated with a sell-off.

6:09The reality is most of the panics over the last couple of years, you can argue they've been to the upside because to Carter's point, you know, people feel like they're missing. And I don't think today was panic at all. I think it was somewhat orderly. The VIX is telling a little bit of a different story, but the sell-off to me was sort of run-of-the-mill. Yeah. The internals also, I mean, 150 stocks in the S &P were up. That's not an over—when it's really bad, you get 490 down, right? So can there be follow-through? That's the real question, because tomorrow morning you've got to make decisions, each of us and everyone.

6:38And the presumption is there's more to come to the downside. Yeah, well, it seemed like the decision making that everyone was expecting from last night just totally reversed midday today. Mike, what is your take? Well, you know, it's interesting. We often talk about rallies broadening. And sometimes I kind of look for signs that maybe some weakness is also broadening. If we go back about five weeks or so, there were a lot of high flying, high beta stocks that are probably more speculative in nature. So we're not talking about the invidias of the world. Now we're talking about things like Palantir and hims and hers, those types of names.

7:15And a lot of those began to suffer pretty considerably at about that time. And NVIDIA, Alphabet, these are the types of names that everyone thinks of as the highest quality and so on. And so to me, I think the bloom started to come off the rose when those stocks started to roll over. A little bit of a sign that those who are willing to take the most risk in the market were less willing to do so. And so I'm kind of with Carter on this one that, you know, we often look to the VIX as a potential barometer for when you think things are oversold. But the hazard in doing that is that before you get to higher levels, you must go through elevated levels.

7:52That's where we find ourselves. We move from elevated to high, but it could still go a little bit higher. I think we could see a little bit more of a flush before it's all said and done. Yeah. To Guy's point, we talk about panic to the downside, momentum to the upside, but they both technically work both ways. And they feel very right. And it's the same mechanism. It's just different words. So people associate down with bad, up with good, which I totally understand. But panic works both ways. Yeah. Meantime, one bright spot in the market is Walmart, ending the day more than 6 % higher after beating the street sales and profit estimates thanks to strong e-commerce growth.

8:27The big box retailer also raising its full year guidance for the second quarter in a row. For more on the quarter, former Walmart U.S. CEO Bill Simon joins us now. He's also on the board of Darden Restaurants and the chairman of Haynes Brands. Thanks for being here, Bill. What's your overall takeaway in terms of the state of the consumer versus some of the strategic initiatives that Walmart has been driving in order to gain share here? Well, there's a lot of good in that report for Walmart and I think for the consumer in general. You know, the first thing that struck me is after really, you know, six or eight months of, you know, us hearing about inflation, tariff driven inflation, there's almost no indication of any inflation in Walmart's report.

9:12I think they reported about 1.2 percent inflation. And that's really, really a good indicator for the rest of the economy because they're so broad in how to do so. So I think fears of inflation and we all sort of were worried what the tariffs were going to do. I think we can put that one aside at least for the for a little while and see how it goes. The second for me is Walmart has such a huge portion of the snap, I think about 25 percent or almost twenty five billion dollars a year in snap. And to see my worry was that they were going to struggle as the snap benefits got turned off during the shutdown.

9:49We didn't see that. You know, if they'd have seen it in November, they wouldn't have raised their guidance. So those are two really good indicators that the consumer's in pretty good shape for me. Yeah, and you've got some change at the top of both Target and Walmart. What do you think that means about their competitive posture at this point in time? And how do you kind of assess the changes that are taking place at each of those retailers? Well, you know, Brian Cornell and Doug both went into the role roughly around the same time. They were peers at Walmart with me at one point, so they know each other really well.

10:26And they're both transitioning out at the same time, and they're both being replaced by insiders. I think in the case of Walmart, that's probably a good thing, maintaining the momentum that they have. In Target's case, it's going to be a challenge because they need to make some changes going forward. Anytime there's big structural changes like the CEO changes and board chair changes, there's a risk in the transition. And I think that's something that they're going to have to both deal with. I think Walmart's in a better position to deal with that than Target is. But we'll see. We'll agree to disagree on the consumer, Bill.

11:00But thanks, obviously, for joining us. You don't need to look any further than today's action. Walmart are basically at an all-time high target at a 52-week low on a day where the market didn't perform very well. People have tried to shoot against Walmart on valuation for a long time unsuccessfully. Does valuation matter at this point or just operating better than everyone else? Well, I think they're operating better than everybody else. You know, valuation is really something that I think Walmart's been concerned about for years. You know, they were built as a brick-and-mortar retail, CapEx heavy, asset heavy, and they're valued that way.

11:35Now, they're valued at the top end of a retailer, but that's sort of at the bottom end of a digital company like Amazon. And I think this move to NASDAQ is their effort to try to get more of a digital valuation into the company than a brick and mortar valuation. So they're concerned about valuation. Otherwise, I'm not sure why they'd be doing what they did. Hey, Bill, help us think about Costco. And when you think about their business and you think about just the stock performance over the last few months or so, it's really underperformed that of Walmart. Walmart, as we just said, is trading very near those all time highs.

12:08But even before that, it's just been basing for a while. Right. And so what is the investor dislike, I guess, about Costco and what's going on there relative to Walmart? Yeah, in the brick and mortar retail world, Costco is honestly as good as it gets. They've they've been able to put up really strong, consistent numbers for years. Their merchants are superior than really anybody else. And they've got a model that allows them to retain their their their key people. I think they're very undervalued. There's some structural issues in the club segment. Sam's is doing OK. They're sort of coattailing on on the Walmart valuations.

12:45But I think I think that there's some structural issues. You know, the family size and the quantity size isn't really lending itself towards towards the big club business as much as it might have been at one point. And I think they don't benefit as much from the growth in Snap at Costco as, say, Walmart does. Huh. Interesting points. Bill, thank you so much for your time today. Appreciate it. You bet. Carter, your take on Walmart? Well, I mean, Dan makes his point. So Walmart, after one of its great advances over two-year period, is sideways for now almost 10 months. So that's what is a breakout candidate.

13:19You go up, you rest, and then in principle, you reassert yourself to the upside. Just now, breaking out. Real quick, Bill sort of, he didn't gloss over it. He mentioned it. That's a big deal, Walmart, coming to the NASDAQ. It's the biggest move ever from one exchange to another exchange. Courtney's coming on. She can speak to this. I think it's their way of saying, you know what, we're a retailer, but we're a technology-focused retailer. That's a big deal for the NASDAQ and for Walmart as well. Yeah, a signal for their digital franchise there. Sticking with retail, you mentioned, Courtney, we have an earnings alert on Gap.

13:50shares there higher in the after hours after the company reported its best same-store sales growth since early 2018. The conference call started at the top of the hour. Courtney Reagan joins us now on set. Shares up 4.3 percent. I know. It's a really good day for retail. The week didn't start out strong, but it's ending that way, at least right now. And I do want to start with those comparable sales because in total, all the Gap brands together up 5 percent. As Leslie said, That is the strongest non-pandemic comp since the quarter ended January 2018. So that was also a holiday quarter. Gap itself up 7%.

14:23That was twice as good as expectations. Old Navy up 6%. Banana Republic up 4%. Athleta, it's the smallest, but we have to mention it because it was down 11%. A lot of work to do there. Now, earnings of 62 cents. That was stronger than 59 cents. Revenue is also stronger than expected. Gap raising its full year net sales outlook to that upper end of the previous range. and then increasing its full-year operating margin guidance. I spoke with Gap CEO Richard Dixon, who's on the call right now, getting ready to take questions from investors, and he said, Gap is exceeding expectations. We are winning with all income cohorts with equal growth in low, middle, and high incomes.

15:01Dixon has seen consistency and strength in our customer behavior. CFO Katrina O 'Connell explained that the tariff impact estimate is unchanged, And while it did have a 190 basis point hit to gross margin, the stronger sales with less discounting offset almost all of it. So it left gross margin down just 30 basis points from last year. And Dixon acknowledges disappointment with Athleta's performance, as I mentioned. But he says that he believes the new president, she's just 90 days in, is taking the right steps. He is confident that the brand will re-emerge. and Gap CEO Richard Dixon will be joining Jim Cramer on Mad Money at 6 p.m.

15:38for an exclusive interview. So we'll get to hear more from him directly when he does get off this call with investors. Well, yeah, it feels like the brand is reemerging. What have they been doing to try and win back that brand equity? Because those numbers, the best in eight years for comparable sales growth, I mean, that's nothing to shy away from. Right. So Gap is doing what I think Target wants to do. They're trying to get back that cool factor. And the CEO always talks about trying to be back in the cultural conversation. I don't know if you've seen any of the ads, but they've had Parker Posey in recent ads, and she had a lot of hit with a lot of success with the White Lotus hit.

16:12They just had this, you know, other campaign that's sort of kicking off the holiday season that has really gotten a lot of people talking. The CEO says that it has sort of reignited the past love, some nostalgia from some of us that might have shopped at the Gap in high school with our restaurant paychecks. I don't know who that was, but, and then also sort of reintroduced the brand to Gen Z. He's really trying to mesh music back with fashion. And it's an easy thing to say. It's a hard thing to do. But two years in, it does look like it's starting to take off. Yeah, the marketing push with Gap, American Eagle.

16:47I don't know if you've looked at Old Navy, but their kids clothes are really cute. And the prices are compelling, but without having to discount so much. And that's how they're pulling in that lower income consumer and really being able to hold on to those margins even after the pressure from Jaros. Yeah, we had to make a pit stop there on the way to your son's birthday party. So we did. Yeah, that's right. That old Navy experience, unexpected, but still worthwhile, still productive. Mike, what's your take? Yeah, I mean, look, Gap Stores was trading at about 10 times next year's full year adjusted EPS estimates.

17:21And that was on very narrow margin expectations, actually narrower than what they had been experienced over the trailing 12 months, even before these results came out. And when you put that together, basically the better the top line and the better margin picture that they just articulated, you know, the move that you're seeing after hours here, I think, could be just the start of something a little bit better. Because, I mean, I don't see any reason why this couldn't trade 14 times. And that's, you know, a meaningful 30 % premium to where the stock's trading right now. Yeah, it definitely feeds into this whole brands from the 90s and early 2000s are just making their way back to the forefront of the cultural consciousness.

17:58Coming up, it wasn't just earnings impacting the markets today. How the long-delayed September jobs report factored in as well and what it means for the Fed's next great decision. One top central bank watcher weighs in. Plus, Netflix, Spotify, DoorDash, and Uber all getting hit hard in today's sell-off. We dig into the charts to see if the carnage will continue. Don't go anywhere. Fast Money is back in June.

18:24Welcome back to Fast Money, the much delayed September jobs report showing better than expected payroll growth for that month. One hundred nineteen thousand jobs being added, though the unemployment rate ticked up, hitting its highest level since October twenty twenty one. But with no jobs data coming for October and November, the November report delayed until after the next Fed meeting. How is the central bank looking at this data? Let's bring in Ben Emmons, founder and chief investment officer at FedWatch Advisors. Ben, it's good to have you. There is such a data vortex right now. How much stock should we put into the September report, the revisions from August and net net what that means for the Fed?

19:08Hi, Leslie. Well, I felt it was a bullish report because, as you mentioned, this unemployment rate rising is really for the good reason. You know, the report showed there was about 475 ,000 people coming back in the labor force. And then there were actually people that were long-term unemployed. There's actually a few of them now long-term unemployed. There's one other sort of tidbit in that report. So I thought it was actually a really good report for the Fed to vindicate their view that this labor market may have had softening. And that's what those revisions from August show. But that is not falling off a cliff.

19:42And that's what this report actually shows. So the market actually responded to this with wake-up probabilities dropping really sharply because, yes, the Fed doesn't have a reason here to cut rates immediately because there's no alarm on the labor market. Yeah, odds now sitting around 40 % chance of a cut in December. Do you think that's the right likelihood? I think so. I mean, we talked about it previously that this Fed seems to be willing to stay on hold simply for the reason that they do feel that this labor market isn't deteriorating, but they're dealing with this inflation picture that's not cooperating the direction that they want to.

20:22You know, Beth Hammack was talking to Steve Leesman earlier today. She's making, again, a pretty strong case there like we're dealing with elevated prices. You know, and it's funny that that's against the Walmart earnings that show that, you know, there's not much pass-through coming to their earnings there. But, you know, overall, the inflation picture isn't really what the Fed wants it to be. So I think this probability will stay low. There's always a chance that you will go forward if anything changes. But I think they're on hold for December and go forward with January potentially. You know, Ben, Carter correctly has pointed out that the bond market is really nowhere over the last year and a half.

20:56We're waking up. It's 4.1 percent. We've been here before. I still think rates are going higher. I'm not suggesting I'm right. But what do you think is going on here in the bond market? I mean, this is probably best case scenario for the market. There's no bond volatility. Yeah, that's right, Guy. I mean, you know, you and I both want to share this view that rates should be significantly higher. This is an economy. It's so much like stimulus coming in over the course of next year with all this investment. You know, you should actually see yields more closer to 5%. But I think what's happening is that there's some, I think, hedging, some diversification against this equity market.

21:33And I picked it up from client conversations that bonds do look a little bit more attractive in that perspective. And secondly, we don't have really any major surprises from the Fed in one way or the other, which kind of keep that volatility lower. And then it's about sort of the situation where who's going to be the next Fed chair? What are they going to do from there? I think does play a role because we saw from the comments from the president the other day, they really want to bring rates down. I think that sits in the market's mind since February to try to jawbone it down. And I think that's why you've seen some buying flows in bonds, even though yields should be higher because of a good economy.

22:10I know you've studied what's going on in private credit quite closely. That was an area of concern for several Fed officials this week as well. We saw the Blue Owl merger get terminated amid concerns there, which is all playing into this broader market sentiment surrounding business development companies that have exposure to private credit, which have sold off. How do you think that all plays out? Leslie, what you saw today with Lisa Cook with a speech out putting a specific section on private credit and then mentioning there that it's drawing their attention because it's grown so fast, so quickly and there's now some stresses building there and this Blue House example is one other example of that that although not falling apart I don't think there's a financial contagion playing out yet but they are getting the attention of the Fed And I think the Fed will go from here with the SEC and the FSOC, which are bodies to start looking at private credit more specifically and saying, you know, what can we do here in order to not let this morph into another subprime example?

23:18So I think that's what's playing out here. And this negative headline coming from that does affect markets because people don't like the opacity of private credit. This idea that money is tied in there, it's illiquid, and we actually don't know what the marks really are. That was an example blew out, too. So this will stay a bit with us. And that's what the Fed's really going to do as we go from here. Sounds like from Lisa Cook's speech that they're paying real attention to. So we should we should really keep an eye on this. All right, Ben, thank you so much. Appreciate your time this evening.