Stocks Mixed Ahead Of Hormuz Deadline… And The Impact On Oil Prices 4/7/26

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1:01All right, for the Nasdaq Market Sight, right here in the heart of New York City's Times Square, this is Fast Money. Here's what's on tap tonight. Stocks climb back some early losses. The S &B and Nasdaq finishing higher. Oil taking a step lower as President Trump's self-imposed deadline for Iran looms large over investors like you in the markets. We'll get the latest on where things stand in the Middle East and how to protect against what is likely A lot of volatility ahead. Falling Apple. Shares of Apple dropping as much as 5%. That on a report of delays and bringing a foldable iPhone to the market.

1:39And the one-time innovation leader find its footing again. We'll discuss and debate. Plus, another black eye for the homebuilders. Group dropping on the heels of a Wall Street downgrade. How much more pain may be left for the group? Or are they a buy right now and right here? Hi, everybody. I am Brian Sullivan. I'm in for Melissa Lee tonight, tomorrow and on Thursday. Come on. Yeah, that's it, brother. Coming to you live from the next 3DLB, the NASDAQ on your desk tonight. Tim Seymour, Karen Feinemann, Dan Nathan, and Guy Adami. All right, lots to do. But let's start with the macro markets. Okay, kind of grasping for gains at the end of the session.

2:18And right now, folks, at 5.01 p.m. Eastern time, there is basically three hours left until President Trump's self-imposed deadline for Tehran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or else. Major averages, they'd all been firmly down for most of the session. Small mid-caps higher, big averages lower. But toward the end of the day, buyers came in, we got a bounce. That lifted the S &P and NASDAQ into the green. They ended slightly positive. One point, the NASDAQ had been down one and three quarters of a percent at its lows. After Pakistan's prime minister requested a two week pause in escalating attacks.

2:59We don't know if that'll lead to anywhere, but it was said at a high level. Wall Street's so-called fear gauge, though, the volatility index, the VIX, it remained elevated, trading right around 26. While oil, WTI and Brent each paired some recent gains after the settle, but still right around 100 bucks a barrel. So where do we stand exactly now at 5.01 Eastern time? Let's find out. We'll get to Megan Casella, who is in Washington, with more. Megan. Brian, chances of another extension in the president's deadline for Iran to make a deal appear to be rising at least somewhat after that proposal you mentioned from the Pakistani prime minister.

3:37So this proposal has three parts to it. President Trump would delay his deadline from 8 p.m. tonight for another two weeks. The Iranians then would reopen the Strait of Hormuz for a corresponding two weeks, and there would be a ceasefire everywhere for two weeks. The White House has reacted to that proposal with White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt telling me in a statement, quote, The president has been made aware of the proposal and a response will come. That comes after she told us earlier in the day that only the president knows where things stand and what he will do. Now, the Iranians also giving some reaction to the proposal, a senior Iranian official telling Reuters after it was released that Tehran was positively reviewing Pakistan's request for a two-week ceasefire.

4:16So nothing perfectly committal there, but a fairly significant change in tone after Iran's state-run press TV reported earlier this afternoon that Iran would firmly reject any proposal for temporary ceasefire, now appearing potentially to be warming to the idea. Brian? All right, Megan, thank you very much. Sky Domi, we had a pretty muted market reaction, given that in three hours' time, President Trump, and respectfully, we're quoting Iran. This is going to be apparently President Trump's decision, what he does. The market's fairly calm. Why? Welcome, and welcome for the next ensuing few days to you, obviously.

4:52Why? Because I think the market has learned, I think it learned last April, that the rhetoric is one thing. And if you try to get ahead of it, try to trade around it, you're going to be disappointed. And I think the way the market reacted in the aftermath of the back-off last April is what people are planning for now. They're like, I'm not going to make that same mistake twice. I'm not going to get short or underinvested on the back of what could happen this evening or in the ensuing couple of days. Problem, of course, is despite the fact that oil came off today and you watch this very closely, still talking about crude oil north of 110.

5:22And you're still talking to Vicks to your earlier point around 26, which suggests about one point seven percent intraday moves on any given day. So I think there's resilience in the stock market. I understand why I think the equity I think the excuse me, the crude oil market is telling an entirely different story. Well, and I think there's also been a bounce at the stock market. I mean, we've now moved 5 percent. I mean, we're 5 percent off the lows. We've had this rally. And if you remember, this was a stock market. I'm not saying that if you remove war and you remove all the ramifications of higher oil prices and the strain on infrastructure, which will lead to even higher oil prices, do markets go flying?

5:58Well, sort of, except for the fact that markets even going into the Iran war were sideways all the way back to October. So when you take 5 percent back, you're having trouble getting to the 200-day. No matter what we heard from a New York Fed today that tells you that there is inflation, we've heard it from every different economic report that we've had in terms of inflation expectations today were part of the story. I just think that the markets now are in a little bit more of a wait and see mode. Look, I hope we find peace. We all know that two weeks helps both sides a lot. I'm saying that both sides are very happy to do nothing tonight.

6:30And I think this is a case where markets are appropriately cautious. So I agree. I think the VIX at this level really doesn't show nothing remotely close to panic, right? We've seen panic several times before in the last five years. This is not even close. Liberation Day was much closer. So I hope that we do see cooling off of rhetoric and action everywhere. But I'm neither ready to jump in and buy stuff. It hasn't gotten cheap enough. Last night we talked about if peace broke out tomorrow, what would I buy? I would buy energy, which would be down a lot. And I think it would be interesting there.

7:10But this right here, I'm sort of just not selling, not buying. Well, it's funny. You know, the options market, if you look at the SPY, it's implying about a 2.25 percent move in either direction between now and Friday's close. And that's either going to be really cheap or it's going to be really expensive. Right. And so when you think about the sort of implied daily moves that we get, generally they're under one percent. Coming into the week, we had a two and a half percent move. And we had some volatility, right? If you think about yesterday morning, you think about this morning, and we're closing pretty flat.

7:37And I think to everyone's point here, listen, no one really wants to. Like, the rhetoric is the rhetoric. And what he's trying to do is kind of draw things back a little bit. And they've given him a bit of an off-ramp here with this kind of two-week sort of ceasefire. And so when you think about it, we've gotten accustomed to this, definitely during the war. We're too accustomed. That's my point, is I worry a little bit we're too thinking, oh, the market's always going to bounce back. And it has, by the way. Yeah. It sure has. But what if it doesn't? What do our viewers and listeners do if the worst-case scenario transpires?

8:09There is no worst-case scenario. When you have Tucker Carlson calling for the generals to actually disoval, you know what I mean? Not listen. Not listen to it. It's just not happening. It's just not. What would really be the worst-case scenario is the Iranians do something really stupid. If there's some, God forbid, some sort of terrorist attack or something like that, then we've got a problem. But right now, in this scenario where we really are in the driver's seat for the most part, I mean, I don't think we're going to see the worst case scenario. So, Guy, Dan, okay, let's go around. Everybody made great points.

8:39So, Guy, Dan, we'll all engage in this. Markets, to your point, Tim, 5 % off their lows. By the way, small and mid-cap stocks are actually higher this year. But we do have a VIX at 26. The VIX is not at 46, but it's not at 16. Are you comfortable with the level of risk that the market appears to be pricing in? No. I think the market should be pricing in more risk. to Karen's point, I think at 26 VIX, and she says this all the time, anywhere between 21 and 27, you're sort of in no man's land. It's got to do one thing or another. I think the one thing it's going to do is going to find its way into the low to mid 30s at some point.

9:13And maybe that's a crescendo. Warren Buffett was on with Becky a week or so ago in response to a question that we're sort of having now. I think his response was, and I'm paraphrasing, you really haven't seen anything yet. If you think this little move we've seen to the downside is all that's in store. I mean, he clearly is preparing for something. Not that he's been doing this recently. I mean, this is over the last year. They have now$380 billion of cash on the balance sheet. I think on the back of concerns around valuations, this is obviously one more thing to be concerned about. But he's obviously playing the waiting game, too.

9:43I don't think markets are priced for any kind of a growth scare. I do think that the VIX is underrepresenting, at least here where we are. Having said that, what I'll say is there is value in the top five market cap companies in the world that are not named Tesla. And I just single it because I don't necessarily want to own Tesla here. But I think if you talk about the rest of the mega caps, where they are in a relative valuation to the S &P is frankly very interesting. And I think it's interesting on a longer term basis. I'm not sure investors, our investors are thinking, do I need to go buy the market today?

10:17I hope you don't think you do because you don't. And I think this is an opportunity for people to wait it out. What do we heard from every major, you know, whether it's the IEA, whether it's the IMF? These are these are institutions that have been around for a long time. We've never seen this before. We've never had this kind of an energy shock. And let's stay there because, Karen, you said something fascinating. If energy stocks go down, you'd be a buyer here because I want to say something to you. I've been doing some work on earnings and oil from first quarter of 2021 to first quarter 2022.

10:46when Russia invaded Ukraine, earnings for Chevron, Conoco, and ExxonMobil went up over 200 percent year over year each. We had one month of higher prices March of the first quarter. I don't think oil is going back to$65 a barrel anytime soon. And like it or hate it, it's going to be a lot of extra free cash flow and I think a huge surge in EPS in the second quarter. Agree or disagree? Totally agree. 100 percent. I think that I'm worried that if, you know, hopefully peace breaks out, that oil won't come in enough, that people will say, all right, there is a new, much higher floor for oil than there was before.

11:26To your point, Brian, and that I mean, I still think I still want to I'm long the space. I have not sold any here. I'd like to add, but not at these prices. Yeah, I'd look at the Nasdaq 100 because prior to this war, right, we saw the top 10 names really selling off pretty hard. For the most part, we're seeing them down 15 to 30 some percent. If you're looking at Microsoft on the downside from the highs. So if you think about all the heavy lifting that those stocks had done over the prior three years and now discounting. I mean, listen, if you think about heading into earnings season, what these companies are discounting, given the fact they already given CapEx guidance for the full year.

12:01That was back in late January, early February. I think that the other, you know, 90 or whatever you want to call them in the NASDAQ 100. I mean, I think that, you know, down 10 percent in that index, given what we've seen out of the top 10 or something like that, that looks like a sort of unusual value in the sort of thing in this environment. Even if we were to have another leg lower, that you probably want a dollar cost average. To me, that's the most interesting thing. I see what Karen's saying. I see what you're saying about the free cash flow. But when you see a parabolic move like we've seen in a group that goes from 3 % to 4 % of the S &P 500, I think that can be a nice way to invest a small part of your portfolio.

12:38But I think of the NASDAQ 100, I mean, that is the market for all intents and purposes. And I think you're getting some unusual values in the mega cap. Because I know, and I'm going to quote Tim Seymour to Tim Seymour. You said a couple months ago, why do we even talk about small caps? I get it. But they're higher this year. And I only bring that up because it's a very domestic index. Some people suggest it's an economic sort of indicator. And if you believe that, small caps are telling us that the market for now doesn't believe the American economy is going into recession. I think that's right.

13:05And again, with all due respect to the small cappers out there. I hate them. I hate you people. No, no, not at all. My point was the significance of investing in small caps relative to the rest of your portfolio was something I've always been surprised at how much bandwidth they get. But I'm going to say, you know, we're on the show every night and we don't have to say something new every night. So I'm therefore going to say something I've said a lot of times in the last three weeks. We're not going back to 65 oil. And 65 oil, in hindsight, looks really, really good for consumption in this country.

13:34And Walmart, which I love, you can't tell me the people that shop at Walmart. I know we're all shopping at Walmart these days, but you can't tell me it was as good as it's going to get for a while in terms of the tailwinds, in terms of actually there really was inflation that was under control, especially we were starting to even see food inflation come down. So I think that's the most important part of the market multiple and where we may be looking at two to three months. You don't have to go right there. It's not necessarily recession tomorrow. It's telling you that things were pretty good.

14:02It does matter. Well, I know the average American uses 50 gallons of gasoline a month. The average car gets 25 miles per gallon. It's about an extra at a dollar above where it was a year ago. It's about 50 bucks extra a month. It's a lot for some families, but it's manageable for others. What about that Plymouth Volari you're driving? though. That's eight miles to the gallon, but it's no Chevy Vega. All right. Up next. Your guest says worst case scenarios for the market still are not priced in. Huh. Young Yuma is PNC Asset Management's chief investment strategist. Young, thanks for coming on. So what is the and I'm not trying to be dire up here.

14:38OK, but we're kind of trying to look at all the scenarios. What are the scenarios as you and your team see them? Thanks. First, it's great to be here. I would say that worst case scenarios, as was talked about relating to the VIX and even oil futures curves, are not priced in here. There's some risk priced in for sure. But if there were energy infrastructure to be destroyed and taken offline for a year or two, that would certainly cause a much, much greater disruption than we have currently and that is currently being priced and are anticipated into the markets now. We don't expect that's going to happen.

15:13We do think that is more of a worst case scenario right now. But the markets are not braced for that, even if it's low probability at this point in time. And again, nobody is hoping for this. But I will add that President Trump this morning basically said they're going to end civilization or whatever the words were. We don't know what they mean, but it's not out of the question to believe they could mean, to your point, the destruction of a lot of that infrastructure that you referenced. Are you surprised by a VIX at 26, not a 46, not even a 36, by a market that is flat to maybe higher over the last week?

15:54Well, I'm a little surprised. I think a little more risk should be priced in here, but I don't think dramatic more risk should be priced in here. I don't think we should see VIX at 40. I don't think we should see an extreme drawdown in the equity markets here. I would like to see a little bit more nervousness out there and people not jumping as quickly on the smallest tidbit of information to try to get long here. And like we saw that rally in the last 30 minutes of the day. But that said, I think the market is probably being rational here. There's some element of the wisdom of crowds that this probably isn't going to get to those more extreme scenarios.

16:30And the market is looking at some of the underlying pillars, some of the plays where there are value in the market right now and wanting to make sure they don't reduce their longs the way that they did in April of last year when there was that type of concern that turned out to be largely misplaced. How does China insert themselves into this conversation and potentially what does it mean for their markets? Well, China has leverage over Iran. Certainly, you know, China has a strong vested interest in seeing stability in the Middle East. China has a lot of investments throughout the Middle East.

17:05And Iran buys a tremendous amount of its infrastructure and goods and electronics from China. So to the extent that Iran relies on China, China has some ability to influence those discussions. And China is looking for peace in the region, or at least stability in the region, given the extent of its investments, not just in Iran, but especially across the Middle East. So I think there are a lot of backdoor channels at work right now that are applying pressure in various directions, both in Iran and in the U.S. And that amount of pressure that's being applied right now probably leads to somewhat of a de-escalation in the coming days.

17:45But is China front foot or back foot? And I asked that going into Trump-Xi summit. And I asked that as a member of the global markets who wants to see a stronger Chinese economy, who, if anything, was starting to show a little bit of traction. So China front foot or China back foot? Well, it kind of depends what the dynamics are. There are a lot of geopolitics in play that China is being influenced by here as well that are also in flux. I would say that what is interesting about China right now is the extent of its innovation in technology and innovation in AI. And that is not slowing down. And that is going to remain kind of neck and neck with the U.S.

18:30in a leadership position globally. So I do think if we're looking past the current events, we're looking, you know, nine, 12 months out, thinking about where China's growth is coming from. It really is going to come from the tech sector, from innovation, from AI as well. So, yeah, you know, I think their tech sector is probably pretty well positioned. But, of course, the geopolitical questions around China can cause a lot of volatility, especially in the short term. Yeah, but, you know, you look at South Korea, look at Taiwan, even China to a point, they rely so heavily on energy imports from that region of the world, young you.

19:03You just wonder, will they have to stimulate or would that be the exact wrong move because you want to bring down your economy to mitigate the loss of energy? I just don't know why we're not talking more about negative impacts to markets globally, even more so than our market here, which luckily or thankfully, whatever word you want to use, is relatively energy independent. Yeah, some of these countries such as Taiwan and especially China have reserves that they can use for a while. But if this lasts another couple of months, certainly a lot of those reserves are going to be drawn down, even in countries that have more robust reserves.

19:43So you're getting to a crunch point very quickly in the global economy, which is why that pressure is building so much here. You know, I think right now the market is a little bit complacent. I was talking about this and how perhaps more risk to be priced in a little bit too complacent that some of those pain points aren't well appreciated that could take place in the coming weeks. I think the administration understands that. I think a lot of world leaders understand that and a lot of global companies. But I think right now the market is hoping that that doesn't come to the fore right now. A lot of hope out there.

20:20We'll see what happens. Young-Yu Ma, PNC Asset Management. Young-Yu, a real pleasure. Karen, your take? So I agree with what he says, that it's surprising that it's priced here. But I think history with Trump has shown us that this is the far, far, far more likely way to bet that it'll work out in the near term. All right. We've got a lot more fast money coming up and coming up. Apple seeing its worst day in about a month has something to do with a foldable phone. We'll give you the news, the trade, and more coming up. Stick around.

21:03Never bet against American grit or American energy. Through innovation, Venture Global is not only building some of the largest energy facilities in the world right here in the United States, but delivering American energy at a fraction of the cost and a fraction of the time. So while others are busy talking, we're busy building. That's Venture Global. That's unstoppable energy.

21:50Again? That's time you'll never get back. Save time and money with Stamps.com. Over 4 million businesses have skipped the line with Stamps.com. Join them to save up to 90 % off carrier rates from your computer or phone right now. Print postage for certified mail, registered mail, and packages in seconds. Then schedule a pickup right from your home or office. For a limited time, go to Stamps.com and use code PODCAST for a free welcome gift. Taxes and fees apply. All right, welcome back to Fast Money. Let's talk about Apple because Apple stock fell as much as 5 % today. It was a report from the Nikkei in Japan that production issues may cause a delay in the release of a foldable iPhone.

22:33Now, later on in the day, a Bloomberg story refuted those headlines, saying the device is still on track for a September launch. The stock came back, but only by about half. So it finished the day down about 2 percent. Dan, you were talking about the big tech stocks earlier on in the show, a little headline battle with Apple. Does it matter? This does not matter. I didn't even know they were making one of these. Are you kidding me? And this is only a 5 percent move? No. It was really odd, right? And it just tells you maybe investors were looking for a reason to sell. If you think about it, last year in 2025, there was like 1.2 billion cell phones that were sold globally.

23:11Apple has about 20 percent market share. Samsung has about 20 percent market share. Samsung owns, they own the photoable market. It's like 2 % of total. I mean, they are the only one shipping them, and I just don't think it moves the needle. It's a very premium niche, that sort of thing. But I think, obviously, the biggest expectation for Apple is what are they going to introduce in WWDC in early June? What does Apple Intelligent look like? How are they integrating Google's Gemini? What is Siri going to be at the tip of the spear? And if they get that right, then it will be good for the hardware in the fall.