Stocks Surge On EU Tariff Delay… And Nvidia Results On Deck 5/27/25

0:03Live from the Nasdaq market site in the heart of New York City's Times Square this is fast Here's what's on tap tonight. A major market rebound. Stocks jumping as the president delays EU tariffs. And new data suggests the consumer isn't nearly as strapped as feared. But can the rally keep going? And how much higher can we go from here? And NVIDIA earnings on deck. We are counting down to the chip giants report tomorrow. What investors should be watching and how they should trade the name. Plus, Tim's MIGA trade gets a boost. Shares of Novo Nordisk hit a two-month high while one of our traders is eyeing the chart.

0:33And Karen's drafted a new deal while she is betting on the New York Liberty and what she thinks is next for the defending WNBA champs. I'm Melissa Lee. Come to you live from studio B at the Nasdaq. I'm the desk tonight. Tim Seymour, Bono and Eisen, Dan Nathan and Guy Adami. And we start off with a major market melt up to kick off the holiday shortened week. The S &P 500 soaring more than two percent to close within a stone's throw of the 6000 level. The Dow surging over 700 points and Nasdaq jumping two and a half percent. Yields pulled back. Bitcoin got a boost above$110 ,000 and the dollar rose.

1:05All that action after President Trump posted on Truth Social over the weekend that he would delay proposed 50 percent tariffs on the European Union until July 9th. News of those levies sank stocks on Friday in helping stocks a monster beat on consumer confidence. The May reading coming in a whopping 12 points above estimates. Do these things together give an all clear for the markets? Guy. If I had been here on Friday, which I was not, I would have said, you know what, Mel? The market did not close particularly well. Yields are going higher. You have this long weekend. We traded down the 200-day moving average.

1:38A chance for an iron reversal of the downside, it doesn't look good. None of that came to fruition. We traded down the 200-day and bounced exactly off it. Yields are coming back in. So that augurs particularly well, I think, especially with earnings tomorrow and video. I'll say this, though. The concerns I have have not gone away. I mean, the European tariffs, it's not like there's some huge trading partner. So I don't know why the market took all sort of the relief that it did. But with that said, if you get yields continuing to come in, especially with some of the comments from Besson over the weekend, that's encouraging for the market.

2:09The things that I think are really fascinating here is as we go into Nvidia tomorrow, we're going to talk about that. We've talked about it. That's all we talk about. But is that the Nasdaq is at almost a six-month high on a relative basis to the S &P. So at least it's come back to kind of that level on a relative basis to the S &P from February. And then if you take it all the way back just a little bit higher, you're back to that July high. I'm not saying we're going to do it. I think there probably needs to be another test before you test higher. But it's extraordinary to me that the market leadership and I know we're going to talk about international.

2:39I don't think that kills that international trade. But, you know, the market had a lot to go on today. Not only is the sentiment from the White House. And I think we've said this different times in different ways also, which is that I think the worst of the tariff rhetoric, I think, is behind us. Doesn't mean that the impact from tariffs isn't very much in front of us, depending on what we get. You had a bond market that was very cooperative. You had a bond market that not only included a very successful auction, a two year auction, which isn't more as important as a 10 year auction. But more importantly, in Japan, you had some announcements from their excuse me, their treasury effectively, that they're going to be issuing less on the longer end.

3:12That supported the bid to long dated bonds around the world. A bond rally, I think, is very important for equities here, especially when you consider where we were at the start of last week. So a bunch of ingredients include soft data, consumer confidence for, you know, four year highs in terms of the size of that move. That's pretty good. Yeah. So let's go back to like that second week in April. You got to ask yourself, what was the market discounting then? Right. And so we didn't have any reason to believe that the data was going to immediately get bad. Then we had earnings season at that point.

3:41Banks got out of the gate. It was just pretty good for the most part as we got deeper into some more cyclical areas. And then we got into big tech. Everything seemed about fine. So let's kind of flash forward now to where we are right now. And I guess the question is, what are we discounting here? And I think you guys are right, Mel. You got me right in my grill a couple weeks ago. I wasn't in your grill. You were kind of in my grill where you said the worst of the narrative, exactly what Tim just said. He's kind of taking your line and going with it a little bit. No, we agree. It's probably behind us for all intents and purposes.

4:08But I bring you to this whole thing now where things get really ugly at the end of the week because people are just kind of like kind of digging in and figuring out like, okay. Because they use stuff. And so if the EU stuff, like why do we sell off on the EU stuff, then why not claw back those losses today? It makes sense. I get it, but we didn't sell off 2 % in a straight line on one day, right? And so Tim's been saying this, the pain trade is higher right now, right? And so I get all that, but we're going to come in on a Monday and there's going to be a tweet on a Sunday and it's not going to do the thing that you think it's going to do because, again, it's kind of like the boy who cried wolf.

4:38Everyone knows the playbook, right? And so I am surprised that we opened up 1.25 % and closed on the highs up 2 % because you would have thought that we kind of get what's going on. That being said, we have GDP, we have minutes, we have PCE, which is what, the Fed? I think that's their favorite indicator. Preferred indicator. Right, and there could be a whole host of stuff that happens this week which says, okay, well, maybe we should be kind of unched on the year. What do you think? Well, you know, as Tim has mentioned before, you know, the hard data has been constructive. For, I mean, for lack of a better word, it's been okay.

5:12It's been lukewarm. It definitely hasn't been of concern. And I do think there has been some volatility. Dan mentioned some of the earnings that came out. Let's not forget, you know, the apples of the world. Let's not forget the the well, the Foot Locker just had the takeout situation. But let's not forget Nike. Let's not forget, you know, the companies that have been absolutely bashed for pulling forecasts. So you still have this this overhang. And I think, yes, in the short term, it's been addressed. And that's likely why we traded up higher. But I do get behind kind of Dan's assertion that it's like you really wonder what takes us what takes us higher.

5:42This seems like a situation where you can come out, say something absolutely ridiculous, then come back to normalcy and the market trades higher on the back of that. I do think there is has to be some end to that because it just seems like creating a problem which will then be fixed by the same. We don't even believe that there's a problem anymore. Right. Well, if you guys are talking about complacency in markets, that's fair. I can give you seven trillion reasons in terms of the cash that's in money market funds that the market's going to go higher. I mean, the people have been positioned so defensively, and I think mostly the professional community.

6:14So, you know, there's no question that there are economic uncertainties. And there's most likely not going to be an economic fallout for the next three to six months. And I think that's the part of this that makes it very difficult. Because what we've said, I think the bigger thing we've all said on this desk, Guy likes to talk about this, is what's the multiple we're doing for the S &P in a recession? It's a very different multiple. But we don't have a recession. So in the meantime, the news flow, it's frustrating. We see this with stocks on the way down. The same things that were knocking down Pfizer for six months kept knocking them down.

6:46For a market that's getting a relief every time Trump says we might do an extension on a tariff dynamic, I think the market's going to continue to rally it. Also, at the same time, whether it's not good for the bottom market and the deficit, we have a case here where I think you could actually see more pressure in terms of upside on tax cuts. I agree with that in terms of tax. I don't know if we factor tax into whatever rally that we've seen. I mean, are we overthinking it? Because as long as the consumer is still spending, as long as the consumer still has a job, and all the data so far is pointing to that still, markets can go higher.

7:21Why can't they go higher? Well, one thing I thought for a while, and I think today sort of gives me a leg to stand on, is consumer confidence is an overlay of the S &P 500. And the fact that the markets rallied the way it has since early April overlays with this consumer confidence. It makes sense. So if you continue to get a market rally, people will feel good. If people feel good, they spend. The question continues to be, should they be spending? And delinquency rates continue to sort of tick higher in a pretty meaningful way that nobody's paying attention. So Tim just mentioned recession. Right.

7:51So we had this situation in 2022. The markets were actually pricing in a recession. We go in 2023. We never had the recession. We still don't have the recession. We had this period where trade war, right? So I guess recessions don't really matter. If you go all the way back to 2009 after the financial crisis, we didn't have a recession really until COVID, right? And we know what caused that in a way. So the idea that the market's going to sniff out a recession is probably not particularly likely anytime soon. The fact that we've extended this period in which we cannot have – I think that's like – what is it?

8:20Every five, six years historically we had a sort of a recession. Maybe somebody who's coming on in a second can do that. But what's different this time – I think every 20 years. Is it really? It's not every five or six years. That would be really depressing. Really? Five years? Well, earnings recessions, how's that? Then at the time of this show, we've seen three recessions. 18 years. If we make it to January. I mean, that's a little extreme. But anyway, you know, it's a cycle. You say this, I say that. But the point I'd say what's different in this now is that Fed funds are at 4.5%, right? So like during 2009 to 2018 or 19, we basically had 0 % on the Fed funds.

8:57All right. For more on today's rally and what Trump's latest tariff moves mean for the markets, we are joined on set by Ben Emmons. He's a senior investment executive at Strategic Fortune Wealth and founder at FedWatch Advisors. Ben, great to have you with us. I don't know if you have recession data at your fingertips. What do you what do you think the market is pricing at this point? Where are we in this in this rally? So it was really amazing. This conference number today, right, where, you know, in that in that number shows what people expect about stock prices. This is now, people think 44 % of that survey said that stock price will be going up in the next 12 months.

9:29That was 35 % when we were during the whole tariff, the bargain we went through. So there's a big shift happening there that people suddenly getting confident that as you're putting these tariffs off, that that's really what this world was about. There's a confidence crisis that we had, and we're reversing that. And the markets, as you say, a guy has already rallied ahead of that confidence. And so what you're going to see now is that the survey data really were hit with consumer confidence or what you had the Dow's manufacturing survey showed a similar sort of effect. That gets affected just by the tariffs and now starts reversing.

10:01This is only going to drive the markets even higher because that's really what the data was impacted by as opposed to the hard data that's not showing any effect. Are you a believer in the rally? I mean, you say that all these things are positioned, are in place for the markets to go higher. But is that what you, Ben Emmons, believe will happen? I think it will, because one is a good technical picture that's changed. I think to Guy's point, the bounce of the 200-day moving average and a really nice trending sort of channel on the NASDAQ, as I've been tracking that particularly, points really to the upside.

10:34But what is encouraging is that if we do get to a stance here between China and the U.S. and Europe and the U.S., which is the biggest part of the trade war, sort of getting to a point of like there's this deal in the works and it stays that way, then there's no reason why markets couldn't go higher. So I think that's convincing because we don't have an economy, I should say, is in a recession. It may have been a confidence recession that we had briefly, but that was so small, it didn't really matter. So I think it's much more upset. Oh, I'm sorry, go ahead, Dan. No, you go ahead. No, please. Ben, if I told you since 1945, we've had 12 economic recessions, that's 79 years.

11:10Hold on a second. How did you come back so definitive on your recession data? And you divide it by 12, you get 6.6. See what happens on this desk, Ben? 6.6 average. I mean, I'm sometimes on the perplexity like that. You guys are getting all on my grill. So we've extended. What do you call it, Guy? We've alchemyed out recessions, okay? But what's different is we do have 4.5%. So we haven't had a recession going back to COVID. Let's get rid of that one. Like, what does that mean? Like, the markets were obviously sniffing it out. We didn't have it. This time around, you know, who knows what's going to happen.

11:39Will the markets start to figure this out if we start getting hard data that kind of shows that things are weakening a bit? Well, what I think matters there, Dan, is that the trade between China and the U.S. was put on hold, was frozen, was an embargo, which is a big deal for GDP, right? If you actually keep that in place, I would say your recession goal is right. We would be in a recession. But since we started, we slowly were starting it, and it seems to be the case, you can kind of tell from China data too, that I think is the big data point we should be watching. If there's indeed more weakness coming through that that we didn't know of, you can maybe make that call.

12:15At least the economy got a lot weaker through this whole episode. So that doesn't seem to be the case. And there's no, I think, financial indicator giving us a signal of a recession of any kind. It's really that data, the trade data between the U.S. and China. Last week, Japan had one of the worst bonds, the worst bond auctions since 1987. Our yields were going up on the back of that. Dollar-yen was seemingly going to test 140. Tim mentioned a lot changed over the weekend. But is that fixed or just sort of pushed off a little bit? But amazing how they overnight started sort of verbally intervening in the JGP market.

12:47That's actually the first time I've seen it in a while. There's always a dollar yen that gets that verbal intervention attention. We got that auction tomorrow. There may be some short covering going on here just trying to get out of the way. But the fact is that Japan has an inflation issue. It has a food price crisis. And it's, I think, partly driven maybe through the tariffs, partly maybe driven just through the domestic situation. But the Bank of Japan cannot keep the hikes off the table. So this is, I think, a very temporary situation. I would not think that these yields are going to go much lower from here.

13:17And if we're getting more relief from this trade war, as in, you know, if it further fades away, the economy gets more relief here in the U.S., just in itself drives up yields and will drive up JGB yields. Do you expect yields here to remain tame? No, actually, I don't. I think what we experienced in the past. So we will rally with rising yields? I think so. I think it's really a function of we had this volatility in April, and there was this whole debate about Powell, too, I think that had an impact on rates. As we're getting out of that and you get this relief on the economy, so to speak, then, yeah, you're getting this good news, good news idea.

13:53So you would see higher yields and higher stock prices. I think that's where we're going. Okay. Ben, great to see you. Thank you. Thank you. Ben Emmons. What do you think? Higher yields and higher prices? I think that sets up for an interesting backdrop. I mean, listen, it's hard to argue against Ben. I think he brings up a lot of interesting points, but I think I'm going to kind of raise my hand and opt out of the consensus here. The situation where we're trading in a very unlikable known, tariffs at 145 percent, 150 percent, 125 percent, for an unknown reprieve, to me, I think that has run its course.

14:29It's very hard for me to articulate and sit down and put down quantifiable numbers and put new money to work, knowing that I'm essentially investing on a hope and a prayer. And that's what it feels like right now. Perhaps I'm paying too much attention to the headline risk, but I think that is being overlooked. And I just need to raise my hand and say I think it's concerning. Bonham is not living on a prayer, Guy. That's a little jovey for you. Thank goodness. On a Tuesday. It's nice to squeeze jovey in. I think that if we've cleared volatility out of the U.S. Treasury market, and I'm talking about a, you know, the foreseeable, the one month window, something dynamic here.

15:02And again, a world where ECB is going to cut rates next week, I think. I mean, that bodes very well for the equity market. It just does. And if the volatility grind continues lower, then equities are going higher. There's no question that the good news that's in the market today is overly good news. Yeah. And just like we couldn't kind of foresee, you know, how things were going to get much worse back in April. I mean, at this point, I think the idea that things could get that much better. If you look at just kind of where we gap through from that China pause, it was kind of 56, 50, 5 ,700 or something like that.

15:33Here we are now close to 6 ,000, as Mel just said. And I just don't really know what that next catalyst is going to be. OK, so Mexico, Canada, just kind of Monday morning, we're going to get this tweet that we have a framework for this, that or whatever. I think you have to go back a couple months where, like, none of this was on the table, really, or at least the extent that we were. So at the end of the day, I think the weak data, if we start to get it, is really going to kind of retest the S &P 500, probably back towards that 5600 level. Meantime, international ETFs riding higher today. Germany and France surging after the EU tariff delay with the EWG Germany ETF hitting a new record.

16:06Rallies outside Europe as well. Japan and Canada ETFs at all-time highs, while Mexico is at its best since August 2023. So we have to ask Tim about this, quote unquote, MIGA trade. Yes, we're making international great again. And I think it's what's interesting is it's actually happening now when you've seen a rally back. You're still seeing that outperformance and it's relative outperformance. You know, a couple of headlines that are really important, especially those out of today. One was just that over the weekend, there was some press out that Germany's actually now become the largest creditor nation in the world.

16:35In other words, they have a current account surplus. They are someone that is not splurging on debt. Why is that important? Because Germany, which we know to be fiscally austere, has basically said we are now going to run a fiscal deficit. We are now going to spend a ton on defense. We are now going to do things to jumpstart the economy. I just think it means the multiples for a lot of stocks, especially those in the defense sector, but industrials across Europe. Very, very positive. I think energy prices going significantly lower as they have. Whether they go a lot lower, it doesn't matter. This is a huge tailwind for the European economy, who has huge energy import costs.

17:12You recall at iConnections, we had a guest on, and we talked the Brazil ETF. Do you remember that conversation? Yes, I do. Martin Escobar, yes. Great job by you. General Atlantic. But he talked about how cheap it was and how sort of hair-triggered. I think it was trading around 22 at the time. Very quietly, that's gotten itself up to about, I think, 28 and change, or 28 as I'm looking at it now. Brazil, to me, is still insanely cheap at these levels. So if not a dollar to work in the U.S. markets, Bono, and how about a dollar overseas put to work? I like the Germany trade only because, again, there's metrics to support that.

17:48I do think Brazil has lagged. I mean, that's a market that we should trade quite a bit. And if you look at fund flows, there's been a recent fund flow out. I would not forget how quickly that economy can be reignited. The one con is that it is very levered to natural resources. And if you have concerns around that and you don't think we've based yet in that space, I think you may want to think twice about that. Hey, Megaboy, isn't there a case being made, though, that Germany is much weaker than we are, right? And they're lowering interest rates in the EU right now because they're kind of worried a little bit more of weakness.

18:21If you think about what's going on here, what we just described, it's a bit of a soft landing, right? If stocks can continue to rally like this, the economy can kind of hang in there with Fed funds at 4.5%. So on a relative basis, isn't the U.S. like in a better spot right here? I don't know that they're a lot weaker than us. I think, again, the jury's out. Part of this flow of funds, which is the technical side of it, but the fundamentals are that the EU differentials between Europe and the U.S. haven't been this tight in a long time. And at some point, actually, at least based upon where we were with tariffs from Liberation Day, the expectations were that Europe was going to outperform on a GDP basis.

18:54So I don't think there's something that's cast in stone that we're definitely going to see European growth be weaker than the U.S. And I think their central bank will be more accommodative right now. But won't a trade deal weigh heavier on their economies than it is ours? I mean, we're the ones bringing it to the table. A bad trade deal or a good trade deal? Well, what I'm saying is there's no good trade deal for the EU, right? Like, think about it that way. How is there a good trade deal relative to April 2nd? A good trade deal for the EU is that suddenly the U.S. has put themselves at loggerheads with every other trade partner.

19:21and Europe is the largest trading economy in the world outside of China. So, I mean, I actually think that it means pretty good news for them. But I would get back, the most important and the historic things are that Europe is now going to spend money like they haven't spent before. I also think there's going to be a lot more deregulation. We think deregulation is here. The Europeans are waiting for our bank regulation to see how much they can deregulate their banks. I think they got themselves way out on a limb. I'm talking a lot here, so I'll just back off of this. But I do think it's not even about the growth differentials, even though I think they will actually favor Europe.

19:50What did you think of Dan calling him Miga Boy? That started it all. I mean, that's somewhat derogatory. I think so is that. How is that derogatory? He owns it. Mr. Miga. That's good. Miga Man. I love it. Loggerhead, though. I mean, that's a great term, Loggerhead. Anyway. Not every day you can break out Loggerhead. That was 100%. Once we challenge your recession assumption, because there's only been four since 2018, by the way. So, I mean, I knew this was going to happen. No, we talk about in the post-war era all the time. We'll continue this conversation. 81-91-2001 and great financial crisis.

20:25In the last 80 years. Shares of Chinese retailer PDD dropping after the Timu parent posted a big Q1 miss. And with a slate of other retail earnings on deck, is a whole group about to go on discount? That's next. Plus all the headlines from the Bitcoin 2025 conference in Las Vegas as President Trump's media company looks to raise billions to scoop up the cryptocurrency. We're going live to the Strip to get the details. Don't go anywhere. Fast Money is back in two.

20:55Welcome back to Fast Money. Buzzkill on PDD. Shares of the Timu parent company sinking almost 14 percent after disappointing first quarter results impacted by trade tensions between the U.S. and China. Management also giving a downbeat forecast on the call, saying that the trade war will likely weigh on profitability for a, quote, considerable period of time. The stock putting in its worst day since last August. Not only are they facing tariffs, but they also are experiencing the closure of the de minimis loophole, which prevents them from shipping small packages to the U.S. for free, basically, which is an essential part of their business model.