Stocks Wrap Up Volatile Week In The Red… And Oil Shock “Critical Stage” 3/20/26

22:45All right, we've got some breaking news right now in a new Truth Social post from President Trump. He literally just put this out while we were in commercial break. So we haven't had a time to look at it. I glanced at it. It's long. We're going to read it all because it is the president of the United States, and then everybody can respond. Quote, we're very close to meeting our objectives as we consider winding down our great military efforts in the Middle East with respect to the terrorist regime of Iran. Colon number one, completely degrading Iranian missile capability launches and everything else pertaining to them.

23:19Number two, destroying Iran's defense industrial base. Number three, eliminating their Navy and Air Force, including anti-aircraft weaponry. Number four, never allowing Iran to even get close to nuclear capability, as always being in a position where the U.S. can quickly and powerfully react to such a situation should it take place. Number five, protecting at the highest level are Middle Eastern allies, including Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait and others. Then Trump goes on to say the Strait of Hormuz will have to be guarded and policed as necessary by other nations who use it.

23:59The United States does not, if asked or does. Yeah, does not. There we go. Does not use it. I'm trying to. It's there's a read the post. it's sometimes the inflection. You're losing steam. If asked, we will help these countries in their Hormuz efforts, but it shouldn't be necessary once Iran's threat is eradicated. Importantly, it will be an easy military operation for them. A lot there. We haven't even had a chance to look at it. I'm going to go to the beginning of it. Tim Seymour. Okay, I'm up first. I think what the market will react to, and tell me I'm wrong, because what do I know? Close to the end of our military operation.

24:40Karen Finerman:And also, we don't want to police the Straits of Hormuz, which probably now need to be. And it should be because we don't get our oil through there. We don't receive our oil through there. We don't send our oil through there. This is up to those folks that actually use the Straits. Look, there's nothing but positive if you believe all this is true. And by the way, that includes the part that the president talks about in terms of neutering Iran, so to speak. And I do think this is a case where there has been an enormous amount of damage inflicted. There has been a regime change. There have been a lot of things.

25:15Karen Finerman:And I don't even want to talk about the political goals and what's been arrived at. But we went into this weekend and we talked about options expiry. And Ben talked about it. Steve talked about it. Karen talked about it. You talked about it. Julie talked about it. It was the dynamic of rolling forward because the fear is this is an extension of the conflict. We've got infrastructure that's been blown up. We've got an extension of what this means. This obviously is the opposite of that. And so, you know, if you can qualify these comments and if they are reinforced, there's a lot to there's a lot to work through in there.

25:52Karen Finerman:It's not that simple. So I do think if other nations were to take that on and actually patrol or do whatever was necessary to open the Strait of Hormuz, I think that would be a huge positive. I think the United States may end up being part of that as well if that happens. I mean, I think that the president sees the market not really enjoying this conflict. And, you know, four weeks are down that he would like to end it sooner rather than later. regime change hasn't been. We don't know what the regime is, so we don't know if it's changed. But I think you talked about what the pain that's been inflicted and the destruction of the question.

26:32I believe that. Absolutely. So in part, mission accomplished. Right. So a couple of things. I don't know who's advising him to release it on a Friday night. I prefer this post to be Sunday or potentially Monday at 915, 920 a.m. 929.59. So maybe he should repost it or do something else because that's the proper time to do it. Tree falls in the forest, right? So this is something where I think you see that Tim started off commenting on the straight-up home moves. We don't use it. We don't need it. It doesn't have to be policed by us. That's why you see the spread between WTI and Brent just expanding out.

27:12And I think the market's starting to get it correct. They didn't have it correct before. and any positive news will make the futures retire. Okay, we're showing, and guys, just give us a minute to breathe. This breaking news is a big deal, I think. We're showing the markets, the after hours, the SPY and the QQQ, they are up a little bit. They're not recouping, Tim, what they lost today. They're up seven-tenths of 1%. And I want to hedge that, again, reading the president's social media post, as we consider winding down our great military efforts in the Middle East. He's not saying we are. We are considering it.

27:51When and if there is some military end to this, whatever that end is, is that a market ripper? 100%.

28:01Karen Finerman:Well, I think we still haven't realized what the impact of this event was. And I if it was going to be a quick rebound two weeks ago. Yeah, I mean, I think I think markets will get back to assessing where where earnings growth is and thinking about a Fed that probably their next move is ultimately a cut. If that's where we are, there's no question it's going to take some time to rebuild some infrastructure. But I think the markets will price that in. All right. Show's halfway down. We got halfway to go. We're going to kind of digest this tweet or whatever you want to call it. Take a look more at it.

28:38See how the markets react. More Fast Money right after this. Introducing the Total Solutions Advantage only from Comcast Business. It's the largest, fastest fiber-powered network for small business. Gig speeds with equipment and security included and a five-year price lock. No one does business like Comcast Business. Switch today. Get started for$60 a month for 12 months when you add an advanced solution to a qualifying internet package. Limited time offer. Restrictions apply. New customers only. Requires 300 megabits per second internet, security edge, and additional qualifying service. One-year agreement, paperless billing, and auto pay with bank account required.

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30:14All right, this story is unbelievable. Super Micro shares lost one-third of the value today after some of their employees, including a co-founder, were charged with smuggling NVIDIA chips to China. This is the worst day for Supermicros. It's October 2018 when they had some pretty serious accounting issues. Christina Parts and Elvis has been following the story all day and joins us now with more. With more. A web of lies, fake servers, and blow dryers. That's just Friday night. Yes, at my house. No, just talking. Supermicros co-founders, like you talked about, Wally Liao, really charge along with two other company associates with smuggling billions of dollars in servers to China in violation of U.S.

30:56export controls. And the latest news just within the last hour is that that co-founder has resigned from Supermicro's board effectively now. You would assume that something like that would happen. But surveillance cameras that we're showing you right now inside a warehouse caught the defendants in the act, surrounded by dummy servers, blow dryer in hand, swapping serial numbers ahead of government audits. You can see just on the right hand side the red thing in her hand. I see Tim looking. That is a blow dryer. $2.5 billion in servers allegedly funneled to China since 2024. You could have used it this morning.

31:27I know. 510 million in a single three-week stretch just last spring. Supermicro is not named as a defendant, but that may not be enough to contain the damage. Bernstein is already asking whether NVIDIA will feel the need to distance itself entirely from Supermicro. Add in that the company had an accounting scandal in 2018 and was delisted, and then EY walking out as auditor back in 2024. And the compliance questions here go well beyond just three individuals. Guys. So who wants to take this one? Because 2018 delisted counting scandal EY walks. Now the co found one of the co founders is allegedly smuggling NVIDIA chips to China by using a blow dryer to unseal the whatever.

32:13So are we taking out a mortgage and buying all micro here, Karen? Definitely not. No. No. That was a setup. Yes, I realize. I am long Dell, which actually closes the day. It is good for Dell. It is. I mean, the more market share Dell can get, the better. I think. I don't know how the – I mean, I was sort of surprised how well they bounced back from that prior scandal, which was, I mean, the ridiculous payments to the cousin or the brother-in-law or this or that. I don't know how they're surprised. Yeah, Julie Beal, you got to take, I mean, you know, dude, you're getting a Dell. I guess you have to.

32:51I don't know. I just flex the desperation that people want to be able to play in some of these AI themes that they're willing to overlook some pretty dubious and sketchy past. I mean, this is like a Scooby-Doo caper, the way this has turned out. And I think it really reflects some pretty poor decision making and management. And I, for one, would be staying away as much as possible. That was the most diplomatic thing. It was Julie Beal. It was perfect. It was very diplomatic. This was dubious. Scooby-dubious. Wow. Yeah. Good stuff. Zoinks. Thank you, Julie. Banks' bad month. The group is down nearly 6 % in March.

33:34Is there hope for financials to rebound from here, or will all banks in America go away? We're back right after this.

33:47All right, the S &P Bank ETF on pace for its worst month in a year. It's called the KBE. Dropped more than 5 % so far this month. Among the worst stocks in that, you've got Western Alliance Bank shares, Fifth Third, Truist, Huntington. Karen, you've been watching some of these moves. Your take. So I think it's overdone. I mean, I'm on the money center banks, which have had a horrible run also. So sort of switching that for a second. And there's a lot of things that, you know, the concern about credit quality. Are we going to see a meaningful increase in consumer problem loans? Are we going to see for the big money center banks private credit?

34:24Is that going to be a big thing? But I think there's some positives as well. I don't know why this one was ditched. This area was ditched so heavily. I actually think if I own none, I would certainly be buying right now.

34:37Karen Finerman:Yeah, I think they're getting it from all sides, though. They're getting it from some concern that they actually do have some loans into the private lending community. They're not making them directly. There's some sense that there is a an inflationary dynamic out there. There's a sense that there's a slower growth and a consumer that may fall under some pressure. But but most importantly, banks were the you know, they were the best sector going into this. The cyclicality and the sensitivity. That's why banks are what they are. And as an investment, when things were really starting to break out, they outperformed.

35:07Karen Finerman:I think this is as much about positioning. It was an absolute overweight. And I think people reeled it in. I also think you have a little bit of that crypto overhang. There's a smaller section of it with stable coins and crypto companies being able to split interest in holding treasuries for stable coins. I think that does take there's been estimates that it could take as much as 10 percent of their deposit flows on a lot of these banks. It depends on what kind of bank you own. But to Karen and Tim's point, This was about D-reg. This was about pro-growth. This was a huge ramp up that we got off the Trump bump.

35:44And now you're starting to see a lot of these stories sort of grow mold on them or grow hair on them. So at a certain point, you're taking a little bit out of them. But to Karen's statement, if she owned none, she'd probably buy them now. I think the banks have the ability to rally off a bottom. Julie Beal? Yeah, I think the level of cyclicality that the banks have is a real reflection of why people are moving away from them. It's not like they're going to be delivering a ton of growth. They've missed a lot of the opportunities that we saw in credit. Now that's going to wind back. But I do think the positive thing about them is that most of them haven't really participated in the worst of the lending.

36:22And I think they'll come out looking pretty good as long as they have good structurally strong balance sheets. But for the most part, I mean, I think people are kind of recognizing like it's a bank. There's really a limit of how much it can really do, even if we deregulate. All right. Well said. Looking at the banks are coming up. We're going to switch gears. The energy complex is getting complex or more complex. While your next guest says the oil shock is nearing a critical stage where he sees prices heading as the conflict continues. Stick around.

37:00All right. Oil prices higher today with both Brent crude and WTI crude, which is the one traded here, settling up about 3 percent for the week, though. Brent jumping about 9 percent. WTI crude slightly down, actually broke a four week win streak. Your next guest warns the oil shock is heading into a critical stage. John Kilduff joining us again. He's with again, Capital, the founder of that. John, and then, of course, we had this social media post of the president. We're still trying to unwind that. Absent of that, what's your take on energy and oil right now?

37:32Karen Finerman:The post actually feeds into a degree, Brian, because if the priority here is not on the Strait of Hormuz, then the oil price will continue to rally higher here. This is an unprecedented outage. As everyone knows, more than 10 million barrels a day are offline, will continue to be offline. And they've pulled every trick out of the book now in terms of trying to blunt the near-term effect of this with the sanctions relief on Venezuela, Russian, potentially Iranian oil, and other measures like, you know, suspending the Jones Act and the like. And the global SPR releases. All of those things, though, are unfortunately just Band-Aids on a wound that's just hemorrhaging here in terms of volumes.

38:20Karen Finerman:And so today we ended before the post hit near the near the highs for the recent trading ranges on both Brent and WTI. I know every your viewers are well aware that the Middle East markers are much higher than that. We're seeing diesel over five dollars. So without relief and control of the Strait of Hormuz taken away from Iran, which they have effectively right now, or even just the ability of Iran to terrorize ships as they try to pass through it, we are on a trajectory higher, full stop. Hey, John, Tim, you've been doing this forever. So it's great to have this conversation with you. I feel like we've we've been through some supply shocks together.

39:00Karen Finerman:But where is the damage now? So we're trying to have a conversation about, you know, and how the market is extending out timelines. But but let's just say there's a lot in this in this post that can be enacted upon. And where, you know, all we've heard about are LNG plants and cater. All we've heard about are terminals that have been blown up. What is the damage right now? And what is your sense on normalcy in a world where we get a turnaround? out? I mean, the damages that you're seeing, for example, Iraq talk about shutting down production from, oh, I'm sorry, only from the foreign operated plants that are in Iraq, which is only about 90 percent of their production.

39:44Karen Finerman:You're seeing everything done hooked and by crook to get oil out to various other pipelines by Saudi Arabia and UAE. None of it's enough. None of it's enough. This is the mother of all supply outages. I've been trying to do the math on the 1973 situation. It's close. This one is starting to exceed it. But the problem is the shut ins that we're hearing about production wise in these countries is going to take time itself to write. So there will be great relief if we can ever get the straight, the announcement that the straight is now navigable. Oil prices, I would imagine, would fall$10 to$15 a barrel.

40:21Karen Finerman:However, we're not going to be going back anytime soon to the 60s and low 50s that we were in as we were, you know, bruinating over a glut situation this time of year as opposed to the war situation we're in right now. So, John, when you look at the back months, I know the government is thinking about doing some smart swap with the SPR that has been done before, but it hasn't been done recently. What do you think about the back months? So Tim asked you where you think we settle in. The back months in WTI crude still have us dramatically lower by year end. Is that just too much of a Pollyannish viewpoint?

41:01Karen Finerman:I think it's reflective of the trapdoor that's under this market that I just referenced. Again, you get the flows going back through the straight. The prices will retreat. But those back month prices have come up markedly now as well. They're all posting over$70 a barrel for the most part. And that will be some sense of relief. But I think we have to get through. And why I said that this is the critical stage we're in, it's because the loss of supply is really going to start to bite now. We're already starting to hear about spot shortages out in Asia, especially. I already talked about the high diesel price and jet fuel out that way.

41:38Karen Finerman:But as these shortages start to grow and manifest, you're going to see the call on global crude oil all over the world, that they will take a tanker, if that's the only supply, out of the Texas Gulf and send it over to wherever it has to go. And that is going to push the prices of WTI up higher and higher, and you'll see the gap get closed that we're experiencing right now. This is an acute situation, though. This is an acute situation that the straight opening rectifies. Yeah, and that's the big question. John Kilduff, again, Capital John, really appreciate that. Julie, you're a buyer of these oil and gas stocks invested in anything?

42:15By the way, the refiners are up like 75 % in three months. Yeah, it's pretty meaningful. I think for us, we tend to avoid these kind of stocks because they're really difficult as much. relation to the commodity prices. So it's for us not a quality play, but I think it's really notable for all of us to recognize just how interconnected the markets are and how it can really ripple through our entire economy. Julie Beal, appreciate that. All right, programming note, by the way, speaking of oil, gas, and energy, we're going to be live at the CERA Week conference in Houston on Monday and Tuesday. We've got an amazing lineup, ConocoPhillips, Secretary Bergman, Secretary Wright, Lorenzo Simonelli.

42:54We've got GE Vernova. We've got you name it. We got them. We can't even fit them on the board. There's more. All right. Coming up here on Fast Money, we're going to talk housing. And if the spring selling season will truly bloom. What's next?

43:22Well, I've got some breaking news. A verdict in the case against Elon Musk for buying Twitter shares without disclosing the stake ahead of his eventual purchase of the platform. Pippa Stevens has more. Pippa. Hey, Brian. So a jury in the San Francisco federal court is holding Musk liable for misleading investors during that Twitter takeover. So this suit alleged that his flip-flopping commentary around the move to buy Twitter back in 2022 was in a bid to manipulate the stock price. Now, Bloomberg is reporting the damages paid to individual investors could total in the hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars and will be determined at a later date.

43:56Brian. All right, Pippa, thank you very much. All right, moving on. It is the first day of spring. Happy Friday. Now, this time of year normally means a big pop in home sales. But could this year be different? We've had to move up. Look at that in mortgage rates. Also, home prices are growing at a slower rate than they were last year. They're up at a slower pace. So what do we think, Tim? Like housing, how close are you watching?

44:23Karen Finerman:We I feel like all we do is talk about a housing market that can't get out of its own way. And that actually the price action in the homebuilders is disturbing. I mean, there's a dynamic also where the margins are getting a whole lot worse. I mean, the cost and the input costs here are getting worse. But that mortgage rate is what it comes down to. That mortgage rate is not is not happening. We had those new home sales numbers out on, I think it was Wednesday. They were, I think, 150 ,000 below expectations. I mean, this is a housing market that needs lower interest rates. And right now, first half of this show, what were we talking about?

44:57Karen Finerman:Rates are moving higher. Yeah, and you have the bifurcated market. You have the existing home sales. You have new home sales. Existing home sales have been locked up. People own a mortgage. They don't own a home. And in order for them to be untrapped by the mortgage rate, it's got to be somewhere in the fives. We're going the wrong direction on that. We need lower rates. The market hasn't sniffed it out yet. Usually stocks are forward-looking mechanisms. They don't see the end coming, but it's always something that shocks the most amount of people at any given point. I'm glad you're not a realtor.

45:28You don't own a home. You own a mortgage. It's not incorrect, by the way. Up next, your final trades.

45:42All right, Julie Beal, kick off final trades, if you would. One company that benefits from trade disturbance is Descartes. They help companies navigate it.

45:52Karen Finerman:Nice. Family? Friends, company. You were just in. Nice tie, too, by the way. Uranium. This is a case where, if anything, the use case for uranium, the demand cycle for uranium, very much in play. And, in fact, CCJ has sold off more on the fact that it's been a frothy trade itself. I think you're buying CCJ weakness. Okay. Karen? Yes. Mine is not SMCI. It's down a third today. It's not two-thirds as good as it was yesterday. More downside here, even with a big short interest. Not SMCI. That's your final trade. That is my final trade. Short net, she's saying, don't go near him. Steve Grasso. I feel as if you'd like to talk more about that option expiration with anyone.

46:35With anyone that would listen. Anyone in a year shot. Steve Grasso, what's your final trade? I see the clock. I know how much time I have. Delta took a tremendous hit. That probably should come to an end. Thanks for watching Fast Money, everybody. And Tim's time at Money Starts Now. Thanks, Brian.

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