Tech Slides to Close a Volatile Week… Citi Deal Chatter, A Weak Yen, and Nike’s Big Test 3/27/26

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0:44But when your business is operating in top shape, you've earned the right to grow. EY Parthenon can help you reimagine your business and execute a game plan for long-term growth. EY Parthenon. Solutions that work in practice. not just on paper. Live from the NASDAQ, market cited in the heart of New York City's Times Square. This is Fast Money. Here's what's on tap. Call to tech wreck. Officially, the NASDAQ dropping for a fifth week in a row, locking in its worst week in nearly a year. The question now for you, how much more pain is left in the trade? And could there be opportunity? Buy low, sell high.

1:21Oils, next move. Speaking of high, crude oil rising again. Energy stocks trading at records, But have some of these names gotten ahead of themselves, even with everything that's going on? We'll dig into the charts. Plus, while the Yens move caught the eye of one or two of our traders, is Citigroup looking to get a little regional and counting down to Nike earnings? The sportswear giant trading at eight-year lows. Is there anything CEO Elliott Hill can say or do next week that will get that stock going again and making money for you? We're going to find out. Hi, everybody. I am Brian in for Melissa Lee tonight coming to you live from Studio B at the NASDAQ.

2:00And on your desk, we got Tim, we got Steve, we got Guy and we got Mike Co out west. Let's begin with the month plus long losing streak for stocks. The Dow now down over 10 percent from its high means it's officially in a technical correction. The S &P today down 1.7 percent. That's its fifth straight losing week. But the real pain was the Nasdaq. In fact, down close to another 2 percent and it closed out a rough week. This is President Trump's Iran deadline extension, Fail to Ease Investor Fears. The Nasdaq posting its lowest close since August and pacing for its worst month in a year. The Nasdaq is now down nearly 13 percent from its record high of last year.

2:48The magnificent seven stocks among the biggest drags on the index, as you would imagine. Apple, in fact, is the only one of those seven that is down less than 20 % from its record high. And check out this RBI. Random but interesting. Oh, I like that. Nvidia, Microsoft, MetaGuyadami, they're all more than 60 % below their average Wall Street target. Big night. Lot to digest. Glad to be here. So if Microsoft and those stocks are 60, 50, 60 percent below where Wall Street analysts see them, somebody, the market or Wall Street or both are wrong. You would have thought, though, if we had played that game, if I had told you all these things would be true, where's the S &P 500?

3:36And you wouldn't say six and a half, seven percent. Yeah, I would have said down 15 percent. At least. Yeah. Yeah. So that so you look at one of two ways. The S &P has some catching up to do on the downside or the rotation is strong enough such that the S &P can hang in there. Now, I do think the S &P is going to be the last to go. And we're below the 200 day average now for about a week or so. And all those names you mentioned, think about Facebook. Facebook made its all time high in August of last year. It's now the end of March of 2026. So all these stocks, I think, have been trying to tell you something.

4:05But for me, it's all been predicated on simply one thing. the fact that the bond market is not cooperating and seemingly is getting worse by the day. Well, I think when we talk about some of those biggest names in the market, you mentioned that they're 60 percent below the Wall Street target. What usually happens when analysts are way below their target in a stock that's moving higher? They tend to upgrade. I mean, there are downgrades galore coming, and they're going to be coming after an earnings season, which is two weeks away. Now, I don't know that that's the follow through, but I do know that in the case of, I would just say the market overall.

4:39Remember, we went into this war with stocks that were actually struggling with the market multiple. And they were struggling for a number of reasons, especially related to free cash flow dynamics that may not be there for the top market cap in the market credit concerns. And I just think that's something that we need to think about. I think in terms of the market dynamics, the good news for market strategists and players out there is everybody's hedged up. Everybody's nervous. What does that mean, hedged up? Well, so this week we've talked about on this show dynamics where you've seen hedging up in the rates markets, in the short-term rates markets to make up for where people are offsides.

5:13We've seen index hedges. We talked about it. I wouldn't say ad nauseum, Brian, but last Friday we talked a lot about the options market and that expiry. There was no question a lot of that was rolled forward. This is a market that if you talk to the professional community, they have been bearish for some time. They have been hedged up, and that tends to be the silver lining. The problem is that VIX had a closing high today, which is the high of the range. We haven't been this consistently above a 25 VIX. This goes all the way back to 22 and credit dynamics. And I should say Fed dynamics, interest rate dynamics.

5:46So to me, the bond markets guy said I think is probably the quiet culprit this week. But I think the multiple for the market at some point is where investors have to be sitting and people don't seem to be buying this dip. So when you open up with the price targets and they're this far below their price targets. So if you think about it, when when a an analyst gives his price target, he usually punches that 20 to 40 percent above the market because it's got to be something to reach for. Or else he's got to write the paper where it takes six months to do this work. Then if you look at most of those stocks are in a bear market.

6:20So those two things coupled create that dislocation. And so to Tim's point, either they're going to start now cutting their price targets or they're going to wait it out. They don't like to be this much below the price target because now it just becomes unrealistic and it becomes a crapshoot. And I don't know if they can upgrade because on these stocks, the majority of all ratings, by the way, the majority of all ratings on all stocks is a buy. So unless you're like a super duper buy, I'm not sure what the analyst is going to do to be able to come to the rescue, if you will, of these stocks, Steve.

6:52Right. So so they're not going to be able to come to the rescue. But you have to look at return on investment, the dollars that they're spending. Are they going to get the money back? So that's being questioned. Why is Apple outperforming? Because they spent the least amount of money in their JV with the opportunity instead of putting a massive amount of spend on the table. So I think Apple will will continue to outperform. They'll continue to partner with with people in in A.I. And I think that's the best route to go. I don't see them changing that. We're hearing about rumors of the new CEO. I don't think there's going to be anything different.

7:28I know today was tough. The market was rough, Mike Coe. I get it. I get it. But we got a P.E. ratio down to NASDAQ 100. That's just over 20. Tim's point. Still too high. OK, Tim says still too high. What do you say, Mike Coe? Is this a market that now has value because of the declines? I think that if you take a look at just what rates have done, then the decline makes complete sense. So if you figure that the 10-year rate since the day, first, you know, trading day before the war took place, basically, 50 basis points, then you would expect in a move like that, that the S &P should probably shave about two turns.

8:06So that's going to be just shy of 10%. And that's essentially what we've done. You know, one thing I would quickly point out is if we're looking at names like Meta and we're looking at names like Microsoft, a lot of the damage that was done to those stocks actually took place before February 28th. I think Microsoft was down something like 26 % from their 2025 highs to the last trading day in February. So there was already quite a lot of damage done in there. But, you know, when you take a look at the valuations, you know, it hardly seems like a screaming buy to me. I mean, the market feels heavy.

8:38We need to see some solution because right now the oil traffic alone, that decline in production of oil is probably 20 basis points per day of global GDP. You know, you figure 220 trillion of global GDP. You take that out, you know, a billion dollars U.S. a day. That's essentially what we're looking at in terms of the cut in oil production. It's going to have a ripple effect and it's going to affect multiples and it's going to affect people's appetite for risk. I just think we've been talking about how below the surface there was all this churning around and seriously a very difficult tape that wasn't necessarily manifesting on the index level.

9:16If you look at the triple Qs, they're down 7.16 percent in the last seven sessions. This is a case where actually, again, the index hedges have actually more or less worked over the last week because, in fact, this is the place where the pain goes. If you look at technical levels, and it's also interesting to me, a couple of longtime bulls on the street on the on the chart side of things, guys that have been great. Rich Ross, for example, said that the break of the 200 day for him was something that actually really was time to reassess for a guy that is hung in there through some difficult tape.

9:46So the technical damage is such that I think even folks who expect that there has to be at least a headline coming out of the administration that is trying to at least abate some of the negativity. and we know that some of those headlines just haven't been resonating with the market, I'm not sure it's a quick buy this opportunity. As much as people remember April and May, there is some technical damage out there. There is some certainty about what we should be doing with the multiple. Nobody knows what Fed policy is. People are everywhere from an emergency hike to absolutely nothing happens, and we may even get back to one or two cuts this year.

10:23I mean, that kind of uncertainty tells you you don't go buy the market. Well, that's it, right? What did Donald Rumsfeld say? The known knowns and the unknown unknowns or whatever that quote is. Apparently you don't know what Donald Rumsfeld said. No, I don't even know what I just said. So the point is, I don't, to Tim's point, the market doesn't know anything. There are people that will come on respectfully to everybody and say, well, I think this and I think that. That's right. That's great. We all think things, but nobody knows how this is ultimately going to play out. But what we do know is that we've got a 10-year at 4.42%.

10:55We also know that these big tech stocks began falling before the war began. Long before. So I wonder, is the war just sort of fuel on the fire? I believe so. It's not the fire, is it? I think it accelerated what was in motion already. I think at some point we're going to be here. What's happened over the last four weeks has just accelerated the move. Yeah, the bond market is a problem. I think a bigger problem, Tim mentioned the VIX, VIX closing on the highs on a Friday into what I believe is a holiday shortened week next week. Is it telling you something, number one? Number two, you know the administration.

11:31Listen, every administration is focused on the stock market. This one talks about it more than any administration in history. But they're laser focused on the bond market. So you guarantee they're going to try to say something over the next 48 hours. Who's May? President Trump and some tweet. They're going to march people out to try to assuage your concerns. But the bond market genie is out of the bottle, and it's diminishing marginal returns in terms of what they put out and what the market reacts to. Also, you know, when you think about that 10-year and the move that it's made in this run, you compare it back to April.

12:01It was a move from 390 to 460 back in April, which really forced seemingly the policy hand. We're not far from that type of a delta move here on the 10-year. And I think the rest of the world, again, look at JGB yields, folks. A delta move up, meaning a 475, a 5%. I mean, that difference. It's almost as great of a difference. But I know we talk about this a lot, and I know a lot of people don't even know what to do with the news. I'm just telling you, you're starting to see the Japanese JGB market really pull out and widen spreads for really the rest of the world. I want to talk about Japan. I want to talk about interest rates.

12:36I want to talk about all this stuff. But we actually have some news outside of the stock market that a lot of our viewers are going to be interested in. And it's not great news. The rollover crash involving Tiger Woods in Florida. Mackenzie Sigalos now with the very latest on some breaking news on this story. So, Brian, we're hearing that golfing legend Tiger Woods was arrested for a DUI after that rollover crash Friday on Jupiter Island. The Martin County Sheriff weighing in saying that Woods tried to pass a truck before the crash. There were no injuries, but he will remain in jail. He's in custody right now for the mandated eight hour window.

13:11Still hearing from the sheriff right now. I'll come back to you with more details, Brian. Oh, well, glad nobody apparently was injured in that. Mackenzie Sigalos, thank you very much. Let's let's bring in Peter Bookvar, not to talk about Tiger Woods, obviously, but thinking about him, you get a DUI or allegedly in the afternoon. That's a whole different thing. Peter Bookvar, chief investment officer at one point. BFG Wealth Partners go back now to the markets. Peter, you got a 10 year at four point four two percent to to guys point at Tim's point. We're looking at Japan and their move because our bond market is not the only one that is moving around the world.

13:47I want to highlight that. In fact, in some cases, other bond markets are moving a lot more aggressively. How much is that impacting the trade for stocks right now? I think it's definitely part of the equation. And also you have jumping yields in Europe. You have the U.K. 10-year gilt yield, which closed above 5 percent. So it is a developed market global bond sell off. And it's not just worries about inflation. Even before this, there were growing concerns about debts and deficits. And what we're seeing now is only going to enhance that, whether it's government spending on consumer subsidies to try to temper the impact of the energy crisis that's going on, whether it's going to be a huge ramp up of defense spending.

14:27There is, again, a major rethink, an investor desire to take duration risk. And the ripple effects are wide. We know we have a very over levered global economy, particularly on the sovereign level, but also at that corporate level. Going into the war, we were worried about private credit. Well, all these portfolio companies that were hoping for lower interest expense because of the cut in the Fed funds rate, well, that has disappeared. So funding costs going up affects everything. So, Peter, when you look at it, I look at it through a different prism. Extend out for me, and I'm finding that I still keep circling back to lower rates.

15:08Now, the bond market's doing what the bond market does around the Fed, so it's not reliant on that. But when you fast forward, I do believe we're going to get back to a rate-cutting environment for a couple of reasons. A, if we slip into a recession, they're going to cut rates. B, if Powell moves from that seat, they're going to cut rates. And C, if they try to make the mistake, which I think is a mistake, of raising rates into a supply shock of oil, they're going to wind up pushing us into a recession, and that winds up into a rate-cutting cycle. Just comment on that for me. Well, a couple of things.

15:47The Fed's cut 175 basis points, and the 10-year yield is higher than it was in the summer leading into those initial cuts in September 2024. So even if they cut, it doesn't mean that the rest of the curve is going to accommodate that. If the 10-year yield doesn't think that the Fed should be cutting because of inflation and we said debts and deficits, well, the Fed may cut the short-term Fed funds rate to call it three, but the 10-year yield may go to five. Are we better off? Well, depending on where in the yield curve you're borrowing will determine that. So I don't just think that Fed rate cuts are going to solve the whole curve.

16:24And one key thing here, if the Fed, the pain point in the economy is inflation. Companies right now are limiting their hiring because they're trying to cut costs. They're trying to preserve profit margins. So if the Fed starts to cut in response to that weakening hiring, are companies all of a sudden going to hire again? No, they're focused on cutting costs right now. So if inflation is the main pain point, which I believe that I think should be their main priority, even if the economy slows down, because I don't know what rate cuts are going to cure. Well, also, I will remind our audience, hopefully, I'm sure that, Peter, that the Federal Reserve cut rates by half a percent, kind of a shock half a percent cut in September or whatever of 2024, when inflation was pretty much exactly the same as it is now, although we know inflation is going to go up because the price of oil.

17:14I just want to throw that out there. What is the bond market seeing that the Federal Reserve is not communicating? Because the Federal Reserve hasn't said we're going to raise rates, right? There's still talk of potential rate cuts, and the bond market is pulling a honey badger in that it doesn't seem to care. Because I think the bond market is complicating central bank decision making because if I'm right, that debts and deficits do matter, well, then just analyzing the longer end of the yield curve is not just a growth and inflation thing. It is, do we want to lend money to these over levered governments?

17:53Yeah, maybe they'll pay me back because they can print the money. But if they're going to do it in degraded currency, well, then why do I want to own long term bonds? So I think that is a major thing here. And I say that because we're seeing the same bond market reaction in all the many over levered countries like Japan, like the UK, like France, and growingly like Germany, whose debt to GDP ratio has quickly jumped from about 60 percent to 80 percent. Peter, I've got a real quick question. Do you buy stocks? Do you buy the market at the exact same multiple you did two months ago? We know it's cheaper.

18:31I'm just thinking about everything else. Should I be paying the same amount for the stock market? Isn't that the biggest issue? Well, two things. In the very short term, CNN fear agreed to index down to 10. So we're getting close to a bounce. But to your point, the one thing with analyzing the multiple here is that that assumes no change in the east side. There has been no cuts in earnings estimates on the street. So yeah, the stock market's lower. But should we assume that earnings are going to just continue on as is in light of everything that's going on? I don't think so. I think we're going to need some cut in earnings if this situation continues with the Gulf and if the economy obviously succumbs to this, which it seemingly is on a global basis, not so much yet in the U.S., but it would be hard to avoid a slowdown in the U.S.

19:18Peter, always value your insight and time. Really appreciate it. Peter Bookfort, thank you very much. Mike, your comment? Yeah, I mean, one of the reasons you should expect the E to decline in all of this is because the impact of higher energy costs alone is probably going to be impactful. It hurts consumer spending. It's going to increase costs. So it's impossible to suggest that you're going to see if it's prolonged, you know, oil above$100 a barrel, which even in West Texas is where we closed today, that's going to have an impact and it won't be a positive one. All right. In the meantime, President Trump expected to speak in Miami shortly as the conflict in the Middle East continues.

19:55In a social media post this afternoon, Trump said, quote, our military operation in Iran is going great. Eamon Javers has more and the latest from D.C. Eamon. Hey, Brian. Yeah, we are expecting to see the president later on this evening. Meantime, we did see Steve Whitcoff, the chief negotiator for the administration, speaking at this future investment forum. that's a Saudi-backed forum in Miami. And Whitcoff gave them an update on where things stand and seemed to indicate that there may be face-to-face meetings between the U.S. and Iranian sides. Here's what he said. Take a listen. We think there will be meetings this week.

20:33We're certainly hopeful for it. Ships are passing. That's a very, very good sign.

20:43So an optimistic assessment there from Whitcoff. laying out the fact that he thinks there's going to be meetings. He's seeing some ships moving, giving a sense that negotiations are producing some results here. But then we also saw this social media post, Brian, just a couple of moments ago from the Speaker of the Iranian Parliament. Take a look at what he had to say. He says they've spammed so much fake news trying to push energy prices down that the market's just numb now. Keep going. Nobody's buying it anymore. The real prices will show up anyway. Powerful, maybe, but smart, not even close.

21:18Burned that fake news card way too early. So the Iranian Speaker of the Parliament there, Brian, more or less mocking the administration for what it's trying to do in terms of what he sees as jawboning energy markets back up. I don't know how your traders see that, but fascinating that we live in this world that we do now where we can see the Iranian side in the middle of a war mocking the administration for its posture on energy markets as energy markets try to digest all of that and make sense of it. Eamon Javers, we're going to ask him that just now. Eamon, thank you very much. I mean, I will say that, like, you know, Iran, they can say what they want.

21:55They murder their own people. I'm not exactly buying into everything that the speaker of the Prime Minister says. Look, what I hear ahead of Iran's parliament, I don't even know who that is. You know, I'm not reading Iran tweets. We don't even know who's running the nation. And drawing major conclusions about this. So, yeah, look, there's a lot of mockery of a lot of different things out on Twitter every day. And it's not surprising that it's easy to find that in this. But I think the most important thing is that we're getting statements from the White House, at least from Washington, that indicate progress.

22:26And the market is having trouble buying that. Quickly, oil, Guy Adami, you've been on the story. Before the war began, Treasury Secretary Besson, we spoke to him in Paris a couple weeks ago. He said, you know, oil markets well supplied. Do you think it is? No. Okay. It depends on what market? Well, it's a global market. We can say we're energy independent. That's great, except that we're locked into a global oil price. So, yes, it's great that we're independent, but it doesn't mean anything in terms of where the price is going to go, number one. Number two, they can say what they want. I think this is going to last longer than anybody imagined in terms of the elevated price.

23:03But more importantly, the stocks were headed this way anyway. It's again, this has been an accelerant and a space that was going to get here at some point anyway. Two different things. You know the bifurcated market with Brent, WTI, landlocked versus Seaborn. So they're going to move in general with each other. But we're not reliant on the Seaborn market. We're reliant on the landlocked market. I also think when we were talking about news or Trump putting out something, the troops are heading that way now. And I think you're going to see a headline on Karg Island. And that's going to change the dynamic.

23:40That is Iran's primary export report. About 90 percent of Iran's exports come from this one island off shorts inside the Persian Gulf. That's the negotiating tactic right there. If they lose that, they lose everything. OK. All right. Coming up. Bad news on the banks. Citigroup tumbling on some reports that it may be eyeing a smaller bank, but then Citigroup kind of saying that report may be, dare we say, fake news. Plus, we are eyeing some big action in Japan. Why what happens in Japan matters to all of you. Don't go anywhere. Fast Money is back in two.