Trump’s Second First 100 Days… And Auto Tariff Reprieve Description 04/29/25

0:01Live from the Nasdaq market site in the heart of New York City's Times Square. This is Fast Money. Here's what's on tap tonight. 100 days in the books. President Trump notching his second, first 100 days in office. Fox seeing their worst start of a term since Nixon. But can we expect more downside ahead or a continued comeback from all this tariff pain? We'll debate that. And pumping the brakes on auto tariffs. The White House adjusting its plans for levies. So-called automakers don't see a stacked tax, but will it be enough to lighten the load as car companies rush to bring production stateside?

0:31Plus, earnings season in full swing. Snap Starbucks Visa headline tonight's action, a weight loss deal packing on the pounds for hims and hers and tech's pair of twos. Why the chartmaster isn't loving what he's seeing as tech giants get ready to report. I'm Melissa Lee. Come to you live from Studio B at the NASDAQ. On the desk tonight, Tim Seymour, Dan Nathan, Guy Dami and Lori Calvacina, head of U.S. equity strategy at RBC. Welcome, Lori. We start as President Trump completes the first hundred days of his second term, a milestone for any administration and for the markets. It has been a turbulent time.

1:02Major averages initially shot higher after Trump took office, with the S &P hitting a record in mid-February, but then turned sharply lower. The announcement of sweeping tariffs sent the index to more than one-year lows earlier this month. And though it's clawed back from the worst levels, the S &P is still down more than 6 percent since inauguration. The Nasdaq is down nearly 10 percent, and the Dow has shed over 3 ,000 points. Meanwhile, benchmark Treasury yields have fallen by more than 40 basis points. Crude oil is trading near$60 a barrel. The dollar has weakened to about three-year lows, and gold has hit a slew of new records.

1:36And take a look at some of the biggest stock movers. Palantir, Philip Morris, Dollar General, the best-performing S &P stocks in the last 100 days, while Decker's, Teradyne, Albemarle are lagging the pack. So as we get ready for the next 100 days and the onslaught of earnings season, what should we expect for the markets? Guy. Let's look in the rearview mirror. You just said it. I mean, to me, the most concerning thing is the weakness of the dollar. But back that out and look at an S &P 500, which is now down, what, maybe 9 percent-ish from its all-time high, maybe even less than that, which to me, given this backdrop, is a bit of a win.

2:10So the S &P hanging in there like a champ. I'm concerned about the U.S. dollar. But tariffs, no tariffs, I think the question one has to ask is, are earnings going to be as robust as the market hopes? And I don't think they are. And you've brought this up as well. And what's the right multiple, the environment that we find ourselves in? And I think the market's still a little expensive here. Especially as a list of companies suspending guidance, not giving guidance. It gets longer by the day as earnings season chugs on. We had it from UPS. We had it from GM. No guidance. So how do you value the market?

2:37So it's a great question. And I'll tell you, we went through all of our models the day after the Rose Garden tariffs. And we basically baked in a stagflation scenario with inflation kind of in the mid threes and GDP of half a percent on the year. It basically tells me kind of 53-51 is a reasonable place to end the year. So I feel like we're fairly valued based on that scenario. And we did hold within the 20 percent drawdown range, which is a growth scare, not a recession. If we get recession fears, we've got another big shoe to drop. But I think the market is kind of fairly valued where it is right now.

3:06I think the next 100 days have a lot less volatility. And I know that may seem obvious. Maybe it doesn't seem obvious because I think there is still so much uncertainty. But and I said this yesterday and Rebecca Patterson pushed back a little bit. It's fair to have done. I said, I think we're kind of through the worst of the detox phase. And what I meant by that is I actually think the economy will weaken. I think there is certainly there are headwinds around margins and multiples for the stock market. And I actually think we're at some point going to go lower. But I do think that the news flow out of the administration in terms of that detox phase, that was a phase of policy.

3:37I think we're now going to get more into, I think, as we talk about the next hundred days, we hear a lot more about deregulation. I think we're going to hear a lot more about tax cuts. I think we're going to hear a lot more about things that that at least will elicit that animal spirits reference that people in the markets were saying. I still think we've got some significant issues for the economy and as a result of tariffs that are uncertain and damage that's been done. Again, I'm not trying to sugarcoat that, but I think we're talking about the next hundred days. And this administration on some level, I know it's crazy to say that, has almost moved on.

4:08Like, I think, you know, they're talking about where they're cutting deals. We heard some of that today. Who's done a deal? Maybe the nameless country. But I do think you've got a case where there are things that will be coming. And I look at markets and I think as long as the VIX is in the mid 20s, if we're heading down to even low 20s, I think the pain trade remains higher. More deals, more carve outs, more exemptions for U.S. companies on the tariff front. Yeah, don't buy any of that. I think the next 100 days has the potential to be far worse than the first 100 days. What's the worst? I mean, can I just can I finish?

4:37Sorry. OK, so we're just saying Steve, listen, go ahead. So, OK, the first 100 days, they're dismantling all of this infrastructure, which has existed. Right. They're putting people in place that are there to dismantle the organizations in which they're there to cover. Right. So we've had this sort of chaos. We've had this kind of policy roll out. A lot of it actually hasn't been instituted. The uncertainty in and around trade and tariffs is not going away in the next 100 days. They can continue to carve stuff out. They can continue to kind of jawbone stuff. But companies are telling you something different.

5:09OK. Now, if you want to talk about valuation, I talk all this stuff. Listen, the glass half full is that the 10 year yield is at four point one seven. The dollar, the Dixie, is still at 99, right? And so I don't really care about the VIX right here. I think you keep an eye on the dollar and on the 10-year yield. I think they're going to tell you what equities are going to do. But the other thing that's going to tell you, again, what equities are going to do is all this guidance that we're getting. And it may be fine right now. Like, it might be fine. We keep hearing about this pull forward. So Q2 might be baked in the cake.

5:37It might be fine. What's the outlook for the back half of this year look like? And I just don't think we're going to get the sort of bilateral agreements. Look at what happened in Canada last night. I don't think Mark Carney's running down here to do a deal right now. I think he has a little bit of a mandate. If we can't do deals with our allies, then we're certainly not going to be able to do them with China. And I think that's what keeps things volatile over the next 100 days. I just want to interject a little bit on timing because I agree with the things that both of you have said, but my timing sense is a little bit different.

6:03What I'm hearing from companies in this reporting season is that there are enough buffers and there's enough management skill, whether it's through pricing, pull forward of inventories. I think things are going to be OK in the short term. I think companies are going to be able to manage through. They're pulling a lot of levers. I have been telling people and kind of joking, I've got a vacation booked in August, but it's very cancelable. And I'm very worried about the September conference season because what we saw back in 2018 was during that first trade war, that was when companies really came out and said, maybe we're not going to be able to manage through this as well as we thought we were.

6:34So right now we're getting a lot of good news. And I believe what companies are saying, that they've been putting a lot of resources behind this. And there's a lot of optimism that in, you know, 90 days or 60 years, whatever it is now, that we're going to get better news. But I'm worried about, you know, kind of what happens a little later on in the year. Yeah, I don't think we're going to get a lot of better news again. I if I need to restate what I said and I don't think I do. But I think in terms of what we hear from the White House, in terms of where they are focused, I think they you know, again, I think they're going to move on.

7:02It doesn't mean that there isn't damage done. And I do think companies have headwinds coming. I do think that consumer, we're doing this with still record unemployment. We're doing this with people with jobs. We're doing this also coming out of what I still believe is for a lot of discretionary and even consumer companies that the pent up COVID demand is something that really it was something that we hadn't ever seen. And I think we're only just getting through it. That's why I think also we saw even before tariffs were announced, things like Decker's, things like on, on, things like, you know, I would even say Lulu and Nike, even though people want to say those are company specific.

7:32So I don't think the economy gets stronger into the fourth quarter. I don't think I don't think the multiple the market's supposed to trade at gets stronger into the fourth quarter. In fact, I think the multiple it falls down. But I think, again, in terms of the peak uncertainty around headlines that, you know, at times I don't even think we got the sense that this administration knew what the next headline was going to be. And I think that's part of where the market has been taking its cue in the short run. Again, we're up six straight days. We have a case where the VIX is still in the mid 20s.

8:00I think we're in an earning season where whatever we're all saying is there's been a good pull forward. Nothing's falling out of bed yet. I don't think it's going to. I think it's companies, you know, we're going to talk about Snap, who pulled guidance. I mean, that's that's what we're hearing from companies. Right. With all that said, though, what we have learned over the past 100 days or even in the past eight days is that there's more of a Trump put right under the market. There's more of a Fed put under the market. So doesn't that shape how you view the next 100 days? when before it was all about the detox period, and we're going to have to wait to see what happens to the data.

8:33So the Fed put was much lower. The Trump put was maybe nonexistent for some time. Yeah, I mean, I'd push back. And if there is a put in the form of the Trump administration, I think it comes in the form of what happened with the bond market. The bond market is what scared them a week and a half or so ago. The equity market, to me, is probably a nuisance for them. The bond market scared them. So I think there's a put in the form of the bond market, maybe to Dan's point. And yields are sort of going their way. But they're going their way, I think, for the wrong reasons. And quick, this University of Michigan survey that came out today, 65 percent of people now expect the unemployment rate to go higher.

9:05I don't think I'm breaking any news. But when you have an economy that's predicated on people having jobs and feeling good about things with an unemployment rate that I think is going to surprise people to the upside, that becomes problematic. Meantime, Treasury Secretary Besant speaking to reporters a short time ago about tariffs. NBC's Megan Fasel has got the latest from the White House. Megan. Hey, Melissa, absolutely. you guys have been talking about confusion. And we have some more here after several days of confusion about whether President Trump had been in touch with Chinese President Xi Jinping over tariffs.

9:33Today, we have further confusion between the commerce and the treasury secretaries over who in the administration is actually leading the trade portfolio with China. So first we had on CNBC, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick saying that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessett was actually the one leading the trade portfolio with Beijing. I asked Bessett about that just a few minutes ago. So take a listen. George Lutnik said on CNBC that you are in charge of China and he is in charge of the rest of the world on trade negotiations. Is that accurate? Are you leading the China negotiations? The president Trump's leading all the negotiations, so I'm not going to get ahead of the president.

10:10Melissa, this just further underscores how much confusion there is about these China tariffs in particular, which are, of course, the most impactful at this point for the markets, for consumers and businesses as well. And it comes after Besant told reporters just earlier this morning here at the White House that while the U.S. has 18 important trading relationships, he said 17 of those are moving forward with some momentum and just one China has to be put to the side. So pretty much confirming there that there is no ongoing negotiation with China about these tariffs at this point. Finally, Melissa, I also just want to flag on the tariff front that just in the last hour or so on Air Force One, we got news that President Trump did officially sign that executive order, giving some relief, at least some relief, on some of the tariffs to the automakers, making sure that they're not paying any additional tariffs beyond simply just that 25 percent tariff on auto parts, cars and car parts, I should say, and also giving them a little bit of a rebate just for the next two years on some of that tariff impact.

11:07Melissa? Megan, thank you. Megan Casella at the White House. We'll have much more on the auto tariffs, which are now the carve-out, that is. That's official. We'll fill a little bit later on in the show. But in terms of the confusion regarding who's in charge of those China talks, I mean, this not only underscores the confusion regarding the China tariffs themselves, but confusion over whether or not there is actually any progress being made if nobody knows who is actually in charge. If it's not that obvious who is leading the talks, are the talks actually happening? Well, I'd push back and say I think it's pretty obvious that there's probably Treasury Secretary Besson is in charge of one and Howard Lutnick's on the other side.

11:44But President Trump decides on everything. And I think that's what Treasury Secretary Besson was trying to say. So confusion, I wouldn't go as far as to say confusion. Maybe the language isn't as tight as it should be, but I don't think there's confusion. It comes down to confidence, right? And I've been saying this. Every time Besson is on TV and opens his mouth, he does not instill confidence. And when you hear Lutnik and you hear Besson go back to and they say the president every 10 seconds in there, it doesn't like it is a single point of failure. If this one man who's going back and forth to play golf in Mar-a-Lago is supposed to be doing 60 bilateral deals and then be the point person on a China deal.

12:22It just doesn't work. And I go back to if you think that the next 100 days is going to be less volatile the way our government is run. They basically tried to you could say this is political. They've tried to dismantle almost every part. Just open the newspaper every day. The first 10 stories about what they are taking apart. And so if you think about what goes on from here on out with all the uncertainty we have in the economy that we have on defense that we have on health. I mean, the list goes on and on. There's a lot of potential problems out there. And, you know, the economy might be the least of all of them.

12:52Look, I think what I hear from investors is they desperately want the conversation to change. Right. They want to get to the D. reg, they want to get to the tax, but we're stuck in this moment and we just can't get out of it. And I think that's what's really frustrating to a lot of investors. And I do actually talk to a lot of people that take comfort when Besson is on. And, you know, I think the other issue, frankly, is that this is kind of a two steps forward, one step back kind of situation. So it's halting progress. I do feel like, though, we had with the April 8th pause, we had a major turning point.

13:22And so I think along with things like AAII being at rock bottom, University of Michigan consumer sentiment is as bad as the great financial crisis as 2022. There is room for the market if it can just get a little bit of good news to stabilize and keep going higher in here. Yeah, I guess we're get back to what the market has done off those intraday lows. I mean, we've done almost 16 percent on the S &P off those intraday lows. It's extraordinary. And I think you get to a place where at some point I think we are going to face the reality. I just think that sentiment was so poor. We already had hedge funds de-risk.

13:56We talk about this. I mean, I think if anything, like CTAs are underway. This gets probably a little bit too into the inside baseball. But I do think, if anything, the chase will be to the upside here before the chase is to the downside. All right. Coming up, more earnings action to bring you shares of Snap, Starbucks, Visa, all in the move after reporting results. The details out of the quarters next and checking the scales in the weight loss space. That's why the new partnership between him and hers and Novo Nordisk has a telehealth company stock packing on the pounds. Don't go anywhere. Fast Money is back in two.

14:31Welcome back to Fast Money and Earnings Alert on Supermicro. Shares falling after the company issued weak preliminary financials. Christina Parts Nevelis has got the details on the 16 percent decline. Christina. Yeah, they're definitely taking a hit this current quarter. So their latest preliminary numbers showing just 29 to 31 cents in adjusted EPS, which falls short of the 54 cents analysts were banking on. Revenue wise, they're looking at 4.5 billion to 4.6 billion. So that's nowhere near the 5.5 billion everyone was expecting. So this is quite the downgrade, I should say, from earlier projections for the quarter that wrapped up March 31st.

15:06They're still growing at 18 % year over year, but that's a pretty big slowdown compared to the explosive 200 % growth that they were celebrating just a year ago. According to Supermicro's release right now, which isn't actually a 10Q, some customers drag their feet on platform decisions, and so that pushed sales into Q4. They're also dealing with a buildup of older inventory and facing some expedite fees, which together cut their gross margins. For those that don't know, Supermicro designs and manufactures high-performance servers and storage systems, many of which are optimized with NVIDIA GPUs.

15:38And so that's why you're seeing shares of NVIDIA down about 2 % in After Hours. And then other server makers like Dell dropping. Last I checked about 5%, yeah, almost 5%, and HPE also down about 3 % in sympathy. Melissa? Christina, thank you. Christina parts Nevelis. So there's this relationship between the two, and that's why you're seeing, as Christina had mentioned, NVIDIA provides GPUs, AI software. where Supermicro does the infrastructure for a lot of the NVIDIA stuff, including Blackwell. So 8 % customer of NVIDIA. I mean, this is a pretty horrible report. I mean, this is a pre-announcement.

16:12I mean, 20 % miss on revenues. And, you know, Kparts just said about the growth and, you know, it's still growing at 18%. Good luck with that. I mean, it's going to be single digits by the end of this year. And I think you can extrapolate this out a bit. These are themes that we've been talking about. CoreWeave is also down a bunch. That thing should be down. NVIDIA, there's just not a good headline out there. And we're going to go into some of their biggest customers' reports, Microsoft. You know, we heard from Google last week, Meta and Amazon. I just can't imagine that there's going to be anything that sticks out, the saying that you want to buy NVIDIA based on what they have to say.

16:42None of them are going to be raising CapEx guidance at all. And if anything, when you hear from some of their customers NVIDIA is like this, you can say to yourself, this is not like a one-quarter thing. It's likely to be one, two, maybe three. The optimists will say that people, because of tariffs, are going to push everything out, as I think Christina just said, until the third or fourth quarter in this case. Pessimists will say this company's had issues now for quite some time, and their proximity to a name like NVIDIA is, I'll use the word, problematic. And it does put pressure on not only NVIDIA, but the rest of the space, which has just started to get off the ground a little bit again.

17:16This sort of derails it in the short term. I just don't know for different reasons, but I would say most notably, the concerns around the financial filings and just some of the uncertainty there and that we're getting at least, okay, so we're hearing a few customers, core platform customers have delayed purchases, et cetera. But I don't know why you have to go there. Now, when I speak about the semis group more broadly, I think, remember, we forget that semis are also uber cyclical. They are the uber cyclical. And if we were talking about a micron or something, we'd really get into the cycle. But I think some of this still even matters for NVIDIA and those folks that are in the middle of both data center and AI.

17:51And I think by the fourth quarter, I think we're going to have de-risked a lot of this. So, I mean, semis still at the end of the day are a place where valuations do matter and the cycles matter. And it's not time, but it's going to be time. And again, the demand side of this trade hasn't gone anywhere. And I think there's all kinds of constraints right now and some demand, but not really. But Tim, if the demand side hasn't gone anywhere, it's likely to go somewhere if we do go into a recessionary environment. If we go into an environment where a lot of these customers who've been buying these racks, who've been buying these servers, you know, all that sort of stuff.

18:25Who are delaying to Q4 and then things get worse in the meantime. But they'll price that in before that. Yeah, but, you know, we talk about this. Sorry, I just interrupted you. No, you did. What do we call that? This is just a spirited debate, that's all. Just spirited. But in 2021, when the NASDAQ was down 30 percent, the S &P was down 25 percent, some of the names that had overshot to the upside, it's Meta, it's NVIDIA, it's Tesla, and it's Netflix, they all sold off 70 percent. Much of the other names sold off 50%. So my point is there was really nothing going on over there other than rates going higher.

18:54But we had this tremendous, you know, whatever you want to call it, just orgy of buying. Well, it's kind of what it was. And so they were taking some of the froth off the table. This is some real stuff going on. We're on the other side of the recession that never came there. You know, if we go into a recession, I mean, a lot of the demand is going to be like go away. Well, I would just say AI nervousness is like this cockroach that keeps poking its head out in the middle of all this tariff stuff. And so I guess here it is again. But we had noticed about like a week or two ago earnings revision momentum on like the tech AI trade just collapsed massively versus the rest of the market.

19:27So to your point, there's going to be a point at some time we come back to this. Really curious to see kind of how bad this is tomorrow. Let's move on to Starbucks. Just taking a big leg lower after a top and bottom line myth. The call is underway. Kate Rooney's in San Francisco with the latest. Kate. Hi, Mel. So Starbucks did fall short of most expectations for the quarter. But CEO Brian Nichol right now on the earnings call with analysts talking about confidence. He's talking about momentum in the turnaround plan, says things right now are on track. It was an eight cent miss, though, on EPS for the quarter.

19:55Revenue was light as well. Same store sales down one percent, while consensus was for a point six percent drop. That was partially offset by a one percent increase in average ticket sizes. North America was a weak spot. Same store sales down one percent. Domestically, analysts were looking for a 0.24 percent drop. And then international comm store sales did see a modest uptick, 2 percent, Nickel says. In China, he just addressed China on the call, says they're seeing indicators of progress there. Says the brand remains strong despite all of this tariff uncertainty. Supply chain, he says, is mostly local there and then also said that they remain, quote, committed to China for the long term.

20:33Brian Nickel, the CEO, as I mentioned, joined from Chipotle, says, quote, we don't know what the state of the consumer will be in the months to come, but says he's confident that we're building a resilient business that can succeed in any economic environment. Also says the financial results don't reflect the progress, said EPS is not the best way to measure it, but did point out what he called real momentum. Shares have clawed back some of the actually lower, significantly lower now. They've kind of been jumping around after hours, Mel, but down more than 4 percent, and they've been down about 8 percent for the year.

21:04Back to you. All right, Kate, thanks, Kate Rooney. Tim, What do you make of this quarter? Well, Brian Nichols putting a brave face on a really difficult situation, which is five straight quarters of same-store sales declines. I mean, that's awful. And if you think about it, this is a company that's getting back to their core coffee business. When you get to core coffee, people are moving away from 450 ventis. Not me, not yet. And I don't think I'm going to, but there are plenty of people that are. And I do think there are problems with the Starbucks brand globally. I do think there will be some pushback.