Yields Surge, Stocks Fall… And Apple’s Foldable Phone 9/9/26

9 Sep 2026 · 44 min · 21 chapters

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In short

Fast Money episode covers: rising yields and falling stocks amid Treasury attempts to suppress long-term rates; what upcoming inflation data (producer prices, CPI) and next week’s Fed meeting could mean; crude oil hitting three-month highs after Persian Gulf strikes; consumer/retail weakness after earnings (Casey’s, Chewy) and concerns about consumer credit; Meta’s rally after its AI agent reveal; Apple’s product event and its first foldable iPhone (“iPhone Duo”) priced up to about $3,200; and AI safety warnings plus Oracle earnings expectations.

Guests

EY Parthenon chief economist Greg Dacco (macro/inflation, Fed reaction function vs guidance); Deepwater Asset Management managing partner Gene Munster (Apple foldable impact); CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz (AI agent security risks); plus Fast Money desk analysts (Steve Grasso, Carter Braxton Wirth, Dan Nathan, Diadomi).

Key claims/examples

10-year yields peaked ~4.85% despite planned ~$6B buybacks; energy stocks rally as WTI/Brent rise; discretionary retailers pressured; Meta Muse subscriptions ($0-$100 tiers) driving optimism; Apple foldable positioned as ecosystem-additive with iOS 27 number handoff and Siri “always listening” demos; AI extinction risk cited >10% (Anthropic/OpenAI safety concerns).

Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.

Chapters

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Treasury Yields and Market Reactions

0:00 to 0:22

Discussion about the recent surge in Treasury yields and market implications.

“Mazda has been named Consumer Reports' safest new car brand.”

Treasury Yields and Market Reactions

1:43 to 3:42

Discussion about the recent surge in Treasury yields and market implications.

“The benchmark topping 4.85 % at its peak today.”

Contrasting Economic Strategies

3:42 to 4:07

Analysis of the contrasting strategies of Treasury Secretary Besson and Fed Chair Warsh.

“And I do think it's really important to kind of juxtapose what's going on with Treasury Secretary Besant, who is a political pick.”

Impact of Rising Rates

4:07 to 8:14

Exploration of how rising interest rates affect the economy and stocks.

“but also some of the I don't know what you want to call it.”

Upcoming Inflation Reports

8:14 to 12:07

Insights on expectations for upcoming inflation reports and their implications.

“No, I mean, it's just going to be a huge drag on growth.”

Employment and Wage Growth Dynamics

12:07 to 14:00

Discussion on the employment landscape and its relation to wage growth.

“What are you expecting in terms of the inflation reads and how it feeds into what the Fed does next week?”

Economic Landscape and Inflation Concerns

14:00 to 22:48

Explore the current economic environment, focusing on inflation and employment dynamics.

“I often talk to clients about the economy that could have been.”

Economic Landscape and Inflation Concerns

22:55 to 23:20

Explore the current economic environment, focusing on inflation and employment dynamics.

“including projected stock updates, monetary policy decisions, and key results and statistics that may impact your trading.”

Consumer Market Challenges

23:20 to 27:05

Delve into the challenges facing consumer stocks and the implications for the market.

“The consumer trade under pressure again today.”

Meta's Monetization Strategy

29:15 to 31:29

Exploration of Meta's opportunities with AI and its past failures.

“I mean, on a free basis, I mean, they're basically giving you the memory and the compute that's like in a lot of computers they could buy.”
Show all 21 chapters

Trust Issues with Meta's New AI

31:29 to 32:22

Analysis of trust concerns and investment strategies related to Meta's AI developments.

“And now this is the fourth, count them, ricochet of 25 % or greater.”

Market Reactions to Rising Rates

32:22 to 32:57

Overview of market trends and stock performance amid climbing interest rates.

“The details and analysts' reaction when Fast Money returns.”

Apple's Product Launch Event

32:57 to 35:37

Details on Apple's latest product release including the new foldable iPhone.

“And a communication breakdown in telecom stocks.”

Impact of Apple's Foldable Device

35:37 to 37:49

Discussion on the potential market impact and strategic implications of Apple's foldable phone.

“And that's been the standing problem for Apple for a while now.”

Investor Perspectives on Apple's New Product

37:49 to 40:08

Investor insights regarding demand and financial implications of Apple's new foldable device.

“This is going to be like the AirPods effectively, and that's really notable.”

Apple's Market Performance Analysis

40:08 to 41:25

Analysis of Apple's stock performance and relative market position over time.

“So I'm in the camp that this actually is going to move the stock higher over the next week.”

AI Safety Concerns and Industry Impact

41:25 to 42:06

Discussion on the risks associated with AI and its implications for the tech industry.

“I guess the big issue is Apple's relative performance to other choices one could have made, right?”

AI Safety Concerns and Corporate Vulnerabilities

42:06 to 45:11

Explore the risks associated with AI and its implications for human safety.

“Welcome back to Fast Money, a series of posts about potential risks in AI making waves today.”

Oracle's Fiscal Q1 Earnings Expectations

45:11 to 45:50

Discussion on Oracle's upcoming earnings report and its impact on stock performance.

“Can the software stock keep its late summer momentum going after its results and what the traders expect from the numbers?”

Final Trades and Stock Picks

45:50 to 47:03

Traders share their final stock picks and market insights.

“Yeah, so if you look at the chart, and Carter's here, so I'm sure he'll weigh in on this.”

Final Trades and Stock Picks

48:22 to 48:36

Traders share their final stock picks and market insights.

“Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com slash marketupdatepodcast or find Schwab Market Update wherever you get your podcasts.”
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Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

0:02Mazda has been named Consumer Reports' safest new car brand. It starts with our approach. Every Mazda comes standard with proactive safety features. So you're more aware of what's around you, more focused on the road ahead, and ready before problems ever start. Mazda. More of what matters most to you. Go to mazdausa.com to learn more. Consumer Reports does not endorse or promote any product. Never bet against American grit or American energy. Through innovation, Venture Global is not only building some of the largest energy facilities in the world right here in the United States, but delivering American energy at a fraction of the cost and a fraction of the time.

0:48So while others are busy talking, we're busy building. That's Venture Global. That's unstoppable energy.

1:01Tim Seymour:Live from the Nasdaq Market Sight in the heart of New York City's Times Square, this is Fast Money. Here's what's on tap tonight. Rates on the rise, even as the Treasury takes unprecedented steps to keep long-term yields lower. Why markets still seem spooked in what this week's inflation reports could mean for future moves. And Apple gets brought into the fold. The tech giant unveiling its latest$2 ,000 device. Why one top analyst thinks fans are going to be lining up to get this one. Plus, crude oil hits three-month highs. Chewy shares in the doghouse after earnings. And we count down to Oracle earnings.

1:32Tim Seymour:What to expect from the tech giant tomorrow night. I'm Melissa Lee, coming to you live from Studio B at the NASDAQ Market site. On the desk tonight, Steve Grasso, Carter Braxton Wirth, Dan Nathan, and Diadomi. We start off with that great rate rally that sent 10-year Treasury yields to their highest level since November 2023. The benchmark topping 4.85 % at its peak today. While the 30-year briefly crossed 5.3%, the two-year hit its highest. in more than, well, two years. The move comes despite Treasury Secretary Scott Besson saying the department will buy back up to$6 billion worth of 10 - and 20-year notes tomorrow, a strategy designed to help bring down rates.

2:11Tim Seymour:That's three times the normal amount. A strong 10-year auction also did a little to take the pressure off, and it wasn't just here at home. Yields in France, Germany, and in Japan also higher today. All this ahead of two key inflation reports coming this week. August producer prices out tomorrow morning. CPI on Friday and, of course, next week's Fed meeting, where markets currently see a 60 percent chance of a rate hike. So what does today's action tell you, Guy?

2:36Melissa Lee:Tells me, listen, in our world, we all have egos, clearly. I mean, if you watch this show, you know we all have some level of egos. And it's important that you have one, but it's also important to have a level of humility as well, because the market can do things that you rarely, if ever, expect. And I think we're borderline now. I think Treasury Secretary Besson is a bit too egotistical in his some of the statements that he's making and some of the things that he's doing. And the market will shoot against that. So I think that's what we're seeing now. He's the big stack. He has the biggest hedge fund basically in the world right now at his disposal.

3:10Melissa Lee:But the market has other plans. And we've been saying on the show for a while that rates are going higher and they're going higher for the wrong reasons. Yeah, you can use the term hubris. You know, we've been in the business for a long time. And normally when somebody kind of puts a billboard up and says, you know, this is what I'm going to do and you guys are wrong, you know, folks kind of shoot against it. And, you know, again, you know, he's been a very successful money manager. I think managing the Treasury of the United States is kind of a different game, especially when we're in a position right now geopolitically where there's a lot of folks who just don't see us as the sort of reliable steward of democratic capitalism right now.

3:42Melissa Lee:And I do think it's really important to kind of juxtapose what's going on with Treasury Secretary Besant, who is a political pick. Right. And he was approved by the Senate or confirmed by the Senate. And then Fed Chair Warsh. And so Fed Chair Warsh comes into this. He wants to kind of speak less, let the market kind of tell him what's going on. And it looks like Besson is on the exact opposite side. And it'll be really interesting to see how monetary works against some of the fiscal stuff they're looking to do, but also some of the I don't know what you want to call it. Whatever these twists and all this stuff are doing, I mean, it's meant to kind of affect monetary policy.

4:13Melissa Lee:But right now it has not proven to do so. And I think once we get some of this inflation data this week and we see what Fed Chair Warsh and what the panel says and what they do, I think that's going to be a lot more impactful than what Besson is saying right now.

4:26Tim Seymour:I mean, I was I was commenting to Rick Santelli that, you know, Treasury Secretary Besson is basically taking on two of the deepest, most liquid markets in the entire world at this point, trying to influence the direction of these two, the currency markets when it comes to dollar yen, as well as a treasury market. When you set up the markets for expectations for something and it comes up short, that's when people get caught offside. Yes. So he hasn't done anything yet. This has just been all posturing at this point. But I get your point that we're talking about billions against trillions. So he can't win with sticking his finger in the dam, but he can win on rhetoric.

5:04So if he's talking about it, what's the risk? If you're a trader and you say, I have multiple other spots to pick my battles, do I want to pick it with the U.S. Treasury? And the Fed now, I think the administration is most likely saying maybe the Fed does raise rates or maybe a cut is not in the cards. They had to come up with another strategy to avert the market crisis. Crisis for them, higher rates. But when we take a deep pullback, markets are at all time highs. The market seems organized. We don't see massive selling yet. We're coming into a seasonally volatile time period. But where it used to be all about rates, I think the market's telling a story that they're comfortable around rates right now.

5:53Someone's going to win in the end, but the market has not sold off just yet. I mean, for rates, it's about rate of change, right? It's the path travel. That is sort of well documented. And there are two ways to look at it. We have moved up aggressively. We're flirting with five, and that could be seen as a negative. And we could also say that we're lapping the three-year anniversary of the peak. The peak actually was intraday on October 23rd. Three years ago, 2023, we went briefly above 5%. So if we're below where we were three years ago and the market's doubled since then, equities, is it a big problem?

6:27It's about rate of change. The market handles this, but it doesn't handle quickly going to 512, 514. If we were to inch there by the end of the year, 512, 514, I don't think that would matter. It's a rate of change. And for now, the equity markets are dealing with it.

6:43Tim Seymour:In the charts, do you see 512 or 514? The uptrend's intact, and there's no reason they can't get to 5, a little bit above that. But once you start talking higher numbers than that, I think there will be some consequences, which have yet to be seen.

6:57Melissa Lee:Yeah. When you make comments like I am the house now and I have asymmetric information when it comes to the BOJ. Yes, it's just I don't think it's particularly helpful. It may be true. Doesn't mean you have to say it. And listen, I'm happy. It calms me to know that they're aware that there's a problem problem in terms of what's going on with Japan and problem clearly what's going on in the bond market here. That's a good thing that they understand it. But it's not necessarily a good thing to sort of take on the market in its entirety and make comments like that, because invariably the market will shoot back against you.

7:32Melissa Lee:And I think that's what we're seeing now.

7:34Tim Seymour:To these guys' points, though. Smart guys. Yeah. I wasn't going to say that. These are the ego guys here. The markets are doing just fine. The markets are doing just fine. So why are we frightened about this? Well, we're not frightened.

7:48Melissa Lee:We seem pretty calm over here. I mean, it's more, you know, to Carter's point, you know, back in 2023, here's the one issue right now is like we just crossed that$40 trillion debt sort of level here. Back then when yields were at 5%, we had$32 trillion. So if you think about that, when yields do go higher, this is a really difficult spot for the Treasury to be in to have to kind of, you know, finance all of that debt. And it just keeps going higher and higher. So higher yields at some point is going to be a huge drag. So it should cut rates. Well, no. No, I mean, it's just going to be a huge drag on growth.

8:19Melissa Lee:I mean, sooner or later. But the market did, to Carter's point, the market has doubled. Yeah, the stock market has not been bothered about rates going higher. I mean, that's the point. And we sit here. But that's the hard part. What's the tipping point? What is that number? Nobody knows the answer to that. I mean, if it is predicate ultimately always on the rate at which you can earn profits, the profit margins are so big for these big companies that moving up in rates doesn't matter. You know, obviously, 9 % rate matters, but for these big AI, whatever you want to call it, right, tech or whatever, the margins are so fat, the profit's so big, the interest rate doesn't really impact them unless it were to get wildly higher.

8:58Melissa Lee:But it is, actually. If you think about this, we're getting kind of long in the tooth of this AI buildout, right? And if there's a trillion and a half on balance sheet right now, and they have to get really creative and go off balance sheet with all these SPVs, and we have all these private equity and private credit companies and all these real estate investment. I mean, it's really getting a bit crowded. And there's$1.65 trillion off balance sheet, right? And why are they doing that? A lot of these companies, the credits, and we're going to see Oracle tomorrow night after the close. I mean, they're raising money at like 7%, 8%, 9%, a lot of these neoclods too.

9:29Melissa Lee:So sooner or later, you don't get the demand. You know what I mean? You're getting, you're crowding out all the good stuff. That's the Microsoft. That's the Google. That's the Amazon. Those are the ones with great credits. But the other stuff, it's that sort of incremental finish line. It's that incremental last mile that's going to get us to the promised land, which is return on this investment. And that is being 100 percent fueled by debt that's coming increasingly at higher rates. There's two sort of sins in market. Illiquidity, right? You mess around with small-capped stocks, you get drilled.

9:57And debt, right? And obviously, with the case of the U.S. government, it never seems to matter. Well, here's a good point. But to these companies, it's on a relative basis.

10:06Melissa Lee:So here's a company, CoreWeave. Okay? It's got a$53 billion market cap. they lose a ton of money. They have$51 billion in debt. This is one of the most levered companies we've ever seen in technology at this scale. So things have to go so right for this company to be able to execute and stick around, by the way. You know what I mean? Because if there's any hiccups in the near term, that's just one of these situations. And I'm not picking on this company. This might be in a great situation. They may have so much leverage that sooner or later, everything gets realized, all of this demand, right?

10:38Melissa Lee:And this company could be, you know, a half a trillion dollar market capital. Who knows? But all that debt right now, if we do have some sort of credit situation, they're coming for those stocks first.

10:48Tim Seymour:I mean, let's pretend that there isn't even a credit situation. There's a situation per se, but it does impact how you calculate the rate of return for the IR on these investments. I mean, it prolongs the time frame potentially to recoup what you borrowed. And so it changes how you view the stock.

11:08Melissa Lee:I mean, the reality is.

11:09Tim Seymour:Without a mistake or, you know, some kind of big dislocation.

11:13Melissa Lee:This is the U.S. economy is not built for higher rates. And again, the Fed can lower rates. Chair Walsh can come on the show today in 530 and say we're lowering rates. Rates will go higher. That's exactly what will happen. And I think I hope certain people understand that because I think that's what will happen. But the point is, it's not an economy built for higher rates at this position, and it's certainly not a market that's built for higher rates, but that's what we have right now. But the return on invested capital, though, they could always pull back and turn off that spigot. It's the same way that Amazon was with AWS, where that was the growth engine.

11:47It could foster that growth or it could pull it back. So if the mega cap names are the ones that were responsible for the market doubling, and they're the ones that are going to be responsible for cutting in half because they're spending too much, they cut back on spending.

12:01Tim Seymour:For more on what to expect from inflation and next week's Fed meeting, let's bring in EY Parthenon's chief economist, Greg Dacco. Greg, always good to see you. What are you expecting in terms of the inflation reads and how it feeds into what the Fed does next week? Well, I think we have two elements when it comes to the inflation picture. The first one is a very short term. I think at the next release, when it comes to the CPI data, we're going to see core inflation rise about 0.2 % month over month. I mentioned 0.2 % because that's a key anchor for Fed policymakers. Anything above that will likely trigger a rate hike at the September meeting.

12:32When we look further out on the horizon, and I think that's actually more important, we're going to see higher energy prices feed into core inflation. And that's a real risk for the U.S. economy because we have an environment where there are a few pillars of growth that are resilient, but we also have exposure when it comes to the underlying drivers of economic activity. namely consumer spending activity. Consumer spending has been financed to a great degree by wealth accumulation coming from very strong stock market earnings. If you take that out, and if you have a flat stock market environment, and you're increasingly relying on income, that's where the rubber hits the road.

13:10Because we're currently in an environment where real wage growth is actually contracting. Real wages have been contracting for the last five months, and that's a key constraint for many households.

13:20Tim Seymour:How is this picture, though, different from other periods since the Iran war started where we've seen oil prices where they are and we've seen them feed through? It's the accumulation of shocks, which is really an issue. What we've had over the past two years, arguably, is a series of negative supply shocks that have been hurting consumers, hurting businesses, because the cost of living, the cost of doing business has continuously increased. We were just talking about interest rates and the cost of capital. The cost of capital is much greater than it was just a year ago. The cost of goods, the cost of inputs for many businesses are also much higher.

13:55So when you're asking, what does this shock do? Well, this shock comes on the back of a number of prior shocks that are leading to this higher inflationary environment and constraining gross capacity. I often talk to clients about the economy that could have been. We could have been right now talking about a U.S. economy growing at a 3 percent plus. Instead, we're talking about a 2 % economy, and that is in line with its potential. It could have grown much faster thanks to the AI boom that we're currently seeing. Unfortunately, we're in this negative supply shock environment.

14:26Melissa Lee:As Mel knows, the NFL season starts tonight. Mel will be watching. Bill Parcells used to say, you are what your record says it is. So if you're 5 and 12, you're a lousy team. My question is, is a 4.1 % unemployment as great as that seems? Is it a great number? or are there things below the surface of the employment picture that concerns you? So it's a solid number. I think there's no escaping the fact that a low 4 % unemployment rate is very encouraging. Many people that want a job have a job. The question I am going to pose is the following. If you have an environment where wage growth is decelerating while inflation is accelerating, at one point they cross over.

15:02And that point happened five months ago. Five months ago, we had inflation surpassing wage growth. That means that real wages are in contraction. What do you and I depend on when it comes to spending our income at the end of the month? So that's really the key fundamental pillar that we have to watch very attentively. And that's why I am very cautious about the Fed potentially raising rates in this environment, because it's likely to impact interest rate sensitive sectors disproportionately without necessarily affecting the underlying causes of inflation being above the 2 % target. You're not addressing the Middle East conflict.

15:36You're not addressing tariffs. You're not addressing what is a very inelastic CapEx boom for AI. So what does tightening really do beyond just affecting some financial conditions and some pockets, perhaps, of exuberance in the market? So, Greg, that's where I was actually going to go. It doesn't solve anything. It doesn't drill a new well. It doesn't bring anything else. This is a supply shock. So all inflation is not creating equal. Right. There's demand pull, supply push, or however you want to phrase it. But this is a supply shock. So are they making a big mistake that we're even contemplating this?

16:10Because it was political with Powell and Trump coming from Trump originally. Now it feels political coming from the other way that you are demanding that we raise rates as a political gesture versus an economic one. It's a very interesting point. And I think what I'm hearing a lot of is this narrative that the Fed has to raise for credibility purposes. And I think that's a sad situation because we've had political pressure. We've had the fear now of fiscal dominance with the Treasury intervening in markets. And we have a lack of transparency from the new Fed chair that are all contributing to this question of Fed credibility.

16:46That is sad in today's environment because you can make a very rational argument for raising monetary policy. If you think that inflation has been above the target for more than five years, if you fear a transmission of these price pressures into core inflation, if you think that inflation expectations are at risk of becoming de-anchored, you could very well argue for a rate hike. But you can also argue very intelligibly for a hold in terms of monetary policy because underlying inflation dynamics are not inflationary, wage growth is disinflationary, and inflation expectations are still fairly anchored.

17:21So you could make both sides of the argument. And that's why policymakers are in this very difficult situation of having to ask what's driving inflation, How is the trend evolving? And does tighter monetary policy really address the underlying root cause of higher inflation?

Read the full transcript

17:36Tim Seymour:So if it doesn't, then is there anything the Fed can do? The Fed can be very clear in terms of its messaging. One, you deliver 2 % inflation. You don't deliver it overnight. It's going to take time, and it's going to take a monetary policy stance that remains relatively restrictive. That's number one. Number two, you are aware of the potential risks to the economy. You have to talk about potential scenarios. We're in this highly uncertain environment. The tendency when there is uncertainty is to not do anything. You can't appear as though you're not doing anything and just watching and without necessarily acting.

18:12So you have to say these are the potential scenarios. This is how I would react in this environment.

18:17Tim Seymour:He's not going to do that. It's not Ford guidance. That's the problem. Kevin Rorsch has confused us all by mixing Ford guidance and a reaction function. Afford guidance is essentially an unconditional resolve to do something. No matter what, I will tighten monetary policy. A reaction function is conditional. If inflation does not move back towards a 2 % target, I will tighten monetary policy. These are very distinct things. The latter, the reaction function, is 101 for a central banker, and that should be expressed by the Fed chair. Great to see you. Thank you. Always a pleasure. Rick Daco, EY Parthenon.

18:52Melissa Lee:Parthenon. Carter's into Parthenon as well.

18:54Tim Seymour:That's a different Parthenon. Sure, he could be in the Parthenon too.

18:58Melissa Lee:Makes a great point, and he should be because the points he makes are excellent. I'm of the belief, look, I don't think they should raise, I don't think they should cut. The point we've been making is they could probably do nothing until the spring and be okay. But the problem with that is the bond market's doing everything for them right now. I mean, you say what you want, but Treasury is basically fighting against the Federal Reserve right now and the market's taking over, and you're seeing it manifest almost on a daily basis in currencies and obviously in the bond market.

19:22Tim Seymour:We haven't even talked about the central bank meetings that are happening next week and how traders are vastly expecting all of those ECB, BOE, BOJ to all raise rates and decisively raise rates by the end of next year. Yeah, they have single mandates, so that differentiates them. But the poll higher. Oh, yeah, it's a global. We live in a global rate world. So wherever the direction is, normally that's where all central banks go to. And that's why you see those odds of him raising reach 60 percent. But a month ago, we had CPI that everyone was talking about was the lowest print in I don't know how many years.

19:57So you could see that flip on a dime. I'll tell you, I'll wrap it up with one last thing. Five-year, 10-year, 20-year break-evens, don't tell me inflation is running away. They're right at the Fed's 2 % and small target.

20:08Tim Seymour:All right. Meantime, oil prices rising for a seventh straight day after the latest round of strikes in the Persian Gulf. WTI crude hitting its highest level since early June, while Brent topped$100 a barrel for the first time in nearly seven weeks. The move helping energy stocks rally today. The XLE closing at a fresh record, led by gains in APA. Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Valero. Carter, what do you make of this move? Well, again, we've only just now got back above the pre-sell-off high. So a major drawdown, a major recovery. There are areas that are very extended and we're sellers of those. That's particularly PSX, Valero, MPC.

20:45Nothing wrong with Chevron, nothing wrong with Exxon and others. Generally speaking, obviously a very small sector, 3.5 % weight. And ironically, the biggest sector at 38 % weight, tech, they're both up 48 % here to date. So little guys can sometimes do big things.

21:03Melissa Lee:Energy, I think, again, one thing we've talked about now for a good deal of time, probably the last year, year and a half, is how attractive energy stocks are. Now it's happening right before your eyes. And you have XLE at an all-time high. Crude is not nearly where it was in the spring. and it goes yet again to show you you don't need crude to participate for these stocks to and refiners do well downstream oih seemingly is breaking out you stay with the energy trade here

21:27Tim Seymour:coming up rough times for retail the stocks getting hit hardest today and whether it's time to scoop up the names on the discount rack plus a day late but not a dollar short meta shares rallying the day after its big ai agent reveal why investors are rushing in and whether you should too don't go anywhere fast money be back in two

22:14We'll be right back. That's unstoppable energy.

22:48This episode is brought to you by Schwab Market Update, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Join host Keith Lansford for this information-packed daily market preview delivered in 10 minutes or less, including projected stock updates, monetary policy decisions, and key results and statistics that may impact your trading. Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com slash marketupdatepodcast or find Schwab Market Update wherever you get your podcasts.

23:20Tim Seymour:Welcome back to Fast Money. The consumer trade under pressure again today. Shares of convenience store Casey's General seeing their worst day since 2020 despite an earnings beat and revenue beat. And pet supply company Chewy down double digits as consumers pared back spending on their furry friends. Poor friends. Other consumer stocks like Lululemon and Nike adding to their rough runs and even recent darling Target saw a pullback in today's session. How would you define this weakness? Well, let's see. There's players joining what has been going on for a while, right? So Walmart and Costco, really the two biggest in many ways, regardless of the fact that you might say it's a grocery store, have been stalling and rolling, topping out, bullish to bearish reversal sales for months.

24:05And then TJX joined the party. You see dropping things like a Casey. And then Burlington out of nowhere. So it's one after another. The XRT, there are some names. Look at Abercrombie and Fitch bringing out two big new highs. But the general space of consumer discretion is poor because of Tesla and Home Depot. And then retailers in particular. Then you've got marquee names like, think about it, Disney and Nike. Just the whole space is generally not a place to be. Plus, if you look at results, to Carter's point, you have to pull out who got the biggest tariff refund checks. So we saw Nike get a big check.

24:45We saw Target get a big check. Walmart got the biggest check of all, but said that they were putting that back into savings for the consumer. FedEx, UPS, they were giving rebates back to the consumer. Try to see who's beating, who's raising guidance based on a one-off, non-duplicated issue with a tariff refund check. And see, Lululemon got a check, not as big as the other ones, but they're still getting checks. See who's beating because of those tariff refund checks that will not be duplicated next quarter.

25:18Tim Seymour:Even aside from refund checks, I mean, you take a look at Nike, and Nike's just in the doghouse, regardless of how big a check or if it's going to be required, whatever it is. Yeah, Nike's its own probably story.

25:28Melissa Lee:I mean, a lot of Nike's self-inflicted. But listen, competition comes in a meaningful way when you least expect it. And that's what, look, Lululemon's going through the same thing. Specialty retailers where hope goes to die, a great line from Jeff Mackey, and it's playing out over and over again. But I will tell you, American Express made its high. Carter probably looking at it now in January of this year. It's traded poorly since. It's up again and up, uptrend, and it feels like it's going to break through it. Now, why do I mention that? Well, guess what? They take credit risk. And this is a premier brand.

25:57Melissa Lee:So delinquency rates are up. Nobody's talking about it. They should. The consumer is not nearly as healthy as people want to believe. Yeah. And just talking to Greg. Yeah, to Greg, he was going to say, you know, 4.1 percent. We're in full employment. We've had wage growth. If inflation comes down, that should be good for the consumer. But then you go forget the discretionary names, you know, especially retail, that sort of thing. I mean, you know, Dix is tracking Nike. You know, we know Lolu and the list goes on and on. But it's Walmart and it's Costco and it's Kroger. And if you're just looking through the way that these stocks act, it's going to tell you, I think this is what we're all trying to say here, it says something very different about a consumer, at least the way investors are expressing that view in the markets.

26:37Tim Seymour:There's a lot more Fast Money to come. Here's what's coming up next. Better late than Meta, shares getting a boost as Wall Street perks up to the company's latest AI reveal, The new agent taking on the competition and what it could mean for the stock's future. And speaking of new tech, everything you need to know from Apple's product event and the bold fold coming for your iPhone. You're watching Fast Money live from the NASDAQ market side in Times Square. We're back right after this.

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28:10Melissa Lee:Hey, Fidelity. Can I get a second opinion on stocks in the Fidelity app?

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28:54Tim Seymour:Welcome back to Fast Money. Meta popping nearly 7 % a day after unveiling its new personal AI agent, Muse. The company is selling the product as a tiered subscription service with a free option, as well as tiers with monthly payments of$20 to$100. Meta was the only Mag7 stock in the green today, is now up more than 10 percent in the last month. Wang, Alexander Wang, who's the chief AI officer at Meta, said last night that the usage of Muse was way past their expectations at this point.

29:22Melissa Lee:And it's going to be. I mean, on a free basis, I mean, they're basically giving you the memory and the compute that's like in a lot of computers they could buy. And it's for free and it's on their servers. And so here's the opportunity for them to obviously monetize that spend that they've been penalized for relative to a bunch of their peers. And, you know, they have that distribution. We talked about it last night. It's the combination of subscription and then transaction revenues is going to be something that is very new to this company for all intents and purposes. And they're finally monetizing WhatsApp.

29:51Melissa Lee:So, again, I think this is going to be something. Might it be Threads? Might we look back in, you know, six months or something and say, yeah, I mean, Threads was the fastest growing app, I think, since TikTok. when they released that a few years ago, and no one even talks about it. No one uses that. So this company has had some fails, but this seems like agentic AI, this is the right time for it. And whether it's going to be profitable for them or not, we're not going to know probably for a year or two.

30:16Tim Seymour:You had an excellent point last night, and I'm highlighted because they're so... Write it down. Dan, Dan, write it down now. I thought you were being sarcastic. No, but in terms of the information it has access to on the meta platform, Maybe it may not be as useful to an AI agent to actually do work that needs to be done for any individual user. If it's going to go through your social media and your WhatsApp, et cetera, it doesn't have an email. It doesn't have all these other things that maybe a Gemini or an Apple Siri AI might have.

30:49Melissa Lee:Dan embraces technology like no person that I've met. The other point we made last night was the risk-reward, if you want to use that term for Facebook here, is extraordinary. I mean, there's a limited downside. There's huge upside for a company that basically has half the global population on one or all of its platforms. So you flip this switch and this could be a huge mover. We said it last night, the stock moved today. I still think there's more upside in the name.

31:14Tim Seymour:Why do you think more upside in the name? Well, let's talk about the current move, right? We've moved up 25 percent off of the low. So this is a stock that peaked 13 months ago. It was August 15th. Here we are, September 15th, 13 months later. What was it,$800 a share? It drops to almost 525. And now this is the fourth, count them, ricochet of 25 % or greater. And each one of them failed. Yes. And it's up to a downtrend line. I think you take profits if you caught this well, reduce exposure somehow. Yeah, it's been to that point. It's been in a declining trend line for a year now, a little bit over a year.

31:50But when you think about trust and you need trust for this type of endeavor, you don't think about meta first. Right. Right. It's just I mean, not to be glib, ask the Winklevosses. Right. This was based on something that I don't want to bring, you know, so far back. But when you think about everything that they've done along the way, they spend too much, then he cuts back. What I love about it is that he can throttle better than nobody when it comes to the investment. I'm not sure about this when trust comes into play in addition to the CapEx spend.

32:21Tim Seymour:Coming up, biting into Apple's latest product event, the AI updates and new devices and how CEO John Ternus fared in his first showing. The details and analysts' reaction when Fast Money returns.

32:45Tim Seymour:Welcome back to Fast Money Stocks Lower for a third straight day as rates continue to climb. The Dow falling 400 points, S &P 500 down half a percent, NASDAQ down six tenths of a percent, and the NASDAQ 100 also posting a small loss. And a communication breakdown in telecom stocks. Comcast falling nearly 7 percent, Charter dropping 8 percent, with AT &T and T-Mobile lower as well, both down about 2 percent. Adobe shares slightly lower after hours. OpenAI reportedly will no longer accept chat GPT advertising for image and audio products that compete with its own features. That includes Adobe's.

33:18Tim Seymour:Adobe reports tomorrow after the bell. Well, Apple shares are closing a quarter percent lower after its product launch event. The first with John Ternus, the CEO. The company unveiling the next generation of iPhone, AirPods, and AirWatch. But perhaps the most closely watched device was the iPhone Duo, Apple's first foldable phone. Mackenzie Cigalos is in Cupertino with all the details. Hey, Mac. Hey, Mel. So the iPhone Duo is the device that everyone wanted to get their hands on today. And I just tested it here at Apple Park. It starts at$19.99, but max it out with two terabytes of storage, and you are just shy of$3 ,200, a new high for a mass-market smartphone.

33:56And that gets at the broader strategy here from John Turnus at his first event as CEO, push consumers further up market while making the duo additive to the Apple ecosystem, not a replacement for another iPhone. There's no base iPhone 18 this fall, just the Pro and Pro Max. An iOS 27 handoff lets your phone number follow you across iPhones, encouraging Apple's installed base to own both a foldable and a pro. Ternus also positioned the iPhone as Apple's central AI device, with Siri working across the ecosystem. Now, the most consequential example may actually be on the watch. Siri recap and audio intelligence effectively turn it into an always listening AI device.

34:37But much of the new Siri experience today was demoed, not something that we can test out ourselves at this point. And even when iOS 27 rolls out Monday, Siri AI will still be gated behind a wait list. Mel?

34:50Tim Seymour:I guess this was sort of an answer to the concern that this would be cannibalizing, right, future iPhone sales. The fact that you can sort of port the information across devices. exactly and i mean this has been part of the reasoning behind why we've waited so long for a touchscreen macbook or a foldable in and of itself you don't want to cannibalize your existing lines and that's why also when you price it out like this the apple upgrade this new leasing program that they established a few weeks ago you're almost at a price point that is so high that you have to opt into this kind of system so forcing people's hands into this premium end of the spectrum is a lot more palatable.

35:28You take the sting out of the sticker shock when you break it down into these monthly payments. A leasing system, of course, encourages you to upgrade every year. And that's been the standing problem for Apple for a while now. The fact that they would have these super cycles and then these multi-year lulls. And if you move into a leasing model, then you shy away from that. And then in terms of your point about the foldable being additive and not a replacement for a pro and a pro max, that is really key here. They are trying to make this, they want Siri AI to be the connective tissue across all of these devices.

36:00And the foldable would just be the new cool factor. Because at this point, it's what, 2 % of the overall smartphone market? There's a question as to whether Apple can change the calculus here for the broader foldable scene, including for the names like Samsung.

36:13Tim Seymour:All right, Mac, thank you. Mackenzie Cigalos. For more on all of this, let's bring in Gene Munster, managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management. Gene, great to see you. I take it from the notes that you like this device. I'm wondering, from a product portfolio standpoint, what hole does this fill in the Apple lineup? Well, it fills a hole about where humanity is going, which is this insatiable demand for content. And people get up in the morning. It's the first thing they look at. They touch their phone and look at it 100 plus times a day. It's the last thing they look at before they go to bed.

36:48And I think that's the market, the foldable market that hasn't played out. because the last five years, Samsung and Google really haven't had devices on the foldable side that people want, 2 % of the overall smartphone market. So it's not necessarily filling a hole in the product lineup. It's really in terms of, I think, an unfortunate reality of how humanity is playing out. And I would say going into the event that my expectations, like this was not, I knew the foldable phone as everybody knew that it was coming. It was not on my list of what I think the big takeaways are, but after seeing it, I'm convinced that this was a really big deal for Apple today.

37:24And as far as filling that product hole, effectively what they did is they launched the first product, consumer product, that people really want. I mean, Vision Pro really didn't hit the mark since basically the AirPods came out in December of 2016. And so what that means ultimately is this device is, even though it doesn't fill a hole necessarily in the product lineup, I think it's probably going to account for 5 % of probably 8 % to 12 % of iPhone revenue, 5 % of overall revenue. This is going to be like the AirPods effectively, and that's really notable.

38:01Melissa Lee:Gene, what do you think that will be? Because let's just do a little math. You talked about Vision Pro. They sold, what,$400 ,000 or$500 ,000 of them over a couple years, and you do the math on that. It was a product that generally, you know, I think a lot of people tried. They just kind of got rid of it. It didn't really do that thing. And I know you're big into, you know, physical AI and spatial computing, that sort of thing. I look at this and I say to myself, okay, if they were to sell a million of these over the next year, let's say an average price point of$2 ,500, we're talking about$2, 2.5 billion.

38:31Melissa Lee:It's like a rounding error on that number. So when you think about it as an investor, yes, the signaling of it looks amazing. It looks like a great device. I just would not have any interest in this thing for a very long time. It's too big. You know, it's just whatever. And I think we'll look back, and I think this will be the way it plays out, Gene. But I'm just saying from a financial impact, like as someone who's looking at the stock, would this be the sort of thing that would get you excited to go out and buy the stock? I think it would. And, Dan, I love our back and forth over the years. And I would propose here that to kind of revisit this conversation for fun a year from now, I think that they'll do 20 plus million of these in the first year.

39:13And where I get that math from is that if you look at, I mean, really what they're going to first take from is the iPhone Pro Max base. That's about 30 percent of total iPhone revenue comes from Pro Max. If they take a third of those, just the ASP bump is 54 percent. So if it fully cannibalizes, you still get a 5 % lift on the iPhone business overall. And so just to put some context, that excludes any sort of other upgrades coming from Pro or any of the other models. And so my sense is that, I mean, the big negative here, I haven't actually held one, but from what I hear in talking to people who have is it's heavy.

39:47That is a negative. But I think the experience is going to be remarkable. Again, I went in on the same page you were, Dan. And I thought that this was going to be a rounding error, that it's nice, cool tech. But I just come back to, unfortunately, this is what people want. They want a device that they can just plow all their attention into. And it's really cool. The animation when you open it up is just spectacular. So I'm in the camp that this actually is going to move the stock higher over the next week.

40:15Tim Seymour:All right. Gene, always great to speak with you. Thank you. Thank you. Gene Munster, Deepwater Asset Management. Well, we will see in a year, you know, if it does fill that hole of humanity desiring content, which is an interesting way of thinking about a device. But, you know, I hadn't thought about it until when Gene actually said that in terms of how we consume. And if we have a phone, it's a single screen. That phone is a double screen basically to consume content at the same time or a larger screen to game or look at a document or whatever. I mean, it kind of grew on me in just that sort of.

40:47Melissa Lee:Gene said going in that he was a bit of a skeptic, and he came out saying, you know what, he's a believer now. He also pointed out in a tweet earlier today that it looks like they're going to split the upgrade cycle, which sounds like, well, it's still one plus one equals two. But his point in splitting the upgrade cycle, it's not. It's actually one plus one could equal three. So there's some tailwinds there as well. Listen, Gene is the guy to go to here. You know, he's been positive, negative, but right now he seems to be sort of geeked up. The valuation is a concern, but again, it's been a concern for a while, Milms.

41:18Melissa Lee:The Apple chart. Well, I mean, the here and now chart is decent, right? It's an uptrend, albeit not a particularly exciting one. I guess the big issue is Apple's relative performance to other choices one could have made, right? And we know that Apple's relative strength line or relative performance chart peaked exactly four years ago. It was in the third week of September of 2022. Four years later, it remains a real laggard. What's going to change that? I don't know.

41:45Tim Seymour:Coming up, could AI kill us all? A stark warning for one top AI researcher and why he says there is a chance that the tech could end humanity. Much more optimism when Fast Money returns.

42:06Tim Seymour:Welcome back to Fast Money, a series of posts about potential risks in AI making waves today. Researcher Jacob Coxson resigning from Anthropic, accusing it and OpenAI of racing towards superintelligence at the expense of human safety. One of Anthropic's safety leads echoing that warning, putting the odds of a human extinction, extinction in the next decade above 10 percent without a course correction. Earlier in Closing Bell Overtime, we talked to George Kurtz, CEO of cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, about AI safety risks. Here's what he had to say.

42:38Melissa Lee:now the new apex predator is the agent state right and they're not at at your perimeter they're on your payroll so we're actually think about this corporate america everyone is letting them into their own environment and what happens afterwards they're having a hard time controlling it so i think from the standpoint of how you get in front of this is you have to have the right level of ai and focused on security activities it is interesting that we are you know as a

43:06Tim Seymour:society, inviting AI into our homes, into our lives, into our businesses. And yet we don't really know how well our defenses can actually protect us from what those agents that are so capable and improving themselves constantly can actually do. Yeah. Well, I think if you go back in history, right, nuclear war during JFK and the Cuban Missile Crisis was probably more than 10 percent chance of a nuclear war. So I think we're always battling with humanity. Like, What's the next thing that's going to take us out? The ice age, nuclear war, AI. I think it's always going to be there. And do I believe there's a chance?

43:40I would think a lot of safeguards have to be hurdled before we get to human extinction. I think it could be cumbersome. I think we could see a lot of negative headwinds, but I'm not buying the 10 percent human extinction.

43:51Tim Seymour:Let's let's dial that back and not and say it's not extinction entirely, but maybe physical harm to a factory, physical harm to human beings. I don't know. I feel like that's a decent chance. Maybe not extinction. All very speculative and hard to make.

44:11Melissa Lee:One of the points that's being made is everybody rushing to be first. In the rush to be first, you sort of look past some of the potential pitfalls. And therein lies the vulnerability, I think. So I don't know how you trade 10 percent extinction. But what I'll tell you is all these security names, these cybersecurity names, Z-Scale or Palo Alto, I mean, they're volatile, but those are the names you have to own in this environment. I think it gets worse before it gets better with this technology. And I think to your point, there's figuring out what the vulnerabilities are, right? And we have that example just with OpenAI and Hugging Face.

44:42Melissa Lee:There was another one with Anthropic. You know, it's great to hear these security guys. They obviously have a huge vested interest in kind of, you know, being a bit of a firewall, pun intended, there for all this sort of stuff. But there's going to be some disasters. You know, people are going to die. I mean, it's just that simple. And we're already starting to see that. There's massive lawsuits against these, you know, anthropic and, well, maybe open AI. I don't know about anthropic, about, you know, suicides and all this sort of stuff. So it clearly gets worse before it gets better. But in the meantime, there's some fun stuff going on.

45:10Melissa Lee:It's a piece of technology.

45:11Tim Seymour:Coming up, Oracle results on deck. Can the software stock keep its late summer momentum going after its results and what the traders expect from the numbers? More Fast Money in 2.

45:29Tim Seymour:Welcome back to Fast Money. Oracle shares just in the red today as the software company gears up for fiscal Q1 earnings after the belt tomorrow. That's a key test, of course, for the AI trade. The stock hitting a record after this earnings report exactly one year ago. Its market cap briefly topping a trillion dollars. Shares have been cut in half since then. They've been trying to mount a comeback over the last few weeks. So what do we expect here? Grasso. Yeah, so if you look at the chart, and Carter's here, so I'm sure he'll weigh in on this. It's down 17 % year to date. And when you think about the stock, what do they have to do to force a re-rating of this stock?

46:04So there's got to be some sort of a free cash flow inflection. There's got to be cloud growth. Cloud growth has been great. They've got to continue with their cloud growth, inflection on free cash flow, and then maybe some pillar AI contracts. But you can't tell me that the worst news isn't already priced into the stock. I think upside is at risk now versus downside. What's your take? Yeah, I mean, 350 to, what, 115. And I think those are good lows, those lows back three, four months ago. Early stage bearish to bullish reversal buy.

46:41Melissa Lee:12 % implied move. I think 10 in the last 12, you've seen moves of 8.5 % or more. So stay tuned, sports fans.

46:49Tim Seymour:Up next, final trades.

47:02Tim Seymour:Final trade time. Stephen. Oracle. I think the risk has been taken out. The majority of the stock. Carter Braxton North. General Motors. Among so many very poor consumer discretionary stocks, we like this one. Dan Nathan.

47:15Melissa Lee:Yeah, Metta. I'm with Carter. I think it let this one go. I think there was a lot of good news in the stock. Guy. I just want folks to know that Mel was just saying she would be locked into this Patriot game this evening against the Seattle Seahawks. Just so you folks understand her love of sports. Southern Copper, Melissa.

47:32Tim Seymour:Thank you for watching Fast Money. Mad Money with Jim Cramer starts right now.

47:44All opinions expressed by the Fast Money participants are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of CNBC or its parent company or affiliates and may have been previously disseminated by them on television, radio, internet, or another medium. You should not treat any opinion expressed on this podcast as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of an opinion. Such opinions are based upon information the Fast Money participants consider reliable, but neither CNBC nor its affiliates and or subsidiaries warrant its completeness or accuracy, and it should not be relied upon as such.

48:11To view the full Fast Money disclaimer, please visit CNBC.com forward slash Fast Money disclaimer. This episode is brought to you by Schwab Market Update, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Join host Keith Lansford for this information-packed daily market preview delivered in 10 minutes or less, including projected stock updates, monetary policy decisions, and key results and statistics that may impact your trading. Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com slash marketupdatepodcast or find Schwab Market Update wherever you get your podcasts.

From the publisher

Stocks take a leg lower as the 10-year treasury yield spikes to its highest level in nearly 3 years. Why the Treasury Department’s buyback announcement isn’t cooling things down, and what the yield surge means ahead of key inflation reports this week. Plus more weakness in the retail sector, Apple’s bold move into foldable devices, and the AI threat that could wipe out humanity. The stark warning from one industry expert who says the tech could kill us all…

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