Markets Rally on U.S.-Iran Ceasefire… Delta Pops, Alibaba Bounces, and Banks in Focus 4/8/26

What made you confident that you could do something that hadn't been done before? I have no fear of failure. Trailblazing women changing the game. One of my favorite pieces of advice. Think about what your boss's boss needs. Leadership can look in many, many different forms. It really does come down to just trusting yourself. Life is short and you just got to think big to accomplish big things. Julia Boorstin hosts CNBC Changemakers and Power Players. New episodes every Tuesday wherever you get your podcasts. Live from the Nasdaq Market site in the heart of New York City's Times Square. This is fast money. Here's what's ahead. Markets rallying as a U.S. Iran ceasefire sends oil prices tumbling. Again, the gains hold. Or is this a one-day wonder? It's not just about Iran. Earnings also a big deal. And banks, they're about to kick things off. We'll dive into the technicals and find out what is in store for these names. Also ahead, a big bounce for Baba. Delta Airlines lifting off. And why Tim says any ceasefire could be very good news for one country that is not the United States. Hi, everybody. I am in Bryan once again for Melissa Lee, company live from Studio B at the Nasdaq and on your desk tonight. We've got the aforementioned Tim Seymour, Steve Grasso, Guy Dami and Chris Ferron, partner and chief market strategist at Stratigus. A bared company. Welcome, everybody. All right, there is a lot to do tonight. Very busy Wednesday. But we have to start here with the monster market rally. This was all in one of the best days for most stocks in years. The macro market averages up 2%. This, even after at least one political leader already accusing the United States of violating the temporary truce. Now, if you are counting at home, it is the sixth straight day of gains for stocks. Now, stocks rose as oil fell. In fact, oil collapsed. It was down over 15%. With it, energy stocks also falling. But let's be clear. They're also way higher than just over a month ago. The other big thing that you might take out of the ground, gold moving up a bit as well. Miners two. While the so-called digital gold, Bitcoin also firmly higher. No doubt, it was a very good day for many people. And there are many reasons for hope and optimism. But let's also be clear. There are also still a lot of questions. So let's try to figure out exactly where we stand, get to Aiman Javres at the White House with the very latest. Aiman. Brian, we heard from Vice President JD Vance a short time ago speaking to reporters on the tarmac in Hungary. And he walked through some of the backs behind the scenes details of how this negotiation came together and why there might have been some confusion about it. Take a listen. There are three different 10-point proposals, at least that I've seen floating around. The first 10-point proposal was something that was submitted. And we think, frankly, it was probably written by ChatGPT that was submitted to Steve Whitkoff and Jared Kushner. That immediately went in the garbage and was rejected. There was a second 10-point proposal that was much more reasonable, that was based on some back and forth between us, between the Pakistanis and between the Iranians. That is the 10-point proposal that the president was referencing in his truth yesterday. And then, frankly, I've seen a third 10-point proposal that's even more maximalist than the first 10-point proposal that's been floating around various social media channels. So now the vice president's saying that the Iranians may have misunderstood what it was they were agreeing to, said that the United States never agreed to any ceasefire that would involve Lebanon. And so as we sit here tonight, Brian, we're in a situation where the Strait of Hormuz is effectively not reopened. There's a lot of confusion around this ceasefire, but the White House says it's pushing ahead with negotiations face-to-face over the weekend. So maybe when all the parties are at the same table, you might be able to hash a lot of this out and resolve some of that uncertainty, Brian. I think it's going to be fascinating to see who exactly those parties may be. Aiman Javer is at the White House. Aiman, thank you very much. All right, so the ins and the outs, Goddami, of who may be saying what? There's warring factions maybe inside of Iran. Let's just focus on the markets because even if some people may not believe it, the markets appear to believe it. Which is all that matters. And we've been sort of making a comparison to last April. We said it was a little different. Last April was rhetoric that they walked away from this year. It was a little bit different in terms of it's a lot harder to walk away from disruptions, industry, and all those different things. However, the market last year wanted to fade that rally in the end of April all the way through the fall, and that was a fool's errand. That was probably one of those fools. And I think this time around, people say, I've seen this movie before. I'm not going to fall for it again. There might be some jerks along the way, but this is going to continue to sort of do its thing. And we close below the two-day moving average for a week or so. Chris can speak to this. We probably closed above it today. And people are going to say, you know what? All systems go in terms of the market. Well, you said coming in on the lead-in is this a one-day wonder, which of course lays the gauntlet down guy for us trying to come up with as many one-hit wonders during this show as we can. You know what your point is. But it's not a one-day wonder. It's a 7.6 percent move off the bottom on the S&P, which now sits only 2 percent above the area before we got into war. So a world where I think there are more risks that will come out of this than we had going into it in a world where geopolitics were everybody's number one going into 26, certainly 25. But I get back to the part of the market. You said also that it was one of the best days in years. It's certainly not for the index, but certainly for a lot of stocks below the index. And I think that's what you meant. And it was an extraordinary day for a lot of stocks. The things that I always get back to and the things that I think are very constructive is the semiconductors at one point intraday and not terribly far off of an all-time high. An all-time high for the most malign group in the market, the place where there's so much pessimism that's been built up. Now, I'm not telling you that the Nvidia chart's great, but I'm telling you that semiconductors and then semiconductors making a new relative high to the S&P showing the kind of leadership that you've expected out of them for three years is a great sign for the market. Isn't this kind of a, I know it sounds a little bit weird, we got Christina coming up. It's kind of a Hormuz play, semiconductors. People say, well, it's insane. No, it's not. Because if you worry about the South Korean or Taiwanese economies or helium supplies or anything else that goes into semiconductors, today's news was also a positive for semis. Visa V, the Hort Strait of Hormuz. I agree. I was trying to, and I was going to say it was almost like an afternoon delight, if I may, in terms of... Starland Vocal Band. But I think that's right. And I think we've been able to look through the trade. We've been able to look through, and the sectors that outperformed today were the ones that have been under the most pressure. And I would also just point out that the cyclicality of today's move is very important for markets that were overly defensive, overly rotated into defensive sectors. And I think you can get a little more out of this. I think when you look at the market, pre-The Iran conflict, we were focused on the Fed, focused on rates. Not that we're any less, but I do believe the center stage is geopolitical right now. So the market showed us that. If the strait opens up, the market rips higher. Now we have two countries that actually want the strait to open back up. Sort of, right? There's a sort of agreement. So are we better off today than we were last night at this time? Yes, 100%. And if that's the case, then the market's going to read through it. Look at what the backdated contracts in oil are reading. In December, you know this better than anyone. WTI is at $71. That means that they're seeing through this conflict, anything can happen on the oil front, and it is very volatile, but the volatility seems to be getting sucked out of the market right now because people are focused on what happens next. Fair enough. Okay. Follow up on that, and we'll get to Chris on the markets and everything else. I want to ask you this, and we don't know, but I'm going to ask sort of anybody who wants to jump in. This morning we talked about a little bit on SquawkBox. Today was an extraordinary day. No doubt a great day. Good news. But how much of today's move, both up and down, down for oil, do you think might have been leverage? Might have been positioning? Might have been... That's why I said one day, wonder. Not because I'm anti the news, but because I wonder on a day like today, fortunes were made, fortunes were lost, and there are people who got rich, and some people who got destroyed. Well, we did see on the options front, we did see shorts getting taken out considerably. 75% of the market was squeezed, so I think a lot of it... That's what I mean. And I also believe that every rally starts with a short covering rally, right? I've been saying that for over 30 years. I think that those are the savvy ones, and the most leverage and the most risk in the marketplace. So the shorts usually cover first. Can this be over with one headline out of Iran? Of course, but I don't think so. Listen, I think if you look at any of the prime data, hedge funds went into this, not necessarily short, but certainly the books have been way grossed down over the last three, four, five weeks. Now, one area I might... What does that mean, grossed down? It means risk has come off the books over the last three or four weeks. Now, one place I might push back, this was a good day internally. This was not a spectacular day internally. You know, go back to last April 9th, that liberation day rally. You were 50 to one on the upside on the Russell 3000. Today, you were four and a half to one. You were 97% advancing stocks on the April 9th day of 2025. You were about 80% advancing today. So listen, those are good numbers, but it wasn't some spectacular move that would suggest there's a lot of new money coming into the asset class. This was rotational on the way down. It was frankly pretty rotational on the way up today. So I don't think it changes a lot, Tim. You make a great point. Semi's making new highs. That harkens back to what was working. So I don't think it really changes a lot or flips the script of leadership. Materials were very good going into this. They made new relative highs as well today. Look at the free poor charter or Alcoa. So I don't think a ton has really changed from a leadership. So it is, I guess, RBI, random but interesting that today, one year ago, literally today, was the low of the liberation day tariff market. So it's a little bit odd on that front. You get my point about market positioning. You just kind of said that it wasn't a spectacular day. What are we thinking about then for tomorrow? Because we look at this market and there's going to be people that say, well, it's over now. Everything's over. But yet we had the East West pipeline hit. We had Lebanon get hit. I talked to Hay Pak Lloyd, the German shipper. They said, we're not putting ships through yet. They don't feel safe. This is not over. So let's think about this way. We've recovered two thirds of the decline. You rarely go back to the low when you recover two thirds of the decline. So let's start with that as kind of our operating framework. If you think back over the last three or four weeks, a lot of lines in the sand have been set. We certainly don't want to see above 444 and 10-year yields. We don't want to see below 35 basis points on the two 10-year curve. We don't want to see new high-end credit spreads. I think if this market wants to check back and consolidate, it's very important we distinguish that from actual deterioration. If it's actual deterioration, we'll give up those key macro levels that's what I'm watching going forward. Going to your world, the fact that Crude Oil is still having 90 handle on it despite probably the biggest sell-off since what, April 2020? The negative day. The negative day. You remember this. I remember that. I still think energy stocks, you buy the weakness in energy stocks. We're still talking about Crude Oil that's elevated. I don't think it's going to have another significant leg lower on the back of any news that comes out. I think energy stocks, despite the moving, despite today's sell-off, I think they're still in play. Let's bring another voice into this market. That is Mike Schumacher, Wallace Fargo Securities, head of macro strategy. Mike, good to see you. Perfect night. What a day. Let's start with bond yields. Chris mentioned them. Okay, markets ripped higher. Oil sank 15%, but the guy's points still is a $95 price range. 10-year yield didn't move that much. Down less than five basis points. What do you make of that? It's interesting. You've got to disconnect. So as Chris just said, stocks have recouped what? Two-thirds of their losses, something like that. In bond land, it's maybe one-third. In oil, it's one-third. Something's not right there. I would say in volatility space, it's maybe three-quarters. What do you think is then not right? It seems to me people are sounding the all clear a little bit too quickly. I'm the bond guy. I'm supposed to be depressing. I'm supposed to say that kind of thing. But nonetheless, if you look at exactly, got them all, right? You think about the market backdrop, I would say it's become a little bit too saying when a little bit too quickly. So it strikes me you ought to have higher prices for insurance, people waiting a little bit longer for the market to price some Fed easing, maybe a little bit less hiking by the ECB, that kind of thing. But the Fed said the opposite today. We got their minutes, so it's three weeks old. So burn the book if you want. But in that three-week old statement, they did reference hiking, hiking, if inflation is not sort of fixed. Inflation has got to be higher now than it was three weeks ago when they wrote that. Yeah, the Fed. Are we going to get a rate hike? No, that seems incredibly unlikely. And the Fed speaks very opaquely. So the Fed said many people potentially could advocate a hike if certain conditions are met. It said most people actually, which is more than many the way the Fed thinks about the world, could contemplate a rate cut down the road. So the Fed actually, I thought, leaned dovish, not hawkish. Yeah, I did too. I thought it was dovish Fed minutes, which I think give you a little eye into all the fear of this emergency hike we were going to get. And I would get back to where is Fed policy right now? I mean, where are we really, Michael, given we've got a big CPI coming out on Friday. We've had inflation in every other number, but I heard a Fed that if they're pushed here, it's still the job market that's number one in that weakness. Yeah, they're really concerned about that for sure. And that's gotten weaker if you look at some of these, call it secondary ancillary indices like quits rate, et cetera, and they're not doing terribly well. I take your point, Tim. I think that's right. So, Mike, when you look at the misery-like index, you look at gasoline prices, we're heading into midterm elections. So you have gasoline prices and you have mortgage rates, both elevated. What can this administration do? Or what do you look at in the market as the next domino? We could talk about the 10-year, but what's the effect on the mortgage rate? That's when you really get lifeblood into the economy. Yeah, mortgage rate, that's a great question, Steve. You think about the mortgage rate and how it's gone elevated over the last, call it, four to five months, you could maybe have the Fed come in and talk about doing an operation twist. It sounds really unlikely for a lot of reasons. Number one is the Fed's sort of uncomfortable with balance sheet changes right now. Anyway, it's buying Treasury bills, doesn't want to buy the long-end. Secondly, a new Fed share comes in probably next month. Maybe it's pushed back, but pretty soon, so that transitions tough. If Trump and Secretary Besant want to do something very different, we've talked about this a bit I've mentioned in the show, they could conceivably change the issuance, not schedule, but volumes of 10-year, 20-year, 30-year debt, say, wish you just a little bit less of that long-term stuff, a little bit more in Treasury bills. That buys them some time. Maybe it's worth 20, 25 basis points. Is it 50? I don't think so. So that to me is something that could be done, but it's not a long-term fix. Mike, it's great to see you. If you think about curve shape from this point forward, is there a direction to the curve up or down that gets you more worried? My suspicion would be flatter here would kind of reflect that there's an economy that's still weakening, even if the Iran situation is in the background. Would you agree with that? I think toward the front of the curve, like two-year versus 10-year, I think that's right. The thing that would really scare me, though, is if yield went up and the gap between the 10-year and 30-year increased, because that's basically a vote of no confidence in U.S. governance, U.S. fiscal policy. Don't want that for sure. Let's talk about 30-year real quick. I'd say it was a 10-year auction. Fine, I guess. 30-year auction on Thursday, I think it's a pretty big deal. I think it's a fair point. Yeah, decent auction in 10s, I agree with that. Last time I was here, we talked about the horrible three-year auction, but that seems like old news now. As far as 30s go, it's probably a decent perometer. You don't really see a lot of foreign buyers step into 30s, oh, guys. So that's going to be consumed domestically. So to me, it's less of a signal probably in 10s, unless it's really terrible. So quickly, what's the next big thing you're watching? Is it CPI? Is it Iran? Is it something else? CPI is old news. So the number is going to be terrible. I think we all know that, but probably just one. Mean hot, hot inflation. Sure, you're hot. Red hot. Red hot, smoking hot. 1% print, something like that for one month. So year over year, probably 3, 4. Really bad number. What's that? I was just going to quote a Van Halen song, but it didn't really fit in here. We are talking about Van Halen. Well, you talked about afternoon delight a few minutes ago. So how's that signal? Thank you for saving me. Yes. Anyway, so inflation, really not the big topic right now. To me, it's got to be the Middle East. That seems obvious, but really it's what exactly is this thing? What kind of agreement is it? How many ships get through Hormuz? Does this mean that Lebanon is not attacked anymore? I don't know. I don't have the answers to these things. And that's one reason why we think Volsyn State somewhat bit. There is a lot to watch, but we're glad you're here. Michael Schumacher, Mike, thank you very much. Do appreciate that. And Tim, don't worry. Don't worry about your eruption. No. It's not about Van Halen. Steve Grasso, what's the next? I would never say that. The market is taking its lead from the war headlines. And when you see that headline today that Iran, and we don't know to your point, we don't know who's disseminating that headline saying that the U.S. violated the ceasefire. That keeps you on your toes. So as long as we have the U.S. stand pat, I think the market has more room to be upset. We all want that piece. And by the way, one thing I'll say before we go, with dividend yields, Chris Ferrone, I think the S&P is higher on the year if you include the dividend yield. Yes. If not, it's pretty dark post. It's like right there. I mean, remember though, equal weight is still positive on the year. Equal weight S&P never broke the 200 days. Small caps really never broke the 200 days. Mid caps really never broke the 200 days. I still think this year is about the average stock over the big one. All right. Well, meantime, we know the market's here, ripped higher. They're all over your screen. But Tim says the real story maybe overseas. How come? Well, it's Germany. If you think about what the impact of higher energy costs are on some of the biggest developed nations in the world, we know Japan imports 80% of their energy, but Germany's close to 70. And 77% of that are fossil fuels. Germany is a much more economically, which is an energy sensitive economy. And really what we saw both with bond yields and the DAX from the outset of the war actually shows that and shows it strongly. I mean, you had the DAX which sold off almost 15% in dollar terms to the S&Ps down nine and a half. Today's move is 170 basis points of outperformance on the DAX. And that's in the European morning. And I bet it might have been higher if you added in the rest of the U.S. day. If you look at bond yields, they were the ones that really showed the most concern around inflation. They were the ones that went up almost 25% off of the pre-war level. So I would just get back to the trade that was working and some of the cyclicality. If you see cyclicality come back, you want to own Europe. You want to own Germany. And I think that's a great place. But I'm not saying it's off to the races. I'm just saying this is a case where if everything's better, look to Japan, but definitely look to Germany. Super, super energy intensive and reliant economy. Tim Seymour, thank you. All right, we've got a long way to go. And coming up, Baba Boyd, Ali Baba Bopping. We're going to find out why next. Plus, what Delta Airlines may have said that made a lower oil story even better to watch in fast money. We're back right after this. What made you confident that you could do something that hadn't been done before? I have no fear of failure. Trailblazing women changing the game. One of my favorite pieces of advice, think about what your boss's boss needs. Leadership can look in many, many different forms. It really does come down to just trusting yourself. Life is short and you just got to think big to accomplish big things. Julia Boorstin hosts CNBC Changemakers and Power Players. New episodes every Tuesday wherever you get your podcasts. All right, a lot more going on than just the macro markets, Iran and energy. Ali Baba Bouncing, the Chinese tech company launching an AI data center with its very own chips. Let's get more on this big story. Christina Parts and Elvis joining us here on set with that and more. And that $5 Canadian that I just handed you. Because right now we're talking about China. China and chips. The key word you use, the Brian though, is own. And I have that in quotations in the prompter here because Baba launched a data center in southern China powered by 10,000 of its own AI chips. No Nvidia anywhere in the picture. And that's not an isolated move. Deepseek, for example, is about to release its next model. And Deepseek is an AI Chinese startup of V4. And it will run entirely on Huawei's AI chips. According to the information, the model could have come out sooner. But Deepseek spent months rewriting its code with Huawei engineers to get it working on domestic hardware. Ali Baba, ByteDance, Tencent have all placed bulk orders. Hundreds of thousands of Huawei chips, not American chips. And Huawei is now trying to push those chips beyond China's borders. Malaysia recently said it would deploy Huawei's Ascendant chips as part of a sovereign AI program. The first time outside of China. So the risk for Nvidia is no longer just lost. Sales in China, I know many analysts will say, oh, it's not in estimates. We've taken it out a long time ago. But it's that parallel ecosystem forming around Ali Baba, Huawei and Deepseek. One that gives Chinese AI firms something they haven't had before. An exportable alternative. So is this everybody kind of, it's hard to keep track. You got Ali Baba, you got Nvidia, you've got all these companies. Amazon, Gemini, Google. Are they all competing now with each other? Is there a common winner somewhere? Nvidia still has a strong hold over the market, especially on the trading upstage. With the inference, the second part where you're, you know, spitting out the answers to your queries, like, you know, who's on this Canadian bill. That part is becoming incredibly competitive. In the case with China, though, their AI stack, even on the trading front, may not necessarily still compare to what Nvidia's latest offering is. But they have the ability to stack on many chips because power isn't a constraint. They're also, their chips are a lot cheaper, which makes it more marketable once you leave outside of China. And that's a huge selling point given how much companies are fighting. Hold on, there's a lot of fear in the car industry about BYD of China coming to the United States or Europe and taking a lot of share. Does that also exist in the AI data center and chip market? Is there a lot of fear? Well, that's this whole story. Yeah, I know. Is that going to come in and undercut? Is that going to kill Nvidia? It's going to eventually start to chip away at its market share around the globe. What did you do there? Chip away. Yeah. You don't have to state the obvious. It's a little bit. Sorry. It was serious. Who's on that $5.00 Canadian dollar? Who is that? No, I'm not saying it right now because I'm blanking. Go back to this chip story. Is that the existential risk? John McDonald, there you go. Obviously not today, but to Nvidia, the fact that Chinese can do it cheaper and seemingly more efficiently, I'm air quoting. The answer is 1,000% yes. Why? Because the CEO of Nvidia, Jensen Wong, how many times has he said that the Chinese market is worth so much? It's $50 billion. All of these AI Chinese developers are over there. We're missing out on this important market. He's making that statement because he wants to convince politicians in DC to allow or to reduce the export controls. It reduced the export ban so that they can keep their market share over there, or they risk to come full circle to the story, losing it to Baobao or Huawei or whatever other Chinese chip firm is gaining. It is a big story. Chips, to your point earlier in the show, and Tim's yours. Chips leading the way today as well. All right, there is a lot more fast money to come. Here's what's up ahead. Welcome back. Shares of Delta Airlines soaring as much as 13%. They reported earnings at top, both the top and bottom lines this morning. The CEO at Bastion was on scene this morning talking to Phil LeBeau, said that the company plans to meaningfully cut growth plans as jet fuel costs remained elevated. Of course, because the war in Iran, higher costs, adding $2 billion to Delta Airlines fuel bill this quarter. Here's what at Bastion had to say. The fuel prices are going to stay elevated. We have to be responsible. We have to find ways to get our costs covered. One of the ways we're doing it in the second quarter is we're pulling capacity down to accommodate and try to get ahead of some of that potential weakness. But we're not seeing it. The last 30 days are bookings sort of double digits every day for the last 30 days. Now Delta Airlines also joining United and JetBlue and Southwest Airlines. In raising checked bag fees this week, obviously the whole group Tim today got a big boost as oil prices and thus theoretically jet fuel prices came down or will come down. Well, I mean, everything at Bastion does seems to be thoughtful. But the best thing he can do is reiterate that airlines are run differently than they were 10 years ago, even five years ago, absolutely 20 years ago. And that's what he's doing. He's like, when we have higher costs, we certainly can't have too many flights out there. We've got to reel in our capacity. And that has been something that airline investors have been looking at for a long time. If you look at that operating margin in the first quarter, it beat all expectations. If you look at the, essentially the net revenue number of up 9.6 percent, that was higher than the guide, which had been upgraded. So I'm a Delta bull. I'm long Delta. I also believe that airlines may now be, again, we're talking about a world if we're just going to play out the scenario that we started the show with, that we've seen the worst of it. That airlines, which haven't really re-rated since COVID and actually we're starting to before war hit Delta, kissed all time highs today, pulled back. That's fine. I think you can buy that. When you look at the one year performance on Delta, it's outperforming the entire group. Delta is the only one that owns its own refinery. You know that better than anybody. They say like 300 million. They saved 300 million. So obviously it sounds like it's 10 percent, 15 percent of the number that they said they're going to lose. No other airlines hedges these days. So that's their pseudo hedge. If you're going to buy an airlines, I think Delta is probably the best position. How does the charts look, Chris? You know, Tim, I think you would agree it wasn't the greatest close today on Delta. No, pulled back. But I think as long as this kind of keeps its head above 64, 65, it gets the benefit of the doubt here. Remember, this bottom relative to the S&P on March 11th. So long before we knew what was going to happen over the last 24 hours, I think airlines in general have actually held up pretty well the last two or three weeks. Cruise lines have held up particularly well. I think Viking made new highs today. So the whole space travel in general, Marriott comes to mind, Hilton, Wyndham have all acted well despite the obvious headwinds. Fair enough. Just got to say it's anecdotal. I've been to about 10 airports in the last five weeks. They've all been empty. What was your favorite? Calvary. YYC. That's where the stampede is. It is. And the flames. But I'll just tell you, they're all. YYZ is a great rush turn. And a great airport. Yeah. Not as good as YYC as an airport. All right, coming up. Yeah. Big banks on deck, ready to kick off, earning season. What Chris sees in the charts and why he says the group could be nearing what he calls escape velocity. Mm, mom. Yeah. I also made that noise. We're back right after this. Welcome back. Pretty much like everything but oil and gas. And I think that's where the big banks, they caught a big bid today. City group in fact closing at its highest level since February. The action coming as we get ready for earnings from everybody. You got Goldman Sachs kicking things off on Monday. And then the rest kind of all line up. So Chris Verone, what are the charts saying? Well, because I think actually it's probably the most important part of the market here. Because if you think about what was the story before Iran, it was all about the private credit mass. So as Iran fades into the background here, at least we hope it does. I think the big question is can the banks actually exhibit some relative strength here and put to bed some of the concerns that were brewing in the financial sector for the better part of the last couple months. I thought yesterday was interesting. So even before today's price action, you had something like 65, 66% of the banking group make a new 20-day high. So groups in uptrends where the new high list is expanding is generally a pretty good sign. I think if you pair that with the strength we've seen from the transports, it's hard to make a recession call when banks are hanging in as they have throughout this entire thing. And transports are the leadership. It doesn't sound like very recessionary leadership to us. And I think lastly, if you're going to talk about curve shape here as well with stocks like Citigroup, Bank of New York, PNC on the outperforming list here, that sounds like steeper curve, not flatter curve. So as we look ahead, Brian, over the next really number of weeks and number of months, what the banks do from here I think will be essential engaging. Is there something more sinister out there? We don't think there is, but of course. And you say, I assume you say they're the most important group guide down here because the weight, they're not energy. I mean, I love energy, but it's 4.5% of the market. It's not going to drag the market up. Financial is a bit of a different story, I think. The tell, the tell in terms of what they're seeing. I mean, Bank of America seemingly has only seen great things, but I think we've been universal in our love of Citibank. Jeffery's, I think, initiated or upgraded stock at the end of March, $135 price target. Our logic behind it is one, Jane Frazier, but two, the compelling valuation that even at $122, I think it still has. You know, the city has had the move when you look at it. All these charts look almost interchangeable, but when you think about the year that's coming up now, we're going to have a couple of hot IPOs. There's going to be probably some decent M&A, and you think about Morgan Stanley, you think about Goldman Sachs, you think about JP Morgan. City has already performed. I don't say that they're going to turn back on it, but I would look to the year that we have in front of us versus the old story about D-REG and yield curve. So if SpaceX goes really, really well, Tim, is that going to open the door for a lot more IPOs, or is it its own thing and it kind of operates in a vacuum? I think it's both. I don't look at it as a driver for bank valuations because people are now looking at the IPO market. I think people are going to see that banks in terms of their investment banking, in terms of their capital markets business, in terms of, I mean, those numbers were fantastic in the first quarter. A little volatility goes a long way. Chris is right. I mean, we were focused on credit. I think credit doesn't happen until it happens, and I think right now we're not looking at a credit crisis. I think the world we have is actually not near a recession. I think we've talked about it, and I think we've said stocks aren't priced for that. But getting back to banks, I would argue they've kind of been walking on sunshine for the last few days, not just today. In other words, they're up almost 14% off the floor. You're shaking your head, but Katrina and the waves also matter. And I would just say you don't want to see them rallying that much more into earnings next week because we know what happens when they do that. Coming up, possibilities in property. What your next guest says may be the ultimate safe haven in real estate. All right, let's talk about real estate. Not the great New Jersey band, but actual real estate. Thank you. Housing stocks may be struggling, commercial REITs though, mostly outperforming. The broader market by about 9% this year. Your next guest says the space may be the most attractive safe haven trade in the market. Darrell Craig, the CEO of Easterly Government Properties joining us now and saying maybe the best ticker out there, DEA, because most of your properties go to the DEA, FBI, their government. So you would assume that is a safe haven. But we also know that DC is a lot of work from home. How does this get resolved? What does it mean for Easterly? Yeah, we built this portfolio for durability. Most, we don't own any federal buildings in Washington. We're out where the work gets done. And it is out in the field offices of the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Veterans Administration. The ticker is DEA because they wouldn't give us FBI. But broadly, it's all of those agencies that depend upon Republican, Democrat. They have an enduring mission for the United States. And we know that these buildings and the enduring mission is going to last. Darrell, let me ask you that, though, because I got a lot of friends in DC and the Virginia area. And a lot of them, you know, they're going to hate me for saying this. They're working from home almost all the time. The stock could use some help. It's had a tough couple year run. What is Wall Street missing about Easterly government? Because somebody's missing something. Yeah, no, no, that's a great point. I mean, again, in the vacancy, doge, all these concerns have really put a headline pressure on the stock. The reality is, though, that you can't catch criminals from your basement. The DEA, you can't store drugs in your refrigerator at home. You've got to do those in those facilities. And we have leases, very young buildings. They're 16 years old. A government building lasts 40 years. So we've got one lease, two lease renewals that are coming. So there's just consistency cash flow with an 8% dividend. We're in a fantastic place to provide durable income and an opportunity for investors. Talk about the impact of doge, if any, and budget cuts, because my sense is that was sort of a double whammy in terms of the stock price. Yeah, I mean, doge, again, the stock really got hit with doge, because people thought the government was going to cancel all these leases. These leases say United States of America on them. They are full faith and credit of the U.S. government, just like your dollar bill. So they're not going to default on these leases. But there was confusion. There's always been confusion as we're going through these transitions. So we find ourselves in a place where the stock continues to get beaten down, but the durable cash flows are there for investors. Darrell, I think it was in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, and maybe this morning there was an article about how stuff in the D.C. market on the commercial side is getting sold for, you know, 10, 20 cents on the dollar. I actually view that as bullish, that there's activity. Now we know the price and stuff is clearing. Would you view it in a similar way? Yeah, no. I mean, I think there's a lot of government buildings in Washington in particular. You know, that should be vacant. It's not really where the work is getting done. You've got, but you do have a stabilization in office in D.C., but also around the country. You know, in the office sector in real estate generally, it's been a little bit of a depression because fundamentally, you know, banks have been, you know, withdrawn their financing from many of these buildings. Capital has been scarce, and that's really depressed. You haven't seen flows going into real estate in really a couple years. But as interest rates are where they are, evaluations are at attractive level. If interest rates come down just a little bit, inflation stays away. Real estate could be a place to be, and why not be in a place with long-term leases, high credit tenants, and durable assets. That's actually what the question is going to ask you. When you look at the, everyone talks about the patent cliff, but there are a couple of refi walls that are coming up. And when you look at commercial real estate, these short-term rates were at 3, 3 and change, 4%, maybe the max. Now you're looking at considerably higher rates, and people have avoided that section. Is that a big part of why people are staying away from commercial real estate? Absolutely. I mean, you know, one of the biggest influences of real estate is interest, is really interest rates. And as you think about it, real estate investment gives you bond-like returns, but also gives you some equity opportunity. There's been so much uncertainty in our space in the government, which now there's clarity, not one of our leases was canceled during Doge, but you look in the office sector generally, and you're beginning to see people understand, you know, where that is, where evaluations are, and the biggest stress point is interest rates. So as we get a little more clarity on where we go, as Kevin Warsh comes into this new seat, maybe it's really a time where real estate could run. All right. Darrell Crate of Easterly Government Properties. Darrell, really appreciate you coming on set. Great to be with you guys. Thank you very much. We've got some vacancies around here too. You might maybe move in. Tim, your take on the group. Well, I think it's always some sense of cyclicality. It's some sense of interest rate sensitivity. It's some sense, really, of where you are seeing institutions looking for yield. I mean, this is an environment where when yield has been plentiful, or there have been opportunities to find either inefficiencies or there's been at least yield product out there, I think that's where the cycle runs. It's certainly a place, we talk about housing market, we talk about investments there, and I don't think you need to chase that stuff here. All right. Coming up, we're going to talk inflation, oil, and geopolitics. We're going to give you the read on how investors may be feeling about some of the biggest risks that still remain in the market, and what that means, what you should be doing with your money as well, more fast money. Two minutes. All right. Welcome back to Fast Money. Even before last night's Seats Fire announcement, investors feeling cautiously optimistic on the market. How do we know that? Well, we know it from Investopedia's latest reader survey conducted earlier this week. Editor-in-chief Caleb Silver is here now with more on individual investors. And I want to say that this, Caleb, good to see you. This survey was done two days ago? Friday through yesterday. Okay. So a lot changed. Busy five days. What was it? Today felt like five days in a good way. Tell us what you learned, and then also kind of give us your editor-in-chief view of how things may change if you redid it today. Yeah. Well, we've been gauging sentiment every single day, but when we asked them point-blank these 25 questions, what are you afraid of? What are you buying? What are you selling? What would you do if you had some extra money? Most of the individual investors we survey say we're still pretty optimistic. Maybe they've seen this before. They have taken some shots over the past few months, and maybe they're saying that's all you got because they assume that this might happen. What might happen today? And it might happen again. Now, maybe they're being foolish about it, but they've been right every time that they've stayed in the market and continued buying their favorite stocks. So the idea basically is that, yeah, you're afraid. It's a scary time. There's a lot of uncertainty. We don't know what's going to happen overseas. Heck, we don't know what's going to happen here. But your readers are saying you got a hodl for lack of a better term. I know it's a Bitcoin term, but for stocks, hold fast. Hodl because these are the stocks that have brought them such great gains over the past few years. But also we saw about half of our readers trying to buy the dip in their favorite stocks. Their favorite stocks, again, look like the top of the NASDAQ 100, look like the top of the S&P 500. About half of them said we took an opportunity to get some of these on discount. Caleb, what has changed in terms of their approach either to Bitcoin and some of the exotic stuff that was seemingly a place they wanted to be? Even gold and gold miners placed that plenty were exposed, but we know what was going on in the momentum and it feels like the retail investor left before the institutional did. Absolutely. When we ask our readers, where do you feel the bubbles? Where's the frothiness? They still feel it in AI stocks and they definitely still feel it in crypto. Even after a big haircut in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, maybe they never believed it and now they really don't. Gold also they feel, even with a drop, is overvalued. So they feel heaviness in a lot of those assets. Again, it's the stocks that they lean into and they've been doing it all along. So when you look at this, you've been doing this for a long time and I love this segment. Is there anything that sticks out at you where you're looking at as a 50,000 foot up technique? Is there anything that sticks out other than the resilience of the retail stock owner? Do you see anything where you say, okay, maybe there's a little bit of nuance to this? Yeah, when you look at the stocks that they've been buying lately, we like to do that every single week. We're looking at stocks like Apple, which caught a pretty big bid over the past few days, despite some of the news. Nvidia always, Microsoft, Tesla, Micron and Amazon. Then we ask them what stocks do you hold? Again, a lot of those same stocks, but then what stock would you buy today and hold for the next 10 years? Same stocks. They are not willing to turn over their portfolios even after some big sell-offs here, even after leadership has shifted to other parts of the market. But it's interesting because I know a lot of people are probably driving home there on the radio so they can't see your heads out. Here we go. Sandy's off. We got the chart. 50% of your readers said that AI-related stocks were the most likely to be overvalued. Still, even after the other half. So the other half, I assume, is staying in and the other half is like, sold to you. They may feel like they're expensive. That doesn't mean they want to sell them. That doesn't mean they wouldn't buy them if they had some extra money. We always ask them the discretionary question. What would you do with an extra 10 grand? Buy individual stocks. That's what they've been doing. That's what they intend to keep doing. And they have been through some cycles. This last little correction shocked a lot of people just with the severity of it. But they've seen these stock markets bounce back, especially over the last five years. They're not willing to totally believe in a big dip that's going to be sustained. I love that graphic. Put it back up. What would you do with an extra 10K? And the last one was CDs and my old brain immediately went to music. I'm like, oh, they're going to buy some music with that. They're going to have records. See, there we go. But I assume they mean certificates of the box. What would you be buying? Like some Kasia Gugu? No, no, no. Two shy shy in a way. Come on, you're not going to get me on this stuff. Caleb, love you, man. Thank you very much. Up next, your final trades. Cool. Quick newsletter on Anthropoc. The U.S. appeals court declining to block the Pentagon's black listing of Anthropoc. Kind of a win for the Trump administration. Defense Secretary Pete Hegzeff instituted the black list over Anthropoc's refusal to allow the military to use its clogged chatbot for surveillance. Final trade time. Tim, kick it off. Yeah, Chris talked about transports, acting well. UPS is ready to bust and move again. You know, I like where the market gives you a tell and you know what popped today? Quantum stocks, inflection, more to go. I think these banks are okay. City Group long. Take your seat. Guy? No one played the game. Nobody played the game with Tim. Played it alone. It's fine. My favorite one hit wonder is Lady in Red by Kristen Burns. Brutal. You just, a lot of people are now. You kind of Rick rolled us. Poisoned for the rest of the night. Yep, there's a Rick roll. Walmart. Walmart is your final trade. All right. Really appreciate that everybody, hey, had a great night. Thanks for watching. Mad starts right now. All 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. To view the full fast money disclaimer, please visit CNBC.com forward slash fast money disclaimer. What made you confident that you could do something that hadn't been done before? I have no fear of failure. Trailblazing women changing the game. One of my favorite pieces of advice. Think about what your boss's boss needs. Leadership can look in many, many different forms. It really does come down to just trusting yourself. Life is short and you just got to think big to accomplish big things. Julia Boorston hosts CNBC Changemakers and Power Players. New episodes every Tuesday wherever you get your podcasts.