Mini Correction or Fundamental Rethinking?… And Bitcoin Bounces Back After Plunge 2/6/26

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 Borsten 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 on tap tonight. Believe the bounce, U.S. markets surging after a rough week, but is this really a sign the sell-off is over or is there more pain to come? We'll debate that. Plus, staples close at new highs. Atlanta stock hits the skids. Bitcoin mounts a comeback after nearly dropping below a key level. And we're counting down to kickoff. How the prediction markets are gearing up for a historic amount of betting on Sunday's big game. who could be the winners and losers off the field. I'm Melissa Lee coming to you live from Studio B at the NASDAQ. I'm the best tonight. Bono and Eisen, C. Grasso, City Head of Equity Trading Strategies, Stuart Kaiser and Tim Seymour. He's on a train somewhere. He'll be here shortly, remotely. We will start with a major market rebound to close out the week. Stocks are rallying after yesterday's sell-off, with the Dow surging more than 1,200 points and closing above the 50,000 level for the first time ever. The S&P 500 and NASDAQ both jumping 2%. The small cap Russell leading the pack up three and a half percent. Some of yesterday's hardest hit areas coming back with a vengeance today. Investors scooping up software and semi-stocks. NVIDIA, Broadcom, Oracle and Palantir notching big gains. Crypto also getting a reprieve. Bitcoin shooting back towards 70K after nearly dropping below $60,000 overnight, its lowest level since October 2024. Strategy, Robinhood, Coinbase all up double digits. But are these big moves, they beg the question here, Where do we stand right now after all the S&P was down for the week still? The tech heavy Nasdaq was down 2 percent. Software stocks losing nearly 9 percent since Monday. So was this a mini correction? Was this a fundamental rethinking of market leadership? I don't know. Stuart, what do you think? Look, I think there's something we've sort of been in the process of for the last three months or so, kind of rotating out of growth into cyclicals and value, maybe fading some of the MAG7 leadership. I think what changed, frankly, is instead of that being a nice, steady trend, it accelerated. The volatility hit people, and I think it definitely caught folks by surprise. The reaction to MetaGoogle and Microsoft earnings, I think, also was attention-grabbing just because of the absolute size of the CapEx spend. I think what maybe happened a little bit later in the week was people said, wait a second, I don't like them spending $200 billion. I sure like the stocks that they're spending $200 billion on, though. And I think we kind of saw that play out as the week went on a bit. Yeah, I mean, when you look at the patterns, you always try to, as a trader, you like to see where the pattern is and where it's going. So we went from AI to memory to questioning valuation to replacement in software. And then when you look at the replacement in software, it was indiscriminate selling. They're going to replace everything now. Every software company is going to be replaced. And now you're going to see them sift through the carcasses. When you look at a service now that was dramatically hit, a sales quarter quarter, by the way, off a good quarter. So we always say when stocks don't go up off a good quarter, that tells you something when they don't go down off terrible news. It tells you something. So I think it's a rehashing. It's sifting right now with the overall market. I think it was maybe conflated with crypto. So you have crypto acting like a risk asset. And crypto, when you look at crypto and the beating that it's taken, but then you compare it to some of the software stocks, some of the software stocks are more down than crypto. So is it a risk off? Is it geopolitical? Is it really about replacement? Is it about overspend? But Stuart just talked about it, right? You have operating cash flow up around 20%. You have free cash flow negative. And you have CapEx up 60 percent. These are things that bull markets, long in the tooth bull markets, start to question. And that's what we saw this week. First off, specifically, Bono and Wynn, did you think that the bounce today was convincing? It was very heavy volume on the IGV, but it was still, you know, a 2 plus percent bounce. Do you think we're clear or do you think that there's more sort of downside pressure here? I think there's more downside pressure. I think this is impulse buying, kind of the by-the-dip nature that we've been rewarded for time and time again over the last couple of years. And frankly, I think, you know, some of the volatility that we saw both on the way up and way down encouraged people. This was not, to Stu's point earlier, when we saw the rotation, it was a bit more of an orderly redistribution of allocation. The sell-offs were intact, but you could see like an orderly step down and to the right. This felt like the beginning of capitulation. And then when you saw the VIX, you mentioned this earlier, when you saw that VIX collapse five, six points, it seemed like people had just forgotten and put it so quickly in their rear view mirror. It seemed like this acceleration to the downside was a confirmation that people needed to start to step in. But I don't think that's likely the short term bottom. For one, as Steve pointed out, there's still a lot of sorting out to do in terms of what the implications are for software. where I think people got things wrong and why they stepped in is that you cannot have this reacceleration of AI CapEx spend and not have the AI story and simultaneously have AI disrupting all the software. Part of that story has got to give. So either AI is not going to be as disruptive and the AI CapEx spin is not justified, or AI is going to be disruptive and so transformative that these CapEx numbers are going to be justified over the long run. I agree. I mean, software should have been a hedge, in theory, to the AI trade, right? AI is successful, kills software, or AI is not successful and software lives. I mean, to Bono's point, having both be true is sort of hard to justify, and yet that's what we saw today. today and this week. And the selling immediately, like when Claude released its tools for the legal profession, we saw those stocks just get slammed immediately. You know, Thomson Reuters faxed it, they got slammed. I mean, it was quite a reaction, a quick reaction. Yeah, I think, you know, if you were assuming that there was an existential risk to software from AI, for instance, I think those models early in the week said, well, this actually might not be a 10-year process. It might be a three-year process. I need to get out of all of this stuff collectively. And then to Bono and Wensky's point, you know, as the dust settles, they say, well, actually, I don't need to get out of all of it. Maybe I need to get out of half a dozen of these or 12 of these. And I think we did see some kind of recovery buying there. IGV is an interesting one. You know, you get a bid for that, but if you go down the membership list of IGV, you have Microsoft, Palantir, and then a group of stocks that you debate, you know, the survivability of AI in. So, you know, to Bono's point, I think this is like a knee jerk by a software. But if you go stock by stock, after two or three, you get a little bit uneasy within that IGV. And when you look at the tape, to your point, when things get hit immediately, AI drives algorithms now in selling the market. So as soon as something prints, it ripples through the market with anything associated to that. So it's kind of a fulfilling cycle that we go through in trading. Having said that, compare this to the April sell-off. How many days did it take to recapture? And you can't really do it because the market as a whole didn't cave the way we did in April. Taper tantrum, the tariff tantrum, right? But if you look at the stocks that were sold off dramatically, you can make it analogous to April. And it was only nine days. Now, I'm not saying they're going to recoup all of their losses. But it was nine days, and we were back above where it was. So be careful. These things are whippy both ways. Right. So we saw a huge decline in Microsoft off the bat. And then we had CapEx, that whole idea of CapEx going to an NVIDIA or a Broadcom. would you put fresh money today into a Microsoft or a Broadcom? She just gave you, would you rather? Well, I would rather both, but I'm going to play the game correctly. I'm going to play the game correctly. At this point in time, I'm going to say a Broadcom, because I do think that at some point, listen, Microsoft is in a downtrend. I love the company, but let's play the game. I'm going to choose Broadcom because I do think inference is closer than people think. I also think that while this acceleration is bullish for NVIDIA, there is going to come a point where these custom chips are the prevailing hardware that's being used. There is no way that these companies are going to continue to spend $200 billion, $185 billion per annum, when eventually the switching costs will be lower and they will be able to do this in-house. It's why you're seeing the press on TPU. It's why you're seeing Amazon look, they're behind the curve, but it's why you're seeing them try to, you know, engineer their own custom chips. And I think the beneficiary of that custom process is Broadcom. I guess the notion is, would you buy the software sell-off or do you buy the picks and shovels trade, which seem to be affirmed by the raised CapEx numbers? I mean, I would definitely be, you know, to Bono's point, a buyer of the recipients of that spending as opposed to the spending right now, both because that's what the market reaction function is. And secondarily, like the AI PowerGen theme is just something we've been very bullish on for the last 12 months. Not wanting to walk away from that. I would say about 12 months ago was DeepSeek. And we had a similar kind of shakeout there. So that might also be another way to kind of think about how this might play out. And that was the sell-off in different wrapping, right? DeepSeek was supposed to be cheaper, more efficient. And that day is coming for AI, right? It should be done cheaper and more efficient. Meanwhile, NVIDIA shares jumping more than 8% today. The biggest percentage gainer on the Dow, CEO Jensen Huang told Halftime that the tech industry's $660 billion CapEx spend is sustainable. Huang also expects AI is not going to crush software like so many fear right now. We are addressing the largest software opportunity in history. For the very first time, software is not just a tool. A tool is like Excel. Now software uses tools. So these AIs use Excel. And so I think the opportunity for this new era of software is incredible. Let's bring in Fast Money friend Gene Munster for Reaction. He's managing partner at Deepwater asset management. Gene, always great to get your take on things. Do you agree with that, that AI agents are using software? We're not thinking about this in the right way. I've got a ton of respect for Jensen, and I think that I have a little different view. Let's just play it forward that in fact we are in a new era of software where these agents are using software agents using things like Excel If that is in fact the case those agents are not going to have full software suites A typical Salesforce suite there different layers of it but call it $150, $200 a month. That's just simply not going to happen. And so Melissa, from my perspective, I think that the key here is less about these software companies being left behind. Ultimately, they're going to push hard to take their domain expertise and integrate with APIs, with these bots, that's going to happen. They'll get ahead of it. They understand. Of course, Sundar talked about this very robust comment about token usage from software companies in the December quarter. So they're moving quickly, but ultimately it comes down to how disruptive is this going to be at Bowman? I appreciate your comments earlier just about, I mean, that's one of the roots of it here. So Melissa, my sense is that we're going to have seat loss. I think that these software companies will trade dollars for dimes, a lot of them, the ones that are seat-based. Usage-based will do fine, but seat-based software companies are going to be challenged. Not to say we're going to get a bounce in the next three to six months in the software names, but if you think three years out, this headwind is not going to go away for these companies. I want to focus on Microsoft for just a second, Gene, because Microsoft is one of these companies increasing CapEx, but also feels the threat of AI to the software story. And so when you think about 365 and how many seats it has, 400 million or so, I don't know, 450 is a number. So how do you think about that in the future? I mean, it's spending in AI, but it's also fueling sort of this existential risk narrative to its own business. Yeah, they're kind of hedging at the same point. I think, of course, Azure in a great place. And I think the software side of the business will be somewhat challenged. And so I think the market's kind of reflecting that. And I would just kind of maybe take the conversation again. There's the kind of the near-term part, which is more exciting to talk about the long-term part. The center of the bullseye right now is talking about agents. That's what Jensen talked about today. That's what all the buzz is. That's what's pressuring the market. Three years from now, what we're going to be talking about is agentic tools. And what that means is that essentially that this structure around the internet effectively is going to be re-engineered. It'll work with both humans and with bots. And when you think about that, something a company like Microsoft that has relied on humans to do the work for so long, if you fast forward to this kind of re-engineering in our venture business, we see companies that are pushing this forward. When you think about that impact, then you start to get a sense that Microsoft's in a great place when it comes to Azure usage is going to go up exponentially, but in a tough place, probably when it comes to software, those seats are going to go down. I mean, the cold reality of this is we talk a lot about AI. Most people don't use these tools. The people that use these tools have a strong conviction. Look at the mega caps, how transformative this is going to be. It's going to impact, unfortunately, knowledge work, and Microsoft has exposure to that. So, Gene, when you look down, I like how you did the current and then three years out. So are you looking down the food chain, so to speak? Are you looking for smaller tech companies or are we still going to be talking about three of the seven mag seven names three years from now? So I think some of the two companies that are answer your question, I think there'll be a fracture that I'll say two companies that are in a great place. What we've learned about Claude and ClaudeBot specifically, it's had like three different name changes in the past week here, this idea of personalized AI. This is the stuff, warning, don't try it unless you're okay with some security breaches. But ultimately is that concept of what they're doing on personalized AI, having these bots work on your behalf, like Google and Apple in an incredible place. They're probably in the best place. And so, Steve, I think that we're going to see outperformance with those companies that capitalize on this personally. And I think we're going to see a lot of these some of these smaller companies that people haven't heard of become more more top of mind as we think about kind of reengineering the Internet, essentially, to be bot friendly. Gene, great to get your take. Thank you so much. Thank you. Gene Munster, Deepwater Asset Management. This goes to your point, Stu, in terms of taking a look at the IGV and the components. You got the big ones. And then you got the other ones that you don't know where they stand in this whole AI landscape. Yeah, look, I think that one of the questions I'd have for Gene as well is how much of an advantage do, let's say, a Microsoft or a Google who are already embedded in large corporate enterprises have over kind of the smaller startups that are trying to break in there? Because if you have access to a Citibank, for instance, where we have hundreds and hundreds of AI products and your machines are learning and your support staff is learning from that, how much of a head start does that give you? Yeah, I think Gene makes a great point in terms of seat-based versus usage-based. I mean, that is a transition. To its point, I do think, and the reason why I like Microsoft as well, is I do think they have taken steps to insulate themselves to an extent and can't afford to take the hit on the software side. What really is concerning, and we're talking about these other names as if they're a monolith, but essentially like these horizontal platforms that don't really have an AI offering, right, where they're not deeply embedded within your workflow. I mean, we're talking about a Microsoft, and I know you mentioned Salesforce earlier, and I think that of the people that fit into that particular group, they are the largest and probably the most well-insulated. But I do question their offering. I mean, I think that's a tough situation. Like, they are really going to have to show how, one, AI is creating internal cost reductions within their own operating leverage. And then what is the real offering there? Because aside from a CRM, I don't know how deeply embedded that really is into a workflow. And I'm not sure how real heavy the switching costs are there. Meanwhile, HIMSS and HERS shares sharply lower after hours. The FDA saying it intends to take action against non-FDA approved compounded GLP-1 drugs, specifically mentioning HIMSS. The FDA will also take steps to combat deceptive direct to consumer advertising for the drugs. Novo probably doesn't have much, by the way, of after-hours trading, especially on a Friday evening. But we did see those shares earlier this week really get hurt on this notion that there's going to be a copycat oral on the market out there because they saw last year the impact on revenues. They had to take their revenue guidance down a couple times at least last year on the back of compounded injections. Yeah, and Novo seems to be getting it from every angle, whether it's falling behind or just chosen as a second best to Lilly. But him's hers stock has been just getting butchered in the marketplace. And when you take that out of the framework and you look towards the patent cliff that's coming up, the one with the least amount of exposure, negative exposure to the patent cliff is actually Novo. It's less than 20 percent of revenue. Except semaglutide, which is loss of excess of these. Exactly. But as a whole, Lilly has above 30 percent and Merck has closer to 40 percent, 50 percent. By the way, that's an after hours chart for Nova. So we are seeing a pop here. Five point six percent. We'll continue to monitor the story as we get some more coming up. Sneaky Staples, the group hitting a fresh record high amid this week's wild trading. Should the pantry be in your portfolio? Plus, fans betting on way more than who will win the trophy at Sunday's Super Bowl game. how the rapid rise in prediction markets is changing the game for the gambling industry. Don't go anywhere fast when he's back in tune. This is Fast Money with Melissa Lee right here on CNBC. 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. Welcome back to Fast Money. Time for our move of the day. There were a lot of them out there today, but check out the XLP Consumer Staples ETF hitting a fresh record high today, notching a more than 5 percent gain on the week, making it the best performing sector in the S&P. Among the standouts today, French fry maker Lamb Weston, Target and Dollar Tree. Walmart and Coca-Cola, meantime, hitting new records. I think Coca-Cola back to its levels when it IPO'd in 1919. We're talking about seat valuations at this point. I mean, I was looking at Coke. The forward PE is like 26. Meta's forward PE is 22. So where are we on this trade, do you think? I'll be honest. The flows that we've seen through the desk the last couple of days have been hedging and fading the move in staples. Doesn't mean it's going to work, but that's the flows we've seen. I think the story here, frankly, is if you're selling winners to buy losers or you're selling growth to buy value, you are buying a lot of staples. So I do think a lot of this rotation we're seeing is actually benefited staples in a way. And then secondly, the tax refund story is also potentially incrementally beneficial for Staples as well. So you do have sort of a growth story that you can tell alongside the positioning. But a lot of the macro folks we talked to were kind of frustrated because Staples is not typically a cyclical, but it's getting kind of rallied with them. So it's a convenient thing to fade. I mean, I think the rotation probably has its days numbered only because particularly in Staples, you're not going to get the same type of margin expansion that you will. I mean, we're not even talking about high-flying growth, but just tech or information. I mean, like, you're talking about probably the most benign or one of the most benign pockets of the market. And I think that really speaks to the story of investor frustration and anxiety around the volatility that we're experiencing right now. Let's not forget that, you know, we haven't talked about it, but the metals trade, both precious and industrial metals, there's been no place to hide, right? And even if you want to talk about health care, you look at the moves that are in like your lilies and your novos. Where do you go to kind of try to batten down the hatch and preserve capital? And I think that's the engine that staples are. But in terms of that rotation continuing to have legs and new money continuing to flow in, I just don't think I think there's a limit to that. When you look at it on chart and if you pull back for the last couple of years and maybe we could put that up again, pull back to 2023. That was the real move in staples. You had mid-year 2023 ratchet up aggressively to 2024. And then for two years, it played around with $5 increments up and down. So it's really done nothing for the last two years. So I think it can go higher. And when you look at a yield versus having a 40% drawdown, you don't buy it for yield because the yield could be wiped out in one day. But if you want to sleep at night maybe you put whatever percentage you had in your crypto whatever percentage you had in your gold and you still up big in both of those by the way maybe not crypto anymore but you still up in the metals trade Take that put some into staples and you sleep a little bit better at night. There's a lot more fast money to come. Here's what's coming up next. Gearing up for the big game and what could be a major moment for the prediction markets. Just how much is on the line? How high are the stakes for all the players? Plus, Bitcoin bouncing back. The crypto testing the 60K mark, but seeming to find its footing. Is the token ready to rally from here, or is there more damage to be done? Next, you're watching Fast Money, live from the NASDAQ market site in Times Square. 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. Welcome back to Fast Money, a big rally to finish off a wild week. The Dow closing above 50,000 for the first time, 631 days after it first hit the 40K mark. The S&P climbing back into the green for the year. It and the Nasdaq both gaining more than 2%, but both down for the week. Carlisle Group seeing a nice bounce after beating earnings expectations this morning. The rally coming amid a rough start to the year for private equity stocks, especially those exposed to software. Shares of Jennifer Garner-backed organic nutrition company Once Upon a Farm, soaring nearly 17% from its IPO price in its NYSE debut. Meanwhile, for the few that don't know, the country's largest sporting event is taking place this weekend. Millions of viewers are expected to watch the Seattle Seahawks take on the New England Patriots in San Francisco for Super Bowl 60. Many are turning to the prediction markets to place bets on way more than just who they think will win it all. For more, let's bring in CNBC's Contessa Brewer. Contessa. Yeah, Melissa, the party here on Radio Row at the Super Bowl is starting to wrap up. But the party for prediction markets is really heating up. Big news from DraftKings this afternoon, which announced a deal with Crypto.com to broaden the markets it offers in predictions, including the first player-specific sports event contracts for the NFL and the NBA. I went on. They're live right now. So now you've got DraftKings and FanDuel fanatics joining the likes of Robinhood and Calci and Polymarket getting ready for the big game. Calci, for instance, has seen a lot of dramatic growth here. Super Bowl trading volumes are up almost 1,400 percent year over year in the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl. That's according to data from Piper Sandler. Look, investors are a bit skeptical here. Shares of DraftKings and FanDuel Parent Flutter are off like 40, 50 percent over the last six months. But the Fanatics head of gaming and betting told me predictions aren't cannibalizing the sportsbook. A vast majority of the demand for prediction markets in aggregate is coming from states that don't have state-regulated sports betting. For us, we only operate in states that don't have legalized sports betting. And so for us, that's our entire business. Industry analysts also say other groups with limited access to legal sportsbooks, like players who are 18 to 20 years old, or, for instance, those who are professional gamblers known as sharps because they're limited in how much they can bet on sportsbooks. Look, we're watching Calshi odds of the big game right now. The money's coming in favoring Seattle by 2-1 right now, but the sportsbooks have said in terms of the number of bets they're getting, It looks like more bets are coming in on the Patriots. Melissa? Contessa, I didn't know what Sharps was until this morning. I read the journal article, I think it was, on professional gamblers. The fact that they're moving into the predictions markets because they're not sort of blacklisted or constrained in any way, does that pretend them actually migrating and bringing their business elsewhere? So a lost part of revenue for some of these gambling sites? Well, I think what it means is maybe they're moving off of those offshore platforms like Bobata or MyBookie, where they have gone to play. If they're not limited by the predictions platforms, and let's face it, here you're not betting against the sportsbook. You're betting against another party, and there are market makers just like there are when you're trading stocks. What does that mean for the other people? There are industry critics who say, look, on the other side of that bet, you've got a bunch of rubes. the non-Sharps who are taking that action against people who know far better what they're doing. Yeah. Contessa, thanks. Enjoy the Super Bowl. Contessa Brewer. And as a reminder, CNBC and Calgary have a commercial relationship that includes customer acquisition and a minority investment. You can watch the Super Bowl, by the way, on NBC on Sunday, kickoff slated for 6.30 p.m. Eastern time. I know Tim Seymour will be watching. We found him. He took a choo-choo train. He made it to his destination. And you are in some of the gambling sites. What do you make of the declines when they're saying, you know what, we're not feeling the impact of predictions markets? Well, there's no question that I think there's absolutely an impact to the DraftKings story. Hold on one second. I think your buddy Guy Adami was trying to call me in the middle of my Zoom here. Guy, stop calling Tim. He's on TV. All right. Unbelievable. So the DraftKings, there's absolute correlation to the stock price. And when we started to see the betting markets begin to pick up some steam. What's fascinating is that you're seeing the traditional casinos begin to bounce off of, in some cases, even some uptrends, but some volatility and actually start to show that they are cheap relative to long-term EBITDA. And I'd still think the sports books in Vegas are the place most people want to be betting and where they want to go. I've been long draftings at different times over the years. I have not been long for the last six months. The valuation is still very different. And I still think you're betting on the whole concept of where you are betting on this addressable market growth. Meanwhile, as I talk about a lot, Las Vegas Sands, Marina Bay Sands, some of the properties in Southeast Asia are booming. But I think that the digital business and the online gambling businesses that essentially Las Vegas has built are undervalued. And again, these stocks win Las Vegas have had nice bounces over the last couple of weeks, and I think they're in uptrends. By the way, Guy texted me that he's sorry that he called you by accident. So that's what happened there. All right. Coming up, Bitcoin rebounding today, but still down more than 15 percent this week. As today's move, the beginnings of a real turnaround. We'll get some answers next. Missed a moment of fast? Catch us anytime on the go. Follow the Fast Money podcast. We're back right after this. Welcome back to Fast Money. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana all regaining ground, jumping double digits to end the week. Crypto proxy strategy surging more than 26 percent, but still losing almost 10 percent on the week. The CEO was on CNBC earlier today talking about Bitcoin's volatility. First of all, I don't think Bitcoin will go down to $10,000. I think it's extremely unlikely. What's happening with Bitcoin right now is the government's fully behind it. We have a Bitcoin president. We have a Bitcoin head of the SEC, head of the Treasury. We have Bitcoin head of the CFTC. So the regulatory issues that I think five years ago people worried about Bitcoin are gone. For more on where the crypto trade is going, Coindesk's David LaValle joins us now. He is the president of Indices and Data. David, great to have you with us. Hey, Melissa, great to be here. How are you doing? So Feng Li outlined all the positive regulatory aspects, the tailwind to Bitcoin. And at the same time, it also has a lot of stronger holders, in theory, institutions. It's got lots of ETFs now. So the holders have broadened. And at the same time, we're seeing a garden variety pullback, the same sort of volatility that we've seen in years past without these positive factors. Why is that? Right. Well, look, I think there's some of a possibility of buy the rumor and sell the news a little bit. We've had a tremendous windfall in everything that we've seen in the regulatory front, but we haven't gotten everything that we had anticipated with the Trump administration coming. Yes, we have a positive leader of the SEC, positive CFTC, a number of different aspects of regulatory clarity. But we don't have the legislative clarity that we would have hoped for at this point in time. And so, look, there's uncertainty in the market. The market doesn't like uncertainty. And so we've seen a little bit of a downdraft. No one's going to argue that Bitcoin isn't and crypto is not, you know, of all the last set class. But we saw a down draft in the early part of the week, but we saw a pretty significant rebound here. In fact, in the last five minutes, you know, I looked Bitcoin was up 10 and a half percent. And that was about 11.6 percent right before I came on. So things are moving around quite a bit. David, when you look at it, I always think be careful what you wish for. So we've expanded the holder base. We have a bunch of institutions that are capable of buying the ETFs now. But also having a portfolio manager take a look at his at his pad and see something's down three, four, five, 30 percent. He sells it. So you have people that use the original holder base with the hodlers. You don't have a hodler in an institutional holder base. So that's my question. Do you think we have a different class of holder that's affected the maybe the diamond hands that we used to see? Well, what I would say is that obviously the ETF coming online was a massive opportunity to open up and democratize kind of a broad new user base in the form of advised market institutions who weren't interested in ensuring they were handling their own wallets or dealing with their own custody. But the reality is that we're so early in the adoption of the advised market and the institutions and kind of moving into the ETFs. And in this downdraft, we actually haven't seen those that are holding the ETFs actually unwind positions because we've seen that the shares outstanding are maintaining a strong, strong hold. So I think those kind of hodlers or those that are holding Bitcoin are actually hanging out in the ETF now and we're seeing others that are unwinding their positions. But I think that we haven't even really seen the adoption that we anticipate to see in the advised market and with institutions. The ETF hasn't even really been made available broadly in all the wealth management platforms. And so I think we're going to see a next leg of adoption as model portfolios incorporate Bitcoin into them. And we see firms like Morgan Stanley and other very large global institutions really taking significant leg forward in adopting ETFs and Bitcoin Another dynamic that sort of different this time around David I hate that expression Is the digital asset treasury companies that is there a level of price level at which you worried that some of these digital asset treasury companies whether they hold Ethereum or Bitcoin that they will be forced to sell that there will be that pressure And that will then in turn put pressure on the entire crypto space. I don't think I would put a price target on that that would result in for selling. What I would say is that we're amidst the very beginning of what I would consider to be a 25 year change in everything kind of going on chain. And so there's a little bit of uncertainty in the market right now. We don't have perfect regulatory clarity. We don't have perfect legislative clarity. but everybody that's crypto institutions and that's traditional finance institutions figuring out exactly how this kind of tokenization trend is going to happen and how we're going to find a path forward to getting everything on chain. I think we're in the very early stages of it, and I think it's going to be an incredible opportunity to watch this change happen. David, thanks for your time. Appreciate it. David LaValle of CoinDesk. Thanks for having me. Vonwin, what did you make of the pullback here? I mean, this isn't the first time we've seen it. I mean, I think if you're going to be in this space, you've just got to understand that this is not the first 40% or 50% drawdown that we've had. This is kind of a run-of-the-mill situation. I think when you see high beta tech, when you see meme stocks, when you see crypto, when you see silver and gold, clearly these are beta trades that people are chasing. And Bitcoin, you just have to understand that it is no longer a store a value hedge. It is not. It is a beta-related asset, and that is not going to change. Now, with more legislative regulatory framework, clearly you can kind of dull some of that. But to Steve's point earlier, when you now can trade in an ETF and you no longer have to access a crypto wallet, it is going to lead to more volatility because people that perhaps are trading it for a recent trend and don't have the same level of conviction are able to get in and Now, that is not going to change. And so I don't think that for those that are like Bitcoin believers, this recent price action should change anything for you. Look, I think at least from the institutional side, I think the other question you asked was the right one, which is if there is a trigger level here, I do think for an institutional trader, you can price that as a non-zero probability. And for that reason, I do think it's kind of made that institutional bid for crypto just a little bit weaker as you get down towards these levels. Doesn't mean it can't work, but I do think that was the right question to ask. You know, when you look at October peak, the market cap of total crypto was about $5 trillion. And when you look at Bitcoin, it's about 60% of that. Everything is being cut in half now. So when you look both sides of it, people don't want to jump back into it that readily. But I think we've hit a near-term bottom in crypto right now. All right. Coming up, stopped in its track. Shares of Stellantis having one of their worst days ever after an eye-popping $28 billion charge. What it means for it and other automakers and who is best positioned in the space. More Fast Money right after this. Welcome back to Fast Money. Stellantis shares tanking after the automaker announced a $26 billion charge related to restructuring and reining in of its electric vehicle plans. The company is saying it overestimated the speed of EV adoption. Solantis also saying it will continue as one company, not sell brands or split up the business, and will cancel its dividend this year. It was the stock's worst day since 2008. There was a lot of bad stuff that I just listed in terms of pressures on the stock. Right, that you ripped through there. You know, this is the last of the three car companies that we've heard taking these huge write downs and charges. And the market was pushed to go to an EV direction that the customers or consumers were not buying yet. So if you look at very micro, the Jeep Grand Wagoneer, they're reducing the price of that car $25,000. So all of the stuff that they padded in that car because of inflation and EV and electronics is coming off the table. People want what they want. They want Jeeps. They want ICE cars. Give them what they want and then prepare on a smaller level where we're going to be 10 years out. But don't force it down consumers' throats and, more importantly, down the automakers' throats. Let them make money. Yeah. The staggering thing about this charge is that it's bigger than the charge that Ford or GM took. So it's larger. And they are also, at the same time, suspending the dividend. There's a lot of other things that they're doing that the other ones are not. We've seen the disparity in the performance, for sure. Well, I think, you know, Steve made the pun earlier. You know, when a company announces bad news and the stock still goes down, you know, that's kind of troubling. It sounds like, from what you've described, and I haven't read it specifically, but they tried to kitchen sink some of this stuff. Yeah. Yet the stock still traded off. So that definitely makes you cautious on the outlook for that kind of group at this point. We've got an update on a story that we brought you earlier this hour. HIMSS in HERS responding to the FDA action. In a statement to CNBC, the company saying HIMSS in HERS has always operated with a deep commitment to the safety and best interests of consumers and in compliance with applicable law. We have a long history of successfully working with regulators and look forward to continuing to engage with the FDA to ensure safe access to affordable health care. We still see the stock down by about 13 percent. Novo shares were up at last check. Coming up, survey says more than half of respondents to Investopedia's latest survey say precious metals are in a bubble. A deep dive into their biggest market worries next. More Fast 20 in 2. Welcome back to Fast Money. Even with the recent tech sell-off and broad market volatility, individual investors are still feeling cautiously optimistic, according to Investopedia's latest sentiment survey. Here with the findings is Investopedia Editor-in-Chief and People Inc.'s Chief Business Editor, Caleb Silver. Caleb, good to see you as always. We always like getting these readings. When was this in the field? This was in the field from Saturday until Tuesday. So it went through some of this volatility. I I held it there because I knew there was a lot of unease and the market's moving so quickly, so many headlines. But I think if I did this two weeks ago or if I did this a week from now, we'd probably get the same result. Individual investors, bold, unbowed. They are not afraid and they want to keep investing. But they do see bubbles. Where do they see bubbles? Bubbles everywhere. Bubbles in AI stocks, bubbles in the big tech stocks, bubbles in gold for the first time. Where have they been waiting for? But gold has been one of the best performing assets of the last five years. But that crept into the top five, which we found interesting yet. They're willing to continue to invest, especially in stocks, especially in stock ETFs. So also AI stocks, or would they want to keep going, even though they say well more than half? Absolutely. And if you look inside their portfolios and we ask them, what are your top 10 now and what would you buy and hold for the next 10 years? Same group of stocks, big AI stocks, big mega cap tech stocks. And now we also ask them very specifically in the next 11 months this year, what's going to perform better? NASDAQ 100, semis, gold, crypto, NASDAQ 100, semiconductor stocks. They're sticking with the home cooking. Yeah, we showed the word bubble. So NVIDIA was the biggest, which is not a surprise there. So there's that notion of picks and shovels over software. Did you capture any trepidation about the software trade that we saw in the markets? Yeah, we asked them very specifically, which sectors do you think are the most vulnerable? They still stuck with their favorite stocks. Software stocks are among their favorites. Semi stocks are among their favorites. So not veering from the plan. And the plan is done very well by them, even though we've had this big sell off really since October. So I always feel as if they're always a little bit shaded to the cautiously optimistic. What for you stuck out in this versus others that we could take? Because you do this day in and day out. Quite frankly, this is one of my favorite spots that we do. So what can we glean from this? What's your knee jerk reaction to it? Two things. Geopolitical uncertainty, top of their concerns. It's been tariffs. It's been inflation. It's been Fed independence. Geopolitical uncertainty far and above their biggest concern right now just because we don't know what's going on. And also the fact that they do feel bubbles in gold and other areas that were safe haven assets because of the rise in those prices, yet at the same time unwilling to change their investing patterns. Individual investors, hard to break the habits. Where would you put an extra 10K? That is my favorite question. What I notice here, pay down debt, was that always in the top five? It was always in the choices, but the fact that it's crept up was also interesting. You mentioned what else is interesting, the fact that you have this balance of people who are aggressive. Let's buy individual stocks. And those that say, if you gave me 10 grand, I'd cover myself right now. I'd pay down my debt. What do you think that says? If the economy is not as good as the headline numbers tell us and not everyone's feeling it equally, those that have been invested a long time in own assets, doing great. Other people are thinking, this might not last very long. I'm going to make sure I am covered. Yeah. Caleb, it is always great to see you. Thank you. Caleb Silver, Investopedia Editor-in-Chief, People, Inc. What is your title? Chief Business Editor. Chief Business Editor. Very fancy title there. Up next, Final Trades. By the way, Fast Money will be on hiatus the next two weeks as CNBC airs the Winter Olympic Games during that hour. But don't worry. If you need your Fast Fix, the traders will join Mike and me, Mike Santoli, that is, on Closing Bell Overtime for all your post-market analysis. Time now for the final trade. Is this right? We're going to Tim. Tim? Yeah, I'm here. I promise you I'm here. GM is here, too. And I think, unlike Stellantis, this is a story where there is free cash flow. Even after these markdowns, still trading six and a half times, re-rating from a cancellation of the EV business. All right. Stu? We came into the year liking domestically-facing cyclicals, so I'll just stay with the bank's trade. Work this week and hopefully continue. Bono in. Well, I'm going with waste management. I mean, in a week where all the exciting high flyers experience all types of volatility, I want something that's steady come further. Go Team USA, Palantir. Thanks for watching Fast. Mad Money starts right now. 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 Boorstin hosts CNBC Changemakers and Power Players. New episodes every Tuesday, wherever you get your podcasts.