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Locker and net-a-tech market site in the heart of Times Square. This is fast money. And here's what's on tap tonight. A win-in week for stocks ahead of what could be a pivotal weekend in the Iran War. Can this momentum continue? And out of today's inflation print, factor into that debate. And a big warning on AI. The red flag being raised to corporate executives and the implications for cybersecurity across all industries. Plus, we count down earnings from the big banks and Netflix. Taiwan sent me post record revenue and another blow for Nike. One analyst says that even at 12-year lows, this stock is still not cheap. I am Frank Holland, I'm from Melissa Lee, coming to you live from Studio B at the Nasdaq. On the desk tonight, we've got a great group. Steve Grasso, Carter Worth, Bono and Eisen, and Mike Ho. But we start with the markets posting their best weeks since November, while major indexes were near the flatline today. They pulled off massive gains since Monday. As investors kept an eye on the fragile two-week ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran, the Dow and the S&P both climbing more than 3% and the tech heavy Nasdaq leading all the gains, jumping nearly 5% and erasing all of the losses since the beginning of the Iran War. It's now riding an eight-day win streak. It's longest since August of 2023. Meanwhile, crude oil back below triple digits, WTI settling above $97 today. While Brent hovers right around $95, though both still up sharply since the start of the conflict in Iran. Gold also lowered today, though up more than 2% so far this week. All this ahead of planned talks between the U.S. and Iranian negotiators this weekend in Pakistan are Megan Kassella. She's in D.C. with more on what we can expect. Megan. Frank, so Iranian negotiators just arrived in Islamabad, Pakistan in the last hour, and we know that Vice President J.D. Vance is on his way as well. Talks are set to begin around 11 p.m. tonight. That's Eastern time, about 8 a.m. Saturday in Pakistan. And as of right now, it does appear that talks are already on shaky ground. That's after Iran's parliamentary speaker, who's leading the talks for that country, warned earlier today that two issues that Iran believed to be part of the two-week deal have yet to be implemented. That was a ceasefire in Lebanon and what he described as the release of Iran's blocked assets. The speaker wrote on social media that these two matters must be fulfilled before negotiations begin. So that suggests that the focus this weekend will need to be on litigating the terms of the ceasefire before Iran is even willing to engage on broader peace talks to end the war. And then as for the U.S. side, President Trump posted on TruthSocial after that post from the speaker saying, quote, the Iranians don't seem to realize they have no cards other than a short-term extortion of the world by using international waterways. The only reason he wrote they are alive today is to negotiate. So, Frank, he's acknowledging there the leverage that the Iranians have in the Strait of Hormuz while suggesting that the U.S. still has the upper hand, all of it suggesting there's a tough hurdle for these negotiators this weekend. Frank. All right. Our Megan Gossella live from D.C. Megan, thank you very much. We're going to trade it. Steve, I want to come over to you because you and I were spending a lot of time before the show talking about oil and the price of gas and what that means for the markets. Let's start off with these negotiations. JD Vance also saying that he doesn't want those outrageous negotiators to play the U.S., basically. So, a lot of concerns about how real the negotiations are, at least from the words that JD Vance had to say, what are your views of not only these negotiations, but the risk premium for oil and the market sentiment, we're going to get some trickles. We're not going to know exactly what's going to happen. We're going to get some trickles out of this by Monday. What's your expectation? It could be a big weekend, right? Sunday when the future is open, you're going to see a lot of Wall Street people just locked in at their seats on Sunday evening. And when you talk about the risk premium, that war premium, this is what the Fed seems to be looking through, not looking at. And what I mean by that is, if it is a transitory escapade that we're dealing with, it's not the right word, but that's the word I'm going to use, if it is a transitory condition that we're looking at with oil, remember, Frank, before we got into this altercation or war with Iran, we were in an oversupplied state and oil was heading towards probably $45 a barrel. That changed significantly. And do I think there's a war premium where the baseline for oil is higher? I do. But still, when you look at where we came from, where we went and where we settled back in, I think you could have a very productive economy with oil price that around $70 a barrel, $75 a barrel. So we are all hinging where we were hinging on the Fed and rates. Now we're hinging on Iran and the resolution. I think it's going to be an extraordinary weekend and an extraordinary week for the market. We've had a couple, a string of up days. Let's see if we can maintain them. We had a string of updates for the S&P, seven in a row before today, the NASDAQ up eight days in a row. Remember, the string of updates is just the equal and opposite of what happened. We had five weeks down in a row. And how many times? That's only 24 times in the history of the S&P, meaning you get bounces after big sell-offs, you get big sell-offs after huge surges. There's a lot of mean reverting things that go on in the market. The question is, which is the primary data point, just like the footnotes in a research paper, which is the secondary? Is the sell-off primary and the ricochet secondary? Or is the ricochet the new primary data point? I'm in the former camp. I think the primary data point is the fact that the market's deteriorated substantially. It's been happening for six months and it's not just Iran. It's things like payrolls. It's things like there's problems with software. There's problems with valuation. And so the ricochet, to my eye, feels impetuous, impulsive, and not likely to carry through. Not likely to carry through. You seem very skeptical. How does the CPI report today play? Have you watched the show before? Yeah. I have seen it. I spent some time with Carter as well at one of our programs. The CPI plays no part. That no one knows what the CPI is going to be. And inflation is hot because of oil. But the grains are at multi-year lows. It just depends. Is it rents? Is it wages? That's all academic. It's great for economists. It has nothing to do with the stock market. All right. So nothing to do with the stock market. Bought no one eyes. And I want to come over to you. Are we sure this has nothing to do with the stock market? I'm looking at the CPI report. Gasoline prices up 19%, electric up 4.5%. And I think most economists agree this is just the beginning of the shock when it comes to energy prices. Doesn't that have to be a big part of this story as we go into the market for next week? Oh, listen, I can see both sides of the argument. I think Carter makes a cogent argument. I would say that I would be a little bit hesitant to see that has nothing to do with the stock. Nothing to do with the stock market because it has everything to do with the consumer. So while you know, PCE, core PCE rather won't reflect the food prices, the energy prices, and all the inputs that the consumer is actually filling on a daily basis, you throw in housing. That's the core of what the main expenditures of a large bulk of the expenditures of your average consumer are. So as it pertains to the ability to invest, the ability to save, we've seen that savings rate draw down from 4.5% to 4% now. I mean, I do think it has something to do with it. I see what he's saying. Listen, stocks can continue to rally even when the underlying economic stimulus, if you will, are eroding or kind of plateauing. So the two things can both be true at the same time. However, when you stack on unemployment, when you stack on job openings, when you stack on layoffs that we're seeing from tech companies, when you stack on the software pullback that we've seen, I would argue that you are seeing some subtleties in the background that would suggest that there is some trouble ahead. Now, to Steve's point, I do think that it is possible that we continue to see some follow-through. I would be cautious there, but impulsivity is part of investing. Like there's a whole swath of research, rather, about irrational exuberance and how people, you know, invest emotionally. So all of those things can be true at the same time. Kind of trying to read through the tea leaves, I will say prior to the war, we were in a somewhat stagnant or deteriorating situation. And if you look at the revisions to Q4 GDP, they're telling you that the growth, which has been what we've been hanging our hat on and saying, listen, growth continues to charge ahead or at least be moderately well-paced, despite some of the hiccups that we're seeing, we're seeing more and more revisions to those numbers. So I kind of want to proceed with caution here. It seems like the market is getting a bit ahead of itself, assuming that we're having some resolution. Awe's of Fed rate cuts seem to be kind of jumping back in. And I really don't see that happening. If you parse down into the CPI report, you're seeing that some of the data were either in blackout periods when we had a shutdown, or even the beginning of the war really hasn't even, given where, when the beginning of the war started, really haven't factored and poured into the data yet. So I don't think we're going to get a clear picture for another month, two, maybe even three, as it pertains to whether this is a transitory situation, or whether or not inflation is retrenching itself in a sticky manner. Well, I don't know. That's just what I was saying. I mean, we're seeing a 19% spike in electricity, but this is just the beginning. So, Kojim point on your part, Michael, I want to go over to you. What do you expect for next week? We obviously don't know how these negotiations are going to go over the weekend. You'll be watching, we'll all be watching. But what are your expectations when it comes to sentiment next week? Yeah, I mean, I think right now the sentiment is based on the price action anyway, seems to be pretty optimistic. I'm kind of just talking about data to go along with Carter's idea. I would say under normal circumstances that $70 a barrel crude, which Steve's point would be okay for the U.S. economy. But the problem that we have here is that probably every $10 a barrel in crude is probably something like 10 basis points to global GDP. If you add to that, that you've got essentially that forces a slowing in the economy, increases inflation. And then one of the things that Bonoen mentioned was the revisions. Well, we also saw revisions in the labor markets as well. And basically we were seeing that a lot of the revisions for job creation were slowing ahead of this too. So we really need to see something formative come out of these negotiations. Or I think we could actually sort of bounce back down from where we are right now. All right. For much more on the market, it's going to bring in a very special guest, CNBC contributor Peter Bookvar, Chief Investment Officer at One Point BFG Wealth Partners. Peter, thank you for joining us. Thanks, Frank. So you're saying the market is trying to figure out is this conflict going to end? Is the straight up form was going to open up? We saw WTI have its worst week since all the way back in 2020, obviously pandemic days. Isn't that the market saying that we believe progress is going to be made? Yes. And I actually think it started at the last day of March when the market bottomed. I think there was signaling outside the White House that they were done with this and they needed to figure out a way out. And that's why I think the market fundamentally has traded better in the month of April. Now, whether that's going to be reality or not, we'll obviously see in the next couple of weeks. I'm optimistic that this will end and the straight will reopen in some fashion. But I still think that we're not going back to where we were pre-war in terms of commodity prices and the tone of the stock market. All right. You seem very confident that we've already seen the bottom back on the last day of March. What signs are you seeing that give you that confidence? And the fact that we're going to have negotiations this weekend, we have a president that is very liberal with his use of social media. And we just also have people over in the Middle East, specifically in Iran, that have some ideology that's completely against the U.S. I mean, there's a lot of different factors here. What's giving you all the confidence? Well, I'm not confident that it's the bottom, that it was just a bottom after the war. Well, you got to explain that. You're going to have another bottom? No. I'm saying that that March 30th bottom, I think, was triggered by the signaling from the White House. I don't think necessarily that's the bottom because we still have some big picture issues. We have the Mag7 stocks that are tremendously lagging. The last six months, the Mags index is down 8 percent. The S&P 500 is flat-ish. I think we're losing that leadership of these hyperscalers. We still have private credit issues. And if I'm right that we're in a commodity bull market and that 85 is the new 65 with oil, then I still think we have inflation issues and central bank inflexibility to handle things and that the long end of the oil curve is going to stay relatively elevated. All right. So you mentioned the Mag7. You mentioned big tech, some cybersecurity concerns based on this new model from Anthropic. How do you see that factoring into investor sentiment and thoughts about some of these names? That, I don't know. That to me is going to be specific to software. It's going to be specific to that particular technology. But I don't think it's going to have broad market implications. Really? I mean, there's a lot of concerns about the security of the financial system. Software stocks are selling off. Cybersecurity stocks are selling off. And it doesn't have an impact on the market. Well, no, no. Well, software has been selling, of course, because of the competition from AI. But I don't know necessarily with this particular security issue what the broader implications are. I just don't know yet. Peter, when we look at the CapEx spending and you talked about it with the hyperscalers, that's what's really driving the market. The market's been driven in the past and the recent past by technology companies. Technology companies have been driven by the CapEx spend. We had our deep seek event last year in April. And then we have the Alibaba event last week or this week with an 80% discount on inference chips. If you start to see a crack in that CapEx spend and you start to see it roll over, I've only known and you've only known in our careers commodity pricing in the chip space. We're not seeing boom bust here. We're only seeing booms. So that's my biggest fear. That's my biggest worry. I'm looking past energy. I'm looking past the Iran conflict. Maybe that's ignorant of me to do so. But I think the bigger question that this market has is, can it hold the CapEx spend? Do you have an opinion on it? So you're right. The spenders are getting punished because people are seeing the deteriorating cash flow. I mean, Meta's cash flow was 45 billion free cash flow last year, expected to go less than 10. The receivers of that spend are the ones benefiting. Not necessarily in invidia anymore. Stocks are no higher than it was last August. It's down to storage and the memory names, which yeah, going back to the 90s, it is the most cyclical part of the stock market. So there's going to be a major bust when these hyperscalers wake up and say, you know what, maybe we built one too many data centers. Maybe we need to rein this in in terms of the spend. That will happen at some point. I don't know when, but we'll get there at some point. It's not a matter of if it's a matter of when. Yeah, I've talked to some investors. They say a lot of these hyperscalers are basically building their church for Easter and there might be a reckoning coming down the line. Peter Bookvar, always great to see you. You have a great week. You too. All right. I want to bring some of you guys in this conversation. Mike Co, what do you make of some of the points that Peter Bookvar had just about commodities and commodities being in a bull market and how that impacts the broader equity market? Yeah, I mean, we've seen a couple of commodities get into a bull market and a couple of companies that are in that space benefit as well, largely because they might have a regional benefit. By way of example, consider that there's a lot of fertilizer that comes out of the Persian Gulf. Companies that operate outside of that area have lower feedstock costs, particularly in natural gas. So one of the things I think this plays into and is likely to persist for a while are companies like CF where they're going to benefit essentially for some time to come from the lower feedstock cost. So I think that's a commodity play that is seeing a bullish move and is likely to persist for some time because this is a problem that's going to take quite a while to resolve. Yes, certainly it will. I'll look at CF industries today up over 1.5%. All right. Coming up, Anthropics' latest rollout. Sparked in major security fears in Washington and on Wall Street. Just how big of a thread the latest A.I. evolution could be. We're going to talk about that next. Plus Nike limping across the finish line today after a very big downgrade. The new wristdog in this company right after this. Do not go anywhere. Fast money's back in two. If your team isn't using your CRM, it isn't working. Pipe Drive is a simple CRM. It's easy to use so you can focus on closing. Get 30 days free at PipeDrive.com forward slash audio. Breakups, that is a tricky one. That's why EE is the only major provider who'll give you up to 300 pounds to switch. You'll get full fiber, but you'll also get EE's most powerful Wi-Fi 7 as standard. So the whole house can do more like streaming that series. Watch your work calls stay crystal clear. Switch to EE today. Up to 300 pounds credited to your EE account. Verify at EE.cuddy.com slash claims new BT group customers only 62% availability terms apply. 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 Borsden hosts CNBC Changemakers and Powerplayers. New episodes every Tuesday wherever you get your podcasts. And welcome back to Fast Money. Cyber security stocks getting just crushed today. After news administration officials met with bank and tech executives to discuss cyber threats posted by Anthropics Claude Mythos model for much more on this. And what companies can do to prepare. E-Tai Maior joins us. He's the VP of threat intelligence at the Kato Networks. E-Tai, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me again. All right. How big of a threat is this potential? We've all read the reports about the Treasury Secretary and the chair of the Fed, Jerome Powell, meeting with big bank executives to talk to them about this. You're somebody who's actually in this space. How real is this threat? So first of all, it's not a threat at the moment because it's not released to the general public. What is done with this model, it was given to specific vendors, which can now test and prepare for it. But it is definitely an evolution of what we know about security. It shortens the time that it takes threat actors potentially to find vulnerabilities in software and then also shortens the time to exploit them. Not just a little bit, but completely revamping in how we need to look into software security. All right. You said there were a threat and that really kind of made my ears perk up. Because this technology, it has defensive and offensive capabilities. Why are we so focused on the offensive capabilities that we're assuming are going to come from hackers? Why can't big banks like the ones that met with the Fed chair and the head of the Treasury, why can't they also do something defensive or offensive to stop the hackers from attacking their networks? So not only can they, that's pretty much the only way to fight AI is going to be with utilizing AI to battle it and to find these vulnerabilities faster, to patch them and to prioritize them. So organizations are definitely looking into how to utilize these as defensive tools. And we've been doing this actually for years now in the industry. The main difference that we're seeing now is that AI is becoming accessible to just about anyone. If you think about it, in the past to do some of these things, you needed a lot of knowledge, a lot of capabilities, a lot of hardware. Now you're pretty much a prompt away from finding all kinds of vulnerabilities. So that is also a major shift. It's not just what can be done, but who can do it now? All right, Ita, we're very solution focused here on CNBC. I want to ask you a question. So the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, CISA, a couple years ago, I believe it was 2023, they created this initiative. It was called Secure by Design. Every company jumped on board. It was basically including cybersecurity and the design of products and also hardware. Is that a possible solution for this issue to put embed basically cybersecurity from the beginning of development? That's something we've been talking about for a very long time, moving cybersecurity to as early in the process as possible. And I think there's also been a major shift in how cybersecurity is viewed with all the major breaches that you hear about. All of a sudden, organizations started realizing, hey, cybersecurity is not a showstopper that, oh, we have to stop development and think about security. It's actually an enabler that allows you to do a lot more, a lot safer. There's also the flip side of it, by the way, and that is how threat actors are now also using, of course, AI and different capabilities. And what was once, for example, vulnerabilities that used to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in the dark web, and they were sold there. Now almost anybody, what we call the zero, zero knowledge threat actor can perform those as well. So there's an economic change also on the threat side. So, Eita, when you look at the, what we're showing them up on the screen right now, the cybersecurity stocks, who is doing it so well that they can't be replaced? What's the most valuable strategy when you look at a Palantir, or you look at a CrowdStrike or a Palo Alto? Is there someone that has a strategy that can't be replicated, can't be replaced? Because as Frank said, it sounds like the aggressor and the victim have the same technology right now, and it's a race to see who could put that patch on first, or who can get embedded first. Who's doing the best job in the space? So, of course, in terms of the attackers and defenders, once again, the model we're talking about right now, Mythos, has not been released to the general public, so threat actors don't have access to it. It doesn't mean that there aren't any other frontier models, or models developed by nation-state actors that might be using this. In terms of defense, the security industry has adopted AI for a long time, and are now working even better in accelerating the use of it, in putting it into play in order to stop some of these threats and identify them. I think it will also come down to who is a good platform to do this, because what we're going to end up with is a lot of different point solutions for AI products, or AI security, so it will be putting it all in one place that is manageable, and where you can view everything in one place and utilize these different capabilities without reaching saturation of different products and solutions. So it's going to be a platform play. All right, E-Time Ior from Kato Networks. Thank you so much for your time and your insight on this one. Have a great day. Thank you. All right, Bonaman, when I toss this over to you, is there a trade here with the idea of this disruption? The trade is, as Steve mentioned, in cybersecurity. I mean, listen, right now, you seem like the, or it seems to be that investors believe that these companies are challenged going forward and might be replaced. I would actually posit that these companies, Fortune 500 companies, down to your small SMB are likely going to be leaning into cybersecurity solutions. Trying to pick who's going to be the winner may be a bit tough now, because the pace of development is so rapid. But in terms of the space overall, I would be looking for chances to buy on pull backs and weakness or outside moves within that cybersecurity complex. Mike, I want to come over to you as well. Are you seeing opportunities to invest in some of these names, or maybe even the ETF? Bonaman just said it's going to be hard to pick the winners, but you can certainly take a broad-based approach. Yeah, I mean, I think the challenge for some of the cybersecurity companies is that they have to win every single game, whereas the bad actors only have to win once, and there's an untold number of them. I mean, when it comes to cybersecurity breaches, they do occur. I think my bigger concern about them in the future is simply that the severity and speed of them is going to increase. If I was interested in looking at a technology play that I think is probably well positioned, I'd actually look to something like Alphabet, because number one, they have a lot of expertise in AI, and number two, because they are key in terms of cloud. And I kind of want to see those two pieces combined with one another if I'm going to be a customer of one of these businesses, and if I'm worried about cybersecurity myself. So I think that going to try to pick any one of the cybersecurity companies and say, they're not going to lose at any point in the future, and we've seen what's happened to cybersecurity companies when they have lost. If there is some kind of a security breach, they tend to pay a steep price. So I think that's probably the way I would go. Yeah, to your point on Alphabet, they purchased, I believe it was Mandiant just a few years ago to beef up their cybersecurity. All right, there's a lot more fast money to come. Here's what's coming up next. Big bank buybacks? What a top analyst believes could be a major theme of earning season for the financials and where the Fed fits into the trade. Next. But first, Nike knocked out the latest downgrade suggesting the sportswear giant might be losing its edge in the market. And what it would take to rebound, you're watching fast money live from the Nasdaq market site in Times Square. We're back right after this. At two, we give you more, more outfit choices with 20 kilograms of luggage allowance as standard, more hotels built around what you love like that swim up suite, more ratio to the bottom, water parks on site, more, oh, that looks good food options from poolside snacks to ala cart dining, book on app, in store or online, you book it, to resort it. Atoll and Abt are protected, keys and C's apply selected hotels only see website for details. Breakups, that is a tricky one. That's why EE is the only major provider who give you up to 300 pounds to switch. You'll get full fiber, but you'll also get EE's most powerful Wi-Fi seven as standard. So the whole house can do more like streaming that series. Watch the work calls stay crystal clear. Switch to EE today. Up to 300 pounds credited to your EE account. Verify at EE.cuddy.co.uk slash claims new BT group customers only 62% availability terms apply. 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 Borsden hosts CNBC change makers and power players. New episodes every Tuesday wherever you get your podcasts. And welcome back to fast money stocks mixed on Friday to close out a second straight winning week across the board. The now dropping 269 points, the S&P down just slightly and the NASDAQ up a third of 1%. It was the best week of the year for all three major averages. Taiwan semi-shares jumping after chipmaker reported record first quarter revenues of more than $35 billion. That's up 35% from just a year ago. And to also up today, it's eighth straight day of gains. The longest win streak since September of 2023. The stocks gained more than 50% during that run. Meanwhile, Nike, well, it's actually sprinting in the opposite direction after Piper Sandler downgraded the sportswear stock to neutral from overweight, noting a lot of saturation in the athlete market and suggesting the company might need fresh eyes among the leadership. Nike fired as chief innovation officer this afternoon after less than a year at the company. Steve coming over to you, your view on, well, I'll pick it up with Nike, your view on Nike consumer discretionary, by the way, this week up over 5% is still negative year today. Yeah, there's been, there's been a consensus view that Nike has no fresh blood. I mean, look at who they brought in. Great person, has a lot of logistical know how, but it's not new blood that's entering the Nike story. It's not only that's the as the problem. The problem is you have a lot of non-public brands that are coming on. You have a lot of public brands that are coming on. Remember, when Nike ran the whole segment, they ran it because they outspent everyone on ad dollars and they had a digital platform. Now anyone has a social platform. Any shoe company can just be a startup and gain the attention of the public. So you have like an on cloud that is killing it. They're up in in revenue or in sales, they're up 30%. Nike's down. Lulu is actually coming back. That's a turnaround story. I don't see the end for Nike within eye shot right now. They need a lot that they really don't have a view on right now. All right, Carter, I want to come over to you. He hit on Nike. Let's talk about the chip trade. We just mentioned Taiwan, Semi and Intel. Steve was actually hitting on it. It is a cyclical sector and so far we haven't seen a downside. We've seen only see an upcycle. Yeah, I mean, it is the single best thing in the market, right? I mean, it's the only area of the market that's right now making new highs except for the Dow Jones transports. But most sectors are not and tech is certainly not. But Semi seemed to be the one area where people continued to believe right or wrong that the growth is uninterrupted. As to its cyclicality, it is certainly less cyclical than it was, right? I mean, there was no chip in your in your refrigerator 20 years ago and there was no chip in your and their chips everywhere, right? So it's a bigger part of the picture now. But still cyclical and you know, all of the stuff that is studied, booked to bill and all the things that go on, it still will have its day. It's it had a major setback during the sell off of the prior six weeks before this bounce and that's a part of it. I would reduce her trim exposure to it. Yeah, it's your point. I think the estimate GTF hitting a all time high today earlier today. All right, coming up breaking down big bank earnings that have a monster week for the financials where our next guest thinks buybacks could take center stage next. Missed a moment of fast catches any time on the go. Follow the fast money podcast. We're back right after this. All right, welcome back to fast money. All eyes on the banks at the kickoff Q1 earning season next week. Goldman Sachs starting things off on Monday. The stocks have had a solid week ahead of those reports. Citigroup trading near levels last seen back in 2008. But will the next week's results keep all this momentum going? Let's bring in Breen Capital's director of research, Chris Marinak. Chris, thank you for joining us. Thank you for it. Good to be here. All right, let's start off with this. Financials been under a bit of pressure so far this year. What are your expectations for these earnings reports? What things would be looking at? It's always just we talk about banks when we're talking about the spread between deposits and loans. What are the other stories to follow? Well, I think it was a very strong quarter from trading. Certainly the volatility in March was huge and I think will contribute positively to earnings. I think you may see some investment banking, the deals that got pushed into the second quarter, but second quarter is typically a very strong period anyways. I think the guide for the next few quarters will still be positive. The banks are enjoying the interest rate chains that occurred during the month of March. I actually think that's more of a positive. Low growth, deposit growth has been solid. We've seen a lot of liquidity in the system. And we think banks are still generating a lot of earnings in general from spread businesses, keeping costs under control. And honestly, the buybacks are still going to be a big piece of the puzzle this year. All right. So I know you're seeing you're forecasting quite a bit of buybacks. Before we get to more on your buyback thesis, I want to talk to you about private credit and the loans to non-depository financial institutions. It's something that you're watching. I was just on the Fed website looking up some data. Those loans up more than 25% year over year. And a lot of different banks have different levels of exposure. Talk to us, is that going to be a major theme when it comes to these earnings reports or at least the earnings calls from analysts? Absolutely. I think what the banks have to do is give greater transparency into NDFI reserves and what exactly they've got set aside for losses. Even if the loss expectations are low, I think we need to know that. There's been very little disclosure about reserves. Only three banks have done that. I think we'll see a lot more. I feel that that percentage growth is going to continue to be the leading indicator for the industry's growth. And whether we like it or not, NDFI is still a big percentage of what the banks are doing, particularly among the largest banks. Getting more information about where they're doing business with REITs and insurance companies, which are perceived to have less risk, where it's going into private equity, where it's not going, which sometimes is the mortgage finance channel, which has limited risk, all of that detail matters. But I think the reserve build is really what investors don't know today and they need to find more detail. Chris, when I look at a net interest margin, net interest income, I look at Wells Fargo and Wells Fargo and then Bank of America seem like the top two candidates to impress us with net interest income. Everyone was focused on net interest margin for a while there. And when you look at JP Morgan, JP Morgan does everything well. But when you look at a city group or a Wells Fargo, they're the comeback banks. Which one do you think has the best opportunity for net interest income to surprise to the upside or am I looking at it the wrong way? No, I think you're correct. I think that NII pays the bills and that matters more than margin. I think Wells would be my candidate that can surprise. I think that the balance sheet is starting to grow. That's going to help. I also think to some extent, Wells tends to be more asset sensitive. So the way that we're not cutting interest rates at the Fed, and we can see more turnover of loans being repurposed at higher yields. And I do think pricing is actually improving as we are ending the quarter beginning April. That's going to be positive for the forward look for these companies from the spread perspective. Chris, where are you on the city? Of course, it's the standout of the big four, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, of course JP Morgan. City is the one making new all-time highs. Do you think that's sustainable? It's always been the laggard or do you think something is changing? Well, it's interesting. It trades at exactly the same multiple as Bank of America today, which is ironic because it's been a long time coming for that. I think that Jane still has a lot more potential to get cost improvements, find new opportunities for revenue. I think there's a lot of optimism on the company and I suspect it will probably stay intact. All right, Chris Marinak, great to have you on. Thank you very much. I look ahead to big banks reporting next week. Mike, when I come over to you, what do you make of what Mike had to say? Chris had to say about buybacks and also the questions about those loans to non-depository financial institutions. Yeah, I mean, if you take a look at most of the money-centered banks, it looks like most of them are in runs that are fairly well intact. That's really probably a better question for Carter than it is for me. I will say that XLF, which is the ETF that tracks financials broadly, going into earnings and we've got some big ones coming up next week, it actually traded much more bullish flow today than it does on average. Calls outpacing puts, 145,000 calls versus 110,000 puts. Usually, it's the other way around and the reason it's the other way around is very frequently ETFs like this are used to hedge. We saw a big purchase, for example, of 43,000 of the 51 strike calls that expire at the end of the next week, which is basically a 1% risk that XLF could rally. If it's going to rally, it's going to rally on its biggest constituents, which are those that are going to be reporting. Bonham, I want to come over to you. A lot of volatility during this quarter. When you're looking at these banks that are reporting, are you more focused on upside opportunity for the banks that have big trading franchises or are you looking more at the consumer side of their businesses? In terms of sensitivity, well, in terms of a longer-term investment of what will give me comfort, it is going to be a money-centered bank that also has robust trading capabilities as well as M&A. You're diversifying between fees, trading income, so that gives me a little bit more comfort. In terms of what really I will be focused on, much like Chris said, I think this NDFI exposure or at least disclosure is going to be critical. Even if I'm not one to say that the end of times are coming, but I do think that that is what the market seems to have a pulse on, that seems to be the pain point that people are concerned about. Getting a better grasp on what exactly is on the books, if you look at loan growth, I believe it's 47, 50% of new loan growth are NDFI. I think people are really going to want to dig into that and understand where those loans are being made. All right, we're going to get some answers next week. Coming up, inflation soaring in March as the Iran War drives up energy prices, how that's impacting consumers and the trade-offs that they're being forced to make. Coming up right after this. As our country celebrates its 250th anniversary, CNBC spotlights the leaders, driving business, and the nation forward. I'm Noel Wallace, Chairman, President and CEO of Colgate Pomala, a 220-year-old American company that's reimagining a healthier future for all people. Since 1806, William Colgate started the business just here down the street near the New York Stock Exchange, in fact. He started as a small soap and candle business. The company became a household name in the 1800s. When we evolved the company from a candle and soap business into oil care, and then we started to expand in the early 1900s all over the world, we started to think about oil care as a way to reimagine the healthier future for all. We transformed the category by bringing the first squeezable collapsible tube, and most recently we've launched the first recyclable tube in the world. It really started with a constancy of purpose. It was about leading edge science and innovation. It was about creating a culture where our people could thrive, and it was about constantly reinventing ourselves through difficult times and challenges. We expanded around the world in the 1920s. Today, the Colgate brand is in more homes than any other brand in the world. What's allowed us to endure over 220 years is, again, this constancy of purpose. That's embedded into our culture. That's embedded into our values, and our people truly believe that and they see that they're empowered to make a difference in the world. We have grown alongside of America from the industrial revolution to the AI revolution, and I believe, and I think all Colgate people believe, our best days are ahead. Hey, welcome back to Fast Money. Consumer prices they spec'd in March as the Iran war drove up energy prices, and an exclusive CNBC survey finds Americans, they're feeling especially strapped and are making some trade-offs to navigate that crunch. CNBC, Sharon Epperson joins us right here on set with much more on this affordability survey. Sharon, what did you find out? Well, what we found out is what you've just said. Inflation surged as the Iran war pushed up gasoline and other prices. The consumer price index rose 3.3 percent year over year according to government data, led by a nearly 19 percent jump in gasoline prices, which have spiked even more during the war. Now, as a result of rising prices, this new CNBC poll finds many Americans are facing an affordability crunch that's forcing them to make some significant financial trade-offs. In our exclusive survey, half of Americans polled said they are more stressed financially than a year ago. 70 percent said they're just managing, struggling or falling behind. And 54 percent are pessimistic about the U.S. economy as they face rising prices for groceries and transportation. Now, most of those polled said they've stopped buying or they're cutting back on dining out and delivery apps, brand name and premium groceries, as well as clothing. And to make ends meet, many admitted they are dipping into savings to cover daily expenses, using a credit card for groceries and household essentials, and taking on extra work, a side hustle or second job, to increase their income. CNBC's poll of nearly 3,500 adults in the U.S. was conducted by SurveyMonkey from March 23 to 25, about one month after the Iran war started. Most economists say to expect further increases in gas prices due to the war. And given the spike that we've seen in diesel fuel, they say it's only a matter of time before that affects food prices, too, increasing not only the cost of living, but the cost of survival for many Americans. For strategies on managing your money in this affordability crunch, use the QR code on the screen to sign up for my Money101 newsletter or go to cbc.com slash Money101. A lot of readers are telling me, you know, that they're facing this, Frank, and they need help and they're trying to figure out what strategies are going to be best just so they can survive. Yeah, I mean, it makes sense. You want to cut back on eating out and maybe higher in groceries. Did people give you any insight on the summer? Did they plan to cut back on vacations or travel? Well, right now, they're getting those tax refund checks. They're using that money to offset the gas prices. They're not thinking about and planning ahead, which you should be doing if you want to travel this summer to do it now to lock in prices before they go up even higher. But they're not really able to have that kind of discretionary income. A lot of people. So they're kind of just trying to manage the day to day. Yeah, a lot of questions about what this is going to mean for the consumer. If this conflict continues, obviously we're in a two-week ceasefire right now, but looking at gas prices still elevated. Anybody that drives here, I think we all drive. You know how expensive it is. But that's why we got to read the Money101 newsletter. That's why you got to run. Did you sign up? Do you sign up? Absolutely signed up. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Good to be here. Good to be here. All right, coming up on Fast Money, it's not just the big banks. Netflix also reporting earnings next week. We're going to lay out an options trade on the action next. More Fast coming up in two. And welcome back to Fast Money. Netflix joining the big banks on the earnings marquee next week. And with Cohen Carter on the desk tonight, we thought it'd be a perfect time for some good old-fashioned options action. Carter Worth is at the Telestrator with all the technicals. Carter, take it away. You bet. Let's get right to it. Four charts, always the same timeframe. Let's annotate them. This is one of the risks here that we are setting up for that, which would of course be that, if and as resolved. Let's look at the next chart. Same time frame again. And let's put in the moving average. What we know is that in an uptrend, when you come down to your moving average, you respond to it and bounce, respond to it and bounce, respond to it and bounce, respond to it and bounce. But once you're underneath it and you rally to it, you've rallied to a difficult level. And that is the risk that you hit your head there. Let's go to the next one. What we have is now with very clear circles. And so again, I'm making the case that just as you in an uptrend bounce off a rising moving average, once you're in a downtrend, you have the risk that it hits its head here. And then finally, last chart, same timeframe again, we've already bounced some 37%. We've gone right back to a 50% retracement level. That's a tough spot. I want to fade this going into earnings. All right. Carter, laid out the technicals. Mike, I want to come over to you. What's the trade here? Yeah, I mean, I like the fundamental story. Obviously, the best in the streaming space and they're trading probably 26, 27 times next year's earnings with probably a 21% adjusted EPS growth rate. But when you combine the things that Carter just talked about with, of course, the concerns that we have about the negotiations ongoing, and if the markets roll over, it's going to take this one with it. And the fact that the stock actually traded lower after the last three earnings results, options actually look cheap right now, implying about a 6% move going into the print. I think if you own it, you can hedge it. I was looking to the May month ending, 190 strike put spread. That would cost about $2.75. At the current stock price, you're risking about 2.5% of the stock price if you want to make either a bearish bet or if you want to hedge your longs. So I think this is a very cost effective way to either play for the downside move or to hedge against a bad one. All right. Thank you so much, Carter. Mike, Steve, I'm going to give you one more word on this. Yeah. So Netflix, the whole idea that Netflix got to the top in streaming, they did it on their own. So that whole deal with Warner Brothers where they missed it, it was a blessing in disguise. Stock bottomed out, starts to run a little bit higher here. It actually is the cheapest streaming play that you can buy on an hourly basis. I think that when you match it up against its opponents, this is the one that you stick with. This is the leader in the group. I like Carter's technicals on the name, but I think it still could have a little more room to the upside. Buy on an hourly basis. What do you mean? Yeah. So if you compare it, like if you go to, how much do you charge per month to watch it? How much do you streaming hours or watch? If you go to a movie, how much does the movie cost? My Lord. Right. So the difference is huge. All right. We're going to leave it there. Coming up next, we have your final of trades. You don't want to miss it. It is time for final of trades. Let's go around the horn. Mike, you're up first. Yeah. Cost conscious consumers eat out less and they look for less expensive gas and cruising bulk instead. And that benefits membership scores like BJ's wholesale. Final one. Despite recent volatility, AQUI has failed to outperform US domestic. I would fade AQUI by US domestic. Carter, sell XLE, sell oil. Steve, last one. SL green, the dislocation between the fundamentals and the stock price are very wide. All right. Thank you for watching Fast Money, mad money. It is starting 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 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 Powerplayers. New episodes every Tuesday, wherever you get your podcasts.
