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Consumer Reports does not endorse or promote any product. Live from the NASDAQ markets in the heart of New York City's Times Square, this is fast money. Here's what's on tap tonight. Software in the crosshairs. Some of the biggest names in the space under pressure as earnings season is about to kick off. What we should expect to hear in these reports and what it says about investments in the space and a Danaher drop. Shares the medical device maker seeing their worst day in 25 years. The reason for the plunge and what is in store for the stock right now. Plus, intel gets back in rally mode. What options traders are saying about the bounce in bitcoin and time to buy. Philip Morris the chart. Matt, investors getting bullish on the tobacco trade. What he is seeing in the technicals right now. I'm Melissa Lee, come to you live from Studio B at the nasdaq. On the desk tonight, Carter Braxton Worth, Steve Grasso, Dan Nathan and Guy Adami. We start off with the latest bugs in the software trade as that segment of the tech sector gets ready to report earnings. ServiceNow kicks things off tomorrow, down 2.5% today having lost a third of its value already this year. IBM also out tomorrow. It hasn't recouped any of its losses since its warning last week. And Microsoft reports next Wednesday it's the worst performing Stock in the magazine 7 so far this year. Elsewhere in the space, Salesforce and Adobe down today after Morgan Stanley cut its ratings on both stocks. Analysts are citing execution risk and slow organic growth in their agentic efforts. And take a look at Oracle shares rebounding today after hitting more than two year lows yesterday. But credit risk also on the rise. Five year CDS spreads lowest, excuse me, widest since the financial crisis. So can this quarter's earnings results Relieve any pressure on the space or is there even more pain to come? Guy, what do you say?

Guy Adami

I hope so, because obviously the pain has been felt if you're a shareholder. And there's been, I mean today you mentioned Oracle bounce. It's a pretty meaningless bounce in the context of what's going on, but at least it did bounce. And I think earnings is the key to this. More important than the earnings I think is to be some of the dialog in the aftermath of earnings, what the guidance is and to the extent that they have any visibility whatsoever what that is. And more importantly than all those things, what's the spend going to look like and what the balance sheet looks like and do they need to sort of tap in to the debt markets? Which is obviously a concern for a lot of people trading these names.

Melissa Lee

I mean what IBM said last week about customers shifting their spending away from software and toward hardware, that just sort of underscores all of the fear surrounding the software sector for a very long time.

Dan Nathan

Yeah, and a lot of these SaaS names got really hit hard right, with that IBM print and you know, it was kind of a shoot first, ask questions later. And I don't think that's something that software investors are not too unfamiliar with. If you just look at the, like ServiceNow for instance, down 60% from those all time highs made about a year and a half ago. I look at the numbers here and I look at the expectations. Let's say the ServiceNow, you know, the office market is pricing about a 10% move in either direction. And right now, you know, consensus is calling for 19% earnings growth, about 22% sales growth. This company has 79% gross margins. And so I just say to myself, if this company is able to kind of come in line and kind of just endorse consensus, I can't see how these stocks are going down now. I think, you know, obviously the narrative is going to be really important. You know, the CRM downgrade for Morgan Stanley I think kind of spells it all out for all intents and purposes is like the company is growing that agent force off a low base and it's growing kind of fast. But I think the term they use hasn't really inflected yet. Right. And how much time do they have to kind of get that? Right? So to me, I think the ServiceNow is a great one to get this early in the cycle.

Melissa Lee

I mean specifically for CRM, it's, it's, they're investing in this new business so they're trying to disrupt Themselves, it's not happening fast enough in the meant time. Their old legacy businesses are still a huge drag. And so it's, it's sort of not enough to sort of offset.

Steve Grasso

Yeah, when you look at service, when you look at service now, that's a different damn point. Now the growth rate, they also have a buyback. They also have free cash flow margins 40 to 50%. We haven't heard that in any name recently, have we? And then when you look at CRM, it's different. Competition's rising, growth is slowing. So you have a totally. And they're more of a billboard where ServiceNow is the brain. So I look at them in different ways. Microsoft is treated like a utility, but the price sucks. Price action is terrible. When you look at it though, it's got, it's traded lower year to date than most of its counterparts. But when you look at it against a CRM or a ServiceNow, it looks excellent. Right. So you have to judge these things. But I think that the damage has been done in ServiceNow. I think they're actually a buy now.

Melissa Lee

Carter Braxton Worth, what do you see in the software space?

Carter Braxton Worth

Well, in principle, let's talk about the two that we're talking about. They are just an established downtrends and CRM and Microsoft's a little different, more defensive. But I don't think one of these is interesting. Not, not Salesforce, not Microsoft. I would just resist the temptation to think it's over or it's cheap. A lot of times after a great run up and then an equally great wipeout, which is the circumstance at hand for these name, you get to a dull period where you just become a pair of tools. And guess what? That's not a very good hand.

Melissa Lee

Hmm. So a pair of twos, Dan, you just said that they look pretty good to you.

Dan Nathan

No, I mean they're possibly buying me. I'm talking more about the potential for the fundamentals to kind of, you know, get so bad that maybe that just kind of discounts a little bit of where these stocks are. And I just think the sentiment is really poor. And you know, when you look at the salesforce, for instance, I mean, you're finally getting around to downgrading that stock, right. And you're lowering that price target by 35%. And you know, the writing's been on the wall for fundamentals. I mean, Mark Benioff comes on, you know, CNBC after every quarter and he talks a great game about how they've been positioning themselves to kind of take care of this agentic sort of new, I guess, world order, but they haven't been demonstrating it, you know, at all. So I just look at what's going on there and I say to myself, okay, at some point they might get it right. But to your point about disrupting themselves, that might be a really, really difficult process. The last thing I'll just say about all these SAS names, you keep hearing about this, where the agents are going to have their most impact in the near term is going to be in small, medium business, right? Especially businesses, that sort of thing. But the switching costs for a lot of big companies to kind of rip out ServiceNow and Salesforce, it's big right now. And so, like, at the end of the day, these companies are probably going to keep these numbers around for long enough, but investors are going to continue to discount it.

Guy Adami

I think it was last quarter sales. I think it was last quarter they announced a $50 billion stock buyback for them is significant. It was probably a third of the market cap at the time. And I thought, incorrectly, in retrospect, that the stock would bounce significantly on that. And it did for a couple of days. But we're actually lower now than when that announcement was. And now if you want to go back and look for support, and I'm not saying it's going to get there, I mean, valuation, you can make a very compelling case, but that's never a timing mechanism. It's got to go all the way back to, I think, December of 2022, and this was like $125 stock. And that's the ultimate low of this thing. And I got to tell you something, if they say things that are going to disappoint or they give any a hint of weak guidance, I mean, that's where we're headed. Mel.

Melissa Lee

They announced the stock buyback then? Guy? Yeah, yeah. It'll be interesting to see how much stock they actually bought. You're right about during the quarter. And if they bought not much, that may speak volumes in and of itself.

Steve Grasso

I just think when you look at the tech space, it's like you're moving deck chairs around, right? So you have the semis, and then the semis ran. Then you have this software, you sold them off. So I think it's. I think people are just rotating in and out now. It's software's time, plain and simple.

Melissa Lee

I mean, it's been a churn. And Carter, you point this out in your note today. It's been a churn for the past eight weeks, we've basically Gone nowhere despite all the volatility that we see day to day.

Carter Braxton Worth

I mean that's exactly right. But what's important is what was the precursor to the churn, right, which was a very aggressive move off of the sort of Iran US initial sell off, right. The markets dropped 10% right to the end of the quarter March 30th and then April and May were straight up, right? S and P up 20, Nasdaq up 30 and then now this very tight range bound trading, which is perfectly normative, right, as called consolidation. But what is not known. And sometimes you get tells, but there are no tells here how it then gets resolved. We've been dead flat eight weeks after the huge move of the preceding two months and it will. We are likely that resolves this standoff and it's as much a 5050 jump ball coin toss as I think one will see. Very rare.

Melissa Lee

Yeah, we haven't mentioned, I mean we're talking about software but obviously Alphabet reports tomorrow. And so to the extent that they spend on Capex, maybe that detracts from the software trade because the thinking is you spend on hardware and then you know, you're not spending on other things.

Dan Nathan

Yeah, I think the thing we spend a lot of time talking about YouTube, we talk about the search business, we talk about TPU's, we talk about GCP. Right. And Gemini is obviously a big part of that. That's going to be the secret sauce going forward. But when you think about how Google might distribute, I guess Gemini across its kind of suite of like productiv tools and the like, that's the thing that is probably going to be coming at Microsoft to some degree because the integration that you have across that whole vertical stack is something that I think investors kind of got around to definitely mid last year when Google started selling their TPUs and probably earlier than that, you know, to some of their competitors and the like. And so I just think Google is probably continually the best name to kind of play this. You know, Microsoft's probably the worst name. That is probably the second to worst, you know, that sort of thing. Amazon, to me, I just don't like really throw it in there, but I think Google's opportunity to monetize their investments is probably the best out of all the major hyperscalers.

Melissa Lee

Yeah, you like Microsoft here?

Guy Adami

I want to. I mean there are a lot of reasons to like Microsoft, probably as cheap as it's been in a decade, if not longer than that. I mean that's not a reason to buy something either. But get any inflection in terms of Microsoft, in terms of their cloud. And yeah, I think it has at least a 15 to 20% move over the course of a couple of days. The problem is, I mean this stock has been a non performer now going on almost a year. I think it was a fall last year when it made its all time high.

Steve Grasso

Yeah, I mean I think you just have to look for cloud growth. Everyone's been throwing this one out but when you look at it on a chart, Carter could read it on a back to April 2025. So we're not talking that that long but it's bounced from these levels historically pretty consistently and it's off the, it's off the lows, but it should move higher.

Melissa Lee

All right, let's get to bitcoin now bouncing back above $66,000 today. The crypto has gained almost 13% already this month. And the move is options traders betting more gains are ahead. Our Oliver Ranick is at the CBO in Chicago with more Oliver.

Dan Nathan

Hey Melissa. It's been a brutal year for crypto with bitcoin lagging stocks by the widest

Steve Grasso

margin in seven years. But hope springs eternal if you put

Dan Nathan

credence in options flows around crypto related stocks. We saw 2 to 1 call to put buying ratios in strategy ibit and

Steve Grasso

even more in Coinbase where call buying

Dan Nathan

almost tripled puts and Options volume was 30% higher than the 30 day average. The stock rallied 10% today and found technical support on a three year line. As CEO Brian Armstrong told CNBC he's optimistic that the crypto clarity bill will get passed in DC. Bitcoin is also quietly up 7% the past five sessions while the S&P 500 is roughly flat. And lastly, also arguably a good sign, call options Robinhood were also surging. Four times as many were bought than puts as that stock also rallied 7%.

Jared Holz

Melissa.

Melissa Lee

Oliver, thanks. Oliver Renick at CBO. Carter, what do you see in the charts for bitcoin?

Carter Braxton Worth

Yeah, I would put this as the sort of dull. Of course you get big bounces. You can get out of coin after something has dropped as much as it has. But it feels like it's all still happening at a new lower level where it's going to be mired longer term.

Melissa Lee

Dan, your thoughts?

Dan Nathan

Yeah, you know, Guy and I, we like to play games all day, don't we? We sit around all day kind of say wow. You and I were talking about, we were talking about the bitcoin, we were talking about some of these names you saw like Coinbase and some of these names are all trading really high. And you know, we were playing the. Would you rather. That's what we were playing. You know what I mean? And I said, I'd rather, I'd rather some of these names, some of these exchanges, you know, I was like, I bumped into a good friend of ours, Tom Farley. Anything to say about Bullish?

Steve Grasso

Yes, he is bullish.

Dan Nathan

I mean he's bullish on the crypto. So he's the CEO of this company, Bullish. It's an institutional trading platform and they have an exchange, a lot of different things trade on it as it relates to crypto. And you know, he said the word tokenization like five times to me. And you know, I am somewhat skeptical about the need for that. But when you listen to somebody who's building a platform around it, right, and you say to yourself, okay, it's about stablecoins too, I get it. You know, they just bought a company, I think he mentioned that, you know, is going to be in that tokenization space. They own CoinDesk, which is like the big media sort of platform. They're 25% short interest. I just look at this thing and it was trading at all time low yesterday. So I think there's names like that. I have no involvement in one way or another, but I think it makes sense to look at some of these names as opposed to Bitcoin because I think you're to get a lot more bang for your buck.

Steve Grasso

Clarity act is what made it, but made the whole space jump to. They need just that clarity. What's, what's a, an equity, what's a digital asset? Who's going to regulate? That's what these companies were waiting for. That's what these companies are hoping to get. So I think there's an underlying bid. But to Carter's point, Bitcoin looks sick lately, right? There's still just lower highs in the, in the, in the coin and you need to prove itself before you really dive in.

Melissa Lee

And these, I mean to dance point, you don't need to be invested in bitcoin in order to believe in the applications of blockchain and some of the other, like tokenization for instance, and tokenization. I think there are a lot of skeptics on tokenizing stocks, etc. But if you want 24, 7 trading, I don't necessarily want that. But if one does, then tokenization is probably the way and so do you invest in that way as opposed to the crypto?

Guy Adami

I think that's. Listen, first of all Tom Farley's got many things going for him. Two of them specifically, as Steve mentioned, extraordinarily handsome man number two. Is that George here?

Melissa Lee

He'd be blushing.

Steve Grasso

No, he's heard. He's heard it many times.

Guy Adami

I think bullish is an interesting way to play it. Now, listen, short interest is something that, you know, you get any glimmer of good news and that stock rallies 15 or 20% in terms of Coinbase. Quickly report on the 30th of July. Bitcoin goes sideways here. And the fact that is. Oliver just talked about that. We held that 144 level going back three years a number of times now suggest that there's more. I think Steam left in this train. I think Coinbase goes higher in earnings.

Melissa Lee

Carter, do the exchanges on which you would trade or the platforms on which you would trade Bitcoin and the other cryptos look better than bitcoin itself?

Carter Braxton Worth

Well, for instance, I mean, what is that one? Just as a. Yeah, well, in particular, Hood has, I think, obviously not just bitcoin going for it, but it was really damaged. It's bounced more substantially to the point where the pattern is repaired. I would be long hood.

Melissa Lee

I mean, Hood is interesting. We got a glimpse from Interactive Brokers after the Bell Schwab today saying retail trading activity was off the charts. Margin borrowing was at record highs we saw in the month of June. So to Carter's point about Robinhood not being just crypto, maybe also benefiting from things like predictions markets as well as

Guy Adami

equity trading, 100%, they look better, well positioned for that. I mean, again, a lot of these stocks have been under considerable pressure now for quite some time. So relief rallies, as Tim says when he's here, when things just need to go from very bad to bad to get some of the big moves. And I'm not suggesting we're at the very bad level, but it was clearly bad. Now we're starting to inflect. So I agree with you there.

Dan Nathan

You know, it's astounding what you're seeing year over year and actually the trading growth one way or another. And you know, you just had on the closing Bell a guy from BlackRock talking about the IQQ. This is an ETF that's trading at $24 relative to the QQQ, that's trading at $700. Can you imagine if all of these stocks that are trading 6, 7, $800, a lot of these, you know, we got $1,000 on Western Digital and Sandgate. If those companies start to split the Trading activity per share is going to go crazy. Options volumes are going to go crazy. And that should be an absolute like orgy for these companies.

Steve Grasso

And you know, one last thing on, on these, on these markets, we were just showing interactive brokers on the screen. This is a name that we probably don't talk about enough. We talk about Robinhood, we talk about Coinbase. They're in everything. They're in prediction markets, they're in every. They were really early. They're up 47% this year and the chart still looks amazing. There's no peaks and valleys the way you get in the other ones. Maybe take a look at that one.

Melissa Lee

Coming up, critical Intel. Some major announcements had shares surging today. What they mean ahead of Thursday's results and whether this turnaround has any traction. Plus a reckoning for social media. More on the landmark ban in France and the impact of the stocks at home. Don't go anywhere. Fast Money's back in two.

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This is Fast Money with Melissa Lee right here on cnbc.

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Melissa Lee

Welcome back to Fast Money. Intel shares popping almost 9% today after the chipmaker announced more plans to cut jobs and said it locked in a marquee customer for it, its Foundry services. Intel reports earnings on Thursday. CNBC's Christina Parts Nebulous has been following the story.

Christina Parts Nebulous

Christina well, what intel is doing is it's trying to show it can cut costs while building a new business. Another round of layoffs in data center and AI group as CEO Liputan continues to streamline the company. Intel says the cuts won't affect its product roadmaps and also didn't provide an actual number. But today announced a new Foundry partnership with cybersecurity company Fortinet. Fortnite is going to use intel to build its next generation security chips that won't use Intel's most advanced technology but will be built in an American fab by an American company offering kind of a level of supply chain security that remains difficult to find here in the United States. And that's a theme intel has been leaning into as it expands beyond defense work into commercial customers looking for US Options. Intel's biggest confirmed Foundry customer is still itself, although the US Government also uses its fabs for defense chips.

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Chips.

Christina Parts Nebulous

Fortnet now joins a growing list of commercial companies working with intel as it tries to build a contract chip making business. The companies didn't disclose financial terms, didn't disclose production timelines or volumes, so investors still can't measure the deal's revenue impact. But it's another step, I guess, as intel tries to prove its foundry can win customers beyond its own chip designs.

Melissa Lee

Seems odd that it's doing this like a couple of days before its earnings release. And by the way, we're not going to give any sort of details as to what this deal is.

Christina Parts Nebulous

And I push back. I had a bunch of questions I'm asking, why don't you have any Financial Times? Maybe they're going to be revealing more. But this also falls into the time frame where the CEO said Q3, Q4, there's going to be multiple customer announcements. So perhaps this is getting the ball rolling and maybe this is the smallest of all of them.

Guy Adami

That's fair. Christina always does a great job and that is the pushback. Why would you, why wouldn't just wait until the 23rd after the bell to make all these announcements at once? It seems logical to me. So listen, let's wait and see what they say. I'll tell you, I think hsbc, I think today or yesterday raised their price target from 100 to 200. So obviously a lot of people are getting excited. I think the average price Target for the stocks, 113. There is no valuation cushion whatsoever. But people are excited about what's going on in Intel.

Steve Grasso

I mean, this is a stock that came from $20, and even if it pulls back to $60, you're still a triple from where it started then. No, no one's going to. No one's going to be helpful. I wasn't at 20, but I sold it at 40. I thought I had a grand slam. So I left a lot of money on the table here. I would not be a buyer of it at these levels. But the market does love the efficiency at this level where we're talking about absurd capex everywhere else, but yet this one, they like the efficiency.

Dan Nathan

You know, it's looking at Fortnite probably, I don't know much about this company. I just looked up they're going to have $8 billion in sales this year. And you say to yourself, all right, so what percentage of those sales are really that business that they're doing? Is this chip that' to be manufactured? It's going to be K bars. You said small. You know what I mean? Like, it's not going to be.

Christina Parts Nebulous

It's exclusive, though. I didn't have that in my report, but I reached out to Fortnite. They said it's an exclusive contract, but I'm predicting it's.

Dan Nathan

Yeah, but what does it say that companies are willing to give them a shot on manufacturing but not use their technology. Right. And manufacturing chips is a hard thing. And that's one of the reasons why Taiwan Semi has this kind of choke hold on it, you know, so it'll be interesting to see like how some of these things get done over time. It's going to take a little bit to kind of get a sense for that.

Christina Parts Nebulous

To your point, though, that's why Google said that they're only collaborating with Intel. That's why Tariff AB is working with intel but not actually doing any chips. That's why Apple won't confirm, despite what President Trump is saying, right. That Apple is going to become a customer. Customer to Intel.

Melissa Lee

So there's a deal here with no revenue value attached to it. No value attached to it.

Christina Parts Nebulous

Carter, what is the signs of today, though, in this market?

Melissa Lee

I guess so. Percent. It's worth something. Carter, what do you see in the charts?

Carter Braxton Worth

Well, I mean, there's a common circumstance. It's not idiosyncratic. Of course, intel, they all have these huge moves. From the early April lows, the stocks itself doubled. Right. Literally April 2, double 7,000, essentially 14,000 plus. And now you've got various forms and shades of corrections, drawdowns. Some are down 40, some are down 50. The stocks itself down 25%. My hunch is that it's too young a move. Only 15, 16 sessions. 25%. It's not corrective enough. I would not be buying into this dip.

Melissa Lee

All right, Christina, thank you. Thanks.

Guy Adami

When you say maybe now I understand why you say you collaborate with me and you don't work with me because you don't want it. Right now it all starts to make sense.

Melissa Lee

Melissa, we collaborate.

Guy Adami

Well, she doesn't want to. She's not all in. She's like, you know, we're just collaborating.

Melissa Lee

Arm's length.

Guy Adami

Arm's length. You follow now?

Christina Parts Nebulous

No, I must have missed something earlier in the show.

Melissa Lee

You say intel and Google are collaborating. Terraform collaborating. I'm just not like a firm.

Christina Parts Nebulous

Didn't get that connection either.

Guy Adami

I speak to an audience of like

Melissa Lee

three people every evening, not including himself. Coming up, France, taking a big step to rein in social media usage among children. The details and the impact next. Plus, a health care checkup inside one Medical device giants post earnings plunge and the stocks one top strategist says are healthy enough to buy. You're watching Fast Money live from the NASDAQ markets at in Times Square, back right after this.

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Melissa Lee

welcome back to Fast Money. French lawmakers adopting sweeping legislation that bans social media usage for children under 15. Let's get to Julia Borson for the details. Julia?

Julia Boorstin

Melissa, France is the first country in the European Union to pass a law like this. This law also bans the use of cell phones in high schools, expanding a ban that already exists in primary and middle schools in France. Now, this law, approved by both houses of France's parliament, could go into effect as soon as September for the start of the fren year, but it does still need to be reviewed. This is the latest in a wave of action to limit teen access to social media, starting with Australia in December, which became the first country to ban kids under 16 from using social media apps, followed by Britain and Canada which passed similar restrictions last month. The EU is now expected to introduce similar measures for across the EU in September. Now, Meta and TikTok have not responded to requests for comment. SNAP directed us to a blog post from snap's head of law enforcement and safety policy about why social media bans may create new risks instead of mitigating existing ones. Now, there are plenty of questions when it comes to these types of bans, about enforcement and also consequences for the platforms if they don't comply. And these global restrictions come as social media platforms face lawsuits here in the US around allegedly addictive design. So, Melissa, challenges both at home and abroad.

Melissa Lee

Yeah. Any thinking, Julia, that this sort of ban could be adopted here? I mean, are any, you know, local governments considering state governments?

Julia Boorstin

Well, look, there's a lot of support for legislation when it comes to social media and questions about how to handle teen access to social media. What's been interesting is because though there has been a lot of bipartisan support for social media restrictions because of Section 230 there, really, which protects social media from the content shared on the platform. The energy here has really shifted to these lawsuits because these lawsuits are about litigating how the apps are designed. It's not about the content shared on them. It's about whether the app design themselves, app design itself is addictive, whether things like Infinite scroll lends itself to addiction. So we had one big lawsuit here in the U.S. i'm sorry, here in California there is another state, a set of lawsuits that are coming, including one in Northern California later this summer. So we're seeing really what's a wave of lawsuits that have been compared to the crackdown on big tobacco a couple decades ago. So I think it's the lawsuits that are really going to determine how things are managed here in the US Rather than a nationwide band because of the issues we've seen with this type of legislation getting passed.

Melissa Lee

Julia, thank you. Julia Boorstin, what do you think?

Dan Nathan

Sadly, I mean, the genie is out of the bottle. We all have kids, and it's just one of these situations where what is the enforcement mechanism, you know, as it relates to individuals and, you know, whether they're going to find a way to get on these platforms. And so it is sad. We all know that they've hacked our brains for all intents and purposes, and it's really detrimental to kids. Kids, you know, below the age of, what, 16, you know, that sort of thing. And I just feel like, you know, if you're selling off these stocks because of the fear of that, it's probably not the best reason to do so right now.

Steve Grasso

Yeah, I agree with that. And I do believe the infinite scroll, it affects all of us. You go down that rabbit hole and you just keep going. And I wish we couldn't, but as Dan said, it's really hard to go backwards and put that genie back in the bottle.

Melissa Lee

You are smile. Infinite scroll.

Guy Adami

Does that mean you can scroll infinitely

Melissa Lee

for the next story, the next video, the next, the next, the next puppy video?

Guy Adami

What have we done?

Dan Nathan

You know, you know who doesn't scroll?

Guy Adami

Guy Adami.

Dan Nathan

No.

Sharon Epperson

You do.

Guy Adami

I don't.

Dan Nathan

You scroll a little bit on the Twitter and stuff like that.

Melissa Lee

Sure you do. You go down rabbit holes.

Dan Nathan

I don't have a single social account

Guy Adami

Sandy just said in my ear. Sure I do.

Dan Nathan

It's the, it's the biggest unlock that, that you could just possibly imagine. You don't even look at it.

Guy Adami

I'm.

Dan Nathan

I don't have anything on my thing. Yeah, just get back.

Guy Adami

Maybe we should all listen. This is not. They're not an endorser of the show, but Barnes and Noble is a lovely place to go. You can find a book where you can sit in a corner by yourself.

Melissa Lee

Or the public library.

Guy Adami

Or the public library.

Steve Grasso

Don't buy your kids a phone or

Guy Adami

don't buy old enough. All those things work. The more you know.

Melissa Lee

Coming up, Danner under the knife, the earnings headlines that trigger the stock's worst day in 25 years. And how Mizzou host Jared Holtz is digesting the med tech move. Straight ahead, fast money's back into missed

Dan Nathan

a moment of fast. Catch us anytime on the Go follow the Fast Money podcast.

Steve Grasso

We're back right after this.

Melissa Lee

Welcome Back to fast money. Stocks snapping a three day losing streak. The Dow adding nearly 400 points. The S&P rising almost a percent and the Nasdaq surging 1.5 2.3%. General Motors gaining nearly 5% after the automaker reported top and bottom line results ahead of estimates thanks to strong demand for its trucks and SUVs. The company also raising full year guidance. Navy is soaring 19% after Nvidia revealed a 9% stake in the new cloud company. That Stock now up 160% year to date. And Novo Nordisk filed a lawsuit against Eli lilly alleging its GLP1 ad campaigns are designed to mislead consumer consumers about the efficacy of the weight loss drugs. Novo ending the day down half a percent while Lilly rose more than 2%. And Diana her take a look at this. Having its worst day since 2001 despite an earnings and revenue beat for the latest quarter. The medtech company giving a cautious outlook for growth in the current quarter, lowering guidance for its bioprocessing business. Mizuho's Jarrod Holz joins us now to discuss these results and what that might mean for the rest of the sector. Jared, good to see you. And you wrote in your note this morning on Danaher that it was a good, very crowded trade. Overall. Medtech is a very popular trade. So what does this do to the sector?

Jared Holz

Yeah, I mean it's less about medtech, more about this life sciences sector that sells equipment into pharma and industrial industry groups. The results I thought were pretty mixed. I think the street wanted to see improvement in bioprocessing. This is essentially manufacturing for new drugs that are coming on board. So I think the expectation was there was more of a tailwind there. They actually took that number down a bit. It and there were all these reasons given on the conference call as to why. But at the end of the day, investors wanted to see that business pick up. On the flip side, where the positive side, equipment was very strong. So the, the peer group, I think we had all sort of asserted we expected weakness. But that equipment number helped the likes of Bruker and Rebbedy and Agile and a lot of the peers actually went up on the day.

Melissa Lee

What is the read through on the biopharma production part of it being weak in terms of uptake? Like what does that mean about, I don't know, factories or production or whatnot?

Jared Holz

It's not clear necessarily as far as what the Read through is I think there was an expectation that that business was going to see more near term acceleration and it seems like that tailwind is probably not going to take place until maybe early 2027 or six months from now, nine months. That element of the company continues to be pushed out and pushed out. I think that's why the weakness was a little bit more profound than we thought.

Guy Adami

Dan has been a laggard now for five years. At some point there's some valuation cushion that says we know all things you're talking about, but it's priced into the name. We close.

Jared Holz

We might be. That was a big conversation this morning, which is do we cover this if we're short, do we go long, do we double down if we're already there? I think there's, there is already a dynamic that you buy the weakness. And Danaher been five years. The pandemic basically allowed Danaher and some of its peers to really catalyze growth for a number of years based on vaccine production and other sort of one timers. And they're still sort of like reeling from that. It's really the only industry group where anyone mentions Covid anymore. But it was such a tailwind at the time that it's taken years to get back.

Steve Grasso

Jared, you started answering this before, but are there any names in the space that were unjustly sold off that should be bought or are there any names that should be bought off of this? You said that some of the competitors actually ran on this news. Which of those competitors should extend that run? Obviously you already commented on Danner.

Jared Holz

Yeah, the one name that that sort of stands out is Repligen. That would be the, maybe the closest comp in terms of the bioproduction business. That name was down close to 10% at one point today. It's unclear whether Danaher is seeing something that the market is not seeing. Is there a broad based slowdown? I don't really believe that there's anything ultimately material. I think just a little bit of weakness in the Danaher quarter. So I think Repligen could be the way to actually play this. If you're bullish, big picture and you think their results will be better, that

Melissa Lee

could be the trade and switching quickly to Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk. What do you make of this lawsuit?

Jared Holz

I don't really know. It seems a little bit desperate on the part of Novo to be going after Lilly. At point this, this point in time we sort of all get the fact that Tirzepatide is stronger, more efficacious. Than semaglutide. We've talked about it at so much length. Whether they were using the correct dosing. The apples to apples dosing I think is sort of meaningless. The doctors know and the patients know. A little bit of desperation, but we'll see. I mean, I think the Novo quarter is going to be pretty good. So this is sort of like an out of left field situation. Yes. Like maybe, maybe Lilly pears back advertising. Maybe they, you know, adjust the dosing slightly. But I think everyone sort of gets it.

Guy Adami

Nova on August 5th. I mean, this, hopefully this is the inflection point because the rest of the business is being valued effectively, seemingly at nil. And can I ask a question here to Jared?

Melissa Lee

Yeah, of course. He's still sitting here.

Guy Adami

I don't know, sometimes.

Melissa Lee

Say goodbye.

Guy Adami

You know, one of the first stocks ever mentioned on CNBC is fast money. Like in the early days, like, like

Melissa Lee

before my existence on this show.

Guy Adami

Well, you've existed for a certain. No, but on this show was Danaher and of course Stephen and Mitchell Rales and sort of the genesis of Danaher was what? Let's. I'm setting you up, but I know you know the answer to this.

Jared Holz

I don't, I don't know.

Guy Adami

Danaher Creek. They were on a boat, the brothers.

Melissa Lee

Oh, I've heard this story before.

Guy Adami

They were on a boat, Two guys in a boat. And they just said, hey, this would be a great name for a company.

Steve Grasso

Now had you known, you wouldn't have let him ask those questions.

Melissa Lee

Absolutely not.

Dan Nathan

Nor, you know, no.

Guy Adami

I mean, there are people in Montana watching right now. Like, I know this place. Fans of the show Mitchell and Steve watch.

Melissa Lee

All right, Jared, great to see you.

Steve Grasso

Thank you.

Melissa Lee

Jared holds Mizuho. Coming up, a smoking hot sin stock. The bullish signal. The chartmaster season. Philip Morris shares and why the rally may be far from burning out. That's next and best money as America

Dan Nathan

celebrates its 250th anniversary. CNBC Spotlight the companies that rose with the nation and continue to shape its future.

Toby Rice

I think what's made America stand out and be successful is its drive to evolve. It starts with identifying problems and then having the freedom and the opportunity to innovate to solve those problems and make the world a better place. My name is Toby Rice. I'm the President and CEO of EQT. EQT was founded back in the late 1800s, drilling natural gas and building the pipelines to power Pittsburgh and Appalachia as a whole. When we talk about the history of energy, it started with human labor. Then we introduced coal and that allowed some more industrial capacity. It wasn't until the discovery of oil that really unleashed the next large wave of innovation in this country. People like to talk about the evolution of cars, but cars were made available because we had plentiful engineering energy to power them. We've made our energy so affordable and so reliable that people have started to take energy for granted. Energy powers everything. Energy underpins industry. And our success on energy translates to our success in industry. I believe that America has a bright future. And I think people are waking up to realize just how incredibly important energy is to the success of American business.

Melissa Lee

Welcome back to Fast Money. Philip Morris releases Q2 earnings tomorrow morning. Shares are up nearly 20% since its last report. And the chartmaster says the tobacco company has more room to run. Carter, what did the chart say?

Carter Braxton Worth

Well, a dollar. Frankly it's the exact same price it was a year ago. But we think it breaks out here. Let's go to the charts and try to figure it out together. So one way to depict the circumstances seen there, well defined uptrend over the past two years from May of 2024 to here, the summer of 26. But those flat tops we keep hitting there and not progressing. That is what a potential breakout candidate looks like. Another way to draw the line, second iteration. It doesn't matter how one draws them. It's characterizing a circumstance where there's a lot of tension as you continue to try to move out of a range Again, we're exactly the same level we were one year ago in June. A third iteration also this, that line is very precise. It's touched there four times to the penny. And I think we move above that line that's depicted there. Finally, let's look at a long term chart of Philip Morris and this internal trend line is what you call that first line going in effect since 08. Just to get back to that line takes you to about 210, 212. Again we close at 188 today. Had a nice pop on its last quarter. We think that happens again tomorrow.

Melissa Lee

Interesting setup. Steve, what do you make of it?

Steve Grasso

They are about 40% smokeless and they're trying to move to about 2/3 smokeless. The others trail that. So the other ones are better for deep value tobacco stocks. This one you get growth and you get the yield on it as well. Everyone's trying to move to like the Zins or the Icon coast or whatever.

Melissa Lee

The substitutes basically substitutes.

Steve Grasso

They're, they're on the way and they've made the most progress.

Melissa Lee

This is pm, obviously. So this is international, not Altria, which

Guy Adami

is domestic, which is the mo kind. PM kind. Mo kind. You like what I did? Yeah.

Melissa Lee

Yep. Yep.

Guy Adami

First of all, nobody should smoke ever.

Melissa Lee

It's bad for you.

Guy Adami

It's bad for you. We've established that, full stop. But you know what's not bad for you? Listening to Carter Braxton Worth. And this appears to be like what I did. There appears to be a bearish to bullish reversal. Yes, I do.

Dan Nathan

Can I ask Carter a question away from this? You do find work, Carter. You know that pm Mo, they're not my jam. When you see this sort of price action, I know you look at hundreds of charts a day. What we've seen in semi, semi equipment. I know it's a hard term. Memory, Neo clouds, that sort of thing. Is it starting to say anything to you? Are you seeing things develop in the charts? A little bit.

Carter Braxton Worth

But in terms of all those high flyers or just, just the back and

Dan Nathan

forth action, you know, down 10%. Up 10%.

Carter Braxton Worth

Sure, sure. I mean that's the. If you think sharp indecision is resolved sharply. It's a good adage. So we have this debate four weeks now, five now, seven. And it's happened after a very big move in almost everything. And that's what consolidation is. Or it's the, the opposite. And right here now I think is literally 50, 50, whether this sideways, huge volatility but no variance. Right. We're not going anywhere but individual names fighting and money gapping up, gapping down. We're at a major inflection point and it won't be but a few days, I would think, before we're out of this tight range in the market. And I don't have a clue which way.

Melissa Lee

Completely unrelated to our previous conversation. But I mean, it was a good question. It was a fine. It was a good question. It was a good question. Coming up, the middle class squeeze. A new CNBC study finds more Americans are moving to the extreme ends of the financial sector spectrum. The impact of the K shaped divide is next. And here's a sneak peek at the Kramer cam. Jim is chatting exclusively with the CEO of 3M. Catch a full interview. Top of the hour on Mad Money. More fast money to. Welcome back to Fast Money. A new CNBC survey shows growing pressures on the middle class as more Americans are starting to live paycheck to paycheck. Sharon Efforts and got the details here. Sharon,

Sharon Epperson

Melissa, CNBC and SurveyMonkey polled more than 2500 adults in the U.S. 63% say they're living paycheck to paycheck. That's up from 59% in March. And that financial pressure is moving up the income ladder. 64% of those with family incomes between 50,000 and just under $100,000 a year said they're experiencing paycheck pressure. And 41% in that six figure category with income up to almost $250,000 say they're feeling the pinch too. Then there's this sharp divide between the ends of the income spectrum. 81% of lower income families are living paycheck to PayCheck, while just 12% of the wealthiest Americans say the same for that middle group, those with incomes between 50 and $100,000. Credit card debt, car insurance and medical bills are major causes of financial stress. In addition to lack of savings, 63% say they have less than $500 left over every month after expenses. For 40%, a paycheck that's just one week late would cause a major financial hardship. And 36% say debt has delayed or prevented them from saving for retirement. Many people are looking to stay on track with their retirement savings. Sign up for my Money 101 newsletter series@cnbc.com Money101. Use the QR code there on the screen for a lot of great strategies. Melissa.

Melissa Lee

Sharon, thank you. Sharon Epperson. I mean this is just eye opening because the headline numbers on all the economic reports indicate a pretty good economy, inflation is abating, etc.

Guy Adami

And so but it's not, there's nothing political about this. And by the way, Sharon's a national treasurer and these are the people that admit to that, by the way. And those numbers are staggering. But that does not suggest, suggest a robust economy. And it certainly does not suggest. And a consumer that's doing well, which is one of the reasons I think we're sort of on the precipice of a credit event for the reasons Sharon just gave us.

Steve Grasso

Yeah, this is, this is the true definition K shaped economy. But if you think about it, they could be in a recession right now. So we're talking about if we go into recession, they're in a recession right now. And unfortunately, this is why it's so complicated. If you raise rates, that pushes them over the cliff.

Melissa Lee

Right. Because they're paying the interest.

Steve Grasso

Everything. Exactly. Everything they do is on credit right now.

Melissa Lee

Yeah, yeah.

Dan Nathan

I mean, but the flip side is that inflation and the longer it sticks around. Right. You'd rather have a rate kind of stay, you know where it is. That sort of thing than just have higher prices.

Steve Grasso

You know the cure to higher prices? Higher prices. They've already been hurt. They already can't buy anymore. So I hear what you're saying.

Dan Nathan

Well, the cure to higher prices is like higher rates. I mean like it's, it's.

Steve Grasso

Well, the damage. Damage has already been done is what I'm saying. It's not going to fill up anybody's gas tank. This is the, this is the wage earners that I really feel bad for.

Dan Nathan

Yeah, I do too.

Melissa Lee

Up next, final traits. Time for the final trade. Carter Braxtonworth are worth charting Tesla reports

Carter Braxton Worth

tomorrow after the close.

Melissa Lee

I'm a seller, Steven.

Steve Grasso

IBM. I think the worst they got out. I think this should be an uptick.

Melissa Lee

Dan.

Dan Nathan

Yeah, obviously I'm long Tom Farley kicking

Guy Adami

the tires and bullish guy on behalf of the entire squad. Dan is too bashful to say, but happy birthday to Alex Nathan. Turned 23 today. Georgetown graduate, big fan of the show. You recall my clamber?

Melissa Lee

I do. How can you forget your clam?

Guy Adami

Yeah, if you can. The A in the clam was Agneco Eagle Minds.

Melissa Lee

Thanks for watching. Fast Mad Money starts right now.

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