Wake of his tweet about the china tariffs. The president said he wasnt worried about it he, in fact, expected it he said it is because people dont fully understand what his tariff strategy is in fact, the president here blaming the market for not understanding exactly what his approach is to tariffs and to china. He was also asked by me exactly why he picked 10 as opposed to 25 or 5 on the tafrs he tariffs here is what he had to say. I did more than anybody thought with the first 250 billion and the 10 is for a shortterm period, and then i can always do much more or i can do less, depending on what happens with respect to a deal but im very happy the way it is right now. So the president there saying that he could go up to above 25 if he felt that was necessary, but he said he doesnt see that as being necessary at this point. So that puts a lot of tension now on those negotiations between the u. S. Side and the chinese side here in washington in Early September the president was also asked an interesting question, if he is considering a blockade of venezuela. He said yes, but it was just a oneword answer. He didnt offer us any real detail on when that would begin, how it would work, why it is being put in now, but the president did respond in the affirmative when he was asked if he was considering a blockade of venezuela, guys. Thats Something Else to chew over in terms of the geopolitics around all of this. Eamon, thank you. Thats eamon javers, live on the north lawn of the white house once again lets trade it guy. Okay. You guys are the ones paid to figure it out. So we have a lot of pressure. We have a tale of two days. Everything seems copacetic and then oh, you mean today was the tale of two days, thank you for the clarification. Then you have a tweet late in the afternoon that caused an instant reversal. Makes sense i thought the market should have been down today anyway, but it is a horse of a different color. I think the president this is my opinion i think the president. We talked about this, is trying to force Jerome Powells hand. I mean the fed chair yesterday said, you know what one of the biggest risks to the market is more tariffs what does the president do on the back of that levies more tariffs. Steve leishman pointed that out in a tweet today again, he wasnt happy with a 24, 25 point cut, wants another one. Maybe he will get it, maybe he wont. I think the market is calling bs on this and i think theres further down side on this. Grasso, how do you see it who is he putting more pressure on, on powell or china . He is putting pressure on both of them. You get a dark period where you wont hear from the fed, earnings are almost done, so what do you have to look forward to what do you have to be afraid of i think it was kind of genius on his part to do this, and then he backed off it immediately which i wish he did not back off it immediately, saying this is only a temporary thing. Then why do it you know, you take the bite out of it 10 minutes after he did it i thought was the only thing he did wrong in the process. How about the earnings is this this has been with us for a while. If you look at the earnings quarter to date, companies that do more than half of their business outside the u. S. Down almost 14 , versus companies that do more than half in the u. S. Up. This is just fuel on the fire. You have to rethink every way you are going to play the market. It is funny you soy that, scott. First of all, i agree with guy im going to get my extra 25 bits right now. Im going to get it. Oh, boy, i guess trade does matter because, in fact, when you combine trade with the fed that really, you know, we graded the fed yesterday, but either way we all agreed they had a tough job ahead of them in terms of what went on yesterday. So ultimately look at what responded. Lets get to the market. What responded oh, man, what didnt respond . Wow. For people straight off apple, lets go to a name weve all been talking about for the last couple of days. I guess apple might be a trade war stock after all. I thought it decoupled and i am being a little facetious, but you have a case here look at wynn, emerging markets. Look at some of the Retail Stocks some of the Retail Stocks were obliterated after the tweet. It was stunning. I will simply say i think the same playbook is probably at work here. Look what was defensive, starbucks, mcdonalds, mega cap tech in a lower growth environment where you have a valuation argument, look at google, amazon and microsoft today, those were names that were stalwarts. But when guy opened up saying that you thought the market should have been down, people underestimated stopping qt now, what that does for the overall market thats why the market was up in my opinion. The market overreacted qts overreacted yesterday trying to figure out what powell was saying. It is almost cutting by proxy. You have them cut the 25 basis points, then you have qf being removed. It is almost the 25 from december and now you get another 25 so you sort of did get your 50. This is all more of the same narrative. Think what you said. So money hides in fewer and fewer names as bank have been underperforming for three years, industrials, it is the same story. It is more pronounced. Thats never a good sign. I wonder do you need to rethink the way you play the market if you think you are getting the tariffs in a month it changes almost everything now. Yes and no because i think or at least i had thought we were going to get those tariffs or Something Like those tariffs in a month four months ago, five months ago i think it comes down to it is still about the fed right now. I think were still digesting a mid cycle adjustment, and i think it is a more important dynamic for the market because i think the trade at some point we dont even know how you win the trade war. We dont know what the terms are for the trade war. This is what i thought though why wouldnt you raise the tariffs in october 1st so you get you force the hand from powell for september meeting versus september 1st, if he doesnt do it, doesnt have to cut right . I mean why not wait, give yourself an extra 30 days . If hes delaying it now anyway, push it off to october 1st. The thing thats concerning to me is the way the market responded. Look at dollar yen which is for a risk 1. 5 handles on yen stronger, which means watch 107, we break that, i think it gets dangerous. 189 on the tenyear. This is the low, this is a level on the tenyear bond since before the elections so we went to bed the night of the election and we actually had a tenyear around these levels we woke up the next day and two days later we were moving higher we almost cut tenyear yields in half since november, and that to me is the barometer of what the market thinks about growth. What do you make of the move in oil today that in and of itself would be the lead of this show, the fact that wti and brent were down by such a large amount. Thats stunning in and of itself. Commodities in general. You are getting the message in a comprehensive way something is very wrong. What i was going to say quickly going to say dollar going up is not great for commodities. Thats what i was going to say. Dont discount that the president with this tariff talk is trying to somehow ratchet back the u. S. Dollar he is clearly concerned about. One of my big concerns will be will they being the administration pull the trigger and somehow intervene in the u. S. Dollar, which to me would be madness at the highest level. Quickly without getting down a rabbit hole, the chinese is at levels where it is right on the edge the last time we saw it around these levels was august of 2015ish and go back and see what happened in the ensuing months. Remember december of 2015 of course thats why i brought it up. Ugly. It speaks to the mixed messaging of powell where you have the dollar on a cut, you have the dollar rally. The market didnt know what to make of powells cut it was a hawkish 25 basis points and that to me isnt that what the fed wanted i dont know if thats what he wanted. If you think about it, the only reason the dollar is rallying is because it is the appearance or the view that central bank riff ren shals are wider than people thought five minutes before the meeting, which actually the fed is not as easy as boj and ecb, and we hope theyre not because it is not policy that worked. John stoltz is here on the set with us. You tell us what you make of all of this. I cant help but say theyre related to the dollar. I think the dollar also has the effect it has become a safe haven currency and thats a real problem. It is not only the differential in terms of the yield, but it is safe haven assets that are determined by the dollar, an environment where you have negative yields at 13, 14 trillion of negative yields around the world we are still positive. Everything is relative, and it is an environment where theres very little peace right now but we may be leading up to a crescendo of things that lead to some kind of agreement in the trade war. I dont think anybody expects we are going to go to a Perfect World with a trade agreement, but at least it will point us in the right direction and hopefully begin to reinstate the process of globalization with china as a player. It will feel less threatened because right now it is losing by the day you have firms that companies are diversifying their supply chain away from china, and thats only going to compound the longer this continues. It is easier said than done, too. If i had asked you this morning postpowell how you play this market, you would have been positive, buy stocks i would have been positive and said buy stocks. Now it is 5 00, just past in the east, you got another tweet and tariffs now. You say what before the close we were looking for we were looking for stocks that had come off, that we had seen just a few days ago looked a little bit expensive, were beginning to shop to buy. We still like consumer discretionary, technology, industrials and financials go figure. Because we dont think this is this goes forward forever. You dont think it happens . Oh, i think what we do have here i dont think he is going to actually do it. I think we get some kind of a truce ahead of ahead of to provide opportunity to come to an agreement hes saying this is what im prepared to do the irony and the sadness of all of this is probably the only thing that would get chinas attention was a trade war with tariffs because a traditional negotiation was not going to work. One heck of a game. Financials, i mean is it valuations that makes you want to buy those because basically they havent worked and theyre not going to work. Is it so bad it is good or what is it . Actually it worked this year. They underperformed the s p 500 but at one point financials were up 14 related to industrials, we think it is related to new technology. When it comes back, you have Industrial Products today are riddled with technology, whether it is all kinds of sensors. Gm, a case in point. This is the cyclical and the secular trends that are the offset to a lot of the negativity that we have. What if i told you that powell, he made his cut in rates yesterday and thats it and hes done would your outlook on the market change i think it would depend how things develop from here today is too fresh it is like yesterday people were saying to me, what do you think on the back of what just happened . Well, it seems to make sense people were waiting for an opportunity to be able to take profits without fomo they got it today by the confusion with the fed chair, and today they had more time because the markets are up if you look at a screen that shows you the world market, markets are green around the world, whether it is latin america with the exception of mexico europe, youve got it higher on theyearold. Measuring the yeartodate number is an arbitrary thing most are below where they were 18 months ago. That is one thing, but the good thing is theyre higher than they were on december 24th. Thats an arbitrary thing. Well, Global Equity thats what wall street is gauged i get all of that. You get paid annually, the reality is that Global Equities are not working. They peaked 18 months ago. Or maybe they were in the process of working and we were in the middle of a great big rampup higher, the next leg to come, and we have just been interrupted. It is like stocks interruptus. Who was the big interrupter, powell yesterday or trump later in the evening good to see you. We are just Getting Started on fast money up next, commodities crush oil, handing in its worse day in more than four years. Drilling down on the crude collapse, but pin stress and square on the move after reporting. Live in times square in new york city tonight much more fast money right after this oh, dont worry. Voya helps them to and through retirement. Dealing with todays expenses. Like college. While helping plan, invest and protect for the future. So theyll be okay. Without me . Um. And when we knock out this wall imagine the closet space . Yes oh hey, son. Yeah, i think theyll be fine. Voya. Helping you to and through retirement. Here, hello starts with hi mple. How can i help . A data plan for everyone. Everyone . Everyone. Lets send to everyone [ camera clicking ] wifi up there . Ahhh. Sure, why not . Howd he get out . a camera might figure it out. That was easy glad i could help. At xfinity, were here to make life simple. Easy. Awesome. So come ask, shop, discover at your xfinity store today. Were back with fast money. Crude absolutely collapsing today. Oil falling nearly 7 for its worst day in more than four years. It wasnt just oil though. Banks also getting hit pretty hard in todays sell off our chart master carter worth is at the plasma to break it down for us carter. Thats right. Banks, all commodities in general, softs, iron, steal and anything that sort of goes clunk in the night, cyclicality not good lets talk about banks you know, i had a teacher mentor that said if you can draw a Straight Line you probably will be okay in this business i thought he was insulting me but he was being very candid it is a Straight Line, isnt it . Guess what ill be darn, it rallies there and fails. Now, consensus, of course, was that this was going to be a headandshoulders bottom on wall street but it is nothing of the kind it is some sort of weird, bizarre, not a headandshoulders bottom. It is something that failed repeatedly, repeatedly and it is failing again. More importantly than absolute return of course is relative, opportunity cost here is the real tragedy if i put the line from the low, and one could say that banks while theyre up, thats true, of course their relative performance is straight down also, it has failed to the penny, to the penny, to the penny at this relative down trend line it hit that line literally today and sunk again not a great setup. In fact, if you pull this back even further, now i want to single out really what has happened since the 2016 president ial election. Thats what happens right here of the thats your trump bump. So look at the next slide. What we know is this, that basically all of the alpha right. So this is the index itself. This is relative performance to the market on the bottom we have undone the entire election we are trading below where we were threeplus years ago, and thats not adjusting for beta or cyclicality in risk. Not good not good today, and i dont know what the narrative is that makes it good going forward. Yeah. Come on over well finish the conversation on the desk lets trade the banks. Well, if you think about Bank Earnings this quarter, expectations were relatively light. There was a boost from mortgages. The yield curve actually was steepening into Bank Earnings and it was something beneficial to banks it is part of the little blip up that carter says he thinks is now failing at resistance. I just say this. Look, with the 189 tenyear and the jury is out in terms of where growth is, the curve will continue to flatten. Right now the bond market is pushing on the fed to do their next move. In the short run though, i actually still like banks. They havent been a disaster yes, theyve been side ways for 12 to 18 months, but youre close if not at record earnings across the group their Capital Allocation as seen by jp morgan almost failing intentionally, because they want to give more capital back to investors. For investors, banks are being run differently. Think that he being run for equity investors. Jp morgan used to be everyones Favorite Bank theyre up 18 to date i think citi has been the out performing, up 21 . Goldman. In the bull case, clients say, the Balance Sheets are better than theyve been, dividends are on the rise, but guess what when the cycle changes, what happens . I think the biggest bullish thing was you had deregulation and the tax cuts those were the two most bullish things that could have ever happened to the xlf or to the big banks. But if you still have to hide or you want to have some exposure, i think you stay with a goldman or if you thought there was going to be a rate cut cycle you could get a steepening of the yield curve and that would be which you got. Now if youre not going to get the cycle i agree with you. I guess what im saying is you got that going into the fed meeting and the testimony. Because you thought you were going to get it. Thats what people thought. And it is only u. S. Banks japanese banks are making new fiveyear lows. Seven year lows in europe look at credit what else was up today high yield was up today. Until the credit market starts to and, of course, thats what everybody said. Powell yesterday talked about the banks, talked about the strength of the Financial System hes right carter is saying it. Yes, doesnt guarantee necessarily theyre going to be strong tomorrow if we have essentially this trip sorry, this bbb credit out there that looks very vulnerable. You can read more about todays selloff on our website, cnbc. Com we have much more fast money straight ahead coming up, hip to be square . We have instant reaction to squares quarterly report. Later, rolling the dice on china, the casino stocks caught in the crosshairs of a trade war. Is now the time to cash in your chips . Were hitting the tables when fast money returns welcome back to fast money check out cloudera shares. There they are, getting a big bump, 15 . An sec filing showing that carl icahn has more than 12 stake in the company. It comes as the stock has dropped nearly 50 in the past year, so he is apparently looking for a bargain and the shares are reacting. Other after hour movers today, pintrest and square on the move after reportingresults Julia Boorstin is standing by on pintrest, but lets be