possible the u.s. could see a significant response from china. plus, another read from inflation. april's producer price index economists are expecting gains year over year really interesting trading dead. the s&p about flat, but the wcld up 1.25. arc innovation fund up almost three. that will do it for "overtime. "fast money" starts now. live from the nasdaq market site in the heart of new york city's times square this is "fast money. here's what's on top president biden set to whack china the ev tariffs the reason for this move and how china might react, straight ahead. plus, roaring back the man behind the meme stock posting a new series of messages that sent gamestop soaring but there could be more to the re-emergence than meets the eye. and later, a little retail would you rather home depot set to face off with

walmart. who will be the traders' pick in the big box battle royale? i'm melissa lee, coming to you live from studio b at the nasdaq on the desk tonight -- tim seymour, karen finerman, dan nathan, and guy adami. we start with the fxi jumping 2% today to post its highe est clo since last august. it's up 35% from its january lows much of that strength coming in the last month look at how some individual names have done in that time pinduoduo gaining more than 20%. the s&p, meantime, up less than 2% but these gains come ahead of the expected announcement of what could be massive tariffs against chinese e ve v makers the biden administration set to lay out the plan tomorrow. let's get more on what we could expect from this announcement. me megan? >> melissa, president biden is set to kwa droquad rupele tarif

tomorrow nbc news is reporting that biden will also be raising tariffs on chinese solar panels and batteries. these tariffs are going to be most ly symbolic, especially on the ev front that's a but the goal is to protect the u.s. market from a flood of imports, even as chinese production starts to increase. china has already threatened to retaliate here, but even if it imposes tariffs of its own, but economists say the impact should be fairly muted. >> this would be more of a gradual price effect over a longer period of time, as sheltered producers in the u.s. then adjust their prices upward. >> now, sources tell me that a host of other products are under consideration for tariffs, as well, and that will include critical minerals and

semiconductors we expect tariffs to talk effect within weeks following the official announcement. melissa? >> megan, thanks so, what can we expect, especially as we are witnessing this massive guy? >> it's clearly campaign season. this is obviously somewhat bipartisan i would imagine, so. i get it, i get the rhetoric i don't think the market is pricing in the target that chinese will probably act in kind they've already made comments about -- i think it was the chinese government telling their companies not to buy nvidia chips or something along those lines. with all that said, yes, it will continue, but how do you trade it and into the fall of last year, we said, look, the fxi looks like it wants to trade down to the october lows of 2022, '21. well, guess what that's what happened we said from january on, you trade this from the long side. and alibaba's taken a lot longer than i thought it traded 70 for a long time

very quietly now, that's up some 23%. so, as counter intuitive as it may seem, you stay with these chinese stocks here. >> would saying that the american consumer would likely not be impacted by any sort of tariffs, is that under sort of estimating china at this point >> chinese stocks have discounted a lot of bad china. so, i think about the china macro and what people had expected of the geopolitics, and i think about china on china, as it relates to the chinese internet sector. alibaba, which reports tomorrow, at what point are we worried about them on the export and tariff front we're not. and it trades at 9 1/2 times, a third of their market cap in cash this is a company that, if they're left alone, and, again, it's not an extraordinary number, but their q-1 numbers expect to show growth. that's better than last quarter. and, again, and 9 1/2 times, i think you are paid to take some risk here. and so, my view is that --

tencent, they announced 43% growth, especially in the segment, the music segment, their online music segment, which is 115 million users so, there are companies that are continuing to grow, and i just think that the discount that's been put on not only chinese equities, but you know, we're talking about china, but let's be clear, global equities as a whole have outperformed u.s. equities for a long time it's outperformed the u.s. since the summer of 2023 i think china is very interesting. i think it's priced to be interesting. and that's going to win out. >> so, i think tim is correct on the digital names, the kweb, i think they're going to be really focused on the chinese consumer, right? so, they're not exporting here but i would worry about u.s. multinationals giga shanghai exports a lot of cars outside china they could be slapped with tariffs. i think it was on the q-4 call, when elon musk mentioned that if we don't have aggressive on

tariffs chinese evs, they're going to take over the world and i think about that, i say, okay, well, careful what you wish for because again, i just think they're right in the firing line for all of this, and again, i don't believe that u.s. consumers any time soon are going to be gbuying a $23,000 chinese ev here in the u.s so, to me, it's raeally protecting detroit not really focused on tesla. and apple has some of the same issues here. i don't think this gets any better here. >> i'm sort of wondering if this is a very strategic thing. we're going to do a tariff on something that doesn't matter, because we want to look tough. >> right >> and so, this is the -- >> who is they >> the biden administration. what >> i said who is they? and it was said by the administration, but i kind of feel like both sides -- >> we're not that far removed from when there was the attack

on israel that was -- ended up being more muted, not less of a deal than people thought, and the people were very scared about the response and that ended up being far more muted than people thought, and that was the end, everybody dropped it i don't know if this is something like that kind of famesfame gamesmanship, where, we're not big ev buyers of chinese cars in america, so, what difference does this make are they going to respond in kind with something equal -- >> maybe we're thinking about it too much along the lines of tit for tat. maybe there are other ways of retaliation which aren't, you know, you raise tariffs on evs, we'll raise tariffs on this. or, we'll make it very difficult for a business like apple here >> maybe >> call for a national boycott of a starbucks >> maybe i think what they -- the administration shouldn't get into things that will wind up being very inflationary. that's not going to help >> that's never stopped them before >> well, that's true >> i mean, again, you go back to

some of the trump tariffs and -- i just think that there's an element of this that's been playing out for a long time. dan is right, he brought up, look at this, nvidia, this is nvidia, it's the h-20 chip, their way of finding their ways around the u.s.-driven export curbs, and what does this mean for nvidia nvidia basically went higher and near all-time highs, semis are within 3%, 4% of all-time highs. the comments that came out, these were verbal instructions to companies that have been given over the last four, five months or six months orzech moor seven months, but the chinese companies, the government has been trying to support for a long time. this goes on around the world. it's interesting >> our next guest says a trade war could come as soon as 2025 let's bring in leeland miller, the ceo of china beige book. as we were discussing here on

set, the potential tariff increase on evs is quite meaningless, because they don't make a market here in the united states, but in terms of solar panels, you know, the issue here is, china exporting through another country. do you think that these increased tariffs would go as far as to actually stop that trade from happening >> well, that's going to be the big tell, if any of this is serious. and it's not just solar. if you look at the potential issue with chinese evs coming to the united states, it's not likely they are going to be exported directly here the issue is whether they're going to be produced in mexico, produced in vietnam, produced in a third country, and then they are going to avoid regular tariffs by coming in through the back door. the way to gauge how serious these are, beyond the obvious political overlay that this action has, is to see if there's provisions on transshipment and if they are doing things in order to set up a multiyear wall, or this is an announcement that just sort of -- it's

announced today and doesn't have much economic effects in the future >> walk us through what you think will be the retaliatory, you know, impacts here if it's the most benign, it's unveiled, nothing much is done to actually enforce, what will china do, versus setting up those walls that you're talking about and making sure that china's not getting into the united states market through third parties? >> yeah, i -- you know, the -- obviously, the benign response from china would be to do nothing, or virtually nothing on this they'll say they don't like it, but you know, if they're looking at something which puts 100% tariffs on something that basically doesn't exist yet, you're not going to be hit with economic effects the question is whether you want to send a political signal that we don't like this so, you know, if there is not significant, you know, provisions around trans-shipment and other things, then i wouldn't expect the chinese response to be too much. they want to save their bullets down the line, they understand it's a presidential election year if there's something more

meaningful, then it's possible that a u.s. company could get hit in china it's possible they could, you know, send signals through rare earth, supply chains and other things like that but look, china has fewer bullets than the u.s. does they know it's a campaign season, so, they're going to really have to look at this and say, is this something we want to try to respond to >> leeland, one of the bullets might be, and it happened in august of 2015, the devaluation of their currency. i don't think it's imminent, but what are the chances of that happening in the foreseeable future >> well, we think it's pretty low, but look, you say that, no one's talking about it now, three, four weeks ago, that's all anybody was talking about in my world we were constantly having to talk about how it's not what beijing is looking for we understand the yuan is weak understand that this rising dollar has caused havoc, you know, to the yuan, as well as the yen and other currencies

so, there is pressure there. but it's very much not in china's interesting to do a yuan devaluation. they're in better shape than they were back in 2015, 2016, but look it's not going to help anything to devalue, especially in an election year. it will cause more problems than it solved. we don't expect that to happen >> leeland, tim. capital flight for china, especially during periods where the economy's been a big deal. what are you hearing behind the scenes in terms of the apples of the world? what are u.s. companies really fearful of we could talk about this all we want, we talk about it in a marked context, but what are you hearing about some of the most important companies in our space that do a lot of business there? >> well, a lot of them like apple are stuck between a rock and a hard place, because they went all-in on the china story years and years ago, and you couldn't tell them that they were putting all their eggs in a basket, they didn't want to hear it and now, what they're seeing is, there's problems on the chinese

side, you know, beijing wants -- doesn't want to use foreign tech, at least in the government world. there's problems on the u.s. side, there's worries over supply chains, and obviously geopolitics. but the companies isn't just create a factory in india or vietnam or somewhere else in southeast asia or mexico that does what the chinese factories do this is a very long-term transition, so, they're very vulnerable in the medium-term. there could be some cyclical good stories, but the structural story is pretty scary. >> you were talking before about how few bullets china actually has. isn't that one of the major bullets, the fact that apple cannot snap its fingers and just create a factory elsewhere, that it is still dependent on china and so is the case for a lot of other american companies, that that is sort of the bullet that may not exist in the form of aer the riff, but can exist in the form of just making business very difficult todo there? >> that is exactly right and about a decade ago, we made

this, you know, we pushed very hard for companies, certain companies in particular, to understand that just because they're very friendly with beijing right now doesn't mean it wasn't going to get worse and even though beijing may not want to punish some of these companies, which are as close to a friend in washington, d.c. as they have, at the end of the day, they're going to have limited amount of bullets. if tensions rise past a certain level, they have no choice than to act against the foreign firms in china, even if they've been traditionally friendly with them, because they have to cause some sort of policy chaos to push back against the u.s. >> leeland, thank you. >> thanks for having me. >> so, should we put a further discount on a starbucks on apple because of the china issue, as we enter this political season >> well, this isn't the first time we've thought about this, and i'd like to think we thought about this a lot and if you look at apple, apple,

at least, you look at the trading range and certainly more importantly the relative performance of apple tothe index, apple's outperformed the index by 5% since september. so, we're talking about 6% to 7% of the s&p that's trading well with a lot of bad china news around it. so, this is kind of what markets do, right? and the starbucks, which has put china also at the top of its kind of key growth markets, their issues are not really china here they are other places. >> when you think about this on a day that we saw headline this morning that china is prepared to sell 50-year bonds, there was a long read, i think "the new york times" talking about demographics in countries like china, south korea, in the u.s. we have issues china's got a lot of problems. they have long-term problems, when you think about this. and it doesn't seem that investable -- i said it. investable on a relative basis, it doesn't look that interesting, essentially by an economy that's totally muffed everything. and our multinationals are

having a tough time over there gdp at 5%, something like that, that doesn't really compensate for the sort of risk that are out there that we're speaking to so, to me, i don't find it that interesting. other than the digital companies that can leverage off of these hundreds of millions of dollars of, you know what i mean, like, of their own citizens. >> so, if you believe in a china story, is it -- you no longer invest in a starbucks or the mcdonald's or the companies that say, china is our growth market, you invest in china. we've gotten to that point where you go back into the chinese stock market, yes? >> i believe so. and i understand the investable part but it's tradeable as hell and it's been tradeable -- if you see the chart of alibaba, with that said, at least seven, if not ten times along the way, you've seen 25% to 50% bounces in the stock and i think we're on sort of the verge of one of those right now. >> from a valuation perspective, it's very, very attractive i just don't know what to put on -- what is the discount one

should have for this, you never know what's going to happen? >> for china stocks or -- >> for china's own stocks. remember ali pay, where, you know, and that, who did that snurt that hurt alibaba. that wasn't a u.s. thing >> right >> so, i don't know what the right multiple, the right discount is. i'm not in it and that's been wrong the last couple months. coming up, details from openai's spring update they're not the only ones announcing new developments in the a.i. space what more to watch for tomorrow. plus, airlines taking off, as wall street gets bullish on travel the tailwinds driving this trade, when "fast money" returns. this is "fast money" with melissa lee right here on n cnb.

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and they're all coming? those who are still and ywith us, yes.ness. grandpa! what's this? your wings. light 'em up! gentlemen, it's a beautiful... ...day to fly. welcome back to "fast money. openai launching a new flagship model during its spring update today. steve kovach watched the announcement and is here right now with all the details >> yeah, openai actually front running google's big developer conference which is happening tomorrow with an announcement of its own. revealed its latest a.i. model

called gpt 4.0, which is capable of having natural conversations with you just talk to it like you would a friend or a coworker you can even interrupt it and ask it to speak in a different tone, do live translations, and so much more it is also multimodal. that's a term you're going to hear a lot it can process images, text, or voice. it's going to be rolling out over the coming weeks and the company's cto teased there's even more coming with a, quote, next big thing to be revealed soon ceo sam altman was not part of the event, but he did publish a blog post, calling gpt 4.0 the best computer interface i've ever used. altman called openai a business, and will, quote, find plenty of things to charge for now, remember, openai structured as a nonprofit organization and has been sued by elon musk for allegedly abandoning its original mission and focusing on

profit instead we'll see how that shakes out in the meantime, expecting google, which has had multiple stumbles trying to launch its gemini a.i. system, to show off similar a.i. features at its developers conference tomorrow. in fact, coinciding with that openai event today, they shared this video on x that appeared to be a demo of that update mel? >> how finished is this product, steve? how long has it been in beta has it been actually tested for quite some time? so, this is really ready to hit the ground running >> it's launching now. it's being used so much right now, melissa, the servers at openai are kind of struggling with all the demand they're seeing it's being used. it's rolling out slowly, some paid users already have it, it's going to be available for free users, as well >> that next big thing, could that be a search engine? >> i read that at gpt 5, which would be the next large language model. they've been teasing that for ages the coo at openai, he was at a

bloomberg event last week and kind of talked about, like, forget about having to prompt people, you don't have to prompt your best friend, i think was his quote. so, it's going to even more natural language and even more capable of what we're seeing today. so, i feel like that's the next thing. this is art part search, too it can answer questions, math formulas, it can do stuff that we already use traditional search for >> i can't wait to try -- to tell it that it's speaking to me in, like, a mean tone or something like that. change the tone. >> it can do that. they had it sing today in the demo they had it talk in a more dramatic tone. there are multiple voices you can choose, so, they're really playing around with it and point out that sam altman in that blog post he posted was talking about how this new model can be used to -- just imagine integrating it with your personal data, and it can really become that real assistant that we've all been talking about for so long. so, we'll see how that turns out, too >> all right, steve, thank you >> sure thing.

>> steve kovach. and alphabet shares finished the day higher >> yeah. >> i was quite surprised by that, actually more about that they wouldn't be partnered with apple, right? and so, i was very surprised to see that we'll see what they come out with tomorrow. i think it starts at 1:00 p.m., our time i just think, though, that video portion, first of all, i have to think it takes a huge amount of power. >> yes >> huge. what that will do. i mean, it's fairly exciting i hope this is the end of siri which is one of the worst products ever and it's just amazing to me that apple has allowed that to -- so bad -- this is nothing i wouldn't say to a face i do all the time because she's so terrible, but i don't know how they could have allowed it >> i say it to her face all the time we could do it right now if you want this is the point. this is -- i think one of the greatest things for google all of this criticism means, forget the summer of a.i., it's been the year of a.i

g google's outperformed microsoft by 8%. 13.5% over six months. and since kind of that recent google sentiment, they've outperformed microsoft by 27%. i can't wait for the good news in the meantime, this has been a reason to focus on their core business >> sounds like what they announced, openai today, they made the case why apple should be licensing this technology, to all your points about this kind of voice engine here, and siri, obviously, has it knocks i just don't know how apple really causes an upgrade cycle they haven't gotten that behavior -- >> don't think of it as sir, think of it as gpt 4.0 >> charging for it >> listen, they're already charging $1,200 for an iphone 15 pro, okay? like, so, there's -- unless you think that it really -- and it will do it in the future i don't think it's going to do it in 2024, 2025

causes some big services sort of upgrade that you are going to be -- these are -- this should be integrated in your thing. and the last thing about google, why did it gap down? you just asked the question, mel, will openai have a search engine well, that would clearly work into their 90% market share, as far as search advertising and the like here. so, there's a lot of reasons to be optimistic about alphabet they have to demonstrate some technology that i think can be monetizable. right now, they haven't done that yet, but i'm still optimistic about google, too >> google broke out through the double tops, 150 we flagged it a number of times. the breakout was significant valuation, 21 times, trades mid teens revenue and earnings growth i think you stay with it here. i don't think we're -- are we coworkers here, are we family? >> family, guy we're family i can't believe you asked that question >> coworker now. >> i'm a panelist. >> panelist now.

context of, he was talking about how you would speak to your -- >> coworker. >> can you imagine if that thing heard the things we say to each other? >> it would blush. >> i would blush >> dan just referenced a point we've been dancing around. for more $1,500 iphone, i should have a.i. in that. how much bigger is the pie, just because it's a.i.? we could spend the whole show on it. there's a lot more "fast money" to come here's what's coming up next >> cleared for takeoff airline stocks flying first class as one wall street firm gets bullish on the travel space. the forces they say could drive profitability and the names that could lead the gains. plus, the kitty comeback shares of gamestop surging after the return of the original meme stock trader, but did the options market spot that something was coming the activity that caught traders' eyes, and why you might want to take caution you're watching "fast money," live from the nasdaq market site in times square. we're back right after this.

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welcome back to "fast money. stocks closing mixed ahead of this week's inflation data the dow snapping an eight-day winning streak, down 81 points the s&p virtually unchanged.

the nasdaq with a small change shares of roku jumping, as they land rights for the mlb sunday leadoff games. that stock down 34% this year. airlines getting a boost delta, american, and united initiated with buy ratings a continued recovery in corporate travel, stronger demand and pandemic behavioral changes as drivers for the trade. i don't know what that means, exactly. tim, you've been trading these stocks >> i think they're late to the party. thanks for the upgrade today but yes, there's been an understanding -- essentially oil and gas and airline fuel prices have stabilized. you've had a dynamic where the front of the bus and the transcontinental and the higher margin business is back. the capacity element of airlines to me is what always gets me, the analyst company, comfortable or uncomfortable i think the efficiency of airlines right now is smooth

sailing. coming up, the cat's out of the bag. the man behind the meme stock craze from 2021 apparently back. how he fueled a huge surge in gamestop and the options activity in the name that's next. plus, stick with walmart and give home depot a swing? a would you rather ahead of earnings don't go anywhere. "fast money" is back in two. missed a moment of "fast?" catch us any time on the go. follow the "fast money" podcast. we're back right after this. ea'. what? horsepower keeps you going, but torque gets you going. what happened to my inner child craving love and acceptance? how about you love and accept this? p-p-p-p-powershot! when can i drive? you already are! the dodge hornet r/t... the totally torqued-out crossover.

welcome back to "fast money. shares of of gamestop jumping 74% today. it had been up 118% at its highs but were halted for volatility multiple times the move coming after the apparent return of roaring kitty, the pseudonym for the man be behind the meme stock conve conversation our next guest spotted some unusual activity in kitty's

post did they know something the rest of us did not? joining us now is david bull david, great to have you with us you wrote about the increased activity long before, and if you look at gamestop's chart, its stock rally started three weeks ago, and that's when you started seeing the unusual activity. >> that's correct. it's difficult to call anything unusual in gamestop options, however, going back about two to three weeks, there was a large amount of very far out of the money call options bought. this started in april 26, into the first week of may, and the strike was -- centered around the 30-strike, about 70,000 of the may 30 callstraded over th last two to three weeks, and it seemed to really set the groundwork for this move, when the time seemed to line up >> hey, david, you talked to a lot of very smart institutional investors, they look at situations like this, because, again, they are unusual. when i look out a month, i look

at june expiration, it's pricing what the expected move is in this stock, it's basically $19 it's 60% of the price. what are institutions saying to you when they see this sort of activity, especially given what we know about, you know, 2021 you it it was a fairly short-lived phenomenal. >> there's two sides of his. i'm seeing both sides of it. traders that think that the stock is detaching from its fundamental value have limits on how they can invest in the stock, based on it being too dangerous to sell the stock short. so, there was a huge -- there was a large amount of puts traded today,11 times. so, there are people buying puts, thinking the stock is going to go lower. but some of the accounts i speak to remember in january 2021, the move had more legs than i think a lot of people realized once this move happened, thinking about the supply and demand of who is buying and selling the stock, it didn't

revert lower immediately it kept a floor to it, so, i did see some players looking to play the stock, staying somewhat range bound. >> when you take a look at the activity, david, and the activity we've seen over the past few weeks, is it your view that these are mostly retail traders or were they trades in size, which would indicate institutions >> i think both, but i think institutions were involved, given the size of what's traded. about 2 billion of options traded today, 5 billion of stock notions traded this is still about one-tenth of the size that we saw trade in january of 2021, so, the size is bigger than just retail playing, but i think institutions have literally seen this movie before and are getting involved in the action, as well. >> david, it's karen thanks for being on. just looking at the may 30s that you talked about, so, those were 43 cents yesterday, they went out at 6 1/2 or so, so, you

know, 15 times your money overnight. were you -- are you able to see if that's closing, if those are sales to close, or, what was the activity in there today? a lot of -- obviously a lot of volume >> a lot of volume we won't know if the net impact was opening or closing until tomorrow when the open interest data comes out however, looking at this, if the volume in the may 30s over the last two weeks, the open interest grew, i believe every day, so, it seemed like continual buying of the may 30 line today, the most active line was the may 34 calls, so, as the stock went higher, perhaps some of those holders of the may 30 calls were moving higher to the may 34 strike, as well >> david, great to have you on thank you. >> thank you >> kind of suspicious, you know, he's off x or twitter for three years, activity picks up for

three weeks, and then he drops a tweet, or, a post, and bam, you got your rally >> well, the question is, what's the catalyst for the rally other than him and his tweet i look at gamestop, a company that had their holiday season quarter sales down 20% year ore year there's been no value added there. there's very little to get excited about. people can say what they want in terms of where the short spikes are. i read stuff, you know, you read stuff about roaring kitty and you get into blogs that talk about short sellers lost $800 million in this. and all you're doing is taking the short interest from the day the stock rallied from 10 to 18 and multiplying it by an $8 move how about all the money that's been lost? it's game, set, and match for amc. you're down 87% year over year after a 40% move today or, a 70%, or whatever it did, up 76% so, ultimately, it gets back to fundamentals and i can appreciate the retail investors -- i'm not even sure it's fair to actually pick on

retail investors here. this is a group of people that i think are moving stocks around and i don't think any of it is funda fundamental. >> for context, in terms of short squeezes, today, gamestop traded 180 million shares, typically trades 7 million shares, so, any shorts out there were able to cover ten times over, probably, in terms of the existing positions, to tim's point. amc, for example, almost traded a half a billion shares, that typically trades 17 million shares a day so, all the volume that traded allowed people that were short to get out synthetic shorts aside, i can't speak to that. so, fundamentals are going to come into play if gamestop and/or amc doesn't have a secondary potentially in place at some point, if they continue -- they're just not doing it correctly, i mean, they should be taking advantage of these price spikes, i would think. >> well, the balance sheet is not in terrible shape, so, they don't need -- amc, on the other hand, desperately needs money, but i mean, this is -- the whole thing is so astoundingly crazy,

but it's like war games. just best not to play. you know, as david einhorn priced silly could go two or three times silly. coming up, we're going to look ahead at the action with a very special game of would you rather. throughout may, cnbc is celeb celebrating. here's our own deirdre bosa. >> asian americans own and estimated 3 million buzzes in the united states, while native hawaiians and pacific islanders own nearly 90,000. collectively, the group includes close to 5 million workers u.s. small business administration says that's just under $200 billion a year paid to their work forces for asian american native hawaiian pacific islander heritage month, i'm deirdre bosa

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on the foundation of life experience. umgc values the successes you've already achieved. that's why you can earn up to 90 credits from prior learning and life and job experience toward our bachelor's degree programs. no application fee if you apply by may 31 at umgc.edu. welcome back to "fast money. with big tech earnings me hind us, we're about to enter the retail portion of this earnings season home depot and walmart kicking things off this week but these two stocks that had very different runs this year. with walmart trading near records and home depot treading water. so, that got us thinking, would

you rather walmart or home depot? guy? lets out a big sigh. >> it's america's favorite game. >> it sure is. >> would you rather? am i going first >> is this a difficult choice? >> it is walmart is at an all-time high home depot, valuation for the first time in awhile is reasonable however, is home depot a nondiscretionary thing or -- so, that's the rub here, and, you know, the heyday was clearly from the middle of covid, everybody's home, getting those checks, spending on their homes. those days have passed so, to answer your question, despite the fact that walmart is stretched and expensive, it's walmart. >> i agree with everything he just said. i'm long both. i'm long more walmart than home depot. i have some lowe's, though. if we think the problem is the consumer, i feel like it's a better risk/reward in walmart.

>> have we seen normalization when it comes to home improvement? >> i think we have we've seen a segment shift you talk about some of the more durable components of where home depot and lowe's saw a lot of sales, because this is america's favorite game, it would be a shame -- >> so, for no other reason -- >> exactly, because why it's america's favorite game. dan and i are going to push back i think home depot's pro business is high margin. it offers them a lot of resiliency if we continue to talk about the housing market as we do, then home depot goes higher, because there's so much demand out there, both for people who have houses that they're staying in, they want to upgrade, and those people that are actually trying to get a new house i like home depot. it's $340 off the $390 high. >> do i get to go? >> yes, you have to. >> i think walmart's really dangerous here >> dangerous >> i think as a trade near term,

i just think that if you think of that gap that it had when they reported that quarter in november, the stock was at then all-time high, trading expensive to many of its speers, as it always does. it had a big gap a lot of cautious things to say about the consumer then. flash forward five months, they've benefited from this tradedown, but we just got a reminder from a host of retail-focused companies, that the consumer is getting stretched here so, i would rather take a shot on a home depot that is not at its highs, well off its all-time highs and down about 13 pr%. to, me, it looks more attractive from a valuation standpoint. >> the grocery component makes it more compelling, because you need to eat. you don't need a 2 by 4, necessarily. >> how much margin is there? >> yeah, maybe not shared wallet. >> once they walk into the store and we have seen that home depot has seen the trade up. and i love home depot. i think the investments they've made in their technology and their loyalty, and their,

essentially their amazon competitor, is unbelievable, it's why walmart trades at a premium. coming up,volatility picking up how should you position? we'll make sense next of all the ckrket volatility, or maybe the la of volatility, actually details next when "fast money" returns. d relentlessly work with you to make them real. what is cirkul? cirkul is what you hope for when life tosses lemons your way. cirkul is your frosted treat with a sweet kick of confidence. cirkul is the effortless energy that gets you in the zone. cirkul, available at walmart and drinkcirkul.com.

welcome back volatility trading near the lows of the year, even with worries over inflation we'll get new readings on ppi and cpi in the next couple of days what impact could they have on the market ma mandy zu is with us. >> great to be here. >> why is volatility so low these days you would think with so many unknowns that it would be higher than sub-14. >> no, it's definitely interesting as we head into this week's cpi number. that volatility is low, not just for equities, when you look at the vix, but across as sell classes. bond market, credit, currency, everything is near one-year lows, and i think that's because at this point, inflation as a risk of -- i think has come to

terms with the fact that it's going to be stickier the longer, and the fact that the fed is not panicked about it. if the market panics when the fed panics what we heard from powell is he's not concerned, right? he's not in a hurry to raise rates, either keep rates unchanged, or cut, and that's, you know, i think volatility suppressing. >> there seems to be strategies in place where any volatility spike is solved, because we can create a synthetic dividend. we might be out of money for a day or two, but the volatility events don't last. is that just as easy as it is right now? any spike in volatility is sold and people are taking advantage of that? >> what's interesting actually going into april selloff, a modest 5% pull-back in the market, in the vix, spiked to 19 was actually we saw very elevated option activity in the vix index options. so, a lot of people going into a positioning for volatility spike, and during monetizing that spike, exactly to a point they recognize volatility spik

s tend to be very short lived. so, if you recall in mid april when we had that call when vix spiked to 19, we had more vix options trade on that day than any point in march of 2020 during the pan semiic when the vix spiked to 90 i thought that was interesting >> mandy, thank you for being here so, there's not something structural about the vix it's really just the market's relative complacency with what used to be big news? >> so, that's the debate people are having is there something in the equity market that is suppressing volatility and one common reason that gets brought up is the proliferation of these vol selling strategies. our view is that they're not the main reason for volatility, because like i pointed out, we're seeing low volatility across asset classes, right? in credit, in fx, in rates, where these strategies are not as common. and we're also seeing low volatility across regions in

emerging markets, in developed markets, outside of the u.s., so, to me, that's really a sign that it's a macro fundamental. we've gone from fearing a recession to now firmly on the path to soft landing obviously with some risks, but those risks, people, you know, they have a fair grasp on. >> mandy, thank you for stopping by >> great to be here. >> mandy xu of cbo if markets are going to follow powell's lead, it would be that markets believe in what he's doing, which is -- i don't know, kind of a surprise to me >> yeah, this time last year felt very similar, heading into the summer, i think a lot of folks were kind of believing that inflation, at least, was slayed or the upward pressure on it and the fed was going to get easy when they had the opportunity to do it they felt the consumer felt good and we did have a 10% selloff from some highs and got a little further than some would have hoped, like me, in particular, because that felt pretty bad,

but i look at the markets, say, what is the thing that's going to catapult us to a new high and establish a new range? and i can't really put my finger on it right now. up next, falras.in tde to start a business, you need an idea. it's a pillow with a speaker in it! that's right craig. a team that's highly competent. i'm just here for the internets. at&t it's super-fast. reliable. you locked us out?! arrggghh! ahhhh! solution-oriented. [jenna screams] and most importantly... is the internet out? don't worry, we have at&t internet back-up. the next level network. i sold a pillow!

final trade time tim? >> america's favorite game that was -- >> tremendous. >> eem should have been in that game >> karen >> yes bought some out of the money dell call spreads in june. >> dan >> it was a fun game walmart, i wouldn't be chasing it here. >> see, i think you despise that game

just the way you say that you love it. >> speaking of games 13 blocks south of here -- >> what's going to happen? >> tim seymour is divulging. the rangers of new york are playing the hurricanes alibaba. they report tomorrow, but you stay with the baba >> answerer. answerer >> thank you for watching "fast. "mad money" starts right now my mission is simple, to make you money i'm here to level the playing field for all investors. there is always a bull market somewhere, and i promise to help you find it. "mad money" starts now hey, i'm cramer. welcome to "mad money. welcome to cramerica other people want to make friends. i'm just trying to make you a little money my job is not to entertain, but to explain so call me at 1-800-743-cnbc newsom tweet me @jimcramer. we're in a weird moment where stocks could be hostage to the fed inflation, but maybe they'll be freed by th