Palo Alto Networks rose 13% in a single session. On MRKT Call the company was put at $300 billion, and the move was used as evidence against the idea that large stocks are priced efficiently at all.
Most of the week's commentary treated the AI safety argument as the story: Dario Amodei's warnings, Elon Musk and Sam Altman joining the chorus, a report of an agent swarm hunting for models to use. Dan Nathan's reading is that the argument arrived at a convenient moment for the people making it.
"So Sam Altman came out over the weekend saying they will not be going public this year."
Nathan and Guy Adami co-founded RiskReversal Media, have presented MRKT Call daily for five and a half years, and both sit on the CNBC Fast Money desk, where Nathan called the Oracle quarter good enough four days before this episode and spends part of it saying the stock proved him wrong.
The full episode is covered here so you can skip it. 30 minutes of audio, 18 minutes of reading.
Here are the 11 calls that matter.
🎙️ Hosts: Dan Nathan, Principal at RiskReversal Advisors and a CNBC contributor, and Guy Adami, Director of Advisor Advocacy at Private Advisor Group and an original member of CNBC's Fast Money; the two co-founded RiskReversal Media
📰 Published: 14 September 2026 on YouTube (RiskReversal Media)
🔴 YouTube | ⏱️ 30 min | ✅ Time saved: 12 min
Key Takeaways
The AI trade has split into spenders and takers, and the takers are being sold
The spenders are being rewarded whichever way they spend; the takers are not
Cybersecurity is where they want to be, and its price action proves markets are not efficient
A $300B name up 13% in one session, with a smaller peer moving with it
The AI-doom chorus arrived the same weekend Altman ruled out an IPO this year
Oracle and the neoclouds are the first casualties of any pullback in AI spending
Offered the stock at $143 up or down $30, they would both take the down
Caterpillar and Deere have decoupled: one is an AI proxy, the other is an ag trade
A rate hike this week could make the bond market rally rather than sell off
Energy security is now a national policy question, so the energy names stay on
The death of software was vastly overstated
1. Spenders and Takers
Nathan set the frame for the whole show, and it is a split inside the AI trade rather than a view on the trade itself.
He credited Adami with the call. "You've been talking about the rotations. You've been talking about the Nasdaq can grind, as money comes out of just, there's spenders and there's takers in this AI trade, right?"
What changed after the second and third quarter reporting season, in his read, is that the spenders stopped being punished for spending. Meta got hurt for it and Amazon's cloud business was fine, and the market went back and forth on which treatment applied.
"Now what's we're seeing today is the takers are getting taken out to the woodshed." The spenders, meanwhile, are being rewarded a little.
The software leg of the story is a separate correction. "And then you have the narrative about software which you've been on top of the SaaS apocalypse is something that maybe got a little bit overdone and here we are right now."
The index move is not the point: "And I just think it's like really important because we have a Nasdaq that's down one and a quarter percent, which is fine, considering where we are, but there's ways to make money. Maybe it's security." Security names, he said, were making new all-time highs that day.
2. A 13% Day at $300B
The example the show used to unpack that is the one most people would call a good day.
The size of the move against the size of the company is the whole argument: "Palo Alto Networks which by the way Dan is a $300 billion company with a B. It's up 13% today."
It was not alone. "If you put up Zscaler excuse me which is a smaller company that's up in kind."
The conclusion drawn on air was about market structure rather than about the stock: "And I guess the point is in the world of efficient markets when you have moves like this there's nothing efficient about that."
"I will continue to say by the way that I do think cybersecurity understanding how volatile the names are today is a good example is a place you want to be."
The reason the sector moved, on the show's reading, is last week's AI-risk news — and the framing was a joke about the shark hunter in Jaws warning about the demise of the human race, which the speaker said he does not necessarily believe.
3. The AI Safety Split Screen
Nathan then laid out the week's news as two pictures side by side, and this section is his throughout.
The trigger was a report of an OpenAI agent swarm that had worked for months on a problem and went looking for a repository of AI models to help it finish the task. "And I think that sort of creativity is something that really freaked people out." Others, he said, were not reported.
Amodei has been warning about this for a while. "He was on 60 Minutes, guy, talking about this sort of stuff and a lot of folks thought he was again just kind of being a bit of alarmist."
"But over the weekend, you basically had Elon Musk and you had Sam Altman kind of join the chorus here on that." Nathan's caveat is that he does not believe any of them will actually give up position: "I mean the fact that Altman is quote tweeting Amodei tells you that there is something rotten."
The second picture is Washington, and it points the other way: "But the split screen is really what the administration and specifically Trump is saying." The story led the Journal, the Times, the FT and Bloomberg all weekend, and the Sunday headline was that the president intends to stay the course. "We don't need regulation. But this is bipartisan."
"It's also moratoriums on data center builds, right?" He named the politics around them: "So all of a sudden, and let me tell you something, Governor Abbott in Texas, which has seen a huge benefit, right, of all these data centers coming in, their power grid was kind of going to be an issue."
The investable version of all of it is one sentence: "But if you are a taker of this money, right, then you might be having problems in the near term."
He acknowledged the volume of it himself — "I know that was a lot." Adami's answer: "No, it's a lot, but there's a lot going on and the politics has made its way into this realm."
4. No IPO This Year
The part of the weekend that changes a number rather than a narrative came from the same set of posts.
"I mean, these were the sort of like these are the sort of headlines which are not great if you're going to try to do a two trillion dollar IPO, right?"
"So Sam Altman came out over the weekend saying they will not be going public this year."
Neither host treated that as news: "You and I were kind of in the camp that wasn't going to happen."
The president's own contribution, paraphrased on air, was that the winners in the new world will be those that get there first. The response was that he may well be right, and that this is not the point. "And listen, he may be right. I don't really have a view on that, but it's clear that it's made its way into the ranks of politics, which is probably never a good thing in terms of this, but yet here we are."
One more reading was offered and left open: that the three of them may be saying these things in concert and in their own self-interest, for reasons of their own.
5. Nvidia's Third Touch
From the narrative the show went to a chart, and the read was technical.
"And this rotation, continues to be a thing."
"I do think the names like Nvidia, I think, continue to find themselves directly in the crosshairs." The stock had just traded up to and flirted with the all-time high set earlier in the year.
The setup is an uptrend that has been in place since March being tested for a third time, in the same place as a widely watched moving average: "That uptrend, the third point, is about to be sort of I think taken a look at and it coincides, oddly enough, or probably not oddly enough, but it coincides with the 200 day moving average."
"So, this is coming to a theater near you." No call was made on which way it breaks.
6. Oracle and the Neoclouds
Adami's warning sign was the reaction to a quarter that looked fine, and this is where the two hosts disagreed on the record.
"So, here was what I thought was a canary in the coal mine on Friday." The quarter and the guidance came out Thursday, and the reaction was the tell. "The stock was up five, six% or something like that. We're like, wasn't good enough. Just wasn't good enough."
His thesis is that the companies that borrowed to build are first in line if spending slows: "it's been my view, and I know that you've been in this camp, that these NEOClouds, and I'm just going to throw Oracle in there, they are the first casualties on this pullback, if there is a pullback in spend." The debt taken on was to build infrastructure that might not be needed — "And I don't mean in three years or five years or 10 years. I mean in the next couple of years."
The position, stated as a coin flip he would take one side of: "If you told me where's the stock right now at 143, up 30 bucks or down 30 bucks, I'm taking the down 30." Later in the show Nathan said he would take the down as well.
Nathan conceded he had called it the other way on Fast Money the night the quarter printed: "I thought the quarter was good enough and the free cash flow although negative was better than expected." Then: "I looked smart for a day and now here we are below those levels."
The technical confirmation is the same one Nvidia is approaching. "The fact that we traded up to and failed at the 200 day moving average." On a longer chart, "By the way, if you go longer term, I mean, you'll see how just catastrophic this stock has been."
The mechanism tying it to the rest of the show is rates: "And I think what the market is saying is in a world where interest rates are going higher" it becomes a problem for debt-laden companies that have to keep raising.
7. Caterpillar vs Deere
Nathan widened the point beyond the AI names, using two industrial companies that used to be discussed as a pair.
Caterpillar is sitting on its 200-day moving average after a period of acquisitions, and he called it a name that got really expensive. "Now technically, you'd say that look at that sitting on that 200 day moving average. I mean, this is an important, technical level, but it's also a name that got really expensive."
Deere is the opposite chart. "I mean it took out that prior high there and this looks like a very different chart."
The reason they no longer move together, as the show put it: "Caterpillar obviously is tangential to the AI trade and Deere is basically locked into the whole ag trade." Market pundits used to lump the two together, and for a time that was fair.
The agricultural case was credited to a guest who had been on the show the previous Thursday — a commodities strategist who has left Goldman Sachs and Carlyle and started his own firm. "He knows more about commodities than any of us know collectively put together."
His argument, as relayed: "He's pointed out correctly that we're in this commodity super cycle whether or not people want to acknowledge it or not." "And a big part of that is what's going on in the ag space." Fertilizer prices and the global cost of agriculture were named as the evidence.
"So that's why there's been this sort of I think decoupling of the two names which I think will continue."
8. Goldman's IPO Problem
The last single-name chart was Goldman Sachs, and the question was what happens to it if the listings do not come.
"So on Friday you had David Solomon who's the CEO." Nathan said it was the first time the chief executive of Goldman Sachs had appeared on Fast Money, which he found interesting; he was not on the desk that night.
Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley were meant to be two of the biggest beneficiaries of the coming wave of very large listings.
Adami's point is what the chart does if that wave does not arrive. If Anthropic does not happen, and the other companies people are excited about do not happen, and SpaceX turns out to have been the only one, then on a narrative basis these stocks could come in.
He did not think the timing was accidental: "It's, I don't think it's coincidental." SpaceX went public on 11 June — "It was June 11." — and Nathan's read is that this lines up with roughly where Goldman's own highs were. "I don't believe in coincidence."
9. A Live Fed Meeting
The rates section is the longest single stretch of the show, and the two hosts largely agree on the setup and differ on the wording.
The 10-year had come in a couple of basis points on the day but had been above 5%.
The counterintuitive call is that a hike could be good for bonds: "I think it's that they do something above 80 that the bond market might actually respond in a favorable way." Then: "Bond market might actually rally on the back of that which will make yields go lower. I know that's somewhat counterintuitive, but I think that's out there."
The longer-run view is unchanged by any of it: "But regardless of what happens this week, again, my opinion, we're just in a higher rate environment globally that's not going to abate anytime soon." The only thing that stops it, on this reading, is an equity market event: "I think the only way to make it stop, and I don't not wishing for this, but historically, if you have some stock market event, and when I say event, I think you know what I mean by that, to the downside, that's when you see some sort of flight to quality in the form of the bond market." Then: "Short of that, I think rates continue to do their thing to the upside."
Rising yields have not stopped equities before: "I mean, I guess the stock market since 23, has doubled while yields have gone up a lot, right? So it doesn't mean that the stock market can't, go higher with, rates going higher."
The market has effectively removed the option of doing nothing: "This is a live meeting. There's a near 100% probability, not near, you know what I'm saying, that they're going to raise." A few weeks earlier the implied odds had been far lower.
The bad outcome is a hold with hawkish language: "No raise, hawkish, more hawkish in rhetoric. I think that's bond market negative." Stock market negative too. "So, I think that in some ways the market has backed him into a corner where he needs to do something. I think the best thing for both the stock market and the bond market would be a dovish raise." Nathan agreed and put it the other way round: "I think a raise but with dovish rhetoric. I think that's probably helpful. I think doing nothing is problematic."
On who actually decides, the show pushed back on the personalization of it: "Kevin Warsh doesn't make these decisions in a vacuum." "There's a committee that needs to vote on these things."
And on what the Fed controls: "So Kevin Warsh could come on market call right now and lower rates, and that doesn't mean the bond market is going to act in kind. As a matter of fact, if he were to do that, I actually think rates would go higher."
The complaint about the politics was made plainly: "I wish obviously that people were not as vocal in the administration about Fed policy and interest rates and those things because I don't think it's particularly helpful." The genie, the speaker added, is out of the bottle. Nathan's version of the same point: "you do not want to be in the crosshairs in any way, shape, or form."
10. Energy Security Holds
Crude came last among the macro topics, and the position did not change.
The setup was tariffs and inflation together, and a warning to the Fed chair about calling anything transitory. "But you might say the inflation or one might say inflation in the near term and it maybe is transitory and be careful Fed chair Warsh of what you're saying." On the war and the trade war: "I mean, obviously they're closely related, but this is not something that's likely to abate."
On the war itself, the show's expectation is that it runs through the election.
The structural argument is about policy rather than price: "But I think what's happened here, and I think we've talked about this as well, energy security globally is a thing." "And all these countries are examining very closely their dependence on different things and they're figuring it out."
The position survives a bad tape: "regardless of my view on crude price, which I still think is going to grind higher" the oil services index was down on the day and the energy sector fund had not been checked in the last 20 minutes.
"I think you got to stay with these names, Dan. I'm of a firm belief that energy stocks are still in play."
11. Software Isn't Dead
The closing topic returned to where the show started, with a software index that has been stronger than the narrative.
Nathan walked the chart: a pullback, then the breakout on the day Salesforce moved roughly 20%, which strengthened the index through that session and has kept strengthening since. He remembered the opening print that day and thinking it was probably a buy.
The open question he put to Adami is whether the strength is only a rotation, or whether it survives an actual slowdown in AI building.
Adami's answer takes both sides in order: "I think real quick it's rotation initially. I think then the market's going to come to the realization that the death of software was vastly overstated."
Nathan agreed, and that was the last market call of the show.
Bonus Insights
The show opened on a running joke about its own production. After five and a half years of MRKT Call, Adami discovered that the meeting link is the same every day rather than something to be requested each morning: "But today I learned, Dan, and I think you learned along with me, that it's the same link every day. Not that that's going to help me, by the way." The two credited their producer with straightening out the show's earlier names.
Rick Heitzmann walked into the shot mid-segment and was introduced from the desk: "Hey, everybody here, CEO, co-founder of FirstMark Capital, and our landlord" — and, Adami added, a Georgetown graduate, "And a Georgetown grad circa 94." The hosts described him as a dear friend who has been instrumental in making RiskReversal work.
A phrase used about the AI companies set off a literary digression. Nathan noted that "you mentioned something's rotten in Denmark" comes from Hamlet, said most people do not realize which character in the play actually speaks the line, and added that it is not the Pulp Fiction character whose name sounds much the same. He then disclosed a strong personal position: "I can't stand Shakespeare." With one exception: "But I really did enjoy Shakespeare in Love." Adami called Ben Affleck's casting in it "a very very odd casting choice"; Nathan's view was "I love me some Ben Affleck."
A long detour about randomness came out of the Goldman Sachs chart. Walking through Denver airport with only backpacks, one host crossed paths with a college friend who lives between Dallas and Bozeman and whom he had not seen in two years. "We happen to cross paths. I have not seen him in two years." The odds, he said, "It's got to be in the hundreds of millions." The co-host's contribution was to point out the loop the two of them could have got into: "You know what would have been funny? So you're on the people movers. He's going one way, you're going the other way. And then you both get off and get back on and you go the way he was going and he goes the way you're going. You could pass each other in perpetuity if you keep doing that." A correction of the record about a lost wallet was also issued on air: "Sarah did not lose your wallet. You lost your wallet that was subsequently found by your friend."
One more cybersecurity data point, dropped in between segments: "So guy CrowdStrike is up 15%."
The NFL's opening weekend got 90 seconds. For the first time since 2009, the Giants and the Jets both won their opening day game. On the Bears: "Obviously, the Bears, their offense there, their head coach might be in the early running for coach of the year just given what that team did yesterday." On the Giants: "Giants are a different football team. You can just see there's a different air about them." The caveat was discipline — "I did not love the fact that I think they were penalized 12 times, but they'll work that out. And obviously the Harbaugh era got off to a very good start." Nathan's read on Chicago was about the quarterback: "Caleb Williams, if he could just improve his accuracy a little bit, the way he scrambles and those two touchdowns that he had, that is really hard to defend against."
After five and a half years of booking around Federal Reserve meetings, the show's producer has blocked them out in both hosts' calendars.
The bottom line from the segment is that the AI trade has stopped being one trade: the companies taking the money are being sold on the same headlines that are being used to justify staying private, and the hosts would rather own cybersecurity, energy and software than the leveraged builders that have to keep raising into higher rates.
Products, Companies & Tools Mentioned
Palo Alto Networks, Zscaler and CrowdStrike (The cybersecurity names the hosts say are the place to be; Palo Alto rose 13% in a session on a market value they put at $300 billion, with Zscaler moving with it and CrowdStrike up 15%)
Oracle (The stock the show treats as the canary: a quarter that was not good enough, a failed test of the 200-day moving average, and a debt-funded build that Adami thinks may not be needed)
Nvidia (Named as directly in the crosshairs of the rotation, with an uptrend from March meeting the 200-day moving average)
Caterpillar and Deere (The pair that has decoupled: Caterpillar as a tangential AI trade sitting on its 200-day, Deere as an agricultural trade that has taken out its prior high)
Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley (The two banks meant to benefit most from a wave of very large listings, which is the reason the show thinks their shares are exposed if the listings do not come)
OpenAI and Anthropic (The center of the weekend's AI safety story and of the IPO question — Altman ruled out going public this year, and Anthropic is one of the listings the banks are counting on)
SpaceX (Named as the listing that did happen, on 11 June, which the hosts think lines up with the highs in Goldman Sachs)
Salesforce (The roughly 20% single-day move that produced the breakout in the software index the show closed on)
FirstMark Capital (Rick Heitzmann's firm; he walked into the shot mid-show and the hosts described him as their landlord and a friend who has been instrumental to RiskReversal)
CME FedWatch (The tool the hosts checked for the market-implied odds of a hike at this week's meeting, which they described as near certain)
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