The futures market priced the odds of a Federal Reserve rate rise the next day at "92 and a half%", against roughly a third of that a month earlier.
None of that is what has the show's attention. Underneath an S&P 500 that Carter Worth points out is sitting where it was at the end of May, the market's biggest winners have started to roll over: the trust banks, the Canadian banks, Goldman Sachs, Marriott. The one large stock that has not is the one everybody calls speculative.
"Nvidia is a defensive asset. Strange to say, right?"
Worth publishes daily chart notes and videos at Worth Charting and runs the WRTH ETF, which holds roughly 900 idiosyncratic options positions across 50 equally weighted trades. Dan Nathan and Guy Adami disclosed on air that they own it.
The full episode is covered here so you can skip it. 53 minutes of audio, 20 minutes of reading.
Here are the 12 calls that matter.
👤 Guest: Carter Worth, who publishes the chart work at Worth Charting and runs the WRTH ETF
🎙️ Hosts: Dan Nathan and Guy Adami, who have worked together on CNBC's Fast Money since 2007 and co-host MRKT Call
📰 Published: 15 September 2026 on YouTube
🔴 YouTube | ⏱️ 53 min | ✅ Time saved: 33 min
Key Takeaways
Nvidia is now the defensive way to own semiconductors, and Worth would short the chip index against it
The SOX has come off roughly 28% to 30% since its May-June peak while Nvidia is unchanged
The market's best winners are the ones rolling over, not the laggards
Bank of New York, Northern Trust and State Street all sit far above trend with nothing underneath them
The S&P 500 is unchanged since the end of May while everything under it rotates violently
Bank of America's chief executive rarely sounds a warning, which is why Nathan says this one counts
Worth sold a 10-day Amazon strangle for $1.17 against a $251.92 stock, a 46 basis point yield
That annualizes to 16.95%, and the position only has to stay inside the two strikes
A hike is what the bond market wants, Nathan argues, even though the President will not
His expectation is the front end rising and the long end falling
Doing nothing tomorrow would be the most market-negative outcome on the board
Energy shares are ignoring the oil price in both directions
XLE has been unchanged for five days while crude rallied, and the oil services charts look worse
Volatility is cheap into a Fed decision, and futures with stops beat same-day options for trading it
The SPY straddle expiring the next day costs about $7 against a $757 stock, under 1%
1. A Flip-Flop Session
Nathan opened on a tape that had reversed itself overnight. The day before, semiconductors and software were destroyed while everything else rose. On this morning it was the other way round.
"The SOX closed down 5% or something" the previous session, Nathan said, and everything else was mostly up.
On this day the pattern inverted. SMH was unchanged and semiconductors were green, while Microsoft was down 1%, Amazon 2%, Google one and a half percent, SpaceX 2% and Apple 1%.
"we literally have flip-flopped the whole thing" — his description of a session where the 10-year Treasury yield sat at 5%, exactly where it was at the same time the day before, and crude oil was up 3% at 104 after coming in a bit.
His read is that the market is repricing rates, not the Fed. Since roughly early August the S&P has made a series of lower highs and lower lows, the VIX is finally showing signs of life, and "Fed, no Fed, it doesn't matter."
The evidence he watches for that is Bitcoin, which he put at around 75,000 and change. "Bitcoin to me is sort of this arbiter of trying to understand what's going on in terms of the Fed."
He thinks it rallied on the CLARITY Act and on Treasury Secretary Bessent's operation twist, and is now giving that back — which to him is the market accepting a higher-rate environment.
He also flagged a seasonal quirk before making the point, carefully. Over the 25 years the market has been open on 11 September, he said, "it's probably up 90% of the time" — an observation about what he has noticed rather than a comment on why.
2. Moynihan's Warning
Adami pulled up the XLF over two days, which led to the Bank of America chief executive's appearance on Fast Money the night before. Nathan's assessment of the man was blunt, and so was his point about why the warning matters.
"I don't find him to be all that inspiring." Nathan wants a leader people would run through walls for, and said "He is not that person", comparing him to Roger Goodell as someone who found his way into a position of leadership and a large pay packet without an obvious reason.
The substantive point is the change in tone. Brian Moynihan has been in the seat since 2010, and Nathan has been on air since 2007. "I've never heard him say anything other than the environment that we find ourselves in is extraordinary" and that things are going well.
So a warning from him is information. Because he historically does not talk that way, "you better listen to him" when he says something has changed.
3. Goldman and the IPOs
Nathan contrasted that with Goldman Sachs, whose chief executive he does respect, and used the investment banks to make an argument about the pipeline of large listings.
"Goldman's going to be lead left on every one of these deals" — SpaceX already, and presumably Anthropic or OpenAI, with Goldman and Morgan Stanley flip-flopping the lead between them.
The revenue is not only the banking fee. Nathan listed lending fees, stabilization on the deal, the green shoe, and then the aftermarket order flow. "The floats are small, but they're going to trade multiples of their floats."
Which is why deals being pushed out hurts the stocks, and why he thinks both names reach "reasonable values at some point".
Adami put a technical frame on Goldman. Drawing an uptrend from the spring 2025 low around 470 through the next low, the third touch of that line lands exactly on the 150-day moving average. "These are not coincidental."
His conclusion was that the stock is at the line now. "This is make or break." The duration of the trend line, he said, is what makes the level matter.
Nathan's version was the price action. Goldman made a brief new all-time high in mid-July, gave all of it back, and has made lower highs and lower lows since — down 17% from those levels while the S&P is down a few percent.
4. Winners Starting to Roll
Worth's opening read was that this is not one sector's problem. The same shape is showing up across the market: strong charts that have stopped going up.
"A lot of stalling, churning, rolling." He put XLI and Goldman Sachs side by side — an entire industrial sector and a single stock with the same circumstance, a formerly strong chart now rolling over.
Marriott is the more severe version, down 28% from a pattern he said has taken real damage. He had flagged it and similar names in a note about three weeks earlier, which Adami noted had played out as described.
"And the S&P remarkably is unchanged." "We've got this equity market the same level it was essentially in the end of May."
The risk he names is an unacceptable move higher in rates, and his read is that the current move is being deemed acceptable — the S&P is down 3% from its high with rates doing what they have done, and the oil market can handle it. There is always a tipping point, he said, but not yet: "For now, we have a very benign VIX."
What the benign surface hides is violent rotation. Software surging then plunging, semiconductors surging then plunging, and the index churning through it.
The clearest damage is in the highest fliers inside financials. Bank of New York is in a two-day sell-off accelerating from the previous session, with Northern Trust and State Street alongside it — all three huge outperformers far above trend and now starting to roll. "This is a lot of air between where they are now and any sort of support."
Canadian banks are the same story. He named the ZEB ETF in Canada as having all the elements of something rolling and stalling after being extended.
"So you've got you've got all sorts of great winners starting to stall", with Goldman in that category, alongside names that were never doing well.
The mirror image is what he would own. "If Goldman has the elements of a bullish to bearish reversal, progressive PGR is a bearish to bullish reversal."
5. Nvidia Turns Defensive
Nathan asked what Worth would do with Nvidia trading at 200, sitting on its 150-day moving average and on the uptrend, with headlines about slowing the pace of artificial intelligence in the background.
Worth's answer was that Nvidia has decoupled from its own sector. It is the great leader, and yet over the past year the SOX index has been "the laggard along with the mags".
The arithmetic is what makes the conclusion strange. The SOX is off roughly 28% to 30% from a peak he placed around May or June, and Nvidia is unchanged over the same stretch.
"Nvidia is a defensive asset. Strange to say, right?" He added that someone working from the fundamentals would point out that Nvidia trades cheaper than the market multiple.
The trade that follows is a pair. "I'd rather be long Nvidia and short the SOX." On the other side, SMH or any aggregate of semiconductors has all the elements of something not only stalled but continuing to roll: "I would think lower for SMH."
Nathan preferred the SOX as the short leg on construction grounds. "I think the SOX is a better way than the SMH" — Nvidia is a much larger component of SMH than of the SOX, which blunts the hedge.
The Nvidia chart is one of many that look the same. Worth said a number of the charts he has looked at over the past few days have uptrends in place since the spring of 2025 that are being challenged now, with the trend line and the 150-day converging at the same point.
The one difference he noted was a possible double top in Nvidia, which he explicitly declined to make a large point of.
6. Is AI Over-Earning?
Between segments Nathan read out a tweet from Doug Kass, who was watching the program, and treated it as the question the market is not asking.
Kass's line, as Nathan read it: "I asked your guest that perhaps the reason why AI-related valuations are declining is that the sector is over earning."
The mechanism is inventory. Nathan pointed at "double and triple ordering" in memory and semiconductors in particular, a point he credited Adami with making repeatedly.
What bothers him is the absence of the argument. Everyone is bullish on the hyperscalers and the semiconductor names, and "this happens at every freaking cycle."
7. The Amazon Strangle
Worth's ETF sells option premium into collapsing implied volatility after a large move, across 50 equally weighted positions. He walked through a recent Amazon trade, with Nathan explaining the mechanics as they went.
The setup was the July re-rating. "Amazon has a massive rerating." "The stock essentially going from 230, 235 to 280." It has drifted lower in an orderly way since.
The trade was a short strangle sold a few sessions earlier, with "the stock was trading at 251.92".
"Someone's willing to pay 39 cents for those. That's pretty bullish for that person. So we sold it to them."
"And in turn, someone who was very bearish was willing to pay 78 cents for the 237.50 puts."
The yield is the whole point. "Those two add up to $1.17." "$1.17 divided into the price of the stock is a 46 basis point yield over 10 sessions which annualize it 16.95%."
What has to happen from here is nothing. The position needs decay to carry it to expiration, and "it just has to stay between the two horizontal blue lines."
He is relaxed about being wrong in either direction. A fall to 240 would let him "buy Amazon at 240" at about 15 times earnings, and a rally would hand a short to whoever wants one. "The point is we think we've got this one. We shall see."
On duration, he sells the front month and nothing longer. "Well, always front month." "So, the sweet spot is sort of at that 20 sessions or less." Across "about 900 idiosyncratic options positions" the average lands around 15 or 16 sessions, never 40 or 60, because he does not think anyone can see that far out.
He wants no part of the same-day market. Roughly "half of all options volume" is now same-day, which he called outright speculation: "That's not what we're doing."
Nathan drew the line between a strategy and a single trade. Delta, he explained, is "The percentage probability for all intents and purposes that option on expiration is going to be in the money", and as a one-off "You don't sell kind of single-digit delta options" — inside an actively managed book it can make sense. He repeated that "it's not a recommendation or anything like that", and that he and Adami are long the fund.
8. Industrials and Energy
Nathan came back to XLI, which has fallen well behind an S&P 500 down three and a third percent from its recent high, and asked whether tariffs on steel, copper and aluminum explain it.
Worth's answer was that it is a handful of large names. "They're big names driving this." He named Caterpillar and GE Vernova as the places to start, with Cummins Engine substantially off — "great winners that are now under some pressure" rather than a stock-specific story.
He found no other sector that looks quite like it, but pointed back at Bank of New York: "That's the kind of thing that can get quickly in trouble." The same risk sits in parts of financials and in consumer names, where Marriott and Hilton share the pattern of uptrends under pressure.
In energy the charts are worse than the commodity. "So, if we look at the oil services, that is not a good look" — close, he said, to what the industrials look like, from the most price-sensitive corner of the sector.
The refiners are the extended ones. Phillips 66 and Marathon Petroleum risk giving ground: "They're extended no different than BNY."
And the sector as a whole is ignoring the commodity. XLE, driven largely by Chevron and Exxon, has been "unchanged for the past five days" while crude rallied. Nathan made the same point from the other side: these energy stocks "continue to do their thing regardless of price", with price only a partial tailwind.
One of the hosts said a shock is coming to crude. "a headline coming to a theater near you" would knock oil down 7 to 9% over the next couple of weeks, from a source he could not name, and would pressure the energy names that have gone sideways.
Worth gave the level to watch on the way down. "62 and a half is your first level of support" on XLE, and a close below it means a visit to the 150-day moving average.
Adami's explanation for the White House's interest is that crude, diesel, gasoline and the rest are at the top of the list as problems for consumer sentiment and for inflation — conversations he assumes are being had, and assumes will not succeed.
9. Gold Loses the 150-Day
Gold broke out through its 150-day moving average and has come back below it, which Adami was not pleased about. The dollar index, meanwhile, is sitting almost exactly on its 200-day.
"I am very disappointed that once we got through the 150-day, we didn't stay above it. So yes, label me upset."
His original thesis was that higher yields would be bullish for gold, because a deteriorating bond market would push people into precious metals. That worked for a period and has not for the last two or three weeks, so higher rates are a headwind now.
He has not abandoned it. "I still think there's an environment where bond market deterioration, currency moves that are seemingly coming out of nowhere will be bullish for gold." "I don't think the gold story is over."
Nathan put the levels around it. Gold spent some time above 5,000 going back a year or so, and 4,000 looks like "a pretty decent support level" if the macro backdrop is not going to abate.
He also allowed that this may just be consolidation after an asset that has been a massive outperformer, and said the test is how it trades if it reaches 4,000.
10. The Fed at 92.5%
Nathan put the CME FedWatch tool on screen. What struck him was not the level but how fast it moved.
The screen read "92 and a half%" for a 25 basis point rise the next day. A month earlier the same reading was about 33%, and a week earlier the hosts were in the 50/50 camp.
"I can't remember seeing that sort of monthly volatility, for something that, a live meeting."
A rule of thumb was relayed from a guest on Fast Money the previous night: above roughly 65% certainty going into a meeting, the Federal Reserve historically does not disappoint. "So using that logic, it appears as though they're going to move and hike rates by 25 basis points."
The most dangerous outcome on the board is inaction. "I think out of all the outcomes, believe it or not, them doing nothing might be the most market negative thing" — because it would show a Federal Reserve zigging when it should zag, and not adhering to what it has said since Kevin Warsh took office.
So the base case is also the preferred one. "So, I think the best thing for the market, my opinion, 25 basis point hike", with the tone of the press conference as hawkish or dovish as it likes. A 50 basis point move is being floated by some, at low probability, and would be a one-and-done paired with dovish language.
The politics are the obvious risk. Nathan expects an immediate reaction if the committee raises — "what's going to happen to the president's Twitter account" — and said the Treasury Secretary knows better but will back the President.
His own call is counterintuitive and he knows it. If you want the rates that matter to fall, he argued, you want the hike. "I think that will be a salve, a calming influence on the bond market."
"And I think in a weird way, you could see the front month, the front end of the curve go up and the back end, which is what you should be concerned about, actually go down."
A Société Générale strategist who appeared on Fast Money the night before agreed with him, which Adami said made everyone else nervous.
Underneath the index, things are already moving. The VIX at 17 and a half struck Nathan as a joke against real trepidation, and the airline ETF, JETS, has made a nasty move alongside the hotel names — some things are starting to "act a little funky under the surface" whatever the S&P has done.
11. Futures Over 0DTE
With a decision at two o'clock and a press conference after it, Nathan walked through how he would take the risk, and came down against same-day options.
He priced the event off the straddle. With SPY at 757, the call and the put expiring the next day at the 757 strike together cost "about seven bucks" — a little under 1%, or about $3.50 for either side alone.
"That seems cheap, man." "I do think vol is cheap in this environment 100%", a view he said has been wrong for a while because the VIX kept falling until the last week.
His objection to options here is mechanical. "Options can be very hard to trade in and around events", especially contracts expiring two hours after the press conference ends. "But again zero-days-to-expiration options can end up being worthless very quickly."
What he would use instead is the E-mini future with a stop. A stop can be elected at a worse level than intended in a fast move, he allowed, and the answer to that is to keep probing rather than to abandon the position.
The trade-off he named is honest. Options define the risk; futures do not, but they do not decay to zero in an afternoon. He noted he does not trade zero-day contracts himself.
12. The Gene Hackman List
The last stretch of the program is not about markets at all. Prompted by a line from Hoosiers, the two hosts spent it working through Gene Hackman's filmography and then everybody else's, with Doug Kass and the production team throwing in suggestions.
It started with "Don't get caught watching the paint dry" and the picket fence, from Hoosiers.
Hackman's roster ran through Mississippi Burning, The French Connection, Crimson Tide, Unforgiven, The Royal Tenenbaums, Enemy of the State, The Firm and Young Frankenstein, with Adami quoting the "deserves got nothing to do with it" exchange from Unforgiven.
Robert Duvall was the running theme, from Apocalypse Now — where Nathan noted he is on screen for maybe ten minutes and won a supporting nomination — through The Great Santini and Tender Mercies, and as the man who Nathan says stole The Natural.
On sequels, Nathan drew a distinction. "Godfather 2 is not a sequel. It's his own movie." Adami offered Top Gun: Maverick and The Empire Strikes Back; both agreed the second Bad News Bears should not have been made.
Nathan's oldest call was on an actor, not a stock. Twenty-five years ago, after Triple X came out, he told a colleague Vin Diesel would become one of the highest-grossing actors in history — a prediction he asked the team to check on air.
The Wilford Brimley question produced the closing note. "So, my favorite Wilford Brimley movie is 100% The Natural", Nathan said, for the scene where the general manager tells Roy Hobbs he is the best hitter he has ever seen. "He won the movie."
Adami made the joke against himself. If the two of them spent less time on films, "you might have a higher hit rate" on the stock market side.
And the sign-off was unapologetic. "We did not name one shitty movie. Not one." — followed by "You could have tuned out 10 minutes ago."
Bonus Insights
Nathan's artificial-intelligence assistant failed him. It is meant to send him a rundown of his calendar at 7 a.m.; on this morning it did not, and he learned at 9:08 that he was supposed to be at breakfast with a chief financial officer visiting from San Francisco. He got there in a hat, which is why he wore one on air.
Adami has rules about city nicknames. If you say Frisco, or Beantown, "You're failing at life."
The hosts speak every morning at 9 a.m. to level-set before the show, a routine Nathan described in passing.
Worth was reviewed as much as his charts were. Nathan opened by asking about his hair and closed by praising his button-down shirt, which Adami said belonged on an album cover.
Doug Kass was watching live and participating, which is how his over-earning question reached the show mid-segment.
Adami on the market's own selective memory: the crude-oil headlines keep not mattering, which he framed as a boy-who-cried-wolf problem the market will eventually stop pricing.
Worth's bottom line is that the damage in this market is concentrated in what has worked — the trust banks, the Canadian banks, the industrials, Goldman Sachs and the hotels are all rolling over from above trend — and that the one name investors treat as the speculative extreme, Nvidia, is now the defensive holding to own against the rest of the chip complex.
Products, Companies & Tools Mentioned
Nvidia, the VanEck Semiconductor ETF and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (The pair trade: Worth would be long Nvidia and short the chip index, which is off roughly 28% to 30% from its peak while Nvidia is unchanged; Nathan prefers the SOX as the short leg because Nvidia is a smaller part of it)
Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley (Lead left on the coming large listings and the aftermarket flow that follows them; Goldman is down 17% from its July high and sitting on a trend line from the spring of 2025)
Bank of America (Nathan's point is that a warning from a chief executive who never warns is worth acting on)
Bank of New York, Northern Trust and State Street (The trust banks: huge outperformers far above trend, now rolling, with what Worth called a lot of air beneath them)
Progressive (The mirror image of Goldman — a bearish-to-bullish reversal rather than the other way round)
Marriott and Hilton (Marriott is down 28% and has done real damage to its pattern; Hilton shares the shape)
Caterpillar, GE Vernova and Cummins (The large industrial names driving XLI's underperformance, all former winners under pressure)
Amazon (The re-rating from 230-235 to 280 in July, the orderly drift since, and the short strangle Worth sold against it)
Phillips 66, Marathon Petroleum, Chevron and ExxonMobil (The refiners are extended; Chevron and Exxon are why XLE has sat unchanged for five days through a crude rally)
SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic (The listings the banks are counting on, and the ones Nathan thinks are being pushed out)
Microsoft, Alphabet and Apple (Down 1%, one and a half percent and 1% on the day, in the session that reversed the one before it)
Worth Charting and the WRTH ETF (Worth's daily chart notes and videos, and the actively managed fund that sells option premium across 50 equally weighted positions; both hosts disclosed they own the fund)
CME Group (The E-mini S&P future Nathan would use with a stop rather than same-day options, and the FedWatch tool the Fed probability came from)
JETS (The airline ETF, making what Nathan called a nasty move alongside the hotel names)
Books & Resources Mentioned
Worth Charting (Worth's daily notes and daily videos, which carried the Marriott call about three weeks before the breakdown)
The CME FedWatch Tool (The source of the 92.5% reading, and of the month-earlier comparison Nathan pulled up on screen)
Watch the full episode:
If this was worth your time, send it to someone who has to have a view on this.
Get the latest market chatter as it happens: