11AM Hour: Former Barclays CEO on Bank Earnings, Standard Nuclear CEO on IPO & UnitedHealth Shares Jump 7/16/26

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The board recommends approving...

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Regarding that seat on the committee, we're promoting......to most quarterly earnings...

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Sara Eisen (1:05)

Good Thursday morning again. Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Sara Eisen with Carl Quintanilla, live from host nine of the New York Stock Exchange. Today, former Barclays CEO Bob Diamond is with us on what's been a solid week for bank earnings, why he still sees more strength ahead.

Carl Quintanilla (1:19)

CEO of Standard Nuclear is with us as we await the company's public debut here at the Stock Exchange today, after they cut their IPO size by more than half.

Sara Eisen (1:27)

Plus Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, Ellen Zentner, on New Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh and why she says the Fed will maintain a hiking bias for a while here. First up in the markets, we have seen a recovery from some early morning lows, and it's the rotation today into defensives and cyclicals, healthcare having a nice day up 2.5 percent. That's leading the market along with consumer staples, energy is higher as well, and so are some of the groups like financials, industrials, and materials tied to better economic data today with retail sales, jobless claims, some manufacturing surveys. The small caps are up a half a percent. The overall index is down though, Carl, because we do have technology underperforming. And that gets back to the Dells and the memory chips like Micron, NVIDIA is lower, so is Broadcom. We'll start with that weakness in chips as Taiwan Semi becomes the latest with news out today, reporting a pretty good number surge in profits year over year. Christine, the Parts and Evelos joins us now with what was a good quarter, Christina, but some weakness in the share price.

Christina Partesides (2:30)

Yeah, Taiwan Semi actually delivered one of their strongest quarters ever, record revenue, profit up sharply. And yet the stock was down worse this morning, but now it's down one and a half percent. The problem is TSMC's margins actually beat its own guidance, but some on Wall Street had quietly kind of penciled in an even higher number, buy side numbers, and when a company this dominant only meets expectations instead of crushing them. Investors, unfortunately, use this as a sell the news kind of scenario. So next quarter's margin guidance also came in a little lighter as the company ramps its newest two nanometer chips, so just more advanced chips, which cost more to produce in the early stages, hence the gross margin issue. TSMC also raised its spending plan significantly for the year and piled on another $100 billion specifically for factories here in the United States. So there's more proof the AI buildout isn't necessarily slowing down, even if the market isn't necessarily rewarding it. Just over the last little while with the drop in chips, there's some fears that add supply and that would break the demand shortage, or I should say the demand supply dynamic. So why are we seeing the stock down? Investors say there's simply no catalyst left to really push TSMC shares higher from here. The good news is already priced in. It's the same pattern we've seen with NVIDIA. Solid prints that don't necessarily move the stock because the bar was already so high.

And TSMC isn't alone. It's now the third strong chip print in a row. You had preliminary results from Samsung. You had ASML just yesterday. And they just get faded by the market. Pair that with the sell-off and memory names like Micron, Sandisk, SK Hynix. And a pattern really just emerges across the entire sector. Investors are taking profit after a historic run, rotating, Sara, you said it, into healthcare, Mag 7, and quietly asking whether the chip cycle has already peaked.