9am Hour: Fed Decision Day: SK Hynix Effect on Chips, Dow Tumbles, Oil Surges 7/29/26

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
The board recommends approving...

**David Faber** (0:01)
Regarding that seat on the committee, we're promoting...

**SPEAKER_3** (0:02)
to most quarterly earnings...

**SPEAKER_4** (0:04)
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**David Faber** (1:00)
Market insight and analysis. You're listening to the opening bell of CNBC's Squawk on the Street.

**Carl Quintanilla** (1:05)
Good Wednesday morning. Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla with Jim Cramer, David Faber at Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. Pre-market a little skittish as the cost speed continues to plummet, now down 16 percent in two days, and the Koreans impose caps on leverage, hold some meetings on emergency measures, got a Fed decision at two, and Microsoft Meta tonight. Brent gets near 90 as we have now reported strikes between Iran and the US, Iraq and the Saudis, and Hezbollah and Israel. The President says the US will hit Iran hard. A roadmap begins with more cracks for the chips. SK Hynix reports its first earnings, it's making its US debut.

**David Faber** (1:42)
Plus Mark Zuckerberg criticizing Anthropic and OpenAI's approach to AIs, calling for more openness. Of course, this as his company Meta gets ready to report its earnings after the bell. And we're going to get you set for the Fed. The markets are expecting Chairman Warsh to hold rates steady. That'll be a bit later in the day.

**Carl Quintanilla** (2:03)
Let's get right to the markets in this weakness in tech. The NASDAQ's in the midst of a five-day losing streak. And there's SK Hynix falling and missing lofty expectations by a more than 550% jump in quarterly profit and revenue that more than tripled from a year ago, Jim. It is a miss on revenue in OperNet, even though I'm looking at DRAM ASPs up 30, quarter on quarter.

**Jim Cramer** (2:25)
This was one of the most confusing conference calls I've ever been on. The reason why it's confusing is something that I learned from Micron and from Plot Materials, which you have these long-term agreements.
This was by companies that are afraid that prices have gotten out of control. So what they do is they go to SK Hynix, David, and they say, listen, we like to have a long-term agreement. SK Hynix has a long-term agreement. But the analysts themselves weren't caught up. And they were looking at the actual prices, DRAM and HBM, and said, are you guys kidding me? You didn't make it anywhere near what the spot market is. And they said, well, listen, we're not using the spot market. So the analysts did not see it coming. Now, how they could not see it coming is insane to me. But one thing that is absolutely certain, that we better start getting used to, is this Korean market is wide open and it's very different from ours. And the analysts seem, I don't want to say that they're, they seem naive.
There's a lot of action in these stocks. And just to give you a sense of why, of the leverage here, that is just amazing, everybody has got, everyone has got something that's Hynix. We have it here, the ADR is about to combine. But listen to this, the reason why they're worried is that there's a Korea 3X Hynix leverage fund. This one was out of London. It was at 36 in June 2nd, 22nd, 36 Now it's at one.

**David Faber** (3:46)
Now it's at one.

**Jim Cramer** (3:47)
Now it's at one. So like that's what they're trying to prevent. I mean, there's just got, it is the most gambling country I have ever seen.

**David Faber** (3:54)
There is a level of, yes, a level of, or a very high willingness to, to use your words, gamble in the South Korean market to a certain extent.
And there are products that obviously are fulfilling that desire, I guess, as well, that are available. I mean, that said, I'm not sure how much we should be playing off of the Korean stock market. SK Hynix, we're talking about because it is one of the more important companies out there, it's certainly one of the leaders in memory. We know that. It recently listed, of course, here with a massive issue of shares as well. They have been trading the US ADRs at a significant premium still haven't they?