9AM Hour: Stocks Shrug Off U.S-Iran Tensions, Chips Surge, PepsiCo CEO "First On CNBC" 7/9/26

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Carl Quintanilla (1:00)

Market moving insight and analysis. Join Jim Cramer, David Faber and me, Carl Quintanilla on the opening bell hour of CNBC Squawk on the Street.

Good Thursday 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. Chip stocks asserting some leadership this morning on the back of some bullish demand commentary from AMAT. News from Micron, Broadcom working with Meta, Q2 earnings season warms up with Levi's and now Pepsi. Oil prices higher after a second night of US strikes on Iran, and now retaliation from Iran on sites in Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, Hormuz traffic has essentially collapsed. Roadmap begins with the chips though, leading that bounce ahead of the open as investors shrug off some of those Iran strikes.

David Faber (1:48)

Plus Meta is reportedly planning to put its custom AI chips into production in September. This is it looks to double its overall computing capacity over time.

We're keeping an eye on Pepsi consumer headwinds. Despite a second quarter of price cuts, the company's saying economic concerns continue to weigh on demand. Pepsi shares are under some pressure this morning. We're going to break down the quarter with Batman right there. He's the CEO Ramon Laguarta. That'll be the South.

Carl Quintanilla (2:14)

Let's begin with stocks though and the oil markets after the US and Iran did trade strikes for a second consecutive night. This is the president on Air Force One last night talking about dealing with Iran.

SPEAKER_7 (2:27)

We have many ways we can win, but we've already won militarily. They have very little left and they want to make a deal so badly. I just don't know if they're worthy of making a deal. I don't know if they're going to honor the deal.

Carl Quintanilla (2:45)

Jim, we mentioned that tanker traffic has slowed down appreciably. The other story is diesel, and now that Russia is banning diesel exports, they're the second biggest exporter, up 11 percent yesterday.

Jim Cramer (2:56)

No, and that's business. That's what it impacts. That's business to business. Gasoline, and it's not good for the numbers. A lot of numbers are going to have to come down. I do think that there is a skepticism in Wall Street that when the president says they're begging for a deal, it's become a refrain that we no longer, let's say, respect as much as we used to, neither as demonstrated by the oil price futures or, David, by the stock futures, where you would think, well, wait a second, they're begging for a deal, then, why are they widening the war?

What is that?

David Faber (3:33)

I don't know. I'm not sure what to make. We had conversations yesterday with Mark Esper, a few others around this.

How do we describe this period we're in right now? It's not all-out war. It's not a ceasefire. How long will it go on? Does it maintain until the midterm elections in some way because you want to keep gas prices lower? I don't know, Jim.

Jim Cramer (3:55)

Yeah, I do know this, that the market is trying again to ignore because, Carl, if you ignored last time, you made a lot of money. If you drove your earnings estimates toward this, you didn't get a lot of pit action. You ended up sitting down, not buying anything, and you missed a great rally. I think people don't want to have that happen again.

Carl Quintanilla (4:18)

Yeah. Meantime, the so-called crack spread, Jim, the difference between the price of a barrel and the price of a gallon, 57 bucks a barrel. That is now the biggest wide since June of 22