Big Week for Earnings, Pfizer's Warning and Rebound, Yellen on the Israel-Hamas War 10/16/23

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Jim Cramer (0:31)

It's Jim Cramer here. You're listening to the opening bell of CNBC's Squawk on the Street. Don't miss a minute of the action.

Carl Quintanilla (0:39)

Good Monday morning. Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla with David Faber, Sara Eisen at Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. Cramer has the morning off. Futures are solid despite yields close to one week highs. The market watching for headlines on Israel-Gaza will get 15% of the S&P this week in earnings, including Tesla, Netflix, Goldman, and Powell speaks on Thursday. A roadmap begins with the big week ahead for investors as we get set for all of these results, including B of A, as we said, Netflix and Tesla in there as well.

David Faber (1:08)

Also, we got Pfizer. It slashed its sales forecast for its COVID vaccine and therapies late on Friday. Shares, though, actually not going to be down ahead of the open.

Sara Eisen (1:16)

And watching Apple reports of disappointing iPhone sales in China.

Carl Quintanilla (1:21)

Let's begin with this new week for the market. It's going to have something for everybody. Obviously, we're on the lookout for geopolitical headlines as we watch to see if Israel makes a move into Gaza. But as we said, earning season will heat up. The FedSpeak calendar, Sara, is insane.

Sara Eisen (1:35)

It's heavy.

There's a lot of them.

And you know, what's interesting is that FedSpeak has moved from hawkish to dovish now for the markets, because increasingly you've got a number of these FedSpeakers saying, we're OK waiting and seeing the impact of our higher rates. They're not expressing any kind of alarm or panic over the fact that inflation numbers have come a little bit firmer. CPI last week was firmer. Expectations in the University of Michigan sentiment number on Friday were a little bit firmer. And the data overall has continued to not point to recession. But it does feel like the group think, guys, at the Fed has moved toward, let's pause, let's wait a little bit and see the impact of the tightening. And by the way, the move in the long term Treasury yields, the big sell off we saw there, that's restrictive and they're paying attention to that and kind of feeling like that might be doing some of the work for them when it comes to rates. But Powell will be good because this is a sort of authoritative chance for him to put on the table another rate hike or not. And it'll be the first time he gets to react to CPI and PPI and the last jobs report, all of which have been strong.

David Faber (2:44)

Is there a point at which it's almost too much though? I mean, Carl just tweeted out the schedule, I mean, it's endless. You're not going to bring us every single sound.

Is it going to be every single sound bite from every single person?

Sara Eisen (2:57)

I'll try, but we do have earnings, which makes it a little more interesting. And we're going to try to get the forecast from companies because so far so good, right, with the banks, with Pepsi. I mean, if we've only had a few reporting so far, but none of them are talking about recession and none of them are worst case scenario. There's stuff to monitor, like in the banks talking about higher net charge offs, for instance, at JP Morgan and Wells Fargo, more credit card debt being used by Americans. But again, nothing alarming at this point as far as what they're expecting.

Carl Quintanilla (3:26)

Yeah, got about 11% of the S&P in so far.

B of A this morning says 81% beating on EPS, about 9% above consensus, two ex-financials. David, of course, Friday was eventful and we'll get a lot more tomorrow.

David Faber (3:41)

Yeah, and again, as Sara said, the banks, I mean, yes, expecting more charge-offs, but frankly, things not near where some had anticipated they would be given the state right now, commercial real estate, or at least what seems to be the view of weakness there in particular.

You know, that is, we talked to Willie Walker last week. You know, it's a slower moving story, as we've said many times. The charge-offs will come, but they aren't here as yet.

Sara Eisen (4:06)