Inflation Soars, Stocks Pull Back From Record Highs, eBay Rejects GameStop's $56B Bid 5/12/26

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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 (1:12)

Good Tuesday morning, welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla with David Faber here at Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. Cramer's at FedEx headquarters in Memphis today, ahead of his exclusive with Raj Subramaniam tonight on Mad Money. Meantime, some equity weakness here, as April CPI does come in hot. Year on year headline, 38 is the highest in three years. Biggest jump in food prices in almost four years. Long bonds back above five. Oil meantime, back above 100, as the president says the ceasefire with Iran is on life support.

Roadmap begins with CPI rising on the spike in gas prices. Kevin Warsh moves a step closer to being confirmed as the next Fed chair.

David Faber (1:48)

Also ahead, geopolitics is on Wall Street's radar this morning, and it's tightening US-Iran tensions. President Trump is heading to China tonight for those high stakes meetings with President Xi. Plus eBay rejects GameStop's unsolicited $56 billion takeover offer. Remember, it was half cash, half stock, but they call it either credible nor attractive.

Carl Quintanilla (2:11)

Let's begin with Jim this morning at FedEx in Memphis. Jim, I know you're psyched about today's show.

Jim Cramer (2:17)

Yeah, I really am. And look behind me. This, by the way, just so we have all the introductions, this is Olivia, okay, and this is Alexia. They named planes, employees' names, okay? And I think that we should get that straightened. It's really kind of a three-box here, too.

You know what? This is a great place to discover exactly how bad what oil is meaning, because they have a fuel surcharge. And so far, the fuel surcharge has been passed on pretty well.

David, you know, when you see the CPI number, it's pretty obvious that the idea that you can keep inflation under control during this period is just out the window. And so the question is, we always hear the same thing, gasoline up, and we all see the prices. Midterm elections, therefore, there has to be a settlement. I don't know, David, maybe after China, but I just don't think that after that life support comment, I see something happening imminently. I don't know how you, maybe you take it differently.

David Faber (3:11)

No, I don't have a, I don't really have a view. I rely on a lot of other people to help me sort of understand what's going on here. What I would say, Jim, is the, you know, the market has not paid close attention, I would argue at least, to what has been going on. And then we episodically sort of tune in and we tune out. It doesn't appear that either side is going to go back to war, so to speak, in the way that it was. But at the same time, the settlement certainly seems far off. And I guess as long as the Strait is more or less closed, that's the key question, remains the key question. And what the impact will be, so many of the experts we bring on CNBC have talked about, really starting to see the true impact in June, let's call it, Jim. And I do wonder whether we'll be talking even more about that than in terms of its impact on the market, if in fact they're right.

Jim Cramer (4:04)

Well, here's what people are missing. Yesterday was a really horrible day. There was a huge part of the market that just cratered. We got a lowest upgrade today. I think that's kind of like someone saying, hold it, wait a second, things have just collapsed. Anything involving retail collapsed yesterday. Just a giant rollover didn't matter whether it was for luxury good, it didn't matter whether it was for Dollar Tree and that whole cohort. Now, today, I think we are seeing the denouement of that big jump up yesterday, where everybody who bought the top... I mean, Carl, there was just a tremendous wave of buying before the market started. That's never good and it was really reaching. It felt so topish that you can see the detritus this morning. Almost everything that was red hot is down today.