Markets and Fed Decision Week, SoftBank CEO to Meet With Trump and Announce $100B U.S. Investment 12/16/24

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David Faber (0:59)

Market Insight and Analysis. You're listening to the opening bell of CNBC's Squawk on the Street. Good Monday morning.

Carl Quintanilla (1:05)

Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla with Jim Cramer, David Faber at Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. Pretty steady pre-market as we set the table for a hectic week. Fed decision, earnings from Nike and FedEx, retail sales and PCE. Dow is down seven straight. That's the longest losing streak in about four years. Our roadmap begins with expectations for the Fed. Investors are waiting the latest rate cut outlook as we kick off this last full trading week of the year.

David Faber (1:31)

Plus the president-elect continuing to court big business. Apple CEO dining at Mar-a-Lago Friday. Jeff Bezos set for a meeting this weekend. SoftBank CEO expected to announce a major investment in the US. And we're keeping an eye on shares of Honeywell. They're hired this morning. This after activist pressure. The company is now considering a sale of its aerospace, or I should say a split, a split of its aerospace business. Yeah, Jim and I will talk about it. What we've been talking about, we'll continue to.

Carl Quintanilla (2:02)

Let's begin though with the markets ahead of this week's Fed rate decision. Jim, we'll see what we get on Wednesday. Goldman does remove their expectation for a January cut.

Jim Cramer (2:10)

Yeah, Goldman notes are pretty bullish. I think that there's a sense that although you're not supposed to look through about what's supposed to happen, you're supposed to look at the data they currently have, which is that other than housing and auto is pretty strong. But the look through is kind of like what David Costin said at Goldman, which is that the animal spirits are really taking over. The small business index is incredibly bullish. But what I'm finding, there are so many people who are coming out of the woodwork to say how bad the Biden administration was to business, almost to the point where you couldn't really talk about it ahead of time. And David, a lot of it's concentrated on con in the FTC.

David Faber (2:50)

Well, I mean, that is not exactly a surprise to anyone at this desk or anyone who's been listening to us for the last four years. My God, you've been talking about it nonstop.

Jim Cramer (2:58)

Well, I had to relent because I was talking about it nonstop.

David Faber (3:04)

Yeah, there was definitely fewer deals perhaps getting done as a result of the regulatory pressure from both Lena Conn and from Jonathan as well at the DOJ enforcement.

Jim Cramer (3:18)

Not going back to Paul Weiss's.

David Faber (3:20)

We know that, but this is beyond that. I think this is a sense of well into the regulatory regime and what that's going to look like in the incoming administration and what that will mean for business. Not just in terms of pursuing deals, but just in doing business.

Jim Cramer (3:36)

Well, I spoke to three different CEOs, actually I spoke to about a half-dozen CEOs in the last, say, five days. And, to a person, they all say, I called the president, President Biden, and he got some assistant and the assistant said, no, he doesn't want to be in the room with you. Now, these were people, if I told you who they were, you would all say, hey, they were in the room with you. I mean, they were your last people in President Trump. I mean, I would say, actually, two of them are very hard-line Democrats. One is middle of the road. And they just couldn't believe that they were rebuffed. It's just amazing how ill-advised Biden is, people were, because they turned away people who really wanted to help him. And somehow, Biden seemed to think that anyone who was wealthy is bad news. Of course, the opposite here.