Markets and Mideast Tensions, "Golden Share," Analyst on Tesla "Sell" Call 6/16/25

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Carl Quintanilla (0:59)

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 Monday morning. Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla with David Faber and Sara Eisen at Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. Cramer has the morning off. Futures near session highs after a weekend in which oil facilities in the Mideast have so far been spared as Iran and Israel trade missile attacks, oil is back near 71 Busy week with the Fed decision, retail sales and the G7 Summit. Our roadmap begins with the markets digesting some of these Mideast tensions. Stocks coming off their worst day in more than three weeks.

David Faber (1:34)

Speaking of stocks, here's the US. Steel. They're going to be up in the pre-market. Well, President Trump late Friday did approve the company's deal to be acquired by Nippon. It does require a golden share and gives that to the US government.

Sara Eisen (1:47)

Also ahead, oil prices pulling back after the Israel-Iran conflict fueled the biggest one-day gains for WTI and Brent since 2022

Carl Quintanilla (1:56)

Let's begin with the Middle East, of course, on the market's radar. As we do kick off a new trading week, Sara is absolutely right. The focus is going to be on energy today. Nat gas a little elevated, but after hitting 78 on Friday on West Texas, back to 71.5 and a lot of notes this morning talking about how maybe markets are overreacting to some of the tensions in the Middle East.

Sara Eisen (2:18)

Or underreacting. I mean, oil has this sort of numb effect sometimes to geopolitical risk. That's been a constant theme for the last few years now. So it was actually a big move that we got on Friday. And some might have thought coming in today, we would see oil prices elevated again today just because we're in the fourth day in a row now. It's escalated. But I guess what the market is looking at, David, is that oil supply still flows through the Middle East and has not been disruptive. And the worst case scenarios for the oil market, i.e. Israel going after the energy, the oil infrastructure, the production in Iran, which is one of the world's biggest producers, has not happened. Iran has not disrupted flow of oil via the Strait of Hormuz, which is really important for about a fifth of the world's oil. And because that's not happening, oil prices down again. And we continue this sort of theme of the geopolitical risk just not going into oil like we've seen in years past.

David Faber (3:16)

And potentially not impacting the market, obviously oil down and the futures are up, as our viewers saw there. So, yeah, I think it's interesting because the prospect of an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, so to speak, or their uranium enrichment facilities, and the like, certainly has been something the market or market participants have talked about as a possibility for years. I think the expectation would have been a stronger response, a negative response, but it has not happened, at least at this point. And to your point, it's not as though things have calmed down in any way. If anything, they've continued to escalate with both sides exchanging ever-increasing volleys of bombing.

Carl Quintanilla (4:00)

Yeah, there have been some civilian deaths in Tel Aviv and in Haifa. But Netanyahu is on the tape this morning, says there is a path to victory. They're on their way to achieving their two objectives, which is removing the nuclear threat and then removing the missile threat. So I guess there is a sense that if they can achieve their objectives earlier, that's less time under which the markets would be under strain.