Pres. Trump Visits the Federal Reserve, Righting the Chip, Live: FCC Chairman Carr 7/25/25

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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Carl Quintanilla (0:47)

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 Friday 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. Jim has the morning off. S&P is gunning for five gains in a row and some fresh all-time highs as we put a busy week of earnings to bed. Get ready for next week's Fed decision and an even busier earnings calendar with more than a third of S&P market cap reporting. Our roadmap begins with the president, though, his historic visit to the Fed yesterday, sparring with the Fed chair over those renovation costs, but holding back on threats to fire him.

Sara Eisen (1:25)

Plus, Intel shares are dropping post-results as the chipmaker continues to try and turn things around.

David Faber (1:30)

And the FCC Greenlight Skydance's takeover of Paramount, the deal valued at about $8 billion. We're going to speak with FCC Chairman Brendan Carr about that decision and a few other things.

Carl Quintanilla (1:41)

Let's begin with the markets. S&P and NASDAQ are coming off more record closes, as we mentioned, although, once again, the longest stretch of the year without a 1% move, the earnings beat rate, Sara, has been pretty good at 84%, although, the average stock, thanks to Bespoke this morning, that has reported is down a touch on the earnings reaction. That's interesting to watch.

Sara Eisen (2:01)

But the revenue beats are bigger than historically averaging, and that is something that I think has been a positive surprise to the markets, especially on a quarter when the companies are really having to deal with tariffs, and they're mitigating it in different ways, and some of them are finding it delayed because they have inventory. But overall, it's just a better than expected picture.

Goldman Sachs has a sort of speculative basket that they're looking at that was interesting because this is a week that was also defined by name trades coming back. I mean, the most shorted stocks, most hated stocks in the market like GoPro and Kohl's, and yesterday, American Eagle, did you see that one got a big lift after Sydney Sweeney became the new poster child of the poster girl of the American Eagle ads. That one went up four and a quarter percent after a really rough year. SPACs? I didn't realize this. I saw on the Goldman note $9 billion of SPAC issuance deals. Yeah.

David Faber (2:57)

I mean, Cantor alone has four of them out there now. Howard Lutnick's son, Brandon, running. I mean, it's four different SPACs that they've raised since, I mean, not even the last six months, just to put in perspective. So you are starting to see SPACs come back. We're reloading the old SPAC index. It's taking a little while to get the data together, Sara. I know you're anxious for it. But to your point, we're going to be tracking this stuff again.

Sara Eisen (3:24)

But it's all signs that, according to Goldman, the speculative activity is back. 61% of options activity, they say, are call options. So what does this mean? Well, actually, they look at it. And going out a few months after the speculative index is at this level, actually, you see better returns in the market overall. But it could also lead to things like squeezes and sort of more violent corrections.

Carl Quintanilla (3:49)

Yeah, this tracker, this speculative trading indicator, they say, tracks unprofitable stocks, penny stocks, and then stocks, David, where EV to sales is 10x or higher. Yesterday, item on the tape about this five-cent meme stock, Healthcare Triangle, which was 15% of trading on US exchanges.

David Faber (4:13)

Seriously?

Carl Quintanilla (4:13)

Yeah.

David Faber (4:14)

I did not see that.

Carl Quintanilla (4:15)

Not to mention the call trading in some of these meme names exceeding.

Sara Eisen (4:20)