Rare Disease Progress, Tech Charity, & the Elizabeth Holmes Doc 10/19/26

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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SPEAKER_2 (0:29)

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Andrew Ross Sorkin (0:59)

Bring in show music, please.

Katie Kramer (1:03)

Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on Squawk Pod, the president's key economic advisor on the economy, Kevin Hassett says the consumer is what matters.

Kevin Hassett (1:14)

We're almost at a 4 percent GDP growth and discretionary travel is a sign that people are feeling good and they've got the money to go out and buy things.

Katie Kramer (1:22)

The FDA lays out a new approach to cure and treat rare disease. Dr. Scott Gottlieb joins us.

Scott Gottlieb (1:28)

In terms of the aspirations that they're indicating and what they want to pursue, I think it's very meaningful. Now they're going to formulate policy around that.

Katie Kramer (1:36)

Plus, did you see it?

Andrew Ross Sorkin (1:38)

The biggest opening for a non-music documentary in two decades.

Katie Kramer (1:42)

The documentary of documentaries about Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes.

Joe Kernen (1:47)

If it was just a confirmation of her being the villain, we all think of her being. I just don't think it would be selling out and getting 100 on Rotten Tomatoes.

Katie Kramer (1:59)

All that and the rest of today's news that got us squawking. It's Monday, October 19th, 2026 Squawk Pod begins right now.

SPEAKER_8 (2:07)

Stand Becky by in 3, 2, 1

Katie Kramer (2:10)

Cue, please.

Becky Quick (2:12)

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Squawk Box. Right here on CNBC. We are live from the Nasdaq Market site in Times Square.

I'm Becky Quick, along with Joe Kernen and Andrew Ross Sorkin. The Nasdaq is coming off a roughly 4.5 percent drop from last week. It was even more concentrated in the big tech names. The Nasdaq 100 was down by 5.5 percent last week. The S&P was down by about 2 percent. It was the worst week for those two averages since late June, the Nasdaq and the S&P Fund 500 But again, you see the Dow was a little bit higher.

Joe Kernen (2:45)

VIX.

SPEAKER_10 (2:46)

That's what I asked for.

Becky Quick (2:48)

VIX actually closing below 20 on Friday.

SPEAKER_10 (2:50)

It doesn't tell the story.

Becky Quick (2:51)

It's 200-day moving average for the first time since July 30th, but you see the spike.

Joe Kernen (2:56)

2231

We talked about it a lot last week, about how there were days where we thought we were going to get a spike, but then it was settling down to 15 or 16, just so much complacency. Then think about going from 15 to 2231 on Friday. Yeah.

Becky Quick (3:15)

22 percent increase for the week.

Joe Kernen (3:17)

But it was up 50 percent basically on Friday briefly. But it's ready.

The slightest thing and it's ready. It got scary, a little bit scary on Friday. Things settled down by the close and it's all happening with a backdrop of 508 on the 10-year.

Becky Quick (3:32)

The 10-year. We'll look at the 10-year in just a second. I'm taking a look very quickly at energy prices too, because energy prices have been elevated as you have continued to see attacks in the Middle East. You can see right now that Brent is trading at 108.59. That's actually off by about 1.1%, but we saw it climb over the weekend. WTI is flat. It's at $101.33 a barrel. And then the 10-year, as Joe was mentioning, crazy to see the pullback that we've seen. The 10-year is sitting at 5.08%.

The 30-year is at 5.42. The 2-year is at 4.72.

Andrew Ross Sorkin (4:08)

Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly now floating a meeting between himself, President Trump, and Chinese President Xi Jinping to try to negotiate an end to the Ukraine War Wall Street Journal report, saying the Ukraine's President, Vladimir Zelenskyy, would not be included in those proposed talks, however. The proposal said to have been broached on a phone call between Putin and Trump earlier this month. That also led to a deal for the US to buy Russian diesel fuel. Now, on Friday, President Trump said that he would pause new sanctions. That's a package aimed at Russia just days before it was set to go into effect, telling Congress the move was in the national interest. In an interview that aired yesterday on Meet the Press, Ukraine's president was asked if he trusts President Trump.