Record Highs and the Santa Claus Rally Watch, Metals Rock, Nvidia's $20B Deal 12/26/25

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Market insight and analysis. You're listening to the opening bell of CNBC's Squawk on the Street.

Brian Sullivan (1:05)

Well, good Friday morning and welcome to Squawk on the Street. I am not Carl.

Morgan Brennan (1:10)

Holiday edition.

Brian Sullivan (1:11)

She is not David. And he is not Jim. No. I am Brian. That is Morgan. That is Dom. We're here post-night at the New York Stock Exchange, the regular squad, Jim, David, Carl. All have the day off, kind of. Cause we'll hear from David in about a minute or two. Just four more trading days of the year.

Futures, not giving us a lot of help right now, guys. Kind of mixed right now. The president ordering that today is a federal holiday. So if you work for the government, congrats. You have the day off. But the markets, we are open and we are coming off record highs. The S&P 500 up nearly 18% this year. On pace, three straight years of double digit gains for stocks. The big question, will the markets make it four years in a row? The strategist on average, guys, is seeing about eight to 11% gains next year. Brian, your roadmap today begins with the state of stocks. We just said record highs rolling into the fourth year, maybe, or Morgan, will it be three and done?

Morgan Brennan (2:07)

Well, plus, metals madness, gold, silver, copper, platinum, all hitting new record highs. We're going to discuss how far the bull run can go.

Dominic Chu (2:16)

And of course, guys, Morgan, Brian, the AI trade has been the trade of the year, maybe even the last three. Nvidia is making its biggest acquisition ever, $20 billion worth, but Oracle is on pace for its worst quarter in more than two decades as the company bases concerns about its AI buildout. So there's all kinds of cross currents heading into this market for 2026

Morgan Brennan (2:38)

I'm not sure I'd say acquisition. I might say aqua hire here, and obviously non-exclusive deal for Nvidia, but still huge for that company and huge for the AI ecosystem at a time where competition is ramping for things like inferencing.

Brian Sullivan (2:50)

Because they stole, sorry, hired away the CEO of Groq. Groq with a Q, not the X AI program, Groq with a K.

Dominic Chu (3:00)

Correct.

Brian Sullivan (3:01)

So it wasn't really a deal. They didn't buy Groq. No, they struck a partnership, yep. And also this metals trade. Metals outperforming. Fire. And the miners have also outperformed the metals.

Dominic Chu (3:13)

But not just the precious ones, right? It's also now the base metals like copper, industrial metals as well. This is a huge deal because whether or not we see the triple-digit returns that we've seen in silver going forward, silver has surpassed the AI trade going now, right? In a hundred percent return.

Morgan Brennan (3:30)

We're looking at 74 on the screen right now for silver COMEX. I mean, this is unheard of. You could talk about short squeeze. You could talk about, you know, supplies, supply shortages and how many years it's going to take to get more online. The fact that it's used in industrial capacity as well as the fact that it's been trading, it's been a catch up trade for gold too. But, I mean, this is like parabolic. You haven't seen this since the 1970s, moves like this in silver.

Brian Sullivan (3:52)

That's right. But it does, honestly, it goes to the Christmas season as well because a lot of my friends are buying jewelry for their loved ones and they're complaining about the price. I'm like, well, that's, have you seen the price of gold lately? Over 4,000 an ounce, silver now costs more than a barrel of oil. What you should have done, folks, instead of buying a silver bracelet for your loved one at Christmas, just give them a barrel of oil, it's cheaper. They can also refine it, use it, they can drive around with it, who knows?