Russia-Ukraine Tensions Roil Markets, Walmart Beats, DOJ vs. Google 11/19/24

David Faber (0:00)

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

Carl Quintanilla (0:11)

Good Tuesday morning, welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla with Jim Cramer, David Faber at Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. There is some flight to safety this morning on these renewed Russia-Ukraine tensions. Gold is higher, yields are lower. You can see futures drowning out. Some of Walmart's beaten raise, the third straight quarter of rising comps. Our roadmap's gonna begin though with these geopolitical risks. Futures lower as Russia-U.S. tensions hit some global markets. Putin lowering the threshold for a nuclear strike.

David Faber (0:40)

Plus Walmart shares look to be up a bit this morning. The retail giant hiked its outlook yet again and it is seeing what it expects will be a strong holiday season. We're also watching tech antitrust headwinds. The DOJ is reportedly set to ask a judge to force Alphabet's Google unit to sell off its Chrome Internet browser, amongst other things.

Carl Quintanilla (1:04)

Let's begin with these geopolitical tensions weighing on stocks worldwide. The Kremlin announcing Russian president Vladimir Putin has updated his country's nuclear doctrine. It says Russia could use nuclear arms if it's attacked by a country backed by a nuclear power. Moscow's Defense Ministry claims Ukraine has carried out its first strike on Russian territory using these US long range missiles. And that comes just days after a report stating that the Biden administration lifted restrictions on Ukraine's use of such missiles against targets inside Russia. Jim, this morning you wrote something like this does tend to get yields lower.

Jim Cramer (1:40)

Yeah, I mean, look, we're in one of the situations where you were trying to figure out why Biden didn't do this before. Why did they not have long range missiles? And well, the reason why was that obviously there would be a statement about a nuclear response. This has been what everybody feared. I think at the same time, David, there's a belief this is really it. I mean, if you're going to have a negotiation, this is how the negotiation starts. You say, OK, look, this is no longer this out of control. And maybe we've got to sit down and figure out what to do, whether it's solved by this administration or the next administration. This is the escalation that everyone had feared. And here it is.

David Faber (2:16)

Yeah. I think the expectation is, it's the incoming administration that conceivably will try to settle things, as President-elect Trump has said he would do in 24 hours. That remains to be seen whether, in fact, that's possible. It's been many years of this war.

Jim Cramer (2:34)

Right.

Carl Quintanilla (2:34)

Well, a thousand days today.

David Faber (2:35)

And, I mean, sometimes we forget the human toll. The Russians, by the way, losing, I think, the British estimates, which typically are referred to by many publications. I read the journals' coverage, by the way. Wall Street Journal's coverage has been amazing of this war in so many different ways. 1,500 people a day getting lost by the Russians, just to put that in some perspective again, in terms of what's been hot here. We know North Korea has provided as many as 13,000 soldiers that are now some of them in combat position. And we haven't focused on this war that often, obviously, since the early days, when we saw commodity prices rise and a lot of different things were ruling global markets. But every so often, it rears its head.

Jim Cramer (3:14)

Right. Look, I think it's ripe for some sort of negotiation, just because it's obvious that so many people are being killed a thousand days. I think that the Ukrainians would have to give away something in terms of setting so that the Russians have land. That would be, I think, the Trump doctrine.

But the idea of selling it, selling the market here, you finally have interest rate stamp. You finally have a situation where the market, other than a few stocks, might not be under attack. We really had a lot of stocks fall off last week. We realized, wow, you know what? Trump is not, it may not be that friendly to the stock market. And so maybe you get, I don't know. Look, if you say that you should buy something here, and anything bad happens, it will never be forgotten. That tape will be running forever. It will be on YouTube, a TikTok thing. Cramer says, buy, and meanwhile, a city was obliterated. But if you think that it won't be, and you think that this is just the escalation you've been waiting for, we're finally going to have a chance to buy some stocks.