SOTS 10AM: Nike hits a wall, an AI experiment turns to chaos, and can you trust the inflation data? 12/19/25

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Carl Quintanilla (1:05)

Good Friday morning, welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla with Leslie Picker and David Faber here at Post9 at the New York Stock Exchange. Sara Eisen is off today. The final full week of the year comes to an end today with most sectors higher. Got some nice bounce in IT, almost 2%.

Watching yields today as well, as the Bank of Japan does hike rates, and our own yields are a little warm, even after Thursday's soft CPI. I had this hour, Apollos Torsten Slak will join us here at Post9. We'll get his take on whether to trust that surprise inflation data this week. We'll watch Nike, got an analyst who says just buy it as the stock is lower on the lower profits and concerns in China. Also, what happens when you allow AI to manage a vending machine in an active newsroom? We'll talk to the Wall Street Journal's Joanna Stern about that experiment that she says caused chaos and was a complete disaster.

David Faber (1:57)

Yeah, they tortured that poor machine. All right, first though, let's get some breaking economic data. This is just crossing. Rick Santelli has it for us. Rick?

Rick Santelli (2:05)

Yes, David, indeed. These are the December final reads on University of Michigan sentiment and the inflation metrics embedded in this report. So the mid-month read gets tossed. Fifty-three point three was the mid-month read on the headline. It now moves lower to fifty-two point nine. That would be the weakest since it was fifty-one in November. And I'd like to point out that if you look at the absolute low, it is fifty from June of twenty-two. We're not far away from the low going back to my database in the seventies. Now, if we look at current conditions, same dynamic. Fifty point seven mid-month becomes fifty point four. And fifty point four is a new all-time low replacing the fifty point seven. Also, my database goes back into the nineteen seventies. Look at expectations. Same dynamic. Mid-month, fifty five now becomes fifty four point six. And fifty four point six will be the weakest since November, when it was fifty one. And finally, on the inflation front, well, four point two, it replaces four point one. It's one tenth hotter on the one-year inflation. On the five to ten-year inflation rate, it remains the same at three point two percent. And I must point out that the equity markets are making new highs on the Dow Jones Industrial Average for the session on this data. And it's weaker than expected and pretty much a punt on the inflation data. So no surprises. But I will also point out, University of Michigan has not kept up with what it normally does. And that is correlate with the equity moves. Now let's shoot towards Diana Olick on the East Coast for what's going on with existing home sales for the month of November.

Diana Olick (3:51)

Well, Rick, existing home sales in November rose 0.5% to a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 4.13 million units. That is right along expectations. Sales down 1% from November of last year. Now this count is based on closing. So contracts likely signed in September and October when mortgage rates initially came down a little bit, but then stayed in a very tight range. The headline on this report is supply. It is coming down again. We've reported on more sellers delisting their homes There were 1.43 million units for sale at the end of November, down 5.9% from October, still up 7.5% from the year before, but losing those big annual gains. This is a 4.2 month supply, and that's keeping pressure on prices. The median price of a home sold in November was $409,200, an increase of 1.2% year over year, and the highest November price on record. Homes are staying on the market longer, an average of 36 days versus 32 the year before. First time buyers, just 30%, unchanged from a year ago. Historically, that number should be 40%, but investors made up 18% of sales, up from 13% a year ago, and the Realtors' chief economist noted they did not see a surge of delayed closings coming out of the government shutdown in October. Leslie.