SOTS 2nd Hour: AT&T's New Strategic Plan, Record Holiday Shopping 12/3/24

Sara Eisen (0:00)

Good Tuesday morning. Welcome to another hour of Squawk on the Street. I'm Sara Eisen with Carl Quintanilla and David Faber, live as always for post night of the New York Stock Exchange. Stocks are giving a little back today, coming off of record closes for the S&P 500 There is unchanged because you do see pockets of strength under the hood, communication services, utilities, and technology all higher today. Everybody else is lower, industrials are bringing up the rear here in the market, but only down a half a percent. The NASDAQ is a little bit positive right now. We today were up 1 percent because yesterday was such a good day. Take a look at treasuries right now. We're going to get some data here in just a moment. We started the week selling treasuries with yields a little bit higher, back and down a little bit today. Look at the 10-year yield. It's below 4.2 and the two-year yield also below 4.2 as well.

Carl Quintanilla (0:48)

Jolt is the big data point of the morning. Let's get it from Rick Santelli. Morning, Rick.

Rick Santelli (0:52)

Good morning, Carl. And even though rates are definitely down from where they were pre-Thanksgiving, they're moving up a bit on the jolts for October, because instead of $7.5 million, we're at $7,744,000, a bit higher than expected. And the rear-view mirror last month was downgraded from $7.443 million to $7.372 million. Why is that important? Because whether it was revised or not, both numbers remain at near four-year lows, going back to January of 2021 But we have lifted from that level a bit. And how does the current read of $7,744,000 stack up? It comes to August, when we're at $7.8 million. But it does break that kind of big drop that we had last month. If you look at yields, they have moved up a bit. But do remember, we're still way below some of the levels. Just think, it was about 14 sessions ago, 10-year was trading an intraday high of 4.5%.

A lot going on in the world, Carl. We want to watch that Chinese currency, the onshore right now is at a one-year low versus the greenback. Sara, back to you.

Sara Eisen (2:00)

Yeah, fears over tariffs, playing in, lack of stimulus. Thank you very much, Rick Santelli. And just to put a longer picture on what Rick just reported on the job openings. So the trend has been softer job openings, say from what we saw, remember coming out of COVID.

Here's what it's looked like over the past few months, not including that number that Rick just reported at 7.7 million, which you can see is elevated from where we were last month. This past month, it's been probably a little bit distorted by the strikes, the labor strikes, the storms. Keep that in mind. But remember, they were coming in above 12 million at March 2022 So when the Fed is now focused on the labor market and looking at signs of softness, they do see that in the fact that job openings have come down. They look at the ratio of unemployed people to job openings. Powell mentioned that that's come down to closer to one, basically 1.1 slightly lower than the pre-pandemic peak of 1.2. As far as what we expect Friday, it's going to be a big mover on jobs. The overall monthly jobs report. Expectations are for a rebound in the month of November. After October was weak, as you can see because of the storms and the strikes. Looking for a number around 200,000 jobs added in November. 207,000 is the latest estimate. Again, could speak to a job market that is still doing all right, even though the Fed is really focused on maintaining that balance. Fed Governor Waller, who I always pay very close attention to, spoke yesterday, made some market moving comments. Here's what he says about state of inflation in jobs right now.

Christopher Waller (3:37)

Overall, I feel like an MMA fighter who keeps getting inflation in a chokehold, waiting for it to tap out, yet it keeps slipping out of my grasp at the last minute. But let me assure you that submission is inevitable. Inflation isn't getting out of the octagon.

Sara Eisen (3:55)

They forgot to put lighting there. But he basically said he's leaning toward a December rate cut and the market is leaning there too, around 70 percent odds at this point.

Unless we get some surprising data on that front. But he is saying, and I watch him because he sometimes is a thought leader on the Fed, that the policy is still restrictive enough that if they go again at the next meeting, it doesn't really change the stance of monetary policy. I'm not sure what they're looking at to show how restrictive it is, but it does feel like they're increasingly targeting the labor market and they are seeing signs of softness there. Even if they're not, you know, recessionary or super stressful or anything like that.