SOTS 2nd Hour: Big Tech Rallies, Tariffs Latest, and Gauging A Market Bottom 03/24/25

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David Faber (0:44)

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

Sara Eisen (0:56)

Good Monday morning and welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Sara Eisen with David Faber, live as always from Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. Carl has the morning off. Stocks are in rally mode this morning. Some good news potentially on the narrowing, a reported narrowing of tariffs around the April 2nd Reciprocal Tariff Liberation Day that the Trump administration has teased. That's helping the market sentiment this morning. We're up 1.5% on the S&P 500 NASDAQ bouncing back strongly, up 2%.

We did manage to eke out a gain last week, but just barely. It was tentative. Today's rally definitely more forceful than what we've seen lately. We've got every sector higher in the action. Tech is included in that. Remember, tech had been under a lot of pressure lately, especially the magnificent seven names. It's why the NASDAQ is soaring today. Names like Tesla bouncing back strongly, Palantir, Nvidia, the chip names like Micron as well, all part of the story. Take a look at Treasuries. We're seeing selling with higher yields, and that's reflective of the sort of risk on tone that we're seeing this morning in the markets. Treasuries have been sort of a risk barometer out of stocks into bonds, so now they're out of bonds with the yields a little bit higher, 10-year at 4.3. 30 minutes here into the trading session. Here are some movers we're watching. I mentioned the Mag-7, some green shoots in those names as Morgan Stanley forecasts a rotation back into equities led by the Mag-7, thanks to weaker dollar and stabilizing earnings estimates for the group. Auto stocks are also getting a boost from reports that the tariff scheduled for April 2nd could exclude autos. Separately, Hyundai also announcing a $20 billion investment in the US. News first broken here on CNBC, we'll get to in a moment. And then a similar story for steel stocks, rallying as UBS upgrades steel dynamics and Nucor to buy from neutral. As they say, tariff protection for US steel and aluminum has exceeded expectations and caused a significant rally in commodity prices that the companies can capitalize on. So it's all about tariffs. That's the front and center story today. And David, the thing is, we just we don't know that much yet. And there's still uncertainty. But this time it feels like it's better uncertainty because the word is they're more targeted, they're more narrow, they're not blanketed. They might have exclusions for certain key industries.

David Faber (3:08)

Right. I mean, Scott Besson continues to use, or at least they continue to reiterate his words about the 15, I think he did say dirtiest or 15 percent. No, the 15 countries that are the dirtiest of the group. You know, being, certainly being front and center.

Sara Eisen (3:23)

Is that referring to our deficits, our trade deficits?

David Faber (3:25)

Yes, exactly, exactly. And therefore getting recompense, so to speak, in terms of our tariff policy versus them, but not having quite as broad, although exclusion is still not really being discussed, I guess, even though many have come to the president asking for them.

Sara Eisen (3:40)

Lobbying. Yeah, we don't know at this point. I think there's a lot that we still need to find out. And it's a hard job. I mean, millions of tariffs exist on products that go back and forth. So it's unclear how broad that's going to be. But I think a bigger question for the market right now is, what's going on with the economy? There's definitely some softness, but how soft is it? Is all the recession talk warranted? That's what I'm focused on. Some street notes this weekend to pay attention to Morgan Stanley, Seth Carpenter. The real slowdown, he says, has yet to show up in the hard data. It's really in the confidence. That's the soft data. Our equity strategists also caution about further risk to earnings downgrades. We think there's more bad news to come for the US economy as substantial shifts in policy when they're way through the economy. Barclays with a sort of similar note, amid intensifying uncertainty around both legs of the mandate, Powell struck a more positive tone, resurrecting the transitory narrative for tariff-related price pressers and dismissing potential warning signs from inflation expectations and surveys. For now, hard data points to slowing, not weakness.