SOTS 2nd Hour: Cadence Design CEO, Mamdani's Tax Plans, & Live From Mar-A-Lago w/Eric & Donald Trump Jr, Plus Coinbase's CEO... 2/18/26

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Sara Eisen (0:57)

Good morning and welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Sara Eisen, joining today from the World Liberty Forum, Mar-A-Lago, Palm Beach, Florida, along with Carl Quintanilla and David Faber live from the New York Stock Exchange. Coming up this hour, an exclusive conversation with World Liberty Financial co-founders Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump here at the forum as the crypto complex remains under pressure after a brutal start to the year. Plus, we will speak with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and Ohio Senator Bernie Moreno about the latest developments in crypto regulation, prediction markets and much more. Guys, I am here today and here's a fun fact for you. The first ever live show broadcast from Mar-A-Lago, better known here as the Winter White House. And that's because World Liberty has hosted quite a big financial forum. It's not just key players in the crypto industry. They've also had CEOs speaking. I'm doing an onstage panel with David Solomon, the CEO of Goldman Sachs. They have the CEO of NASDAQ here, Dina Friedman and the New York Stock Exchange. They have Congress people and senators here as well. The regulators, including the CFTC chair, fresh off of that announcement that they're going to back the predictions markets companies against states on regulation. And the goal is to talk about crypto, but also to talk about American policies and growth. There's also some discussion about how to preserve the dollar, for instance, as the world's reserve currency. But of course, it's not without controversy. The last time World Liberty, this company that has been founded by both President Trump's sons and special envoy Steve Witkoff's sons, was in the news, was this Wall Street Journal report that there was a deal to sell 49% of the company to an Emirati royal after President Trump was elected, raising questions, again, that the Trump sons have been answering for the last few months now about mixing for the presidency and those interests with some of the Trump family interests. We'll get to that, but of course, we'll also get to the price of Bitcoin, which is now down more than 20% for the year. This was supposed to be the golden era for Bitcoin and for crypto. The Clarity Act was stalled in Congress after Brian Armstrong, who we are going to talk to, the CEO of Coinbase, came out surprisingly against it. So a lot of hot topics around the industry, but also in general, you won't be surprised to hear, Carl and David, that the folks here are very optimistic about what they're seeing from Washington, about what they're seeing in the economy, what they're seeing in capital markets, and of course, in technology and AI. And those are all hot topics on the agenda as well.

Carl Quintanilla (3:34)

That's a big show, Sara. I look forward to a lot more over the next couple of hours. We'll see in a minute. Let's get to the market this morning as well as stocks try to build on yesterday's comeback. And NASDAQ is up almost a full percent. We're about 15 points shy of 6,900. Anastasia Amoroso is with us this morning here at Post9, Managing Director and Chief Investment Strategist and Partners Group. It's great to have you back, Gay. Welcome.

Anastasia Amoroso (3:53)

Good morning. Good to see you, Carl.

Carl Quintanilla (3:55)

I was just looking at sort of Vanguard, ex-US, up almost 10 for the year. We're up less than one for the year. I think that one of the phrases I heard today is, ex-US is rallying, US is churning. And I'm wondering what changes that.

Anastasia Amoroso (4:09)

Right. Well, I think there's definitely some consolidation happening in the US because of this rolling AI scare that we had. Having said that, I do think the fundamentals of the US economy are actually quite robust. And I agree with Sara's sentiment there from Mar-A-Lago that there is a lot of momentum. But I do want to go over to Europe, for example. And it feels like that region gets neglected pretty often, or it ends up being a trade. But I think something is really different this time around for Europe in particular. And I think Europe is really starting to step up its actions to boost its resilience. And I mean that in several different ways. I mean that in terms of defense spending, and for example, the commitment to 5% of GDP spend on defense in Europe. You can see that coming out of Germany, for example. You see the industrial goods orders really picking up there. And some of that is routed towards defense. So that's really sort of a new engine of growth. The other thing is we talk about trade deals in the United States, but you know who else is cutting trade deals? Is Europe. Europe is actually on a mission, I would say, to strike deals of its own. And they just did a monster deal with India, essentially cutting tariffs on 96% of the European goods going to India, which is the world's fifth largest economy, which is the world's third largest market, and Europe now has access to that. So that's really positive. And then there's the Northern Europe versus Southern Europe story, and the fact that if you look at Spain and Portugal and Italy, more services oriented, more consumer oriented. And so those economies are sort of insulated from the exports that have been disrupted by China. So you put all that together, and we've been launch time investors in Europe, but I think there are more cyclical reasons to be excited about it.