SOTS 2nd Hour: Cramer Interviews Nvidia CEO, Apollo's Chief Economist, & Iran's Fed Impact 3/17/26

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Sara Eisen (1:01)

Good Tuesday morning. Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Sara Eisen with Carl Quintanilla and David Faber. We are live as always from Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. We're also moments away from an exclusive interview with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, the company projecting $1 trillion in chip sales by the end of next year. He'll sit down with our Jim Cramer in just a few minutes. Plus, day one of the Fed meeting, we will look at how the Iran War could impact the picture for the economy and rates. And Apollo's Torsten Slok will be here with new data on why recessions are becoming less frequent and what that ultimately means for investors.

Carl Quintanilla (1:35)

First of all, let's get some pending homes data with Diana Oll. Okay, Diana.

Diana Olick (1:39)

Good morning, Carl. Pending home sales in February rose 1.8% month to month, but were down 0.8% from February of last year. That according to the realtors. Now, this count is based on contract signing. So people out shopping during the month when mortgage rates were falling to multi-year lows, the average on the 30-year fixed, even dipping below 6% briefly. That is not the case now and the realtors did make note of that, saying the improved affordability could make a U-turn if oil prices and interest rates continue to rise. Now, sales were strongest month to month in the Midwest and South. Those are the regions where housing is most affordable. Markets seeing the strongest annual gains at San Diego, Jacksonville, San Jose, Denver, Miami, and Phoenix. Now, just a note as we head into the all-important spring sales season for housing. Apartment rents are softening and that has landlords now giving more concessions. In fact, the highest level in over a decade as vacancies rise. For more on that and how trouble in private credit could mean a big boost for commercial real estate, that is all in today's new Property Play newsletter. If you haven't signed up, go to it, cnbc.com/propertyplay.

Sara. Okay, we'll do.

Sara Eisen (2:47)

Thank you, Diana. Diana Olek. Guys, it's day one of the Fed meeting, so I thought I would take a look at how expectations have changed in the market for what the Fed's going to do this year as a result of the war in Iran. So, Standard Chartered had a really good look at basically, in the orange, you see the expectations before the war, February 27th, in blue is the line as of March 16th, so more recently, post-war. And you can see the market was a lot more willing to bet on lower interest rates before the war. They have treated the war, treated the war as an inflation story. Higher oil prices, higher inflation, less room for the Fed to cut. In fact, right now, as you can see, the Fed, the market doesn't expect a Fed cut until December. That's the only one of the year that the market is expecting right now. Back in February, the market was expecting a few cuts and a much more dovish reaction. The thought was, come June, if Kevin Warsh gets confirmed as Fed Chair, he's going to come in dovish and get ready to cut in June. Well, guess what? June now has less than 20% odds of a cut. July has like less than 50%.

And then, not the first cut priced until December. Let's see the tone from Fed Chair Powell to see how he balances the risk of inflation, because there's also risk, guys, of demand destruction, you know, what that could mean for the consumer, and ultimately jobs, which have gone negative as of last month in terms of adding jobs.

Carl Quintanilla (4:17)

We mentioned the rate hike in Australia overnight. One of the governors said inflation was already too high. If we don't raise rates, we're going to see second round effects coming from petrol prices and fuel prices. They'll get into supply chains. That's the view of all of this coming from Australia, at least.