SOTS 2nd Hour: Dan Niles' Tech Trades, Evercore Vice Chair, & Regional Bank CEO Talks Credit Concerns 10/17/25

Dan Niles (0:00)

Introducing Fidelity Trader Plus.

David Faber (0:02)

With customizable tools and charts you can access across all your devices. Try our most powerful trading platform yet at fidelity.com/traderplus.

SPEAKER_3 (0:10)

Investing involves risk, including risk of loss.

David Faber (0:12)

Fidelity Broker Services LLC, member NYSE SIPC.

SPEAKER_4 (0:15)

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Sara Eisen (0:48)

Good Friday morning again. Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Sara Eisen with David Faber. We are live as always from Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. Carl has the morning off. Ahead on today's show, noted investor Dan Niles will be with us as the major averages pays for a winning week. Even as volatility picks up, he tells us why he sees a further market melt up in the coming weeks. Plus the CEO of Huntington Bank Shares will join us fresh off earnings as concerns balloon around regional bank credit exposure. That'll be an important interview. But first, still no data with the government shut down here. So we're looking for these alt data searches to tell us what's actually happening, especially on jobs because that's a big question mark for the Fed. Interestingly, the Fed goes into its quiet period, its blackout period next week ahead of its meeting the week after. So maybe here are some of the other sources they're looking at to tell us what's happening on jobs, or at least investors are looking at. The Indeed data. Indeed is the job posting site. Okay. So it turns out there is, so what we're looking at here in the Indeed data is interest in holiday jobs. And that is trending higher if you look at this year. The purple line, 2025 What does that tell us? More people.

David Faber (2:03)

Oh, okay, there it is.

Sara Eisen (2:04)

There it is.

As you can see, there's always interest in holiday jobs around this going into the holiday season, right? Temporary work. And then usually that tails off, that's normal, right? Seasonality thing. But what the purple line is showing is that there's more interest this year in holiday jobs.

David Faber (2:22)

What does that mean?

Sara Eisen (2:23)

That temporary work.

David Faber (2:24)

Is that good or bad?

Sara Eisen (2:25)

Well, it's a bad sign for the labor market, right? Because it's more people wanting to either pick up more jobs, work temporarily.

When they're out looking for jobs, it means they don't have jobs and they're looking for other sources of income. So that is something we're watching. We've reported a lot on the slowdown in the jobs market. We have no idea what the September report looks like. But that's potentially a sign.

David Faber (2:46)

What else you got in your alternative data sources here, Sara?

Sara Eisen (2:49)

This is very alt. This is the Google search. This is from Nikolas and data tracking here. He's looking at Google search numbers of finding a job and new job. What he found there is actually they hit 20 year highs, those Google searches, which tells us something about what people are Googling right now, which is how to find a job and getting a new job.

We have not seen jobless claims tick higher, that is people filing for unemployment claims, which would signal layoffs, but we have not received the data in recent weeks.

David Faber (3:23)

Again, we're left with, and you are, frankly, I don't have to deal with this stuff, but it's key for you. It's key for all investors. You could also argue a really good jobs market where people think there are other opportunities as a reason to put in, hey, I'm looking for a different job or a new job.

Sara Eisen (3:38)

We haven't typically seen that during, if you look at some of the Google searches, you don't usually see big searches for new jobs. But agree, job switchers happen sometimes when wage growth is a little higher. That sure could be the case, but we haven't seen the switchers' wage growth numbers move higher. They've been lower in the ADP report, for instance. But yeah, we really don't know exactly. We're flying blind on the data.