SOTS 2nd Hour: DC Plane Crash, Big Tech Earnings, RFK Jr. Day 2 1/30/25

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Carl Quintanilla (1:02)

It's a very strong morning. We're only about 30 points away from going positive for the week on the S&P. Dow's up 100 It's a big morning on Capitol Hill as well. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the hot seat for day two of his confirmation hearings to become Secretary of Health and Human Services. This time he is before Senate Health. Senate Intel holding a confirmation hearing for Tulsi Gabbard to be Director of National Intelligence and then Cash Patel will be before Senate Judiciary to be FBI Director. We'll monitor the hearings yesterday, of course, pretty spicy on the health front. We'll get you headlines as they happen.

David Faber (1:37)

Well, hearings, a lot of earnings and also some housing data that just crossed the tape. Let's get to Diana Olick for that. Diana.

Diana Olick (1:44)

Well, David, pending home sales, a huge miss in December down 5.5 percent from November and off 5 percent year over year. The street was looking for a small gain. This drop after four straight months of gains, pending home sales are counted by signed contracts on existing homes. So the most current indicator of people out shopping in December, and that's when mortgage rates shot over 7 percent again on the 30-year fix. No matter what the realtors may say about a new normal and higher rates for consumers, that seven handle is an emotional barrier. Sales fell in all regions with the West and Northeast seeing the biggest drops. Those are, of course, where home prices are highest.

And a note on prices, we did see annual gains accelerate on the Case Shiller Home Price Index released earlier this week. Back to you.

Sara Eisen (2:27)

Okay. Thank you, Diana. Let's get to that tragic news that broke overnight. The search and rescue mission is underway in the Potomac River after the collision between an American Airlines jet and an Army helicopter. Eamon Jabbers at Reagan National Airport with the latest this hour. So what have we learned, Eamon?

Eamon Javers (2:45)

Well, Sara, we're now expecting to hear from President Trump at the White House across the river from where we're standing at 11 a.m. East Coast time. So just about an hour from now, the president is expected to go to the briefing room and update the country on what he knows now about what happened here last night. We do have a little bit of additional information on what happened. And I can tell you that the airport here is starting to reopen in expectation of flights beginning at 11 a.m. And just as you see normal life beginning to reemerge here, passengers with their wheelie bags, TSA lines are filling up. And we did hear from the new defense secretary, Pete Hedgeseth, in a social media post just a short time ago, saying that this Blackhawk helicopter crew was fairly experienced. It was involved in this crash last night. He said they were equipped with night vision goggles, so they did have the capacity at least to see the other aircraft. They did have the training and experience to understand what they were doing, even though this is described as a training flight. Here's what we know right now. Officials are saying, so far, there are no survivors from this incident. We know that there were 64 people on board the jet aircraft, the commercial plane that crashed, three people on board the US. Army helicopter that crashed. They say they've recovered 27 bodies from the airplane so far, one from the helicopter that was involved in this incident. There has been a litany of incidents over the past couple of years where they've had near misses here at Ronald Reagan National Airport. Some concern about that as you take a look at some of the dates associated with those near misses in the past. A number of incidents that have been reported publicly where airplanes came too close to one another and there have been some concern that we might see some kind of incident like this because of all of the incredible amount of traffic that comes through this airport on a day-to-day basis.