SOTS 2nd Hour: ECB President Lagarde, Banks Breakdown, & ETSY CEO Talks AI 10/14/25

Sara Eisen (0:00)

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Sara Eisen (0:11)

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Carl Quintanilla (0:17)

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SPEAKER_4 (0:18)

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Carl Quintanilla (0:20)

Zero dollar commission applies to online US equity trades and ETFs and retail Fidelity accounts. Sell order assessment fee not included. Some account types and securities excluded.

David Faber (0:25)

Details at fidelity.com/commissions.

Scott Rechler (0:26)

Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC, member NYSE, SIPC.

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Carl Quintanilla (1:01)

Good Tuesday morning. Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla with David Faber here at Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. Sara Eisen is live in DC. Will bring us an interview later this hour with European Central Bank President Lagarde. A busy morning for Sara in our nation's capital. Meantime, some weakness giving back almost all of Monday's bounce. Dow's down 400 Goldman taking about 200 points out of the Dow this morning. You can see the 10-year back to 404 Although, off of the morning lows. Bank earnings this morning showing some investment bankings back. We're going to drill down in some of those key reports. A new report says the Manhattan office market is coming back. We'll talk to one of New York City's largest real estate owners about what he's seeing. And then there's ETSY moving its listing here to the NYSE today. The CEO, Josh Silverman, is going to join us, talk about the move and how it's incorporating AI into its business. Sara, what's going on in DC?

Sara Eisen (1:52)

Well, what's going on in DC is we're having all the conversations that investors are having right now about the economy and the outlook. You'll hear from ECB President Christine Lagarde. You'll hear from the US trade rep, Jameson Greer. Ambassador Greer with me in the next hour as China, US tip-for-tip trade concerns take center stage again in the market right now. But guys, I wanted to highlight the data point of the day. We're lacking economic data in this government shutdown here in DC because that's not happening here.

But we did get NFIB, the National Federation of Small Businesses. Basically, they give their optimism, pessimism report. And it was a step back. It actually saw a decline for the month of September, the Optimism Index overall for small business. But you can see on the chart here, you know, we're still not too far from the highs. The recent high was 104.5 back, you know, in February 2020, 93 is kind of the average in 2024 But it is notable that there was a deterioration in September. The Uncertainty Index rose to the highest level since February in that index. I don't know, guys, when my kids have meltdowns, we ask them, is it a big deal or a little deal? This one feels like a little deal, but it is worth watching when it comes to the way small businesses are feeling. Not as bad as it could have been, given all of the tariffs, but something to watch as we monitor the economic signals to find out if we're heating up or if we're cooling down. There really is some debate on that, Carl, right now. And I would just note in here, you know, more firms planning to raise prices, so we're going to be on the lookout for that on inflationary worries, but also more plans, more firms planning to hire people. And that is notable, given some of the concerns about a soft labor market.

Carl Quintanilla (3:36)

Yeah, one thing we haven't gotten to yet this morning are some of those tariffs on lumber and kitchen cabinets and vanities, which go into effect, not to mention some of the heightened rhetoric out of China in the last 24 hours.

Sara Eisen (3:49)

Right, which is a bigger deal for small business if it has to import kitchen cabinets or lumber or anything from China. They just don't have as much scale or diversity in the supply chain as some of the bigger businesses. So that could be what's being reflected here in the rising uncertainty. You know, Jamie Dimon, of course, JPMorgan chief on this morning coming out with earnings characterizing the economy, he mentioned the slower jobs market, but then described the overall economy as resilient. He says, while there have been some signs of a softening, particularly in job growth, the US economy generally remained resilient. However, there continues to be a heightened degree of uncertainty stemming from complex geopolitical conditions, tariffs, trade uncertainty, elevated asset prices and the risk of sticky inflation. So that really summarizes, I think, what you're what you're seeing in things like the Small Business Survey. It also really gets at what you'll hear from in just a few minutes, Christine Lagarde, the head of the ECB, talking about concerns about some of that uncertainty influencing the real economy.