SOTS 2nd Hour: End of An Era At Berkshire, Top Tech Picks, and Milken: Day 1 with Blackstone’s Jon Gray 5/5/25

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Carl Quintanilla (1:00)

Good Monday morning. Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla, live from Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange, alongside Sara Eisen and David Faber, both live in LA ahead of some huge interviews of the Milken Institute's annual conference. This hour, an interview you do not want to miss. Blackstone Chief Operating Officer Jon Gray is going to be with us. In the meantime, though, let's check some markets.

About two-thirds of a percent of clients for NASDAQ S&P 10-year hanging right around 434, actually rising a bit during the session. A few movers were watching Berkshire's board votes to name Greg Abel as its new CEO at the end of the year. More on that and what Buffett said about markets in just a moment. Media stocks under some pressure after the president announces plans for a potential tariff on any movies produced overseas. And then earnings beginning once again. Lows, misses, Tyson misses on revenue on Semi Reports of Loss. But they do beat estimates. We got some more data crossing the tape this morning. Let's get to Rick Santelli. Hey Rick.

Rick Santelli (1:55)

We had S&P Global Final April earlier. They both deteriorated the lowest levels on the service side since the fall of 23 Now these are ISM. April reads 51.6 is the service index. That is stronger than expected, higher than the rear view mirror, best since February of 24 Now if we look at the prices paid component, 65.1. Once again, this is zooming. We're expecting a number around 61 Our last number was a whisker below 61 This is the highest since Jan of 23 And in this case, highest is not a good thing. On the new order side, 52.3. Best since DC of 24 Once again, better than front and back, meaning rear view mirror and windshield. Finally, the employment. And of course, we know in the rear view mirror, we had a good jobs report. This number is the only one that's in contraction territory. Under 50, 49 But that's still better than expected. And well above 46.2 in the rear view mirror. 49.0, believe it or not, is actually the weakest. And the first time under 50 since June of last year, we were at 47.8. Now, what we want to really pay attention to here is the fact that these readings, the strong readings and the prices paid, are pushing yields higher. If you notice right now, we're at 434 in a 10-year. That's up three basis points on the session. It had been gravitating near unchanged. We want to pay particularly close attention to this area right now, 434

It's been a very important high-frequency pricing point. Any type of a yield close above it most likely continues to push rates more to the upside than the downside, which reversed last week. Sara, back to you.

Sara Eisen (3:45)

Okay, Rick Santelli, thank you very much. Good set up for some of our conversations that we're going to have here at the Milken Global Conference where everybody in the finance world is here and some key policymakers are here. We're going to have a conversation next hour with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessend who is delivering a policy speech in the next hour and then he's going to come out and speak to us exclusively. Also we'll talk to some of the other Trump officials. FCC chair Brendan Carr is here, also very much in the spotlight of course with some of his actions. Look, it's been a very busy 100 days I think for both of these two gentlemen on the policy front. For Bessend, you know, trade obviously is front and center but I think he's really trying to bring the conversation, David, to the three-pronged strategy. The tax deal, which he's very much in the throes of negotiating, has set a new sort of July 4th deadline for that to pass. And deregulation as well, which I think the administration is expecting to start to come to fruition now that the regulators are in place. He set it all up with the Wall Street Journal op-ed this weekend and I just wanted to read some of it for you because I think it speaks to what Rick was just reporting on the economic data.