SOTS 2nd Hour: Goldman’s Chief U.S. Economist, Potential Powell Picks, & The Quantum Computing Breakdown 8/13/25

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Sara Eisen (1:01)

Good Wednesday morning. Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Sara Eisen with Carl Quintanilla and David Faber, live as always from Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. Record highs. S&P is up another four-tenths of one percent. Nasdaq also zooming three-tenths of one percent. It's actually healthcare that's leading the market. Again, consumer discretionary. So we're seeing this good breath broadening out of the market rally as we continue to see this melt up. Materials and financials, energy, technology, all playing a role in today's rally. It looks like every sector is higher right now. Take a look at Treasuries. It's kind of a light day to day. Tomorrow's PPI, then we'll get Retail Sales and University of Michigan Confidence on Friday. The 10-year yield, a little bit lower, 4.238%.

The two-year yield also lower, 3.6%. Coming up this hour, as President Trump rails against Goldman Sachs, we'll talk to the firm's chief US economist about tariffs, inflation, the criticism from the White House. Plus, we will be joined by the CEO of Rigetti Computing, Quantum Play, that's up nearly 2,000% just in the past year as that company reports earnings. And some surprising new names being floated as potential replacements for Fed Chair Powell. Details on the latest nominees in just a moment. Guys, we're trying to figure out what's going on with the consumer and what business is saying and what signals we're getting from business right now about demand and where the economy is headed. I just noted on Cava, so Cava is down sharply today. They didn't see great same-store sales. They saw flat traffic. But they're not blaming it on inflation and a weak consumer. Listen to what the CEO is saying about it.

SPEAKER_6 (2:38)

We haven't seen inflationary pressures today. I've got to give a shout out to our supply chain team. They've been incredibly agile, really mitigating any cost pressures to pass through to our guests. It remains to be seen what's going to happen at the end of the year, but no pressure on the labor front either.

Sara Eisen (2:51)

Sounds like they had a bigger problem with state comps from last year than they did with inflation and weakness in the consumer. And no weakness in the consumer for Brinker. I mean, this restaurant chain continues to outperform. This is the owner of Chili's. I mean, how about what the CEO is saying here? We are confident in our ability to grow sales and traffic throughout fiscal 2026 Chili's is officially back, baby back. Did you know that about Chili's?

David Faber (3:14)

I didn't know they were gone.

Sara Eisen (3:15)

No. They had a little bit of a comeback. And then just buried in the news flow, we got small business optimism this week. And guess what? I mean, this is a survey of almost a thousand small businesses. Because you can see the big, OK, look recently. There's the spike up on the election. Small businesses were excited. And then we saw this big plunge in confidence because of the tariffs. It's on the mend. It is coming back. It is at a five-month high. And all I'm saying is that if you're looking at some of these signals, soft data, commentary, anecdotes, I mean, there's no big alarm bells when it comes to the economy, I would say, or inflation in some of these reports.

Carl Quintanilla (3:52)

That's interesting. We always mention some of the political bias of NFIB. The percentage of respondents, though, who said that weak sales were their number one problem did jump to 11 That's the highest in about four years.

Sara Eisen (4:05)

Yes. But you know what? It tied with the percentage of those that said inflation is their number one problem. And to me, here's the chart. The number one problem of inflation, only 11% said that. This number was like almost 40% back in 2022

11% say inflation is the top issue, same as those saying sales are the top issue. The translation to me is actually, and David Rosenberg wrote about this as well in his note, this is fuel for the doves on the FOMC who say, look, we don't have to worry about inflation as our number one concern right now. There are signs of weakening demand. Inflation is not the problem. And just to emphasize that point further, they go really granular into this index, in this survey, and they ask those looking to raise prices, businesses looking to raise, guess what? That one fell. Those looking to raise compensation, that number fell. I mean, these are still elevated levels, but the fact that the trend is coming down on intentions to raise prices signals that maybe inflation isn't flaring as much as people thought.