SOTS 2nd Hour: How To Play Nvidia, Google Record Highs, The Retail Wrap-up & LIVE: Goldman Sachs CEO 11/19/25

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Sara Eisen (1:00)

Good Wednesday morning. Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Sara Eisen with Carl Quintanilla and David Faber. We are live as always from Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. Coming up on today's show, a can't miss exclusive with Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon on the market, volatility, the money flowing into AI and much more. Plus, it's Nvidia Day. All of Wall Street waiting for results in just a few short hours as the stock recovers this morning after a pullback this month.

Noted tech analyst Ben Reitzes tells us his expectations for tonight's print. And crypto has had a sizable pullback of its own. Bitcoin giving up gains on the year. We'll talk to Tom Farley, CEO of Crypto Exchange Bullish, which just reported earnings this morning. But guys, key focus this morning is on retail. What's it telling us about the consumer? Target is one I'm paying attention to, adding to losses on the year after a miss on revenue, third straight quarter of comp sales declines and a cut to the high end of its full year guidance. The stock is only off by about a half a percent, but it's been whacked this year down 35%.

I did catch up with CFO Michael Fidelky, who's the incoming CEO, starts in February. Here's what he told me about the quarter. Look, he said, we've got some work to do, but we are building momentum. As far as the performance, obviously he said he's not happy, but it was as expected. I'm focused on the change that will get us back to growth. And guys, just in terms of the cadence of the quarter and what it says about what they're seeing from the consumer, he said August flat, October flat, September is where they saw the dip. Why? Back to school was just a little bit choppier. It wasn't that cold. Usually when it's cold, that bodes well for some of the retailers. So on the turnaround, he did note that the places where he said, quote, we've started to drive the most change, those are what's doing best. And he pointed to some of the hard lines, which are electronics, toys is a good example. He said, toys running at almost a 10% sales increase. He was encouraged by that because they've made some changes to the toy selection, more exclusives, more partnerships, more trading cards, which is very, and I can tell you with the young boys these days. He said he's also encouraged by the momentum and experience. That's another key part of his strategy. They are making sure that more items are in stock. They're remodeling stores. They're changing the way they think about how certain stores fulfill digital orders. So not all stores are going to do that because it's been very disruptive and messy for some stores. They did announce a partnership today with ChatGPT where they're going to basically, if you're on ChatGPT, you can make a target cart. He said, okay, this is going to be a part of the consumer story going forward. We're experimenting. They don't know how big it's going to be, but they are, you know, he did talk about how there's some firsts here with this partnership. And the two firsts are that it's the first one where you can add multiple items to a cart in ChatGPT and also fresh food items. So unlike the Etsy partnership, for instance, with ChatGPT. As far as the overall consumer, doesn't sound like there's much of a change than what Target's been seeing. He says the consumer's feeling cost pressures and they're on a budget. They're resilient overall, but they're choiceful. He said, we know inflation is on the mind of the consumer, so they're really taking actions to try to keep prices low. Target has a two part problem. The problem is the consumer right now. And we've seen signs of weakness and affordability. And they're more exposed than Walmart to the discretionary items, the toys, the home goods, the electronics, and say that just the staples. And also on its own, it's had a brand problem and Michael Fidelke is taking over in February and he's got a turnaround to engineer. They're not saying when they could get back to growth yet, and they're still negatively comping. But he does say that David has a plan to do it.