SOTS 2nd Hour: Inflation Cools, Micron’s Moment, Accenture CEO on Results 12/18/25

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Sara Eisen (0:53)

Good Thursday 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. Today Micron breezed life into the AI trade. Shares of the chip maker surging after last night's results. We'll talk about what it means for the tech trade at large. Plus, the CEO of Accenture, Julie Sweet, will join us as that stock pulls back despite strong earnings, including solid AI bookings. And another pop for Lululemon, now at more than 30% in a month as an activist takes a big stake in the stock. We'll bring you the latest. But guys, the big news today is CPI, which comes in lighter than expected. And that is good news. We got, I'll do the year over year because it's really hard. There's no month over month because we didn't have October CPI. So let's just show you where we are. And that's also what the Fed looks like. The headline number 2.7 percent. Again, better than expected. Core, even better at 2.6 percent. And that means that it was not the 3 percent that was expected. If you break it down into inflationary spots that we talk about, that we worry about, I think food was a pleasant surprise. Up 2.6 percent overall. And food at home, which is grocery bills. That's what you're paying. That's what people feel. Up only 1.9 percent. It's a lot less than it has been and also less than eating out at restaurants. Food away from home. Energy prices are a problem. 4.2 percent gain. And part of that, at least, is the electricity. You know, we talk about, with all the data centers and the high electricities we're paying, 6.9 percent increase in November from the November before. And then shelter, which has been stubbornly high and been a factor in the higher services inflation, up 3 percent, looks a little better than it has been. So overall, you know, Carl, I would say that if you're worried at the Fed about inflation that is above target, it's still above target, but it's not getting worse and then maybe getting a little bit better.

Carl Quintanilla (2:46)

Everybody's pointing to this footnote, though, at the bottom, and I'll read it. The October and November 2025 data values are not available due to the 2025 lapse in appropriations and some of these columns are, on a monthly data standpoint, are empty.

Sara Eisen (2:59)

Empty. And also, like I went down to do my basket breakdown of white bread and everything like that, they don't even get that grand Mueller and they don't even have even the year over year numbers on those. So yes, is it the most reliable data? Maybe not, but it's something and it's something for the Fed to look at as we've been trying to figure it out. Also, I would just note that jobless claims were pretty good as well. You know, the no hire, no fire labor market we've been talking about. If there were firings, you would see elevated numbers on jobless claims and we're just not seeing that. The latest read was 224,000 Americans. That was actually a decrease from the week before in terms of jobless. That's kind of where we've been right now. And if you zoom out and look at a long term picture, it's not a level where you would worry about stress in the labor market where you would see kind of mass layoffs. We saw that obviously during COVID. That was the crazy spike there. But so far, it's been low pre-COVID levels, which was not recessionary levels, even though we are watching an unemployment rate go higher. So I think that the combo of data today makes the Fed probably feel really good about its policy that it cut three times, inflation not rearing its ugly head in a worse way. But let's see what happens on the jobs picture.