SOTS 2nd Hour: Iran Escalation - Latest Market Moves, The Energy Trade, & LIVE: Intuit, Accenture CEOs 3/19/26

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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SPEAKER_2 (0:28)

Thy ticket, Lady Jennifer of Coolidge. Well, many thanks, good sir.

SPEAKER_3 (0:33)

Heareth my Discover card.

Diana Olick (0:36)

They accept Discover at Renaissance Fairs?

SPEAKER_5 (0:38)

Yeah, they do here. Discover is accepted at the places I love to shop.

SPEAKER_3 (0:42)

Getteth with the times.

Diana Olick (0:45)

With the times?

Sasan Ghadarzi (0:46)

You're playing the lute.

SPEAKER_3 (0:49)

Yeah, and it sounds pretty good, right?

SPEAKER_5 (0:51)

Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide. Based on the February 2025 Nielsen Report.

Carl Quintanilla (1:04)

Good Thursday morning, welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla, I see you in Modi, Mike Santoli here at Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. Busy, busy morning as we're weighing central banks, obviously the war in Iran ahead this hour. We're all over the latest in oil, as it climbs amid more strikes against energy assets in the Middle East. Micron is slipping this morning, despite revenue that nearly tripled in the latest quarter. We'll ask a shareholder if he's buying this dip. And Accenture CEO Julie Sweets with us. Fresh off results as that name tries to reverse some weakness on the year.

Seema Mody (1:34)

But first, breaking economic data. Our Rick Santelli has that for us. Hi, Rick.

Rick Santelli (1:39)

Hi, indeed. Host sale inventories, these are January final reads. They're coming in at minus half a percent, minus.5 percent. And that is really a big shift from the mid-month read of up two-tenths. And it goes a long way to dispel notions. We're going to see big inventory jumps in January. That would actually be the biggest negative host sale number going back to the December of twenty-four, December of twenty-four. And if we look at the sales side, well, this is a fresh January number, up half a one percent, exactly as expected. Leading economic indicators expected down one-tenth of a percent, deliver exactly down one-tenth of a percent. We haven't had a positive integer in leading economic indicators since November of twenty-four. All of twenty-five, all negative, except for two months at unchanged. We also have another data point out today, new home sales, and for that we go to Diana Olick. Diana?

Diana Olick (2:39)

Well, Rick, a huge miss on January new home sales.

587,000, seasonally adjusted annualized rate. Street was looking for 719,000. The month before it was 745,000. This again is January because the data is still delayed one month. Inventory jumped to a 9.7 month supply from a 7.6 month supply. The home price was $400,500, down 4% year over year. Now it's important to note that these contracts were signed in January, that's how the count is done. So it's people out shopping when mortgage rates were actually lower than they are today. They were around 6%, bumped up to 6.2, but really in that 6 to 6.2% range. So it would not have been a mortgage rate issue. Mortgage rates are now much higher because of the war with Iran. So again, this drop in January, you could blame some of it on the weather, but that's just a huge, we don't see that kind of 17.5% drop month to month. And again, 11% year over year for new home sales. The only data we have on new home sales so far for February is actually mortgage applications to buy a new home and they're less than 1% higher. So basically flat. So not looking for much improvement in February. But that again, a huge miss at 587,000. Carl, back to you.

Carl Quintanilla (3:57)

While we have you, I keep seeing this redfin number that the number of cancellations are pending deals that don't close is high. Is that true?

Diana Olick (4:07)

Yeah, I mean, we've reported that before. It's cancellations are rising because people are just, it's on the buyer side, mostly on the buyer side, not necessarily on the seller side. But because the market is getting more competitive, that is it's a much more of a buyer's market right now because there's more inventory, prices are still high. And so you just have buyers in the driver's seat now and some of them are canceling because they think wait a minute, maybe I could get a better deal if prices start to come down a bit or they're waiting for mortgage rates to come down. Because remember, as mortgage rates rise, some people are not qualifying for the loan that they thought they might have gotten maybe just a month ago. So they could be canceling deals on that as well.