SOTS 2nd Hour: Meta Minus The Metaverse? Plus: Cantor's Chief Macro Strategist, Fmr. Antitrust Chief Jonathan Kanter 12/4/25

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Sara Eisen (0:45)

Welcome, everybody. Good Thursday morning. Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Sara Eisen here with Carl Quintanilla and Michael Santoli. Live at post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange, Faber has the morning off. Today, the bull case for bonds, Bitcoin and equities into year end. We'll talk to Cantor Fitzgerald, chief macro strategist, about why he sees upside across the board in the coming weeks. Plus, Meta shares gaining on a new report that Mark Zuckerberg plans to cut spending on the company's metaverse efforts. We'll ask an analyst what it means for shareholders, seem to like the news. And former antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter will join us on these new headlines around the bids for Warner Brothers Discovery, as one senator raises concerns about a Netflix takeover.

Carl Quintanilla (1:25)

It's been a busy morning for Data. Getting a little bit more this morning. Let's get back to Rick Santoli. Hey Rick.

Rick Santelli (1:31)

Hi Carl and Dee. We're looking at our September reads on fact, you orders in our final September reads on durable goods. Fact, you orders expected to be up 3 10s for September. Still playing catch up on the data. Comes in a bit light at up 2 10s. And last month's robust up 1.4 retains a lot of its strength. It's revised to 1.3. If you strip out transportation, still pretty solid up 2 10s. And that follows a minus 1 10 That was a revision from positive 1 10 to minus 1 10 Now, durable good, this series, as I said, are final reads replacing mid-month read. And the replacements, well, exactly the same. Up half 1% remains. And if you strip out transportation, it improves to up 6 10s, same as mid-month read. And both capital good orders, non-defense XR and shipments, both up a very robust 9 10s, same as the mid-month read. As we look at yields, they're revisiting the upper end of the range. We're over three and a half on a two-year up a couple basis points, four oh nine on 10s, up three basis points, and we continue to watch global rates on the firm side. Sara, Carl, back to you.

Sara Eisen (2:45)

Okay, thank you, Rick. Rick Santoli with the latest piece of data. It's good to get data back. We also got some news on jobs, and it's worth reporting, even though they tell very different stories of the labor market right now. The challenger numbers, which we have been watching with increased focus, especially since we haven't gotten a jobs report, a monthly jobs report, showed that employers announced 71,321 layoffs last month. This is according to the job placement firm Challenger Gray and Christmas. And it is a 24% jump from the planned layoffs in November 2024, so a year earlier. That challenger data has continued to point to elevated layoffs and is seen as problematic for the labor market. On the plus side, we got the government jobless claims, the number of Americans filing for unemployment claims in the last week. And keep in mind, it includes Thanksgiving, so it could be exaggerated by that. But it's historically very low. And that is a good sign for the overall labor market. So contrary to what we just heard, 191,000 Americans filing for new unemployment claims. That is the lowest level since September 2022 It speaks to the no hiring, no firing economy. Again, if you saw mass layoffs, you would see this number go up because more Americans would be filing for unemployment claims. We're just not seeing that in the data. I don't know if there's a quark with the data, Mike, or what, but it's like, you know, economists always say, don't panic about the labor market until you see a spike in jobless claims. We're not seeing that, though a lot of the other data does point to weakness, ADP yesterday, negative number on private sector jobs, these challenger numbers.