SOTS 2nd Hour: More Market Records, Bitcoin All-Time Highs, and Trump 2.0 Stocks To Watch 11/11/24

Sara Eisen (0:00)

Good Monday morning. Welcome to another hour of 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. Stocks are building on record highs. S&P is up 2 tenths of 1%. The Dow is really the leader today, up another 1%.

Higher than 44K. Goldman Sachs, Salesforce, Caterpillar, United Health, those are all the big contributors to the Dow move. Goldman adding 100 points to the Dow by itself. Financial is in the lead today, as well as Consumer Discretionary, and that's a Tesla story. The NASDAQ is lagging. It's down a quarter of 1%. Some weakness in the chip names, NVIDIA has given some back. Broadcom, Apple, Meta, Amazon, they're all weaker. Tesla is helping to offset that with another strong gain post-election, but most of the other information technology names are a little bit weaker. Remember, the bond market is closed, which is why we're not showing you treasuries for this Veterans Day. We're 30 minutes here into the trading session. Here are some big movers we're watching. Tesla shares coming off their best week since January of last year, now on pace for their best monthly performance of the year and adding to those gains pretty sharply this morning, up another 7%. Cigna and Humana headed in opposite directions after Cigna confirmed it will not pursue a possible combination with Humana. And then crypto-related stocks, the top of the market, Bitcoin hitting 80K for the first time this weekend. It's sharply above there, boosting names like Coinbase and MicroStrategy. MicroStrategy confirming it bought more Bitcoin. Just continues to buy more Bitcoin. Michael Saylor. As far as the overall market though, guys, we continue to be in this state of optimism, I would say, over the results of the election combined with a federal reserve that has been cutting interest rates and continues to signal more rate cuts are on the way. And that's why you see groups like consumer names, financials, small caps I would add in there as well, really tied to the health of the US economy doing better. I was at this conference on Friday, speaking with CEOs across industries, telecom, cyber, banking, and tech. It was overall a TMT conference about what the new outlook and the new prospects for an administration and Congress mean to their business. They were practically giddy. Listen to what I heard.

SPEAKER_2 (2:16)

It was a good week in the markets. And it's on the back of a quick, a clear, and a decisive result, which I think really helped drive what was an anticipation of a pro-growth agenda.

SPEAKER_3 (2:29)

We know roughly where US policy will be. I think it is going to lean in in favor of innovation. It's going to lean in in favor of economic growth.

SPEAKER_4 (2:37)

We look forward to working with this administration, with this FCC that's coming up, and we're expecting a really productive relationship. And we have one now.

SPEAKER_3 (2:45)

You're more than likely going to see some decisions which are possibly going to accelerate investment in AI and development of the country.

SPEAKER_5 (2:52)

They have a pro-growth agenda, and they're really focused on how we drive growth and innovation to the country. You know, that's good for the country, that's good for the markets, and that's good for us.

Sara Eisen (3:02)

I mean, clearly the deregulatory piece is what a lot of these CEOs are anticipating and looking forward to, even in AI. You know, I was talking to Arvind Krishna, CEO of IBM there, about, so President Trump, President-elect Trump has promised to roll back, for instance, the executive order that they did on AI. Not necessarily that that was holding things back, but as a signal that it's a lighter touch regime when it comes to things like AI, because the focus and the goal should be competing with China and letting our companies, you know, excel on that front. And I think that a lot of what you're seeing in the market has to do. Yes, lower corporate taxes are good if we get that 15% rate, especially for companies that bring business back to America. But the regulatory regime and just how much it has been, I think, punishing and overzealous in the last administration is something we're seeing reflected in the market, really across sectors.

Carl Quintanilla (3:56)

Punishing is a hard thing to say about a market at all time high and unemployment at the lowest level in 50 years.

Sara Eisen (4:03)

That's why I say it surprised me, how much I hear that it's been holding back business. I mean, I'm sure you guys talk to CEOs, that won't be named, that are looking at deals that they would not have looked at now because this next FTC might look at it differently or this next DOJ might look at it differently, just as one example of activity that could be unlocked. When I say punishing, I mean, look at the banks. Look at the move in the banks since the election on this view that lighter touch on Basel III regulations. The CFPB, this hidden bank rule or hidden bank fee rule or late fee rule, for instance, this could unlock potentially much more revenues for some of the banks if it gets reversed.