SOTS 2nd Hour: Navigating Q2, Today's Deals To Watch, & LIVE: Hershey CEO 3/31/26

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Sara Eisen (0:50)

Good Tuesday 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. It is the last day of the first quarter, and stocks are higher today, but we're pacing for their worst quarter in years. We'll talk to market experts, Ed Yardeni and Adam Parker, about how they're positioned for Q2. Plus, the CEO of Hershey is with us as the company lays out a strategy update after a strong start to the year. And it's another Supreme Court opinion day, so that means we're waiting a potential decision this hour on President Trump's authority to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook. We'll bring you any headlines on that case if we do get in this hour.

Carl Quintanilla (1:27)

First up, though, Conference Board and Joltz on deck. Let's get back to Rick Santelli. Hey, Rick.

Rick Santelli (1:33)

Well, indeed, these are consumer confidence numbers from the Conference Board for the month of March. 91.8 is the headline. Much stronger than the 87.9 that we were looking for. Sequentially higher than the 91.0, which is a subtle revision from 91.2. That would be the best since the end of last year when we were 94.2. So it is a good number. And if we look at the present situation, same thing. A solid number, better than expectations. 123.3, that would be the best since the end of last year as well. And finally, expectations, 70.9, better than the 68 and change we're looking for. It is the only numbers thus far that's not sequentially higher. Our last look was 72 70.9 would be the lightest since 67 and change in January. But all in all, pretty good numbers. Job opening and labor turnover, always two months in arrears. This is a February number, expecting a number close to 6.9 million. Comes in at 6,882,000, with a fairly large revision to the upside in the rear-view mirror, from 6,946,000 all the way up to 7,240,000.

So obviously this read is a bit lower, but that 7,240,000, that would have been the highest read going back to May of last year. So the revision really is a pretty big deal, and it softens the blow a bit to the lighter number under 6,9 million for February. We see interest rates are to the downside, and even though of course oil is over $100 and Brent's even higher, we see that the Treasury market seems to have disengaged a bit from oil prices. Sara, back to you.

Sara Eisen (3:25)

Okay, thank you, Rick, and I'll just add another headline here. It does not appear that we will get the Lisa Cook Supreme Court case today, so we'll continue to be on watch for that next time we get a decision out of the Supreme Court, but no decision on Fed Governor Lisa Cook. I'll pick up where Rick left off on the consumer, better consumer confidence, because gas prices, this big headline, they did surpass $4 a gallon across the national average, and that is a milestone. It's about $1 more than we were last month. You feel this when you're at the pumps, higher prices, of course, in California. Now, a few silver linings. Number one, we've been here before, very recently. Three years ago, we were above $4 a gallon. Now, it didn't happen this quickly that time, so this can probably lead to some sticker shock and Americans are feeling it intensely and acutely. But during that inflation spike in 22 and 23, we were looking at these levels. And then the other chart, and we've looked at versions of this before, but I do think it's worth mentioning, comes from Bank of America, which shows the percentage share of energy spending, basically, of consumers, and how that has just come down to below 4% of our wallet share. It used to just make up a lot more. Oil energy was more expensive.