SOTS 2nd Hour: Novo Nordisk Oral Weight-Loss Pill, Global Market Outlook, “Aggressive Housing Reform” 12/23/25

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Carl Quintanilla (0:30)

Good Tuesday morning. Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla with Leslie Picker and Mike Santoli. Sara and David are off this morning. We're live at Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. S&P is still holding gains for the month, which would take us to the longest monthly wind streak since 2018 Treasury is up a little bit on a warm set of data out of GDP consumption and prices as well. Today, Novo Nordisk shares are up after its weight loss pill received FDA approval. You'll hear what the CEO has to say about that news coming up.

The president says aggressive housing reform is coming in the new year. We'll look at what that might mean for housing stocks. And the man who coined the term brick, Jim O'Neill, Lord O'Neill, will join us to discuss his outlook for the global markets in the new year. Let's begin there with some breaking news from Leslie.

Leslie Picker (1:15)

Carl, thank you. Citadel planning to return about $5 billion in profit it earned in 2025 back to investors at the beginning of next year. That is according to a person familiar with the matter. The firm's flagship multi-strategy fund known as its Wellington Fund gained 9.3% in the year through last week said the person who asked not to be named discussing performance details. The profit being returned is not all that was generated in 2025, that person said, but rather it's a way of constraining capital amid what the fund managers there perceive to be a limited opportunity set going into the new year. As such, Citadel will start 2026 with $67 billion in assets down from the $72 billion it currently manages, that person said. A spokesperson for Citadel declined to comment and Citadel does not opt for profit distributions every year, but since 2017 the hedge fund has returned $32 billion to its investors, guys.

Mike Santoli (2:14)

Yeah, interesting the attention to capacity constraints and multi-strategy, which is the biggest, I guess, single category of hedge funds now overtaking equity long short. So, you know, it is kind of fascinating how we can look at the kind of footprints of those types of strategies in the markets, the whole kind of factor hurting and things like that, that they try to dance around. But yeah, very interesting. And, you know, 9.3, everyone will look at that and say, oh, it's only half of the S&P debt. But it's like with market neutral, factor neutral, it's essentially, you know, also, right. So many asset classes and trying to keep volatility very mitigated.

Leslie Picker (2:52)

Exactly. A key constraint factor, too, is just talent and hiring talent. There are only so many people who are good at certain, you know, running certain strategies, running certain books. And so therefore, if you feel like, you know, the market isn't presenting itself in a way that you really want to be putting a lot of capital to work and there isn't the talent to really run those books, best way to kind of manage that is to, you know, have these distributions of profit back to investors.

Carl Quintanilla (3:16)

It has been a challenging year. I think it's their lowest gain for the year since 18 or so.

Leslie Picker (3:20)

That, yeah.

Carl Quintanilla (3:21)

And some of that involves Nat Gas trades that didn't go the way they thought, some other things too.

Leslie Picker (3:25)

Yeah, still the most profitable hedge fund in history and it's likely to still be that way when the LCH rate rankings come out in January. But, you know, obviously the commodity pressure there affected them and there were reports that that was kind of the lowest return in some time but still obviously positive. And I believe that their returns since inception are about 19% going back to 1990 Those are annual returns since inception.

Mike Santoli (3:52)

When they didn't start with 67 billion or whatever the number is right now. Yeah, so it's a little tougher.

Leslie Picker (3:58)

Exactly. Law of large numbers.

Carl Quintanilla (3:59)

Yes. Busy day for data and we're getting a little bit more right now on a conference board. Let's get back to Rick Santelli. Hey, Rick.