SOTS 2nd Hour: Nvidia in Correction Territory, Trump Takes Aim at PBMs, CNBC Fed Survey 12/17/24

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Sara Eisen (1:07)

Yeah, all right. Good Tuesday morning. Welcome to another hour of Squawk on the Street. I'm Sara Eisen with Carl Quintanilla and David Faber live at post nine of the New York Stock Exchange. Take a look at stocks. Dow continues its recent losing streak as we've been talking about. SMB is under a little pressure too, four tenths of a percent. NASDAQ pulls back half a percent as well. Though tech has been the star of the show lately. Take a look at Treasuries. We're gonna get some data in just a second. Also talk about retail sales, which were better. The 10-year yield, a little bit lower, just below that 4.4 level. So buying, but it's kind of mixed on the curve. Five-year yield is a little bit firmer. We're 30 minutes into the trading session. Here are some movers we're watching. Shares of Nvidia under pressure again. Trading in correction territory, which means they're officially down more than 10% from recent highs. The stock down for four straight days now and down eight of the last nine. Shares of Pfizer moving higher after raising its outlook. We're gonna take a closer look at what's ahead for that stock going into 2025 with some announcements today.

And then shares of UnitedHealthcare moving lower once again. This stock among the biggest drags on the Dow over the past eight sessions and accounts for more than half of the Dow's point losses on the month. It's been a big part of the story of the Dow lagging.

Carl Quintanilla (2:18)

Busy day for data. We got retail sales, industrial production. Let's get some inventories with Rick Santelli yet again. Hey Rick.

Rick Santelli (2:25)

Good morning, Carl. Indeed, these are October reads on business inventories. And remember, that's the first month of the fourth quarter and many were looking for a big positive number potentially as many large entities try to get in front of the notion of how tariffs might affect future pricing. We're expecting up one tenth of a percent, Carl. Came in exactly up one tenth of a percent. And last month, it was exactly the same, although it was just downgraded to zero unchanged. This of course will put a bit of a positive spin on the GDP numbers for the fourth quarter when we get them in a little over a month. Also out is our December read on National Association of Home Builders Market Index. And for that, we head east to Diana Olek. Diana?

Diana Olek (3:12)

Well, Rick, builder sentiment in December was unchanged from November at 46, according to the NIHB survey. Anything below 50 is considered negative. The index stood at 37 last December. NIHB chairman Carl Harris said in the release, while builders are expressing concerns that high interest rates, elevated construction costs, and a lack of buildable lots continue to act as headwinds, they're also anticipating future regulatory relief in the aftermath of the election. Now, of the index's three components, current sales conditions were unchanged at 48, buyer traffic dropped 1.231, but sales expectations in the next six months rose 3.266. That's the highest level since April of 2022 Sentiment increased month to month everywhere except in the West, that's where home prices are the highest. The builders also noted no change in incentives month to month, still 31 percent with average cut being 5 percent. The use of incentives was 60 percent in December, also unchanged from November. Sara, back to you.

Sara Eisen (4:11)

Okay, Diana. Thank you, Diana Olek. Other big piece of data we got this morning was retail sales, good snapshot of the consumer and overall pretty good number, 0.7 percent increase monthly on the retail sales number. That was a little bit of a bounce back, but October got revised higher as well, so that's also good news. October sales, 0.5 percent increase than the previously reported 0.4 percent increase. A lot of it was in autos and auto parts. Remember, these numbers aren't adjusted for inflation, so price increases in that area could also have an impact. Here's the monthly gainers, what looked really good this month in terms of where the spending was, and there's motor vehicle parts with an unusual 2.6 percent monthly increase, but online, really good sign for Cyber Monday and Black Friday and holiday spending. Sporting hobby instruments and books was also a good one. Building materials and garden supplies, not surprising because that was a rebound effect from the hurricane. As far as where the sales were a little bit weaker on the month, a few interesting stories here. So miscellaneous store retailers down, department stores in particular, were weak in that sector.