SOTS 2nd Hour: Resilient Retail Sales, Schwab's Liz Ann Sonders, & Tiktok Deal Latest 9/16/25

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

Want to quickly create and execute trading strategies to help keep up with the markets? With Fidelity Trading Dashboard, you can access live data, advanced charting, portfolio insights, and automated alerts, all on one screen. We streamlined the trading experience so you can build and place trades better. Your Fidelity Trading Dashboard is ready now for free. Visit fidelity.com/tradingdashboard.

Investing involves risk, including risk of loss. Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC, member NYSE SIPC.

SPEAKER_2 (0:32)

Huge savings on Dell AI PCs with Intel Core Ultra processors are here, and they are newly designed to help you do more faster. They can generate code, edit images, multitask without lag, draft emails, summarize documents, create live translations, and even extend your battery life. That's the power of Dell AI with Intel Inside. Upgrade today by visiting dell.com/aidashpc.

Sara Eisen (1:01)

Good Tuesday morning. Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Sara Eisen with Carl Quintanilla and David Faber, live as always for you from Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. Coming up this hour, Liz Ann Sonders from Charles Schwab joins us with her expectations for the market as the Fed meeting gets underway today.

Plus, the CEO of the Long-Term Stock Exchange joins us as President Trump joins the company's effort to end quarterly reporting. SEC is going to take it up. And Oracle shares are jumping again this morning. A new report about the company's involvement in the TikTok deal. Our David Faber has some new details on the story that you need to know. As the S&P loses an early morning game, Carl, but since that little changed.

Carl Quintanilla (1:39)

Let's get some fresh economic data. Just crossing for that, we'll turn back to Rick Santelli. Morning, Rick.

Rick Santelli (1:45)

Yes, good morning again, Carl. We have business inventories. This is July number first month, of course, of the third quarter, and it comes in exactly as expected. Inventories on the business side up two-tenths of a percent, and that's exactly what we have in the rear view mirror for our final June read as well. We do see that the yield curve has steepened. This morning's data has brought two-year note yields down about three basis points, but the long end and 10-year stubbornly high hovering much closer to unchanged. There's also a housing number out. That's the Association of Home Builders, Housing Market Index, and for that, we turn to Diana Olick. Diana.

Diana Olick (2:26)

Home builder sentiment in September was unchanged at 32 on the NAHB index. That's a miss. The street was actually looking for a slight gain. Now, anything below 50 is considered negative. The index has been in this low range since May. Last September, it was at 41, but builders are expressing some optimism that lower mortgage rates could get more buyers off the fence. The average rate on the 30-year fixed is down significantly from where it was in May, hitting 6.25 percent yesterday, according to Mortgage News Daily. Now, NAHB's chief economist Robert Deet said, NAHB expects the Fed to cut the federal funds rate at their meeting this week, which will help lower interest rates for builder and developer loans. Of the index's three components, current sales conditions were unchanged at 34, buyer traffic dropped one point to 21, but future sales expectations rose two points to 45 That's the highest reading since March of this year. The builders, though, do continue to see softness in the market, with the survey showing 39 percent of builders reporting cutting prices in September, up from 37 percent in August, and that is the highest percentage in the post-COVID period. Sara, back to you.

Sara Eisen (3:35)

Okay, Diana, thank you very much. Diana Olek, adding to some news we got earlier, on the US consumer, that consumer remains remarkably resilient. I think that's the headline from today's retail sales, despite the fact that we're just not seeing as much job growth out there. Consumers are still spending, at least they were to wrap up the August summer period. If you look at overall the number, 0.6 percent, that was better than the 0.2 percent that economists were looking for. If you strip out some things and go to the number that feeds into GDP, which is really important, 0.7 percent. Again, better than expected on spending. Break it down and you can see where the spending is taking place. Online, that's the non-store retailers, continues to be a real bright spot, up 2 percent in the month. This is the change from August, from July. Clothing and clothing accessories up 1 percent. Now, the only caveat I'll give you with these numbers is that they're not inflation adjusted. Some of these increase could be some pricing increases in places like clothing and accessories, as food and drinking places. But overall, it still paints a pretty strong picture of the consumer. What's not doing as well? Miscellaneous store retailers, department stores, we know that's been in a sort of structural slum. Furniture, I thought of Gary Friedman in RH when I saw the negative number on retail spending at furniture stores, health and personal care and general merchandise stores. Guys, the bottom line is the Fed is going into this meeting.