SOTS 2nd Hour: Santa Claus Rally: A Boom or Bust? Plus: The Apple Playbook, and 2024’s Rise of the Dupes 12/30/24

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David Faber (1:01)

Good Monday morning. Welcome to another hour of Squawk on the Street. I'm David Faber with Mike Santoli and Leslie Picker. We're live from Postline at the New York Stock Exchange. Carl and Sarah have the morning off. I want to take a look at the equity markets. It's not a pretty picture, at least if you're long, as we head into what we're into the second to last trading day of the year. And you can see we are down sharply on all of the major averages. Treasury's not really the culprit here, obviously. We did have that spike in rates last week. Not so much as you see a decline overall in the 10-year to 4.547 percent.

Leslie Picker (1:33)

Yeah, it seems to be more sentiment driven today. We are 30 minutes into the trading session here. Three big movers we are watching. NVIDIA off morning lows and in the green, actually. Oh no, down about half a percent, or a quarter of a percent at this point in time. The company is turning its attention to robotics, according to the FT saying NVIDIA will launch the next version of compact computers for humanoid robots in the first half of next year. Officials in South Korea are investigating a deadly plane crash involving a Boeing jet after it landed and skidded off the end of a runway at an international airport there and erupted into a fireball as it slammed into a wall. Transportation officials there now conducting a special inspection of all Boeing 737-800 aircraft operated by airliners in that country. Shares of Boeing down more than 4% right now. And more volatility in names like Tesla and Palantir both still up double digits in some of the best performers on the S&P in December. But coming off of those highs into year end, Tesla down about 3%, Palantir down about 5%.

David Faber (2:39)

We got PMIs a little while ago. Let's get to pending home sales there out just moments ago. And Diana Oleck has the report. Diana.

Diana Olick (2:45)

Well, David, pending home sales in November rose 2.2% month to month and were up 6.9% from November last year. That according to the realtors. And that is slightly better than expectations and the fourth straight month of gains. Remember, this count is based on signed contracts. So that's people out shopping in November when the average rate on the 30-year fix spent much of the month over 7% before coming down in the last week. NAR's chief economist, Loris Yud, said in the release, Consumers appeared to have recalibrated expectations regarding mortgage rates and are taking advantage of more available inventory. Regionally, sales fell in the northeast month to month, but rose everywhere else with gains the strongest in the south. Now, that may have been making up for declines in earlier months due to several hurricanes and flooding. And it looks like we will be starting the new year over 7% as well on mortgage rates. As a result, the home construction ETF, ITB, is down close to 17% month to month on pace for its worst month since March of 2020 And David, we remember March of 2020, not so great.

David Faber (3:50)

No, that was not a great period at all. Diana, thank you. Diana Olick. Turning back to stocks, we're in the midst of a significant selloff, of course, as we end the year here. Let me turn to Mike Santoli. I mean, a lot of people are on vacation. I mentioned a lot of perhaps people who run portfolios, but this is going to get their attention a bit.