SOTS 2nd Hour: Tech Investor Dan Niles, Truist Wealth's Chief Investment Officer, & Today's Big Tech Trade 9/15/25

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Sara Eisen (1:10)

Good Monday morning. Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Sara Eisen with Carl Quintanilla and David Faber. We are live at Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. Stock's kicking off the week higher, near record highs. We've got a big macro week ahead with the Fed meeting, retail sales tomorrow. We're up half a percent on the S&P. Tech is having a nice start. Alphabet higher. Some of the semi-cap companies higher. Nasdaq up three quarters of 1%. As for Treasuries, a little bit firmer today.

Actually, yeah, firmer with the yields a little bit lower. The 10-year yield just above that 4% level. Ahead this hour, two big movers in tech. Tesla surging as Elon Musk discloses a billion-dollar share purchase, while Nvidia pulls back on a China investigation. We'll talk to noted tech investor Dan Niles about what to do with both of these names right now. Plus, vaccine stocks coming off a rough session after reports said the Trump administration may link COVID vaccine to some pediatric deaths.

Former FDA Commissioner, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, will be with us to discuss that news in a big CDC meeting. What you need to know about that this week. And then much more on these TikTok headlines and how close the US might be to a deal with China. But guys, it is Fed Week, and we have a major Fed meeting coming up on Wednesday. Meeting kicks off tomorrow. We might not know who exactly is going to be at that meeting. A lot rests on whether Stephen Myron gets confirmed tonight, what happens with Lisa Cook. But what we do know is that the market is gearing up for the first interest rate cut in nine months, first cut of the year. Here's what the Fed is dealing with, basically since the last time it met. It's a changed picture. Jobs, front and center. The job growth has just leveled off, and it's really weakened. Just look at the last few months of job creation. If you look, well, there's the PCE, there's the inflation report, and that's the other part of the mandate, right, to keep stable inflation and jobs. Here's jobs. Look what's happened over the last few months. The three-month average, down to 29,000 jobs per month. They actually went negative in June. And then if you do that whole revision back from April 20, 23 to, sorry, April 24 to March 25, 911,000 jobs fewer than we expected. That means that we were thinking that job growth was around 200,000 a month, averaging. It actually was closer to 75,000 a month. So the concern for the Fed has to be on the employment side of the mandate, which is why everyone's now expecting for them to cut. What's the mystery? Well, a few. Number one, how many descents will there be? I mean, some people might descend and say, no, no cut right now. We're worried about the inflation and tariffs. Some people might descend and say, we want 50 We want to double 50 basis point cuts. I would especially watch that if Stephen Myron gets on the Fed. Maybe Bowman and Waller will be in that camp. We don't we just don't know. It's important because it just shows that it's not exactly clear cut what to do and there's so much political pressure on the Fed. And the and the dynamic is changing very quickly around inflation and jobs.

Carl Quintanilla (4:09)

That's tough.

Sara Eisen (4:10)

We haven't seen for descends Carl since 1990 So that would be a big deal. So that's one of one of the questions that I have going in. Yeah.

Carl Quintanilla (4:19)

And then of course, we're getting some dots, right? Give us a sense as to how they think we're going to end the year.