Squawk on the Street 2nd Hour 4/20/26

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Sara Eisen (1:03)

Good Monday morning, welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Sara Eisen with Carl Quintanilla and David Faber. We are live, as always, at post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. Coming up this hour, oil prices back on the upswing as the fate of the Strait of Hormuz remains uncertain. We'll talk to energy expert Paul Sankey about where he sees prices heading next. Plus Adobe CEO, Shantanu Narayan, is with us from the sidelines of the company's annual summit in Las Vegas. After just announcing a new enterprise AI platform and expanded partnerships with Anthropic, OpenAI, and NVIDIA.

A key moment for the Federal Reserve coming this week is Fed Share nominee Kevin Warsh. Here's tomorrow before the Senate Banking Committee. We'll talk about what's at stake with former Boston Fed President, Eric Rosengren. But guys, we are trying to figure out how resilient the economy is right now, given the rise in oil prices and the rise in gas prices that consumers are feeling at the pump. You know, it was a sharp rise, and I think the key is how long it lasts. But so far, sorry, we've had some CEOs out there from banks, from retailers. They're talking about the consumer actually being in pretty good shape. Listen.

SPEAKER_5 (2:15)

You can't ever say the world is perfect ahead, but right now, the cup is performing well, the consumers are spending, the credit quality is very good in improving.

SPEAKER_6 (2:23)

Overall, you know, spend continues to grow week on week, every week, year on year.

SPEAKER_7 (2:29)

We haven't seen any correlation or correction there at all. I mean, sales are very, very strong in the United States.

Carl Quintanilla (2:37)

The consumer is in good shape. We look at all these metrics, whether it's credit, whether it's spending, whether it's the wealth effect, the consumer is in really good shape.

SPEAKER_9 (2:48)

We're seeing a very resilient consumer. I mean, the impact to our international business is accelerating.

SPEAKER_10 (2:53)

You have a little bit of a bifurcated market where people who are more well off are still feeling in good shape and still spending. Folks are maybe a little more cautious who are less well off, but they're still spending as well.

Sara Eisen (3:08)

All right. Got a little choked up. But seriously, from regional banks...

David Faber (3:12)

Very emotional. I love those CEO strings, by the way. That's great.

Sara Eisen (3:15)

And that's all just people we've talked to in the last week or so.

David Faber (3:18)

I was with you talking to most of them.

Sara Eisen (3:19)

Right. And there's a theme there I'm sure you picked up on, which is the consumer actually is in pretty good shape there. These regional bankers aren't seeing credit deterioration. And part of it could be we're seeing the tax refunds coming a little bit higher and we're coming off of a stronger base. Unemployment is still pretty low, although it's crept up a little bit. And overall, it just paints a picture of an economy so far, and it's still early, right? We'll get retail sales tomorrow for the month of March. That'll be an interesting tell. But so far, that's holding up.

Carl Quintanilla (3:50)

Yeah, it's hard to then digest real disposable income printing negative for February, or the savings rate dropping to 4%, lowest since 22, right? I mean, it's just hard to put the anecdotes with the data right now.

Sara Eisen (4:03)

Yeah, I mean, on wages, we have seen a little bit of softness, but that could speak to the fact that we're kind of in a tight sort of full labor market right now and we've seen labor supply go down. Something obviously we'll watch and the Fed will watch it, but overall, and you can look at the jobless claims data every week, we just haven't seen a stress or deterioration from business or from consumers. Could be one reason the market's been so resilient. We're higher than where we were before this war started and the S&P 500 Great chart out of Goldman Sachs about earnings revisions, usually that typically happen around this time of year. They usually go lower, but look at what's happening in 2026, which is the top line. Earnings estimates are rising and they're strong, and they paint a pretty resilient picture of the US economy and of corporate America, which as you can see compared to last year or median or average according to Goldman Sachs, usually around this time of year starts to soften a little bit.