UnitedHealth Surges on Buffett Bet, Trump and Intel Stake Buzz, Applied Materials Tumbles 8/15/25

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Carl Quintanilla (0:47)

Market Moving Insight and Analysis joined Jim Cramer, David Faber, and me, Carl Quintanilla, on the opening bell hour of CNBC Squawk on the Street. Good Friday morning. Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla with Scott Wapner and Mike Santoli at Post Night of the New York Stock Exchange. Cramer and Faber have the morning off. Pre-market indices are going in different directions, as UNH is going to boost the Dow on the heels of Buffett's purchase. But AMAT is going to hurt the NASDAQ and the SEMIs as it guides lower and suffers some downgrades. Retail sales were solid. Good revisions. Our roadmap begins with this new bet by Buffett. Berkshire revealing a stake in UNH. The Dow component is surging on that news.

Scott Wapner (1:22)

Chips also in the spotlight this morning. Intel rising on reports. The Trump Administration discussing having the government take a stake in that company. But Applied Materials this morning is taking a hit on weaker than expected guidance. Plus, President Trump on his way now to Alaska for that high stakes meeting with Russian President Putin about ending the war in Ukraine.

Carl Quintanilla (1:42)

Let's begin though with the markets. Plenty to get to regarding single stocks, UNH and AMAT as we mentioned. But briefly, the macro data today. Mike, we mentioned retail sales 5 tenths, looking for 6, but still pretty good. The control group was good. Import prices, though, kind of throw some cold water on the notion that exporters of other countries are eating some of these tariffs.

Mike Santoli (2:04)

For sure. I mean, the retail sales, with a slight upward revision to June, looks like pretty solid, in general, at the core level. And so, the premise that the economy is in decent shape, maybe decelerated a little bit, but not that much. Now, the import price thing, it just, this week has shown you how high the bar is for the market to get rattled by the inflation figures, given the extremity of the shock of the payroll report that we got. So, it just feels as if the market's not going to be pulled off of this idea, that September, there's going to be room for at least a 25 basis point rate cut. And the market wants the cut, but it doesn't want to need the cut. And that's why, I mean, it's like...

Carl Quintanilla (2:45)

All of the gain, none of the pain.

Mike Santoli (2:47)

And who knows if that's going to stay in place? Who knows if the Fed wants to change the narrative a little bit next week, because there is room for that. But for now, the bond market is positioned in such a way that you're probably going to get it, and it's going to be a good news cut and not a rescue.

Scott Wapner (3:03)

After all the data that we got this week, CPI, PPI, import prices, if nothing else, you're going to leave this week with more concerns and or questions about inflation from here than you came into this week with. I think Austan Goolsbee this morning on Squawk is very representative of that perspective. He talked about unease, the word that he used, given all the data out there. He mentioned stagflation, which has been one of the words of the moment as well. And whether this inflation is going to be persistent, which sort of begs you to believe that in his mind, you got to wait and find out the answer to that question.

Mike Santoli (3:42)

I mean, clearly, the Fed does not want to be pulled well over a month before the September meeting into a place where the market is just going to force it. And it's not going to be able to pull the market back from them. Morgan Stanley, economist this morning, are essentially saying Jackson Hole next week leaves the opportunity, maybe the last opportunity, for Jay Powell to preserve the optionality.

Scott Wapner (4:05)

They say he's going to be hawkish.

Mike Santoli (4:07)

Yeah, exactly. They say, look, we still are in wait and see mode. And waiting and seeing means taking all these inflation numbers we've gotten and the ones we're still going to get before the September meeting to figure out what the path looks like. And I don't think you're going to get resolution on that. It's really going to be more of a weight of the evidence thing. And again, if you get a strong jobs number for August, then it probably does foul the equation. I just don't know if the market really will panic out of that. It's just kind of interesting.