Yields Fall on Treasury Decision, OpenAI-Anthropic Revenue Race, Moderna Soars 100% 8/19/26

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Market insight and analysis. You're listening to the opening bell of CNBC's Squawk on the Street.

Carl Quintanilla (0:48)

Good Wednesday morning, welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla with David Faber, Jim Cramer here at Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. Pre-market is getting a little help today from lower rates with the long bond back to 5-2 on these Treasury buybacks and some bright spots in retail and in semis today. Steady oil doesn't hurt even as the White House says no talks are planned with Iran and the war hits a six-month mark next week. Our roadmap begins with OpenAI though. The company's revenue growth are reportedly coming in well short of Anthropic sales numbers.

David Faber (1:20)

Also ahead, Moderna shares, they are soaring. Merck shares also this on phase three trial results involving a melanoma vaccine.

And President Trump pauses imposing 50 percent tariffs on certain Canadian imports. This was done shortly before those duties were set to kick in at midnight.

Carl Quintanilla (1:41)

Let's begin though with the markets looking to snap this three-day losing streak. A lot of that, Jim, has come obviously as a result of higher yields and Treasury taking some action today.

Jim Cramer (1:49)

Yeah, look, today's the day I think we're going to remember as what US. Treasury issues bonds and buys them back. SK Hynex issues stock, then buys them back. I think that we're in a situation where people are trying to address directly what's happening in the market. A best is looking at the market and saying, listen, we can't, we have to hold it here. It's a put. It's an obvious put. We're seeing a lot of puts in the Micron area.

I'm going to the meeting zone, that's what my mind is, I'm going to Micron.

But it's SK Hynex, after issuing all that stock here, comes back. I mean, I think, Carl, people want this rally preserved in the worst way, and some would say they're doing it in the worst way.

Carl Quintanilla (2:31)

Well, the Hynex buyback would be, I think, the largest buyback in South Korea's history.

Jim Cramer (2:37)

They did one of the largest issuances. I mean, look, I'm not saying it's ill founded. They wanted to list here. I think there were other ways to do it, such as dumping a lot of stock here and then say, listen, we'll buy it back there. Right, but I sell it here, I buy it back there.

David Faber (2:49)

What, obviously, we heard this from the current Squawk Box in the last five, 10 minutes of that show, but what the market has been dealing with lately, certainly yesterday in a part, is the higher yields, particularly at the long end, the 30 year, of course, hitting that 5.3% magic number and going a bit past that, highest yields we've seen in 19 years.

And that had been a concern. So this morning, with the Treasury saying they're at least doubling the size of their liquidity support buyback operations for longer dated nominal coupon securities, including 10 to 20 to 30 years. I guess that can be helpful to yields. You see them declining here.

Jim Cramer (3:24)

Treasuries up a full point in the long end.

David Faber (3:27)

Does that clear the way? It's not as though it's been really hampering stocks to begin with. And it does take you back sometimes, doesn't it? To 30 years ago, during the.com boom, when we had yields that were as high, it was not higher than we're currently seeing.

Jim Cramer (3:40)

Yeah, I mean, the market was saying, listen, you can't borrow, but I think what's most interesting about this is under the previous administration, they had a guy, Frost, he handled all these, all the stock, all the bond issuance, and he timed it perfectly, Carl. He did a lot of short end stuff. Tim Geithner did a lot of short end stuff. They always liked the short end because even though it's much more expensive than the long end, it doesn't hurt the curve.