CNBC Business News Update - Market Close: Stocks Lower, Investors Hoping For Fed Interest Rate Cut Wednesday, Gold Hits 35th Record High Close Of The Year 9/16/25

Episode Date: September 16, 2025

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I'm Jessica Eddinger, CNBC. Wall Street will open Wednesday morning after a losing Tuesday for the major averages, but not until the NASDAQ and the S&P 500 index each hit new intraday record highs before pulling back. Investors on hold for an expected interest rate cut by the Fed. On Tuesday, the Dow fell 125 points, led lower by shares of United Health, which were down more than 2%. The S&P 500 index was down 8. The NASDAQ down 14 points. NVIDIA shares lower by 1.5% gold with a new record high, finishing at $3,725 announced. That was the 35th record high for gold this year. Investors are banking on an interest rate cut of at least a quarter percentage point. The announcement comes Wednesday afternoon at 2 Eastern. Cutting because the economy is weakening is not traditionally a good thing. and just because they're easing and people are getting excited because there's going to be this easing cycle,

they're not easing because things are great and productivity surging. They're easing because the economy is rolling over in terms of the labor market. And that's a very different outcome. And I think people are undercounting the amount of risk out there. MetLife investments drew Mattis on CNBC. A deal seems to be in the works for Chinese video clip app TikTok. It sits on the phones of more than half the U.S. adult population and was banned by Congress as a national security risk. Something could happen Friday after a planned phone

call between China's president and President Trump. Here's CNBC's David Faber. TikTok USA will be brought into a new entity that will be owned by some current investors in ByteDance, its parent company. It appears it would include the licensing of the key algorithm, of course, from the Chinese, and they would be paid for that. BightDance essentially would get a payment for that. I'm told as much as 20% of the revenues. The main idea here is that you would have a new entity. Oracle is the cloud provider for TikTok. Remember, if this app had been banned, that would go away. It's an important component of business for Oracle.

They've had it for quite some time. Americans are already starting to book their flights for the holidays, hoping to head off more plane ticket price increases. Coming out of Labor Day, you're really starting to book for your fall break, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and bookings have been even stronger as we have come into September. So I actually think that the economy is stronger than some of the backward-looking statistics would suggest. That's United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby on CNBC. In August, plane ticket prices rose by 6% in the CPI report, the Consumer Price Index.

Kirby says it's the more expensive premium and business seats that are actually selling. Main cabin seats less so. Retail sales came in stronger in August than expected, but some of that may be inflation, because things cost more. 0.6% increase. Economists were looking for 0.2% increase that could incorporate a little bit of higher prices in there. It's not adjusted for inflation,

but it also shows a pretty decent consumer picture. CNBC's Sarah Eisen here is CNBC's senior economics reporter Steve Leesman. Part of what we're seeing in this retail sales number is a little bit more inflation on the consumer goods side. You can have consumer strength that looks to be true. It could also be true that part of what we're seeing here is the result of tariffs working their way into the system. On Wednesday's watch list, investors are hoping for that first interest rate cut by the Fed since last year.

Earnings are coming from Cracker Barrel and General Mills, and we get a read on the new construction home business with building permits and housing starts numbers. I'm Jessica Eddinger, CNBC. You come to my show and you learn how to do stocks. Mad Money, Weeknight, Six Eastern, CNBC.