CNBC Business News Update - Market Open: Stocks Mixed, Gold Sets Another Intraday Record High, US Economic Growth Better Than Expected 12/23/25

Episode Date: December 23, 2025

From Wall Street to Main Street, the latest on the markets and what it means for your money. Updated regularly on weekdays, featuring CNBC expert analysis and sound from top business newsmakers. Anchored and reported by CNBC's Jessica Ettinger. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I'm Jessica Eddinger, CNBC, mixed and flattish morning out of the gate today. Ahead of a half day of trading tomorrow for Christmas Eve, the markets, of course, will be closed for Christmas on Thursday. The Dow down 52 points. It's being led lower by shares of McDonald's, which are already down 1.5% this morning. The S&P 500 index is up 5. The NASDAX up 22 points, shares of Nvidia up 3 tenths of 1%. state the obvious. There's not a lot of volume going on. Historically, around holidays, there's little movement. I think that's where we are at the same time. We're Florida with all-time highs. That's the Carson Group's Ryan Dietrich on CNBC. Gold said another intraday record high this morning. Yesterday, it closed at its 52nd record high of the year. The U.S. economy grew at a 4.3% pace in the third quarter. That was much stronger than expected.

I think this is a very, very impressive GDP report, 8% essentially nominal GDP growth. Consumer spending really beat expectations. This is pretty unusual. I mean, we had the monthly data for July, August, and September. So the only thing left was revisions. And the revisions were huge. Otherwise, you can just take the July, August, September number and get 2.7% consumer spending growth. Bank of America's Adich above on CNBC.

And here's Adichia with CNBC's senior economics reporter, Steve Leesman. This number, 4.3% GDP growth, in what has been tallied as the worst quarter for employment growth since 2019, suggests. Suggest productivity growth is off the charts. Off the charts productivity growth. Americans are on the road for Christmas with prices at the pump at four-year lows. Great news for consumers. Not the best news for oil giants. Oil is sitting around $58 a barrel, ExxonMobil, Chevron and Occidental.

are the biggest shale oil producers in the U.S. They need WTI, which is West Texas Intermediate Oil, to be at least in the low 50s per barrel to make the 15% return they want to run their businesses and pay investors. While consumers are getting a big break for their budgets right now. It's definitely a very attractive price for the U.S. consumer. We think the current oil price level

is a pretty attractive oil price level for the U.S. economy as a whole. That said, U.S. shale producers, prices are getting a little bit too low. Goldman's Dan Stroven on CNBC. Visa, the credit card company, its data show. The consumer's doing okay this holiday season, even though people are sick and tired of inflation

and higher prices they are still spending. Visa economist Michael Brown tells CNBC, this kind of surprised him. The resilience of consumers. We have seen much softer consumer sentiment and consumer confidence measures relative to this same time last season. Yet consumer spending held up.

Even if we adjusted our 4.2% number for that shopping basket of holiday goods prices, we'd still be up about 2.2% in inflation adjusted terms. The number one Christmas gift this year, again, in the numerator holiday survey, is gift cards. Clothing is second, toys and games, the third most purchased holiday gift. Today is the seventh biggest shopping day of the year. No Powerball winner last night. Christmas Eve jackpot for tomorrow night has grown to $1.7 billion. Jessica Eddinger, CNBC.

Become a smarter investor with CNBC Pro. 24-7 access to market-moving news and interviews with three global live streams, subscriber-only content, plus exclusive live events. This is my first time at the stock exchange, and it's been awesome. To be on the floor, I just can't believe I'm here. Become a CNBC pro. Go to CNBC.com slash get pro now.