Good Wednesday morning. Welcome to Squawk on the street. I'm Carl Kintania with Melissa Lee here at Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange.

Sarah and David are off today. Got a shortened Christmas Eve trading session with markets in the green. Dow's up almost 90 points. Nasdaq trying to get out of the red. Most sectors are positive. A little bit of weakness in communication services, consumer discretionary. Treasury's

well-behaved on an area where, man, rate volatility has come way down, 10 years still in that

range around 4.15. In a few moments, Wharton Professor Jeremy Siegel joins us with what he says

are two potential roadblocks that might slow the market rally. Moody's Mark Zandi will give us

his reaction to jobless

claims today pretty good and why he believes economic growth right now is fragile. Plus, a deal in

the pharma space, Sanofi buying vaccine maker Dynavacs. We'll talk about whether we could see more deals

in that space in the new year. Let's begin, though, with this morning's initial jobless claims number.

Better than expected, $214,000 for what this all means for stocks.

Let's bring in Jeremy Siegel, Wisdom Tree, Chief Economist and Warden School Professor of Finance.

Jeremy, great to see you. Happy holidays.

Thank you.

Labor market still doesn't give you too many things to worry about in claims, although yesterday

people were looking at conference board job differential and what that might mean for, I don't

know, the prospect of a jobless expansion, let's say. Yeah, the sweet spot for jobless claims,

you know, is between 200,000 and 240. We have just been there virtually every week, which is really, you know, shows, you know,

not an overheating labor in the market to say the least, but one that is certainly not deteriorating

and, you know, setting us up for potentially good 2026.

Do you think a more dovesh rate environment can unwind some of the job

loss that might come from technology? Yeah. I mean, I think we should be in the low threes on the

Fed funds rate. I mean, we really had a good inflation report, and I don't

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