Apple’s AI leadership, Costco’s tariff lawsuit, Cyber Monday Shopify outage and more in Morning Squawk

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Here are five key things investors need to know to start the trading day:

The stock market’s recovery rally grinded to a halt yesterday. The culprit: A slide in cryptocurrencies, which put a damper on risk-on investing.

Here’s what to know:

• The three major indexes all broke five-day win streaks. Small-cap stocks also felt the pullback, with the Russell 2000 sliding more than 1%.
• Investor sentiment was soiled by a sell-off in crypto assets. Bitcoin fell 6% for its worst day since March.
• Crypto-related stocks and some artificial intelligence plays also dropped in the session, signaling that animal spirits were spooked.
• But retail stocks bucked the downtrend, with the State Street SPDR S&P Retail ETF (XRT) pushing its one-week gain above 6% as the holiday shopping season kicks into full swing.
• Follow live markets updates here.

President Donald Trump has said he knows who he will nominate to be the next Federal Reserve chair, but the public will have to wait. Even so, people seem to be coming to the same conclusion: National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett.

Across the board, prediction markets are placing a high likelihood that Hassett will succeed Jerome Powell in the role. Hassett told Fox News this weekend that he’d “be happy to serve” if asked.

As CNBC’s Jeff Cox writes, the central bank’s next chair will enter the role at a pivotal time for the U.S. economy. They will also have to navigate a Fed that is currently divided on the direction of monetary policy.

Apple said yesterday that its head of artificial intelligence, John Giannandrea, is stepping down and will be replaced by Microsoft and Google alum Amar Subramanya. As CNBC’s Kif Leswing writes, it’s the biggest shakeup to the company’s AI efforts since it launched the Apple Intelligence suite last year. The move also comes as experts warn that Apple’s AI technology is lagging that of its peers.

Meanwhile, Nvidia announced that it bought $2 billion of Synopsys stock as part of a partnership to accelerate computing and AI engineering work. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang called the agreement a “huge deal” on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” yesterday. Synopsys shares surged nearly 5% in Monday’s session, while Nvidia added more than 1%.

Costco is taking the White House to court over President Donald Trump’s tariffs. The wholesaler filed a lawsuit last week asking for a full refund of the new tariffs it has paid this year. The suit also seeks to block those levies from being collected as the Supreme Court weighs the tariffs’ legality.

Dozens of other companies have filed similar lawsuits in hopes of securing refunds if the Supreme Court rules against Trump’s tariffs. Even if the court finds the duties are illegal, Costco warned in its suit that it may not be able to get paid back later, pointing to a Dec. 15 deadline that could prevent refunds of any duties it’s already paid.

White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement that Costco’s suit underscores “the economic consequences of the failure to uphold” Trump’s tariffs.

Yesterday was slated to be one of the most important online shopping events of the year. But companies using Shopify faced an hours-long outage, sending shares of the e-commerce firm down nearly 6% in yesterday’s session.

Shopify said some merchants had trouble logging in, while others were not able to access point-of-sale systems. By midafternoon, Shopify — which says it handles more than 10% of all U.S. e-commerce transactions — said its platform was beginning to recover.

— CNBC’s Fred Imbert, Liz Napolitano, Pia Singh, Jeff Cox, Ashley Capoot, Kif Leswing, Dan Mangan, Annie Palmer and Ryan Baker contributed to this report. Josephine Rozzelle edited this edition.