S&P 500 win streak, Berkshire’s leadership changes, Netflix’s regulatory path and more in Morning Squawk

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

The three major indexes are coming off back-to-back winning weeks, with the S&P 500 on Friday rising closer to records it set earlier this year. Stocks’ advances came as investors geared up for the last Federal Reserve policy meeting of the year, which is set to kick off tomorrow.

Here’s what to know:

• The delayed release of September’s personal consumption expenditures price index showed core PCE — a key inflation measure — was lighter than economists anticipated on a 12-month basis.
• The report gave stocks a boost on Friday, as traders bet the data would encourage Fed officials to cut interest rates this week.
• The Fed is set to announce its decision on Wednesday. Traders are pricing in about a 90% likelihood that the central bank cuts interest rates again, according to CME’s FedWatch tool.
• Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday that he expects the U.S. economy to finish the year with 3% real GDP growth, even after the hit from the federal government shutdown.
• Following its four-day win streak last week, the S&P 500 is now roughly 0.7% away from its intraday record and about a quarter-percent off its closing high.
• Follow live markets updates here.

Berkshire Hathaway announced this morning that Todd Combs, investment officer and Geico CEO, will leave the conglomerate to join JPMorgan Chase as head of its new Security and Resiliency Initiative.

Berkshire CEO Warren Buffett, who will step down as CEO at the end of the year, said in a press release that Combs “made many great hires” for Geico and “broadened its horizons.”

Nancy Pierce, operations chief at Geico, will replace Combs as the business’ CEO. Berkshire also announced that its CFO Marc Hamburg will retire in June 2027 and be replaced by Charles Chang, current CFO of Berkshire Hathaway Energy.

Both Wall Street and Hollywood were left reeling after the announcement of the Netflix–Warner Bros. deal on Friday. Now, the question is if the agreement can get over regulatory hurdles.

President Donald Trump’s administration views the deal with “heavy skepticism,” a senior administration official told CNBC’s Eamon Javers on Friday. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has already asked for an antitrust review, calling the deal an “anti-monopoly nightmare.”

Believing it has a better chance of securing regulatory approval, Paramount Skydance is weighing whether to bring a bid straight to WBD shareholders in a last-ditch effort to beat Netflix, sources told CNBC’s Alex Sherman. Meanwhile, movie theater operators are wondering whether they can survive if the Netflix deal makes the world’s largest streaming service the owner of a major film studio.

After losing its search antitrust case last year, Alphabet on Friday got more details about the consequences it will face.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta said Google can’t enter into an agreement like it has with Apple, which it pays for search browser usage, unless the deal has termination date of a year or less. Mehta also listed requirements for the makeup of a committee that will decide who Google has to share its data with.

But as CNBC’s Jennifer Elias notes, these weren’t the most drastic punishments on the table. Mehta in September ruled against harsher penalties proposed by the Department of Justice, which could have included the forced sale of Google’s Chrome browser.

The global denim market is now a more than $100 billion industry, driven by major retailers such as Levi Strauss and American Eagle. But as CNBC’s Gabrielle Fonrouge reports, its origins are far more humble.

Blue jeans were born out of a woman’s frustration with the frequent rips in her gold miner husband’s denim pants. Her tailor’s solution — adding copper rivets to the garment’s key points of strain — signified the birth of what we know today as the blue jean. In the approximately century and a half since, the pant has become a staple of American fashion that transcends income class and trend cycles.

Here’s what we’re keeping an eye on this week:

• Monday: New York Fed’s Survey of Consumer Expectations
• Tuesday: Job Openings & Labor Turnover data for October
• Wednesday: Fed decision and press conference; Oracle and Adobe earnings (after the bell)
• Thursday: Lululemon, Costco and Broadcom earnings (after the bell)

CNBC Pro subscribers can see a calendar and rundown for the week here.

— CNBC’s Sean Conlon, Ryan Ermey, Alex Sherman, Lillian Rizzo, Dan Mangan, Sarah Whitten, John Melloy, Jennifer Elias and Gabrielle Fonrouge contributed to this report. Josephine Rozzelle edited this edition.